“I’m not afraid to tell,” he said defiantly. “I’m not afraid of anything. I’m safe.”
The Cuban said to me in Spanish: “This senor is my friend. Everyone who hates that devil is my friend.”
“I’m safe,” Nichols repeated. “I know too much about our friend the raparee.” He lowered his voice. “They say you’re to be given up for piracy, eh?” His eyes had an extraordinarily anxious leer. “You are now, eh? For how much? Can’t you tell a man? We’re in the same boat! I kin help you!”
Salazar accidentally knocked a silver goblet off the table and, at the sound, Nichols sprang half off his chair. He glared in a wild stare around him then grasped at a flagon of aguardiente and drank.
“I’m not afraid of any damn thing” he said. “I’ve got a hold on that man. He dursen’t give me up. I kin see! He’s going to give you up and say you’re responsible for it all.”
“I don’t know what he’s going to do,” I answered.
“Will you not, Señor,” Salazar said suddenly, “relate, if you can without distress, the heroic death of that venerated man?”
I glanced involuntarily at Nichols. “The distress,” I said, “would be very great. I was Don Balthasar’s kinsman. The Señor O’Brien had a great fear of my influence in the Casa. It was in trying to take me away that Don Balthasar, who defended me, was slain by the Lugareños of O’Brien.”
Salazar said, “Aha! Aha! We are kindred spirits. Hated and loved by the same souls. This fiend, Señor. And then....”
“I escaped by sea—in an open boat, in the confusion. When I reached Havana, the Juez had me arrested.”