BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

WHEN I WAS CZAR.

The Court Circular says:—“There is always something supremely audacious about Mr. Marchmont’s books. This, however, I will say, that for a long evening’s solid enjoyment ‘When I was Czar’ would be hard to beat.”

The Nottingham Guardian says:—“The best story of political intrigue which has been written since ‘The Prisoner of Zenda,’ with which it compares for the irresistible buoyancy by which it is told and the skill in which expectation is maintained on tiptoe till the last move.”

The Freeman’s Journal says:—“A very brilliant work, every page in it displays the dramatic talent of the author and his capacity for writing smart dialogue.”

AN IMPERIAL MARRIAGE.

The Sporting Life says:—“Every page is full of incident and bright dialogue. The characters are strongly and vividly drawn, and the development of the whole story shows the author to be a thorough master of his craft.”

The Scotsman says:—“The action never flags, the romantic element is always paramount, so that the production is bound to appeal successfully to all lovers of spirited fiction.”

The Notts Guardian says:—“The interest is absorbing and cumulative through every chapter, and yet the tale is never overloaded with incident. The vigour and reality of the story does not flag to the last page.”

The Court Journal says:—“One of those intricate webs of intrigue and incident in the weaving of which the author has no equal.”

BY SNARE OF LOVE.

The Dundee Courier says:—“To say that the clever author of ‘When I was Czar’ has eclipsed that stirring romance is to bring one within the sphere of the incredible. But it is true. The present novel is full to overflowing of boundless resource and enterprise, which cannot but rouse even the most blasé of readers.”

The Daily Mail says:—“The story is undoubtedly clever. Mr. Marchmont contrives to invest his most improbable episodes with an air of plausibility, and the net result is an exciting and entertaining tale.”

The Birmingham Post says:—“Mr. Marchmont creates numerous thrilling situations which are worked out with dramatic power, his description of the interior of a Turkish prison, with all its horrors, being a realistic piece of work.”

IN THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM.

The Times:—“Mr. Marchmont’s tales always have plenty of go. He is well up to his standard in this busy and exciting narrative.”

The Globe:—“Mr. A. W. Marchmont can always write an exciting story bristling with adventures and hazard, and incidents of all sorts. ‘In the Cause of Freedom’ furnishes a good example of his talent. Vivid, packed with drama, with action that never flags, this novel ought to appeal successfully to all lovers of romantic and spirited fiction.”

The People’s Saturday Journal:—“It is an admirable example of the type of exciting fiction for which Mr. Marchmont is justly famous, and lacks nothing in the way of plot and incident.”

THE QUEEN’S ADVOCATE.

The Daily News says:—“Written in a vigorous and lively manner, adventures throng the pages, and the interest is maintained throughout.”

The Belfast Northern Whig says:—“As one book follows another from Mr. Marchmont’s pen we have increased breadth of treatment, more cleverly constructed plots and a closer study of human life and character. His present work affords ample evidence of this.”

Madam says:—“A thrilling story, the scene of which takes us to the heart of the terrible Servian tragedy. We are taken through a veritable maze of adventure, even to that dreadful night of the assassination of the Royal couple. A very readable story.”

A COURIER OF FORTUNE.

The Daily Telegraph says:—“An exciting romance of the ‘cloak and rapier.’ The fun is fast and furious; plot and counterplot, ambushes and fightings, imprisonment and escapes follow each other with a rapidity that holds the reader with a taste for adventure in a state of more or less breathless excitement to the close. Mr. Marchmont has a spirited manner in describing adventure, allowing no pause in the doings for overdescription either of his characters or their surroundings.”

The Bristol Mercury says:—“A very striking picture of France at a period of absolute social and political insecurity. The author’s characters are drawn with such art as to make each a distinct personality. ‘A Courier of Fortune’ is quite one of the liveliest books we have read.”

BY WIT OF WOMAN.

The Morning Leader says:—“A stirring tale of dramatic intensity, and full of movement and exciting adventure. The author has evolved a character worthy to be the wife of Sherlock Holmes. She is the heroine; and what she did not know or could not find out about the Hungarian Patriot Party was not worth knowing.”

The Standard says:—“Mr. Marchmont is one of that small band of authors who can always be depended upon for a distinct note, a novel plot, an original outlook. ‘By Wit of Woman’ is marked by all the characteristic signs of Mr. Marchmont’s work.”

THE LITTLE ANARCHIST.

The Sheffield Telegraph says:—“The reader once inveigled into starting the first chapter is unable to put the book down until he has turned over the last page.”

Manchester City News says:—“It is no whit behind its predecessors in stirring episode, thrilling situation and dramatic power. The story grips in the first few lines and holds the reader’s interest until ‘finis’ is written.”

The Scotsman says:—“A romance, brimful of incident and arousing in the reader a healthy interest that carries him along with never a pause—a vigorous story with elements that fascinate. In invention and workmanship the novel shows no falling off from the high standard of Mr. Marchmont’s earlier books.”

IN THE NAME OF THE
PEOPLE

“‘To whom are you going to give the papers you have
just received from M. Dagara?’” (Page [193].)

IN THE NAME OF
THE PEOPLE

By
ARTHUR W. MARCHMONT
Author of “When I was Czar,” “The
Queen’s Advocate,” etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED

WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1911

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
AN UNPROPITIOUS START

“318, Rua de Palma,
“Lisbon,
“September 20, 1907.

“MY DEAR MURIEL,—

“I’m here at last, and the above is my address. The Stella dropped her anchor in the Tagus yesterday afternoon, and within half an hour I was at the Visconte de Linto’s house. That will show you I mean my campaign to be vigorous. But the Visconte and his wife are at Coimbra, and Miralda is with them. I should have been off in pursuit of her by the first train; but I managed to find out that they are with friends there and will be back to-morrow for a big reception. As that is just the sort of place I should choose before all others for the meeting with Miralda, I promptly set to work to get an invitation. I have done it all right. I got it through that M. Volheno whom you and Stefan brought on a visit to us at Tapworth, just after I got home from South Africa. Tell Stefan, by the way, that Volheno is quite a big pot and high in the confidence of the Dictator. I told him, of course, that I had come here about the mining concessions in East Africa; and I shall rub that in to every one. I think his mouth watered a bit at the prospect of getting something for himself; anyway, he was awfully decent and promised me all sorts of a good time here. Among the introductions he mentioned was one to the de Lintos! I kept my face as stiff as a judge’s; but I could have shrieked. Imagine a formal introduction to Miralda! ‘Mademoiselle Dominguez. Mr. Donnington,’ and those eyes of hers wide with astonishment, and her lips struggling to suppress her laughter! I really think I must let him do it, just to see her face at the moment. Anyway, I shall see her to-morrow night. Ye gods! It’s over four months since I fell before her beauty as intuitively as a pagan falls before the shrine of the little tin god he worships. I hope no one has got in the way meanwhile; if there is any one—well, I’ll do my best to give him a bad time. I’m not here for my health, as the Yanks say; nor for the health of any other fellow. By all of which you will see I am in good spirits, and dead set on winning.

“By the way, I hear that things are in the very devil of a mess in the city; and Volheno told me—unofficially of course—that the streets are positively unsafe after dark. But I was out for a couple of hours last night, renewing my acquaintance with the city, and saw no ripple of trouble. After his warning I shoved a revolver in my pocket; but a cigar-holder would have been just as much good. I should rather like a scrap with some of the Lisbon ragamuffins.

“I’ve taken a furnished flat here; yacht too awkward to get to and from; and a hotel impossible—too many old women gossips.

“Love to your hub and the kiddies.

“Your affect. brother,
“Ralph.

“PS. Think of it. To-morrow night by this time I shall have met her again. Don’t grin. You married a Spaniard; and for love too. And you’re not ashamed of being beastly happy. R. D.

“PPS. Mind. I hold you to your promise. If there is any real trouble about M. and I need you, you are to come the moment I wire. Be a good pal, and don’t back down. But I think I shall worry through on my own.”

I have given this letter because it explains the circumstances of my presence in Lisbon. A love quest. In the previous March, my sister’s husband, Stefan Madrillo, who is on the staff of the Spanish Embassy in Paris, had introduced me to Miralda Dominguez—the most beautiful girl in Paris as she was generally acknowledged; and although up to that moment I had never cared for any woman, except my sister, and the thought of marriage had never entered my head, the whole perspective of life was changed on the instant.

The one desire that possessed me was to win her love; the one possible prospect which was not utterly barren and empty of everything but wretchedness, was that she would give herself to me for life.

I had one advantage over the crowd of men whom the lodestone of her beauty drew round her. I had lived in her country, spoke her language as readily as my own, and could find many interests in common. Naturally I played that for all it was worth.

From the first moment of meeting I was enslaved by her stately grace, her ravishing smile, her soft, liquid, sympathetic voice, the subtle but ineffable charm of her presence, and the dark lustrous eyes into which I loved to bring the changing lights of surprise, curiosity, interest and pleasure.

I was miserable when away from her; and should have been wholly happy in her presence if it had not been for the despairing sense of unworthiness which plagued and depressed me. She was a goddess to me, and I a mere clod.

For three weeks—three crazily happy and yet crazily miserable weeks for me—this had continued; and then I had been wired for at a moment’s notice, owing to my dear father’s sudden illness.

I had to leave within an hour of the receipt of the telegram, without a chance of putting the question on which my whole happiness depended, without even a word of personal leave-taking. And for the whole of the four months since that night I had had to remain in England.

During nearly all the time my father lay hovering between life and death. At intervals, uncertain and transitory, he regained consciousness; and at such moments his first question was for me. I could not think of leaving him, of course; and even when the end came, the settlement of the many affairs connected with the large fortune he left delayed me a further two or three weeks.

My sister assured me that, through some friend or other, she had contrived to let Miralda know something of the facts; but this was no more than a cold comfort. When at length I turned the Stella’s head toward Lisbon, steaming at the top speed of her powerful engines, I felt how feeble such a written explanation, dribbling through two or three hands and watered down in the dribbling process, might appear to Miralda, even assuming that she had given me a second thought as the result of those three weeks in Paris.

But I was in Lisbon at last; and although I could not help realizing that a hundred and fifty obstacles might have had time to grow up between us during the long interval, I gritted my teeth in the resolve to overcome them.

Anyway, the following night would show me how the land lay; and, as anything was better than suspense, I gave a sigh of relief at the thought, and having posted the letter to my sister, set off for another prowl round the city.

I had not been there for several years—before I went out with the Yeomanry for a fling at the Boers—and it interested me to note the changes which had taken place. But I thought much more of Miralda than of any changes and not at all of any possible trouble in the streets. After a man has had a few moonlights rides reconnoitring kopjes which are likely to be full of Boer snipers, he isn’t going to worry himself grey about a few Portuguese rag-and-bobtail with an itch for his purse.

Besides, I felt well able to take care of myself in any street row. I was lithe and strong and in the pink of condition, and knew fairly well “how to stop ’em,” as Jem Whiteway, the old boxer, used to say, with a shake of his bullet head when he tried to get through my guard and I landed him.

But my contempt for the dangers of the streets was a little premature. My experiences that night were destined to change my opinion entirely, and to change a good many other things too. Before the night was many hours older, I had every reason to be thankful that I had taken a revolver out with me.

It came about in this way. I was skirting that district of the city which is still frequently called the Mouraria—a nest of little, narrow, tortuous by-ways into which I deemed it prudent not to venture too far—and was going down a steep street toward the river front, when the stillness was broken by the hoarse murmur of many voices. I guessed that some sort of a row was in the making, and hurried on to see the fun. And as I reached a turning a little farther down, I found myself in the thick of it.

A small body of police came tearing round the corner running for their lives with a crowd of men at their heels, whooping and yelling like a pack of hounds in full sight of the fox.

As the police passed, one of them struck a vicious blow at me with a club, and I only just managed to jump back and escape the blow. I drew into the shelter of a doorway as the mob followed. The street was very narrow and steep at this point, and the police, seeing the advantage it gave them, rallied to make a stand some forty or fifty yards up the hill above me.

The foremost pursuers paused a few moments to let a good number come up; and then they went for the police for all they were worth. The fight was very hot; but discipline told, as it will; and although the police were tremendously outnumbered, they held their ground well enough at first.

Meanwhile the racket kept bringing up reinforcements for the mob, and some of them began to get disagreeably curious about me. Here was a glorious struggle going on against the common foe, and I was standing idly by instead of taking a hand in it.

One or two of them questioned me in a jeering tone, and presently some fool yelled out that I was a spy. From taunts and gibing insults, those near me proceeded to threats, fists and sticks were shaken at me, and matters looked decidedly unpleasant.

I kept on explaining that I was a foreigner; but that was no more than a waste of breath; and I looked about for a chance to get away.

I was very awkwardly placed, however. If I went up the street, I should only run into the thick of the fight with the police; while the constant arrival of freshcomers below me made escape in that direction impossible.

Then came a crisis. One excited idiot struck at me with a stick, and of course I had to defend myself; and for a time I was far too busy to heed what was going on in the big row higher up the street. I tried fists at first and, putting my back to the wall, managed to keep the beggars at bay. Then a chance came to seize a big heavy club with which a little brute was trying to break my head; and with that I soon cleared quite a respectable space by laying about me indiscriminately.

But suddenly the club was knocked out of my hands, and a howl of delight hailed my discomfiture. Then I remembered my revolver. I whipped it out and a rather happy thought occurred to me. Shouting at the top of my lungs that I was an Englishman and had nothing to do with either the mob or the police, I grabbed hold of the ringleader of my assailants, and used him as a sort of hostage. Keeping him between myself and the rest, I shoved the barrel of the revolver against his head and sung out that I would blow out his brains if any other man attempted to harm me.

The ruse served me well. The crowd hung back; and my prisoner, in a holy scare for his life, yelled at his friends to leave me alone.

Whether the trick would have really got me out of the mess I don’t know. There was not time to tell, for another development followed almost immediately. Some fresh arrivals came up yelling that the soldiers were close at hand; and we soon heard them.

The mob were now caught between two fires. The police were still holding their own above us, and the troops were hurrying up from the other direction. Some one had the wit to see that the crowd’s only chance was to carry the street against the police and clear that way for flight. A fierce attack was made upon them, therefore, and they were driven back to one side, leaving half the roadway clear.

The throng about me melted away, and I let my prisoner go, intending to wait for the troops. But I soon abandoned that idea; for I saw they had clubbed their muskets and were knocking down everybody they saw.

I had already had a blow aimed at me by the police, and had been threatened by the mob; and being in about equal danger from both sides, I was certain to get my head cracked if I remained. Their tactics were to hit first and inquire afterwards, and I therefore adopted the only alternative and took to my heels.

Being among the last to fly I was seen. A tally-ho was raised and four or five of the police came dashing after me. Not knowing the district well, I ran at top speed and bolted round corner after corner, haphazard, keeping a sharp look-out as I ran for some place in which I could take cover.

I had succeeded in shaking off all but two or three when, on turning into one street, I spied the window of a house standing partly open. To dart to it, throw it wide, clamber in, and close it after me took only a few seconds; and as I squatted on the floor, breathing hard from the chase and the effects of my former tussle, I had the intense satisfaction of hearing my pursuers go clattering past the house.

