I put the case in my pocket.
“If you want to get her out of the mess you’d better do as I’ve done. Out with everything. It’s the only way. I——”
I jumped to my feet. “Look here, if you talk any more to me I shall act as deputy for those men outside, and when I’ve finished with you, you’ll find it difficult to talk at all.”
That stopped him and he slunk away to the door and flopped into a chair staring at me and muttering to himself, probably cursing me as he had cursed the others.
Soon afterwards M. d’Olliveira came back with a couple of police, and said that Volheno was coming and would arrive in about half an hour. Then he ordered the first of the prisoners to be brought in.
The informer jumped away from the door as if it was on fire and crossed to the other side of the magistrate’s desk.
The proceedings were very short—apparently for no purpose other than identification.
I glanced at the prisoner and recognized him as one of the men I had seen at the house in the Rua Catania. He was the scoundrel named Henriques, who had been going to strike Inez when I had entered.
He looked at the young informer with a scowl of hate and hissed out an execration.
The magistrate appealed to me first. “You know this man, Mr. Donnington?” he said sharply, and the fellow turned a scowling face on me with a half defiant and wholly malicious expression.