I was not such a fool as to argue against two loaded revolvers levelled dead at my head and held within a yard. But it struck me that Colonel Livenza was not altogether satisfied with the interruption, and that he had some kind of personal interest in the affair which was apart from the motives of his companions.
"Do as you will," I said, after a second's thought. "And do it quickly. The people at the hotel to which I was going know where I have come. I told them; and a messenger will be here shortly from there." I intended this to frighten them; and for the moment it did so. But in the end it acted merely as a warning, and gave them time to concoct a lie with which to get rid of the hotel porter when he arrived.
One of them kept me covered with his pistol while the others talked together and referred to some papers which lay on a table. Then the man who had met me at the station, and whom I judged to be in some way the Colonel's inferior, turned to me with the papers in his hand, and began to question me.
"You admit you are Ferdinand Carbonnell?"
"My name is Ferdinand Carbonnell; I am an Englishman, the son of Lord Glisfoyle, an English nobleman, and I have come to Madrid from London to join——"
"Enough; you are Ferdinand Carbonnell. You have just come from Paris, haven't you?"
"I came through Paris, from London." A sneer showed that he regarded this admission as a contradiction of my previous statement. "Paris is on the direct route from London," I added.
"And on the indirect route from a thousand other places," he retorted. "Your only chance is to stick to the truth. You shall have a fair trial, and it will go less hard with you if you speak the truth. I am Felipe Corpola, and this is Pedro Valera—you will know our names well enough."
"On the contrary, I never heard your names until this instant, nor that of Colonel Livenza until it was told me at the station."
"Santa Maria! what a lie!" exclaimed the third man, Valera, in a loud aside; and by this I gathered they were two Carlists prominent enough to be fairly well-known in the ranks of that wide company.