“Do not worry. When you raised your voice, I turned and left.”
“But perhaps,” said Maximilian slowly, “it would have been better if you had overheard, either you or another knowing the cruel rumors which–which link my recent visitor’s name with my own. Then the truth would have been made known. That truth, señor,” he hastened to add, despite a hardening frown between the American’s eyes, “means first that I have been honored, indeed, in my visitor’s––”
He got no further. A broad hand closed over his mouth.
“Another word of that, and I’ll–I’ll––”
The threat was left unfinished. Gasping in the chair where he had fallen, Maximilian found himself alone. He was vaguely nonplussed. There had been so many revelations of late that he thought this one simply a further re-adjusting of himself to the modern world of men. The present instance had to do with the critical juncture where the woman enters. But he had learned something else, too. The American loved her, and that was important. Yet lovers were very contrary beings, he mused lugubriously.
“Still, I shall try again,” he decided. “One humble success against my career of distinguished failures should not be too much to expect.”
The night that followed, a black, favorable night, was the time planned for escape. Horses ready saddled waited outside the town under the aqueduct. Certain guards were bribed, among them Don Tiburcio. The humorous rascal had driven a hard bargain, but only because the money was to be had. He would have sold himself as briskly for the cream of the jest.
473Late the same night there came a frantic pounding at Driscoll’s door, where he was quartered in the sacristy of the old Capuchin church. “Well?” he muttered, alert already.
“Hurry, mi coronel!” a cracked voice blended with the knocking. “Hurry, you are wanted!”
“Murgie!” Driscoll exclaimed, flinging wide the door. “Back from San Luis, and prowling round here as usual, eh? Well, what’s the matter?”