He paused as if waiting for me to question him.
“He is mad with his love for Mademoiselle Dominguez,” he continued after a pause. “I said that if he would let me break with her, you would go away. He would not. It was he who planned that attempt on your life the same night. He was with Henriques. He is mad, I say. And nothing, not even this, will turn him from his purpose. He knows something about that South African affair of mine, but not all. He has had nearly all my money, he forced this farce of an engagement with Mademoiselle Dominguez, and his intention was to use the influence he would have if a revolution was provoked to force her to marry him. That’s why she has been dragged into it, and he would sacrifice every man of us rather than lose her. He would have been betrothed to her openly, but he could not break with the Contesse Inglesia. Now you know everything.”
“I knew most of that before,” I replied drily. “But how did you get the visconte’s consent?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “He could not help himself. He was in this thing also to some extent, but Barosa found out that he had been stealing his wife’s money and I was put to threaten him with exposure if he refused. I have been Barosa’s slave for months, curse him.”
There was no mistaking the bitter sincerity of this.
“You will do no good with the letter you want. It is more probable that you will find that he fled from the city the moment he knew this thing had failed and took Mademoiselle Dominguez with him. But if he is still there, and still hopes to provoke a revolution, your only means of dealing with him will be through the Contesse Inglesia. Rouse her jealousy, and you may succeed. I would have done it, but I dared not.”
I did not let him see my alarm at his suggestion that Barosa had forced Miralda to fly with him, but I determined to get back to Lisbon as fast as the Stella could carry me.
I took Sampayo back to the rest, wrote a line:—“We are prisoners in the hands of Mr. Ralph Donnington, who knows everything;” and obtained the signatures of them all to it; and then hurried up on deck.
The Stella was just casting off, and with a last handshake with Burroughs, I jumped on board.
“How long will it take us to get back to port, captain?” I asked the skipper, who had good news for me.