“I comprehend your excellency,” grinned the patrone, significantly. “You were a stranger then, and I did not expect to see you again. It was all in the way of business, you see. But no offense, I trust?”
“None. You rob the traveler in one way, I in another; ha, ha!” laughed Romulo, as he passed to the further end of the vacant room, where he seated himself at a small table.
The host, when he brought the ordered articles, removed the two nearest stands to a distance, so that any thing said in a moderate tone by Lopez or his expected friend could not be overheard. After the elapse of an hour, perhaps, half of the tables were occupied, and then Sylva Cohecho, the repulsive-looking scoundrel who had betrayed Marcos Sayosa and his comrades of the Scarlet Shoulders to the Melladios, entered, and was directed to where Romulo was sitting. He was greeted with a careless, half-contemptuous nod by the latter, who did not deign to move the cigarette from between his lips.
“You wished to see me, ’nor capitan?”
“On business, yes; for pleasure, no,” returned Lopez, not noting the flash of anger that shot from beneath the shaggy, pent-house eyebrows of his comrade. “I have work for you to do, of that kind which pleases you the most. There is a certain man that I wish put out of the way; a blow of the cuchillo will do. And the sooner it is done the greater will be your pay. He has deeply insulted me, and as it was at a place and time that I could not resent it then, I ask you. But that matters not. When you have done this, we will be ready to begin the business that brought us here.”
“And the person’s name is—?”
“One Marcos Sayosa, a miner of Los Rayas, and, I have heard, the chief of those who call themselves Scarlet Shoulders,” returned the captain.
“Good, and at the same time I can discharge the little sum he owes me!” exclaimed Cohecho, clutching his long knife vindictively.
“Ah, you know him, then?”
For reply Don Sylva narrated the adventures of the night on which he had played the spy.