“I am tormented with a cold that I have had for the last three days.”
He grumbled a little, passing his thin and dirty hand over his face, which was dark and full of lines, and to which a heavy mustache gave a certain air of fierceness.
Sebastião said he was very sorry, but it was not strange with this weather! He advised him to take sulphur-water with boiled milk.
“No; if it does not go away,” said the commissary, in a hoarse voice, “I will attack it to-morrow with half a bottle of gin; and then, if it does not go of its own accord, it will have to go by force. And what is the news?”
Sebastião coughed, complained of feeling somewhat indisposed himself, and taking a chair and seating himself near his cousin, said, placing his hand upon the knee of the latter,—
“Vicente, if I were to ask you to let a policeman accompany me on a little matter of business—merely to show himself—so that a certain person might make restitution of something that has been stolen, you would give me the order, eh?”
“Order, for what?” asked the commissary slowly, fixing his small eyes on Sebastião.
“The order for him to accompany me,—only to show himself. It is a delicate affair. To give a fright—nothing more. It is to make some one restore something that has been stolen, without causing scandal.”
“Effects, or money?” said the commissary, slowly twisting his mustache with his long tapering fingers that bore the stains of the cigarette.
Sebastião hesitated.