Chapter Eight.
Señor Alvaros gets to work.
For fully a quarter of an hour after the departure of Alvaros, Don Hermoso sat plunged in a deep and somewhat anxious reverie. He scarcely knew whether he was more pleased or annoyed at what had just happened: for, on the one hand, he was at last rid of a distinctly uncongenial acquaintance, which had been almost thrust upon him in the first instance, and which had proved ever more uncongenial and unwelcome with the lapse of time; while, on the other hand, he fully recognised that he had made for himself a vindictive and implacable enemy who, although not very formidable or dangerous just then, might at any moment become so. For although Señor Montijo was one of the most important and influential persons in the island, he was a Cuban; and, as such, he was well aware that, thanks to the corruption which was then rampant among the Spanish officials of the Government, there could be no hope of justice for him if he were brought into collision with any of these officials, of whom, of course, Alvaros was one. The word of a Cuban, however important his position might be, was of absolutely no weight whatever; and Don Hermoso was fully aware that it would be no very difficult matter for Alvaros to absolutely ruin him if he chose. Yet even ruin would be preferable to seeing his beloved daughter the wife and slave of such a man as Alvaros had proved himself to be; and, for the rest, should it come to be war to the knife between them—well, he must take his chance with the rest of the Cubans, and trust to the coming revolution to enable him to hold his own.
His reverie was interrupted by the arrival of Milsom, who, having taken the Thetis into Havana harbour and snugly berthed her there, and further made every possible provision for her safety, had turned her over to the capable care of Perkins, her chief mate, and had now come on by train as far as Pinar del Rio, and from thence by Don Hermoso’s carriage, to pay his promised visit to the hacienda Montijo. He was full of glee at the unconcealed uneasiness with which the Spanish officials regarded the presence of the yacht in the harbour; and their evident belief that, despite the strict search of the vessel by the commander and lieutenant of the Tiburon, she carried, hidden away in some cleverly-contrived place of concealment, the contraband of which they had been informed by their spies on the other side of the Atlantic.
“They have put on board us no less than four custom-house officers—empleados de la aduana, as they call them—to see that nothing is surreptitiously landed from the ship,” he exclaimed with boisterous enjoyment; “and four boats now guard around us every night! Oh, they are a great people, these Spaniards!”
Then he went on to relate how, a few hours after his arrival, a boat had come alongside from the Tiburon, which was also lying in the harbour, bearing a challenge for him from Lieutenant Silvio Fernandez, her lieutenant, who demanded satisfaction from him for his insulting behaviour on the occasion of the yacht being stopped by the gunboat; and how he had accepted the challenge to fight and, being the challenged party, had chosen fists as the weapons wherewith the duel was to be fought: and he made merry over the lieutenant’s indignation when he had declined to accept swords or pistols as a substitute for fists. “Of course,” he concluded, “the fight did not come off, although I remained in Havana forty-eight hours longer than I originally intended, in order to give Señor Fernandez every chance.”
During dinner, that night, Don Hermoso related to his family and guests the particulars of the interview that had occurred between him and Alvaros in the afternoon; and if he had, even for a moment, entertained the slightest doubt as to the wisdom of the step which he had taken in declining Alvaros’ proposal and dismissing him from the house, it was finally dissipated when Señorita Isolda expressed in quite unmistakable terms her relief and gratification.
The next few days sped very pleasantly, for the young people, at any rate, who passed their time in shooting, or in taking long rides about the surrounding country; and Señorita Isolda frequently found herself contrasting the genial, hearty friendliness and chivalrous courtesy of her brother’s English friends with the stiff, haughty, overbearing manner and overweening conceit of the Spanish officers, who seemed to think that such attentions as they chose to pay her ought to be regarded as a vast condescension on their part.
