“That is just what I mean. Otherwise, I certainly should not have remained.”
“Who were the men?”
I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. “I would tell you if I could.” This was a deliberate equivocation, but it saved me from a direct lie. I meant that I could not because of my pledge, but I meant him to infer that I did not know.
He paused and I added: “And now I shall be glad to know what you propose to do with me?”
“What do you suppose we generally do with prisoners? Billet them at the Avenida Palace Hotel? You’ll be locked up for the rest of the night, of course, while we make inquiries about you.”
“I am an Englishman—as I have told you.”
“What of that? What’s good enough for a Portuguese is good enough for an Englishman, I suppose.”
“I am also a friend of M. Volheno.”
“So you say. But do you expect me to rouse him in the middle of the night whenever a revolutionary rascal chooses to say he is a friend?”
“I can give you the names of several other influential men who know me. The Marquis de Pinsara, Visconte de Linto,” and I rattled off a number of the men to whom I had been introduced on the night of the reception.