He could only delay, discover as soon as possible what was behind Santacilla’s deceiving patience and good humor. Upon that he would have to act without hesitation and with no chance of failure. The regiment should, the dancer complained, send her maid back to her. Manners were very much corrupted beyond the western ocean—in Sevilla the servant would have been dispatched in a bullock cart deep in roses. That, 158 he answered, reminded him of another procession, a different cart; but it was more French than Castilian—the tumbril.
He was seated against a wall at a right angle from the door, and Charles left the vicinity of the window, lounging across the room. La Clavel said, “I know you so well, Ceaza, what is it; what is it you are saying and saying without speaking of? Your mind is like a locked metal box that shows only the flashes on the surface. But you must open it for us. It seems as though you were threatening me, and that, you best should realize, is useless.”
His flickering eyes rested first on her and then upon Charles Abbott. “You will never get to South America now,” he asserted; “for you are a conspirator against your King. Since you have shown such a love of Cuban soil you are to become a part of it forever.”
Charles Abbott, now standing by the door, shot in the bolt which secured it, and, by a fortunate, a chance, twist, broke off the handle. Santacilla, undisturbed, remained seated, smiling while his fingers played with the plaited loop of his cane.
“This infatuation,” he indicated them with a wave, “while it convinced Havana, never entirely satisfied me. I have been watching you, Jobaba has been listening, for days. You were very cunning, but, in the end, you failed; you were neither skilful nor patient enough. Yet, at the last, all that you heard were fairy tales—the spy that was sent to Camagüey, ha!”
La Clavel faced him calmly, but, Charles saw, she was pale. He was revolving a hundred impractical schemes: they had only one end, the death of Santacilla, but how that was to be brought about with safety to Cuba evaded him.
“I am not a traitor in the way you mean,” she declared; “what your conceit never allowed you to note was that, in Spain and here, I have always detested you; and what I did was the result of that. I struck at you and not at our country, for the court and church and army are no longer our strength—if we still have any except the knife and cord—but our weakness.”
“Fools,” he asserted, unmoved.