Captain Mitchell walked up with undisguised
eagerness, put it to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly.
Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance. Again he looked aside
at the doctor, who stared at him unwinkingly.
But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, without as much as a nod or a
glance, he hastened to say--
"You may go and wait downstairs for the senor doctor, whom I am going to
liberate, too. You foreigners are insignificant, to my mind."
He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, while Captain
Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him with some interest.
"The law shall take note later on of your transgressions," Sotillo
hurried on. "But as for me, you can live free, unguarded, unobserved.
Do you hear, Senor Mitchell? You may depart to your affairs. You are
beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by matters of the very
highest importance."
Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an answer. It displeased
him to be liberated insultingly; but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties,
a profound disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver-saving
business weighed upon his spirits.
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