“English guineas,” Jurado said, “fifteen letters, twenty guineas each.” He was feeling more confident now. He kept a loaded pistol in the bureau’s bottom drawer. He tested the mainspring every day and changed the powder at least once a month. And his fear had subsided now that he understood Montseny really was a priest. A frightening priest, to be sure, but still a man of God. “If you prefer to pay Spanish money, Father,” he went on, “then the letters are yours for thirteen hundred dollars.”

“Thirteen hundred dollars?” Father Montseny responded absently. He was reading one of the letters. It was written in English, but that was no problem for he had learned the language in Hampshire. The letter’s writer had been deeply in love and the fool had committed that love to paper. The fool had made promises, and the girl to whom he had made the promises had turned out to be a whore, and Jurado was her pimp, and now the pimp wanted to blackmail the letter writer.

“I have a reply.” The pimp dared to speak without invitation.

“From the English?”

“Yes, Father. It’s in here.” Jurado gestured at the bureau’s bottom drawer.

Father Montseny nodded his permission and Jurado opened the drawer, then yelped because a fist had struck him so hard that he reeled backward. He hit the door behind him, which gave way so that he fell on his back in the bedroom. Father Montseny took the pistol from the bureau drawer, opened the frizzen, blew out the powder, and tossed the now useless weapon onto one of the silk-covered couches. “You said you had received a reply?” he asked as though there had been no violence.

Jurado was shaking now. “They said they would pay.”

“You have arranged the exchange?”

“Not yet.” Jurado hesitated. “Are you with the English?”

“No, thank God. I am with the most holy Roman church. So how do you communicate with the English?”

“I am to leave a message at the Cinco Torres.”