That I might be taken for a burglar and handed over to the police by the occupants of the house, did not bother me in the least. I could very easily explain matters. It was the virtual certainty of a cracked pate, not the fear of arrest from which I had bolted; and that I had escaped with a sound skull was enough for me for the present.

But no one came near me; so I stopped where I was until the row outside had died down. It seemed to die a hard death; and I must have sat there in the dark for over an hour before I thought of venturing out to return to my rooms.

Naturally unwilling to leave by the window, I groped my way out into the passage and struck a match to look for the front door. Close to me was a staircase leading to the upper rooms; and at the end of the passage a second flight down to the basement.

Like so many houses in Lisbon this was built on a steep hill, and guessing that I should find a way out downstairs at the back, I decided to use that means of leaving, as it offered less chance of my being observed.

I had just reached the head of the stairway, when a door below was unlocked and several people entered the house. A confused murmur of voices followed, and among them I heard that of a woman speaking in a tone of angry protest against some mistake which those with her were making.

The answering voices were those of men—strident, stern, distinctly threatening, and mingled with oaths.

Then the woman spoke again; repeating her protest in angry tones; but her voice was now vibrant with rising alarm.

“Silence!”

The command broke her sentence in two, and her words died away in muffled indistinctness, suggesting that force had been used to secure obedience.

Then a light was kindled; there was some scuffling along the passage; and they all appeared to enter a room.

I paused, undecided what to do. The thing had a very ugly look; but I had had quite enough trouble to satisfy me for one night. I didn’t want to go blundering into an affair which might be no more than a family quarrel; especially as I was trespassing in the house.

A few seconds later, however, came the sound of trouble; a blow, a groan, and the thud of a fall.

I caught my breath in fear that the woman had been struck down.

But the next instant a shrill piercing cry for help rang out in her voice, and this also was stifled as if a hand had been clapped on her mouth.

That decided things for me.

Whatever the consequences, I could not stop to think of them while a woman was in such danger as that cry for help had signalled.

CHAPTER II
DEVELOPMENTS

MY view of the trouble was that it was a case of robbery. The disordered condition of the city was sure to be used by the roughs as a cover for their operations; and I jumped to the conclusion that the woman whose cry I was answering had been decoyed to the house to be robbed.

But as I ran down the stairs I heard enough to show me that it was in reality a sort of by-product of the riot in the streets. The woman was a prisoner in the hands of some of the mob, and they were threatening her with violence because she was, in their jargon, an enemy of the cause of the people.

To my surprise it was against this that she was protesting so vehemently. Her speech, in strong contrast to that of the men, was proof of refinement and culture, while the little note of authority which I had observed at first suggested rank. It was almost inconceivable, therefore, that she could have anything in common with such fellows as her captors.

The door of the room in which they all were stood slightly ajar, and as I reached it she reiterated her protest with passionate vehemence.

“You are mad. I am your friend, not your enemy. I swear that. One of you must know Dr. Barosa. Find him and bring him here and he will bear out every word I have said.”

“Holding my revolver in readiness, I entered.”

“That’s enough of that. Lies won’t help you,” came the reply in the same gruff bullying tone I had heard before. “Now, Henriques,” he added, as if ordering a comrade to finish the grim work.

Holding my revolver in readiness, I entered. There were three of the rascals. Two had hold of the woman who knelt between them with her back to me, while the third, also with his back to me, was just raising a club to strike her.

They were so intent upon their job and probably so certain that no one was in the house, that they did not notice me until I had had time to give the fellow with the club a blow on the side of the head which sent him staggering into a corner with an oath of surprise and rage. The others released their hold of the woman, and as I stepped in front of her, they fell away in healthy fear of my levelled weapon.

They were the reverse of formidable antagonists; rascals from the gutter apparently; venomous enough in looks, but undersized, feeble specimens; ready to attack an unarmed man or a defenceless woman, but utterly cowed by the sight of the business end of my revolver.

They slunk back toward the door, rage, baulked malice and fear on their ugly dirty faces.

“A spy! A spy!” exclaimed the brute who had the stick; and at the word they felt for their knives.

“Put your hands up, you dogs,” I cried. “The man who draws a knife will get a bullet in his head.”

Meanwhile the woman had scrambled to her feet, with a murmured word of thanks to the Virgin for my opportune intervention, and then to my intense surprise she put her hand on my arm and said in a tone of entreaty: “Do not fire, monsieur. They have only acted in ignorance.”

“You hear that, you cowardly brutes,” I said, without turning to look at her, for I couldn’t take my eyes off the men. “Clear out, or——” and I stepped toward them as if I meant to fire.

In that I made a stupid blunder as it turned out. They hung together a second and then at a whisper from the fellow who appeared to be the leader, they suddenly bolted out of the room, and locked the door behind them.

Not at all relishing the idea of being made a prisoner in this way, I shouted to them to unlock the door, threatening to break it down and shoot them on sight if they refused. As they did not answer I picked up a heavy chair to smash in one of the panels, when my companion again interposed.

But this time it was on my and her own account. “They have firearms in the house, monsieur. If you show yourself, they will shoot you; and I shall be again at their mercy.”

She spoke in a tone of genuine concern and, as I recognized the wisdom of the caution, I put the chair down again and turned to her.

It was the first good square look I had had at her, and I was surprised to find that she was both young and surpassingly handsome—an aristocrat to her finger tips, although plainly dressed like one of the people. Her features were finely chiselled, she had an air of unmistakable refinement, she carried herself with the dignity of a person of rank, and her eyes, large and of a singular greenish brown hue, were bent upon me with the expression of one accustomed to expect ready compliance with her wishes. She had entirely recovered her self-possession and in some way had braided up the mass of golden auburn hair, the dishevelled condition of which I had noticed in the moment of my entrance.

“You are probably right, madame,” I said; “but I don’t care for the idea of being locked in here while those rascals fetch some companions.”

I addressed her as madame; but she couldn’t be more than four or five and twenty, and might be much younger.

“There will be no danger, monsieur,” she replied in a tone of complete confidence.

“There appeared to be plenty of it just now; and the sooner we are out of this place, the better I shall be pleased.” And with that I turned to the window to see if we could get out that way. It was, however, closely barred.

“You may accept my assurance. These men have been acting under a complete misunderstanding. They will bring some one who will explain everything to them.”

“Dr. Barosa, you mean?”

“What do you know of him?” The question came sharply and with a touch of suspicion, as it seemed to me.

“Nothing, except that I heard you mention him just as I entered.”

She paused a moment, keeping her eyes on my face, and then, with a little shrug, she turned away. “I will see if my ser—my companion is much hurt,” she said, and bent over the man who was lying against the wall.

I noticed the slip; but it was nothing to me if she wished to make me think he was a companion instead of a servant.

She knew little or nothing about how to examine the man’s hurt, so I offered to do it for her. “Will you allow me to examine him, madame? I have been a soldier and know a little about first aid.”

She made way for me and went to the other end of the room while I looked him over. He had had just such a crack on the head as I feared for myself when bolting from the troops. It had knocked the senses out of him; but that was all. He was in no danger; so I made him as comfortable as I could and told her my opinion.

“He will be all right, no doubt,” was her reply, with about as much feeling as I should have shown for somebody else’s dog; and despite her handsome face and air of position, I began to doubt whether he would not have been better worth saving than she.

“How did all this happen?”

She gave a little impatient start at the question, as if resenting it. “He was brought here with me, monsieur, and the men struck him,” she replied after a pause.

“Yes. But why were you brought here?”

“I have not yet thanked you for coming to my assistance, monsieur,” she replied irrelevantly. “Believe me, I do thank you most earnestly. I owe you my life, perhaps.”

It was an easy guess that she found the question distasteful and had parried it intentionally; so I followed the fresh lead. “I did no more than I hope any other man would have done, madame,” I said.

“That is the sort of reply I should look for from an Englishman, monsieur.” Her strange eyes were fixed shrewdly upon me as she made this guess at my nationality.

“I am English,” I replied with a smile.

“I am glad. I would rather be under an obligation to an Englishman than to any one except a countryman of my own.” She smiled very graciously, almost coquettishly, as if anxious to convince me of her absolute sincerity. But she spoilt the effect directly. Lifting her eyes to heaven and with a little toss of the hands, she exclaimed. “What a mercy of the Virgin that you chanced to be in the house—this house of all others in the city.”

I understood. She wished to cross-examine me. “You are glad that I arrived in time to interrupt things just now?” I asked quietly.

“Monsieur!” Eyes, hands, lithe body, everything backed up the tone of surprise that I should question it. “Do I not owe you my life?” I came to the conclusion that she was as false as woman of her colour can be. But she was an excellent actress.

“Then let me suggest that we speak quite frankly. Let me lead the way. I am an Englishman, here in Lisbon on some important business, and not, as the doubt underneath your question, implies—a spy. I——”

“Monsieur!” she cried again as if in almost horrified protest.

“I was caught in the thick of a street fight,” I continued, observing that for all her energetic protest she was weighing my explanation very closely. “And had to run for it with the police at my heels. I saw a window of this house standing partly open and scrambled through it for shelter.”

“What a blessed coincidence for me!”

“It would be simpler to say, madame, that you do not believe me,” I said bluntly.

“Ah, but on my faith——”

“Let me put it to you another way,” I cut in. “I don’t know much of the ways of spies, but if I were one I should have contented myself with listening at that door, instead of entering, and have locked you all in instead of letting myself be caught in this silly fashion.” Then I saw the absurdity of losing my temper and burst out laughing.

She drew herself up. “You are amused, monsieur.”

“One may as well laugh while one can. If my laugh offends you, I beg your pardon for it, but I am laughing at my own conversion. An hour or two back I was ridiculing the idea of there being anything to bother about in the condition of the Lisbon streets. Since then I have been attacked by the police, nearly torn to pieces by the mob, had to bolt from the troops, and now you thank me for having saved your life and in the same breath take me for a spy. Don’t you think that is enough cause for laughter? If you have any sense of humour you surely will.”

“I did not take you for a spy, monsieur,” she replied untruthfully. “But you have learnt things while here. We are obliged to be cautious.”

“My good lady, how on earth can it matter? We have met by the merest accident; there is not the slightest probability that we shall ever meet again; and if we did—well, you suggested just now that you know something of the ways of us English, and in that case you will feel perfectly certain that anything I have seen or heard here to-night will never pass my lips.”

“You have not mentioned your name, monsieur?”

“Ralph Donnington. I arrived yesterday and stayed at the Avenida. Would you like some confirmation? My card case is here, and this cigar case has my initials outside and my full name inside.”

“I do not need anything of that sort,” she cried quickly, waving her hands. But she read both the name and the initials.

“What have you inferred from what you have seen here to-night?”

“That the rascals who brought you here are some of the same sort of riff-raff I saw attacking the police and got hold of you as an enemy of the people. I heard that bit of cant from one of them. That you are of the class they are accustomed to regard as their oppressors was probably as evident to them as to me; and when you expressed sympathy with them——”

“You heard that?” she broke in earnestly.

“Certainly, when I heard you tell them to fetch this Dr. Barosa. But it is nothing to me; nor, thank Heaven, are your Portuguese politics or plots. But what is a good deal to me is how we are going to get out of this.”

“And for what do you take me, monsieur?”

“For one of the most beautiful enthusiasts I ever had the pleasure of meeting, madame,” I replied with a bow. “And a leader whom any one should be glad indeed to follow.”

She was woman enough to relish the compliment and she smiled. “You think I am a leader of these people, then?”

“It is my regret that I am not one of them.”

“I am afraid that is not true, Mr. Donnington.”

“At any rate I shall be delighted to follow your lead out of this house.”

“You will not be in any danger, I assure you of that.”

As she spoke we heard the sounds of some little commotion outside the room and I guessed that the scoundrels had brought up some more of their kind.

“I hope so, but I think we shall soon know.”

“I have your word of honour that you will not breathe a word of anything you have witnessed here to-night.”

“Certainly. I pledge my word of honour.”

The men outside appeared to have a good deal to chatter about and seemed none too ready to enter. They were probably discussing who should have the privilege of being the first to face my revolver. I did not like the look of the thing at all.

“If they are your friends, why don’t they come in?” I asked my companion. “Hadn’t you better speak to them?”

She crossed to the door and it occurred to me to place the head of a chair under the handle and make it a little more difficult for them to get in.

“You need have no fear, Mr. Donnington,” she said with a touch of contempt as I took this precaution.

“It’s only a slight test of the mood they are in.”

As she reached the door the injured man began to show signs of recovering his senses; and I stooped over him while she spoke to the men.

“Is Dr. Barosa there?” she called.

Getting no reply, she repeated the question and knocked on the panel.

There was an answer this time, but not at all what she had expected. One of the fellows fired a pistol and the bullet pierced the thin panel and went dangerously near her head.

I pulled her across to a spot where she would be safe from a chance shot. Only just in time, for half a dozen shots were fired in quick succession.

She was going to speak again, but I stopped her with a gesture; and then extinguished one of the two candles by which the room was lighted.

A long pause followed the shots, as if the scoundrels were listening to learn the effect of the firing.

In the silence the man in the corner groaned, and I heard the key turned in the lock as some one tried to push the door open.

I drew out my weapon.

“You will not shoot them, Mr. Donnington?” exclaimed my companion under her breath.

“Doesn’t this man Barosa know your voice?” I whispered.

“Of course.”

“Then he isn’t there,” I said grimly.

I raised my voice and called loudly: “Don’t you dare to enter. I’ll shoot the first man that tries to.” Then to my companion: “You’d better crouch down in the corner here. There’ll be trouble the instant they are inside.”

But she had no lack of pluck and shook her head disdainfully. “You must not fire. If you shoot one of these men you will not be safe for an hour in the city.”

“I don’t appear to be particularly safe as it is,” I answered drily.

There was another pause; then a vigorous shove broke the chair I had placed to the door and half a dozen men rushed in.

As I raised my arm to fire, my companion caught it and stopped me.

For the space of a few seconds the scoundrels stared at us, their eyes gleaming in vicious malice and triumph. I read murder in them.

“Throw your weapon on the table there,” ordered one of them.

Then a thought occurred to me.

I made as if to obey; but, instead of doing anything of the sort, I extinguished the remaining candle, grabbed my companion’s arm, drew her to the opposite side of the room and, pushing her into a corner, stood in front of her.

And in the pitchy darkness we waited for the ruffians to make the first move in their attack.

CHAPTER III
THE RECEPTION

THE effect of my impulse to extinguish the light in the room was much greater than I had anticipated. It proved to be the happiest thought I had ever had; for I am convinced that it saved my life, and probably that of my companion.

The average Portuguese of the lower class is too plugged with superstition ever to feel very happy in the dark. He is quick to people it with all sorts of impalpable terrors. And these fellows were soon in a bad scare.

For a few moments the wildest confusion prevailed. Execrations, threats, cries of anger, and prayers were mingled in about equal proportions; and every man who had a pistol fired it off. At least, that appeared to be the case, judging by the number of shots.

As they aimed at the corner where they had seen us, however, nothing resulted except a waste of ammunition.

The darkness was all in my favour. I knew that any man who touched me in the dark must be an enemy; while they could not tell, when they ran against any one, whether it was friend or foe. More than one struggle among them told me this, and showed me further what was of at least equal importance—that they were afraid to advance farther into the room.

