“None whatever, provided you undertake to destroy what I write in my presence afterwards.”
He smiled grimly and then rose and waved me to sit at the desk.
“Well?” I asked, looking up pen in hand at the desk.
“Write as follows, please.”
“It may influence your Government in granting the Beira concessions which I seek,” I wrote as he dictated, “if I give you some information which I have learnt. Let your men raid at once the house 237, Rua da Catania. It is one of the headquarters of the revolutionary party. I shall be in a position to tell you much more in a few days. Of course you will keep the fact of my writing thus absolutely secret.”
“That will do,” he said.
I resumed my former seat and he sat down at the desk again and very carefully compared what I had written with the letter the signature of which he had shown to me. The work of comparison occupied a long time, and now and again he made a note of some point which struck him.
“You gave me a pledge on your word of honour just now, Mr. Donnington,” he said, at length turning a very stern face to me. “Are you willing that I treat with you on that basis?”
“Of course I am.”
“Then will you pledge me your word to imitate to the utmost of your ability a line of the writing of this letter?”