‘Now, my dear Hartfield, what can I do for you?’ asked Fitzpatrick, when the clerk had gone.  ’I can see by your face that you’ve something serious in hand.  Can I help you?’

’You can, I believe, in a very material way.  You were five-and-twenty years in Spanish America?’

‘Rather more than less.’

‘Here, there, and everywhere?’

’Yes; there is not a city in South America that I have not lived in—­for something between a day and a year.’

’You know something about most men of any mark in that part of the world, I conclude?’

’It was my business to know men of all kinds.  I had my mission from the Spanish Government.  I was engaged to examine the condition of commerce throughout the colony, the working of protection as against free trade, and so on.  Strange, by-the-bye, that Cuba, the last place to foster the slave trade, was of all spots of the earth the first to carry free-trade principles into practical effect, long before they were recognised in any European country.’

’Strange to me that you should speak of Cuba so soon after my coming in,’ answered Lord Hartfield.  ’I am here to ask you to help me to find out the antecedents of a man who hails from that island.’

‘I ought to know something about him, whoever he is,’ replied Mr. Fitzpatrick, briskly.  ’I spent six months in Cuba not very long before my return to England.  Cuba is one of my freshest memories; and I have a pretty tight memory for facts, names and figures.  Never could remember two lines of poetry in my life.’

’Did you ever hear of, or meet with, a man called Montesma—­Gomez de Montesma?’

’Couldn’t have stopped a month in Havana without hearing something about that gentleman,’ answered Fitzpatrick, ’I hope he isn’t a friend of yours, and that you have not lent him money?’

‘Neither; but I want to know all you can tell me about him.’

‘You shall have it in black and white, out of my Cuban note-book,’ replied the other, unlocking a drawer in the official table; ’I always take notes of anything worth recording, on the spot.  A man is a fool who trusts to memory, where personal character is at stake.  Montesma is as well known at Havana as the Morro Fort or the Tacon Theatre.  I have heard stories enough about him to fill a big volume; but all the facts recorded there’—­striking the morocco cover of the note-book—­’have been thoroughly sifted; I can vouch for them.’

He looked at the index, found the page, and handed the book to Lord Hartfield.

‘Read for yourself,’ he said, quietly.

Lord Hartfield read three or four pages of plain statement as to various adventures by sea and land in which Gomez de Montesma had figured, and the reputation which he bore in Cuba and on the Main.

‘You can vouch for this?’ he said at last, after a long silence.

‘For every syllable.’

‘The story of his marriage?’