Murguia hesitated. This polite drawing-room interest was the most ironical of encouragement for villainy. Driscoll frowned impatiently, but at once he was smiling again. He placidly filled his corncob, and a moment later, his gaze piercing the tobacco smoke, he said, "Then I'll tell you. You're here to make a dicker, you and your tool between the lines. The monastery of La Cruz on top of the bluff is the citadel of Queretaro. Maximilian has his quarters there. The troops there are the reserve brigade. This puppy, this mongrel, commands the reserve brigade. He places the sentinels. And you are his orderly.--Oh, I haven't forgotten how he let you off that time he condemned me!--So now you are his orderly, for your own reasons and his. And here you are, talking mysteriously about _capturing_ Maximilian. But you don't mean that, snake. You are here to _sell_ him! Howsoever," and smiling a little at the stilted phrasing, Driscoll paused and delicately rammed the tobacco tighter in the bowl, "howsoever, Murgie, you've come to the wrong market. No, there's no demand for Maximilians just now, not in this booth. But why in blazes didn't you go to Escobedo? With his Shylock beard, I reckon _he'd_ take a flyer in human flesh." "I was going to him, but I came to you first, to take us there, to take Lopez and myself, I--I thought you would manage it all, because you--Your Mercy is the strongest, the most resourceful----" "Resourceful enough, eh, to dodge the bullets you had fixed up for me once? Thanks, Murgie, but I liked your attentions then better than your slimy advances now. By the way, how are you going to get to Escobedo?" The tone was honey itself. Murguia gasped, yet not so much to find himself a prisoner, as to find himself mistaken in the American. "Now maybe," Driscoll suggested, "maybe you'll be wondering yourself why you bring your dirty little affairs to me? Lopez may be an open book, but you seem to've read _me_ wrong. Prob'bly the language is foreign." Murguia's jaw dropped, and he gaped as one who beholds the collapse of high towering walls. It was his system of life, of motives calculated, of humanity weighed. It was the whole fabric of hate and passions which quivered and crashed and flattened in a chaos of dust before his wildly staring eyes. "You mean, senor, you mean you do not want--as well, as _I!_--to bring to his end this libertine, this thief of girlhood, this prince who scatters death, who scatters shame, this--this----" "Man alive, you're screaming! Stop it!" With his nails the old man combed the froth from his lips. "But you too have cause," he cried, "cause not so heavy, but cause enough, as well as I! There was my daughter, my little girl! With you there is that French wo----" He stopped, for he thought he heard the sharp click of teeth. But Driscoll was only grave. "Well, go on," he said. "But--speak for your daughter only."