“Hmm! Pretty clever scheme. But—Oh! hang it, Hernandez, do you suppose this can be correct?”
Hernandez regarded his cigar thoughtfully. “I know it is!”
“Well——”
“Just a moment, please, Mr. Condon. There is one chance for us—only one. That is to discredit the witch doctor. Once the superstitious mixed breeds and blacks find that he is not infallible, that there is something more powerful than he, they will lose confidence in him. They will believe nothing he has told them. But until that is done the case is hopeless. You see, many of the men working here were raised on superstition—on voodooism. The blacks brought it from Africa, and their descendants in this and the other nearby countries cling to it. And, as I have said, we have them here from many places.”
“How are we to discredit the witch doctor?”
Hernandez smiled. “Armstrong visits him at eight o’clock this evening, to pay half the price for running the laborers away from here. He is to pay the other half when they are gone. Of course, he has paid something all along for the various little jobs, but this is the big one—the big money job.”
“What on earth would that old fellow want with money?”
Hernandez laughed. “Square-faced gin. He stays soaked all the time. But I have a plan——”
“But how,” interrupted Condon, “did your man learn all this?”