Manuel was obviously impressed.
"What do you know about this?" he asked curtly. "Tell your story."
"I hate Leborge," declared Stuart, trying to speak as a negro boy would speak. "He took away our land and killed my father. I want to kill him. He never talks to anybody, but he talks to himself. The other night I overheard him saying he 'must get rid of that Cuban at the Citadel of the Black Emperor.'
"So when I saw you here in Cap Haitien, I took a chance on it's being you he meant. If it hadn't been you, my asking you if you wanted a guide wouldn't have been out of the way."
"You are a very clever boy," said Manuel, and turned away to suppress a smile.
Certainly, he thought, this boy was a very clumsy liar. Stuart had never tried to play a part before, and had no natural aptitude for it. His imitation of the Haitian accent was poor, his manner lacked the alternations of arrogance and humility that the Haitian black wears. Then his story of the shadowing of Leborge was not at all in character. And, besides, as the Cuban had convinced himself, the boy was not a Haitian negro at all.
Then, suddenly, a new thought flashed across Manuel's mind. He had thought only of his fellow-conspirators as traitors. But there was one other who had some inkling of the plot—Garfield, the American.
And Garfield had a boy!
The Cuban's lip curled with contempt at the ease with which he had unmasked Stuart. He had only to laugh and announce his discovery, for the boy to be made powerless.
It was a temptation. But Manuel was too wily to yield to a temptation merely because it was pleasurable. As long as the boy did not know that he had been found out, he would live in a Fool's Paradise of his own cleverness. Believing himself unsuspected, he would carry out his plans—whatever they were—the while that Manuel, knowing his secret, could play with him as a cat plays with a mouse she has crippled.