THE matter was obviously more serious than I had at first believed; and I realized that, as the authorities were aware that I knew Barosa and Inez were really revolutionaries, I might have some difficulty in convincing them that my knowledge had been innocently obtained. And two unpleasant possibilities loomed ahead.
This hot-headed magistrate, if left to himself, might pack me off to one of their prisons; and any one who has seen a Portuguese prison will understand my dread of such a step.
The condition of these dens of filth, wretchedness, and abomination is a black stain upon the Portuguese administration. Take the lowest and dirtiest type of the worst doss-house in London, multiply its foulest features ten times, overcrowd it with verminous brawling scum to two or three times the extent of what you would consider its utmost limit of accommodation, and stir up the whole with gaoler-bullies who have all graduated with the highest honours in the school of brutality and blackguardism; and you have a typical Portuguese gaol.
A sojourn in one of those human hells was one possible result for me; and the other was even more distasteful—that a sufficiently grave view might be taken of the case to have me ordered out of the country.
I was railing at my ill-luck in ever having learnt the facts which threatened one of these alternatives, when the murmurs of many voices started below in the house swelled as it came up the stairs and culminated in a chorus of threats and groans and curses just outside as the door was opened and a man was thrust violently into the room and went staggering across the floor.
He had been in the wars. His clothes were all disordered, his collar was flying loose, his coat was torn, and he had the crumpled look which a man is apt to have at two o’clock in the morning after a night on the general rampage finished up with a scrimmage with the police.
His first act was inspired by the sheer stupidity of rage. He turned and shook his fists at the door and swore copiously. He had quite a natural gift for cursing, and gave free vent to it. Then he began to put his clothes straight and saw me for the first time.
“Hallo, you here?”
“Yes.” Both question and answer sounded a little superfluous under the circumstances, but it turned out that he recognized me.
“Did they want you?” He swore again as he recalled his own experiences.
“Who?”
“Those infernal brutes out there?”
“Do you mean the police?”
Instead of replying he gave me a sharp look and then came up close and peered inquiringly at me with his head slightly on one side.
“What the devil are you doing here?”
“Waiting to go somewhere else; but where, seems a little doubtful at present.”
He laughed. “I didn’t expect they’d take you yet. They’re all fools—the whole lot of them. I told them to give you more rope.”
“What kind?”
“Oh, not that sort;” and he made a gesture to indicate hanging. Then wrinkling his brows he added suspiciously: “You didn’t come of your own accord, did you?”
“Perhaps you’ll make things a bit plainer.”
“If you did, you’d better tell me.”
“If there’s any telling to be done you’d better start it,” I said drily.
“They got me to-night—— Here, aren’t you interested in Miralda Dominguez?” he broke off lowering his voice.
“I’m getting rather interested in you. Who are you?”
He winked knowingly. He was quite young, dark and not bad-looking, except that he had sly ferretty eyes. “You don’t know, eh? You don’t remember, eh? Is that your line? Or are you on the same tack as I am?”
“What is your particular tack?”
“You might have guessed it I should think. They’ve got about twenty of Barosa’s people here and about half a dozen police to look after them. Somebody let ’em know that I meant to save myself by telling things, and the brutes nearly tore me to bits as I came up. The devils;” and once more he cursed them luridly. “But I’ll make it hot for some of them,” he added, his little close-set eyes gleaming viciously.
“Oh, you’re an informer, are you? Well, I don’t like your breed, I’m——”
“Oh, I know you, of course. You’re Ralph Donnington, the reputed English millionaire. I know;” and he winked again. “I saw you at the de Pinsara house the other night with Barosa. He told me you were all right. I had to tell them about you, of course. They’ve sucked me about as dry as a squeezed orange. Barosa told me you were interested in Miralda Dominguez——”
“I’d rather not talk any more,” I interposed sharply.
“I suppose you know it’s all up. They’ve got Barosa and Contesse Inglesia, and Lieutenant de Linto and heaps of others. But not his sister yet.”
I affected not to hear this and took out a cigarette and lighted it.
“Can you spare me one?”
I put the case in my pocket.
“If you want to get her out of the mess you’d better do as I’ve done. Out with everything. It’s the only way. I——”
I jumped to my feet. “Look here, if you talk any more to me I shall act as deputy for those men outside, and when I’ve finished with you, you’ll find it difficult to talk at all.”
That stopped him and he slunk away to the door and flopped into a chair staring at me and muttering to himself, probably cursing me as he had cursed the others.
