“Thanks!”
The acknowledgment, softly uttered as the warning, floated back over
Hal Maynard’s shoulder as he struck out on the double-quick for the
water front.
Once he turned. Over his shoulder he saw three indistinct figures
following him down the street.
Fast as he was traveling, the pursuers increased their speed until they
seemed likely to overtake him.
“Is this more of Vasquez’s deadly work?” groaned Hal. “Will he never
stop until he has destroyed me?”
Cold perspiration oozed out on the boy’s forehead.
He broke into a swift run.
At this gait, he calculated that less than three minutes would bring
him to the English brig’s wharf.
As he ran, he took a flying look over his shoulder.
Hardly more than two hundred feet to the rear were the pursuers, their
sandaled feet moving without noise.
“I can beat them,” thrilled Hal, putting on an even better spurt of
speed.
Just ahead was the water-front street.
Here, a swift turn to the right, and a speedy dash would carry him to
the wharf he sought.
Trip! Hal’s feet became entangled in something stretched across the
sidewalk.
He plunged, then fell to the sidewalk, measuring his full length there.
More quickly than he could rise, a figure darted out of the doorway.
Across the boy’s body a man hurled himself.
“You’ll fight for it--sure!” vented Hal, gripping the stranger by the
throat.
They grappled, struggled, breath coming quick and short.
Hal fought like a tiger. He quickly placed himself on top of his
assailant, but could not wrench himself loose.
Pit-patter-pat! Soft sandals struck the sidewalk as the three shadows
rushed upon the scene.
Not pausing an instant, they hurled themselves into the melee.
Many hands grappled the boy at once.
Maynard fought with renewed fury, but what could he do against so many?
One seized him by either arm and shoulder, another grasped his kicking
feet.
“Help! help! help! Thieves!” roared the victim, but his captor-carriers
did not even attempt to stifle his cries--the surest way of proving
that they had no reason to fear interference.
Hal’s first assailant now darted back into the doorway, unlocking a
door, and making way for the squad to enter.
Still kicking and squirming, Hal Maynard was carried through the house
and out into a courtyard at the rear.
Here he renewed his shouts, with no other effect than to make his
captors smile maliciously.
At the rear of the yard a gate was unlocked.
Hal Maynard involuntarily crossed a second yard, after which those who
carried him entered another house.
Here he was carried into one of the rooms, and unceremoniously dumped
upon the floor.
“You stay there,” muttered he who appeared to be the spokesman, “unless
you are foolish enough to try to escape.”
“What would be the use?” grated Hal, inwardly. “They wouldn’t be so
sure of me if there was a dog’s chance to crawl out.”
The spokesman went out, but the other three remained.
Ting-a-ling-ling-ling! tinkled a bell in another room.
“A telephone,” conjectured Hal. “Will Senor Enrique Vasquez be at the
other end of the wire?”
Though he listened intently, he could not hear the words spoken into
the receiver.
Presently the fourth man came back.
As Hal had not made any effort to get up, his jailers now squatted upon
the floor, lighting paper cigarettes and puffing incessantly.
Minute after minute dragged by.
Hal did not address a word to his captors. Neither did he shout for
help, for he felt sure that he would not have been left ungagged had
they feared that his voice would reach friendly ears.
Nor did his captors speak, beyond an occasional word addressed to one
another.
“Whatever is to be done, they are merely the agents of some one else,”
cogitated Hal, his mind as busy as his tongue was idle. “Vasquez
bragged about his agents. Are these some of them? If so, they are not a
lot to boast about!”
His reflections were cut short by the sound of the wheels of an
arriving carriage.
Then steps sounded in a hallway, next at the door.
The door opened, to give entrance to Senor Vasquez, as Hal had expected.
As the Spaniard’s burning gaze fell upon the boy, his face darkened,
though his lips smiled.
“Good-evening, Senor Maynard,” was his greeting. “Did you think that
you had seen the last of me?”
“Hardly,” gritted Hal. “I have always heard that the devil is more busy
than successful.”
“Take a seat, senor,” urged Vasquez, pushing forward one of the few
chairs in the room. “As to you, my good fellows,” turning to the four
thugs who had vanquished Hal, “you may step just outside the door.”
As almost anything was more comfortable than the floor, Hal availed
himself of the chair.
Next he turned a look of cool scrutiny upon the Spaniard.
Yet, if Hal looked cool, his appearance was far from expressing his
feelings.
He fully realized that never before had he been in such a critical
situation.
In fact, with such a foe as Vasquez, who, under the circumstances could
not be placated, there was little hope that the American could escape
with his life.
Senor Vasquez drew out a cigar, lighted it, and puffed slowly for some
time before he began to speak.
Yet, while thinking, his brow grew blacker.
“Senor Maynard,” he finally blurted out, “are you not ashamed to be an
American?”
Hal turned eyes that were wide open with surprise upon the man pacing
the floor before him.