When a lull came in the racket, therefore, I adopted another ruse. I crept toward the corner where they had seen us, and, stamping heavily, cried out that I would shoot the first man I touched.

Another volley of shots followed; but I was back out of range again, and soon had very welcome proof that the trick was successful. Each man appeared to mistake his neighbour for me, and some of them were pretty roughly handled by their friends before the blunders were discovered.

Some one shouted for a light; and in the lull that succeeded we had a great stroke of luck. The wounded man, who lay in a corner near to them, began to move his feet restlessly, and they immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was going to attack them from there.

I backed this idea promptly. Letting out a fierce yell of rage, I fired a shot at random. This filled to overflowing the cup of their cowardice, and in another moment they had bolted like rabbits out of the room and locked the door again.

I lost no time in relighting the candles, and set to work to pile the furniture against the door to prevent them taking us again by surprise, and to give me time to see if we couldn’t get away by the window.

Opening it as quietly as possible I had a good look at the bars, and saw that it would be possible to force them sufficiently apart with wedges for us to squeeze through.

“We can reach the street this way, madame?” I asked my companion, who was now very badly scared.

“It is useless,” she replied despairingly.

“Not so useless as stopping here. We can’t expect such luck a second time as we have just had.” I spoke sharply, wishing to rouse her.

But she only shook her head and tossed up her hands. So I began to break up some of the furniture to make some wedges, when she jumped to her feet with a cry of surprise and delight.

“It is his voice,” she exclaimed, her eyes shining and her face radiant with delight. Whoever “he” might be, it was easy to see what she felt about him.

Then the key was turned once more and an attempt made to force away my impromptu barricade.

I closed the window instantly and blew out one of the candles.

“Open the door. It is I, Barosa,” called a voice.

“Let him in, monsieur. Let him in at once. We are safe now.”

“Are you sure?” I asked, suspecting a trick.

Again the rich colour flooded her face. “Do you think I do not know his voice, or that he would harm me? Let him in. Let him in, I say,” she cried excitedly.

I pulled away enough of the barricade to admit one man at a time. I reckoned that no one man of the crowd I had seen would have the pluck to come in alone.

A dark, handsome, well-dressed man squeezed his way through the opening with an impatient exclamation on the score of my precaution. And the instant she saw his face, my companion sprang toward him uttering his name impetuously.

“Manoel! Manoel! Thank the Holy Virgin you have come.”

His appearance excited me also, for I recognized him at a glance. He had been pointed out to me in Paris some time before by my brother-in-law as one of the chief agents of Dom Miguel, the Pretender to the Portuguese Throne. His real name was Luis Beriardos. His presence in Lisbon at such a time and his connexion with a section of the revolutionaries gave me a clue to the whole business.

The two stood speaking together for a time in whispers, and then he went out to the others. I heard him explain that they had made a blunder in regard to madame and that he was ready to vouch for her as one of their best friends and a leader of their movements.

Some further murmur of talk followed, and when he returned, one or two of the rest tried to follow. But I stopped that move. One man was all I meant to have in the room at a time; and when I told the others to get out they went. I had managed to make them understand that it was safer to obey.

“What does this mean, sir?” asked Barosa, indignantly.

“You need have no fear now, Mr. Donnington,” added madame.

I replied to Barosa. “Those men have been telling you that I am a spy and you have come in to question me. This lady has assured me that I have nothing to fear from you. You will therefore have the goodness to get the key of that door and lock it on this side. Then we can talk, but not till then.”

“I shall not do anything of the sort,” he replied hotly.

“Then I shall shove these things back in position;” and I began.

“Dr. Barosa will get the key, Mr. Donnington,” put in madame; and she appealed to him with a look. “He has saved my life, doctor,” she said in an undertone.

I noticed that she did not now call him by his Christian name as in the first flush of her relief.

He hesitated a second or two and then with an angry shrug of the shoulders complied.

“I’ll take the key, doctor,” I said quietly; and when he stood irresolute, I pushed past him and drew it out of the lock. “Now we can talk, and I’m ready to answer any questions, in reason, which you like to ask.”

“Your conduct is very extraordinary, sir.”

“Not a bit of it. These friends of yours take me for a spy. You may come to the same conclusion. They tried to take my life; and you may wish to do the same. I am simply taking precautions. I have told this lady enough about myself to satisfy her that I am no spy; but if you are not equally satisfied, I prefer to remain here with no other company than ourselves until a chance of getting away offers.”

He was going to reply when madame interposed. To do her justice she took up my cause with a right good will. She repeated all I had previously told her, gave him a graphic account of what had passed, lauded me to the skies, and ended by declaring her absolute conviction that every word I had spoken was the truth.

Feeling that my case was in safe hands, I let them have it out together. He was suspicious, and at every proof of this, her anger and indignation increased.

“I have accepted Mr. Donnington’s word, Dr. Barosa,” she said hotly, when he declared that I ought not to be allowed to leave the house; “and I have given him a pledge for his safety. You know me, and that I will keep my word. Very well, I declare to you on my honour that if any harm comes to him now, I will abandon the cause and reveal everything I know about it and all concerned in it.”

That shook all the opposition out of him on the spot.

“You are at liberty to go, Mr. Donnington,” he said at once.

“Thank you; but what about your friends out there?”

“I will leave the house with you,” declared madame. “And we will see if any one will dare to try and stop you.”

“It might be simpler if they were to go first,” I suggested.

“I will answer for them,” said Barosa. “We have your word that you will not speak of anything you have learned here to-night?”

“Yes, I pledge my word,” I replied.

“Let me thank you once more, Mr. Donnington——” began madame.

But I stopped her. “We can call the account between us squared, madame. If I helped you out of one mess you have got me out of this. And for the rest, silence for silence. We shall not meet again.”

“Are you staying long in the city, sir?” asked Barosa with a suggestion of eagerness in his tone.

“Not an hour longer than my business here renders necessary. I am not so delighted with my experiences so far as to wish to remain.”

He left the room then and after a hurried conference with the fellows outside he called to us and we left the house.

With what relief I drew the first breath of the fresh night air will be readily understood; but I do not think I fully realized how narrow an escape I had had until I was safe in my rooms and sat recalling the incidents of the strange adventure.

Who was the woman I had helped? Not a hint had been dropped of her name; but that she was a person of as much importance in the world outside as in the ranks of the revolutionary party of which she was a leader, I could not doubt. That the conspiracy was being carried on in the interest of the Pretender was fairly certain, seeing that this Beriardos, or Barosa, as he now called himself, was mixed up in it; and I resolved to write at once to Madrillo to send me everything he knew about him.

What had he meant, too, by that eager question as to the length of my stay in the city? He was certainly not satisfied that I was not a spy. Should I have to be on the look-out for further trouble from him and the scum of the city joined with him? It was a more probable than pleasant prospect.

As that exceedingly handsome creature had reminded me, I had gained some information which made me dangerous to these people; and however willing she might be to accept my promise of secrecy, it was all Portugal to a bunch of grapes that the others would not be so content.

And the irritating part of it was that I had got into the mess through my own blundering stupidity. If I hadn’t been ass enough to go wandering about the city when I had been warned to stop indoors, I shouldn’t have had this bother. But the world is full of asses; and many of them with a heap more brains than I. And with a chuckle, as if that silly cynicism were both an excuse and a consolation, I tossed away my cigar and went to bed.

A night’s sound sleep put me on much better terms with myself, and I scouted the thought of troublesome personal consequences following my adventure. The thing was over and done with and I was well out of the mess.

Instead of bothering to write to Madrillo for details about this Dr. Barosa, therefore, I went off to the Stella for a cruise to blow the cobwebs away and think about Miralda and the meeting with her that evening.

We were to meet at the house of the Marquis de Pinsara, and my friend, Volheno, had impressed upon me the importance of the gathering.

“Affairs are in a somewhat delicate condition just at present,” he had said; “and as there is a great deal of surface discontent here and in Oporto—although the bulk of the country is solid in our favour—we have to exercise some care in organizing our followers. The Marquis de Pinsara is one of M. Franco’s firmest adherents, and this reception will really be political in character. You may have heard of the ‘National League of Portugal?’ No? Well, it is a powerful loyalist association, and we are doing our utmost to make the movement fully representative and powerful;” and being a politician and proportionately verbose, he had first inflicted upon me a long account of the League and its merits, and from that had launched into the reasons why he meant to take me to the reception. Put shortly these were simply that he wished to interest the Marquis de Pinsara and many of his loyalist friends in the concessions at Beira which I had put forward as the object of my visit.

What this process of “interesting” the Marquis meant, I learnt within a few minutes of my entering his house.

As Volheno sent me a line at the last moment saying he was detained, I had to go alone and I was very glad. Not being quite certain how Miralda would receive me, I did not wish to have any lookers-on when me met. Moreover, I certainly did not want to fool away the evening, a good deal of which I hoped to spend with her, in talking a lot of rot about these concessions which I had only used as a stalking-horse for my visit to Lisbon.

But I soon found that in choosing them, I had invested myself with a most inconvenient amount of importance.

The Marquis received me with as much cordiality as if I were an old friend and benefactor of his family. He grasped my hand warmly, expressed his delight at making my acquaintance, could not find words to describe his admiration of England and the English, and then started upon the concessions.

I thought he would never stop, but he came to the point. Volheno had taken as gospel all the rubbish I had talked about the prospects of wealth offered by the concessions, and had passed it on to the marquis through a magnifying glass until the latter, being a comparatively poor man, was under the impression that I could make his fortune. He was more than willing to be “interested” in the scheme; and took great pains to convince me that without his influence I could not succeed. And that influence was mine for a consideration.

In the desire to get free from his button-holing I gave him promises lavish enough to send him off to his other guests with eyes positively glittering with greed.

Unfortunately for me, however, he began to use his influence at once, and while I was hanging about near the entrance, waiting to catch Miralda the moment she arrived, he kept bringing up a number of his friends—mostly titled and all tiresome bores—whom he was also “interesting” in the scheme.

They all said the same thing. Theirs was the only influence which could secure the concessions for me, and they all made it plain about the consideration. I began at length to listen for the phrase and occasionally to anticipate it; and thus in half an hour or so I had promised enough backsheesh to have crippled the scheme ten times over.

One of these old fellows—a marquis or visconte or something of the sort, the biggest bore of the lot anyway—was in possession of me in a corner when Miralda arrived, and for the life of me I couldn’t shake him off. I was worrying how to get away when the marquis came sailing up with another of them in tow, a tall, stiff, hawk-faced, avaricious-looking old man, with a pompous air, and more orders on his breast than I could count.

I groaned and wished the concessions at the bottom of the Tagus, but the next moment had to shut down a smile. It was the Visconte de Linto, Miralda’s stepfather.

The marquis had evidently filled him up with exaggerated stories of my wealth and the riches I had come to pour into the pockets of those who assisted me, and his first tactic was to get rid of the bore in possession. He did this by carrying me off to present me to his wife and daughter.

It was the reverse of such a meeting as I had pictured or desired; for at that moment Miralda was besieged by a crowd of men clamouring for dances. But I could not think of an excuse, and I had barely time to explain that I had met Miralda and her mother in Paris, when the old man pushed his way unceremoniously through the little throng and introduced me, stumbling over my name which he had obviously forgotten, and adding that Miralda must save two or three dances for me.

As he garbled my name she was just taking her dance card back from a man who had scribbled his initials on it and she turned to me with a little impatient movement of the shoulders which I knew well.

Our eyes met, and my fear that she might have forgotten me was dissipated on the instant.

CHAPTER IV
MIRALDA

ALTHOUGH it was easy to read the look of recognition in Miralda’s eyes, it was the reverse of easy to gather the thoughts which that recognition prompted. After the first momentary widening of the lids, the start of surprise, and the involuntary tightening of the fingers on her fan, she was quick to force a smile, as she bowed to me, and the smile served as an impenetrable mask to her real feelings.

The viscontesse gave me a very different welcome. She was pleased to see me again and frankly expressed her pleasure. I had done my best to ingratiate myself in her favour during those three weeks in Paris, and had evidently been successful. She was a kind-hearted garrulous soul, and before I could get a word in about the dances, she plunged into a hundred and one questions about Paris and England and the beauties of Lisbon, and why I had not let them know of my coming and so on, and without giving me time to reply she turned to Miralda.

“You surely remember Mr. Donnington, child? We met him in Paris, last spring.”

“Oh yes, mother. His sister is M. Madrillo’s wife,” said Miralda indifferently.

This was not exactly how I wished to be remembered. “I am glad you have not forgotten my sister, at any rate, mademoiselle,” I replied, intending this to be very pointed.

“M. Madrillo showed us many kindnesses, monsieur, and did much to make our stay in Paris pleasant; and it is not a Portuguese failing to forget.”

This was better, for there was a distinct note of resentment in her voice instead of mere indifference. But before I could reply, the viscontesse interposed a very natural but extremely inconvenient question. “And what brings you here, Mr. Donnington?”

The visconte answered this, making matters worse than ever; and there followed a little by-play of cross purposes.

“Mr. Donnaheen is here on some very important business, my dear—very important business indeed.”

“If I remember, Donnington is the proper pronunciation, father,” interposed Miralda, very quietly, as if courtesy required the correction—the courtesy that was due to a stranger, however.

“I wish you wouldn’t interrupt me, Miralda,” he replied testily. “This gentleman will understand how difficult some English names are to pronounce and will excuse my slip, I am sure.”

“Certainly, visconte.”

“I am only sorry I do not speak English.”

“Donnington is quite easy to pronounce, Affonso,” his wife broke in.

He gave a sigh of impatience. “Of course it is, I know that well enough.”

“You were speaking of the reason for Mr. Donnington’s visit,” Miralda reminded him demurely; and as she turned to him her eyes swept impassively across my face. As if a stranger’s presence in Lisbon were a legitimate reason for the polite assumption of curiosity.

“It is in a way Government business; Mr. Donnington”—he got the name right this time and smiled—“is seeking some concessions in our East African colony and he needs my influence.”

“Oh, business in East Africa?” she repeated, with a lift of the eyebrows. “How very interesting;” and with that she turned away and handed her programme to one of the men pestering her for a dance.

No words she could have spoken and nothing she could have done would have been so eloquent of her appreciation of my conduct in absenting myself for four months and then coming to Lisbon on business. Once more I wished those infernal concessions at the bottom of the Tagus.

“I hope to be of considerable use and you may depend upon my doing my utmost,” said the visconte, self-complacently.

“I cannot say how highly I shall value your influence, sir, not only in that but in everything,” I replied, putting an emphasis on the “everything” in the hope that Miralda would understand.

But she paid no heed and went on chatting with the man next her.

“And how long are you staying, Mr. Donnington?” asked her mother.

“Rather a superfluous question that, Maria,” said her husband. “Of course it will depend upon how your business goes, eh, Mr. Donnington?”

I saw a chance there and took it. “I am afraid my object will take longer to accomplish than I hoped,” I replied; for Miralda’s benefit again of course.

“At any rate you will have time for some pleasure-making, I trust,” said the viscontesse.

“Englishmen don’t let pleasure interfere with business, my dear, they are far too strenuous,” replied her husband, who appeared to think he was flattering me and doing me a service by insisting that I could have no possible object beyond business. “I presume that you are only here to-night for the one purpose. The Marquis de Pinsara told me as much.”