Soon afterwards M. d’Olliveira came back with a couple of police, and said that Volheno was coming and would arrive in about half an hour. Then he ordered the first of the prisoners to be brought in.
The informer jumped away from the door as if it was on fire and crossed to the other side of the magistrate’s desk.
The proceedings were very short—apparently for no purpose other than identification.
I glanced at the prisoner and recognized him as one of the men I had seen at the house in the Rua Catania. He was the scoundrel named Henriques, who had been going to strike Inez when I had entered.
He looked at the young informer with a scowl of hate and hissed out an execration.
The magistrate appealed to me first. “You know this man, Mr. Donnington?” he said sharply, and the fellow turned a scowling face on me with a half defiant and wholly malicious expression.
“Do I? If you know that, why ask me?”
“Don’t trifle with me, sir.”
“He knows him well enough. He saw him that night in the Rua Catania,” broke in the informer.
“Hold your tongue,” was the rough rebuke. “Do you deny it, Mr. Donnington?”
“You can draw what inference you please. I decline to be questioned by you or any one,” I replied.
“I cannot too strongly warn you, Mr. Donnington, that any refusal to identify this man and any of his companions will render you suspect.”
“I am quite ready to accept the responsibility.”
He turned then to the informer and accepted his identification, made a note of it, and sent the prisoner away in custody.
Another of the men I had seen in the house was brought in, and a very similar scene was enacted, except that I held my tongue. Three more followed and then a pause.
When the door opened next time Dr. Barosa was brought in.
“You know this man, Mr. Donnington?” asked d’Olliveira.
“Yes, I had the pleasure of meeting him at the house of the Marquis de Pinsara. Good evening, Dr. Barosa;” and I rose and would have shaken hands with him had not the police prevented me.
“Did you see him in Rua Catania?” asked the magistrate.
“I have told you I met him elsewhere. That is my answer.”
“I am obliged to you, Mr. Donnington,” said Barosa, “but unfortunately no good purpose can be gained by your keeping silent about anything you know. You can only compromise yourself; and as everything is now known to these people, I release you from the pledge of secrecy you gave.”
“Ah,” broke in d’Olliveira, gloatingly.
“To the devil with you and your grunts of satisfaction,” I cried hotly, turning on him. “If you want to bribe or frighten information out of people, do it with carrion like that young brute at your side. Don’t try it with Englishmen.”
“How dare you use that tone to me, sir?” he exclaimed, getting up.
Barosa interposed. “I beg you not to compromise yourself further. It may lead you into a very false position and can do no good either to me or to the Contesse Inglesia. It is known quite well that you were present in the——”
“That’s enough, doctor. If you like to tell these people what they want to know, it’s your affair not mine. As for my part, I have friends quite influential enough not only to protect me, but to make it unpleasant for this hectoring gentleman here. I am sorry to see you in this mess.”
He threw up his hands. “It is the fortune of war.” Then he turned to the magistrate. “Now, sir are you satisfied?”
There was a pause and d’Olliveira said: “Yes, absolutely.”
And then I had the most amazing surprise of my life.
The magistrate waved his hand and a dozen or more men, police and prisoners mingled together, crowded into the room, and the eyes of every man present were directed on me.
Barosa stepped forward and offered me his hand.
“You must forgive us, Mr. Donnington,” he said.
“Forgive you. What the deuce for?”
“For having tested you in this drastic way. You will admit the evidence that you had betrayed us to the authorities was very strong—a letter in your name to your friend M. Volheno and his to you, thanking you for the information, was found in your rooms. I made the inquiries you suggested and satisfied myself of your absolute good faith. I would not believe you had broken your word, but my friends here insisted, and then this test was planned.”
“Do you mean——” I stopped in sheer astonishment as the truth dawned on me.
“I mean that this was all an elaborate pretence. There is no magistrate here and no police. We are all comrades in the one cause, and after what has passed no one of us will ever distrust you again. I say that for all of us.”
“Yes, certainly for me,” said the magistrate.
“For us all,” came a chorus.
“Well, you fooled me all right,” I said, gaping at them for a moment like a bumpkin at a wax-work show, for the suddenness of the thing almost bewildered me. Then I laughed and added: “It seems I was sitting on a bag with more gunpowder in it than I knew. Which do you expect me to do—thank you for your present confidence or curse you for your former distrust?”
“The matter is ended, Mr. Donnington,” said Barosa. “And you have as much reason as we have to be glad the result is what it is.”
“And if it had gone the other way?”
He shrugged his shoulders and replied very drily: “You had better not ask perhaps. At such a crisis our methods with those who betray us cannot be—pleasant.”
