The Hôtel et Café Restaurant de Lepanto is one of those many places near, and in the neighbourhood of, Leicester Square, where foreigners delight to sojourn when in London. Not first-class foreigners, perhaps, or, at least, not foreigners of large means, but generally such as come to London to transact business that occupies them for a short time. As a rule, this establishment is patronised by Spanish and Portuguese gentlemen of a commercial status, persons who, more often than not, are connected with the wine trade of those countries; and it is also frequented by singers and dancers and other artistes who may find themselves--by what they regard as a stroke of fortune--fulfilling an engagement in our Metropolis. To them, the Hôtel Lepanto is a congenial abode, a spot where they can eat of the oily and garlic-flavoured dishes partaken of with so much relish when at home in Madrid, Lisbon, Seville, or Granada, and here they can converse in their own tongues with each other and with Diaz Zarates, the Spanish landlord of the house, to whom half-a-dozen Southern languages and many patois are known.
The hotel seems to exist entirely for the people of these countries, since into it no Frenchman, nor Italian, nor German ever comes; they have their own hostelries of an equally, to them, agreeable nature in other streets in the neighbourhood. So these Southerners, with the dark eyes, and coal-black hair, and brown skin, have the little dining-room with the dirty fly-blown paper, and the almost as dirty table-covers and curtains, all to themselves; and into it--or to the passage with the three chairs and the marble-table where, as often as not, the Señors and Señoras sit and smoke their cigarettes for hours together, in preference to doing so in the dining-room--no one of another nation intrudes. If, not having Spanish or Portuguese blood in his veins, there ever is any one who does so intrude, it is generally some Englishman of a rashly speculative nature, who wants to try a Spanish dinner and see what it is like, and who, having done so, never wants to try another.
And sometimes, as has been the case of late, much to the disgust of Diaz Zarates, an English detective has made his appearance, and, under the guise of one of the above speculative individuals essaying an Iberian meal, has endeavoured to worm secrets out of him about his patrons and guests. To the disgust of Diaz Zarates of late, because he knows perfectly well who Dobson is (although that astute individual is not aware of the landlord's knowledge of his calling), and because, honestly, he has never heard of any one bearing the name of Corot in his life.
And it is of such a person with that name, that Dobson has been making little inquiries whenever he has dropped in to try a Spanish luncheon or a Spanish dinner.
Seated, a few days after the murder of Walter Cundall, on one of the three chairs in the passage, and meditatively smoking cigarettes out of which, as is the case with Spanish-made ones, the tobacco would frequently fall in a lighted mass on the marble table, was Señor Miguel Guffanta, as he was inscribed in Diaz's books. Had the Señor been as carefully washed as the upper classes of Spaniards usually are, had his linen been as white and clean as the linen usually worn by the upper classes of Spaniards, and, had he been freshly shaved, he would, in all probability have presented the appearance of a fine, handsome man. But he had come downstairs this morning to smoke his cigarette, without troubling to make his toilette, putting on his yesterday's shirt, and going through no ablutionary process at all, and with a thick, heavy stubble of twenty-four hours' growth upon his cheeks and chin. Still, with all this carelessness, Señor Miguel Guffanta was a handsome man. He had a dark, Moorish-looking face, the lines of which were very regular, he had large luminous eyes that, when he chose, he could open to an enormous extent, and coal-black hair that curled thickly over his head. His frame was a powerful one; his height being considerable and his chest broad and deep, and his long, sinewy, brown hands looked as though their grasp would be a grasp of iron, if put to their utmost strength. In age he was about thirty-eight or forty, but he looked younger, because no single gray hair had appeared either in his luxurious locks or in his long, black moustache. As he sat there, taking fresh cigarette-papers from his pocket, and, when he had put some dry, dusty tobacco into them, twisting both ends up, and smoking them while he gazed meditatively either at the ceiling of the passage, or into the species of horse-box that was designated as the "bureau," a stranger might have wondered what brought the Señor there. Unkempt as he was this morning, there was something about him, either in the easy grace of his figure, or in the contemptuous, almost haughty, look in his face, that proclaimed instantly that this was not a man accustomed to soliciting orders for wine, or to appearing in Spanish ballets or choruses, or of, in any way, ministering to other people's amusement.
As he still sat there thinking and smoking, the landlord came down the passage, and bowing and wishing him "Good morning" in Spanish, entered his box, and proceeded to make some entries in his books. The Señor nodded in return, and then made another cigarette and went on with his meditations; but, when that one was smoked through, he rose and leaned against the door-post of the bureau, and addressed Zarates.
"And have any more guests arrived since last night," he asked, "and is the hotel yet full?"
"No more, Señor, no more as yet," the landlord answered him. "Dios! but there is little business doing now."
"That is not well! And he who loves so much our Spanish luncheons and dinners, our good friend Dobson (he pronounced the name, Dobesoon) with the heavy, fat face and the big beard--what of him?"
"He is a pig, a fool!" Diaz said, as he ran an unclean finger up a column of accounts. "He believes me not when I tell him that of his accursed Corot I know nothing, and that I believe no such man is in London."