STRANGE HAPPENINGS
The Radio Boys solemnly gave the required promise, and listened with
breathless attention to the story that Benton unfolded.
“As I told you yesterday,” he began, “my last term of service was in San
Domingo. As you know, that borders on the Caribbean Sea, the old Spanish
main that the buccaneers roved on for centuries. It’s a tropical
country, and to my mind a God-forsaken place, whose chief products are
tarantulas, spiders, centipedes and scorpions. Most of the people are
blacks or half-breeds, and of course revolutions are happening there
every little while. Their armies are only mobs that a squad of American
policemen could put to flight, and the chief difference between generals
and privates is that the former have shoes while the latter are
barefooted.
“They had been having one of these little revolutions when for some
reason Uncle Sam took a hand. You know he acts as a sort of policeman to
keep those little West Indian countries in order when they get a little
too gay and frisky. At any rate, we’ve had a little force of marines
there for some years past, and it happened that I was sent down there
with the last batch of leathernecks.
“It wasn’t much of a task to keep the bigger towns in order, but it was
different when we were sent out to clean up some of the outlaw bands in
the interior of the island. There were plenty of these, and we had to
watch our step, for they were bloodthirsty rascals and if any of our
boys happened to fall into their hands it was all up with him. It wasn’t
merely death—that’s part of the game in the marine service—but
torture. And those bandits certainly were experts when it came to making
a man die slow and hard.”
Phil thought of Espato and his skill in the same gentle art.
“A couple of pals and myself,” went on Benton, “were pushing along one
day in a desolate patch of the jungle way off from the beaten road when
we heard shrieks coming from a cabin. We made a break for it, and found
a bunch of bandits torturing an old Spaniard. He lived alone there, and
somehow the idea had got out that he had money concealed about the
place. The outlaws had felt so confident that they had everything their
own way that they hadn’t set any watch and we took them by surprise.
They had the old man bound on his bed, and were burning him with hot
irons to make him tell them where his money was hidden. We burst in on
them while they were in the very midst of their infernal work, killed
two of them and put the rest to flight.
“The old man was pretty well done for. It didn’t seem practicable to get
him in his condition to the nearest military post which was some
distance away. So I sent the other fellows to report, and I stayed to
nurse the old fellow. I didn’t think he’d last out the next twenty-four
hours, but he had surprising vitality for a man of his years and it was
nearly a week before he passed away. He needed constant attention, and I
was kept pretty well on the jump day and night.
“During that time I learned, of course, a good deal of his history. Part
of it he told me, and part of it I picked up from what he kept babbling
from time to time when he was delirious. It seemed that he had never
married and that he had no relative that he knew of in the world. He had
lived there for years, doing a little farming on his garden patch and
getting barely enough to keep body and soul together. As for money, he
didn’t have any. That was where the bandits would have had their
troubles for their pains.
“One morning I could see that death was pretty near, and the old man
knew it too. He called me to him, thanked me over and over for what I
had been able to do for him and then told me that he was going to give
me something that would make me rich. I thought his mind was wandering
again, but he pointed out a place under the flooring of the cabin and
asked me to dig down a couple of feet. I did it to humor him, and fished
out an old tin box. I brought it to him and he took out the papers that
I have just laid on the table.”
The boys looked with the keenest interest at the package of papers that
were mildewed and yellowed by time.
“He put those in my hands,” continued Benton, “and told me they were
mine. Said they had been handed down in his family for generations. It
seems that the old man himself had had dreams of following up the clues
that were contained in them. But it would take capital and he never had
one dollar that he could lay on another. And he had been afraid to trust
his secret to anyone else for fear that he would be either cheated or
perhaps killed by those he might choose as partners. And so the years
had dragged on and he had come at last to his deathbed without ever
having derived any benefit from them. Now he gave them to me, and the
only condition he attached was that if I got any benefit from them I
would have a candle burned in some church for the repose of his soul.”
Benton paused for a moment. No one spoke. They were envisaging the scene
of that forlorn old life coming to so pitiable an end in the depths of
the San Domingo forest.
