“It is a word you will remember,” said he. “Good by to you, senhor.”
He had an odd way of disappearing, this strange Pole, whose eyes I had never seen. With his last word he actually melted into the crowd of loiterers who were watching the Emperor’s departure, and I could not have found him again had I so desired.
My first thought was to rebel at leaving Rio, where Lesba Paola had taken refuge from the coming storm. But the girl seemed amply amused without me, and my duties to the interests of my dead chieftain forbade my deserting the Cause at this crisis. Therefore I would follow the Emperor.
As the train moved slowly out of the station, I swung myself upon the steps of the rear car, and the next instant was tumbled upon the platform by a person who sprang up behind me.
Angrily protesting, I scrambled to my feet; but the fellow, with scarcely a glance in my direction, passed into the car and made his way forward.
The exclamations died suddenly upon my lips.
The belated passenger was Senhor Valcour, the spy.
CHAPTER XII
THE MAN IN THE SHRUBBERY
The name of an Emperor is a fine thing to conjure with. When we arrived at the station at Cuyaba at early evening a score of saddle-horses and several carriages were awaiting the royal party.
I stood in the shadows of the station and watched the guardsmen mount and surround the equipage in which their imperial master seated himself. His civic companions—men of high rank, evidently—occupied the other carriages; and then the entire cavalcade swept away into the gloom and left me alone.