“You came to us the potential murderer of our first-born, Señor Graydon. In my heart your sentence to death had been passed. Colonel Henriquez, the black-hearted craven, has wiped that out. He had been my honored guest for years. We differed in politics, but I thought him a brave and honest man. When I told Juan of his cowardly desertion, I learned the truth of the fight in which he was wounded.”
“And that, señor?”
“Henriquez thought you a spy from the United States. There was something on foot, and they determined to kidnap you so that you could not thwart their plans. Ah, señor, something evil is marching on, but Juan has not yet the courage to tell me all. When he was delirious he babbled of secret plans, of strange foreign agents, of Ramona Bay. They have given me troubled nights. Perhaps, when Juan is himself again, he will tell me all.”
“Ramona Bay!” exclaimed Stanley Graydon.
“Whatever concerns Ramona Bay, señor, is of vital import to your country as well as mine,” and the old don’s voice was grave. “We will be allies, you and I, as we have been since the day you cast your fate with an old man and his wife.”
He caught up a decanter, filled two glasses with golden wine, and they drank to their compact, standing.
Ramona Bay! If there was hidden intrigue on foot in Santander, it could mean but one thing. If he and Don Rafael could unmask it, he would be striding far in his hope for rehabilitation.
At noon the following day Don Rafael, visibly perturbed, sought him out. His first words came with a rush of Spanish that Stanley Graydon found difficult to follow. Juan, now clearly on the road to recovery, roused by bitter contempt for Henriquez, had made a clean breast of it. Through mock marriages of native women to foreign agents, the groundwork for titles to land bordering on Ramona Bay had already been accomplished by the Henriquez faction. A revolution, headed by Henriquez, was scheduled to break out in the capital on the first of the month.
Ten days was the slender interval—days that would see gun running at its peak; the corruption of troops by gold, and lavish promises of increased pay. The old patrician’s face was haggard.
“These foreign agents, Don Rafael—how have they worked under cover and betrayed your government?”