Until the very end Driscoll staid there alert. The old man, baffled, insatiate, might yet cry out what he knew. Driscoll’s gaze never relaxed. He felt as though he watched a murderer while the murder was being done. But the old man only listened. Unable to see within the hollow square, he listened, and waited. His lower jaw hung open, and over his lip a white 494froth grew and grew, until it broke and trickled down his chin. The red eyeballs gleamed ravenously, as still he waited.
“When this is over,” Driscoll said to himself, “he’ll plump down in a fit and blow out. Else he’ll go raving crazy. Lord, that look!”
When it was over, Driscoll went to him. He had but to reach forth a hand and fasten on his shoulder. He held him against a scurrying of spectators, whom the tragedy’s close had that instant brought to life.
“Here, Murgie, here’s something that belongs to you,” he said. “Well, what’s the matter? Take it, I don’t want it.”
The old man looked up. An ivory cross was dangling from the other’s fingers. The cross still showed bloodstains; no later flowing of blood had washed them away. But the father of María de la Luz stared, stared vacantly at the trinket. The masterful, consuming rage of two years past was gone out of his eyes. Instead they were watery and senile. The brows, and even the lashes, had turned as white as the thin strands of hair, and contrasted gruesomely against the yellow, mottled skin, which stretched like clouded parchment over the bony death’s head. At last the old man put out his hand and took the cross, not comprehending.
“No, I didn’t give it to him,” Driscoll explained bluntly. “I told you I wouldn’t.”
Yet no spasm of chagrin distorted the weazen face.
“This chain here, it’s–it’s gold!” the old man cried.
Then he sputtered, choked. What had he betrayed? Would the strange donor reclaim the gift, knowing it was gold? He leered craftily at Driscoll, and with a hungry, gloating secrecy–his old slimy way of handling money–he smuggled the holy symbol under his jacket. But from cunning the leer changed to suspicion and quick alarm. He delved into his pockets, one after another. He searched greedily, wildly, until the last coin on him lay in his palm. Quaking in every feeble bone, 495he counted his poor wealth again and again. There was very little left. He glared at Driscoll. He glared at townsmen, officers, blanketed Inditos, all swarming past to gaze on the three corpses. He cried “Thief!” first at one unheeding passer-by, then at another.
“I had more than this!” he whined. “More–more than this! There was my hacienda, my peons, my cotton, my mills, my canvas bags. There was my blockade runner. She was Clyde-built, she was named La Luz, she cost twenty thousand English gold pieces. Who has taken these things from me? Who–where––Curse you, do you know?”