“And tonight will pay,” responded Don Manuel, determinedly. “But I speak of all this just to put you on your guard. It will be necessary for me to say something to Mrs. Darlington as well. I have brought for her the papers that will establish the rights of Merle and Grace to all I leave behind.” As he spoke he touched his coat where the shape of a packet in an inner pocket showed.
“Your will?”
“No. As I have explained, I require no will. The property is theirs already. And I do not need to tell you, my dear Tia Teresa, my beloved friend, that you, too, have not been forgotten.” As he spoke he raised her hand and pressed it reverently to his lips.
“Don’t speak like that, Don Manuel,” she protested.
“I know that all I owe to you can never be repaid,” he continued, humbly, gratefully—“the devoted life-service for me and for Rosetta and our beloved parents as well.”
Again he kissed her hand, and this time she accepted the seal of his high-souled and chivalrous regard. There were tears in her eyes now.
“But, Don Manuel, you need not die tonight. Death for him—that is right. But why for you?”
“Perhaps not for me—most certainly,” he replied with a little, reassuring smile. “Oh, do not imagine that I deliberately court death for tonight. On the contrary, I have all my plans carefully laid. An automobile is ready for the road, and I have a yacht waiting for me at a quiet spot on the coast, and if all is well, by tomorrow’s dawn Pierre and I will be on the ocean. No one around here except at La Siesta will miss Ricardo Robles, and if the name of Don Manuel is associated with the death of Ben Thurston, only once more will the White Wolf have strangely disappeared just as he used to do in the old times.”
He was laughing, not loudly, but just with carefree, almost joyous triumph, as he rose to say good-bye.
“Then, Tia Teresa, if events work out just as I have planned, we may all meet again, somewhere, somehow—I cannot say more at present. For I shall be happy to see my little girl happy in her married love, and later on I shall close my eyes contentedly when I can feel assured that nothing from the past will ever emerge to spoil her life or bring to her distress of mind.”