Colonel Menendez turned in a flash, glaring down at the speaker.
“I never feared any man in my life, Mr. Harley,” he said, coldly.
“Then why are you here?”
The Colonel placed the stump of his first cigarette in an ash tray and lighted that which he had newly made.
“It is true,” he admitted. “Forgive me. Yet what I said was that I never feared any man.”
He stood squarely in front of the Burmese cabinet, resting one hand upon his hip. Then he added a remark which surprised me.
“Do you know anything of Voodoo?” he asked.
Paul Harley took his pipe from between his teeth and stared at the speaker silently for a moment. “Voodoo?” he echoed. “You mean negro magic?”
“Exactly.”
“My studies have certainly not embraced it,” replied Harley, quietly, “nor has it hitherto come within my experience. But since I have lived much in the East, I am prepared to learn that Voodoo may not be a negligible quantity. There are forces at work in India which we in England improperly understand. The same may be true of Cuba.”