“We took them red-handed,” Basil answered grimly, and prepared to go out.
The Commissioner called him back for a parting shot. “How many did you kill?” he asked.
“We found eighty-one dead out of a hundred.”
“It is abominable!” Mr Furber’s voice shook with indignation. “You should have taken them prisoners. Probably, most of them were poor misguided peasants, who thought they were serving their country. You must have had a carnival of bloodshed. It is monstrous.”
Basil did not trouble whether the door banged behind him or no.
Half the non-official white population of Manila seemed to be out in the street waiting for him—the captain of the coastguard steamer had been talking freely, as had also the Constabulary soldiers—and Mr Commissioner Furber could hear the cheers, even after he had closed the windows of his office. When Clancy of the Manila Star, and Johnson of the Herald, and Hurd of the Record, ran Basil to earth in his hotel, he found that they knew as much, or more, of the story than he did—in fact he begged them to delete certain portions relating to himself; but one point he did ask them to emphasise—that, if successful, the raid would have been ascribed to Felizardo.
“Where did they get the guns?” Clancy asked suddenly. “They say they were all new small-bores.”
But Basil would not tell him. “Wait for the trial,” was all they could get from him.
When the trial came, however, that point, and a great many others as well, did not come out. Juan Vagas and his comrades were tried as ordinary ladrones. No reference was made to any political conspiracy, and the evidence was merely of a formal nature. It was a matter of common knowledge that tremendous efforts had been made to save the accused at any cost, on account of their family connections; but, though the Commission would have given way gladly enough, it dare not face the storm of indignation which would have been aroused amongst the white population. So, in the end, Juan Vagas and the three ex-majors were condemned to be hanged by the neck as common highway robbers—which they were not.
Still, the subterfuge did not prevent people from talking; because there were the suicide of Mr Furber’s secretary, and the disappearance of Chief Collector Sharler’s brother-in-law to be explained; also that matter of the smuggling of the rifles, and one or two other little things. But the Commissioners were true to the Party, and to themselves, all through. The Chief Collector continued collecting and preaching Racial Equality; Senor Simeon Talibat continued judging, and often sentencing, honourable men, some of whom were white; and the only unfortunate thing was that Vagas and his friends had to be hanged. Moreover, it had been hinted unmistakably that they must be hanged publicly, so that all men might be sure of their death.