‘You have just informed us,’ retorted Conyngham, ‘that all the English in the Spanish service are miscreants. None know the law so intimately as those who have broken it.’
‘Ah!’ laughed Sir John again, with a face of stone. ‘There are exceptions to all rules—and you, young sir, are an exception to that which I laid down as regards our countrymen in Spain, unless my experience of faces and knowledge of men play me very false. But your contention is a just one. I am not in a position to seek the aid of the Spanish authorities in this matter. I am fully aware of the fact. You surely did not expect me to come to Spain with such a weak case as that?’
‘No,’ answered Conyngham slowly, ‘I did not.’
Sir John Pleydell raised his eyes and looked at his fellow countryman with a dawning interest. The General also looked up, from one face to the other. The atmosphere of the room seemed to have undergone a sudden change, and to be dominated by the personality of these two Englishmen. The one will, strong on the surface, accustomed to assert itself and dominate, seemed suddenly to have found itself faced by another as strong and yet hidden behind an easy smile and indolent manner.
‘You are quite right,’ he went on in his cold voice. ‘I have a better case than that, and one eminently suited to a country such as Spain, where a long war has reduced law and order to a somewhat low ebb. I at first thought of coming here to await my chance of shooting this man—his name, by the way, is Frederick Conyngham; but circumstances placed a better vengeance within my grasp—one that will last longer.’
He paused for a moment to reflect upon this long-drawn-out expiation.
‘I propose to get my man home to England, and let him there stand his trial. The idea is not my own; it has, in fact, been carried out successfully before now. Once in England I shall make it my business to see that he gets twenty years’ penal servitude.’
‘And how do you propose to get him to England?’ asked Conyngham.
‘Oh! that is simple enough. Only a matter of paying a couple of such scoundrels as I understand abound in Spain at this moment—a little bribing of officials, a heavy fee to some English ship-captain. I propose, in short, to kidnap Frederick Conyngham. But I do not ask you to help me in that. I only ask you to put me on his track—to help me to find him, in fact. Will you do it?’
‘Certainly,’ said Conyngham, coming forward with a card in his hand. ‘You could not have come to a better man.’