“I’m getting rather interested in you. Who are you?”
He winked knowingly. He was quite young, dark and not bad-looking, except that he had sly ferretty eyes. “You don’t know, eh? You don’t remember, eh? Is that your line? Or are you on the same tack as I am?”
“What is your particular tack?”
“You might have guessed it I should think. They’ve got about twenty of Barosa’s people here and about half a dozen police to look after them. Somebody let ’em know that I meant to save myself by telling things, and the brutes nearly tore me to bits as I came up. The devils;” and once more he cursed them luridly. “But I’ll make it hot for some of them,” he added, his little close-set eyes gleaming viciously.
“Oh, you’re an informer, are you? Well, I don’t like your breed, I’m——”
“Oh, I know you, of course. You’re Ralph Donnington, the reputed English millionaire. I know;” and he winked again. “I saw you at the de Pinsara house the other night with Barosa. He told me you were all right. I had to tell them about you, of course. They’ve sucked me about as dry as a squeezed orange. Barosa told me you were interested in Miralda Dominguez——”
“I’d rather not talk any more,” I interposed sharply.
“I suppose you know it’s all up. They’ve got Barosa and Contesse Inglesia, and Lieutenant de Linto and heaps of others. But not his sister yet.”
I affected not to hear this and took out a cigarette and lighted it.
“Can you spare me one?”