“You lodge a complaint against the senor there.”
The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me.
“I? God forbid, Excellency,” the Lugareño bleated. “The Alguazil of the Criminal Court instructed me to be watchful.”
“You lodge an information, then?” the juez said.
“Maybe it is an information, Excellency,” the Lugareño answered, “as regards the senor there.”
The Alguazil of the Criminal Court had told him, and many other men of Rio Medio, to be on the watch for me, “undoubtedly touching what had happened, as all the world knew, in Rio Medio.”
He looked me full in the face with stupid insolence, and said:
“At first I much doubted, for all the world said this man was dead—though others said worse things. Perhaps, who knows?”
He had seen me, he said, many times in Rio Medio, outside the Casa; on the balcony of the Casa, too. And he was sure that I was a heretic and an evil person.
It suddenly struck me that this man—I was undoubtedly familiar with his face—must be the lieutenant of Manuel-del-Popolo, his boon companion. Without doubt, he had seen me on the balcony of the Casa.