Early next morning Greg, who had paced his room the night through, received the expected summons. Francisco de Socotra had been found dead in his bed. Heart-failure, the doctor said. How should he have noticed the tiny needle prick on the man's throat? The needle itself had been destroyed before he came.
Señora de Socotra was a piteous figure. Later in the day she insisted on seeing Greg to thank him for his kindness at so dreadful a moment in a strange land. Overwhelming as was her grief there was no bitterness in it. She spoke of it as simply as a child. Amy with the tears running down her cheeks translated for Greg.
"If you could have known him as I knew him! So good a man, so kind and true! Like a knight of olden times; my knight! I could not live without him, did I not feel that he had left me a work to do. He has left a great fortune, they tell me. Every penny of it shall I devote to good works in his memory! If I cannot be happy I can at least find peace in building a worthy memorial to his dear name."
When they left her Amy said: "You understand now why I acted as I did?"
"I understand," Greg said.
CHAPTER XXIII
CONCLUSION
The news of the deaths respectively of Antonio Bareda and Francisco de Socotra reached Managuay simultaneously. Many surmises were given rise to, but the truth never became known—or at least it was never published. The bodies of the two citizens arrived on the same ship and their funerals were held on the same day. Little inconvenience was thereby caused, for there were few in Managuay who desired to attend both ceremonies. One cortege was followed by the rich and the great whose sleek countenances bore the conventional expressions of grief; while behind the other followed on foot an endless procession of the weeping poor.
De Socotra's wife and adopted daughter brought his body home, and on the day following the funeral Señora de Socotra in memory of her husband presented to the republic the magnificent estate of Casa Grande with its famous Jardin des Plantes to be held in perpetuity for the benefit of the people. Señora de Socotra and Miss Wilmot (as the younger lady was thereafter to be known) then departed for Paris to arrange for the magnificent mausoleum that the bereaved widow designed to erect.
The simultaneous deaths of these two men left Managuay's political situation very unsettled. The government, deprived of its strong man who had ruled for so long from behind the curtain, scarcely knew where it stood; the people having lost their champion were too apathetic to take advantage of the government's weakness. For a while things went on outwardly as before. Then it became known that the United States minister, a well-meaning, weak soul, who had been an involuntary tool in the hands of the exploiters of Managuay, had been recalled, and one Gregory Parr appointed in his place.