“You know that Senator Beverly is at the governor general’s palace—and that his daughter is with him.”
Spurrier wheeled at that and stood facing his visitor with eyes that had kindled, but in which the light at once faded as he commented shortly:
“Neither the senator nor Augusta has made any effort to see me since I was brought to Manila.”
“Perhaps the senator thought that was best, Jack,” argued Withers. “For the daughter, of course, I’m not prepared to speak—but I know that Beverly has been keeping the cable hot in your behalf. Your name has become so familiar to the operators between here and Washington that they don’t spell it out any more: they only need to rap out Sp. now—and if I needed a voice to speak for me on Pennsylvania Avenue or on Capitol Hill, there’s no man I’d pick before the senator.”
When he had gone Spurrier sat alone and to his ears came the distant playing of a band in the plaza. Somewhere in that ancient town was the girl who had not been to see him, nor written to him, even though, just before his battalion had gone into the bosques across the mountains, she had let him slip a ring on her finger, and had answered “yes” to his question—the most personal question in the world.
CHAPTER III
There was a more assured light in Major Withers’ eyes when he next came as a visitor into the prison quarters, and the heartiness of his hand clasp was in itself a congratulation.
“The thing was carried up to the president himself,” he declared. “Washington is sick of you, Spurrier. Because of you miles of red tape have been snarled up. Departments have worked overtime until the single hope of the United States government is that it may never hear of you again. You don’t go to prison, after all, my boy.”