withal alluring. Perhaps it is true that in the great crises of life the inner eye becomes momentarily opened.
With intense curiosity I awaited the Colonel’s next words, but, a cigarette held nervously between his fingers, he stood staring at Harley, and it was the latter who broke that peculiar silence which had fallen upon us.
“The wing of a bat,” he murmured, then touched it gingerly. “Of what kind of bat, Colonel Menendez? Surely not a British species?”
“But emphatically not a British species,” replied the Spaniard. “Yet even so the matter would be strange.”
“I am all anxiety to learn the remainder of your story, Colonel Menendez.”
“Good. Your interest comforts me very greatly, Mr. Harley. But when first I came, you led me to suppose that you were departing from London?”
“Such, at the time, was my intention, sir.” Paul Harley smiled slightly. “Accompanied by my friend, Mr. Knox, I had proposed to indulge in a fortnight’s fishing upon the Norfolk Broads.”
“Fishing?”
“Yes.”
“A peaceful occupation, Mr. Harley, and a great rest-cure for one who like yourself moves much amid the fiercer passions of life. You were about to make holiday?”
Paul Harley nodded.
“It is cruel of me to intrude upon such plans,” continued Colonel Menendez, dexterously rolling his cigarette around between his fingers. “Yet because of my urgent need I dare to do so. Would yourself and your friend honour me with your company at Cray’s Folly for a few days? I can promise you good entertainment, although I regret that there is no fishing; but it may chance that there will be other and more exciting sport.”
Harley glanced at me significantly.
“Do I understand you to mean, Colonel Menendez,” he asked, “that you have reason to believe that this conspiracy directed against you is about to come to a head?”
Colonel Menendez nodded, at the same time bringing his hand down sharply upon the table.
“Mr. Harley,” he replied, his high, thin voice sunken almost to a whisper, “Wednesday night is the night of the full moon.”
“The full moon?”
“It is at the full moon that the danger comes.”
Paul Harley stood up, and watched by the Spanish colonel paced slowly across the office. At the outer door he paused and turned.
“Colonel Menendez,” he said, “that you would willingly waste the time of a busy man I do not for a moment believe, therefore I shall ask you as briefly as possible to state your case in detail. When I have heard it, if it appears to me that any good purpose can be served by my friend and myself coming to Cray’s Folly I feel sure that he will be happy to accept your proffered hospitality.”
“If I am likely to be of the slightest use I shall be delighted,” said I, which indeed was perfectly true.
Whilst I had willingly agreed to accompany Harley to Norfolk I had none of his passion for the piscatorial art, and the promise of novel excitement held out by Colonel Menendez appealed to me more keenly than the lazy days upon the roads which Harley loved.
“Gentlemen”— the Colonel bowed profoundly— “I am honoured and delighted. When you shall have heard my story I know what your decision will be.”
He resumed his seat, and began, it seemed almost automatically, to roll a fresh cigarette.
“I am all attention,” declared Harley, and his glance strayed again in a wondering fashion to the bat wing lying on his table.
“I will speak briefly,” resumed our visitor, “and any details which may seem to you to be important can be discussed later when you are my guests. You must know then that I first became acquainted with the significance belonging to the term ‘Bat Wing’ and to the object itself some twenty years ago.”
“But surely,” interrupted Harley, incredulously, “you are not going to tell me that the menace of which you complain is of twenty years’ standing?”
“At your express request, Mr. Harley,” returned the Colonel a trifle brusquely, “I am dealing with possibilities which are remote, because in your own words it is sometimes the remote which proves to be the intimate. It was then rather more than twenty years ago, at a time when great political changes were taking place in the West Indies, that my business interests, which are mainly concerned with sugar, carried me to one of the smaller islands which had formerly been under— my jurisdiction, do you say? Here I had a house and estate, and here in the past I had experienced much trouble with the natives.
“I do not disguise from you that I was unpopular, and on my return I met with unmistakable signs of hostility. My native workmen were insubordinate. In fact, it was the reports from my overseers which had led me to visit the island. I made a tour of the place, believing it to be necessary to my interests that I should get once more in touch with negro feeling, since I had returned to my home in Cuba after the upheavals in ’98. Very well.
“The manager of my estate, a capable man, was of opinion that there existed a secret organization amongst the native labourers operating— you understand?—against my interests. He produced certain evidences of this. They were not convincing; and all my enquiries and examinations of certain inhabitants led to no definite results. Yet I grew more and more to feel that enemies surrounded me.”
He paused to light his third cigarette, and whilst he did so I conjured up a mental picture of his “examinations of certain inhabitants.” I recalled hazily those stories of Spanish mismanagement and cruelty which had directly led to United States interferences in the islands. But whilst I could well believe that this man’s life had not been safe in those bad old days in the West Indies, I found it difficult to suppose that a native plot against his safety could have survived for more than twenty years and have come to a climax in England. However, I realized that there was more to follow, and presently, having lighted his cigarette, the Colonel resumed:
“In the neighbourhood of the hacienda which had once been my official residence there was a belt of low- lying pest country— you understand pest country?— which was a hot-bed of poisonous diseases. It followed the winding course of a nearly stagnant creek. From the earliest times the Black Belt— it was so called— had been avoided by European inhabitants, and indeed by the coloured population as well. Apart from the malaria of the swampy ground it was infested with reptiles and with poisonous insects of a greater variety and of a more venomous character than I have ever known in any part of the world.
“I must explain that what I regarded as a weak point in my manager’s theory was this: Whilst he held that the native labourers to a man were linked together under some head, or guiding influence, he had never succeeded in surprising anything in the nature of a negro meeting. Indeed, he had prohibited all gatherings of this kind. His answer to my criticism was a curious one. He declared that the members of this mysterious society met and received their instructions at some place within the poison area to which I have referred, believing themselves there to be safe from European interference.
“For a long time I disputed this with poor Valera— for such was my manager’s name; when one night as I was dismounting from my horse before the veranda, having returned from a long ride around the estate, a shot was fired from the border of the Black Belt which at one point crept up dangerously close to the hacienda.
“The shot was a good one. I had caught my spur in the stirrup in dismounting, and stumbled. Otherwise I must have been a dead man. The bullet pierced the crown of my hat, only missing my skull by an inch or less. The alarm was given. But no search-party could be mustered, do you say?— which was prepared to explore the poison swamp— or so declared my native servants. Valera, however, seized upon this incident to illustrate his theory that there were those in the island who did not hesitate to enter the Black Belt popularly supposed to cast up noxious vapours at dusk of a sort fatal to any traveller.
“That night over our wine we discussed the situation, and he pointed out to me that now was the hour to test his theory. Orders had evidently been given for my assassination and the attempt had failed.
“‘There will be a meeting,’ said Valera, ’to discuss the next move. And it will take place to-morrow night!’
“I challenged him with a glance and I replied:
“’To-morrow night is a full moon, and if you are agreeable we will make a secret expedition into the swamp, and endeavour to find the clearing which you say is there, and which you believe to be the rendezvous of the conspirators.’
“Even in the light of the lamp I saw Valera turn pale, but he was a Spaniard and a man of courage.
