"You shot Silvestre, then?"
"I did," he replied, "and I don't know that I ever enjoyed doing anything so much. It was a close thing between us. Look here!"
He pointed to his left ear, on the lobe of which was a small scar.
"It couldn't have been much closer, could it?" he remarked. "My luck, however, stood by me as usual." Then in a lower and more kindly tone, he added: "My luck and the luck of Equinata!"
For a few moments we stood side by side thinking our thoughts in silence. I recalled the day when I had first seen the dead man in Rio, and also that never-to-be-forgotten afternoon on which he had made the proposal to me that was destined to cost him his life on the beach of an island in the Carribean Sea and to return me to Equinata a wounded and ruined man.
At last Fernandez turned to me and, placing his hand upon my shoulder, looked me full and fair in the face.
"Trevelyan—Helmsworth—Helmsworth—Trevelyan—whatever your name may be, you have put upon me a debt of gratitude I shall never be able to repay. I must confess, however, that I cannot quite understand what it was that so suddenly made you change sides. I offered you excellent terms on the beach on the night that I fell into your hands, and I repeated it on board the yacht. You were a pillar of rectitude then. When, therefore, the game had been played and your employer had won, why did you so suddenly come to my rescue? I think I know you well enough by this time to feel sure that your conversion was due to no mercenary motive."
"You may make your mind easy on that score," I replied. "It was not a question of money."
"Then will you tell me why you did it? Silvestre, when his chance came, would doubtless have proved himself an excellent patron, of course providing it didn't suit his book to put you out of the way!"
"That's exactly it," I replied. "You have put the matter in a nutshell."