Dragon's Teeth by Eça de Queirós

AT nine o'clock Sebastião left his house, and braving the sharp northeast wind that made the gas-jets flicker inside the globes, went slowly to the house of Vicente Azurara, a cousin of his, who was a commissary of police. An elderly female servant in shabby attire took him to the bachelor's den where the Senhor Commissary was sweating away a severe cold. He found him enveloped in a great-coat, his feet and legs wrapped in a blanket, sipping hot grog, and reading "O Homem dos tres calcões. " When Sebastião entered he took his eye-glass off his nose and raising his watery eyes, exclaimed, --

"I am tormented with a cold that I have had for the last three days."

He grumbled a little, passing his thin and dirty hand over his face, which was dark and full of lines, and to which a heavy mustache gave a certain air of fierceness.

Sebastião said he was very sorry, but it was not strange with this weather! He advised him to take sulphur-water with boiled milk.

"No; if it does not go away," said the commissary, in a hoarse voice, "I will attack it to-morrow with half a bottle of gin; and then, if it does not go of its own accord, it will have to go by force. And what is the news?"

Sebastião coughed, complained of feeling somewhat indisposed himself, and taking a chair and seating himself near his cousin, said, placing his hand upon the knee of the latter, --

"Vicente, if I were to ask you to let a policeman accompany me on a little matter of business -- merely to show himself -- so that a certain person might make restitution of something that has been stolen, you would give me the order, eh?"

"Order, for what? " asked the commissary slowly, fixing his small eyes on Sebastião.

"The order for him to accompany me, -- only to show himself. It is a delicate affair. To give a fright -- nothing more. It is to make some one restore something that has been stolen, without causing scandal."

"Effects, or money? " said the commissary, slowly twisting his mustache with his long tapering fingers that bore the stains of the cigarette.

Sebastião hesitated.

"Well, effects -- so as not to cause scandal, you understand. You can already imagine that."

"A policeman in order to give some one a fright," murmured Vicente. He blew his nose noisily, and with a sudden change of countenance said, "It is nothing relating to politics?"

"No! " returned Sebastião, with emphasis.

The commissary wrapped the blanket more closely about his feet, and raised his eyes with a suspicious glance.

"It does not concern any person of respectability?"

"Nonsense, man! " returned Sebastião.

"A policeman, in order to give some one a fright," ruminated Vicente. "You are a man of honor; hand me the portfolio that is on the chest of drawers there."

He took from it a sheet of ruled paper, and reflected a moment, with his hand to his head.

"Mendez -- would Mendez do? " he asked. Sebastião, who did not know who Mendez was, responded, --