THE SWORD TRIUMPHANT.
“You are in unusually good spirits this evening, Senor Ashley.”
“I am always happy when I am near you, senorita,” is Jack’s fervent
response. At which speech, the warmest she has ever heard from his lips,
Juanita grows as rosy as the morn and does not appear displeased.
“Is that dreadfully important work which has occupied so much of your
time this evening yet finished?”
“Very nearly.”
“And you can devote a little time to your friends?”
“I am ready to devote the remainder of my existence to one of them,
senorita.”
“Oh, what unselfishness! When do you expect to begin?”
“Whenever I have reason to believe that such devotion will be rewarded
by—”
“Reward? Then it is not a bit unselfish and does not deserve
encouragement,” interrupts the young lady, with a toss of her head.
“You are cruel, senorita,” murmurs Ashley, but his voice does not betray
a great deal of grief.
“I am just,” declares Juanita. “While I have been sitting here at the
mercy of a lot of frightfully stupid men, you have devoted your time to
the entertainment of Mrs. Harding. Perhaps that was the devotion you
alluded to a moment ago,” ventures the young lady, with a pretty frown.
“Hardly,” laughs Jack. “You do not know Mrs. Harding, senorita.”
“Perhaps not as well as you, Senor Ashley. My opportunities have not
been so good. I saw you come in from the garden. One would hardly judge
that you had met her only half an hour ago.”
“Oh, the fair Isabel and I are old friends,” Ashley remarks, serenely.
“Indeed? Yet you told me—”
“I will tell you more, senorita.”
“I don’t want to hear any more,” opposes Juanita crossly. “You have
deceived me once and I—”
“Deceived thee? Ah, Juanita—” Jack checks himself as he notes the flush
of annoyance in her cheeks.
“Hello! There’s the chap I’ve been looking for,” suddenly remarks
Ashley, as he catches a glimpse of Capt. Guerra over by the big
staircase. “Will you pardon me just a moment, senorita? That will
complete my evening work, and then if a lifetime of devotion will—”
“Stop! I shan’t hear another word,” breaks in Juanita, imperiously. “And
you need not hurry back,” she adds irritably, provoked by Ashley’s
serenity.
Meanwhile Ashley is telling himself that he must be progressing in his
wooing, since Juanita has betrayed symptoms of jealousy. “Devotion? She
little knows how much need she has of a clear head and strong arm,” he
thinks. “Ah, Capt. Guerra,” he remarks, pausing before a
distinguished-appearing gentleman who is idling by the staircase, “will
you be good enough to follow me into the garden?”
Ashley passes out and Guerra follows him curiously. When they are alone
and unobserved Ashley takes an envelope from his pocket and presses it
into the captain’s hand.
“Read that and then destroy it,” he directs.
“Your meaning, senor?”
“No explanation is necessary. I am ignorant of the contents of the
documents further than that their publicity would be deuced awkward for
you and incidentally for myself.”
“Wonderful! How came you by them?”
“That is my affair, senor. Had I not rescued them they would now be in
the hands of Truenos. Adios!” And Jack leaves the mystified Spaniard to
his own devices.
Meantime a little scene that would afford Ashley the keenest delight to
witness is taking place in one of the rooms of the palace. Gen. Truenos
is seated at a table littered with maps and papers and Gen. Murillo and
Isabel Harding have just been ushered into the apartment.
“You have succeeded?” Truenos asks as Mrs. Harding approaches.
“Beyond expectation. Quesada may not be the head and front of the
offenders, but he is certainly one in whom there has been placed some
authority.”
“Quesada is now a fugitive,” asserts Truenos.
“Indeed?” This is news to Isabel. “Ashley’s warning,” she thinks. “When
did you learn this, general?”
“To-day. He has taken refuge on board the United States cruiser. I have
strongly suspected Quesada, but have not particularly feared him.
Quesada is a figurehead. What I want is proof of conspiracy on the part
of men any one of whom is more troublesome than a dozen Quesadas—men I
suspect to be conspiring against the government even while pretending to
serve it.”
“Would certain dispatches from Don Quesada addressed to Capt. Francisco
Guerra furnish the necessary evidence?” asks Mrs. Harding.
“Ah! You have intercepted such?”
“Better. I am the bearer of them.”
Truenos regards his spy admiringly. “Bueno! The papers at once!” he
cries.
“And my reward?” suggests Isabel, as she takes from her bosom the
precious envelope.
“Anything that you may ask—in reason,” replies the captain-general,
reaching impatiently for the documents. “Why, how is this? This letter
is addressed to me.”
“To you?” exclaims Isabel in astonishment. “Surely—why—there must be
some mistake.”
“Evidently,” rejoins Truenos, as he breaks the seal.
Isabel watches him anxiously as he scans the document. A pale sickly
light is beginning to break upon her bewilderment.
Ashley! The papers have been tampered with! It was for that he led her
to the garden. How did he know, before they spoke, who were the two men
whose meeting had interrupted their conversation in the summer house?
And, oh, how weak she had been! She sees it all now and she swears she
will be revenged. Aha! She knows where to wound him, to repay him in
awful torture for the trick he has played upon her.
While these dark thoughts are flitting through her mind the
captain-general has finished his brief examination of the letter, which
he tosses over to her. She picks it up mechanically and reads:
“To His Excellency, Honorato de Truenos: Indisposition prevents
my attending the grand ball to-night and offering my
congratulations upon your safe arrival at Santiago. Under the
directions of such a general there should be no difficulty in
quickly subduing the insurrection, which I believe to be nearly
at an end.
