“As they arranged the final details, he must have reflected somewhat grimly on the irony of things, for at that very moment he could hear the staccato popping of the guns he had smuggled past the vigilance of the customs. The sound was coming nearer—telling him that in a half-hour his friends would be victorious—too late to save him.”
As Ribero paused, little Miss Buford, leaning forward across the table, gave a sort of gasp.
“He was tall, athletic, gray-eyed,” announced the attaché irrelevantly; “in his eyes dwelt something of the spirit of the dreamer. He never faltered.”
The speaker lifted his sauterne glass to his lips, and sipped the wine deliberately.
“The teniente in command inquired if he wished to pray,” Ribero added then, “but he shook his head almost savagely. ‘No, damn you!’ he snapped out, as though he were in a hurry about it all, ‘Go on with your rat-killing. Let’s have it over with.’”
The raconteur halted in his narrative.
“Please go on,” begged Duska, in a low voice. “What happened?”
The foreigner smiled.
“They fired.” Then, as he saw the slight shudder of Duska’s white shoulder, he supplemented: “But each soldier had left the task for the others.... Possibly, they sympathized with him; possibly, they sympathized with the revolution; possibly, each of the six secretly calculated that the other five would be sufficient. Quien sabe? At all events, he fell only slightly wounded. One bullet—” he spoke thoughtfully, letting his eyes drop from Saxon’s face to the table-cloth where Saxon’s right hand lay—“one bullet pierced his right hand from back to front.”
Then, a half-whimsical smile crossed Ribero’s somewhat saturnine features, for Miss Filson had dropped her napkin on Saxon’s side, and, when the painter had stooped to recover it, he did not again replace the hand on the table.