It was about a week after the dismissal of Alvaros by Don Hermoso that, at the end of a long and fatiguing day’s shooting, ending up with a very pleasant musical evening, the party in the casa Montijo retired, somewhat late, to their several rooms; and Jack Singleton, weary with much tramping under the scorching sun, lost no time in disrobing and flinging himself, with his pyjama suit as his only covering, upon his bed, where he almost instantly sank into a sound and dreamless sleep. He had probably been asleep for at least three hours, although it seemed to him only as many minutes, when he suddenly started broad awake, with the disagreeable feeling that he was no longer alone, or rather, to put it more exactly, that someone had that instant stealthily entered his room by way of the window, which, as is customary in Cuba, had been left wide open for the admission of every possible breath of air.
For a moment he lay perfectly still, listening intently, and peering the while into the darkness which encompassed him. All was perfectly still, however, save for the faint rustle in the night breeze of the mosquito curtains which surrounded his bed, and the musical tinkling of the waters of the fountain outside; while the darkness was so intense that it was only with the utmost difficulty he could dimly discern the opening of the window, which, it will be remembered, looked out upon a patio, or kind of courtyard. Suddenly the room was faintly illumined for a moment by a flicker of summer lightning, and Jack felt almost positive that during that fraction of a second he caught a glimpse of something by the open window which had certainly not been there when he retired for the night—something which suggested a crouching human figure. Stretching out his hand, Jack cautiously and noiselessly parted the mosquito curtains, with the object of getting a clear view when the next flash should come, as come he knew it would. And come it did, a minute or two later, disclosing to the young man’s astonished gaze a form on hands and knees, about halfway between the window and the bed. As before, the glimmer of the lightning was but momentary, but, brief as it was, it sufficed Jack to see that the individual, whoever he might be, held a long, murderous-looking knife in his right hand; and the inference was obvious that he was there for no good purpose. Jack had learned, among other things, to act promptly and with decision, and no sooner was he again in darkness than, with a single bound, he was on his feet on the floor, where he instantly came into violent collision with the stranger, who was at that precise moment in the very act of rising from his knees. Brief as had been the flicker of the lightning, it had enabled Jack to measure his distance and to note the exact spot occupied by the unknown: the moment, therefore, that he came into contact with the intruder his left hand fell unerringly upon the right wrist of the other, which he seized in so vice-like a grip that the arm became immovable; while with his right he grasped the man by the throat and thrust him violently backward, at the same instant twining his right leg round the legs of his antagonist, with the result that both crashed to the ground, Jack being uppermost. His antagonist was an immensely powerful man, lithe and sinewy as a leopard, and he struggled furiously to free himself, hitting out savagely with his free left hand and landing one or two very nasty blows on Jack’s face; until the latter, with one knee on his prostrate foe’s chest, managed to get the other upon his left forearm and thus pin it to the ground. Meanwhile Jack’s grip upon the throat of the man was by no means to be shaken off, and the struggles of the stranger were rapidly growing weaker as the breath was remorselessly choked out of him, when Milsom and Carlos, both of whom had been awaked by the commotion, dashed into the room, bearing lights, and loudly demanding to know what was the matter.
“I’ll be shot if I know,” answered Jack; “but I daresay this chap can tell us. He got in through the window; and as the lightning showed him to be a stranger, and I also noticed that he carried a rather formidable-looking knife, it occurred to me that it might be wise to make a prisoner of him, and get him to tell us who he is, and what he wants. Now, friend, I will trouble you for that knife.” The man surrendered the weapon with a sullen scowl. “Thanks!” said Jack. “Now you may stand up.”
The man rose to his feet, revealing to the gaze of the three friends a tall and sinewy form, attired in the picturesquely-tattered garb of a muleteer, or wagoner. The fellow was a low-class Spaniard, of singularly vicious and disreputable appearance; and as he glared vindictively at his captor he looked capable of anything, murder included. For a moment he appeared inclined to make a desperate bid for liberty; but as Jack had slipped between him and the open window, while Milsom, with a cocked revolver in his hand, stood with his back against the closed door of the apartment, he thought better of it, and simply enquired:
“Well, what are you going to do with me?”
