If events followed their normal and reasonable course, he would be free of these accursed walls within a few minutes. Come what might, he would strike a lusty blow for freedom. If he failed, and sank into eternal night, one or more of the half-caste hirelings now so ready to fulfill the murderous schemes of President Suarez and his henchman Steinbaum would escort an American’s spirit to the realm beyond the shadows.
He did not stop to think that an unknown woman’s strange whim should have made possible that which, without her presence in his prison-house, was absolutely impossible; still less did he trouble as to the future, immediate or remote. His mind’s eye was fixed on a sunbeam creeping stealthily towards a crack in the masonry of that detestable cell.
He meant to cheat that sunbeam, one way or the other!
CHAPTER II
TIME VERSUS ETERNITY
Henceforth Maseden concentrated all his faculties on the successful performance of the trick which might win him clear of the castle of San Juan. Nothing in the wide world mattered less to him than that the newly-made bride should stoop to sign the register after he had done so, or that by turning to address Steinbaum he was deliberately throwing away the opportunity thus afforded of learning her surname.
When an avowed enemy first broached the subject of this extraordinary marriage, he had made a bitter jest on the use in real life of a well-worn histrionic situation. And now, perforce, he had become an actor of rare merit. Each look, each word must lead up to the grand climax. The penalty of failure was not the boredom of an audience, but death; such a “curtain” would sharpen the dullest wits, and Maseden, if wholly innocent of stage experience hitherto, was not dull.
He scored his first point while the bride was signing her name. Beaming on Steinbaum, he said cheerfully: