"Good; just as I should have expected from you. And now, I'm going to tell you the whole mess, and just see what's best to be done;" and I gave him a pretty full account of everything that had happened.
"You're right, it is a devil of a mess," was his comment when I finished. "What do you suppose Quesada's sister can do?"
"I haven't a notion. I'm just at the end of my wits, and can't for the life of me see what's to be done."
"There's one thing you may safely reckon on, and it isn't a pleasant thing anyway—that that beggar is sure to have a trump card up his sleeve that will most likely outplay your best. He's the most cunning beggar in all Spain. He's been in heaps of tight corners before, and wriggled out just when it seemed impossible. And he won't give in now, you bet. I tell you what he's likely to do—he knows just as well as lots of others, that he's the pivot of the whole Government; the one man for instance, who, in the popular view, can wage this threatened war with the States with some chance of success; and I wouldn't be one little bit surprised if he trumps you with a change of front and declares for war. You don't know as much as I do of Spanish politics, and can't, therefore, understand the holy mess that would follow here if the war came. He'd be the only man able to guide things; and in such a case you might hammer at him in vain."
"But these documents, Livenza's statement, my own knowledge, Sarita Castelar's evidence!" I cried, in protest.
"Strong enough in England, perhaps; but he'd deny everything; and do you think anyone's going to care two pence about them if the nation is in danger. He'd say the letters were forgeries; pop Livenza into prison, or bribe or threaten him to change face; the lady is already safe in his charge, and as a Carlist wouldn't be believed even if she were at liberty; and your statement would be listened to politely, and then disregarded as that of an enemy of Spain and a friend of America. I'm sorry to discourage you, but you asked my advice and that is—don't count on your weapons as he called them, and don't believe for a moment that you can really do him any harm. He sits too firm in the saddle."
"But he told his sister that I could ruin him, and he showed the fear by wanting to make me fight him."
"Mere play-acting, Ferdinand, nothing more. He wanted to get the papers back quietly if he could, and the quietest and safest way would have been to have you arrested as Carbonnell, the Carlist, and sent somewhere into the far provinces, and probably knocked on the head by the way or shot in mistake—the kind of mistake that does happen at times. His sister appears to have cut that plan short, and naturally he tells her she must get the papers back, if she could. But if she couldn't, it didn't follow that he wasn't quite prepared to face you. Don't make the mistake of thinking he will give up a jot or tittle of any plan he has, whether public or private; he never has been known to yet, and even you will never make him, strong as your case would be in any other country and against any other man. It's part of his constitution, my dear fellow. He's got all the energy and resource of a present day American with all the confounded pride and stiff-necked doggedness of an Old Castile noble. A rummy combination, but the devil to fight."
"I shan't give in," I said, firmly. "And that I take it your advice is that I should."
Mayhew shrugged his shoulders significantly.