WHETHER I was really so near death as it appeared when the two pistols were levelled close to my head and the men were waiting for the word to fire, or whether it was no more than a well-played and realistically-staged bluff to frighten me into writing the instructions to Captain Bolton, I have never been able to decide. I think now, it was only pretence from beginning to end; but I believed it was grim earnest then, and that when I answered Barosa’s question with another refusal, I was signing my own death-warrant.
But in the pause before he gave the order to fire there was a sound of rapid footsteps on the stairs, and Inez rushed into the room. With a cry of horror she dashed between me and the levelled weapons.
“What does this mean?” she asked Barosa.
“You can see for yourself,” was the reply.
“You shall not do this in my house. Lower your pistols, you,” she cried to the men.
They looked to Barosa, who hesitated a second, and then signed to them to leave the room.
At that moment the strain told on me. I turned dizzy and weak, and sat, or rather slid, down on to the foot of the bed, and lolled helplessly against the wall.
An angry altercation followed between Inez and Barosa, but I paid no attention to it. I could not; and some minutes passed before I was able to pull my wits together sufficiently to hear what passed.
Barosa was about to leave the room. “The responsibility is yours, not mine,” he was saying. “I tell you that while that man is alive, not one of us is safe. You know how the police are hunting for us. They will come here to a certainty, and then——” and he threw up his hands angrily and went out.
Inez sat down and leaned her head on her hand in thought, and presently turned and looked at me, with a deep despairing sigh.
The interval gave me time to think. It was beginning to dawn upon me that the whole thing was play-acting, and that Inez herself had had her cue to enter for her part in it.
“Mr. Donnington?” she began at length.
I turned very slowly and looked at her. For the present it was evidently my best course to lead her to think that I had no suspicion of the unreality of the proceedings.
“You are ill.”
I gave a feeble smile and wagged my head slowly.
“Can you listen to me?”
“Yes. I—I thank you,” I said, in a half-indistinct mumble, and with a sigh as heavy as hers.
“It is horrible,” she replied with a shudder. “But they shall not do you any harm. If I could get you out of the house I would. Oh, why, why have you done all this?”
“I owe you my life,” I said, inconsequently.
“If I can save you,” she cried. After a pause she jumped up and began to pace the floor excitedly. “You are mad to set Barosa at defiance. You must see the uselessness, the folly of it, the utter madness. The whole city is up in anger against us. We are in hourly danger of discovery, even here in this house. There is nothing left for any of us but flight; and you choose such a moment to drive him to extremes;” and she continued in this half-distracted manner, as if speaking partly to me and partly to herself, and giving me a very vivid picture of their desperate situation.
But it did not agree with what Barosa had said. He had declared that if I gave the order for the officers on the Rampallo to be set at liberty, I was to be set free on their arrival. That meant a delay of nearly two days, and was therefore absolutely inconsistent with Inez’ statement that they were in hourly danger of the police raiding the house.
However, her long excited tirade gave me time to think things out; and when at last she ended with an appeal to me to write what Barosa required, I had decided how to reply.
“You ask me to have these men set at liberty, contesse; but if I were to do so, what object would be gained, as everything has been discovered?”
“They are our friends and we must save them. Their ruin will not help you.”
“Miralda is my friend, and I must save her.”
“But you will not help her by destroying them.”
“Why is Miralda kept a prisoner here?”
“She is not a prisoner, Mr. Donnington.”
“But she was not allowed to leave the house this morning.”
“Because after she had seen you we learnt other facts about her danger. She is not a prisoner, and she stayed because it was not safe for her to leave the house. That is all. You persuaded her to consent, but when I saw her afterwards she realized her mistake in having given you the promise. She will tell you so herself. She is as anxious as I am that you should do what Dr. Barosa requires.”
This was all part of her parrot-like lesson, of course, but it was no use to tell her that I knew that. So I tried another tack. “Do you know Major Sampayo’s history?”
“What has that to do with this?” she asked in surprise.
“A great deal, as I will show you. Do you know it?”
