t the man existed, at any rate," I said. "I knew him--I've talked
with him. He came out second mate in the same ship with me--in the old
_Thames_. Ramon took charge of him in Kingston, and that's the last
positive thing I can swear to, of him. But that he was in Rio Medio for
two years, and vanished from there almost directly after that unlucky
boat affair, I am absolutely certain."

"Well, I suppose O'Brien knows where to lay his hand on him. But no
matter where the fellow is, in jail or out of it, the admiral will never
get hold of him. If they had him they could not think of giving him up.
He knows too much of the game; and remember that O'Brien, if he wobbles
in the socket, is by no means down yet. A man like that doesn't get
knocked over like a ninepin. You may be sure he has twenty skeletons put
away in good places, that he will haul out one by one, rather than
let himself be squashed. He's not going to give in. A few days ago, a
priest--your priest, you know--turned up here on foot from Rio Medio,
and went about wringing his hands, declaring that he knew all the truth,
and meant to make a noise about it, too. O'Brien made short work of him,
though; got the archbishop to send him into retreat, as they call it,
to a Franciscan convent a hundred miles from here. These things are
whispered about all along the gutters of this place."

I imagined the poor Father Antonio, with his simple resignation,
mourning for us in his forced retreat, brokenhearted, and murmuring,
"Inscrutable, inscrutable." I should have liked to see the old man.

"I tell you the town is fairly buzzing with the atrocities of this
business," Sebright went on. "It's the thing for fashionable people to
go and see what I may call the relics of the crime. They are on show in
the waiting-hall of the Palace of Justice. Why, I went there myself. You
go through a swing door into a big place that, for cheerfulness, is no
better than a monster coal cellar, and there you behold, laid out on
a little black table, Mrs. Williams' woollen shawl, your Senorita's
tortoise-shell comb, that had got entangled in it somehow, and my old
cap that I lent you--you remember. I assure you, it gave me the horrors
to see the confounded things spread out there in that dim religious
light. Dash me, if I didn't go queer all over. And all the time swell
carriages stopping before the portico, dressed-up women walking up in
pairs and threes, sighing before the missus' shawl, turning