There were few people in the saloon of the café, for a chill wind was abroad, and the _cappa_ is a very poor protection against the icy breezes that blow from the Sierras.
A man greeted the horseman as he entered--a stout man with bulging cheeks and puffy eyes. He breathed wheezily, and his hands moved with a strange restlessness.
They hailed each other in the Andalusian dialect, and the newcomer ordered "_Café c'leche_."
"Well, friend?" asked the stout man, when the waiter had disappeared. "What is the news?"
"The best," replied the other in the same language. "T. B. is finished."
"It's a fact. Ramundo shot him at close range, but the devil went down fighting. They've got Ramundo."
"For us, no; for him, yes," said the man carelessly. "Ramundo knows nothing except that he has been living in the lap of luxury in London on the wages of an unknown employer."
"What will he get?" asked the stout man nervously.
"You are getting jumpy, friend Grayson," he said coolly.
"I am getting sick of this life," said Grayson. "We're making money by the million, but what is the use of it? We are dogs that dare not show our noses abroad; we're exiled and damned, and there is no future."
"You might as well be here as in prison," philosophised his friend. "And in prison you most certainly would be, if not worse----"
"We had no hand in the murders," interrupted Grayson pleadingly. "Now did we, Baggin?"
"I know little about the English law," drawled George T. Baggin, sometime treasurer of the London, Manhattan, and Jersey Securities Syndicate. "But such knowledge as I have enables me to say with certainty that we should be hanged--sure."
"Ramundo killed one and Poltavo the other," he mumbled. "What about Poltavo?"
"He was standing by when T. B. was shot; but, as soon as he saw the policeman was down and out, he skipped. He arrives to-night."
Some thought came to him which was not quite agreeable, for he frowned.
"Poltavo, of course, knows," he went on meditatively. "Poltavo is one with us."
"He has been a valuable member," ventured Grayson.
"Had been," said the other, emphasising the first word.
"What do you mean? Was it not he who established our stations and got the right men to work 'em? Why, he has got the whole thing at his fingers' ends."