“If I can find Mademoiselle Dominguez without the police it is all I want.”
She brightened instantly. “Can you get me some disguise?” Seeing my surprise, she explained, “I would go without it, but it would not help you. Since we parted this morning, I have had a very narrow escape from arrest in my own name. The police are swarming near my lodging, and it is in that district we must search. I was on my way there when by good fortune I met a friend—a girl who had lived in the same house as myself. She warned me not to go near it because the police were in it. Her brother had been arrested and she herself was flying. To go as I am, therefore, would not help you.”
“You must not go at all. Tell me where to go,” I said.
She hesitated again. “If I hesitate, you will understand me. Let me be frank. Some of the people have been very kind to me and to put them into the hands of the police would be an ill return.”
“I will not take the police with me. Tell me where to search, and I’ll find means of doing what I need without the police.”
“A little to the west of the Theatre of Donna Amelia and close to the Square of Camoes is a nest of streets; and many of the houses are those of our friends where any refugees are certain of a ready shelter. It is there I should expect to find those whom you seek. But you must go not as you are. It would be not only useless but dangerous, and you must be careful to have help at hand. If your object were suspected, you would look in vain for a friend in all that district.”
I opened a map and she pointed the neighbourhood out to me and indicated a spot at the corner of the Square which would be the best for my purpose.
“There are three theatres close there, and the hawkers always stand about there to catch the people going to them. You could thus watch without being suspected;” she explained.
I took her advice and set about my preparations forthwith, and while getting ready, a thought occurred to me. I sent Bryant with a note to Volheno telling him I had an important clue and I asked him, as I had already had a narrow escape of being arrested, to give me a line or two which would protect me from anything of the kind and enable me to call upon the police to assist me if I should need their help.
Pia helped me to disguise myself as a pedlar of matches, suggesting many clever touches—the result probably of her experiences—and when I was ready not a soul in all Lisbon would have recognized me.