“No, except that——”
“Anything about his South African career, I mean?” I broke in.
“No,” she replied, shaking her head.
“Then I’ll tell you.” And I told her enough to let her understand why he went in such fear of me. “That is the secret of Barosa’s hold over him,” I added.
“Why do you tell me this, and at such a time?” she asked suspiciously.
“Three days ago Sampayo offered to take any oath I pleased that he would never marry Miralda; and this morning on the Rampallo he told me he had all but gone on his knees to Barosa, to induce him to set Miralda free from all this, in order that I might be induced to leave the country.”
She began to understand me now. The catch of the breath, the dilating nostrils, the quick movement of the head, and the involuntary gripping of the hands, were signs as easy to read as print.
“Within the last hour or two, here in this room, I offered to write all that he needs if Miralda and I were put across the frontier. He refused. I asked myself—why? I ask you the same question?”
In the pause she sat gnawing her lip; her bosom rose and fell quickly under the strain of her quickened breathing; her colour began to wane; her brows were drawn together in a frown, and the pupils of those curious eyes of hers dilated as if her pent-up feeling had acted upon them like atropine. “Why do you tell me this?” she repeated, her voice down almost to a whisper.
“This morning Sampayo swore to me that his betrothal to Miralda was a sham and a pretence, never intended to culminate in marriage, but only meant to cover another man’s plans and passion.”
“Why do you tell me this?” she asked, for the third time.
“Because Manoel Barosa is the man you love.”
She winced as if I had struck her in the face, and for a few seconds sat speechless and overwrought. Then with a great effort she mastered her emotion and laughed. “It is all false, all ridiculous, all laughable.”
“Then why will he not let Miralda go?”
“I have told you we are not preventing her.”
“Ah, stop that pretence. If you will not answer that question to me, answer it to yourself.”
But she had regained her self-command, and concealed all sign of the jealousy I knew I had roused. “She shall come to you herself and tell you that what I say is true,” she said. She went to the door, paused, and then turned. “You have done yourself an ill turn by this. Until now I have been your friend,” she said, clipping her words short in her anger; and with that she went out.
I cared nothing for her anger. I knew that I had started a fire which would soon rage furiously enough to burn up Barosa’s scheme in regard to Miralda. The question I had told Inez to put to herself was one to which the roused devil of her jealousy would soon supply the answer; and when it was answered, Barosa would have his hands full in looking after himself.
Moreover, I was now all but convinced that the whole show of force had been nothing more than an ingenious and well-acted bluff. Barosa had realized that without my help he could not get Gompez and his companions set at liberty, and it was quite probable that he had been to Captain Bolton. I smiled as I thought of the reception he would meet with from the old skipper.
As his dramatic show of force and Inez’ appeal following her aptly-timed rescue, had both failed, the next move was to send Miralda. But it was very long before she came, and the afternoon began to wane. I watched the fading light with eyes greedy for the darkness, for I knew that I might then look for some results of Bryant’s action.
I was suffering considerable pain now. The cords which bound my arms to my sides had been so tightly drawn that all the blood in my body was congested, and I tossed and turned on the bed in vain efforts to find relief from the pressure.
All my own worries were forgotten, however, when Miralda came, and I struggled up into a sitting posture and greeted her with a smile, as she crossed the room.
Her face was very pale and careworn, her manner nervous and hesitating, and her eyes very troubled. She had no smile in answer to mine.
“Inez tells me that you believe I am a prisoner here, Mr. Donnington. I have come to assure you that is not so. I did not return to you this morning because I found it would be useless for me to attempt to leave.”
She said this nervously in a sort of monotone, and with the air of one repeating a lesson and afraid of forgetting the lines. The very tone contradicted every syllable; and as she finished, she whispered hurriedly in English: “Caution.”
I understood the position instantly and played up to it. “I told you there was no danger. You might have trusted me,” I replied aloud in a tone of reproach; and then with a glance toward the door which she had left wide open, I whispered in English: “Listening?”