“Which reminds me,” I said, turning to the man who had played the magistrate—whose real name I learnt was Sebastian Maral—“you’ve asked me plenty of questions and there are one or two I should like to ask you. How did you get that spurious letter I was supposed to write to M. Volheno?”
“I think we had better discuss those matters alone,” interposed Barosa; and then all but we three left the room.
“Was such a letter really written?” I asked.
“Certainly. That which you received was M. Volheno’s reply to it.”
“Then some one did give away that Rua Catania house? Who is it? Do you suspect any one in particular?”
“No,” said Barosa, his look darkening as he added: “But we shall of course find out.”
“I think you can help us, Mr. Donnington,” said Maral. “The writer is obviously an enemy of yours. Can you make a suggestion?”
I was fairly confident that I knew, but it did not suit me to say so. “I have not had time yet to make any enemies unless some one is after the Beira concessions and thought this an easy way of getting rid of a competitor. Will you show me the original of that letter you dictated to me?”
He glanced at Barosa who nodded, and it was given to me.
I made a discovery then. Either from inadvertence or as a proof of confidence in me, Maral left on the letter, where it was pinned to the top, a strip of paper with half a dozen words followed by the numerals “134.”
I compared the handwriting of the letter with my own copy of the dictated part and saw at once how clumsy a forgery it was. My signature was done well enough; the writer probably had a signature of mine and had practised it until the resemblance was striking. But the attempt to write an entire autograph letter was a conspicuous failure.
Then while pretending to continue my examination of the writing, I worried over the curious superscription, and it dawned upon me at length that it was a message of some sort in cypher.
As the other two had their heads together in a very earnest discussion, I unpinned the cypher message and rolled it up in my palm. Its nature convinced me that it was inadvertence not confidence which had led Maral to let me see it, and I took the risk of his not noticing its absence even if I could not do what I now very much wished—retain the letter itself for a time.
“I wish to keep this letter, Dr. Barosa,” I said presently.
“I am afraid that is not possible. It has to be returned.”
“We can get over that easily enough. You are probably as eager as I am to know who wrote it. As for returning it, I’ll write out another in my own hand, and that one can be returned.”
After some demur this was agreed to; and I went to the desk and wrote the duplicate letter, and was careful to fold it up so that Maral should not miss the strip of paper I had annexed.
While I was writing, Barosa paced up and down the room thinking. The fact that there was a traitor somewhere among the followers disquieted him profoundly. And when I had finished he came up to me and said with intense earnestness: “You have some definite purpose in keeping that letter, Mr. Donnington?”
“Naturally. I mean to try and find the writer of it.”
“Are you sure there is no one you suspect?”
“I do not know all your followers; if there is any one among them who seeks to prevent my getting——”
He broke in, with an impatient motion of the hand. “Do you give me your word you have no positive suspicion?”
“Is that a question you should expect me to answer? I am not one of you, and I have no interest whatever in your cause. If I am anxious to discover the writer, it is for my own purposes not yours.”
“We are helping you in trusting that to you.”
“Take it back if you will;” and I held it out.
He shook his head and did not take it. “If you find out the truth you will tell me?” he asked.
“I make no promise. I may or I may not, but frankly that will turn upon my own concerns, not upon yours.”
“You are very straight,” he said, with a slow hesitating smile, much more suggestive of vexation than mirth.
“I think we had better leave it there. It is not improbable that if I do get at the truth I may need your help. In that case I shall come to you.”
“I should like something more definite.”
I shook my head. “Not yet, at any rate,” I said.
“I may visit you?”
“At any time you please. And now, I’ll be off.”
While we had been speaking Maral was taking papers from the desk, and as he turned and held out his hand to bid me good-night, we heard the sound of loud knocking at the door of the house.
“What can that be?” he exclaimed nervously.
The next moment the room door was thrust open and the young fellow who had played the part of informer rushed in.
“The police!” he gasped. “The house is surrounded. All the rest have gone.”
Barosa did not turn a hair, but Maral, suddenly grey with fear, tossed up his hands and dropped into his chair with a sigh of despair.
“Are they really the police this time?” I asked.
He nodded. “More of the same man’s work,” he said with grim concentrated passion, and carried away for the moment by his feelings, he clenched his fists and uttered a vehement oath.
I should have sworn too, no doubt, if I had been in his place. But I was thinking of myself and what I was going to do.
It was a tight corner for us all.
In the pause the knocking was repeated more noisily and peremptorily than before.