“You are moving on soon, I hear--before to-morrow.”
“Yes,” said the man, drawling and blinking his eyes, “I do not stay long anywhere. So I may go soon from here. With me it is always uncertain. And you?”
“As soon as I can. I have a boy here with me, and he’s very tired. I want him to get a good night’s rest, and then--”
“Ah, yes.” The man interrupted him. “There is a boy. You are not alone. There is your boy”; and he turned his eyes from Dyke and blinked at the ceiling.
“Moving as I do,” he murmured, after a pause, “now here, now there, not sure myself where next I may be, I do not care to account for myself. In truth--as is generally known--I prefer not to be met with or observed, even involuntarily.”
Then he asked Dyke how it was that he, who appeared to be an Englishman, had so reduced himself in baggage and belongings, when visiting a neighbourhood as unfrequented as this. In the same careless tone as before, Dyke gave him a brief but entirely truthful outline of his trip: describing how he had gone far north in search of an ancient mine, and how his followers had decamped, leaving him and his young servant to get out of the scrape as best they could.
“And you succeeded in getting out of that scrape. It was well done. And the boy, too.” As the man said this, a flutter seemed to pass from his eyelids downward through the flesh of his cheeks till it played about his moist lips as a sickening deadly sort of smile. “Yes, you and your boy!” And, his face rigid again, he showed for a moment the underpart of his tongue obtruding through his opened teeth.
He asked a few more languid questions, but not one in regard to Dyke’s possible possession of any money; and Dyke knew that this apparent lack of curiosity on the point was a bad sign.
While they talked the woman brought in the food--an omelette, some cold chicken, and a flask of wine. She hummed a few notes of a song as she bustled in and out. Acting as waitress, she moved swiftly round and about the table, and every now and then darted at Dyke a glance that seemed to have meaning in it. The man called Martinez ate greedily, but his leader scarcely at all. He sat staring at the wine in his glass, held the glass up to the flame of the nearest candle, and slobbered its edge as he took an occasional sip.