Romance Part 55

The old judge said, "How lucky, Don Patricio! We may now satisfy the English admiral. What good fortune!"

He suddenly sat straight in his chair; O'Brien behind him scrutinized my face--to see how I should bear what was coming.

"What is your name?" the judge asked peremptorily.

I said, "Juan--John Kemp. I am of n.o.ble English family; I am well enough known. Ask the Senor O'Brien."

On O'Brien's shaken face the smile hardened.

"I heard that in Rio Medio the senor was called... was called..." He paused and appealed to the _Lugareno_.

"What was he called--the _capataz_ the man who led the picaroons?"

The _Lugareno_ stammered, "Nikola... Nikola el Escoces, Senor Don Patricio."

"You hear?" O'Brien asked the judge. "This villager identifies the man."

"Undoubtedly--undoubtedly," the _Juez_ said. "We need no more evidence.... You, Senor, have seen this villain in Rio Medio, this villager identifies him by name."

I said, "This is absurd. A hundred witnesses can say that I am John Kemp...."

"That may be true," the _Juez_ said dryly, and then to his clerk:

"Write here, 'John Kemp, of n.o.ble British family, called, on the scene of his crimes, Nikola el Escoces, otherwise El Demonio.'"

I shrugged my shoulders. I did not, at the moment, realize to what this all tended.

The judge said to the clerk, "Read the Act of Accusation. Read here...."

He was pointing to a paragraph of the papers the clerk had brought in.

They were the Act of Accusation, prepared long before, against the man Nichols.

This particular villainy suddenly became grotesquely and portentously plain. The clerk read an appalling catalogue of sordid crimes, working into each other like kneaded dough--the testimony of witnesses who had signed the record. Nikola had looted fourteen s.h.i.+ps, and had apparently murdered twenty-two people with his own hand--two of them women--and there was the affair of Rowley's boats. "The pinnace," the clerk read, "of the British came within ten yards. The said Nikola then exclaimed, 'Curse the bloodthirsty hounds,' and fired the grapeshot into the boat.

Seven were killed by that discharge. This I saw with my own eyes....

Signed, Isidoro Alemanno." And another swore, "The said Nikola was below, but he came running up, and with one blow of his knife severed the throat of the man who was kneeling on the deck...."

There was no doubt that Nikola had committed these crimes; that the witnesses had sworn to them and signed the deposition.... The old judge had evidently never seen him, and now O'Brien and the _Lugareno_ had sworn that I was Nikola el Escoces, alias El Demonio.

My first impulse was to shout with rage; but I checked it because I knew I should be silenced. I said:

"I am not Nikola el Escoces. That I can easily prove."

The Judge of the First Instance shrugged his shoulders and looked, with implicit trust, up into O'Brien's face.

"That man," I pointed at the _Lugareno_, "is a pirate. And, what is more, he is in the pay of the Senor Juez O'Brien. He was the lieutenant of a man called Manuel-del-Popolo, who commanded the _Lugarenos_ after Nikola left Rio Medio."

"You know very much about the pirates," the _Juez_ said, with the sardonic air of a very stupid man. "Without doubt you were intimate with them. I sign now your order for committal to the _carcel_ of the Marine Court."

I said, "But I tell you I am not Nikola...."

The _Juez_ said impa.s.sively, "You pa.s.s out of my hands into those of the Marine Court. I am satisfied that you are a person deserving of a trial.

That is the limit of my responsibility."

I shouted then, "But I tell you this...o...b..ien is my personal enemy."

The old man smiled acidly.

"The senor need fear nothing of our courts. He will be handed over to his own countrymen. Without doubt of them he will obtain justice." He signed to the _Lugareno_ to go, and rose, gathering up his papers; he bowed to O'Brien. "I leave the criminal at the disposal of your wors.h.i.+p," he said, and went out with his clerk.

O'Brien sent out the two soldiers after him, and stood there alone. He had never been so near his death. But for sheer curiosity, for my sheer desire to know what he _could_ say, I would have smashed in his brains with the clerk's stool. I was going to do it; I made one step towards the stool. Then I saw that he was crying.

"The curse--the curse of Cromwell on you," he sobbed suddenly. "You send me back to h.e.l.l again." He writhed his whole body. "Sorrow!" he said, "I know it. But what's this? What's _this?_"

The many reasons he had for sorrow flashed on me like a procession of sombre images.

"Dead and done with a man can bear," he muttered. "But this--Not to know--perhaps alive--perhaps hidden--She may be dead...." With a change like a flash he was commanding me.

"Tell me how you escaped."

I had a vague inspiration of the truth.

"You aren't fit for a decent man's speaking to," I said.

"You let her drown."

It gave me suddenly the measure of his ignorance; he did not know anything--nothing. His h.e.l.l was uncertainty. Well, let him stay there.

"Where is she?" he said. "Where is she?"

"Where she's no need to fear you," I answered.

He had a sudden convulsive gesture, as if searching for a weapon.

"If you'll tell me she's alive..." he began.

"Oh, I'm not dead," I answered.

"Never a drowned puppy was more," he said, with a flash of vivacity.

"You hang here--for murder--or in England for piracy."

"Then I've little to want to live for," I sneered at him.

"You let her drown," he said. "You took her from that house, a young girl, in a little boat. And you can hold up your head."

"I was trying to save her from you," I answered.

"By G.o.d," he said. "These English--I've seen them, spit the child on the mother's breast. I've seen them set fire to the thatch of the widow and childless. But this.... But this.... I can save you, I tell you."

"You can't make me go through worse than I've borne," I answered. Sorrow and all he might wish on my head, my life was too precious to him till I spoke. I wasn't going to speak.