“Nothing was stolen?” asked Harley.
“Nothing whatever.”
“And no clue was left behind?”
“No clue except the filed fastening of a window and two open doors which had been locked as usual when the household retired.”
“Hm,” mused Harley again; “this incident, of course, may have been an isolated one and in no way connected with the surveillance of which you complain. I mean that this person who undoubtedly entered your house might prove to be an ordinary burglar.”
“On a table in the hallway of Cray’s Folly,” replied Colonel Menendez, impressively— “so my house is named— stands a case containing presentation gold plate. The moonlight of which I have spoken was shining fully upon this case, and does the burglar live who will pass such a prize and leave it untouched?”
“I quite agree,” said Harley, quietly, “that this is a very big point.”
“You are beginning at last,” suggested the Colonel, “to believe that my suspicions are not quite groundless?”
“There is a distinct possibility that they are more than suspicions,” agreed Harley; “but may I suggest that there is something else? Have you an enemy?”
“Who that has ever held public office is without enemies?”
“Ah, quite so. Then I suggest again that there is something else.”
He gazed keenly at his visitor, and the latter, whilst meeting the look unflinchingly with his large dark eyes, was unable to conceal the fact that he had received a home thrust.
“There are two points, Mr. Harley,” he finally confessed, “almost certainly associated one with the other, if you understand, but both these so— shall I say remote?— from my life, that I hesitate to mention them. It seems fantastic to suppose that they contain a clue.”
“I beg of you,” said Harley, “to keep nothing back, however remote it may appear to be. It is sometimes the seemingly remote things which prove upon investigation to be the most intimate.”
“Very well,” resumed Colonel Menendez, beginning to roll a second cigarette whilst continuing to smoke the first, “I know that you are right, of course, but it is nevertheless very difficult for me to explain. I mentioned the attempted burglary, if so I may term it, in order to clear your mind of the idea that my fears were a myth. The next point which I have concerns a man, a neighbour of mine in Surrey. Before I proceed I should like to make it clear that I do not believe for a moment that he is responsible for this unpleasant business.”
Harley stared at him curiously. “Nevertheless,” he said, “there must be some data in your possession which suggest to your mind that he has some connection with it.”
“There are, Mr. Harley, but they belong to things so mystic and far away from ordinary crime that I fear you will think me,” he shrugged his great shoulders, “a man haunted by strange superstitions. Do you say ‘haunted?’ Good. You understand. I should tell you, then, that although of pure Spanish blood, I was born in Cuba. The greater part of my life has been spent in the West Indies, where prior to ’98 I held an appointment under the Spanish Government. I have property, not only in Cuba, but in some of the smaller islands which formerly were Spanish, and I shall not conceal from you that during the latter years of my administration I incurred the enmity of a section of the population. Do I make myself clear?”
Paul Harley nodded and exchanged a swift glance with me. I formed a rapid mental picture of native life under the governorship of Colonel Juan Menendez and I began to consider his story from a new viewpoint. Seemingly rendered restless by his reflections, he stood up and began to pace the floor, a tall but curiously graceful figure. I noticed the bulldog tenacity of his chin, the intense pride in his bearing, and I wondered what kind of menace had induced him to seek the aid of Paul Harley; for whatever his failings might be, and I could guess at the nature of several of them, that this thin-lipped Spanish soldier knew the meaning of fear I was not prepared to believe.
“Before you proceed further, Colonel Menendez,” said Harley, “might I ask when you left Cuba?”
“Some three years ago,” was his reply. “Because— ” he hesitated curiously— “of health motives, I leased a property in England, believing that here I should find peace.”
“In other words, you were afraid of something or someone in Cuba?”
Colonel Menendez turned in a flash, glaring down at the speaker.
“I never feared any man in my life, Mr. Harley,” he said, coldly.
“Then why are you here?”
The Colonel placed the stump of his first cigarette in an ash tray and lighted that which he had newly made.
“It is true,” he admitted. “Forgive me. Yet what I said was that I never feared any man.”
He stood squarely in front of the Burmese cabinet, resting one hand upon his hip. Then he added a remark which surprised me.
“Do you know anything of Voodoo?” he asked.
Paul Harley took his pipe from between his teeth and stared at the speaker silently for a moment. “Voodoo?” he echoed. “You mean negro magic?”
“Exactly.”
“My studies have certainly not embraced it,” replied Harley, quietly, “nor has it hitherto come within my experience. But since I have lived much in the East, I am prepared to learn that Voodoo may not be a negligible quantity. There are forces at work in India which we in England improperly understand. The same may be true of Cuba.”
“The same is true of Cuba.”
Colonel Menendez glared almost fiercely across the room at Paul Harley.
“And do I understand,” asked the latter, “that the danger which you believe to threaten you is associated with Cuba?”
“That, Mr. Harley, is for you to decide when all the facts shall be in your possession. Do you wish that I proceed?”
“By all means. I must confess that I am intensely interested.”
“Very well, Mr. Harley. I have something to show you.”
From an inside breast pocket Colonel Menendez drew out a gold-mounted case, and from the case took some flat, irregularly shaped object wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. Unfolding the paper, he strode across and laid the object which it had contained upon the blotting pad in front of my friend.
Impelled by curiosity I stood up and advanced to inspect it. It was of a dirty brown colour, some five or six inches long, and appeared to consist of a kind of membrane. Harley, his elbow on the table, was staring down at it questioningly.
“What is it?” I said; “some kind of leaf?”
“No,” replied Harley, looking up into the dark face of the Spanish colonel; “I think I know what it is.”
“I, also, know what it is.” declared Colonel Menendez, grimly. “But tell me what to you it seems like, Mr. Harley?”
Paul Harley’s expression was compounded of incredulity, wonder, and something else, as, continuing to stare at the speaker, he replied:
“It is the wing of a bat.”
Chapter 2 THE VOODOO SWAMP
Often enough my memory has recaptured that moment in Paul Harley’s office, when Harley, myself, and the tall Spaniard stood looking down at the bat wing lying upon the blotting pad.
My brilliant friend at times displayed a sort of prescience, of which I may have occasion to speak later, but I, together with the rest of pur-blind humanity, am commonly immune from the prophetic instinct. Therefore I chronicle the fact for what it may be worth, that as I gazed with a sort of disgust at the exhibit lying upon the table I became possessed of a conviction, which had no logical basis, that a door had been opened through which I should step into a new avenue of being; I felt myself to stand upon the threshold of things strange and terrible, but withal alluring. Perhaps it is true that in the great crises of life the inner eye becomes momentarily opened.