At that moment a partner came up to claim Miralda for a dance, and as she rose she said: “Mr. Donnington is fortunate in finding so many to help him in his business.”

“Wait a moment, Miralda,” exclaimed her father as she was turning away. “Have you kept the dances for Mr. Donnington?”

Again her eyes flashed across mine with the same half-disdainful smile of indifference. “Mr. Donnington has been so occupied discussing the serious purpose of his visit that he has had no time to think of such frivolity and ask for them;” and with that parting shot she went off to the ball-room without waiting to hear my protest.

The visconte smiled and gestured. “I suppose you don’t dance, Mr. Donnington,” he said, “I have heard that many Englishmen do not.”

“Indeed he does, Affonso,” declared his wife quickly. “I remember that well in Paris. He and Miralda often danced together. And now, sit down here in Miralda’s place till she comes back and let us have a chat about Paris,” she added to me.

But the old visconte had not quite done with me. Drawing me aside—“I want you to feel that I shall do all in my power, Mr. Donnington,” he began.

I knew what was coming so I anticipated him. “I am sure of that, and I have been given to understand that you can do more for me than any one else in Portugal. And of course you’ll understand that those who assist me in the early stages will naturally share in the after advantages and gains. I make a strong point of that.”

“Of course that was not in my mind at all,” he protested.

“Naturally. But I should insist upon it,” I said gravely.

“I suppose it will be a very big thing?”

“Millions in it, visconte. Millions;” and I threw out my hands as if half the riches of the earth would soon be in their grasp. “And of course I know that without you I should be powerless.”

He appreciated this thoroughly and went off on excellent terms with himself and with a high opinion of me as a potential source of wealth, while I sat down by the viscontesse to explain why four months had passed since we met.

But these miserable concessions gave me no peace. I was only beginning my explanation when up came the marquis and dragged me off for the first of another batch of introductions, followed by a long conference in another room with him and Volheno who had meanwhile arrived. And just as the marquis took my arm to lead me away, and thus prevented my escape, Miralda returned from the dance.

A single glance showed her that I was fully occupied in the business which I had been forced to admit in her presence was the object of my visit to Lisbon, and the expression of her eyes and the shrug of her shoulders were a sufficient indication of her feeling.

I was properly punished for the silly lie which I had merely intended to conceal my real purpose, and when I saw Miralda welcome a fresh partner with a smile which I would have given the whole of Portuguese Africa to have won from her, I could scarcely keep my temper.

I was kept at this fool talk for an hour or more when I ought to have been making my peace with her, and I resolved on the spot to invent a telegram from London the next day reporting a hitch in the negotiations.

When at length I got free, Miralda was not anywhere to be seen; and I wandered about the rooms and in and out of the conservatories looking for her, putting up no end of couples in odd corners and getting deservedly scowled at for my pains.

I saw her at last among the dancers; and I stood and watched her, gritting my teeth in the resolve that no titled old bores nor even wild horses should prevent my speaking to her as soon as the waltz was over.

I stalked her into a palm house which I had missed in my former search and, giving her and her partner just enough time to find seats, I followed and walked straight up to them.

She knew I was coming. I could tell that by the way she squared her shoulders and affected the deepest interest in her partner’s conventional nothings.

“I think the next is our dance, mademoiselle,” I said unblushingly, as I affected to consult my card. She gave a start as if entirely surprised by and rather indignant at the interruption; while her partner had the decency to rise. But she glanced at her card and then looked up with a bland smile and shook her head. “I am afraid you are mistaken, monsieur.”

The man was going to resume his place by her side, but I stopped that. “I have the honour of your initials here, and if to my intense misfortune you have given the dance to two of us, perhaps this gentleman will allow me, as an old acquaintance of yours, to enjoy the few minutes of interval to deliver an important message entrusted to me.”

I was under the fire of her eyes all the time I was delivering this flowery and untruthful rigmarole; but I was as voluble and as grave as a judge. I took the man in all right. I made him feel that under the circumstances he was in the way and with a courteous bow to us both, he excused himself.

Miralda was going to request him to remain, I think, so I took possession of the vacant chair; and then of course she could not bring him back without making too much of the incident and possibly causing a little scene.

That I had offended her I could not fail to see; her hostility and resentment were obvious, but whether the cause was my present effrontery or my long neglect of her, I had yet to find out.

She did not quite know what to do. After sitting a few moments in rather frowning indecision, she half rose as if she were going to leave me, but with a little toss of the head she decided against that and turned to me.

“You have a message for me, monsieur?” Her tone was one of studied indifference and her look distinctly chilling.

“For one thing, my sister desired to be most kindly remembered to you.”

Up went the deep fringed lids and the dark eyebrows, as a comment upon the message which I had described as important. “Please to tell Madame Madrillo that I am obliged by her good wishes and reciprocate them.” This ridiculously stilted phrase made it difficult for me to resist a smile. But I played up to it.

“I feel myself deeply honoured, mademoiselle, by being made the bearer of any communication from you. I will employ my most earnest efforts to convey to my sister your wishes and the auspicious circumstances under which they are so graciously expressed.”

She had to turn away before I finished, but she would not smile. There was, however, less real chill and more effort at formality when she replied—

“As you have delivered your message, monsieur——” she finished with a wave of the hands, as if dismissing me.

But I was not going of course, and then I made a very gratifying little discovery. Her dance card was turned over by her gesture and I saw that for the next dance she had no partner.

“That is only one of the messages, mademoiselle,” I replied after a pause in the same stilted tone. “Have I your permission to report the second?”

I guessed she was beginning to see the absurdity of it, for she turned slightly away from me and bowed, not trusting herself to speak.

“My brother-in-law, M. Stefan Madrillo, desired me to bring you an assurance of his best wishes.”

“Have you any messages from the children also, monsieur?” she asked quickly, with a swift flash of her glorious eyes.

I kept it up for another round. “I am honoured by being able to assure you that their boy appreciated to the full the bon-bons which were the outcome of your distinguished generosity when in Paris, and retains his appetite for delicacies; but the little girl, not yet being able to speak, has entrusted me with no more than some gurgles and coos. To my profound regret I cannot reproduce them verbatim. May I have the honour of conveying your reply?”

She kept her face turned right away from me and did not answer.

“I have yet another message, mademoiselle, if your patience is not exhausted,” I said after a pause.

“Still another, monsieur?”

“Still another, mademoiselle.”

“From whom, monsieur?”

“From a man you knew in Paris, mademoiselle, Mr. Ralph Donnington. He has charged me to explain——”

“I don’t wish to hear that one, thank you,” she broke in.

“But he is absolutely determined that you shall hear it.”

“Shall?” she cried warmly, throwing back her head with a lovely poise of indignation and looking straight into my eyes.

“Yes, shall,” I replied firmly. “I have travelled over a thousand miles to deliver it.”

“I am not interested in mining concessions, Mr. Donnington,” she cried scornfully, thinking to wither me.

“Nor am I.”

Her intense surprise at this put all her indignation to flight, and left nothing in her eyes but bewildered curiosity.

“Nor am I,” I repeated with a smile.

“But——”

“I know,” I said when she paused. “I had to have a pretext.”

She knew what I meant then and lowered her eyes.

“I still do not wish to hear Mr. Donnington’s message,” she said after a pause and in a very different tone.

“I do not wish to force it upon you now, and certainly not against your wish. I may be some months in Lisbon, and——”

“There is the band for the next dance, I must go,” she interposed.

“I have seen by your card that you have no partner; but if you wish me to leave you I will do so, or take you back to the viscontesse—unless you will give it to me.”

She leant back in her chair, her head bent, her brows gathered in a frown of perplexity and her fingers playing nervously with her fan.

“I do not wish to dance, Mr. Donnington, thank you,” she murmured.

“Just as you will.”

A long silence followed. She was agitated and I perplexed.

After perhaps a minute of this silence, I rose.

“You wish to be alone, mademoiselle?”

She did not reply and I was turning to leave when she looked up quickly. “I do not wish you to go, Mr. Donnington.” Then putting aside the thoughts, whatever they were, which had been troubling her, she laughed and added: “Why should I? It is pleasant to meet an old acquaintance. You have come through Paris on your way here, of course. Were you there long?”

I was more perplexed by the change of tone and manner than by her former silent preoccupation.

“I did not come through Paris,” I replied, as I resumed my seat. “I came from England in the Stella—my yacht.”

“You have had delightful weather for your cruise.”

“I was not cruising in that sense. The Stella is a very fast boat and I came in her because I could get here more quickly.”

“Our Portuguese railways are very slow, of course, and the Spanish trains no better. It is a very tedious journey from Paris.”

“Very,” I agreed. Whether she wished to make small talk in order to avoid my explanation, I did not know; but I fell in with her wish and then tried to lead round to the old time in Paris.

She turned my references to it very skilfully however, and after my third unsuccessful attempt, she herself referred to it in a way that forced me to regard it as a sealed page.

“It has been very pleasant to meet you again, Mr. Donnington, and have such a delightful chat, and I am so much obliged to you for not having pressed me to dance. I hope we shall see a good deal of you while you are here. You quite captured my dear mother during that time in Paris. Of course you’ll call.”

“I ventured to leave cards immediately on my arrival.”

Then she rose. “I must really go now. Major Sampayo will be looking for me for the next dance. Have you met the major yet?”

“I don’t think so; but I have had so many introductions this evening that I don’t remember all the names.”

“Ah, the result of your supposed purpose in Lisbon, probably. Of course I shall keep your secret,” she replied with a smile. Then a sudden change came over her. She paused, the hand which held her fan trembled, the effort to maintain the light indifference of voice and manner became apparent, and her voice was a trifle unsteady as she added: “You will meet Major Sampayo at our house. Ah, here he comes with my friend the Contesse Inglesia. I suppose my mother has told you I am betrothed to him.”

The news gripped me like a cramp in the heart, and I caught my breath and gritted my teeth as I stared at her.

But the next instant I rallied. The pain and concern in her eyes seemed to explain what had so perplexed me in her manner. Her agitation when I told her the real purpose of my presence; her quick assumption of indifference, of mere acquaintanceship, her studious evasion of my references to our time in Paris, and her light surface talk on things of no concern to either of us. If my new wild hope was right, all this had been merely intended to school herself to refer lightly to the matter of her betrothal.

I forced a smile. “Permit me to congratulate——” I began; but the words died on my lips as I turned and saw the two people whom she had mentioned.

The man, Major Sampayo, I knew to be one of the vilest scoundrels who ever escaped the gallows.

And his companion was the woman whose life I had saved from her revolutionary associates on the previous night.

CHAPTER V
INEZ

WITH a big effort I managed to pull myself together, and much to Miralda’s surprise I covered my momentary confusion with a hearty laugh and a sentence spoken for the benefit of the other two who were now within earshot.

“I’m afraid I’ve bored you frightfully, but I couldn’t resist sparing a few minutes from this concession-mongering business. And after your saying that the viscontesse remembers our chats in Paris, I shall certainly ask her to allow me to call.”

I succeeded in speaking in the tone of a quite casual acquaintance, and I turned to find two pairs of eyes fixed intently upon me.

Whether the fellow who now called himself Major Sampayo recognized me I could not tell, but his companion did, and I waited for her to decide whether we were to acknowledge that we had met.

She made no sign and I made my bow to Miralda and was moving off when the major intervened.

“Will you present me to your friend, Miralda?”

I could have kicked him for the glib use of her name. I paused and turned with a smile, as if highly pleased by the request. If I knew myself, the kicking would come later.

“Mr. Donnington, may I introduce Major Sampayo?” said Miralda, a little nervously.

I bowed and smirked, but behind the entrenchment of English reserve I made no offer to take his hand.

“I am glad to meet you, Mr. Donnington.”

“I consider myself equally fortunate, Major Sampayo.”

I saw then that he had an uneasy feeling that we had met somewhere before, and his eyes moved from side to side as he searched his memory to place my voice or face or name.

“Is that really Mr. Donnington?” exclaimed his companion, with a delightful assumption of interested surprise. “My dear Miralda, please don’t leave me out.”

“My friend the Contesse Inez Inglesia,” said Miralda.

She held out her hand and as I took it she looked straight into my eyes with a most cordial smile. “I have heard so much about you, Mr. Donnington, that I have been questioning every one I know to find a mutual friend, and wandering all over the rooms to find you.”

Which meant that she knew I had been a long time with Miralda.

“I have such an implicit faith in Portuguese sincerity, contesse, that you will turn my head if you flatter me so. The fact is I have been making an unconscionable bore of myself with Mademoiselle Dominguez. I met her and the viscontesse in Paris last spring, and I was so glad to find a face I knew to-night, that I could not resist the temptation for a chat.”

“Have you been long in Lisbon, sir?” asked Sampayo, still worrying himself about me.

“Two days, major, that’s all. I came in my yacht.”

“Surely you’ve heard about Mr. Donnington, major,” said the contesse. “He’s the millionaire who has come about the mining concessions in Beira, or somewhere.”

“No, I had not heard that,” he replied, with a little start, as if this might have suggested a clue to his problem. “Have you been in Beira, sir?”

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “I suppose I ought not to own it, but I was never there in my life.”

“Major Sampayo knows every inch of South Africa, Mr. Donnington,” said the contesse. “He was out there at the time your country was at war with the Boers.”

“Oh, indeed,” said I, as if in great surprise. I knew that well enough. “Then I shall hope to get some wrinkles from him.”

“You served in that war, didn’t you, Mr. Donnington?” asked Miralda, evidently feeling she ought to say something.

“For a few months. I was in Bloemfontein and Mafeking.” I purposely named places as distant as possible from the spot where I had seen him. I did not wish him to recognize me yet.

“Were you out at the finish of the campaign?” he asked at the prompting of his uneasy fears.

“About the middle. I was sent down country after the relief of Mafeking.” This was half truth but also half lie. I had gone up again almost immediately. But it appeared to ease his unrest.

“I have a curious feeling that we have met somewhere,” he said; “and was wondering whether it could have been out in South Africa. That was the reason for my rather inquisitive questions.”

I laughed. “Oh, I should have recognized you in a moment if that had been the case. I never forget a face.”

This made him uneasy again, but, as the band struck up, he gave his arm to Miralda.

“Thanks for a delightful chat, mademoiselle,” I said lightly to Miralda. “May I take you to your partner, madame?” I asked, offering my arm to the Contesse.

Instead of accepting it she said to Miralda. “If you see Vasco tell him I’ll give him another waltz for this. I am going to sit this out with Mr. Donnington—that is, of course, if he is willing.”

“I’ll tell him, Inez,” replied Miralda over her shoulder as she walked away.

Inez was silent until they were out of hearing, and then she said very meaningly: “What an excellent actor you are, Mr. Donnington.”

“May I return the compliment? I saw that you wished it to appear that we were complete strangers. And with your permission that is just what we have been up to the moment of this introduction.”

Another pause followed by a surprise for me.

“So you are Miralda’s Englishman!”

But I was too well on my guard to betray myself. “Am I really?” I asked with an easy laugh. “We had a jolly time for a week or two, but—that’s four months ago.”

“You are fond of camelias, Mr. Donnington.”

