“If you don’t mind,” he said, with well-simulated carelessness, as they invited him to enter an automobile with a closed top which was standing outside the jail, “I’d like to know where you’re taking me? I’m naturally of a rather curious disposition.”
“To the national palace, señor,” one of the men answered. “The president sent us for you.”
The prisoner’s face grew grim. He thought he could guess the reason for this summons. Disappointed at Lopez’s inability to get the truth about the snapshot expedition, Portiforo was going to try his own skill as a cross-examiner. The Camera Chap had no doubt that the president of Baracoa was a past master at the gentle art of administering the third degree, but he was fully resolved that if Portiforo hoped to get anything out of him he was going to be greatly disappointed.
Arriving at the palace in a decidedly belligerent mood, which was intensified by his contempt for the man of whose brutality he had just had such startling evidence, he was somewhat astonished by the graciousness with which he was received. Portiforo was seated in the audience chamber, a large room furnished in massive mahogany and hung with rich Oriental draperies. Near the president sat Minister Throgmorton, whose scowling face was in sharp contrast to the smile which illuminated the former’s rubicund countenance. The only other person present was a dark-skinned young man who sat at a big writing table in the center of the room, chewing the end of a pencil, with a stenographer’s notebook before him.
“So this is Señor Hawley,” Portiforo began quizzically, when the Camera Chap’s two guides had conducted him to a position in front of the massive, thronelike chair in which the first gentleman of Baracoa lolled. “So this is the adventurous young man whose discretion, I fear, is not always as great as his valor.”
To this the prisoner did not deem it worth while to make any reply. He merely looked straight into the tyrant’s beady eyes, his muscles tense, his mouth set in a straight line.
“I am always glad to gaze upon genius,” Portiforo continued, without a vestige of irony in his tone, “and I am informed, Señor Hawley, that you are such a great man in your line that even the President of the United States has honored you by providing work for your camera.”
Grasping the significance of this question, and conscious of the fact that the other’s gaze was riveted searchingly upon his face, Hawley was keenly on his guard. “I have had the honor of photographing the President of the United States, if that is what you mean,” he replied coldly.
His evident miscomprehension of the question seemed to please Portiforo.
“No; that was not quite what I meant,” the latter said, after a slight pause. “However, we will let it go at that. I presume, señor,” he continued, “you are wondering why I sent for you?”