“From whom?”
“A merchant at Anagas, down the coast. But, señores, my contract on the mole is a matter for the port officials. I do not see the object of these questions.”
“You had better answer them,” Stuyvesant remarked, and signed Dick to go on.
Dick paused for a moment or two, remembering how he had confronted his judges in a tent in an English valley. The scene came back with poignant distinctness.
He could hear the river brawling among the stones, and feel his Colonel’s stern, condemning gaze fixed upon his face. For all that, his tone was resolute as he asked: “What was the brand of the cement you bought?”
“The Tenax, señor,” Oliva answered with a defiant smile.
Then Dick turned to the others with a gesture which implied that there was no more to be said, and quietly sat down. Tenax was not the brand that Fuller used, and its different properties would have appeared in the tests. The sub-contractor had betrayed himself by the lie, and his accomplice looked at him with disgust.
“You’ve given the thing away,” he growled. “Think they don’t know what cement is? Now they have you fixed!”
There was silence for the next minute while Stuyvesant studied some figures in his pocket-book. Then he wrote upon a leaf, which he tore out and told Dick to give it to Oliva.
“Here’s a rough statement of your account up to the end of last month, Don Ramon,” he said. “You can check it and afterwards hand the pay-clerk a formal bill, brought up to date, but you’ll notice I have charged you with a quantity of cement that’s missing from our store. Your engagement with Mr. Fuller ends to-day.”