“Travelling with the lady,
You’d best pull down the blind,
Make it cosy and shady . . .”
He came round the table close to Hilary and danced a little breakdown, with two of Hilary’s cigarettes in his mouth. “O I’m a lady, a Hottentot lady,” he sang. “One-time-piecee lubly gal, O.”
“I’ll singe my college pal’s lips,” Sumecta said. “Baillon de cigare chaud.” He straddled down over Hilary, sucked his cigar to a glow and prepared to burn his victim’s lips.
“Cut that out, Sumecta,” Mr. Brown said, at the window. “Come on here, the two of you. The train’s just going.” Mr. Brown’s beard was sticking out of his pocket, but his white eyebrows were still in place.
The two men followed Mr. Brown through the window, which they closed behind them. Mr. Brown opened it again an instant later, to take a last look round the room. Mr. Brown seemed to have no further interest in Hilary, he neither spoke to him nor looked at him. Hilary to him had been simply something to shove aside and leave. After they had gone, Hilary heard footsteps and voices; presently the light went out; he was alone in the dark. A bat flew about the room after insects; presently it knocked down a tumbler which dripped water on to the floor for a long, long time.
Tio Ramón and his wife did not see the miraculous appearance again, though they waited in the clearing, near the stone, till after eleven. They then walked to Las Palomas, and heard a midnight office at a monastery, then stayed on praying in side-chapels of the church till after dawn. After some more prayer and the offering of all that was precious in their apparel to the image in a side-chapel, they walked and partly danced to Los Xicales. They did not enter the house even then, for they had to compare notes with Lotta at the lodge.
At eight in the stormy morning, they found Hilary lying in a chair in the sitting-room, in pain and fever. In the wild weather Tio Ramón summoned Paco, who summoned Enrique, who sent Lotta to find Miguel, who shook his head, and thought it better to call Enobbio. Enobbio was an elderly Italian with a clear wit; he at once rode in to Las Palomas and called a doctor and Colonel Mackenzie. By midday Los Xicales was thronged by detectives, who looked mysterious and took a lot of measurements and shook their heads. Their Indian trackers said that there were seven men concerned in the raid and that two were “little Indians”; that five, including the Indians, had come from the beach, while the other two had driven from the north, in a buggy, which had waited at the gate for some time.
After the raid (the trackers said) the men had carried Margarita to this buggy and had driven her away. Lotta, Lotta’s children, Ramón and Eusebia, all admitted that they had seen the buggy go past, full of men, and that they had heard a woman among them crying for help, but they had not known that it was more than a joke. They had not noticed where the buggy went after it passed them; but this the trackers explained. It drove out of the forest by the city road, turned to the left, and crossed the savannah to the beach. Near the beach it stopped, five of the men carried Margarita to the water; there, presumably, they found a boat and put to sea. The two men remaining in the buggy drove off to Las Palomas, where all trace of them disappeared.