“Now a letter to the Visconte de Linto and one to Mademoiselle Dominguez renouncing all claim to her hand.”
“I will not,” he cried with an oath. “My hand shall rot first.”
“It will do that soon after Lucien Prelot has found you.”
“I will not,” he repeated, flinging down the pen. “I dare not.”
I took the slip of paper and wrote, speaking the words as I pencilled them. “‘Jean Dufoire is now known as Major Francisco Sampayo. You will find him in Lisbon.’ That telegram I shall send within five minutes of leaving here,” I said.
With a groan he threw up his hands distractedly and rising began to pace up and down. “I dare not. I dare not,” he exclaimed.
I watched him very closely and observed that his movements, at first erratic as if at the dictates of his overpowering agitation, had a method suggestive of a purpose. Each turn he took brought him a little nearer to me. So I stood up and while pocketing the papers he had written, I held my weapon in readiness, questioning him the while.
“What do you mean by dare not?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Then make it plain.”