ROGERO IS CHECKMATED.
In front of the hotel an excited crowd was clustered about a man who lay
in the dust. He was evidently badly wounded if not dead. Near by, a
sneer on his evil face, stood Rogero, his still smoking pistol in his
hand. As Mr. Chester and the boys hurried up he turned to them and
exclaimed:
“You see, Señor, that it is not safe to be a revolutionist in these
days.”
“Why it’s poor Juan!” cried Mr. Chester as he bent over the man who had
been shot. “Good God, he’s dead!” he exclaimed a second later after a
brief examination of the prostrate figure.
“Yes; one of your servants I believe,” remarked Rogero carelessly, “the
dog was pointed out to me as being a runaway from Estrada’s army and,
when I called him to me to give him a little wholesome advice, he
started to run off so I was compelled in the interests of discipline to
shoot him.”
There was no more emotion in his voice than if he had been speaking of
some ordinary event of life.
“This is a coward’s trick!” exclaimed Mr. Chester angrily, “this man was
my servant and any complaint you had against him you should have
referred to me.”
Rogero lightly flicked some ash off the cigarette he was smoking.
“I should be more temperate in my language, Señor, if I were you,” he
said.
“I am an American citizen, sir,” replied Mr. Chester; “the flag of my
country floats over that consulate.” He pointed to a neat, verandered
building a few blocks away. “I shall see that you are made to answer for
this wanton crime.”
“I am afraid that you will have to defer such action for the present,”
sneered Rogero, as a file of ragged Nicaraguan soldiers came running
from the barracks and, after saluting him respectfully, fell in behind
him with fixed bayonets.
“This city is under martial law and I should advise you to be
circumspect in your behavior. A suspected insurgent sympathizer is on
dangerous ground in these days.”
“By the way,” he went on viciously, “I am afraid that I shall have to
interdict the orders you have given to have that celebrated
air-ship,”—there was a bitter irony in his tones that made the boys
clinch their fists, “conveyed to your hacienda. I am of the opinion that
air-ships in the hands of revolutionists sympathizers come under the
head of contraband of war and I intend to have this particular one
destroyed.”
The effect on Harry and Frank of these words was magical. The elder
brother sprang angrily forward although his father and Blakely tried to
hold him back.
“You mean you would dare to destroy the property of non-combatant
American citizens?” he demanded, his blood aboil.
“I don’t talk to boys,” was Rogero’s contemptuous reply.
“Well, you’ll have to talk to us,” angrily chimed in Harry coming
forward, “if you put a finger on the _Golden Eagle_, or harm her in any
way you will find that the United States’ government resents any insult
or injury to her citizens in a way that you will remember.”
So excited were the boys at the dastardly threat of Rogero, and so
thunderstruck were their father and Blakely at the man’s brutal
arrogance that none of them had noticed Billy Barnes who had been
standing behind the party. Now he stepped up, with his camera, bellows
pulled out and ready for action. Rogero was standing defiantly, his hand
on his sword-hilt. For the first time the boys saw his right hand.
There were two fingers missing!
“Just hold that pose for a second, General,” exclaimed Billy, his finger
on the button of his machine. Rogero turned with a snarl as the button
clicked and his image was irrevocably fixed on the film.
“It will be a beautiful picture,” remarked Billy amiably. “You see the
light was very good and the lamentable fact that you are shy two fingers
will be clearly shown, I hope, in the print I intend to make at the
earliest opportunity.”
“You dog of a newspaper spy,” snarled Rogero, his face a pasty yellow
and fear in his eyes, “I know you. You are a sneaking reporter. We don’t
like such renegades as you in my country. We have a way of dealing with
them, however, that usually causes them to cease from troubling us.”
He raised his hand to his throat and gave an unpleasant sort of an
imitation of the “garrotte” which is the instrument of execution in most
Latin-American countries.
[Illustration: “JUST HOLD THAT POSE A SECOND, GENERAL.”]
