"Send for no one--at least, not yet. If by the detectives you mean Dobson, the heavy man, he will not assist me, and of the lawyers I know nothing; and at present I will not tell you when and where I have seen this man. But, sir--but, Lord Penlyn, I know one thing. When that man and I once more stand face to face, Walter Cundall, who shielded me from his uncle's wrath, who was as a brother to my beloved Juanna, will be avenged."
"What will you do?" Penlyn asked in an almost awestruck whisper. "You will not take the law into your own hands and kill him?"
"No; it maybe not! But with these hands alone," and he held them out extended to Penlyn as he spoke, "I will drag him to a prison which he shall only leave for a scaffold. Drag him there, I say, unless my blood gets the better of my reason, and I throttle him like a dog by the way."
He, too, had risen in his excitement; and as he stood towering in his height, which was great, above the other, and extended his long sinewy hands in front of him, while his deep brown skin turned to an almost darker hue, Penlyn felt that this man before him would be the avenger of his brother's death. So terrible did he look, that the other wondered how that murderer would feel when he should be in his grasp.
He stepped forward to Guffanta and held out his hand to him. "Sir," he said, "I thank God that you and I have met. But can we do nothing to assist you in your search? May I not tell the detectives what you know?"
"You may tell them everything I have told you; it will not enable them to be in my way. But what I have to do I must do by myself." He paused a moment; then he said: "It may be that when you do tell them, they will still think that I am the man----"
"No, no!"
"Yes, it may be so. Well, if they want to spy upon my actions, if they want to know what I do and where I go, I am to be found at the Hôtel Lepanto--that is when I am not here in this house, for I must ask you--I have a reason--to let me come to you as I want."
Penlyn bowed, and said some words to the effect that he should always be free of the house, and the other continued:
"My business here as agent for Don Rodriguez, a wealthy merchant of Honduras, will not occupy me much at present, the rest of my time will be devoted to the one purpose of finding that man."