“That will depend, to some extent, upon the answers which you may see fit to give to our questions,” answered Carlos. “First of all, who are you; and what errand brought you here?”
“My name, Señor Montijo, is Panza—Antonio Panza; my present occupation is that of a carrier of goods; and I suppose I may as well confess at once that my business here was to murder the English señor, your friend.”
“To murder me?” repeated Jack. “And why, pray? What harm have I ever done you, that you should desire to murder me?”
“None whatever, Señor,” answered the man. “But it would appear that you have harmed somebody else, or I should not have been hired to slit your throat.”
“So,” exclaimed Carlos, “that is the explanation, is it? I suspected as much! And pray who is the coward who hired you to do his dirty work for him?”
“Ah, pardon, Señor; that is just what I may not tell you!” answered Panza. “I was paid handsomely to undertake this piece of work; and it was part of the bargain that, should I fail, I was to keep my employer’s secret.”
“Is it permissible to ask how much you were paid?” demanded Jack.
“Certainly, Señor,” answered the fellow. “I was paid fifty doubloons to kill you, if I could, and to hold my tongue about it.”
“Fifty doubloons—a trifle over fifty pounds sterling!” exclaimed Jack, in comic disgust. “Is that all that my life is worth to your employer?”
“He told me that it was the utmost he could afford to give, Señor; and it was quite enough to tempt me. Why, were I to work all my life at my trade as a carrier, I could never hope to save fifty doubloons, nay, nor the fourth part of that sum. It is not so very long ago that I risked my life constantly as a contrabandista, for a profit of one-fifth of that amount.”
“Well, Antonio,” said Carlos, “according to your own showing you have a very elastic conscience, which you appear to have made pretty completely subservient to your own interests. Now, I suppose you know what will happen to you if we hand you over to the authorities?”
“Yes, Señor,” answered the ruffian. “I shall probably be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment with hard labour; which sentence will be commuted to one month, if I behave myself, as I shall, of course.”
“Six months’ hard labour?” exclaimed Carlos incredulously. “You are strangely mistaken, friend. You are far more likely to get ten years’ penal servitude in Africa. Attempted murder is a crime that is usually punished very severely.”
“Usually—yes,” assented the prisoner. “But that is when one attempts to murder a Spaniard. This muchacho, however, is English; and nobody in Cuba is just now likely to trouble himself very much over the attempted murder of an Englishman. Besides, I have received a definite promise that, if caught, I shall be very leniently treated.”
“Oh, you have, have you?” exclaimed Carlos, in a tone that seemed to indicate that he was beginning to see daylight. “That seems to point to the fact that your employer is a man possessing a considerable amount of influence with the authorities. But I fancy he must have entirely forgotten the British Consul at Havana. Does he, or do you, imagine for a moment that that gentleman will permit any tampering with justice where one of his countrymen is concerned? Make no mistake about that, my friend! So surely as you are brought to trial, so surely may you rely upon receiving the maximum amount of punishment for your crime.”
“Santa Maria!” gasped Panza. “I had forgotten that.”
“I suspected as much,” answered Carlos. “Now, if Señor Singleton here should chance to be disposed to be merciful, to the extent of permitting you to go free, would you be willing in return to swear upon that crucifix which I see you wear round your neck that you will make no further attempt upon his life; and also to disclose the name of your employer?”
“That would be no good, Señor,” said Panza. “My employer warned me that, should I attempt to betray him, he would simply deny every word I might say; and who would take the word of a suspected contrabandista against that of a—well, a Spaniard of high position? It is true that the judge might shrewdly suspect that there was a considerable amount of truth in my story; but he would be very careful to conceal any such suspicion, I assure you.”
“It thus appears that your employer has taken the utmost care to shield himself behind you, and leave you to bear the brunt of whatever may befall,” exclaimed Carlos. “But you have not replied to my question yet. I asked you whether, in the event of Señor Singleton permitting you to go free and unpunished, you would swear never again to lift your hand against him; and also to disclose the name of your employer. As a matter of fact, I know it already; but it would of course be more satisfactory to have an explicit statement from you.”
