t last
Sotillo was induced to have Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story,
which was got out of him again with the greatest difficulty, because
every moment he would break out into lamentations. At last, Hirsch
was led away, looking more dead than alive, and shut up in one of the
upstairs rooms to be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his
character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of the San Tome
Administration, remarked that the story sounded incredible. Of course,
he said, he couldn't tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as
he had been exclusively occupied with his own work in looking after the
wounded, and also in attending Don Jose Avellanos. He had succeeded in
assuming so well a tone of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed
to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular inquiry had
been kept up; one of the officers sitting at the table wrote down the
questions and the answers, the others, lounging about the room, listened
attentively, puffing at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the
doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody out.

CHAPTER THREE

Directly they were alone, the colonel's severe official manner changed.
He rose and approached the doctor. His eyes shone with rapacity and
hope; he became confidential. "The silver might have been indeed put on
board the lighter, but it was not conceivable that it should have been
taken out to sea." The doctor, watching every word, nodded slightly,
smoking with apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him
as a sign of his friendly intentions. The doctor's manner of cold
detachment from the rest of the Europeans led Sotillo on, till, from
conjecture to conjecture, he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this
was a putup job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold
of that immense treasure all to himself. The doctor, observant and
self-possessed, muttered, "He is very capable of that."

Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, amusement, and
indignation, "You said that of Charles Gould!" Disgust, and even some
suspicion, crept into his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans,
there appeared to be something dubious about the doctor's personality.

"What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing scoundrel?"
he asked. "What's the object of an infernal lie of that sort? That
confounded pick-pocket was quite capable of believing you."

He snorted. For a time th