'And to-morrow!' he said, his eyes rolling. Suddenly he stopped. 'Senor,' he said, 'is it true that my venerated friend, my more than father, has been murdered—at the instigation of that fiend? Is it true that the senorita has disappeared? These tales are told.'
I said it was very true.
'They shall be avenged,' he declared, 'to-morrow! I shall seek out the senorita. I shall find her. I shall find her! For me she was destined by my venerable friend.'
He snatched a black velvet jacket from the table and put it on.
'Afterwards, Senor, you shall relate. Have no fear. I shall save you. I shall save all men oppressed by this scourge of the land. For the moment afford me the opportunity to meditate.' He crossed his arms, and dropped his round head. 'Alas, yes!' he meditated.
Suddenly he waved towards the door. 'Senor,' he said swiftly, 'I must have air; I stifle. Come with me to the corridor....'
He went towards the window giving on to the patio; he stood in the shadow, his arms folded, his head hanging dejectedly. At the moment it grew suddenly dark, as if a veil had been thrown over a lamp. The sun had set outside the walls. A drum began to beat. Down below in the obscurity the crowd separated into three strings and moved slowly towards the barren tunnels. Under our feet the white shirts disappeared; the ragged crowd gravitated to the left; the small children strung into the square cage-door. The drum beat again and the crowd hurried. Then there was a clang of closing grilles and lights began to show behind the bars from deep recesses. In a little time there was a repulsive hash of heads and limbs to be seen under the arches vanishing a long way within, and a little light washed across the gravel of the patio from within.
'Senor,' the Cuban said suddenly, 'I will pronounce his panegyric. He was a man of a great gentleness, of an inevitable nobility, of an invariable courtesy. Where, in this degenerate age, shall we find the like!' He stopped to breathe a sound of intense exasperation.
'When I think of these Irish,...' he said. 'Of that O'Brien....' A servant was arranging the shining room that we had left. Salazar interrupted himself to give some orders about a banquet, then returned to me. 'I tell you I am here for introducing my knife to the spine of some sort of Madrid embustero, a man who was insolent to my amiga Clara. Do you believe that for that this O'Brien, by the influence of the priests whose soles he licks with his tongue, has had me inclosed for many months? Because he feared me! Aha! I was about to expose him to the noble don who is now dead! I was about to wed the Senorita who has disappeared. But to-morrow... I shall expose his intrigue to the Captain-General. You, Senor, shall be my witness! I extend my protection to you....' He crossed his arms and spoke with much deliberation. 'Senor, this Irishman incommodes me, Don Vincente Salazar de Valdepenas y Forli....' He nodded his head expressively. 'Senor, we offered these Irish the shelter of our robe for that your Government was making martyrs of them who were good Christians, and it behoves us to act in despite of your Government, who are heretics and not to be tolerated upon God's Christian earth. But, Senor, if they incommoded your Government as they do us, I do not wonder that there was a desire to remove them. Senor, the life of that man is not worth the price of eight mules, which is the price I have paid for my release. I might walk free at this moment, but it is not fitting that I should slink away under cover of darkness. I shall go out in the daylight with my carriage. And I will have an offering to show my friends who, like me, are incommoded by this....' The man was a monomaniac; but it struck me that, if I had been O'Brien, I should have felt uncomfortable.
In the dark of the corridor a long shape appeared, lounging. The Cuban beside me started hospitably forward.
'Vamos,' he said briskly; 'to the banquet....' He waved his hand towards the shining door and stood aside. We entered.
The other man was undoubtedly the Nova Scotian mate of the Thames, the man who had dissuaded me from following Carlos on the day we sailed into Kingston Harbour. He was chewing a toothpick, and at the ruminant motion of his knife-jaws I seemed to see him, sitting naked to the waist in his bunk, instead of upright there in red trousers and a blue shirt—an immense lank-length of each. I pieced his history together in a sort of flash. He was the true Nikola el Escoces; his name was Nichols, and he came from Nova Scotia. He had been the chief of O'Brien's Lugarenos. He surveyed me now with a twinkle in his eyes, his yellow jaws as shiny-shaven as of old; his arms as much like a semaphore. He said mockingly:
'So you went there, after all?'
But the Cuban was pressing us towards his banquet; there was gaspacho in silver plates, and a man in livery holding something in a napkin. It worried me. We surveyed each other in silence. I wondered what Nichols knew; what it would be safe to tell him; how much he could help me? One or other of these men undoubtedly might. The Cuban was an imbecile; but he might have some influence—and if he really were going out on the morrow, and really did go to the Captain-General, he certainly could further his own revenge on O'Brien by helping me.... But as for Nichols....
Salazar began to tell a long, exaggerated story about his cook, whom he had imported from Paris.
'Think,' he said; 'I bring the fool two thousand miles—and then—not even able to begin on a land-crab. A fool!'
The Nova Scotian cast an uninterested side glance at him, and said in English, which Salazar did not understand:
'So you went there, after all? And now he's got you.' I did not answer him. 'I know all about you,' he added.
'It's more than I do about you,' I said.
He rose and suddenly jerked the door open, peered on each side of the corridor, and then sat down again.
'I'm not afraid to tell,' he said defiantly. 'I'm not afraid of anything. I'm safe.'
The Cuban said to me in Spanish: 'This senor is my friend. Everyone who hates that devil is my friend.'
'I'm safe,' Nichols repeated. 'I know too much about our friend the raparee.' He lowered his voice. 'They say you're to be given up for piracy, eh?' His eyes had an extraordinarily anxious leer. 'You are now, eh? For how much? Can't you tell a man? We're in the same boat! I kin help you!'
Salazar accidentally knocked a silver goblet off the table and, at the sound, Nichols sprang half off his chair. He glared in a wild stare around him then grasped at a flagon of aguardiente and drank.