Manuel de Quesada.”
“I have been tricked, Gen. Truenos,” says Isabel, crushing the paper in
her hand.
“It would seem so,” remarks the captain-general. It is apparent that he
is vastly disappointed. “Come, tell me of your stay at the quinta, all
you know concerning Quesada and his movements.”
There is much of importance to relate, and when Mrs. Harding has
finished her story Truenos summons Capt. Huerta.
“Take a dozen of your men and repair at once to La Quinta de Quesada.
You know where it is?” Capt. Huerta knows perfectly. “Ransack the house
thoroughly and fetch me every scrap of writing upon the premises. Gen.
Murillo, do you follow in the morning and look over the place. Go!” to
Huerta.
The latter bows and leaves the room. Mrs. Harding follows. “One moment,
Captain Huerta,” she says.
A short but earnest conversation ensues. Isabel talks in rapid whispers,
and the Spanish captain listens eagerly, while surprise, anger, hope and
malicious joy are mirrored in succession upon his swarthy countenance.
“Within ten minutes,” he breathes, and hurries away to execute the
commands of the captain-general.
“I told you it would be better if you delivered the papers to me during
the afternoon,” General Murillo tells Mrs. Harding, after Truenos has
gone. “Who has been the cause of your undoing?”
Isabel tells him of her suspicions, which she has come to regard as
virtual facts, and Murillo is inclined to agree with her.
“The game is not yet played out, general,” flashes Isabel.
“Well, take care, take care,” admonishes Murillo, as they separate.
“Ah, here is the very man now,” frowns the general, as he re-enters the
sala grande and is greeted by Ashley, who has just left Captain Guerra.
“My dear Senor Ashley,” he observes dryly, “let me give you a piece of
advice.”
“With pleasure, general. I am always open to kindly counsel, although I
do not always follow it.”
“Do not let your interest in a young lady lead you into mixing with the
affairs of a country toward which you are expected to maintain a strict
neutrality,” is Murillo’s blunt remark.
“I don’t think I catch your drift, general,” drawls Jack. But he does,
and the gleam of quiet triumph in his blue eyes irritates Murillo.
“I have warned you,” says the latter, and turns on his heel.
“So I am suspected,” thinks Ashley. “I imagined the fair Isabel would
like to know to whom to ascribe her confusion. And now to undeceive
Juanita.”
But Juanita is not to be found. There are few guests remaining in the
sala and she is not among them.
Ashley explores the garden, with like success. Then he questions the
line of volante drivers drawn up before the entrance to the palace
grounds. Have any of them seen Senorita de Quesada? None that he
interrogates have had that pleasure, and the Pearl of the Antilles is
known by sight to nearly all of them. Ashley is in despair.
“The Senorita de Quesada?” queries one of the Cuban jehus, who has just
joined the group. “The senorita and another lady were driven away in a
volante not ten minutes ago.”
“In what direction?” demands Ashley.
“To Santos.”
“To Santos? Heavens, man, they cannot go to Santos at this hour of night
unescorted!”
Unescorted? Is not Captain Huerta and his men all the escort that one
could desire?
This intelligence is a frightful strain upon Ashley’s composure, as he
thinks of Juanita, Isabel, Captain Huerta and the deserted La Quinta de
Quesada.
“Quick! To Santos!” he cries, springing into a volante and tossing a
handful of coin to the driver. “To Santos as fast as your horse will
travel!”
The man leaps to his seat, cracks his whip and they are off.
As they clatter through the streets of Santiago and swing into the road
which Ashley traversed only a few hours before, Jack shouts impatiently,
“Faster! Faster! Great Scott! This is no funeral! Though it may be,
before I’m through with it,” he adds, savagely.
“But senor, we will dash the volante to pieces,” protests his
charioteer.
Inwardly chafing, but realizing the futility of impatience, Ashley
forces himself to be calm. It seems an age before the distance to Santos
is traversed, but finally the outlines of the few buildings which the
hamlet boasts are seen against the starlit sky.
The driver reins up his steed for further directions.
“To La Quinta de Quesada,” orders Ashley, and they rattle on.
Suddenly rings out the command, “Alto!” and the volante stops with a
suddenness that nearly unseats its passenger, directly in front of El
Calabozo de Infierno, the local carcel.
“What in the devil’s name—” begins Ashley, but he is seized and dragged
roughly from the volante, a pistol clapped to his head and the command
hissed in his ear: “Callese!”
Lights appear about the entrance of the carcel, and as Ashley is hustled
toward the gloom beyond he sees, standing near the passageway and
watching the strange proceedings with a troubled face, the aged priest
whom he noted at La Quinta de Quesada a few days before.
Ashley is hurried through the patio and along the ill-smelling corridor
beyond to an open cell. Into this he is pushed and his ungentle captor
tells him:
“En la manana muere V. sobre el garrote!”
“Thank you,” says Ashley. His stock of Spanish is just sufficient to
enable him to comprehend the nature of the cheerful intelligence, which
is to the effect that he is to die by the iron collar to-morrow.
“Will you leave the light?” he requests.
The smoky lantern is set upon the floor. Then the door clangs to, there
is a rattle of chains and the echo of departing footsteps and he is
alone.
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