Not until the landau was well on its way to Willemstad did Roddy deem it wise to make a certain inquiry.

"What," he asked of the driver, "is the name of the gentleman that the other gentleman tried to shoot?"

The driver turned completely in his seat. His eyes were opened wide in amazement.

"You don't know that gentleman!" he exclaimed. "I think everybody know that gentleman. He be very brave Venezuela gentleman; he be Colonel Vega."

As though sure of the effect of that name, the driver paused dramatically, but, except that the two Americans looked inquiringly at each other, they made no sign.

"Mebbe I better call that gentleman—Pino?" the driver suggested. "Everybody call him Pino, just like he be everybody's brother." The man showed his teeth broadly, in a delighted grin. "The market womens, the sailor mens, the police mens, the black peoples, and the white gentlemens, everybodys—call him Pino. Pino he be exiled. If he go to his country that President Alvarez he say he shoot him. So Pino go over that way," with his whip he pointed to the east. "They say he go live in Paris. But yesterday he come in that steamer, and all the peoples be waiting at that wharf. Everybody be glad to see Pino."

"Everybody but that man with that gun," suggested Roddy.

The driver rolled his eyes darkly and pursed his lips. "That be bad man," he said.

"Did President Alvarez," inquired Roddy pleasantly, "send that bad man over here to shoot the too popular Pino?"

Peter uttered a sudden growl of indignation.

"Look where you are driving!" he ordered.

When the negro had turned to his horses Peter stared at Roddy long and steadily.

"What that parrot said of you," he declared grimly, "was true."

Those Venezuelans who at once had set forth on their ponies to overtake the would-be assassin already had brought word of the attempt upon Colonel Vega to Willemstad, and the repose of the peaceful burgh was greatly ruffled. The arrival of the young men increased the excitement, and, though they fled to their rooms, from their balcony overlooking the wharf they could hear their driver, enthroned upon his box seat, describing the event to an intent and eager audience.

As Peter was changing into dry clothes he held his watch so that Roddy could note the hour.

"How long would you have said we have been living on this island?" he asked.

"Oh, at least a week!" exclaimed Roddy. "I have had more excitement than I could get in New York in a year, and we haven't been here twelve hours!"

"But it is all over now," Peter announced. "We can't stay here. We're getting too chummy with this Venezuelan crowd, thanks to you."

"What have I done now?" complained Roddy.

"You can't help being who you are," admitted Peter, "but you can see that this town is a red-hot incubator for revolutions. Every one in it thinks of nothing else, and every one thinks you are in deep with your father against Alvarez, and if we linger here Alvarez will think so, too. We've got to get back to Porto Cabello where we have a clean bill of health."

Roddy had stretched himself upon his cot, in preparation for his afternoon siesta, but he sat upright, his face filled with dismay.

"And not see the Rojas family?" he cried.

Peter growled indignantly.

"See them! How can you see them?" he demanded. "We only drove past their house, along a public road, and already everybody in town has a flashlight picture of us doing it."

"But," objected Roddy, "we haven't got our credentials."

"We'll have to do without them," declared Peter. "I tell you, if you get mixed up with Brother Pino when you get back to Porto Cabello you'll go to jail. And what chance will we have then of saving General Rojas? He will stay in prison and die there. As White Mice," announced Peter firmly, "we have our work to do, and we must not be turned aside by anybody's revolution, your father's, or Pino Vega's, or anybody's. We're White Mice, first, last and all the time. Our duty isn't to take life but to save it." As though suddenly surprised by a new idea Peter halted abruptly.

"I suppose," he demanded scornfully, "you think you prevented a murder this morning, and you will be claiming the White Mice medal for saving life?"

"I certainly will," declared Roddy cheerfully, "and you will have to certify I earned it, because you saw me earn it."

"But I didn't," declared Peter. "I was under the table."

Roddy closed his eyes and again fell back upon the cot. For so long a time was he silent that Peter, who had gone out upon the balcony, supposed him asleep, when Roddy suddenly raised himself on his elbow.

"Anyway," he began abruptly, "we can't leave here until the boat takes us away, three days from now. I'll bet in three days I'll get all the credentials we want."

Roddy had been awake since sunrise, the heat was soporific, the events of the morning exhausting, and in two minutes, unmindful of revolutions, indifferent to spies, to plots and counter-plots, he was sleeping happily. But as he slumbered, in two lands, at great distances apart, he and his affairs were being earnestly considered. On the twenty-seventh floor of the Forrester Building his father, with perplexed and frowning brows, studied a cablegram; in the Casa Blanca, Senora Rojas and her daughters listened in amazement to a marvelous tale. Had it not been their faithful friend and jealous guardian, the American Consul, who was speaking, they could not have credited it.