“I am wearing one, as you see,” I replied pointing to my buttonhole. But I had often given camelias to Miralda in those three weeks; and this handsome, dangerous, stately creature with hazel eyes, which were open and frank or diabolically sly at will, knew it.

Again she paused once more as the preface to a shot.

“What do you know about Major Sampayo, Mr. Donnington?” She flashed the question at me, her eyes searchlights in their intensity.

“I think he’s quite a handsome man and looks awfully well in that rather gorgeous uniform; and I presume those orders on his chest show that he is as distinguished a soldier as he looks.”

“Spoken without even a shadow of hesitation. I declare that every moment I admire your acting more.” She let her eyes rest on mine and half closed the lids. “I think I am glad I am not Major Sampayo,” she said slowly.

“I should imagine you have every reason to be satisfied with your own delightfully handsome personality. But if it comes to that, I am also glad I am not the major.”

“Not even with Miralda thrown in?”

“Not even with Miralda thrown in,” I repeated with a laugh. “She’s a very charming girl and exceedingly pretty and all that. She was acknowledged to be one of the prettiest girls in Paris last spring, you know, and I admire her tremendously.”

“A frank admission of unconcerned admiration is very clever, of course, but I am not deceived by it, Mr. Donnington.”

“No? Well then shall I confess that I worship her, that the ground her foot touches is changed to holy soil; that when she smiles I am in heaven, and when she frowns, in hell; and that for four months I have only existed on the hope of seeing her again; that she fills my heart, inspires my every thought, dominates my every action, permeates my being, and is the end-all and be-all of my life?” I declaimed all this with a lot of extravagant gesture; and then added in a different tone: “And why on earth do you want to insist that I am in love with her?”

“It is necessary that I know exactly the relationship between you?”

“My relationship is precisely the same as between you and myself, madame.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we not all cousins in more or less remote degree—in our descent from Adam and Eve?”

She rustled her shoulders impatiently. “Don’t you understand what I mean? You know how we first met.”

“Oh ho, and is the fair Miralda one of you?” I laughed. “But I thought that subject was taboo?”

“You know my secret and I can therefore talk freely to you.”

“I would very much rather that you did not, if you please.”

“I am under the deepest of all obligations to you, Mr. Donnington; you saved my life and I wish to be your friend. If you have any such feeling for Miralda as you have burlesqued, I owe it to you to let you understand things and be warned in time. It is not possible for a foreigner to know the undercurrents of life here at present.”

“My dear lady, I am only trying to swim on the surface. I find myself to-night in the house of one of the staunchest supporters of the Government at a gathering intended to strengthen the position of the loyalist body—the National League of Portugal.”

“I am one of the acknowledged leaders of that League.”

I could not restrain a start of astonishment at this; and she noticed it, of course.

“You are surprised. But many of those here are my friends—my political friends, I mean. It was my public connexion with the League which led me into the trouble last night. The men who threatened me knew of my position in it, but not of my sympathies with them—that of course is as close a secret as possible—and by a trick decoyed me to a house where I was seized and brought to where you found me. The intention was to kill me and then carry me into the streets to make it appear that I had been killed in the rioting. You will understand from this the dangerous forces that are at work. Some of those men suspect you of being a spy and you will be well advised not to prolong your stay in Lisbon. And your friendship with M. Volheno will not add to your safety.”

“Cannot an Englishman come here without being taken for a spy?”

“You know that one of your best English detectives has been employed by the Spanish Government to reorganize the detective force there. One story I have heard is that you yourself are an English detective engaged by M. Volheno to help in unearthing some of the conspiracies here, and that your desire to obtain some concessions in Africa is a mere blind.”

“It would be difficult to go much further away about me, anyway.”

“Yet those who seek concessions from a Government do not usually advertise the fact far and wide. You are a man of courage and resource: we have had proof of that. You have learnt some of our secrets and one of our haunts. You have some secret knowledge about Major Sampayo that threatens him; and you are more than clever enough to sustain the part of an Englishman of wealth and position.”

“And do you mean that you yourself believe this preposterous story?”

“No; but I should like to know the real reason for your coming here.”

“And that Dr. Barosa, does he take me for a spy?”

“No, we have already made inquiries about you from our friends in England. But, like myself, he wishes to know why you are here. You will do well to give me your confidence.”

“And your other colleague—Major Sampayo?”

“I did not tell you that he was with us.”

“Not in so many words. And really I don’t care.”

“He will remember where he has met you before, and the facts may help us to know more about you—for your benefit or otherwise.”

“My dear madame, if you mean that for a threat, it does not in the least alarm me. Let me tell you once for all I am not a member of the English detective force; my presence here has not the remotest connexion with your politics or your plots; and I have no sort of sympathy with them one way or another. I am just an average Englishman; and as such claim the right to go where I will when I will, so long as I mind my own business. And as an Englishman I can take care of myself and must decline to be frightened out of doing what I wish to do either by charming, cultured and handsome ladies, like yourself, or by such gutter scum as I had the tussle with last night.”

“Then you refuse to give me your confidence?”

“Let me put it rather that I have really no confidence worth giving. I shall hold absolutely secret what you have told me—that on my honour. And now do you mind if we talk about the scenery?”

“You will have cause to regret it, Mr. Donnington.”

“My dear madam, I have arrived at the mature age of twenty-seven, and probably twenty-six of them are full of regrets for lost chances. But there is a question of real seriousness I should like to put to you,” I said very gravely.

“Well?”

“What is the name of the third, no the fourth bluff, to the north of the river mouth?”

She turned and bent those strange eyes of hers upon me with an intent stare. “You mean me to understand that you regard everything I have said—my warning, my questions, everything—as a mere jest.”

“I mean that, although I am by the way of being a wilful person, I am not an ungrateful one; and that if you would do me the honour one day of making up a little party to view that bluff from the deck of my yacht, it would give me great pleasure and I hope promote that better understanding between us which I should like to think you desire as much as I.”

“I accept willingly,” she replied with a smile; but even then she could not resist a thrust. Looking at me out of the half-veiled corners of her eyes she asked: “May I bring Major Sampayo?”

“By all means, and Dr. Barosa and any others of your colleagues—even the fair Miralda; and I will have cosy corners specially fitted up for you all where you may talk politics or personalities as you prefer.”

Again her strange eyes fastened on mine, searchingly. “What do you really mean by that?” she asked, with tense earnestness.

“Oh, please don’t let us get serious again, and read grave meanings into mere trifling banalities,” I exclaimed with a laugh. “I mean no more than that I should try to give you all a good time and let you enjoy it in your own way.”

“If I am to enjoy it, Mr. Donnington, you must ask Miralda’s brother, Lieutenant de Linto.”

“My dear lady, I’ll ask the whole regiment if you wish it.”

“Here he comes, you can ask him now. I suppose you know him?”

A young fellow in the uniform of a lieutenant had entered the palm house and came hurrying toward us. I did not care for his looks. Tall and slight of figure, a foppish and affected manner, anæmic and dissipated in looks with a narrow, retreating forehead, no chin to speak of, and prominent eyes, in one of which he had an eyeglass, I set him down as weak, unstable, shallow, and generally undesirable. But he was Miralda’s half-brother and thus to me a person of consideration.

“I say, Inez, this is too bad. I’ve been hunting for you everywhere and the dance is all but over.”

She beamed on him with one of her richest smiles. “I own my fault, Vasco, but I sent word to you by Miralda. I simply could not resist the opportunity of a chat with the distinguished Englishman every one is talking about. Mr. Donnington, Lieutenant de Linto.”

I had risen and shook hands cordially, expressing my pleasure at meeting him. “I fear that unwittingly I have taken your place, lieutenant,” I added. “Pray pardon me.”

“Here’s my card, Vasco. Take two dances for the one we have missed.”

“That’s all right then,” he said, as he took her card eagerly and scribbled his initials on it. “I think after all I’m obliged to you, Mr. Donnington,” he added with a vacuous smile which he intended to be pleasant.

“Mr. Donnington has asked me to make up a little yachting party one day, Vasco, and I was just mentioning your name as you came up.”

“Oh, I say, but I’m a rare bad sailor,” he replied doubtfully.

“We’ll choose a fine day then, Vasco. And of course I couldn’t go without you.” She laid her hand on his arm and glanced up into his face with a yearning look which convinced him of her perfect sincerity and fetched a sigh out of him that told its own tale.

I excused myself promptly, and as I turned away he took the chair by her side, feasting his big eyes on her beauty and letting his little senses surfeit themselves in the glamour of her charms.

She had his scalp right enough. He was hers, body and soul and honour. But why had she taken the trouble? She cared for him even less than I cared for her; and the night before I had seen her look at Barosa with the light which only one man can bring to a woman’s eyes. Only one at a time, anyway.

Why then should she fool this little insignificant creature? Of course she had a purpose. She was not the woman to waste her time and her glances for nothing.

Was it those confounded politics again? One of the little wheels within the big one which was to have its part to play when the whole machinery of plot and conspiracy was set in motion.

Fools can be useful at times.

What part had this one to play?

It was nothing to me—and yet it might be much. He was Miralda’s brother; and nothing which concerned her could be indifferent to me.

CHAPTER VI
DR. BAROSA

AS I made my way through the crowded rooms with the object of finding the viscontesse and making sure of an invitation to her house, I saw Miralda and Sampayo sitting together. They did not see me and I stood a moment watching them.

He appeared to be urging her to do something and his eyes were insistent, compelling and passionate. There was no doubt that he felt for her all the animal love of which such a man is capable.

But there was no answering light in her eyes. She was passive, cold and indifferent; and the emotion he stirred was more like fear than anything.

Instinctively I hated the man and felt an unholy glow of gladness at the thought that at a word from me any hold or influence he could have over her would snap like a rotten twig.

My thoughts slipped back to that old time in South Africa; and in place of the swaggering major of cavalry, with his breast covered with orders, I saw him as I had seen him there, a broken-down tatter-de-mallion member of the hungry brigade at Koomarte Port; general sponge, reputed spy and acknowledged rascal, passing as a Frenchman under the name of Jean Dufoire; one of the many scamps who infested the border between the Transvaal and the Portuguese Colony, ripe for any scoundrelism from theft to throat-slitting.

This was the story I knew about him. When old Kruger was bundling off his private fortune to Europe, this Dufoire managed to get hold of some secret information about one of the consignments and joined with three other men to steal it. They were successful. The two men in charge of it were found murdered; and the money, said to be nearly £50,000, was missing.

But that was not all. Not content with a share of the loot, Dufoire first picked a quarrel with one of his companions and shot him treacherously, and then cheated the other two of the greater part of the money and disappeared.

The facts came out when the two men were afterwards captured. One of them died; and just before his death confessed everything, in the hope that the British would take the matter up and secure Dufoire’s punishment. Many men were aware that I knew Dufoire by sight; and when the war was over and I was leaving Capetown for home, the other scamp, a Corsican named Lucien Prelot, sought me out to get news of him. He swore by all the saints in the calendar that if he could ever find Dufoire he would drive a knife between his ribs. He begged me on his knees to let him know if I ever met Dufoire again; and vowed, Corsican as he was, that he would go from one end of the world to the other in his quest for revenge.

Of course I would not have anything to do with such an affair; but he managed in some way to ferret out my address in England and wrote me two or three letters urging the same request. And then one day he turned up in London to tell me that he had made money on the Rand, that he was in Europe searching for Dufoire, and that he could and would pay me any sum I chose to ask if I would tell him where to find his enemy.

That was about a year before my father’s death; and every month had brought me a letter from him, in the hope that I could send news. These letters were addressed from various parts of Europe where he was pursuing his search, with the deadly intensity of his unslaked and unslakable thirst for revenge.

And while Prelot was hunting for a Frenchman of the name of Jean Dufoire, the scoundrel himself had been strutting it in the Portuguese capital as Francisco Sampayo, major of cavalry. He had purchased his position, of course, with the fortune he had acquired by robbery, bloodshed and treachery; and had found some means to use it to obtain the promise of Miralda’s hand in marriage.

That some underhand means had been employed to force her consent I was certain; as certain as that I could scare the brute out of the country with half a dozen words. But before I spoke them I felt that I must learn more of the facts.

“Good evening, Mr. Donnington,” The voice broke in upon my reverie, and I turned to find Dr. Barosa at my elbow.

“Ah, good evening, Dr. Barosa,” I replied, as we shook hands.

“You were looking very thoughtful, sir; I am afraid I disturbed you.”

“I have reason to be thoughtful, doctor. I am more than a little perplexed by the position in which I find myself.”

“I shall be delighted to be of any service, if I can. Would you care for a chat here, or may I do myself the pleasure of calling upon you at your rooms?”

“Both, by all means. I should like a word or two with you, and the sooner the better; but I shall also be glad to see you at my rooms at any time.”

He thanked me and led the way to a spot where we could talk privately.

“I’ll go straight to the point, doctor: that is our English way. I have had a conversation with Contesse Inglesia this evening, and I wish to disabuse your mind thoroughly of any thought that I am a spy.”

“My dear sir, I do not think it.”

“I don’t wish you only to think it, I want you to know. You’ll appreciate the difference. I am ready to give you any proofs you can suggest, to answer any questions you like to put, and to back every word I say with facts. I am tremendously in earnest about this. And when you have thoroughly convinced yourself, I wish you to convince any one and every one associated with you, who may be inclined to suspect me.”

“Your reasons, Mr. Donnington?”

“Must surely be obvious. Last night’s business showed me the length to which some of your more reckless friends are prepared to carry mistakes of the kind; and I desire to be able to walk the streets of the city without expecting to be shot or knifed at the next corner.”

“I do not doubt you, and certainly do not presume to ask for any facts; but if you would prefer to make any statement, I am of course ready to listen.”

I replied to that by giving him a fairly full account of myself, and then added: “Of course I am aware that my statement, unsupported by evidence, could easily be made up by any one who was here as a spy. I suggest, therefore, that you shall get evidence of my identity. The best and simplest thing I can suggest at the moment is that I give you the addresses of various firms who have photographed me from time to time, and that you send your agents to them to get photographs of Ralph Donnington which they have taken. You can then send some one to my place at Tapworth for the photographs to be identified; you can have them shown also to my bankers in London; and to any one of a dozen people who know all about me.”

“I accept your word, I assure you,” he said, with a wave of the hand.

“But that is just what I do not wish you to do. You must be in a position to say you know, and to table the evidence;” and with that I wrote down the names and addresses and insisted upon his taking them.

“As the matter is naturally pressing you will of course use the telegraph, and if money will expedite your inquiries I will very gladly pay any sum that is necessary. I am, fortunately for myself, a man of considerable means, and not likely to spare money to put an end to this intolerable suspicion.”

“You have invited me to question you. There is one point. You are a friend of M. Volheno?”

“That gentleman, as I have told you, was brought to our place, Tapworth Hall, by my sister’s husband, M. Stefan Madrillo, some years ago, and when I came over here about these concessions, Madrillo advised me to see him. Only in that degree is he a friend of mine.”

“These concessions have been spoken about, Mr. Donnington, with unusual freedom.”

“That is not my doing. M. Volheno gave a somewhat lurid account of them to the Marquis de Pinsara, as a man likely to be able to help in the matter; and the latter appears to have told all his acquaintances. I shall not be in the least surprised to find the matter in the papers in the morning. Of course it is very ridiculous and calculated to frustrate my object entirely. But it is not my doing, I assure you.”

