Bat Wing, Sax Rohmer [top 20 books to read .txt] 📗

He drew up two long, low lounge chairs, the arms provided with receptacles to contain cooling drinks; and the mere sight of these chairs mentally translated me to the Spanish Main, where I pictured them set upon the veranda of that hacienda which had formerly been our host’s residence.

Harley and I became seated and Colonel Menendez disposed himself upon a leather-covered couch, nodding apologetically as he did so.

“My health requires that I should recline for a certain number of hours every day,” he explained. “So you will please forgive me.”

“My dear Colonel Menendez,” said Harley, “I feel sure that you are interrupting your siesta in order to discuss the unpleasant business which finds us in such pleasant surroundings. Allow me once again to suggest that we postpone this matter until, shall we say, after dinner?”

“No, no! No, no,” protested the Colonel, waving his hand deprecatingly. “Here is Pedro with coffee and some curaçao of a kind which I can really recommend, although you may be unfamiliar with it.”

I was certainly unfamiliar with the liqueur which he insisted we must taste, and which was contained in a sort of square, opaque bottle unknown, I think, to English wine merchants. Beyond doubt it was potent stuff; and some cigars which the Spaniard produced on this occasion and which were enclosed in little glass cylinders resembling test-tubes and elaborately sealed, I recognized to be priceless. They convinced me, if conviction had not visited me already, that Colonel Don Juan Sarmiento Menendez belonged to that old school of West Indian planters by whom the tradition of the Golden Americas had been for long preserved in the Spanish Main.

We discussed indifferent matters for a while, sipping this wonderful curaçao of our host’s. The effect created by the Colonel’s story faded entirely, and when, the latter being unable to conceal his drowsiness, Harley stood up, I took the hint with gratitude; for at that moment I did not feel in the mood to discuss serious business or indeed business of any kind.

“Gentlemen,” said the Colonel, also rising, in spite of our protests, “I will observe your wishes. My guests’ wishes are mine. We will meet the ladies for tea on the terrace.”

Harley and I walked out into the garden together, our courteous host standing in the open window, and bowing in that exaggerated fashion which in another might have been ridiculous but which was possible in Colonel Menendez, because of the peculiar grace of deportment which was his.

As we descended the steps I turned and glanced back, I know not why. But the impression which I derived of the Colonel’s face as he stood there in the shadow of the veranda was one I can never forget.

His expression had changed utterly, or so it seemed to me. He no longer resembled Velasquez’ haughty cavalier; gone, too, was the debonnaire bearing, I turned my head aside swiftly, hoping that he had not detected my backward glance.

I felt that I had violated hospitality. I felt that I had seen what I should not have seen. And the result was to bring about that which no story of West Indian magic could ever have wrought in my mind.

A dreadful, cold premonition claimed me, a premonition that this was a doomed man.

The look which I had detected upon his face was an indefinable, an indescribable look; but I had seen it in the eyes of one who had been bitten by a poisonous reptile and who knew his hours to be numbered. It was uncanny, unnerving; and whereas at first the atmosphere of Colonel Menendez’s home had seemed to be laden with prosperous security, now that sense of ease and restfulness was gone—and gone for ever.

“Harley,” I said, speaking almost at random, “this promises to be the strangest case you have ever handled.”

“Promises?” Paul Harley laughed shortly. “It is the strangest case, Knox. It is a case of wheels within wheels, of mystery crowning mystery. Have you studied our host?”

“Closely.”

“And what conclusion have you formed?”

“None at the moment; but I think one is slowly crystalizing.”

“Hm,” muttered Harley, as we paced slowly on amid the rose trees. “Of one thing I am satisfied.”

“What is that?”

“That Colonel Menendez is not afraid of Bat Wing, whoever or whatever Bat Wing may be.”

“Not afraid?”

“Certainly he is not afraid, Knox. He has possibly been afraid in the past, but now he is resigned.”

“Resigned to what?”

“Resigned to death!”

“Good God, Harley, you are right!” I cried. “You are right! I saw it in his eyes as we left the library.”

Harley stopped and turned to me sharply.

“You saw this in the Colonel’s eyes?” he challenged.

“I did.”

“Which corroborates my theory,” he said, softly; “for I had seen it elsewhere.”

“Where do you mean, Harley?”

“In the face of Madame de Stämer.”

“What?”

“Knox”—Harley rested his hand upon my arm and looked about him cautiously—“she knows.”

“But knows what?”

“That is the question which we are here to answer, but I am as sure as it is humanly possible to be sure of anything that whatever Colonel Menendez may tell us to-night, one point at least he will withhold.”

“What do you expect him to withhold?”

“The meaning of the sign of the Bat Wing.”

“Then you think he knows its meaning?”

“He has told us that it is the death-token of Voodoo.”

I stared at Harley in perplexity.

“Then you believe his explanation to be false?”

“Not necessarily, Knox. It may be what he claims for it. But he is keeping something back. He speaks all the time from behind a barrier which he, himself, has deliberately erected against me.”

“I cannot understand why he should do so,” I declared, as he looked at me steadily. “Within the last few moments I have become definitely convinced that his appeal to you was no idle one. Therefore, why should he not offer you every aid in his power?”

“Why, indeed?” muttered Harley.

“The same thing,” I continued, “applies to Madame de Stämer. If ever I have seen love-light in a woman’s eyes I have seen it in hers, to-day, whenever her glance has rested upon Colonel Menendez. Harley, I believe she literally worships the ground he walks upon.”