She nodded quickly, and said in her own tongue: “You did not know. You could not know. Everything about last night has been discovered, and the city is being ransacked to find us.”
“Not a bit of it. I am sure that nothing is yet known of the failure. This is said to frighten you;” and again I whispered quickly in English: “Are you a prisoner?”
Again she answered with a quick significant nod, as she went on with her lesson. “I have come to beg of you to do what Dr. Barosa wishes. Inez says you are refusing because you think you can help me. But you can help me much better by doing this. I beg you with all my heart not to refuse any longer.”
She was now able to speak with a much greater appearance of sincerity and earnestness; and as she finished this last appeal she whispered in English: “Don’t do it.”
“You say I can help you better by freeing these men. Prove that to me, or let others prove it. Do you know that Dr. Barosa has told me that even if I yield to him I am to be taken from here on board a vessel sailing straight for England? How is that to help you?” and I laughed incredulously.
Under cover of the sound of my laugh she whispered “Brazil, not England,” and then added, with a well-acted note of concern in her voice: “You are placing me in danger from some of these desperate men who believe that I am in league with you to betray them.”
“But that cannot be so. No one knows that I told you anything about the position of things on the Rampallo,” and I questioned her with my eyes.
“I tell you you will ruin me if you persist in refusing, Mr. Donnington,” and added under her breath: “We were overheard.”
“I can’t believe that. These people are merely seeking to frighten you. Of course if I thought you were really in danger the thing would be altogether different,” and again my eyes questioned her.
She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “How can I prove it to you? I am. I know that. Even Dr. Barosa is alarmed, lest he may not be able to protect me from their violence.”
“But he has already arranged for your escape and your mother’s.”
She shook her head again meaningly. “These men have made that impossible to-day. We were prevented when everything was ready.”
Once more the silent question from me, answered by the significant shake of her head, told me the real truth beneath her words.
“But what you say only confirms my opinion—that by doing what is asked I should not help you,” I said.
Her eyes signalled assent, but her lips uttered a quite emotional protest. “Is my safety nothing to you, then? If I beg and implore you to do what I have asked; if I tell you, as I do, that my liberty, and probably my life, depend upon your decision, is this all nothing to you?”
Her look explained the double meaning of her words. She believed that not only my safety, but her own, depended upon my doing what she had asked—but asked not in words, but by her looks and whispered English asides.
“You distress me more than I can say,” I replied, adopting a similar equivocation. “If it were possible I would tell you precisely how I feel.”
“You appear to think you can set these men at defiance with impunity, and that they will not harm you or me so long as you refuse!” A swift interchange of glances told me that this was actually her belief. Then she added with passion: “How can you be so infatuated, so mad, so reckless? You will pay for refusal with your life.” Once more the significant gesture of the head denied the truth of her words.
“What you have said has moved me deeply. Heaven knows, I have no thought in all this but to save you from harm. I must make you understand that. I have already told Dr. Barosa that if he will put you and me across the frontier, I will do what he asks and keep silent about everything. In that way your safety would be assured. But he refused, believing that he can force me to agree to his terms. He cannot. I have so arranged that even if he took my life—as indeed he all but did to-day—he cannot tear his companions from my grip, and will have to answer for my murder in addition to these other charges. There are two beside myself who know everything about last night’s attempt—they helped me in it—and they will hand over the prisoners I took. Aye, and more than that. They know of his hatred of me; and should anything happen to me they will not rest until they have hunted him down and avenged me. No; it is useless to plead longer,” I exclaimed, as if she had been going to do so, while in fact she had listened with mounting interest and pleasure to every word.
“But I must,” she broke in, taking the cue readily. “I beg——”
“I cannot listen to you. I have stated my terms. The moment you are out of the country, or on my yacht and in safety, I will do what is wanted; but until then neither entreaties nor threats shall make me yield.”
She gave me a last bright glance of encouragement, her heart in her eyes, and then burying her face in her hands she cried despairingly: “You do not care, you do not care. You will ruin us all in your madness;” and as if overwhelmed by her emotions, she rushed out of the room.