“But, take it from me, he’ll soon find that it’s no joke,” Gale went on, a malicious glint in his eyes. “He’ll be lucky if he gets off with a prison sentence. The chances are that they’ll back him up against a stone wall, with a handkerchief over his eyes and a firing squad in front of him. That’s the treatment they generally hand out to spies.”
Virginia turned pale. “They wouldn’t dare do that!” she gasped. “Even Portiforo would be afraid to go so far with a citizen of the United States.”
“I don’t know about that,” Gale rejoined. “It’s been done before, you know. When a man’s convicted of being a spy, they can do as they please with him, and his government is powerless to interfere. That’s international law. Surely you, the daughter of a diplomat, ought to know that.”
Virginia did know that, and an expression of horror came to her eyes. Then, suddenly, her face lighted up. “You are exaggerating the situation, Mr. Gale,” she said, with a scornful laugh. “They don’t shoot spies in times of peace. If you are such an authority on international law, you ought to know that. It is only when there is war that they adopt such stern measures.”
“Very true,” the reporter returned, with a grin. “But evidently, my dear Virginia, you are not aware that the Republic of Baracoa happens to be in a state of war at the present moment. I heard, this morning, that Rodriguez, who broke out of jail the other day, reached the hills yesterday, and raised the standard of revolt. And they accuse Hawley of being mixed up with the revolutionary party. So you see, I am not exaggerating the seriousness of his plight.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE PRISONER.
The soft-footed man with the wolflike smile, known as Señor Lopez, was elated over the arrest of that adventurous man, the Camera Chap, and warmly congratulated himself upon the stroke of luck which had enabled him to bring it about so speedily, for it had been a mere coincidence that he happened to be standing near the dock, earlier that evening, when Hawley, accompanied by a young woman whom the spy immediately recognized as the daughter of the American minister, approached the water’s edge and furtively embarked in a motor boat.
His curiosity aroused, Lopez would have followed the pair, but was prevented from doing so by his failure to obtain a craft in time; so he had to content himself for the time being with speculating as to the motive of this evidently secret expedition. At first he had supposed that they were bound for the American warship, but later the possibility that the fortress might be their goal had suggested itself to his mind. As soon as this suspicion occurred to him he sent a note to the commandant of the fortress warning him to keep a sharp lookout for the pair; but by the time his messenger reached the fortress Hawley had already been there, taken his snapshot, and escaped by throwing himself into the sea.
Lopez’s note had arrived just as the commandant and Captain Reyes were questioning Virginia as to the identity of her mysterious companion, and it was for this reason that they had astonished the girl by their apparent courtesy in not pressing her to give them the information they desired.
When Lopez’s messenger returned to him with a brief reply from the commandant stating what had occurred at the fortress, the spy decided to wait at the dock in the hope that later on the snapshot adventurer would return in one of the battleship’s launches; for he was shrewd enough to suspect that Hawley’s motive in throwing himself into the sea was to swim out to the Kearsarge.