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.’