A breast of chicken and a glass of port were not too diverting to prevent Richard Cary from paying keen attention. He surmised that Señor Bazán was eager to make a favorable impression, exerting himself to dispel the idea that he was a senile object of curiosity. He desired to awaken respect as well as gratitude. This might be laid to an old man’s childish vanity. At any rate, he had ceased to be merely grotesque.
There was no malice on the wrinkled, mobile features of the little old man in the flapping linen clothes. Furtive he was by nature, the beady black eyes glancing this way and that, the bald scalp twitching, but, for the present, at least, there was no harm in him. This was Richard Cary’s intuition. He also guessed that Señor Bazán was anxious to ingratiate himself. If there was a motive behind it, this could be left to divulge itself. The situation hinted of aspects unforeseen.
“You can sleep calmly to-night, Señor Cary,” said the host, with his twisted grin, “but many people in Cartagena would stay wide awake if they knew you were so near.”
“Am I as notorious as all that, sir? Of course I want to hear the news—”
“As they say, you stood this city on its head,” shrilly chuckled Ramon Bazán. “Revolutions have begun with less disturbance in some of our hot little republics of the Caribbean. Rumors flew about until your exploits were frightful. The children of Cartagena have never been so obedient to their parents. All they have to be told is that El Tigre Amarillo Grande, the Great Yellow Tiger, will catch them if they are naughty. It was this way—your dead body was not found, although you were on the edge of death when you escaped from the prison. You could not have fled far. This was why you were not looked for at La Popa. Therefore you were no man, but a wicked spirit from hell. The common people are very foolish and ignorant.”
“I never meant to upset the town when I came ashore that night,” said Cary, smiling in his turn. “You are good enough to shelter me and you ought to know the facts. It was just one thing after another. A gang of roughs tried to wipe me out. In self-defense I stretched two or three of them. My hunch was that Colonel Fajardo had put up the job. If I stayed in jail, he was bound to get me. And my ship was ready to sail. My duty was to join her. So I walked out of the prison, but was too late to get aboard the Tarragona. My head went wrong with fever. I don’t know how I climbed La Popa. Well, that’s the nubbin of the story.”
“Five of the bravoné and three soldiers of the prison,” grinned Señor Bazán, ticking them off on his fingers. “Am I not a valiant old man to sit alone in the same house with El Tigre Amarillo Grande?”
“Not while a word in the telephone yonder would cook my goose,” grimly answered the prisoner of fortune. “Please tell me one thing. Did I kill any of those poor devils at the prison? I didn’t want to. They got in my way and I had to treat ’em rough.”
“By the mercy of God, the corporal whose neck you wrung had a little breath left in him. The two other soldiers are also alive. The five bravoné who were serenading the ladies that night? Two were found very dead. Another whose shoulder felt the iron bar died after four days, I am happy to say. That iron bar? My dear young man, crowds of people still gather to look at the window from which El Tigre pulled the iron bar like a straw in his hands.”
Richard Cary blushed. He was never a braggart nor had he aspired to a reputation like this. “Then I am a bigger fool than I thought I was, to come into Cartagena,” said he.