“Of course, I promised,” Benton went on, “and as a matter of fact I saw
to that matter of the candle as soon as I got back to the city. I didn’t
attach any importance to the old man’s revelations. I’d have thought the
whole thing was simply a sick man’s ravings if it hadn’t been for the
papers. They at least were real, something that could be seen and
handled. Probably they wouldn’t amount to anything, but they promised at
least to be a bit of interesting reading when I got back to the
barracks.
“I buried the old man near his cabin and then hiked back to the nearest
post. I was kept pretty busy for some time, and the papers remained
stowed away in my kit bag.
“After a while, our squad was relieved from the interior work and sent
back to the capital for a breathing spell and the mere routine duty
called for. One day when I was off duty and time was hanging a little
heavy on my hands, I though of the papers and fished them out. They had
to be handled with care, as some of them were nearly falling to pieces.
“I soon found however that they didn’t do me much good, for they were
written in Spanish. Of course, in knocking about those countries I had
picked up a good deal of the lingo, enough to get by with in ordinary
conversation. But that didn’t help me so much when it came to reading
about unfamiliar things, especially in the Spanish of two hundred years
ago.
“And just here is where I made a mistake. There was a half breed that
did odd jobs about the post, a fellow named Ramirez. He happened to be
passing through the barracks just then on an errand for one of the
officers, and I called him and asked him to translate one of the papers
for me.
“He agreed, after bargaining that I should give him an American quarter
for the job, which I did. He commenced to read. I listened for a while,
and then I began to sit up and take notice. Believe me that by this time
he was taking notice too. His hands were trembling, his voice was shaky
and his eyes—he had about the wickedest pair of eyes I ever saw in a
human head—were fairly shining with greediness.
“I snatched the paper back from him. He begged like a cripple to let him
go on with it. Offered to give me back my quarter and do it for nothing.
But by that time I was wise to the mistake I had made and told him to go
along and roll his hoop. His eyes were like those of a rattlesnake when
he realized I was in earnest.
“After I had finally got rid of him, I did some tall thinking. I got a
dictionary and a grammar and settled down to learn the language. I took
some lessons also from the old padre of the church in which I had burned
the candle. He was delighted at my sudden interest in what he called his
‘beautiful mother tongue,’ and did all he could to help me along. So in
the course of time I was able to get the sense of these papers. Some of
the words are blurred and some have been wiped out by time, but what I
couldn’t read I could at least make a very fair guess at.
“Before I had received the papers I had fully made up my mind to
re-enlist, for as I told you before I was in love with the service. But
after I had read them I began to count the days before my present term
should expire. I had made up my mind that I was going to take a chance.
I might fail, but if I did there was the good old service waiting for me
at any time. And if I succeeded, there wouldn’t be need of worrying
about anything for the rest of my life.
“And now,” he continued, as he knocked the ash from his cigar and
glanced at the faces of his spellbound auditors, “that about brings me
up to the present time. Oh yes, there’s one thing more—about that
Ramirez.
“That fellow dogged me like my shadow for the rest of the time I was in
San Domingo. He kept turning up at the most unexpected places. I got
tired of it at last and told him to keep out of my way or he’d be sorry
for it. One night when we were camping out, I woke up to find someone
rifling my kit in my tent. I jumped up and tackled him, but he got away
after knifing me in the arm.”
He rolled up his sleeve and showed a deep scar just above the elbow.
“That’s the memento he left me,” he remarked grimly. “In the darkness I
couldn’t be sure, but I thought I recognized Ramirez. The first thing I
did after getting a light and binding up my arm was to look for the
papers. Luckily they were at the bottom of my kit and the thief hadn’t
got to them when I woke up. Another thing that makes me think it was
Ramirez is that the rascal disappeared from his usual haunts after that
and I’ve never seen anything of him since. But it goes to show,” he
added with that whimsical smile of his, “that I’m not the only one who
attaches some importance to these papers.
“Now let’s see how they strike you,” he continued, drawing his chair
closer to the table, while the Radio Boys crowded eagerly about him.