THE AVENGER.
A man in a heavy overcoat and a slouch hat was walking rapidly through
one of the streets of New York leading into a squalid quarter of the
East Side. Twice he stepped past a corner and stood there some time,
observing the persons who passed in the direction he had been walking.
Once he stepped quickly into a doorway and stood there peering back
along the street until he seemed satisfied and concluded to resume his
walk.
Plainly this man feared he might be followed.
Finally on a block not far from the river, where everything looked
wretched and poverty-stricken, he ascended the low steps of a house and
quickly entered a doorway. The uncarpeted hall was dirty and dark. The
stairs were worn and sagged a little.
Two flights of stairs did the man climb, and then, in a significant
manner, he rapped on a door at the back of the house. There was a stir
within the room. The door was flung open by a slender, dark-faced,
dark-eyed boy, who joyously exclaimed:
"Welcome, Senor Hagan! You were a great time coming."
The man stepped into the little room, and the door was closed behind
him.
"Lock it, Felipe!" he exclaimed. "Take no chances of having some one
walk in on us without warning, me boy."
The key was turned in the lock.
There was a bed, a chair, and a washstand in the room. The floor was
uncarpeted and the walls unpapered.
"It's a poor sort of a hole you're cooped in, Felipe," observed the
visitor, flinging off his hat and unbuttoning his overcoat.
"Paugh! It is vile!" exclaimed the boy, with an expression of disgust.
"But here you say they will not look to find me. It was here you brought
me, and here I have remained, only sneaking out at night to buy food.
Tell me the truth, Senor Hagan, are the police still looking for me?"
"It's your life you can bet on it, me lad. Frank Merriwell has them
rubbering for you, and it's myself who has been watched and shadowed all
the time since the night we were pinched. If he had anything good and
sufficient against me, Merriwell would have me nabbed in a jiffy."
"You're sure the officers did not follow you here?"
"Trust Bantry Hagan," laughed the Irishman. "I took good care of that. I
fooled the plain-clothes chap who was following me round, gave him the
slip, and then came to see ye. Lucky for us I had a pull with one of the
bluecoats the night of the raid at Worden's. It would have been easy
for me to get assistance in ducking that night; but I wouldn't go
without ye, and you had the irons on. It looked bad."
"The handcuffs are yet to be made that will hold those hands, Senor
Hagan," said Felipe, with a laugh.
"Sure you made me wink when you slipped your hands out of them slick and
easy. Then it was not so hard to bribe the police to let us both slip
away in the darkness as they marched the prisoners downstairs and out
through the passage. At that we could not have done it only for my pull
with Riley. It's surprised Mr. Merriwell must have been in the morning
when he learned that neither of us had been locked up."
"Fiends destroy him!" cried the boy. "How I hate him! I would love to
kill him!"
"It's that thing ye'd better not do, unless you want to ruin your
prospect of ever handling any of the money he is making from that mine."
"I failed to frighten him that night when I had him with my knife at his
throat. He told me I would not kill him, and I am sure he believed it."
"Oh, he's a nervy lad, all right," nodded Hagan. "Del Norte found that
out. If he had lived----"
There was a step outside; a sharp knock on the door.
Felipe leaped back toward the window, outside of which was the fire
escape. In a moment he had the window open.
Hagan stepped quickly to the door, against which he placed his solid
body, at the same time calling:
"Who is it that knocks? and what do you want here?"
"It is I, Senor Hagan," answered a voice that made the Irishman gasp and
caused his eyes to bulge. "Have no fear. Open the door!"
"It's the voice of the dead!" gasped Hagan, his usually florid face gone
pale.
"Who is it?" questioned Jalisco.
Instead of answering, with fingers that were not quite steady, Hagan
turned the key in the lock and opened the door.
Into the room boldly walked a man who wore a sable overcoat, had hair of
snowy white, and eyes of deepest midnight.
Hagan stared at this man in amazement.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am Alvarez Lazaro, of Mexico," was the answer, in that same soft,
musical voice that had so startled the Irishman.
"But that voice--that voice!" muttered Hagan. "And those eyes! Man, ye
gave me a start! Why do you come here? What do you want?"
"I have come to meet the enemies of Frank Merriwell."
