The dwarf, called Jumbo by those who knew him, got off the table and pointed to a window.
“Use your eyes,” he said.
Three men stood there looking in. In the road in front stood the automobile in which the party had reached the house. On a hilltop perhaps sixty rods away a little spurt of dust indicated the approach of another motor car.
The Colonel beckoned to the men to enter. As they stepped inside three more men entered from a rear door. They were all dusky, hungry-looking fellows, with snaky black hair and shrinking black eyes. They were dressed in tattered clothes, and carried revolvers in plain view.
“Quite an army,” Frank said.
“This old house,” the Colonel began, a sneer on his thin lips, “is larger than you may think. At the top of a wing which stretches back toward the jungle there is a room where Spanish prisoners were once confined. With your permission I’ll escort you boys there, advising you, in the meantime, to think the situation over carefully.”
The puff of dust on the distant hilltop grew more pronounced, and the chug-chug of a swiftly moving motor reached the ears of those in the ancient structure.