Signing to the sailor to stand aside, I placed the key in the lock. As I opened the door a voice, which I instantly recognized, said as calmly as though its owner were addressing me in the President's study at La Gloria:
"So it's you, Trevelyan, is it? I had an idea you'd come round to my way of thinking. I heard your scuffle with the sentry. I suppose you managed to overpower him?"
I answered him in a whisper that his conjecture was correct.
"You must get up at once," I continued hurriedly. "There is no time to spare. The Señorita is waiting for you in the jungle, and I have a schooner in the bay."
"But I can't get up," he replied. "Our worthy friend, Silvestre, has taken good care of that."
"The deuce, he has!" said I. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that I am chained to the leg of the bed," Fernandez returned. "Before you can release me you must have the key of the padlock."
In a flash I realized what a fool I had been. It had never struck me, when searching Silvestre's pockets, to find out whether he had any other key in his possession. Now we were in a pretty fix. It seemed as if I had defeated Silvestre only to give him a very fair opportunity of turning the tables upon me. At any other time I should have sworn at the contrariness of my luck; now, however, I had too much upon my mind to have time to seek relief in that direction. It was a problem that any man might have been excused for feeling diffident about. The Señorita was concealed in the scrub; the lives of Matthews and his companions depended upon my prompt and successful treatment of the difficulty, and the only possible way I could see of accomplishing that was to return to the room in which I had left Silvestre, and, once there, to overhaul him in the hopes of discovering the all-important key. This time, however, the risk would be increased a thousandfold. It was only too probable that the old negress Palmyre, or the half-caste Manuel, would have entered to find their master in the lamentable condition I had left him; in which case, for all the good I could do, I might just as well take my revolver, shoot myself and Fernandez, and so bring the whole desperate affair to a conclusion.
"You are quite sure, I suppose," I remarked, "that Silvestre has the key upon his person?"
"Quite," he answered. "He has been kind enough to dangle it before my eyes every time he has visited me. Only this afternoon he wittily described it as the isthmus connecting the continents of Equinata and Death!"