Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/178

 derson?" Helena inquired, lifting her eyes suddenly. "Have you murdered him, too?"

"I did not intend to speak of the sailor—a trifle, a thing of no consequence."

"Since you have spoken, Don Abrahan, tell me where he is, what you are going to do with him. He was under my poor protection. I have a right to know how far my hospitality has been shamed by the armed tyrants who invaded my home."

"He is not dead; no man holds him in such account as to want his life, as far as I know. It is not the custom to honor peones who desert their masters by so much as hanging them. You understand the country's customs—you are no alien here."

"What have you done withhim? I have a right to know."

"He will be brought here today, to take up his labors again," Don Abrahan answered shortly. "Now, for this matter that I called you here to confer upon."

Don Abrahan lapsed away again into that suspended introspective pause. So the master of the torture paused in the melancholy chamber of the inquisition, calculating the utmost strain the tendons of his stretched victim could bear without snapping. The same greedy glint must have shone in his eyes as enlivened Don Abrahan's that moment, watching the young woman at the end of his great oak table over the paper's edge.

Helena sat with hands loosely clasped in her lap.