“Ashamed of being an American?” he repeated. “Senor Vasquez, are you
training for a humorist? How can any American live without finding life
one long thrill of pride that he is part and parcel of the Stars and
Stripes?”
“Bah!” retorted Vasquez, impatiently. “Shall I tell you what your
greatest fault is?”
“If you care to.”
“You Americans are not honest,” went on the Spaniard. “You lie, cheat
and steal, always pouring the pesetas or dollars into your pockets,
and laughing at the more simple more honest people of other nations
from whom you derive your dishonest profits. Nowhere do you find easier
victims than the old-fashioned, simple, trusting, generous, honest
Spaniards.”
“Of whom I suppose you are one?”
“Of whom,” repeated Vasquez, sadly, “I am one.”
Hal could not keep back the burst of laughter that sprang to his lips.
“Why do you laugh?” demanded Vasquez, angrily. “Because you have duped
me so easily?”
“Because you have duped yourself so easily,” retorted Hal, with spirit.
“You vaunt your honesty, you who have never earned an honest dollar
in your whole career. You, a simple, trusting man, when you cannot
look back upon a single month in twenty years when you have not used
the fear of fire or the assassin’s knife to inforce the payment of
exorbitant claims against Americans who were new to the island! When
you look into your own heart, Vasquez, can you blame me for laughing at
your pretenses?”
But Hal did not laugh now. His voice rang with a scorn and contempt
that were too deep for merriment.
“Your employer owed me money,” went on Vasquez, plaintively.
“He has paid you far more than he ever owed you. That I know from the
dealings I have had between you. As near as I could place it, you have
robbed him, in three years, of at least twenty thousand dollars more
than you were entitled to. Yet you prate about honesty!”
“He owes me two thousand dollars,” insisted the Spaniard, doggedly.
“Senor Richardson escaped from Cuba yesterday, and left me sighing in
vain for my money. I find that you have collected, within the last
twenty-four hours, money of his enough to pay me. Yet you refuse to
turn it over to me.”
“Of course I refused,” voiced Hal. “I should have been false to my
trust if I had paid over my employer’s money without authority from
him.”
“And that is why I call you dishonest,” cried Vasquez. “You have
conspired, you two, to defraud me of my money.”
“You didn’t conspire to have me sent to Morro Castle, did you?” sneered
Maynard.
“Now,” resume the Spaniard, ignoring all the inconvenient points in
Hal’s reply, “I have stated fully my grievance against you. Do not
think, you Yankee pig, that you can hope to dupe me any longer. You are
now dealing with a Spaniard of honor!”
Vasquez drew himself erect and puffed his chest out as if he believed
his vainglorious boast.
Halting suddenly before the boy, he glared at Hal with burning eyes,
and demanded, with a pause after each word:
“Where--is--that--money?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yet you had it.”
“Certainly?”
“Then what did you do with it?”
“I shall never tell you,” retorted Hal, with spirit.
Now Vasquez’s passion escaped all bounds.
“Oh, you Yankees! Oh, you thieves!” he declared, violently, pacing the
room like a caged hyena. “You hope to dupe us, even when you are in our
power.”
Then his voice became sarcastic, as he went on:
“Senor, do you know how we Spaniards love you Yankees? Do you realize
what happiness it would give us to caress you? To caress each and every
one of your people--to caress them so?”
Pausing in his agitated walk, Vasquez drew a knife, making a
significant gesture of cutting a throat.
“That is the way we would like to treat all you Yankees,” went on the
Spaniard. “No! I mistake. That would be much too quick a punishment. We
must be more ingenious in our punishment of the impudent Yankees--even
as I propose to deal with you now.”
Under that fierce, malicious gaze, Hal Maynard felt himself growing
“creepy.”
It did not afford him much satisfaction, even, to see Vasquez put away
his knife, for the Spaniard’s word and manner left little doubt that
the knife would be put aside only in favor of a more fearful method of
revenge.
“Senor, I ask you, for the last time, what did you do with the money?”
“And I refuse to tell you a word.”
“Did you understand that I was asking for the last time?”
“Yes!”
Hal fairly hurled the short, defiant retort.
As Senor Vasquez realized that it was too late for parley, he raised
his voice, shouting:
“Pedro! Jose!”
Instantly the door opened. Vasquez’s four agents filed into the room.
“Bind the pig! Gag him!” directed the Spaniard, tremulously.
These orders were swiftly carried out, for, though Hal Maynard
struggled manfully, he was like clay in the hands of so many desperate
fellows. Weights were tied to his feet.
“He is ready,” voiced Vasquez, glaring at last at his helpless foe.
“Pedro, open the shutters over there.”
Out he was thrust, face down, his startled eyes gazing down at the
muddy water of Havana harbor but a few feet below him.
“Ready, my good fellows?” quivered Vasquez.
“Ready, senor!”
“Then drop him!”
Through the darkness of the night shot a human form.
Plash!
Hal Maynard’s bound and weighted form sank below the foul waters.
He had gone to share, in a different way, the fate of the Maine heroes!