"No!" said Robert Matcham; and the word came hot as an oath....
One instant I saw the banker toss his arms like a semaphore; the next we were overborne. Of that I retained chiefly a bewilderment at the force of our captors and the ease with which they dealt with us. Shy with the gun they might be, and indeed it is no natural weapon of their race; but these operators knew the use of trip and hamstring—the hugger-mugger arts; none better. My feet were driven from under me; my wrists paralyzed; I was caught and wound like a cocoon; and when I dropped it was on the cushions of the automobile. And, though this might be a slight-enough feat regarding myself, it was the measure of their cleverness that I found Robert Matcham already there, pocketed in a helpless bale. I believe he had no chance so much as to lift a hand.
"You won' be nize with me?" The banker's chuckle floated back to us. "Then you can try being not nize with our Number One, and see 'ow you like it!"
He left us that threat to ponder during our journey to Machico.... For it was Machico. Where else? As soon as they whisked us away toward the eastern coast road I knew it must be Machico. Where else should they take Robert Matcham, whose five centuries looked down on him this night? The rain had ceased; the clouds were lightening and shredding out to sea when we arrived.
There stands a tiny ruined fortaleza on a hill near the southeast point of Madeira, whereof I know more than most folks. You may seek and never find it, for it is now quite lost among the sugar fields, over-topped by the rank cane. Its square tower, whence the first lords of the soil used to keep stern ward against the Moorish marauder, was long ago shorn to the lowly uses of husbandry and built about with arbors; but its walls are a yard thick under the plaster, thick enough for a dungeon—or an inquisition chamber. No place could be more secret, and a man might lie hid there, like a toad in a hollow rock, never to be traced.
This was the obscure prison to which they brought Robert Matcham and myself by tortuous ways along the terraces. And here they carried us in from the forecourt to a low-ceiled hall and set us up for judgment, where many another unhappy captive must have stood before.
It was dim and chill as a vault, relieved only by a hanging iron lamp, which shed one yellow splash of light in the center. For some time I could discern nothing outside that wavering radiance on the deep-worn flags of the floor, though conscious of shifting figures in the gloom, of whispered stir and preparation.
For myself I had no great fear. The thing was so remote, and in itself so certain, sure, inexorable; a play of issues that held no part for a trifler like me. I was only a supernumerary, who had blundered on at the climax; a spectator who, having bought a stage seat, finds himself hustled into the riot. I had "come asking"; and it was hard for me to take our picturesque knave and his plottings and struttings quite seriously.
But how of Robert Matcham? The case was very different with him. When I glanced at his face I knew the possibilities for that harried giant to be just exactly as serious as life and death.
Throughout the long run he had spoken only once; and of all the comments he might have made: