CHAPTER XLVIII.

THE SWORD TRIUMPHANT.

“You are in unusually good spirits this evening, Senor Ashley.”

“I am always happy when I am near you, senorita,” is Jack’s fervent response. At which speech, the warmest she has ever heard from his lips, Juanita grows as rosy as the morn and does not appear displeased.

“Is that dreadfully important work which has occupied so much of your time this evening yet finished?”

“Very nearly.”

“And you can devote a little time to your friends?”

“I am ready to devote the remainder of my existence to one of them, senorita.”

“Oh, what unselfishness! When do you expect to begin?”

“Whenever I have reason to believe that such devotion will be rewarded by—”

“Reward? Then it is not a bit unselfish and does not deserve encouragement,” interrupts the young lady, with a toss of her head.

“You are cruel, senorita,” murmurs Ashley, but his voice does not betray a great deal of grief.

“I am just,” declares Juanita. “While I have been sitting here at the mercy of a lot of frightfully stupid men, you have devoted your time to the entertainment of Mrs. Harding. Perhaps that was the devotion you alluded to a moment ago,” ventures the young lady, with a pretty frown.

“Hardly,” laughs Jack. “You do not know Mrs. Harding, senorita.”

“Perhaps not as well as you, Senor Ashley. My opportunities have not been so good. I saw you come in from the garden. One would hardly judge that you had met her only half an hour ago.”

“Oh, the fair Isabel and I are old friends,” Ashley remarks, serenely.

“Indeed? Yet you told me—”

“I will tell you more, senorita.”

“I don’t want to hear any more,” opposes Juanita crossly. “You have deceived me once and I—”

“Deceived thee? Ah, Juanita—” Jack checks himself as he notes the flush of annoyance in her cheeks.

“Hello! There’s the chap I’ve been looking for,” suddenly remarks Ashley, as he catches a glimpse of Capt. Guerra over by the big staircase. “Will you pardon me just a moment, senorita? That will complete my evening work, and then if a lifetime of devotion will—”

“Stop! I shan’t hear another word,” breaks in Juanita, imperiously. “And you need not hurry back,” she adds irritably, provoked by Ashley’s serenity.

Meanwhile Ashley is telling himself that he must be progressing in his wooing, since Juanita has betrayed symptoms of jealousy. “Devotion? She little knows how much need she has of a clear head and strong arm,” he thinks. “Ah, Capt. Guerra,” he remarks, pausing before a distinguished-appearing gentleman who is idling by the staircase, “will you be good enough to follow me into the garden?”

Ashley passes out and Guerra follows him curiously. When they are alone and unobserved Ashley takes an envelope from his pocket and presses it into the captain’s hand.

“Read that and then destroy it,” he directs.

“Your meaning, senor?”

“No explanation is necessary. I am ignorant of the contents of the documents further than that their publicity would be deuced awkward for you and incidentally for myself.”

“Wonderful! How came you by them?”

“That is my affair, senor. Had I not rescued them they would now be in the hands of Truenos. Adios!” And Jack leaves the mystified Spaniard to his own devices.

Meantime a little scene that would afford Ashley the keenest delight to witness is taking place in one of the rooms of the palace. Gen. Truenos is seated at a table littered with maps and papers and Gen. Murillo and Isabel Harding have just been ushered into the apartment.

“You have succeeded?” Truenos asks as Mrs. Harding approaches.

“Beyond expectation. Quesada may not be the head and front of the offenders, but he is certainly one in whom there has been placed some authority.”

“Quesada is now a fugitive,” asserts Truenos.

“Indeed?” This is news to Isabel. “Ashley’s warning,” she thinks. “When did you learn this, general?”

“To-day. He has taken refuge on board the United States cruiser. I have strongly suspected Quesada, but have not particularly feared him. Quesada is a figurehead. What I want is proof of conspiracy on the part of men any one of whom is more troublesome than a dozen Quesadas—men I suspect to be conspiring against the government even while pretending to serve it.”

“Would certain dispatches from Don Quesada addressed to Capt. Francisco Guerra furnish the necessary evidence?” asks Mrs. Harding.

“Ah! You have intercepted such?”

“Better. I am the bearer of them.”

Truenos regards his spy admiringly. “Bueno! The papers at once!” he cries.

“And my reward?” suggests Isabel, as she takes from her bosom the precious envelope.

“Anything that you may ask—in reason,” replies the captain-general, reaching impatiently for the documents. “Why, how is this? This letter is addressed to me.”

“To you?” exclaims Isabel in astonishment. “Surely—why—there must be some mistake.”

“Evidently,” rejoins Truenos, as he breaks the seal.

Isabel watches him anxiously as he scans the document. A pale sickly light is beginning to break upon her bewilderment.

Ashley! The papers have been tampered with! It was for that he led her to the garden. How did he know, before they spoke, who were the two men whose meeting had interrupted their conversation in the summer house? And, oh, how weak she had been! She sees it all now and she swears she will be revenged. Aha! She knows where to wound him, to repay him in awful torture for the trick he has played upon her.

While these dark thoughts are flitting through her mind the captain-general has finished his brief examination of the letter, which he tosses over to her. She picks it up mechanically and reads:

“To His Excellency, Honorato de Truenos: Indisposition prevents my attending the grand ball to-night and offering my congratulations upon your safe arrival at Santiago. Under the directions of such a general there should be no difficulty in quickly subduing the insurrection, which I believe to be nearly at an end.

