The rain was heavy before noon: the tracks were rained out.
No further trace or track was found. No more evidence was forthcoming. Enobbio had seen a stranger looking for a lost bicycle; but this stranger was proven to have been Sard Harker, mate of the Pathfinder, which had now sailed. Acting on Enobbio’s evidence, the police recovered Richard Shullocker’s bicycle, but found no trace of Margarita. Hilary’s story of the events was not very clear. He could repeat only what he could remember of Sard’s story, which he had not much wished to hear, and of Abner Brown’s story, which had not told him much. He maintained that the abductors were mixed up with Santa Barbara and with the boxing hall, the Circo Romano.
Ben Hordano was questioned, but his movements on the night of the raid were well known: he had been drunk by six, disorderly by seven, and in jail by eight. One curious thing, which none could explain, was how the man Abner Brown knew that Richard Shullocker had warned Colonel Mackenzie of an intended raid at Los Xicales. The warning had been given privately, in person: no one could possibly have overheard it. Paco and his son Enrique denied having had any dealings (horse-hire or other) with anyone outside their hamlet. This denial was backed by sufficient proof.
Colonel Mackenzie, acting on Richard’s warning, had sent two patrols to Los Xicales during the night of the raid, but as one had gone at midnight and the other at four in the morning, and both had shrunk from the weather, neither had seen anything suspicious.
In those days there was no direct cable to Santa Barbara. A message thither had to be cabled to the Florida station, thence to Punto Poniente, thence to Tres Dientes, and thence on. The Santa Barbara police declared that they knew of no one known as Mr. B. or Sagrado B., and that if the raid had been carried out by one of the liquor gangs, which seemed possible, those liquor gangs were composed of Occidentales, not of men from the State of Santa Barbara.
Hilary had been wounded in the wall of the chest by an American revolver bullet. He was in bed with his wound for thirteen days. On the fourteenth day he heard the final reports of the police, that they did not know where his sister was, and that they had no clue whatsoever to her abductors. The story had by this time reached the American and English newspapers. A question was asked in Parliament, whether it were true that an Englishwoman had been abducted by brigands in Las Palomas, and whether Her Majesty’s Ministers were making such representations, etc., etc., as would, etc. The Ministers replied that they had heard the report, and that they had every confidence in Her Majesty’s representatives on the spot and in the police of Las Palomas.
Colonel Mackenzie, who was newly in charge of that police, had less confidence. He told Hilary privately that many in the Occidental police force were bribed by the liquor gangs, and that in this case they were determined not to help. Hilary asked whether it would be any use to look for Margarita in Santa Barbara. “Do you yourself think that she will be there?” he asked.
“No, I don’t, Mr. Kingsborough.”
“Well,” Hilary said, “we know that the raiders were not Occidentales, and that they took her away by sea. The men at the boxing-match said that the raid was planned by a Santa Barbara leader, who had some grudge against us. My sister said that there was one man with a grudge against her. Why should not an international ruffian of that sort, speaking all tongues, establish himself at Santa Barbara, work with the liquor-smugglers, and use his gangs to gratify his grudge when he heard of our presence here?”
“That is a theory, Mr. Kingsborough; but remember, that it is very unlikely that members of a gang would talk in public of their gang’s headquarters without any disguise whatsoever. If they spoke of Santa Barbara, be sure that they meant some other place. Santa Barbara is a big place, however, with seven hundred miles of coast. However, I had a flimsy from Santa Barbara this morning; here it is.”