“This is most interesting! You never told me that before!” he exclaimed. “I confess I wondered with what motive you and your friend Señor Hambledon, living at separate hotels, had in remaining here. It was regarded as suspicious by the detective force that being such intimate friends you lived at separate hotels, and met only in secret. Reports have reached me of your movements, and of your meetings,” he laughed. “More than once you have been regarded as suspected persons,” he added.
“Well, I hope you do not regard me as a suspected person any longer, Señor Andrade!” I exclaimed with a smile.
“No, no,” he laughed. “But I confess you are something of a mystery. Why should the notorious Despujol dare to put his foot into Madrid and lay that deadly plot to kill you? You know the motive, and yet you will not disclose it to me.”
“Not at present,” I said. “If it is found that Charles Rabel is really Despujol, then I will come forward and state all that I know.”
“You promise that?”
“I do.”
“Very well—then I will give orders to have your suspicions investigated,” replied the patient, urbane official. “A detective shall leave by the next train for Montauban with a request to the Prefect of Police of the Department of Tarn-et-Garonne for the arrest of the individual in question, if he should be identified.”
“Then I will accompany him,” I said.
“Excellent,” he exclaimed. “It would be well if Señor Rivero, the head of the Detective Department, whom you have met, went in person to France. I will ring him up at his house.”
He took up the telephone and a few minutes later spoke rapidly in Spanish to the chief detective of Spain.