"I do not wish to use force, Seńor Kelly," he said significantly, and Kelly submitted to the inevitable.
"But," he said, "I do not know why you should suspect me to be hiding him."
"You are known to be a friend of the Seńor Sheridan," was the brief reply, "and the Seńor Sheridan is a friend of this man. We are looking for both of them."
Kelly followed the officer into the house.
"What did you say was the name of this man you are looking for?" he inquired.
"To the Seńor Shannet, whom he attacked," said the officer, "he gave his name as Benito Mussolini."
He was at a loss to understand Kelly's sudden earthquaking roar of laughter. At last he gave up the effort, and put it down to another manifestation of the well-known madness of all ingleses. But the fact remains that the joke largely compensated Kelly for the indignity of the search to which his house was subjected.
The officer and half a dozen of his men went through the bungalow with a small-toothed comb, and not a cubic inch of it, from floor to rafters, escaped their attention. But they did not find Archie Sheridan, who was sitting out on the roof, on the opposite side to that from which the soldiers had approached.
At last the search party allowed themselves to be shepherded out, for barely an hour's daylight was left to them, and they had already fruitlessly wasted much valuable time.
"But remember, Seńor Kelly," said the officer, as his horse was led up, "that both Sheridan and Mussolini have been declared outlaws for resisting arrest and assaulting and threatening the lives of the guardia civiles sent to apprehend them. In the morning they will be proclaimed; and the Seńor Shannet, who has heard of the insolence offered to the Law, has himself offered to double the reward for their capture, dead or alive."
The troopers rode off on their quest, but in those latitudes the twilight is short. They scoured the countryside for an hour, until the fall of night put an end to the search, and five miles away they found the horses of the two comisarios grazing in a field, but of the man Mussolini there was no trace. The Saint had had a good start; and what he did not know about the art of taking cover in the open country wasn't worth knowing.
He was stretched out on a branch of a tall tree a mile away from where the horses were found when the troop of cavalry reined in only twelve feet beneath him.
"We can do no more now," said the officer. "In the morning we shall find him. Without horses he cannot travel far. Let us go home."
The Saint laughed noiselessly in the darkness.
5
That night there came into Santa Miranda a peón.
He was dirty and disreputable to look upon. His clothes were dusty, patched in many places, and threadbare where they were not patched; and his hair was long, and matted into a permanent thatch, as is the slovenly custom of the labourers of that country.
Had he wished to do so, he might have passed unnoticed among many other similarly down-at-heel and poverty-stricken people; but this he did not seem to want. In fact, he went out of his way to draw attention to himself; and this he found easy enough, for his poverty-stricken appearance was belied by the depth of his pocket.
He made a fairly comprehensive round of the inferior cafes in the town, and in each he bought wine and aguardiente for all who cared to join him. Naturally, it was not long before he acquired a large following; and, since he seemed to account for two drinks to everybody else's one, there was no surprise when he became more and more drunk as the evening wore on.
It was not to be expected that such display of affluence on the part of one whose outward aspect argued against the probability that he would have more than a few centavos to his name could escape comment, and it was not long before the tongues that devoured the liquor which he bought were busy with rumour. It was whispered, as with authority, that he was a bandit from the Sierra Maduro, over the border beyond Esperanza, who had crossed into Pasala to spend his money and rest until the rurales of Maduro tired of seeking him and he could return to his old hunting grounds with safety. Then it was remarked that on his little finger was a signet ring bearing a heraldic device, and with equal authority it was said that he was the heir to a noble Mexican family indulging his hobby of moving among the peones as one of themselves and distributing charity where he found it merited. Against this, an other school of thought affirmed that he was a peón who had murdered his master and stolen his ring and his money.
The peón heard these whisperings and laughingly ignored them. His manner lent more support, however, to either of the two former theories than to the third. He was tall for a peón, and a man of great strength, as was seen when he bought a whole keg of wine and lifted it in his hands to fill his goblet as if it had weighed nothing at all. His eyes were blue, which argued that he was of noble descent, for the true peón stock is so mixed with the native that the eyes of that sea-blue colour are rare. And again, the bandit theory was made more plausible by the man's boisterous and reckless manner, as though he held life cheap and the intense enjoyment of the day the only thing of moment, and would as soon be fighting as drinking. He had, too, a repertoire of strange and barbarous songs which no one could understand.
"Drink up, amigos!" he roared from time to time, "for this is the beginning of great days for Pasala!"
But when they asked him what they might mean, he turned away their questions with a jest, and called for more wine.
Few of his following had seen such a night for many years.
From house to house he went, singing his strange songs, and bearing his keg of wine on his shoulder. One or two guardias would have barred his way, or, hearing the rumours which were gossiped about him, would have stopped and questioned him; but the peón poured them wine or flung them money, and they stood aside.
Towards midnight, still singing, the man led his procession up the Calle del Palacio. The crowd followed, not sure where they were going, and not caring, for they had drunk much.
Now, the Calle del Palacio forms the upright of the T which has been described, and halfway down it, as has been stated, is the palace from which it takes its name.
In the street opposite the palace gates the peón halted, set down his keg, and mounted unsteadily upon it. He stood there, swaying slightly, and his following gathered round him. .. "Viva! Viva!" they shouted thickly.
The peón raised his hands for silence.
"Citizens!" he cried, "I have told you that this is the beginning of great days for Pasala, and now I will tell you why. It is because at last we are going to suffer no more under this Manuel Conception de Villega. May worms devour him alive, for he is a thief and a tyrant and the son of a dog! His taxes bear you down, and you receive nothing in return. The President is his servant, that strutting nincompoop, and they are both in the pay of the traitor Shannet, who is planning to betray you to Maduro. Now I say that we will end this to-night."
"Viva!" responded a few doubtful voices.
"Let us finish this slavery," cried the peón again. "Let us storm this palace, which was built with money wrung from the poor, where your puppet of a President and this pig of a De Villega sleep in luxury for which you have been tortured! Let us tear them from their beds and slay them, and cast them back into the gutter from which they came!"
This time there were no "Vivas!" The awfulness of the stranger's blasphemy had sobered the mob as nothing else could have done. It was unprecedented-incredible. No one had ever dared to speak in such terms of the President and his minister-or, if they had, it was reported by spies to the comisarios, and guardias came swiftly and took the blasphemers away to a place where their treason should not offend the ears of the faithful. Of course the peon had spoken nothing but the truth. But to tear down the palace and kill the President! It was unheard of. It could not be done without much discussion.