“If you know the man, as you say, Señor, you will also know that it will not be of the slightest use to charge him with complicity in this,” answered Panza.
“Possibly not,” agreed Carlos. “Yet it would enable us to give Señor Alvaros a hint that his machinations are known, and that henceforth we shall be on our guard against them.”
“Very well, Señor,” agreed the would-be assassin. “You have named the man who employed me; it is therefore evident that you know a great deal more about this affair—whatever it may be—than he suspects, so it is useless for me to attempt to keep the secret from you. Señor Alvaros is indeed the man who employed me; but I am not going to be such a fool as to go back and tell him that I have failed. I insisted upon receiving payment in advance, and there is therefore no need for me to see him again; I shall consequently leave Pinar del Rio, and resume my former occupation of contrabandista. With Señor Alvaros’ fifty doubloons I can see my way to earn a very comfortable living as a smuggler; and if you, Señor, should at any time require my services in that capacity—or any other, for that matter—I shall be pleased to do my utmost to afford you complete satisfaction.”
“Very well, I will remember,” said Carlos, laughing heartily at the man’s cool impudence. “But you have not yet taken the oath, you know, and you must do that before we can release you.”
Without a word of objection the Spaniard took the small bronze crucifix in his hand, bowed his head reverently as he pressed it to his lips, and then, holding it aloft before him, exclaimed:
“I swear upon this emblem of our redemption, and by all my hopes of salvation, that I will never again attempt to take the life of the young Englishman, if he will be so generous as to allow me to go free and unpunished for what I have already done.”
“Right, that will do! You are free to go, now, as soon as you please. Open the door, Milsom, and let him pass,” said Jack.
“Mil gracias y buenas noches, Señor,” exclaimed Panza as he strode toward the door. “One word before I go, caballeros; beware of Señor Alvaros, for he bears no love for either of you.”
And he passed into the night and the darkness.
“Well,” exclaimed Milsom, “I have met with some queer folk in my time, but that chap breaks the record for cool impudence! Spanish is not my strong point, but, if I understood him aright, after calmly acknowledging that he had been hired to murder our friend Jack, here, he with equal calmness informs you that if you should at any time want a similar job done, he will be pleased to undertake it, and will do his best to afford you complete satisfaction! ‘Murders of the most barbarous description undertaken, and executed with promptitude and dispatch’, eh? By Jove, this is an interesting country!”
Carlos laughed rather bitterly. “Yes, it is, isn’t it?” he responded. “And it has come to this under Spanish rule. That fellow knew perfectly well that, in accepting Alvaros’ commission, he was incurring absolutely no risks whatever, beyond such small personal danger as was involved in his attack upon a sleeping man, and that is not much, as a rule. But the incident goes to show what a vindictive and unscrupulous scoundrel that fellow Alvaros is. I must tell the Padre about it to-morrow, for it is evident that the man means mischief, and we must all be on our guard. The worst of it is that we can take no overt steps in the matter; for, as our friend Panza hinted, if we were to go to the authorities with a statement of what has occurred, and lodge a complaint against Alvaros, we should only be laughed at. The Spanish Government protects its own people pretty effectually; but Cubans and foreigners have to take care of themselves as best they can.”
“Nevertheless,” said Milsom, “I should advise Jack to put the matter into the hands of our Consul at Havana, who is not at all the sort of fellow to stand any nonsense. He would doubtless communicate promptly with the Capitan-General, informing him of what has happened, and giving him very clearly to understand that he will be held responsible if, after receiving such information, anything is allowed to happen to Jack.”
“Yes,” assented Carlos, “that might be a good plan, perhaps. But I would suggest that you decide upon nothing until we have had a talk with the Padre to-morrow. Let us hear, first, what he thinks of the affair. Meanwhile, Jack, I think you need not apprehend any further molestation to-night, and certainly none from Panza; after swearing that oath he will not again raise his hand against you. But, to make assurance doubly sure, I will rouse Pedro and instruct him to mount guard under the veranda for the remainder of the night, and to turn loose the two bloodhounds. Then woe betide any stranger who attempts to approach the house!”
