“Vamos,” he said briskly; “to the banquet....” He waved his hand towards the shining door and stood aside. We entered.
The other man was undoubtedly the Nova Scotian mate of the Thames, the man who had dissuaded me from following Carlos on the day we sailed into Kingston Harbour. He was chewing a toothpick, and at the ruminant motion of his knife-jaws I seemed to see him, sitting naked to the waist in his bunk, instead of upright there in red trousers and a blue shirt—an immense lank-length of each. I pieced his history together in a sort of flash. He was the true Nikola el Escoces; his name was Nichols, and he came from Nova Scotia. He had been the chief of O’Brien’s Lugareños. He surveyed me now with a twinkle in his eyes, his yellow jaws as shiny-shaven as of old; his arms as much like a semaphore. He said mockingly:
“So you went there, after all?”
But the Cuban was pressing us towards his banquet; there was gaspacho in silver plates, and a man in livery holding something in a napkin. It worried me. We surveyed each other in silence. I wondered what Nichols knew; what it would be safe to tell him; how much he could help me? One or other of these men undoubtedly might. The Cuban was an imbecile; but he might have some influence—and if he really were going out on the morrow, and really did go to the Captain-General, he certainly could further his own revenge on O’Brien by helping me.... But as for Nichols....
Salazar began to tell a long, exaggerated story about his cook, whom he had imported from Paris.
“Think,” he said; “I bring the fool two thousand miles—and then—not even able to begin on a land-crab. A fool!”
The Nova Scotian cast an uninterested side glance at him, and said in English, which Salazar did not understand:
“So you went there, after all? And now he’s got you.” I did not answer him. “I know all about you,” he added.
“It’s more than I do about you,” I said.
He rose and suddenly jerked the door open, peered on each side of the corridor, and then sat down again.