"You must wait, my good Dobson, you must wait," the Spaniard said, "until I tell you that I want your assistance, though I do not think it probable that I shall ever want it. You could not find out that I was _Corot_, you know, although I had many times the pleasure of lunching at the next table to you; I do not think that you will be able any the better to find the man I seek. But when I find him, Dobson, I promise you that you shall have the pleasure of arresting him, so that the reward shall come to you. That is, if I do not have to arrest him suddenly upon the moment, myself, so as to prevent him escaping." "And what are you doing now, _Signor?_" Dobson asked, giving him a title more familiar to him in its pronunciation than the Spanish one, "what are you doing to find him?" "I am practising a virtue, my friend, that I have practised much in my life. I am waiting." "I don't see that waiting is much good, Signor. There is not much good ever done by waiting." "The greatest good in the world, Dobson, the very greatest. And you do not see now, Dobson, because you do not know what I know. So you, too, must be virtuous, and wait." It was only with banter of a slightly concealed nature such as this that Señor Guffanta would answer Dobson, but, light as his answers were, he had still managed to impress the detective with the idea that, sooner or later, he would achieve the task he had vowed to perform. "But," as the man said to one of his brethren, "why don't he get to work, why don't he do something? He won't find the man in that Hôtel Lepanto where he sits smoking cigarettes half the day, nor yet in Lord Penlyn's house where he goes every night." "Perhaps he thinks his lordship did it, after all," the other answered, "and is watching _him_." "No," Dobson said, "he don't think that. But I can't make out who the deuce he does suspect." It was true enough that Guffanta did pass a considerable time in the Hôtel Lepanto, smoking cigarettes, and always thinking deeply, whether seated in the corridor or in his own room upstairs. But, although he had not allowed himself to say one word to any of the other men on the subject, and still spoke with certainty of ere long finding the murderer, he was forced to acknowledge that, for the time, he was baffled. And then, as he did acknowledge this, he would rise from his chair and stretch out his long arms, and laugh grimly to himself. "But only for a time, Miguel," he would say, "only for a time. He will come to you at last, he will come to you as the bird comes to the net. Wait, wait, wait! You may meet him to-day, to-night! _Por Dios_, you will surely trap him at last!"