On the following morning, after first breakfast, Carlos and Jack followed Don Hermoso into his office, where the former informed his father of the incident of the preceding night, and of Milsom’s suggestion that the matter should be placed in the hands of the English Consul, to be dealt with as that official might deem fit. Don Hermoso was of course, as might be expected, most indignant at the outrage, and was at first very strongly disposed to make a personal matter of it by lodging a formal complaint with the Capitan-General against Alvaros; but after listening to all that his son and Jack had to say he finally allowed himself to be dissuaded from taking so decisive a step, especially as he fully shared their doubts as to its effectiveness: but he cordially approved of Milsom’s suggestion that the affair should be laid before the English Consul, and the final result of the talk was that Jack and Carlos forthwith rode into Pinar del Rio, and from thence took train to Havana, where they arrived rather late in the afternoon, yet still early enough to catch the Consul ere he left his office for the day. This official gave the two young men a cordial welcome, and listened to Jack’s story with the utmost attention, his mouth setting ever more firmly and the frown upon his brow lowering ever more darkly as the story proceeded. When at length it was finished he said:
“I have heard of this man Alvaros before, but never any good of him. Yet I believe he stands well with the Capitan-General. But of course I shall not allow that to influence me; one of my duties here is to protect British subjects, and I intend to do it. It is rather unfortunate, Mr Singleton, that you should have chosen this particular period for your visit to Cuba, for I may tell you—if you don’t happen to know it already—that foreigners of all kinds, and particularly Americans and English, are looked upon with scant favour by the Spaniards just now, as the latter suspect them of favouring the aspirations of the Cubans toward independence. And that reminds me that the Spaniards somehow got hold of the notion that you were bringing out a cargo of contraband of war for the Cuban insurgents. I suppose there is no truth in that story, is there?”
Jack had been expecting some such question as this, sooner or later, and was fully prepared for it. He had made up his mind that to tell the Consul the whole truth of the matter would only be to place that official in an extremely embarrassing position, so he answered, with a laugh:
“They took good care to test the truth of the story for themselves by sending out a torpedo boat to accompany us from Key West and see that we did not land anything of the kind. But something went wrong with her—she apparently broke down—and we left her. But, to make assurance doubly sure, they also sent out a gunboat which—quite unlawfully, in my opinion—stopped us on the high seas, and informed us that we were all prisoners.” Then Jack went on to relate in full detail all the occurrences of that afternoon—how Milsom had refused to surrender the yacht, and had threatened to sink the gunboat if force were attempted, and how he, Jack, had subsequently insisted upon the yacht being searched, and how nothing had been found, to the intense disappointment and chagrin of the Spanish officers, from whom he had exacted an ample apology.
The Consul’s brow cleared, and he laughed heartily as Jack described in graphic language the entire incident, from beginning to end; and when the story was ended he was pleased to express a somewhat qualified approval of the Englishmen’s behaviour.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “the whole affair was in the highest degree irregular. On the one hand, the Spaniards had no business to stop you on the high seas, whatever their suspicions may have been; and in so doing they exceeded their rights and laid themselves open to the rebuff which you gave them. On the other hand, although I do not blame you altogether for your somewhat high-handed action in offering resistance to their attempted seizure of your vessel, it would have been more politic on your part to have submitted, and then placed the whole affair in my hands. I would have seen to it that no harm befell you; and I would also have exacted from the Government an ample apology and adequate compensation for the outrage. However, that is all past and done with; but I have no doubt you will be quite able to follow me when I point out to you that such an incident is, in itself, quite sufficient to render you a somewhat unpopular personage with the Spanish officials, and to cause them to regard with scarcely veiled disapproval your avowed intention to prolong your visit to the island. I tell you candidly that you must be quite prepared to have your stay in Cuba rendered as unpleasant as it can possibly be made; and I ought to advise you to make that stay as brief as possible. But if you choose to remain I will do my utmost to protect you; and I can guarantee you freedom from official interference so long as you abstain from meddling with politics. But of course I cannot insure you against private malignity, such as that of this fellow Alvaros; the utmost that I can promise is that, should anything untoward happen to you, I will exact ample reparation. I shall make it my business to call upon the Capitan-General to-morrow, and will not only lay the whole case before him, but will also insist upon his taking some steps to mark his disapproval of Captain Alvaros’ peculiar methods of venting his personal spite. And now, since you cannot possibly get back to Señor Montijo’s place to-night, I think perhaps you cannot do better than come home with me; I can put you both up quite easily.”
