“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.