“Now, if you make a clean breast of things, I shall let you go,” I said, turning to the man. “What’s your name?”
“Garcia Rosada.” He lied so promptly that I saw he had been carefully making up his tale.
I was on the point of telling him I knew his name, when it occurred to me that it would be better to affect to believe him. “Who sent you here?”
“No one.”
“Why did you come then?”
He hung his head for a moment as if in shame and then muttered: “I’ve never been a thief before, and if you’ll let me go, Excellency, I vow to the Holy Virgin I’ll never be one again. Have mercy on me. I’ve a wife and five children and this will—will kill them.” He was an artful scoundrel, and the break in his voice was quite cleverly done.
I put a few more questions, and he improved on the tale, saying that his companion was name Ferraz, and having heard that I was a very rich man, had tempted him to try and rob me.
Burroughs’ face, when he saw that I appeared to believe the yarn, was quite an amusing study. He was divided between doubt whether I was really gulled, and curiosity as to my object, if I was not.
“I’ll write that down while it’s fresh in my memory. If I find your story true, I won’t punish you, Rosada,” I said and turned away to my writing table. I made a pretence of writing, repeating the words aloud and turning now and then to put a question about some detail.
But what I really did was to make up a dummy packet the exact counterfeit of that on the table.