“Yet M. Volheno might have an object?”

“You mean to use them to conceal some other purpose for my visit?”

“And you give me your word that you have no other purpose except to obtain these concessions?”

“Contesse Inglesia put much the same question, and I will answer it as I answered her. I pledge my word that I have no sort or kind of interest in the political affairs of your country otherwise than as they may be incidentally connected with these concessions.”

“Is that an entirely frank answer, Mr. Donnington?”

“Any suspicion underlying that remark I have already given you the means of dissipating. I declare to you, on my honour as an English gentleman, that I have none but absolutely private and personal reasons for coming to Lisbon.”

“You have discussed political matters with M. Volheno?”

“Certainly not in any detail. He told me the city was in a condition of unrest, and that there were all sorts of more or less dangerous combinations against the Government. But this was merely as a reason for the warning he gave me against being in the streets alone after dark.”

“You did not heed that warning?”

“No. I was disposed to smile at it. But I learnt my lesson last night, and shall profit by it in the future.”

Barosa sat a few moments thinking. “I will have these inquiries made, Mr. Donnington,” he said then; “but I have no doubt whatever of the result. I will make it my personal affair to see that you have no trouble. In point of fact we already have proof that you are what you say. Mademoiselle Dominguez and her mother met you in Paris last spring, and they of course know you to be Mr. Donnington.”

Why did he want to drag Miralda into the matter?

“I have intentionally kept her name out of our conversation, Dr. Barosa,” I answered with a smile, “and I still wish you to make your own investigations.”

“The Contesse Inglesia is disposed to think that your meeting with Mademoiselle Dominguez is connected with your presence here now.”

“The contesse is a very charming and delightful woman, doctor, and being a woman is likely to jump to conclusions.”

“You will understand, of course, that any such purpose would concern us. She is a friend of our cause, and betrothed to a man to whom we are under great obligations, Major Sampayo.”

“I will ask you, if you please, not to give me any information about either your friends or your objects. For the rest, I shall be glad to know when you have satisfied yourself about me; and afterwards, if you wish, to see you at any time as a friend. But no politics, mind.”

He took this as a hint that the subject should be dropped, and he switched off to a topic I was always ready to talk about, yachting and yachts in general, and my own boat in particular. He was a keen yachtsman, and when I suggested that he should find time to have a run on the Stella, he accepted the invitation quite eagerly.

As a matter of fact, I rather liked him. He had treated me quite candidly; and I was convinced he was satisfied that, whatever might be my real object in coming to the city, it had no connexion with the political situation. His politics were no concern of mine. I was absolutely indifferent whether the King of Portugal was Dom Carlos or Dom Miguel; and it was no part of my duty to tell Volheno or any one else that this keen-eyed smooth-voiced, doctor, who was accepted as a loyalist in this most loyalist of gatherings, was in reality a secret agent of the Pretender endeavouring to exploit this National League in the interests of his master.

The only point where the thing threatened to affect me was in regard to Sampayo. Barosa had admitted that they were under great obligations to him, and I read this to mean that some of old Oom Paul’s money was finding its way into the coffers of the cause.

If, in return for the money, Sampayo had stipulated for the support of Barosa and the rest in regard to Miralda, there might be trouble. But I was so confident of being able to bring that scoundrel to his knees that I could view even such an alliance without concern.

What I had to do first was to get at Miralda’s own feelings and the reasons behind her engagement, and for that I must do my best to secure her mother as an ally.

The viscontesse greeted me with a smile and a shake of the head. “You’ve neglected me shamefully, Mr. Donnington. Here’s nearly the whole evening gone and we’ve scarcely had a word together.”

“I hope we shall have many opportunities. I assure you I have not had a minute to myself the whole evening, and after all a place like this is not the best in the world for a real friendly talk.”

“When can you spare time to come and see us?”

“May I come?”

“May you come, indeed? Why of course you not only may, but must. Now when?”

“Shall you be at home to-morrow?”

“I’m always at home. Come in the afternoon. I’ve such a lot to tell you. I suppose you’ve heard about Miralda and Major Sampayo. I was just going to tell you about it this evening when that wretched old marquis carried you away.”

“You mean your daughter’s engagement? Yes. She herself told me of it.”

“Do you think him a handsome man? They call him one of the handsomest men in the army. And he’s very rich, too. There were heaps of women setting their caps at him.”

“A man who is both rich and handsome is generally labelled desirable. At least in London and presumably in Lisbon also.”

“You will find that out before you have been here long. Do you think our girls pretty?”

“Some of them are much more than pretty,” I agreed.

“Would you like an introduction to any of them? I’ll do it for you in a moment.”

“I am too pleased to be where I am to wish anything of the kind.”

“Ah, you always knew how to say nice things, Mr. Donnington. I often think of that time in Paris, and sometimes I—do you know what I used to think?”

“If I was the subject of your thoughts I trust they were pleasant ones.”

“You know an old woman—I call myself old, but I’m offended in an instant if any one else does—an old woman, especially the mother of a pretty girl—you think Miralda pretty, don’t you?”

“By far the prettiest in the rooms to-night.”

“Well, a mother gets into the way of thinking that when a young man pays her attention, it’s vicarious, you know. A woman’s never too old to relish attentions, of course, but I suppose you know that. But in Paris I had my suspicions.”

“Of whom, viscontesse?”

“Of you, Mr. Donnington. Perhaps I should say they were rather hopes than suspicions. You were a great favourite of mine, I’ll admit that. At the same time, I wasn’t quite sure that some of the nice things you said and did were solely on my account. But that’s all over now, of course—over and done with;” and she smiled and fanned herself slowly, looking at me askance through half-closed lids, as if to watch the effect of her words.

Was she warning or reproaching me? Or both? What answer did she expect? “I trust nothing has occurred in the interval to cause me to forfeit your good opinion, madame.”

The fan stopped a moment, as if she detected the double meaning of my words. “Four months is a long time to take to travel a thousand miles or so. I had hoped to see you in Lisbon.”

“I think you know that I was called from Paris suddenly by my father’s illness. He lay for many weeks between life and death, and it was absolutely impossible for me to leave him even for a day. I have come here at the first possible moment.”

The fan stopped again, abruptly this time, and she lowered it slowly until it rested upon her lap; her look was very serious and her eyes full of concern.

“It is only these—these concessions which have brought you here now, Mr. Donnington?” she replied after a pause, her tone and look suggesting some degree of nervous doubt of what my reply would be.

I returned her look and framed my answer carefully. “I have been very careful to let every one know that—every one else.”

She bit her lips and frowned, the concern in her eyes deepened, and with a half-suppressed sigh she turned away and began to fan herself slowly again. I think she understood my meaning, but before she could reply Miralda came up on Major Sampayo’s arm. As she saw them approaching, the viscontesse started and glanced quickly and nervously at me with a look I could not read.

I rose to give my seat to Miralda, and her mother sent Sampayo to find the visconte as she wished to go home. Then she burst into one of her garrulous speeches and did not cease speaking until Sampayo returned with the visconte, when she hurried both husband and Miralda away on the plea of an overpowering headache. And Sampayo went with them.

I was both perplexed and excited as the result of that short conversation. It was possible to read so much both in her words and in her manner; and I was puzzling over her real meaning when Sampayo re-entered the room, glanced round hurriedly, and then came straight across to me.

By the heavy frown in which his brows were drawn together, his air of decision, and the expression of his eyes when he saw me, I guessed that he had at last succeeded in remembering me and had decided to lose no time in finding out what I knew about him.

I had been watching him without looking up, and when I did so, his look changed and he forced a smile: a very poor effort to appear at ease.

“You know I was puzzling where we could have met, Mr. Donnington. I have settled it at last. It was in South Africa, and I wish to have a word or two with you.”

CHAPTER VII
SAMPAYO IS UNEASY

ALTHOUGH Sampayo had obviously made up his mind to ascertain at once whether I knew anything about those black doings of his in South Africa, I had not the slightest intention of satisfying him.

There were many things I had to clear up before I dealt with him; and, as matters stood, it suited me much better that Miralda should be betrothed to him than to any one else.

Sampayo was a big brute, much bigger than I, and had once possessed great strength; but during his years of comfort and wealth, fat had taken the place of a good deal of his muscle. He had, however, retained the air of bullying masterfulness and he now tried to bully me.

“You have not been frank with me, Mr. Donnington,” he said as he sat down. “I don’t suppose you wished purposely to mislead me, but you did so in fact. You said that after the relief of Mafeking you did not see any more of the war.”

“No, no, pardon me. I said I was sent down country.”

“Well, that’s much the same thing, sir; whereas, from what you have told Mademoiselle Dominguez it is clear that you went up country again and were there at the end of things. You meant me to infer the opposite, and I must ask you for your reasons.”

At his hectoring tone I turned and looked him full in the eyes, and then turned away again with a shrug of the shoulders, giving him no other reply.

“You heard me, Mr. Donnington.”

I took out my watch, glanced at the time, and replaced it in my pocket very deliberately, and yawned.

“I have asked you a question, sir, and I mean to have an answer.”

I paused and looked at him again more deliberately than before. “Is it possible that you are addressing me?”

“Certainly I am addressing you,” he said with an angry twist of the head.

“Then be good enough to drop that barrack-yard tone, or say at once that you wish to force a quarrel upon me.”

I knew he was an arrant coward; and this was not at all to his liking. After a slight pause he said in a very different manner: “I may have spoken abruptly, but I think I am entitled to an explanation.”

“Of what?” I rapped out very sharply.

“Whether you intentionally misled me as to your movements in South Africa?”

“What on earth can it matter to you or any one else except myself where I went and where I did not go in South Africa?”

“Do you say you did not meet me out there?”

“Why should I say whether I did or did not? And why should you be so anxious about it?”

“I am not anxious about it at all. No more so than yourself. But if you did meet me and now deny it, I have a right to ask your reasons.”

“I met hundreds of men, of course—thousands indeed—and equally of course you may have been one of them.”

“That is not meant as an evasion, I hope,” he exclaimed, losing his temper again.

“Major Sampayo!” I cried indignantly.

He gave a twirl to his moustaches and it looked as if he were going to quarrel in earnest. But he thought better of it. “I meant no offence, Mr. Donnington,” he muttered.

“Then I will take none.”

“But you will remember your remark that you never forget a face.”

“I did not mean that I could identify at sight every man I met in the campaign both on our side and among the Boers. Of course there would have to be something in the circumstances of the meeting which would serve as a connecting link.”

“And you do not remember me then?” he persisted.

It was awkward to answer this without a direct lie, so I turned and had another steady look at him for perhaps half a minute and then shook my head. “Can you suggest anything likely to recall your features to me?”

His eyes shifted uneasily under my scrutiny, and he vented a little sigh of relief as he replied: “Of course I cannot.”

“We both appear to be in the same difficulty, then. Now that I look fixedly at your features, there is something about them that I seem to know; but very likely it is only due to the fact that I have seen you two or three times to-night. Sampayo. Sampayo,” I repeated, as if trying to recall the name, and then shook my head again as if giving the matter up. “I suppose we must take it that we have not met,” I said.

“I can understand that,” I said with a smile.

“You will excuse my curiosity, I trust, Mr. Donnington. It may have seemed somewhat exaggerated to you perhaps, but I am always anxious to meet any one who was out there when I was.”

“I can understand that,” I said, with a smile.

All the former uneasy suspicion leapt to life again in his eyes. “Why?” he asked, quickly and eagerly.

“It is just the same with me,” I answered lightly. “It suggests a sort of comradeship, you know, chatting over the old experiences.”

“Certainly, certainly,” he agreed.

“I shall be glad to have an opportunity of exchanging experiences with you some day. Only we mustn’t begin, as we did just now, by firing broadsides at one another.”

“No, no, of course not. I am quite ashamed of my heat.”

“That’s all right, major. On which side were you in the war? Of course we’ve all buried the hatchet long ago.”

“I was not a combatant, Mr. Donnington. I was making money and was very successful, I am glad to say.” As I knew how he had made it, his boastful self-complacent tone was amusing. “I rejoined the army here on my return. And now there is another topic on which I should like to say just a word or two. You met Mademoiselle Dominguez last spring in Paris, I believe.”

“Yes. She was there with her mother.”

“You are aware that she has done me the honour to promise to be my wife?”

“Oh yes. She herself told me. But——”

He interrupted with a wave of the hand. “One moment. It has been suggested to me to-night that your present visit is in some respects a result of that meeting?”

I smiled. “Considering that I have been only two days in the city there appears to be a tremendous amount of interest in my movements and actions.”

“You have proposed that we should see something of each other in a friendly way, Mr. Donnington, and I should be glad of your assurance that there is no truth in the suggestion?”

“Really, really!” I protested laughing again.

“Pardon my frankness, but I wish to know where we stand.”

“You are not serious, of course?”

“Indeed I am. And I must press the point.”

“Well, really, I can’t take such a thing seriously at all, Major Sampayo. You are naturally at liberty to entertain any ideas you wish as to my presence in Lisbon. But I am greatly astonished that you should have even broached such a subject.”

“I have a right to put the question to you, I think.”

“Well, I disagree with you, and absolutely decline to discuss it. You must have seen very little of the English in South Africa if your experiences have led you to believe that it is our custom to exchange confidences with a stranger. Possibly after you and I have had our proposed chat over our mutual experiences out there and get to know one another better, we may resume the subject. But not until then, if you please. And now, I must bid you good-night.”

He looked very angry and malicious; but I did not care for that. I was rather pleased than otherwise that Miralda should have spoken of me to him in such a way as to rouse his jealousy.

Sleep was almost out of the question for me that night. I was in a positive fever of unrest.

Did Miralda care for me? If so, why had she promised to marry Sampayo?

Over and over again I recalled every word that had passed between us that evening, and every glance she had given me. The first look at the moment of meeting had been one of surprise, but I had read no other feeling into it.

She had, however, been genuinely indignant when she heard that only business had brought me. And she had every right. I had carried matters far enough in Paris to warrant her in believing I cared for her. I had done everything I could to make my feelings plain. Then I had gone without a word, had remained away four months, and had now arrived “on business.” It was only human nature that she should resent such treatment.

Unexplained, my conduct was that of a cad and a coxcomb. She might well believe that in Paris I had spoken without meaning, had been amusing myself with a flirtation, and had forgotten her as soon as I had shaken the dust of the city off my feet. To follow to Lisbon on such an errand as the visconte had described and I had acquiesced in, was nothing short of a brutal insult to her.

But while her resentment was white-hot, I had made her see the truth. Her eyes had told me that she understood. And the explanation had shifted the axis of all her thoughts. I had come solely on her account, hurrying to her at the first moment I was at liberty to speak the words which had been impossible in Paris, and—she had pledged herself to another man.

If she cared for me—always that if—she would find herself playing the part she believed I had played. The charge of inconstancy was transferred from my shoulders to hers. And she had to face the task of telling me the truth. Her sudden agitation was intelligible enough. And she had undoubtedly been very deeply moved. That thought was as balm in Gilead to me.

