Rollo heard but did not reply.
"So this is my sweet revenge," Fernandez continued. "The good Father-Confessor prates of heretics and times for repentance. But he is mad—mad—mad as Don Quixote, do you understand? I, Luis Fernandez, am not mad. But if you have any reason for desiring to live—live you shall—on my terms. All I ask is that you answer me one question, or rather two—as the price of your life."
Only Rollo's eyes looked an interrogation. For the rest he held his peace and waited.
"Tell me where you have hidden Dolóres Garcia—and at what hour, and in what place Ramon, her husband, lays him down to sleep! If you declare truthfully these two things, I promise to leave you with three days' water and provisions, and to provide for your liberation at the end of that time. If not, I bid you prepare to die, as the men died who have lain where you lie now!"
Rollo's answer came like the return of a ball at tennis.
"Señor Don Luis," he said, "if I had ten Paradises from which to choose my eternal pleasures, I would not tell you! If I had as many hells from which to select for you the tortures of the damned, I would not speak a word which might aid such a villain in his villany! Let it suffice for you to know that Dolóres Garcia is now where you will never reach her, and as for her husband—why, you cowardly dog, asleep or awake, sick or well, you dare not venture within a mile of him! Nay, I doubt greatly if you dare even face him dead!"
Fernandez rose and motioned his brother to the handle which turned the great wooden wheel at Rollo's feet. Then the young man lay very still, listening to the dismal groaning of the ungreased bearings and wondering almost idly what was about to happen to him.
"God in Heaven, he is here! I tell you I heard him cry! Do you think I do not know his voice? I will tear up the floor with my fingers, if you do not make haste!"
It was Concha who spoke or rather shouted these words along the rabbit-warren of passages which ran this way and that under the Abbey of Montblanch.