"Casa Triana? What do you mean?" cried Dick. Then he laughed. "Is the person you're talking about a Spaniard?"
Dick laughed a great deal more. "Well, I guess you'll have to look somewhere else. There's a mistake. The gentleman in the grey coat and all the other grey things has hardly enough Spanish to know what you're driving at."
The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and looked determined. "There is no mistake in my instructions, señor. I am sorry, but it is my duty to detain that gentleman. If there is an error there will be apologies."
"I should say there jolly well was an error," sputtered Dick, in his wild combination of Spanish and English and American. "George, show your card. He thinks you're a Spaniard, who's 'wanted.' "
The gentleman in the grey coat showed the visiting cards of Mr. George Smith, and the Spanish soldier examined them gloomily. "Anybody might have these," said he, half to us, half to a group of his countrymen. "Señor, I must reluctantly ask you to descend and to come with me. It will be much better to do so quietly."
"Of all the monstrous indignities," shouted Dick. "I'm a newspaper correspondent on a special detail. I'll wire the American minister in Madrid, and the English Ambassador too. I'll--"
But the gentleman in the grey coat had obeyed the sergeant. He had also taken off his goggles.
"It will be all right in a few hours, or a few days," said he in English. "You must go on. Don't worry about me."
"Go on without you?" echoed Dick, breaking again into astonishing Spanish for the benefit of the official. "Well, if you really don't mind, as I'm in the dickens of a hurry. You can follow by train, you know, as soon as you've proved to these blunderers that you're George Smith."
"If you are Señor George Smith, you will be free as soon as the photograph of the Marqués de Casa Triana has been sent on by the police at Madrid," said the sergeant. "If not--" he did not finish his sentence; but the break was significant. And the soldiers closed in to separate the alleged George Smith from his companions of the car, lest at the last moment they should attempt a rescue.
"We'll make them sorry for this, George," said Dick. "But as we really can't do much for you here, we'll get on somewhere else, where we can."