“Let me come with you,” Sard said, “I’ll find you a cab, I’m afraid you’re ill.”
“Ill?” he said. “This thing is tearing me to pieces. Those devils shot me and took my sister. And I can’t find her, Mr., sir, no one can find her.”
“But she was found,” Sard said. “She was found at Tlotoatin. I read it in the paper here, only a few hours ago.”
“The paper was a damned lie,” the young man cried. “She isn’t found. We’ve no trace nor track of her. Good God, they are all in it, police, press, politicians, and I can’t get a word of truth, nor any clue of where she is. You said that they talked of Santa Barbara? For the love of God, now Mr. What’s-your-name (I can’t remember names), those devils whom you overheard, tell me the truth now, they said they were coming here.”
“Mr. Kingsborough,” Sard said, “they did. What is more, one of the men, whom I overheard, came out of that door not ten minutes ago.”
“What? You’ll swear that?”
“I don’t swear. He did. He went down those stairs, you must almost have met him.”
“Then Margarita may be in that house?”
“I don’t think that that can be,” Sard said. “It’s not very likely, is it?”
“Likely?” Hilary cried. “What is likely? She has disappeared and every power, here and in the Occidental, is behind the swine who took her. I’ve come here to see the Dictator, and I want you to see him, too, Mr., sir. Tell him that you know that they are a Santa Barbara gang and that he must find her.”