"The divvil ye say!" cried Hagan, his excitement flinging him into the
brogue he so nearly avoided in quieter moments. "Why do ye come here for
that?"
"Because I know you both are his enemies."
"And you--if I didn't know Porfias del Norte to be dead and buried----
But even then you'd not be the man. You're thirty years older; but you
have a little of his looks and his voice in perfection."
"Do you think so? Then perhaps it came through my long acquaintance with
him. Dear friends sometimes acquire each other's mode of speech and
little mannerisms, it is said."
"Were you Del Norte's friend?"
"His nearest and dearest friend in all the world. This may seem strange
to you, considering the difference in our ages, but it is the truth.
From me he never had a secret. I knew all his plans, his hopes, his
ambitions--everything--everything that he knew and felt."
"Strange he never spoke to me of you," muttered Hagan.
"Not strange, for he was not given to talking freely to any one but me.
And now he is dead! But I am here to avenge him. I have learned that he
was buried alive in a cave, and the thought of his frightful sufferings
before he died has torn my soul with anguish. They say the real cause of
his death was the gringo, Merriwell. I am the avenger of Porfias del
Norte, and I have sworn to make him suffer even as Porfias suffered,
and then to destroy him at last. It is an oath I shall keep."
"My, but you Mexicans are fierce at revenge and that sort of a thing!"
said Hagan, with a look on his face that was almost laughable. "Here's
Felipe--I've been cautioning the boy and holding him in check to keep
him from slicing up Merriwell."
Lazaro turned to Felipe.
"What great wrong has Merriwell done you?" he questioned.
Then Felipe hurriedly told how Frank was working a rich mine on land
that had been granted to Sebastian Jalisco by the first president of
Mexico, General Victoria, and how the American had declared the grant a
forgery and had refused to pay a dollar of tribute to Felipe.
"Dear boy," said Lazaro, with an air of gentleness, "I do not blame you
if you can compel the gringo to give you anything; but Porfias had the
only real title to that property that was worthy of consideration. Had
he lived, he would have wrested everything from Merriwell. Now that he
is dead, I shall take his place and do the work as he would have done
it."
"Of course, you think Senor del Norte's claim the only rightful one,"
said Felipe; "but the grant to Guerrero del Norte was made eight years
after that of President Victoria to Sebastian Jalisco. Besides, senor,
President Pedraza's grant was revoked by President Santa Anna, and
therefore is now wholly worthless."
"There is no need to discuss it," said Lazaro, "You have my sympathy;
but I must urge you, for your own sake and for mine, to attempt no harm
to Merriwell. Leave him to me, and you shall have the pleasure of seeing
all his plans go wrong, his fortune dwindle, his friends drop away, his
sweetheart taken from him, his strength sapped, his beauty destroyed,
and, at last, his life crushed out of his broken body."
"It's a big job ye've contracted," said Bantry Hagan. "I'm afraid, me
man, you don't realize what you're up against."
"You think I cannot accomplish it?"
"I have me doubts, and big ones they are."
"Time will convince you. I learned of the existence of Felipe Jalisco,
learned he was in this city, wished to see him, but knew not where to
find him. I found you, and I said you should lead me to the boy. You did
so."
"You don't mean to tell me ye followed me here?"
"I followed you, even though you fooled the officer who was watching
you. I followed you, even though you stopped at corners and watched all
who passed, seeking to make sure you were not followed. I saw you stand
in the doorway and gaze back along the street; but you did not observe
me. Thus you led me to Felipe Jalisco. To-night I strike my first blow
at Frank Merriwell."
"How?"
"In my own way. First I will ruin his scheme to build a railroad in
Sonora. For that purpose the first blow shall be made this night."
"You're like Porfias del Norte turned into his own father!" declared
Hagan. "When you talk you are him to the life, only that you are an old
man with a furrowed face and snow-white hair. He was in the very flush
of vigorous youth."
A sigh escaped Lazaro's lips, and that sigh was precisely like many a
one Hagan had heard Del Norte heave.
"Ah, yes," said the man, with pathetic sadness; "I have looked in a
mirror, and I know I am an old, old man. But Frank Merriwell shall not
find me too old to wreak vengeance upon him!"