“And we in the States have also got a way of dealing with men like you,”
said Billy meaningly. “Now,” he went on in a low voice, stepping close
to Rogero, “if you harm that aeroplane in any way I’ll forward the
picture, I just took to Detective Connolly of the New York Central
Office, and I think he can have a very interesting time with it tracing
your movements in New York _before the murder of Dr. Moneague_!”
If he had been struck full in the face the effect on Rogero could not
have been more magical. He opened his dried lips as if to speak, but no
sound came. In his eyes there was a hunted look.
“I’ll have you——,” he began when he at last found his voice.
“You’ll have nothing,” replied Billy cheerfully, “because you don’t
dare. Now, then; tell these boys they can have their aeroplane unharmed.
Write them an order—here’s my pad and a fountain pen—don’t forget to
give them back.”
Rogero snarled like a cornered tiger, but he took the pen and scrawled a
passport in Spanish on Billy’s pad.
“Take your wonderful flying machine then, and I only hope you break your
necks,” he muttered. With an evil look at Billy which did not at all
seem to worry that amiable young gentleman who merely winked knowingly
in reply, he turned on his heel and strode off followed by his soldiers.
“By Jove, you American pressmen have a high-handed way of doing things,
I must say,” remarked Blakely. The boys, too, were much delighted and
amused and congratulated Billy warmly on his successful bit of strategy.
Mr. Chester, however, by no means took the matter so lightly. After he
had given orders that the body of the unfortunate Juan be properly cared
for and sent back to La Merced for burial, he turned to young Barnes.
“My boy,” he said, “we are not in America now, and in the present state
of the country Rogero can be a very dangerous man.”
“He ought to be shot,” indignantly cried Harry.
“Or hanged,” put in Frank.
“Both,” concluded Billy, with conviction.
“Perhaps,” said Mr. Chester, as he headed the little group into the
hotel once more, “but in Nicaragua the law of might prevails and that
man means mischief.”
As he uttered the last words in a grave tone there came a rattle of
hoofs far down the street, and the next minute a horseman flashed by the
hotel in a cloud of yellow dust. He spurred his horse desperately up to
the barracks and, as he drew rein, Mr. Chester and the boys saw Rogero
come out on the balcony and the messenger standing in his stirrups, hand
him an envelope.
“News from the front,” commented Mr. Chester. Rogero disappeared for a
few minutes and when he came out again he handed the messenger another
envelope, evidently containing a reply to the despatch he had just
received. The man wheeled his horse almost on its haunches and spurred
down the street again.
“What is it?” shouted Mr. Chester in Spanish to him as he dashed by the
hotel riding as if his life depended on speed.
“Another great victory,” he shouted reining his sweating horse in for an
imperceptible fragment of time.
As the clatter of his horse’s hoofs died away in the direction of the
mountains there was a great commotion in the barracks. Bugles sounded
and men ran about with horses, arms and bundles, in the confusion that
characterizes improperly-disciplined troops. After about half an hour of
this frenzied preparation the troops, some two hundred in number, with
Rogero and his dark-skinned staff officers at their head with the blue
and white “colors”; fell awkwardly in line and to the music of a crazy
band with battered, dirty instruments began their march to the front.
Their way led by the hotel where the boys stood gazing with amusement
and some pity at their first sight of a Central American army on the
march. Some of the troopers were not much bigger than the newsboys they
had left behind in the New York that now seemed so far away. These
little fellows tottered along under the weight of haversacks and heavy
Remington rifles, keeping step as best they could with their elders.
Several of the soldiers carried gamecocks under their arms and others
had guitars and mandolins slung over their shoulders; one man even
carried a bird in a wooden cage.
Rogero’s face bore a deep scowl as he rode by surrounded by his excited
staff officers. His eyes were downcast but he raised them as he passed
the little group in front of the Grand Central. There was a sinister
gleam in them like that in the leaden orbs of a venomous serpent.
“Adios, señors,” he sneered, leaning back in his saddle, “we shall meet
again and I shall have the pleasure, I hope, of introducing some of you
to our Nicaraguan prisons.”