I thought long and carefully over her manner at that point. She had thrown off her agitation with an effort and passed at once to the opposite extreme of indifference; she had plunged into a discussion of conventional trivialities of no interest to either of us, and had deftly fended off my attempts to refer to our former relations until she herself had mentioned them in a way that implied they were past and buried. And she had followed this with the news of the engagement.

The object might have been to spare us both from embarrassment. But I read more in it. That she should try to spare me pain was as natural as is the light when the sun shines. But she had not spared me. She would know that to refer to it in the light tone she had used would add to the shock; and there had not been a word of preparation and not one of regret.

Why?

I thought I could see the reason. She wished me to believe her heartless and unfeeling. She had regretted her involuntary agitation on learning the truth, lest I should believe she really cared. She had then acted designedly and with the set purpose of making me believe she had entirely forgotten the Paris episodes, could speak of them with complete indifference, and was happy in her engagement.

Again, why?

And again I thought I could see her reason. She felt there were circumstances behind her betrothal to Sampayo which shut out the possibility of its being broken and she wished to drive home that conviction upon me. She could not tell me what the facts and influences were which had decided her; so she deliberately blackened herself in my eyes, posing as a jilt who had first encouraged me to hope and had then thrown me over with a laugh and a careless toss of the head.

But I knew her too well to accept any such self-caricature as a true portrait, even without the help of all I had heard from Inez, from Barosa, and from the viscontesse.

Was it too late now to win? It might be; but it certainly was not too late to make a big effort. And such an effort I would make at once. If she had compromised herself in this wretched conspiracy business so far as to be under the thumb of Barosa and his associates, her very safety demanded that I should strive with might and main to break the power they held over her and set her free from it.

But my fear was that some other compelling influence was at work; and I looked to find it in her home. It was not the viscontesse, I was certain of her; but I knew very little yet of the visconte and nothing at all of the brother, Vasco, except that he was infatuated with Inez and was being properly fooled by her. I made my promised visit to the viscontesse on the following afternoon hoping to be able to resume the thread of the conversation at the reception. But no opportunity offered. She had some friends and I could not get a word with her alone; and Miralda did not come in until just as I was leaving.

But I learnt something from the conversation. It concerned mainly the personal side of the political situation. Every one had a grievance against M. Franco, the Dictator. In his zeal for economy he had swept away a host of sinecure positions about the Court; and had thus made enemies not only of every one who had been paid for doing nothing and their friends and relatives, but also of all who had been looking forward to such payments.

The visconte himself had held one of the best of these sinecures. He had been the royal cork-drawer or napkin ring-holder-in-chief, or something equally important, and the loss of the salary had been hotly resented.

It sounded intensely ridiculous; but the viscontesse herself was full of indignation; and her friends all agreed and joined in abusing the Government with a violence which, although entirely laughable, proved how widespread was the discontent among those who had been staunch in their loyalty.

It was on this feeling among the higher classes that Barosa was working on behalf of the Pretender, Dom Miguel.

Just as I was leaving, the viscontesse found a moment to tell me she wished to have had more opportunity of talking to me, so I promptly asked her to come to luncheon on the Stella the next day, and she was hesitating when Miralda came in. We were standing near the door and she joined us. She greeted me with just the same air of detached friendliness she had shown on the previous evening; but when her mother spoke of my invitation, she surprised me.

“It will be delightful, and I should like it above all things—that is if the invitation is to include me, Mr. Donnington?”

“Why, of course.”

“And can we have a little run out to sea? I love the sea you know.”

“It shall be exactly as you wish,” I replied, and having arranged that the launch was to be ready for them at noon, I went off delighted at the prospect of having Miralda and her mother to myself, for some hours.

CHAPTER VIII
MIRALDA’S MASK

THE next morning was gloriously fine, and I was on the Stella in good time to see that all was in readiness. Old Bolton, my skipper, muttered something about the wind shifting and that we should probably have a change in the weather, but for once I didn’t believe him, and just before noon I jumped into the launch and went off in high spirits to fetch Miralda and her mother.

Then came a decidedly disagreeable surprise.

As I stepped on to the quay, Inez was waiting for me, her servant standing by with wraps. With one of her most radiant smiles she gave me her hand and reminded me that I had invited her to see the yacht. “So when I heard Miralda and the viscontesse were going to-day, I thought this would be just a chance of chances.”

“Of course, delighted,” I replied very cordially. I couldn’t very well tell her she wasn’t wanted; so I buttoned up my chagrin and made the best of it. “We’re going to have a little run out to sea.”

“You’re quite sure I shall not upset your plans?” she asked, knowing quite well that that was precisely what she was doing.

“My dear lady, what plans do you think I have that could be spoilt? There’s heaps of room on the Stella for us all.”

“I mean with regard to Miralda, Mr. Donnington,” she said, dropping her light tone and fixing those queer eyes of hers on me.

“I hope to give both the viscontesse and her daughter a pleasant day’s outing. You don’t consider that a very deadly plan, I hope.”

“You may remember my warning?”

“I try to make it a rule to remember only the pleasant things which are said to me by beautiful ladies, contesse.”

“You mean you refuse to be warned?”

“Against what?”

“Ah, you pretend you do not know,” she retorted impatiently.

“I don’t think you quite grasp the position. I am in Lisbon on business which will detain me some little time. Meanwhile, I am fortunate in having met some old friends and made some new ones, and I am delighted to have an opportunity of welcoming them on my yacht. That is how matters stand. And any warning against doing that, however well meant and by whomsoever given, is really as little needed as if you or I were to go to the Stella’s captain and warn him against hidden reefs out there on the open sea.”

“It is against a hidden reef in an apparently open sea that I am warning you.”

“Well, Captain Bolton is a splendid seaman and knows his charts, but a man of very few words, and he would—just smile.”

“You may smile if you will; but do you think I should have forced myself upon you in this way without reason?”

“The man is fortunate indeed upon whom such pleasure is thus thrust.”

“You cover your meaning with a jest—but I am too much in earnest. I wish to be your friend. You must not seek to interfere with Miralda’s marriage.”

“Your pardon, but we are really getting too personal. Let me suggest that we wait to discuss that lady until she is present. Ah, here they are,” I exclaimed, catching sight of them. And then I had a little thrust at Inez. “And you are fortunate, too. Lieutenant de Linto is with them.”

I knew how he must bore her; and she did not succeed in disguising her chagrin. She had admitted that she had come as a sort of watchdog; and the punishment fitted the crime so aptly that I grinned. Nor was that to be her only punishment, as matters turned out. The skipper proved a true weather prophet, and Inez was a desperately bad sailor.

She played her watchdog part cleverly; but it was entirely superfluous. All the delightful anticipations I had indulged in were killed by Miralda herself, whose conduct perplexed me far more than on the previous night.

Almost from the moment her dainty foot touched the Stella’s deck, she acted in a manner I could not have deemed possible. She was very bright and laughed and talked as if there were no such thing in the world as care and trouble. She treated me as if I were a mere acquaintance whom she was just pleased to meet again. Nothing more.

But it was not that which so pained me. She spoke freely of her visit to Paris, referring now to her mother and again to me in regard to little episodes of the time there, and doing it all without a suggestion of restraint. Then in a hard tone and with jarring half-boastful laughter, she began to jest about her conquests. She named several men, who, as I knew, had admired her; mimicked their ways, ridiculed their attentions, and freely admitted that she had flirted with them, because “one must amuse oneself.”

If any man had told me that she was capable of such conduct I think I should have knocked him down. But I heard it all myself. I could scarcely believe my own eyes and ears. The last belief in the back of my mind was that she could be the callous, heartless coquette she was showing herself, luring men to her by her beauty only to laugh at them for believing in her, and descending to the depths of talking about it to others in a vein of self-glorification.

The luncheon gong interrupted but did not check her, and as I sat listening in silence she appealed to me more than once to confirm some little ridiculous trait of some one or other of the men she had “scalped.”

Inez saw and rejoiced at my discomfiture, but retribution was at hand for her. When we sat down to luncheon the sea was as smooth as the table-cloth, but when we reached the deck again the weather had changed and a heavy bank of clouds to the south threatened a capful of wind. And even this served to show Miralda in a new light.

She heard me tell the skipper to return. “Is it going to be rough? I hope so. I love a rough sea. Don’t go back yet.”

Inez and Vasco protested vigorously.

Miralda looked at them both and shrugged her shoulders, and then turned to me. “I don’t see why we should spoil our pleasure for them, do you?” she asked with a laugh that was half a sneer.

“I am sorry to cut your pleasure short, but I think we had better return,” I replied.

“People look so silly when they are ill;” and with an unpleasant laugh she crossed to the side.

When the wind came and the Stella began to roll, Inez hurried away, followed directly by Vasco.

The viscontesse had been very quiet all the time, and although the motion of the yacht did not appear to upset her, she said she would rather lie down and asked Miralda to go with her.

“Don’t be unreasonable, mother,” was the reply. “I am enjoying every moment of it. You don’t want to shut me up in a stuffy cabin. But take my hat with you, and bring me a wrap of some sort, and my cloak.”

The unfeeling words and the tone in which they were uttered, stung me like the knots of a whip lash. I gave my arm to the viscontesse and took her below and installed her comfortably on a sofa in the saloon.

“Miralda loves a rough sea, Mr. Donnington,” she said, as she pointed to the wraps for me to take on deck. “Don’t stay with me; I am going to take an old woman’s privilege and have a nap.”

I took the things in silence and returned to Miralda.

She stood by the bulwarks her eyes intent on the troubled waters; a stray lock or two of her hair had been freed by the breeze, and her face was radiant with delight. She revelled in the scene. A veritable incarnation of vigorous youth and bewitching beauty.

She turned as I reached her side. “Isn’t it glorious, Mr. Donnington? I suppose I may stay on deck? I shan’t be in the way?”

“The whole yacht is yours to be where you will, of course,” I replied.

“You always say such pleasant things. I remember that knack of yours. Help me on with this cloak,” she added with a coquettish glance. “There, how do I look?” she asked when she had adjusted the wrap, gracefully, as all her acts were. “And now you must find me a corner where I shan’t be quite blown away,” she commanded.

I found her a corner and installed her.

“We shall want two chairs, of course, and then we can have a long chat like we used to in Paris.”

I had had quite enough of Paris already, if she meant to continue to talk in her former strain. But I fetched another chair and sat down.

Then she laughed suddenly and almost boisterously. “Do you know I really believe my mother wanted me to go and stop with her? She can be a terrible nuisance. Imagine me pinned up there. Sympathize with me.”

“The viscontesse told me she hoped to get to sleep,” I replied.

“Then wasn’t it selfish of her? As if I was going to miss this beautiful sea just because she feels bad and has a headache. Absolutely preposterous, wasn’t it?” and she laughed again.

I looked round at her and made no reply.

She returned the look as if surprised at my silence. Then her eyes lighted and her lips parted. “Oh, I remember now, of course. It was you who always put on that mournful look—funereally gloomy—when I used to do things which shocked your English propriety. I was thinking it was that Graf von Holstein—that long-faced German who would insist upon giving me flowers I did not want and then expected me to dance with him in return.”

I had given her flowers and asked her to dance when she wore them.

“Very unreasonable, mademoiselle,” I said after a pause.

“Oh, men are always like that. They all seem to think that because a girl amuses herself and dances once or twice with them, they have made a conquest.”

“A man is of course unreasonable to believe in a woman.”

“What a delightfully cynical platitude. Isn’t the sea getting up quickly? Poor mother! I am afraid you won’t tempt her on the yacht again.” Again she laughed, and added: “And that’s a nuisance, for I love the sea.”

I turned unexpectedly and caught a look in her eyes as they were bent on me, which she had not meant me to see. And then I thought I understood.

“I thought that was it,” I said quietly. I myself could smile now.

“What was what, Mr. Donnington?” she asked as a sort of challenge; adding, with an attempt to resume her former expression of reckless frivolity: “that sounds like a conundrum, doesn’t it? And they are such stupid things.”

“I believe I have the answer to the bigger conundrum.”

“There’s the grave Englishman again,” she jested, with a toss of the head.

“Yes. ‘Miralda’s Englishman,’” I answered, holding her eyes with mine and speaking slowly and deliberately.

It was great daring, but I felt that I must strip away this mask of heartless raillery which galled and pained me beyond endurance. I would know the truth at any cost. If this coquette of flouts and jibes who laughed at men with one breath and made light of even her mother’s sufferings with the next, was the real woman whom I had set in the inmost shrine of my heart, the sooner I was away the better.

The mask fell, but not at once.

She met my gaze steadily, almost defiantly, and the blood rushed to her face as she read my look and strove to force a laugh and utter a jest in reply. But the words would not come.

“You understand me,” I said, in the same deliberate tone. “You are either the most heartless jilt who ever trifled with the best feelings of men in order to be able to boast of your triumphs afterwards, or you are deliberately playing the part for some purpose of your own. God forbid that I should accept your self-accusation.”

“I will go——” she began and half rose. But the reaction came then. The crimson faded from her face, leaving it white and strained. She hid it behind her hands as she sank back in the chair, her head lowered, trembling in agitation.

I was answered and without a word I rose and left her that she might be alone while she recovered her self-command.

With a rare feeling of exultation I renewed all that had passed in the light of my new knowledge. She had set herself purposely to disgust me with the gibbering caricature she had drawn of herself. And my heart thrilled and my blood raced through my veins as I saw that my reading of her conduct on the evening of the reception had been right.

Many minutes passed as I paced the deck deciding the course I would take, and not until I had settled it did I return to her.

She had regained her self-possession, but as I sat down she looked at me questioningly and nervously as if fearing how I should refer to the secret I had surprised. But there was not a vestige of the mask left. She was just herself.

“The wind is dropping again already,” I said in a casual tone.

Her eyes thanked me, but she made no reply and sank back in her chair with an air of relief. I uttered a few commonplaces about the weather and the yacht, worked round to the subject of Lisbon and then to that of my supposed purpose in the city. For once the concessions were of use, as they enabled me to describe my own acts and intentions in regard to her as if I were referring to the concessions.

“Of course I shall find difficulties—indeed the whole position is entirely different from my anticipations. I ought to have been here earlier. But it was impossible. After my father’s stroke of paralysis which took me at a moment’s notice from Paris, he lay between life and death for three months; and although I was as anxious then as now about these concessions and should have come at once to Lisbon, I could not leave him for any purpose, however vital and important to me.”

“No, of course not,” she murmured, not raising her eyes from the deck.

“But now that I am here, of course I shall not abandon my efforts to obtain them until they are actually in the possession of some one else. I have heard that they are promised, but I shall not regard that as an actual barrier.”

She moved slightly and answered in a voice firm but low: “From what I have heard you will only be wasting time and effort, Mr. Donnington. You will not be allowed to—to obtain them.”

“You think the unsettled condition of political matters here, the cabals and intrigues and so on, will interfere with me?”

“I am sure of it,” she said very deliberately.

“You mean there are obstacles of which I know nothing. As for those I do know, I care nothing for them.”

“It depends upon what you do know.” Every word was uttered in a low tense monotone, full charged with suppressed feeling.

“I know, as I say, that they are promised to some one else, but that doesn’t count with me. I know too that they are involved in the secret plans of some of those whose political objects are opposed to the professed objects of some leaders of the League of Portugal. But that also I will not regard as an insuperable barrier.”

