He was now firmly convinced in his mind that Sheridan and the Unknown were at the bottom of all the trouble, and this belief was strengthened by the fact that no trace of them had been found since their escape, although both police and military had searched for them. Some of the things that the Unknown had said-before and after the interlude in which words were dispensed with-came back to Shannet with a dazzling clarity. It all fitted in.
And ready to his hand lay the key to the trap in which he found himself. He saw that what the Unknown had started the Unknown could stop. It was Campard's own idea, but Shannet was more conveniently placed to apply it than his master had been. Also, he had the necessary lever within a few minutes' reach.
Lilla McAndrew.
She was the master card. Sheridan, he knew, was infatuated. And Sheridan was an important accomplice of the Unknown. With Lilla McAndrew for a hostage Shannet could dictate his own terms.
'I know I have reason!' Shannet said vehemently, while he inwardly cursed the limitations of his Spanish, which prevented him driving his ideas home into the thick skulls of his audience more forcibly. 'I know well the Senor Campard, for whom I have worked for years. Perhaps it sounds fantastic to you, but I know that he is not an easy man to frighten. If I had suggested this to him myself, that these two men could have plotted a war, he would have laughed me to scorn. But he has said it of his own accord. Therefore I know that he must have some information.'
'I think everyone has gone mad,' said De Villega helplessly. 'But you may proceed with your plan. At least it can do no harm. But I warn you that it is on your own responsibility. The Senorita McAndrew is a British subject, and questions may be asked. Then I shall say that I know nothing of it; and, if the authorities demand it, you will have to be handed over to them.'
It was significant of the way in which Shannet's prestige had declined since the commencement of the war, for which De Villega was inclined to blame him; but Shannet did not care.
'I will take the risk,' he said, and was gone.
In the palace courtyard his horse was still being held by a patient soldier-one of the half-dozen left behind to guard the palace. Shannet clambered into the saddle and galloped out as the gates were opened for him by a sentry.
His first course took him to an unsavoury cafe at the end of the town, where he knew he would find the men he needed. He enrolled two. They were pleased to call themselves 'guides,' but actually they were half-caste cutthroats available for anything from murder upwards. Shannet knew them, for he had used their services before.
He explained what he wanted and produced money. There was no haggling. In ten minutes the three were riding out of the town.
Kelly, too late, had thought of that very possibility, as he had hinted to Sheridan in the jungle clearing that morning. But Kelly and Sheridan were still twenty miles away.
And the Saint, in the President's palatial bathroom, was leisurely completing the process of dressing himself in the clean clothes which he had found. They fitted him excellently.
Meanwhile, the men whom Shannet had left in conference were receiving an unpleasant surprise.
'God!' thundered De Villega. 'How did this peon escape?'
'Excellency,' said the abashed governor of the prison, 'it was during the siesta. The man fell down moaning and writhing as if he would die. The warder went to attend him, and the man grasped him by the throat so that he could not cry out, throttled him into unconsciousness, and bound and gagged him. He also surprised the gatekeeper, and hit him in the English fashion--'
De Villega let out an exclamation.
'What meanest thou, pig-'in the English fashion'?'
The governor demonstrated the blow which the gatekeeper had described. It was, in fact, the simple left uppercut of the boxer and no Latin American who has not been infected with our methods ever hits naturally like that.
'What manner of man was this peon?' demanded Don Manuel, with understanding dawning sickeningly into his brain.
'Excellency, he was tall for a peon, and a man of the strength of a lion. If he had washed he would have been handsome, with an aristocratic nose that such a man could hardly have come by legitimately. And he had very white teeth and blue eyes--'
'Blue eyes!' muttered De Villega dazedly, for, of course, to the Latin, all Englishmen have blue eyes.
He turned to the governor with sudden ferocity.
'Tonto de capirote!' he screamed. 'Imbecile, dost thou not know whom thou hast let slip through thy beastly fingers? Dost thou not even know whom thou hast had in thy charge these three days?'
He thumped upon the table with his fist, and the governor trembled.
'Couldst thou not recognize him, cross-eyed carrion?' he screeched. 'Couldst thou not see that he was no true peon? Maggot, hast thou not heard of the outlaw Benito Mussolini, for whom the rurales have searched in vain while he sheltered safely in the prison under thy gangrenous eyes?'
'I am a worm, and blind, excellency,' said the cringing man tactfully, for he knew that any excuse he attempted to make would only infuriate the minister further.
De Villega strode raging up and down the room. Now he believed Shannet, wild and far-fetched as the latter's theory had seemed when he had first heard it propounded. The news of the prisoner's escape, and the-to Don Manuel-sufficient revelation of his real identity, provided incontrovertible proof that the fantastic thing was true.
'He must be recaptured at once!' snapped De Villega. 'Every guardia in Santa Miranda must seek him without rest day or night. The peones must be pressed into the hunt. The state will pay a reward of five thousand pesos to the man who brings him to me, alive or dead. As for thee, offal,' he added, turning with renewed malevolence upon the prison governor, 'if Sancho Quijote, or Benito Mussolini-whatever he calls himself-is not delivered to me in twelve hours I will cast thee into thine own prison to rot there until he is found.'
'I will give the orders myself, excellency,' said the governor, glad of an excuse to make his escape, and bowed his way to the door.
He went out backwards, and, as he closed the door, the Saint pinioned his arms from behind, and allowed the point of his little knife to prick his throat.
'Make no sound,' said the Saint, and lifted the man bodily off his feet.
He carried the governor down the passage, the knife still at his throat, and took him into a room that he had already marked down in his explorations. It was a bedroom. The Saint deposited the man on the floor, sat on his head, and tore a sheet into strips, with which he bound and gagged him securely.
'I will release you as soon as the revolution is over,' the Saint promised, with a mocking bow.
Then he walked back to the other room and entered softly, closing the door behind him. De Villega was penning the announcement of the reward, and it was the President who first noticed the intruder and uttered a strangled yap of startlement.
Don Manuel looked up, and loosed an oath. He sprang to his feet, upsetting the ink pot and his chair, as if an electric current had suddenly been applied to him.
'Who are you?' he demanded in a cracked voice, though he had guessed the answer.
'You know me best as Benito Mussolini, or Sancho Quijote,' said the Saint. 'My friends-and enemies- sometimes call me El Santo. And I am the father of the revolution.'
He lounged lazily against the door, head back, hands rested carelessly on his hips. The Saint was himself again, clean and fresh from razor and bath, his hair combed smoothly back. The clothes he had appropriated suited him to perfection. The Saint had the priceless gift of being able to throw on any old thing and look well in it, but few things could have matched his mood and personality better than the buccaneering touch there was about the attire that had been more or less thrust upon him.
The loose, full-sleeved shirt, the flaring trousers, the scarlet sash-the Saint wore these romantic trappings with a marvelous swashbuckling air, lounging there with a reckless and piratical elegance, a smile on his lips. . . .
Seconds passed before the minister came out of his trance.
'Revolution?'