Thus it was accordingly arranged; and after dinner their genial host took the two young men out and showed them something of the town of Havana, which was very interesting to Jack, although less so to Carlos, who was of course tolerably familiar with the place. They also took the opportunity to pay a flying visit to the Thetis, which they found moored just off the custom-house, still with four customs officers on board; but the other precaution mentioned by Milsom had been relaxed, for it was gradually being borne in upon the minds of the Spanish officials that there was nothing about the ship, or about the behaviour of her people, to justify their suspicions. Everything was found quite right on board her: Perkins took care to keep everybody on the alert, a strict anchor watch was maintained every night, to guard against any possible attempt to maliciously damage the ship; and it appeared that, before leaving her, Milsom had taken care to have the bunkers filled to their utmost capacity, while Macintyre, the chief engineer, after having had the boilers thoroughly cleaned, had caused them to be filled with fresh water in readiness to get up steam at a moment’s notice.
On the following morning the Consul called upon the Capitan-General, taking the two lads with him, and lodged a formal, but none the less vigorous, complaint respecting the outrage which had been offered to a British subject—Jack, to wit—by one of his officers. The Capitan-General, who was a fine, stately, white-haired man, listened with the most courteous attention to what the two Englishmen had to say, and then, with equal courtesy, proceeded to pooh-pooh the whole story, insisting upon the exceeding unlikelihood of any officer of Captain Alvaros’ standing in the Spanish service stooping to so degrading and cowardly a step as that of hiring an assassin to “remove” an almost total stranger from his path. He dwelt very strongly upon the sterling worth of Señor Alvaros’ character, and the very high esteem in which that gentleman was held by all who enjoyed the privilege of his acquaintance; and mildly reproached the Englishmen for being so credulous as to believe the unsupported story of such an unmitigated ruffian as Panza had appeared to be. The fact that the character of a Spanish officer and gentleman could be so easily smirched was dwelt upon by him at some length, but more in sorrow than in anger; and he did not omit to draw the especial attention of his visitors to the important fact that, even according to their own showing, there was no sufficient motive to induce Señor Alvaros to engage in such a very reprehensible undertaking.
It was intensely amusing to Jack, and scarcely less so to Carlos, to observe the sympathetic courtesy with which the English Consul listened to all this rigmarole, which, from his manner, one might have believed to have been absolutely convincing—until he remarked, in turn:
“Well, my dear General, after all has been said, one fact remains; which is, that Señor Singleton’s life has been attempted by a man whom he never saw before, and who could therefore have had no personal animus against him. The obvious inference therefore is that he was hired by someone to make the attempt; and he asserts that the man who hired him was Señor Alvaros. Therefore, notwithstanding all that you have said, if anything further of an untoward nature should happen to Señor Singleton, I warn you that very grave suspicion will attach to Señor Alvaros, and I shall be compelled to insist upon the most stringent enquiry being made into the matter. I would therefore suggest—if you will pardon me for taking so great a liberty—that Señor Alvaros should be made aware of all the circumstances of the case; and that a hint should be given him of the extreme necessity for the utmost circumspection on his part. And now, General, I must offer you my most sincere apologies for having occupied so much of your valuable time, and tender you my warmest thanks for the great patience and courtesy with which you have listened to what I have had to say. Good-morning!”