"Smear some earth over your shoes!"
John Bard was speaking to me. Blindly I did as he bade me and rubbed dust over the damp, dark stains on the white buckskin. Then gripping me by the arm my friend ran me through the backyard and out by the door which now stood open.
In the freshness of the plantation, away from the stenches of the village and the nameless taint of that house of slaughter, my senses came back to me and I felt ashamed of he rashness which might have had disastrous consequences for both of us. But, when at length we stood once more in the bungalow and Bard poured me out a stiff dose of brandy, I noticed that, contrary to his invariable rule, he had one himself as well.
"And now," said he, and in his voice was a note of decision, "the sooner you leave Rodriguez, Desmond, the better for you. I don't want to appear inhospitable or I might add, the better for me too. That poor devil, Adams, is dead and you can do nothing for him by staying. You are sufficiently acquainted, I take it, with the mentality of my distinguished fellow-citizens to realise that very little fuss will be made over the untimely demise of Adams and his coloured lady. In the meantime you are in the greatest danger here.
"I don't see why I should worry," I argued. "If they had known of my visit to Adams they would have raided the hut and butchered the three of us to get hold of the document. But they didn't; and they don't even know me by sight...."
"They evidently didn't know of your visit at the time," remarked John Bard gravely. "But obviously something happened after your departure to put them wise. Hence the attack on the house. You were either seen going to the house or Doña Luisa gave you away. It looks to me as though they had only just traced the document to Adams. Black Pablo was set to watch but, after the happy-go-lucky fashion of Latin America, he whiled away the time by serenading some of the dusky belles in the vicinity and failed to observe your arrival."
I recalled the soft laughter I had heard, mingling with the strains of the guitar in the lane, and nodded.
"You think that this fellow Black Pablo was put on guard to see that Adams did not leave the house?...."
"Precisely," agreed my friend, "while El Cojo was sent for.
"El Cojo, the head of the gang?"