His days and nights, the whole of his remaining life was spent thinking of that tragic affair. Hal’s heart went out to him and he wondered what his life would have been—what all their lives would have been if that terrible thing hadn’t happened!
Felice had sat quietly through her grandfather’s long recital. Finally she sat up straight in her chair and shook her small, golden head determinedly.
“Now Grandfather,” she said, “Mr. Hal has been hearing our story ever since he came up the river to Manaos. Suppose we let him have an end to this Phantom of Death River and change to a lighter vein.”
“Of course, Felice,” said Old Marcellus. “No doubt the young man is terribly bored. I forget myself and talk, talk, talk.”
“Not at all, not at all,” Hal assured them. “I lean toward things like this—I mean toward the supernatural. Of course I don’t take any stock in it that Miss Felice’s father is roaming around and screaming in jaguar form. I don’t believe that at all, but the idea fascinates me.”
“That’s because you’re a romanticist, Mr. Hal,” said the girl. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t get into a scrape like that plane business. It pays to beware of strangers, especially men like Señor Goncalves. He must be a very cold-blooded man to have devised such a scheme. I’ve told Grandfather how you met him on your way to Manaos and the subsequent events.”
“Granting all that,” said Old Marcellus, “I can’t understand why the Señor should want to take your uncle’s life and your own. Why?”
“That’s what I wanted to ask, but didn’t,” Felice said smiling.
“And I forgot to tell you,” Hal explained. “You are people of honor and I can entrust to you the secret of my uncle’s mission up here. He’s a secret service man and he brought me along with him on the exciting chase of a munition’s smuggler. That is, he’s trying to help the Brazilian Government, in coöperation with our own, to trace the smuggling of munitions to this country. And if we find the man who’s the go-between on this end, we’ll soon learn who the manufacturers are in the U. S.”
“And is the man—Renan?” asked Old Marcellus softly.