“Is that all you know?”

“Yes.”

“It has not occurred to you that private influences may be at work which those who might wish to help you are powerless to resist, and which make your quest absolutely unattainable and impossible?”

“I admit I have had fears of that, but I shall not believe it impossible until I know what those influences are.”

“I have told you that I know it to be impossible, Mr. Donnington.”

“Will you tell me more—what these private influences are?”

“I cannot without speaking of things that must be secret; without revealing a story of shame and crime.”

“Why should I sacrifice an object which is more to me than any I have ever desired because another person has done wrong?”

“You must not even seek to discover it.”

“On the contrary, I will know it within the next few hours.”

“If you knew it, you would recognize the truth of what I have said. But if you will take advice, you will use those next few hours to be many leagues on your way to England.”

“I will go when I said—when the concessions are actually in the possession of those who seek them. Not one hour, not one minute before.”

She was silent for a while and then for the first time since I had rejoined her she sat forward and looked at me. “Once in those days when we met in Paris, you said you would do anything I asked you? Does that promise hold good now?”

“Yes.”

“Then I wish you to leave Lisbon at once.”

I shook my head. “No, anything but that.”

“I was afraid,” she murmured, and leant back in her seat, with a sigh of despair; and we both remained silent.

Some time later the skipper’s voice roused me. “We shall drop anchor in about quarter of an hour, Mr. Donnington,” he said as he passed.

Miralda rose with a sigh, started to leave me and then returned.

“There is one thing you spoke of which I must make clear. I am no revolutionary, as you hinted, but I am not free. I have been compromised against my will and I cannot break the bonds. But don’t think me a rebel, because you see me associated with those who are.”

And without waiting for any reply, she turned and hurried away.

When the anchor was dropped and the launch waiting to take us all on shore, she came up with the viscontesse and was again wearing a mask. But a different one now. She laughed and chatted brightly, but without the hardness or bitterness of the earlier time.

I was once more the stranger. I gathered that the mask was now worn to mislead Inez, for when we shook hands, although her words of thanks were just those of common courtesy, there was an expression in the eyes and a simultaneous pressure of the fingers eloquent of the altered relations between us.

Wishing to be entirely alone I returned to the Stella and remained there thinking and speculating and planning.

I did not reach my rooms until late and found a letter awaiting me which made me rub my eyes in astonishment.

It was from Volheno, thanking me for some information I had given him and saying that it had been acted upon the previous night with excellent results. “It will of course be considered by the Government when we come to decide the matter of the Beira concessions; and I need scarcely say that if you can give us any more information of the same kind, you will render the Government a great service.”

I had given no information and would see him in the morning and explain. The man was mad; and I tossed the letter down and went off to bed.

I must have slept heavily after the day in the fresh air, for I was roused by some one shaking me roughly.

I opened my eyes to find the lights switched up and the police in my room. Two of them were searching the room and a third stood over me and ordered me sternly to get up and dress and be quick about it.

“What does it mean?” I asked, blinking like an owl in the sudden light.

“You are arrested. That’s what it means. Dress and come with us, unless you want to go as you are;” and the fellow gave point to his words by stripping off the bedclothes.

A curious sequel, this, to Volheno’s letter.

CHAPTER IX
THE INTERROGATION

DIGNITY in a nightshirt is impossible; so I rolled off the bed and dressed myself quickly.

Why I should be arrested I could not imagine, unless it was in some way the outcome of that row in the streets. Even if that were so, the thing could not be serious. I had been mistaken for one of the mob and nearly clubbed by a policeman; but it was scarcely likely I should be punished because he had missed his aim. Probably some fool or other had blundered, and the whole thing was just a mistake.

I was disposed to smile at it, therefore. I might lose half a night’s sleep; but that was no great matter; and as a recompense I should have an experience at first hand of police methods under a dictator.

“What am I supposed to have done?” I asked the man who had awakened me.

“Wait and see.” He jerked the words out with scowling gruffness.

“In England when a man is arrested like this it’s usual to tell him the reason.”

“This isn’t England.”

“There’s no need to make the affair more unpleasant than necessary by talking in that tone. The whole thing’s a mistake; but I don’t blame you. Why growl at me, therefore?”

“Orders.”

“Well, who ordered this?”

“Hurry.” And he accompanied the word with an emphatic gesture.

“Thank you,” I said with a grin; and as it was evident I should not get anything out of him, I finished dressing in silence. In the meanwhile the two men finished their search of the drawers and wardrobe and my luggage; and we went to my sitting-room.

This had also been ransacked; and the work must have been done before they roused me. “Your men certainly understand their work,” I said; for the search had been very thorough; “but you might have put some of the things back in their places. If you’ll give me a couple of minutes, I’ll do it myself, however.”

“No.” Short, sharp, and peremptory this, from the fellow who had spoken before.

“Then wake my servant—his room is through the kitchen at the end of the hall and up a short flight of stairs.”

“No.” Same tone from the same speaker.

“All right. Then I’ll leave a line here for him to let him know what has happened.”

“No.”

“But he’ll think I’ve gone mad, or bolted, or——”

“Come.” He was quite a master of monosyllabic dialogue.

“I’ll be hanged if I will,” I flung back at him angrily.

But as he pulled out a revolver and made me understand—without even a monosyllable this time—that I should be shot if I didn’t, I decided not to be obstinate.

As we left the door of the house a vehicle drove up and I was bundled into it, none too gently.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Silence.” The word was so fiercely uttered that I saw no use in arguing the point. I sat still therefore wondering to which prison we were going and what steps I should be allowed to take to get the matter explained. The simplest course would be to send a line to Volheno; but the arrest was really an outrage, and in the interests of other Englishmen in the city, a row ought to be made about it by the British authorities.

I was hesitating to which of the two quarters I would send, when the carriage stopped before a large private house, the door of which was instantly opened and I was hurried inside. Obviously I was expected.

The three men took me up a broad flight of stairs and halted on the landing. The man of monosyllables went into a room at the back of the house, taking with him some papers which I concluded he had brought from my rooms; and after perhaps a couple of minutes he reopened the door and signed to us to enter.

Seated at a large official-looking table was a man in evening dress reading the letter from Volheno, the receipt of which had so puzzled me on my return from the Stella. To my intense surprise he rose and offered me his hand.

“I am sorry to have had to disturb you, Mr. Donnington, and am extremely obliged to you for having come so promptly,” he said with a courteous smile and an appearance of great cordiality.

This was too much for my gravity. I looked at him in bewilderment, and then laughed. “As a matter of fact your men didn’t give me any alternative.”

“I do not understand,” he replied glancing from me to the police, who looked rather sheepish.

“Well, I was arrested. These men got into my rooms—I don’t know how—hauled me out of bed, would tell me nothing, except that I was under arrest; and dragged me here. That’s why I came so promptly,” I said drily.

“What does this mean, you?” he thundered at the police, his eyes flaming his anger.

“I was only ordered to bring him here, and I brought him,” answered the man of few words, in a hang-dog, surly tone.

“By Heaven, it is infamous. Do you mean to tell me that you never delivered M. Volheno’s letter to this gentleman?”

“I had no letter.”

“You blockhead, you fool, you thing of wood, get out of the room. You’ll hear of this again, all of you. A set of clumsy mules without the brains of an idiot amongst you;” and he stormed away at them furiously.

I chuckled at their discomfiture while admiring at the same time the excellent variety of abusive epithet possessed by their angry superior.

“These blunders are the curse and despair of public men,” he exclaimed as he slammed the door after them and returned to his seat. “Of course the whole thing is an egregious blunder, Mr. Donnington, and I tender you at once a most profound apology.”

I considered it judicious to mount the high horse. “It is a very disgraceful affair, sir, and naturally I shall report the matter to the representatives of my country here and demand satisfaction.”

“Oh, I hope you will not find it necessary to do that,” he replied in a tone of great concern. “I would not have had it occur for any consideration in the world.”

“A man in my position is not likely to submit tamely to such an infamous outrage; and I cannot see my way to have such a thing hushed up,” I declared with a very grandiose air. “It might have occurred to any countryman of mine whose lack of influence might render him unable to protect himself.”

“Let us talk it over;” he urged; and we did at some length until I allowed myself to be mollified by his apologies, and agreed not to take any step without first seeing Volheno.

“And now perhaps you will have the goodness to explain why I was asked so courteously”—I dwelt on the phrase and he winced—“to come here at this time of night.”

“It was really M. Volheno’s suggestion, Mr. Donnington. You see I am in evening dress and I was fetched home hurriedly from a social gathering as the result of some discoveries the police have made. I may explain I am the magistrate—d’Olliveira is my name: you may perhaps have heard it.”

“I have not. I never discuss public matters here,” I said.

“Well, as I was saying, some important discoveries have been made and a number of arrests——”

“Of the same nature as mine?” I interjected.

“Oh, please,” he replied with a deprecatory smile and wave of the hand. “A number of genuine arrests have been made and I am going to interrogate the prisoners. M. Volheno thinks it very probable that you can identify——”

“Do what?” I exclaimed.

“We believe that they are some of the men who frequented the revolutionary headquarters in the Rua Catania about which you gave him information.”

“Wait a moment. I never gave M. Volheno any information of any sort whatever, sir.”

He gave me a very shrewd glance and his eyes were hard and piercing. “Surely—I don’t understand, then.”

“I am beginning to, I think. I had a letter from him to-night—I think your clever police brought it away with them—in which he thanked me for having done something of the sort. But he is under a complete delusion. I am going to see him in the morning and tell him so.”

“Is this the letter?” I nodded as he held it up. “With your permission I’ll read it again.”

“I don’t care what you do with it,” I said.

“It is certainly very strange,” he muttered to himself when he finished. “He clearly has had a letter from you and this is the reply to it.”

“Nothing of the sort is clear, sir, and I’ll beg you to be so good as not to imply that I should lie about it either to you or to him,” I rapped out hotly. “I have had as much from your people as I can stand for one night. I tell you point-blank that I did not write any letter either to M. Volheno or any one else giving any such information as he and you appear to think; nor did I tell any one anything of the sort. I declare that on my word of honour.”

His look was very stern. “This is an official matter, of course, Mr. Donnington, and you must not regard anything I say as reflecting in any way upon your word. But I am taken entirely by surprise, of course, and equally of course the matter cannot rest here.”

“What does that mean?”

He made a little gesture of protest and sat thinking. “Do you say that you had no such information about the house in the Rua Catania?” he asked after the pause.

“What I know and what I don’t know concerns no one but myself, sir,” I replied firmly. “I decline to answer your question.”

He shrugged his shoulders significantly. “This may be more serious than I thought. You will see that. I think, perhaps, I had better send for M. Volheno.”

“You can send for the Dictator himself if you like. It makes no sort of difference to me.”

He was much perplexed what to do and at length took a paper from one of the pigeon holes of the table, folded it very carefully and then held it out to me. “Is that your signature, Mr. Donnington?” He put the question in his severest magisterial manner.

“It’s uncommonly like it, I admit.”

“Ah,” he grunted with evident satisfaction. “Have you any objection to write a few lines in my presence and at my dictation.”

“None whatever, provided you undertake to destroy what I write in my presence afterwards.”

He smiled grimly and then rose and waved me to sit at the desk.

“Well?” I asked, looking up pen in hand at the desk.

“Write as follows, please.”

“It may influence your Government in granting the Beira concessions which I seek,” I wrote as he dictated, “if I give you some information which I have learnt. Let your men raid at once the house 237, Rua da Catania. It is one of the headquarters of the revolutionary party. I shall be in a position to tell you much more in a few days. Of course you will keep the fact of my writing thus absolutely secret.”

“That will do,” he said.

I resumed my former seat and he sat down at the desk again and very carefully compared what I had written with the letter the signature of which he had shown to me. The work of comparison occupied a long time, and now and again he made a note of some point which struck him.

“You gave me a pledge on your word of honour just now, Mr. Donnington,” he said, at length turning a very stern face to me. “Are you willing that I treat with you on that basis?”

“Of course I am.”

“Then will you pledge me your word to imitate to the utmost of your ability a line of the writing of this letter?”

“Certainly.”

Again I took his seat and he folded the letter so that only one line was visible.

“Rua de Catania. It is one of the headquarters,” was the line.

“It’s a little unusual for a magistrate to give lessons in forgery, isn’t it?” I asked as I studied the writing and then wrote as good an imitation of it as I could, and returned to my seat.

Again he made an examination letter by letter, very laboriously.

“Well?” I asked, growing impatient at his long silence.

“I am greatly perplexed, Mr. Donnington. And I must ask you one or two questions. How did you come to know of the house mentioned here?”

“Wait a bit, please. I have complied with the test you put; what is the result? And what is my position now?”

“I put my questions in a perfectly friendly spirit—as M. Volheno would put them were he here.”

“And that writing test?”

“I will discuss it freely with you afterwards. I promise you that.”

“Well, I can tell you nothing about the house. Evidently the writer of that letter knows that I learnt what I know by accident; but what I know I cannot reveal.”

“I am sorry you take that line. Whom did you meet there?”

“I cannot answer.”

“Did you meet a Dr. Barosa there?”

“I cannot answer.”

“Did you rescue a lady from any of the men belonging to the place?”

“I cannot answer. I will not answer any questions.”

“Was that lady the Contesse Inez Inglesia?”

I held my tongue.

He asked many questions of a similar nature, surprising me considerably by his knowledge of my movements on that night and since; but I maintained a stolid silence.

I could see his anger rising at his repeated failure to extract any reply, and he sat thinking with pursed lips and a heavy frown. “I will make one further effort. I ask you as a personal favour to M. Volheno to reply to me.”

“If M. Volheno were fifty times as great a friend of mine as he is, and begged me on his knees, I would not do it, sir!”

His frown deepened at this. “Then you must understand that if you persist in refusing, you may as well abandon all thought of obtaining the concessions you seek.”

“To the devil with the concessions. If Volheno or you or any one else in the business think you are going to bribe me with them to do spy work for you, the sooner you disabuse your minds of that insulting rot the better,” I answered letting my temper go. “And now I’ve finished with this thing and want to go back to bed.”

“I cannot take the responsibility of allowing you to leave, Mr. Donnington,” he snapped back sharply.

“Do you mean that you dare to detain me as a prisoner?”

“Keep your temper, sir, and remember that I am a law officer of His Majesty the King of Portugal.”

“Then as a British subject I claim my right to communicate at once with the British Legation.”

“That request will be considered, and if it is thought desirable, complied with. Not otherwise. This is a political matter. It is known to us that you have held communication with these dangerous revolutionaries; you are seeking to shield them by refusing information; and the only inference I can draw is that you do so because you are in collusion with them.”

At that I burst out laughing. “Infer what you like and be hanged to you.”

“You may find this is no laughing matter, sir,” he cried, getting white with anger.

“And so may you, magistrate though you are. Kidnapping Englishmen is not a game your Government can play at with impunity, my friend.”

“I shall send for M. Volheno,” he said as he rose; “and in the meantime shall detain you here on my own responsibility.”

And with that he favoured me with a scowl and went out of the room, leaving me to speculate where I was going to finish the night.

The odds appeared to be in favour of a prison cell rather than my own bed.

CHAPTER X
A DRASTIC TEST

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.”