Roddy, now thoroughly exasperated, protested warmly: "Look here," he cried, "if you aren't careful you'll tell me something you don't want me to know."
The Consul came to an instant pause. From his great height he stood staring at his visitor, the placid depths of his blue eyes glowering with doubt and excitement.
"I give you my word," continued Roddy sulkily, "I don't know what you are talking about."
"Do you mean to tell me," demanded the old man truculently, "that you are _not_ Mr. Forrester's son?"
"Then," returned the Consul, "perhaps you will deny he is suing Alvarez for two million dollars gold, you will deny that he might get it if Alvarez were thrown out, you will deny that a--a certain person might ratify the concession, and pay your father for the harbor improvements he has already made? You see!" exclaimed the Consul triumphantly. "And these missing boxes!" he cried as though following up an advantage, "shall I tell you what is in them?" He lowered his voice. "Cartridges and rifles! Do you deny it?"
Roddy found that at last he was on firm ground.
"Of course I deny it," he answered, "because there are no boxes. They're only an invention of mine to get me to Curaçao. Now, you let _me_ talk."
The Consul retreated behind his desk, and as Roddy spoke regarded him sternly and with open suspicion. In concluding his story Roddy said: "We have no other object in saving General Rojas than that he's an old man, that he's dying, and that Peter and I can't sleep of nights for thinking of him lying in a damp cell, not three hundred yards from us, coughing himself to death."
At the words the eyes of the Consul closed quickly; he pressed his great, tanned, freckled fingers nervously against his lip. But instantly the stern look of the cross-examiner returned. "Go on," he commanded.
"If we have cut in on some one's private wire," continued Roddy, "it's an accident; and when you talk about father recovering two million dollars you are telling me things I don't know. Father is not a chatty person. He has often said to me that the only safe time to talk of what you are doing, or are going to do, is when you have done it. So, if the Venezuelan government owes the Forrester Construction Company two millions and father's making a fight for it, I am probably the last person in the world he would talk to about it. All I know is that he pays me twenty dollars a week to plant buoys. But out of working hours I can do as I please, and my friend and I please to get General Rojas out of prison." Roddy rose, smiling pleasantly. "So, if you won't introduce me to Señora Rojas," he concluded, "I guess I will have to introduce myself."