"We don't know they were killed, and the Bat's rather a bogey of yours," Wyndham replied. "Anyhow, from one point of view, perhaps his efforts to keep out Peters and his gang were justified. The country belongs to the Bat and his friends; their rules are not ours, but they suit the people who use them, and I expect they know what often happens to a colored race when white men take control. Semi-civilization and industrial servitude, forced on you for others' benefit, are a poor exchange for liberty."
"You mean their leaders know?" said Mabel. "They would lose their power when the white men came?"
Wyndham said nothing for a moment and Marston imagined he was getting impatient. Then Flora gave him a puzzled glance and he smiled.
"Did the fellow you thought the Bat look very powerful, Bob?" he asked.
"In a way, he did not," said Marston. "He was a dirty, ragged old impostor—and yet I don't know. Perhaps it was his grin, but you got a hint that he was a bigger man than he looked. There was something about him——"
"Something Mephistophelian?" Wyndham suggested with a twinkle.
"But Mephistopheles was rather a gentleman," Flora remarked.
"That's it! You have given me the clew I was feeling for," said Marston. "You felt the old fellow might have been a gentleman long since and had degenerated. Now I come to think of it, his confounded grin was ironical; as if he knew your point of view and laughed at it. In fact, I imagine he laughed at himself; at his claim to be a magician and the tricks he used. A cynical brute, perhaps, but he was not a fool."
"Aren't you getting romantic, Bob?" Flora asked.
Marston said nothing. He had seen Wyndham's frown and imagined he had had enough. For a few moments Mabel studied both. She saw Bob wanted to talk about something else, but she did not mean to help him yet. His portrait of the old mulatto had given her ground for thought. For one thing, it had disturbed Wyndham, and she wondered why. She was not deceived when Wyndham laughed.