Lastly I told him of what had happened upon the previous night and how my enemy had evaded me.
All the while that I was speaking Fonseca, wrapped in a rich Moorish robe, sat up in the bed holding his knees beneath his chin, and watching my face with his keen eyes.
But he spoke no word and made no sign till I had finished the tale.
‘You are strangely foolish, nephew,’ he said at length.
‘For the most part youth fails through rashness, but you err by over-caution.
By over-caution in your fence you lost your chance last night, and so by over-caution in hiding this tale from me you have lost a far greater opportunity.
What, have you not seen me give counsel in many such matters, and have you ever known me to betray the confidence even of the veriest stranger?
Why then did you fear for yours?’
‘I do not know,’ I answered, ‘but I thought that first I would search for myself.’
‘Pride goeth before a fall, nephew.
Now listen: had I known this history a month ago, by now de Garcia had perished miserably, and not by your hand, but by that of the law.
I have been acquainted with the man from his childhood, and know enough to hang him twice over did I choose to speak.
More, I knew your mother, boy, and now I see that it was the likeness in your face to hers that haunted me, for from the first it was familiar.
It was I also who bribed the keepers of the Holy Office to let your father loose, though, as it chanced, I never saw him, and arranged his flight.
Since then, I have had de Garcia through my hands some four or five times, now under this name and now under that.
Once even he came to me as a client, but the villainy that he would have worked was too black for me to touch.
This man is the wickedest whom I have known in Seville, and that is saying much, also he is the cleverest and the most revengeful.
He lives by vice for vice, and there are many deaths upon his hands.
But he has never prospered in his evil-doing, and to-day he is but an adventurer without a name, who lives by blackmail, and by ruining women that he may rob them at his leisure.
Give me those books from the strong box yonder, and I will tell you of this de Garcia.’
I did as he bade me, bringing the heavy parchment volumes, each bound in vellum and written in cipher.
‘These are my records,’ he said, ‘though none can read them except myself.
Now for the index. Ah! here it is. Give me volume three, and open it at page two hundred and one.’
I obeyed, laying the book on the bed before him, and he began to read the crabbed marks as easily as though they were good black-letter.
‘De Garcia—Juan.
Height, appearance, family, false names, and so on.
This is it—history. Now listen.’
Then came some two pages of closely written matter, expressed in secret signs that Fonseca translated as he read.
It was brief enough, but such a record as it contained I have never heard before nor since.
Here, set out against this one man’s name, was well nigh every wickedness of which a human being could be capable, carried through by him to gratify his appetites and revengeful hate, and to provide himself with gold.
In that black list were two murders: one of a rival by the knife, and one of a mistress by poison.
And there were other things even worse, too shameful, indeed, to be written.
‘Doubtless there is more that has not come beneath my notice,’ said Fonseca coolly, ‘but these things I know for truth, and one of the murders could be proved against him were he captured.
Stay, give me ink, I must add to the record.’
And he wrote in his cipher:
‘In May, 1517, the said de Garcia sailed to England on a trading voyage, and there, in the parish of Ditchingham, in the county of Norfolk, he murdered Luisa Wingfield, spoken of above as Luisa de Garcia, his cousin, to whom he was once betrothed.
In September of the same year, or previously, under cover of a false marriage, he decoyed and deserted one Donna Isabella of the noble family of Siguenza, a nun in a religious house in this city.’
‘What!’ I exclaimed, ‘is the girl who came to seek your help two nights since the same that de Garcia deserted?’
‘The very same, nephew.
It was she whom you heard pleading with him last night.
Had I known two days ago what I know to-day, by now this villain had been safe in prison.
But perhaps it is not yet too late.
I am ill, but I will rise and see to it.
Leave it to me, nephew.
Go, nurse yourself, and leave it to me; if anything may be done I can do it.
Stay, bid a messenger be ready. This evening I shall know whatever there is to be known.’
That night Fonseca sent for me again.
‘I have made inquiries,’ he said.
‘I have even warned the officers of justice for the first time for many years, and they are hunting de Garcia as bloodhounds hunt a slave.
But nothing can be heard of him.