The clerk said, “In good time....” And then, in the same tone of
disinterested official routine, he spoke to the _Lugareño_, who, from
beside the door, rolled very frightened eyes from the judges and the
clerk to myself and the soldiers--“Advance.”
The judge, in a hurried, perfunctory voice, put questions to the
_Lugareño_; the clerk scratched with a large quill on a sheet of paper.
“Where do you come from?”
“The town of Rio Medio, Excellency.”
“Of what occupation?”
“Excellency--a few goats....”
“Why are you here?”
“My daughter, Excellency, married Pepe of the posada in the Calle....”
The judge said, “Yes, yes,” with an unsanguine impatience. The
_Lugareño’s_ dirty hands jumped nervously on the large rim of his limp
hat.
“You lodge a complaint against the senor there.”
The clerk pointed the end of his quill towards me.
“I? God forbid, Excellency,” the _Lugareño_ bleated. “The _Alguazil_ of
the Criminal Court instructed me to be watchful.”
“You lodge an information, then?” the _juez_ said.
“Maybe it is an information, Excellency,” the _Lugareño_ answered, “as
regards the senor there.”
The _Alguazil_ of the Criminal Court had told him, and many other men
of Rio Medio, to be on the watch for me, “undoubtedly touching what had
happened, as all the world knew, in Rio Medio.”
He looked me full in the face with stupid insolence, and said:
“At first I much doubted, for all the world said this man was
dead--though others said worse things. Perhaps, who knows?”
He had seen me, he said, many times in Rio Medio, outside the Casa; on
the balcony of the Casa, too. And he was sure that I was a heretic and
an evil person.
It suddenly struck me that this man--I was undoubtedly familiar with his
face--must be the lieutenant of Manuel-del-Popolo, his boon companion.
Without doubt, he had seen me on the balcony of the Casa.
He had gained a lot of assurance from the conciliatory manner of the
_Juez_, and said suddenly, in a tentative way:
“An evil person; a heretic? Who knows? Perhaps it was he who incited
some people there to murder his señoria, the illustrious Don.”
I said almost contemptuously, “Surely the charge against me is most
absurd? Everyone knows who I am.”
The old judge made a gentle, tired motion with his hand.
“Señor,” he said, “there is no charge against you--except that no
one knows who you are. You were in a place where very lamentable
and inexplicable things happened; you are now in Havana: you have no
passport. I beg of you to remain calm. These things are all in order.”
I hadn’t any doubt that, as far as he knew, he was speaking the truth.
He was a man, very evidently, of a weary and naïve simplicity. Perhaps
it was really true--that I should only have to explain; perhaps it was
all over.
O’Brien came into the room with the casual step of an official from an
office entering another’s room.
It was as if seeing me were a thing that he very much disliked--that
he came because he wanted to satisfy himself of my existence, of my
identity, and my being alone. The slow stare that he gave me did not
mitigate the leisureliness of his entry. He walked behind the table; the
judge rose with immense deference; with his eternal smile, and no
word spoken, he motioned the judge to resume the examination; he stood
looking at the clerk’s notes meditatively, the smile still round lips
that had a nervous tremble, and eyes that had dark marks beneath them.
He seemed as if he were still smiling just after having been violently
shaken.
The judge went on examining the _Lugareño_.
“Do you know whence the señor came?”
“Excellency, Excellency....” The man stuttered, his eyes on O’Brien’s
face.
“Nor how long he was in the town of Rio Medio?” the judge went on.
O’Brien suddenly drooped towards his ear. “All those things are known,
senor, my colleague,” he said, and began to whisper.
The old judge showed signs of very naïve astonishment and joy.
“Is it possible?” he exclaimed. “This man? He is very young to have
committed such crimes.”
The clerk hurriedly left the room. He returned with many papers.
O’Brien, leaning over the judge’s shoulder, emphasized words with one
finger. What new villainies could O’Brien be meditating? It wasn’t
possibly the _Lugareño’s_ suggestion that I had lured men to murder Don
Balthasar? Was it merely that I had infringed some law in carrying off
Seraphina?
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 noble English family; I am well enough
known. Ask the Señor 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 _Lugareño_.
“What was he called--the _capataz_ the man who led the picaroons?”
The _Lugareño_ stammered, “Nikola... Nikola el Escoces, Señor 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, Señor, 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 noble 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 ships, 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 _Lugareño_ 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 _Lugareño_, “is a pirate. And, what is
more, he is in the pay of the Señor Juez O’Brien. He was the lieutenant
of a man called Manuel-del-Popolo, who commanded the _Lugareños_ 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.”