Across the end of the Calle San Gregorio, and commanding
that narrow street, stood the Palacio Sarrion—an
empty house the greater part of the year—a
vast building, of which the windows increased in size
as they mounted skywards. There were wrought-iron
balconies, of which the window embrasures were so
deep that the shutters folded sideways into the wall
instead of swinging back as in houses of which the
walls were of normal thickness.
The friar was probably accustomed to seeing the Palacio
Sarrion rigidly shut up. He never, in his quick,
humble scrutiny of his surroundings glanced up at
it. And, therefore, he never saw a man sitting
quietly behind the curiously wrought railings, smoking
a cigarette—a man who had witnessed the
whole incident from beginning to end. Who had,
indeed, seen more than the friar or the two quiet
men-servants. For he had seen a stick—probably
a sword-stick, such as nearly every Spanish gentleman
carries in his own country—fly from the
hand of Don Francisco de Mogente at the moment when
he was attacked, and fall into the gutter on the darker
side of the street, where it lay unheeded. Where,
indeed, it still remained when the friar with his
swinging gait had turned the corner of the Calle San
Gregorio.
CHAPTER II
EvasioMon There are some people whose
presence in a room seems to establish a mental centre
of gravity round which other minds hover uneasily,
conscious of the dead weight of that attraction.
“I have known Evasio all my life,” the
Count de Sarrion once said to his son. “I
have stood at the edge of that pit and looked in.
I do not know to this day whether there is gold at
the bottom or mud. I have never quarreled with
him, and, therefore, we have never made it up.”
Which, perhaps, was as good a description of Evasio
Mon as any man had given. He had never quarreled
with any one. He was, in consequence, a lonely
man. For the majority of human beings are gregarious.
They meet together in order to quarrel. The majority
of women prefer to sit and squabble round one table
to seeking another room. They call it the domestic
circle, and spend their time in straining at the family
tie in order to prove its strength.
It was Evasio Mon who, standing at the open window
of his apartment in the tall house next door to the
Posada de los Reyes on the Paseo del Ebro, had observed
with the help of a field-glass, that a traveler was
crossing the river by the ferry-boat after midnight.
He noted the unusual proceeding with a tolerant shrug.
It will be remembered that he closed his glasses with
a smile—not a smile of amusement or of contempt—not
even a deep smile such as people wear in books.
It was merely a smile, and could not be construed
into anything else by any physiognomist. The
wrinkles that made it were deeply marked, which suggested
that Evasio Mon had learnt to smile when he was quite
young. He had, perhaps, been taught.
