His expression had changed utterly, or so it seemed to me. He no longer resembled Velasquez’ haughty cavalier; gone, too, was the debonnaire bearing, I turned my head aside swiftly, hoping that he had not detected my backward glance.
I felt that I had violated hospitality. I felt that I had seen what I should not have seen. And the result was to bring about that which no story of West Indian magic could ever have wrought in my mind.
A dreadful, cold premonition claimed me, a premonition that this was a doomed man.
The look which I had detected upon his face was an indefinable, an indescribable look; but I had seen it in the eyes of one who had been bitten by a poisonous reptile and who knew his hours to be numbered. It was uncanny, unnerving; and whereas at first the atmosphere of Colonel Menendez’s home had seemed to be laden with prosperous security, now that sense of ease and restfulness was gone—and gone for ever.
“Harley,” I said, speaking almost at random, “this promises to be the strangest case you have ever handled.”
“Promises?” Paul Harley laughed shortly. “It is the strangest case, Knox. It is a case of wheels within wheels, of mystery crowning mystery. Have you studied our host?”
“Closely.”
“And what conclusion have you formed?”
“None at the moment; but I think one is slowly crystalizing.”
“Hm,” muttered Harley, as we paced slowly on amid the rose trees. “Of one thing I am satisfied.”