AFTER DINNER
Hal reveled in the luxury of a hammock that long afternoon and slept the
sleep of the righteous. He awakened, feeling fresh and stronger than any
time since the plane wreck. And to add to his delight, Mr. Pemberton’s
favorite Indian, Joaquim, was standing patiently at the door proffering
shaving materials and a change of clothes including a worn but clean
pair of khaki knickers.
“The Señor Rene’s,” the Indian explained as he held out the knickers.
“Señor will fit—no?”
“Yes—sure. Rene’s not so much shorter than I. And I bathe in the river,
huh, Joaquim?”
“Yes, Señor. But watch for the electric fish. They send shock and
sometimes people die from it.”
“Well, I’ve got enough electricity in me without clashing with those
fish, Joaquim. Thanks for the tip, anyway.”
And so he bathed without incident, shaved and dressed, then strolled
toward the Pemberton hut, a broad, low structure of mud and thatch.
Felice and her grandfather were on hand to greet him.
The building boasted of three good-sized rooms, that is, it was one vast
room partitioned off into three. Two of the partitions, Felice
explained, were used as bedrooms and the third, a wide room across the
front of the hut, was their dining-living room.
That room, into which Hal was ushered, boasted of a fair-sized dining
table, a half-dozen rickety chairs, an antique sideboard, and a
dilapidated couch. The kitchen, Felice explained, was in Joaquim’s hut
and under his own supervision.
They sat down to a nicely set table and Hal perceived that Felice’s slim
brown hand had given the extra touches in honor of a guest. A worn but
clean tablecloth gleamed under the candlelight, and the silver, he was
certain, had graced the table of many generations of Pembertons in
Virginia.
Hal ate his fill of chicken, fish, sweet potatoes, cooling pineapple,
and two cups of coffee. True, it was rather bitter and was flavored with
condensed milk, but coffee had never been so welcome and he sat sipping
the second cup with some Brazilian cigarettes which Old Marcellus kept
for guests.
The old man was pleasant, and he beguiled Hal with divers tales of his
experiences in the Amazon jungle. Now and then a note of bitterness
would creep into his feeble voice, but upon looking at Hal’s smiling
countenance he would dismiss his subject and begin on another. But
always he seemed to come back to the same subject, that of his long
missing son.
His days and nights, the whole of his remaining life was spent thinking
of that tragic affair. Hal’s heart went out to him and he wondered what
his life would have been—what all their lives would have been if that
terrible thing hadn’t happened!
Felice had sat quietly through her grandfather’s long recital. Finally
she sat up straight in her chair and shook her small, golden head
determinedly.
“Now Grandfather,” she said, “Mr. Hal has been hearing our story ever
since he came up the river to _Manaos_. Suppose we let him have an end
to this Phantom of Death River and change to a lighter vein.”
“Of course, Felice,” said Old Marcellus. “No doubt the young man is
terribly bored. I forget myself and talk, talk, talk.”
“Not at all, not at all,” Hal assured them. “I lean toward things like
this—I mean toward the supernatural. Of course I don’t take any stock in
it that Miss Felice’s father is roaming around and screaming in jaguar
form. I don’t believe that at all, but the idea fascinates me.”
“That’s because you’re a romanticist, Mr. Hal,” said the girl. “If you
weren’t, you wouldn’t get into a scrape like that plane business. It
pays to beware of strangers, especially men like Señor Goncalves. He
must be a very cold-blooded man to have devised such a scheme. I’ve told
Grandfather how you met him on your way to _Manaos_ and the subsequent
events.”
“Granting all that,” said Old Marcellus, “I can’t understand why the
Señor should want to take your uncle’s life and your own. Why?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask, but didn’t,” Felice said smiling.
“And I forgot to tell you,” Hal explained. “You are people of honor and
I can entrust to you the secret of my uncle’s mission up here. He’s a
secret service man and he brought me along with him on the exciting
chase of a munition’s smuggler. That is, he’s trying to help the
Brazilian Government, in coöperation with our own, to trace the
smuggling of munitions to this country. And if we find the man who’s the
go-between on this end, we’ll soon learn who the manufacturers are in
the U. S.”
“And is the man—_Renan_?” asked Old Marcellus softly.
“Do you know him?” Hal returned eagerly.
Before they could answer, Joaquim appeared in the doorway, gesticulating
to his master and looking quite perturbed.