Manuel de Quesada.”

“I have been tricked, Gen. Truenos,” says Isabel, crushing the paper in her hand.

“It would seem so,” remarks the captain-general. It is apparent that he is vastly disappointed. “Come, tell me of your stay at the quinta, all you know concerning Quesada and his movements.”

There is much of importance to relate, and when Mrs. Harding has finished her story Truenos summons Capt. Huerta.

“Take a dozen of your men and repair at once to La Quinta de Quesada. You know where it is?” Capt. Huerta knows perfectly. “Ransack the house thoroughly and fetch me every scrap of writing upon the premises. Gen. Murillo, do you follow in the morning and look over the place. Go!” to Huerta.

The latter bows and leaves the room. Mrs. Harding follows. “One moment, Captain Huerta,” she says.

A short but earnest conversation ensues. Isabel talks in rapid whispers, and the Spanish captain listens eagerly, while surprise, anger, hope and malicious joy are mirrored in succession upon his swarthy countenance.

“Within ten minutes,” he breathes, and hurries away to execute the commands of the captain-general.

“I told you it would be better if you delivered the papers to me during the afternoon,” General Murillo tells Mrs. Harding, after Truenos has gone. “Who has been the cause of your undoing?”

Isabel tells him of her suspicions, which she has come to regard as virtual facts, and Murillo is inclined to agree with her.

“The game is not yet played out, general,” flashes Isabel.

“Well, take care, take care,” admonishes Murillo, as they separate.

“Ah, here is the very man now,” frowns the general, as he re-enters the sala grande and is greeted by Ashley, who has just left Captain Guerra.

“My dear Senor Ashley,” he observes dryly, “let me give you a piece of advice.”

“With pleasure, general. I am always open to kindly counsel, although I do not always follow it.”

“Do not let your interest in a young lady lead you into mixing with the affairs of a country toward which you are expected to maintain a strict neutrality,” is Murillo’s blunt remark.

“I don’t think I catch your drift, general,” drawls Jack. But he does, and the gleam of quiet triumph in his blue eyes irritates Murillo.

“I have warned you,” says the latter, and turns on his heel.

“So I am suspected,” thinks Ashley. “I imagined the fair Isabel would like to know to whom to ascribe her confusion. And now to undeceive Juanita.”

But Juanita is not to be found. There are few guests remaining in the sala and she is not among them.

Ashley explores the garden, with like success. Then he questions the line of volante drivers drawn up before the entrance to the palace grounds. Have any of them seen Senorita de Quesada? None that he interrogates have had that pleasure, and the Pearl of the Antilles is known by sight to nearly all of them. Ashley is in despair.

“The Senorita de Quesada?” queries one of the Cuban jehus, who has just joined the group. “The senorita and another lady were driven away in a volante not ten minutes ago.”

“In what direction?” demands Ashley.

“To Santos.”

“To Santos? Heavens, man, they cannot go to Santos at this hour of night unescorted!”

Unescorted? Is not Captain Huerta and his men all the escort that one could desire?

This intelligence is a frightful strain upon Ashley’s composure, as he thinks of Juanita, Isabel, Captain Huerta and the deserted La Quinta de Quesada.

“Quick! To Santos!” he cries, springing into a volante and tossing a handful of coin to the driver. “To Santos as fast as your horse will travel!”

The man leaps to his seat, cracks his whip and they are off.

As they clatter through the streets of Santiago and swing into the road which Ashley traversed only a few hours before, Jack shouts impatiently, “Faster! Faster! Great Scott! This is no funeral! Though it may be, before I’m through with it,” he adds, savagely.

“But senor, we will dash the volante to pieces,” protests his charioteer.

Inwardly chafing, but realizing the futility of impatience, Ashley forces himself to be calm. It seems an age before the distance to Santos is traversed, but finally the outlines of the few buildings which the hamlet boasts are seen against the starlit sky.

The driver reins up his steed for further directions.

“To La Quinta de Quesada,” orders Ashley, and they rattle on.

Suddenly rings out the command, “Alto!” and the volante stops with a suddenness that nearly unseats its passenger, directly in front of El Calabozo de Infierno, the local carcel.

“What in the devil’s name—” begins Ashley, but he is seized and dragged roughly from the volante, a pistol clapped to his head and the command hissed in his ear: “Callese!”

Lights appear about the entrance of the carcel, and as Ashley is hustled toward the gloom beyond he sees, standing near the passageway and watching the strange proceedings with a troubled face, the aged priest whom he noted at La Quinta de Quesada a few days before.

Ashley is hurried through the patio and along the ill-smelling corridor beyond to an open cell. Into this he is pushed and his ungentle captor tells him:

“En la manana muere V. sobre el garrote!”

“Thank you,” says Ashley. His stock of Spanish is just sufficient to enable him to comprehend the nature of the cheerful intelligence, which is to the effect that he is to die by the iron collar to-morrow.

“Will you leave the light?” he requests.

The smoky lantern is set upon the floor. Then the door clangs to, there is a rattle of chains and the echo of departing footsteps and he is alone.