“WHAT?”
“You’re too late,” he said, laughing nastily. “Mr. Webb came here yesterday. He identified himself to the satisfaction of Colonel Hefferan, and he got his money and letters. I don’t know who put you up to this trick, but you’re too late, I tell you!”
He managed to push me aside and now pulled open the door. He put a whistle to his lips and blew a shrill blast. Two barefooted, but very husky negroes came running in from the portico. I had noticed them lounging there when I entered.
He said something sharply to them in Spanish, and they grabbed me. My blood was boiling, and I believe if they had given me a moment’s warning I would have sailed into them. But they held me on either side, and a hundred and eighty pounds of negro on each arm was too much for me. They dragged me toward the main door of the building in a hurry.
“You get out of here!” cried the consul’s clerk behind me. “And don’t you dare come back. If you do you’ll go to the calaboose as sure as you’re a foot high!”
I found myself out upon the sun-broiled street, with the two grinning guards barring my return. It had never entered my mind before that Uncle Sam is sometimes served by an ignorant and pompous nincompoop!
But the satisfaction of making this discovery had a bitter taste. I did not know what to do. My mind was in a whirl. I had some few letters and papers in my pockets by which I had expected—after a time—to assure the consul of my identity. But it seemed that I wasn’t to be given a chance to explain who and what I was.
Somebody had been ahead of me. Some person unknown had represented me before the consul and had, it appeared, made good. My money and my letters had been turned over to this person——
“Paul Downes for a dollar bill!” I ejaculated. “It can’t be anybody else. Who else would know enough about me to represent himself as Clint Webb? He probably knew all about the money and letters. He got away from home broke, worked his passage out here got here only a few hours before I did, and he has beaten me to the consul. Whatever shall I do?”
It was not that I was entirely helpless, although I had only a dollar in my pocket. Captain Rogers was to pay me the hundred dollars he had promised me at the end of the whaling voyage, if I decided not to return to the Scarboro. Ben Gibson was sick in the hospital, and old Tom and I were both dependent upon him for our board money. I didn’t propose to be an object of charity. But I must confess that what I did mean to do had not as yet formed itself rationally in my mind when I got back to old Maria Debora’s.