At the Forrester Building the cablegram had been just translated from the secret code of the company and placed upon the desk of Mr. Forrester. It was signed by Von Amberg, and read: "To-day at meeting your party, unknown man fired three shots Vega; Young Forrester overpowered man; Vega unhurt; man escaped. Understand young Forrester not in our confidence. Please instruct."

Three times Mr. Forrester read the cablegram, and then, laying it upon his knee, sat staring out of the open window.

Before his physical eyes were deep canyons of office buildings like his own, towering crag above crag, white curling columns of smoke from busy tugboats, and the great loom of the Brooklyn Bridge with its shuttles of clattering cable-cars. But what he saw was his son, alone in a strange land, struggling with an unknown man, a man intent on murder. With a hand that moved unsteadily the Light-house King lifted the desk telephone and summoned the third vice-president, and when Mr. Sam Caldwell had entered, silently gave him the cablegram.

Sam Caldwell read it and exclaimed with annoyance:

"Looks to me," he commented briskly, "as though they know why Pino came back. Looks as though they had sent this fellow to do him up, before we can——"

In a strange, thin voice, Mr. Forrester stopped him sharply.

"If the boy'd been hurt—they'd have said so, wouldn't they?" he demanded.

Sam Caldwell recognized his error. Carefully he reread the cablegram.

"Why, of course," he assented heartily. "It says here he overpowered the other fellow: says 'Vega unhurt.'"

In the same unfamiliar, strained tone Mr. Forrester interrupted. "It doesn't say Roddy is unhurt," he objected.

The young man laughed reassuringly.

"But the very fact they don't say so shows—why, they'd know that's what you most want to hear. I wouldn't worry about Roddy. Not for a minute."

Embarrassed by his own feeling, annoyed that Sam Caldwell should have discovered it, Mr. Forrester answered, "You wouldn't. He isn't your son."

He reached for a cable form, and wrote rapidly:

"Von Amberg. Willemstad, Curacao, W. I. Forrester most certainly not in our confidence. Return him Cabello. Is he"—the pen hesitated and then again moved swiftly—"unhurt?"

He drew another blank toward him and addressing it to McKildrick, wrote: "Why is Forrester in Curacao? Cable him return. Keep him on job, or lose yours."

For a moment Mr. Forrester sat studying the two messages, then he raised his eyes.

"I have half a mind," he said, "to order him home. I would, if he weren't doing so well down there." With an effort to eliminate from his voice any accent of fatherly pride, Mr. Forrester asked coldly: "McKildrick reports that he is doing well, doesn't he?"

The third vice-president nodded affirmatively.

"If he comes back here," argued Mr. Forrester, "he'll do nothing but race his car, and he'll learn nothing of the business. And then, again," he added doubtfully, "while he's down there I don't want him to learn too much of the business, not this Pino Vega end of it, or he might want to take a hand, and that might embarrass us. Perhaps I had better cable him, too."

He looked inquiringly at the third vice-president, but that gentleman refused to be drawn.

"He isn't my son," he remarked.

"I am not speaking of him as my son," snapped Mr. Forrester warmly. "Speaking of him, not as my son, but as an employee of the company, what would you do with him?"

"I'd cable him to mind his own business," answered Sam Caldwell.

For the fraction of a second, under levelled eyebrows, Mr. Forrester stared at young Mr. Caldwell, and then, as a sign that the interview was at an end, swung in his swivel chair and picked up his letters. Over his shoulder he said, "Cable him that."

* * * * *

While Roddy in Willemstad was slumbering under his mosquito-net, and Sam Caldwell in New York was concocting a cablegram, which, he calculated, would put Roddy in his proper place, but which, instead, put him in a very bad temper, Captain Codman, at Casa Blanca, had just finished relating his marvelous tale.

It was the story of how young Forrester, without letters of introduction, without credentials, had that morning walked into the consulate and announced that, without asking advice, he intended to liberate the Lion of Valencia.

Upon the members of the Rojas household the marvelous tale had a widely different effect.

To understand why this should be so it is necessary to know something of the three women who formed the Rojas household.

Senora Rojas was an American. When she was very young her father, a professor at one of the smaller universities in New England, in order to study the archives of the Spanish rulers of Venezuela, had visited that country, and taken his daughter with him. She was spirited, clever, and possessed of the particular type of beauty the Spaniard admires. Young Rojas saw her, and at once fell in love with her, and, after the death of her father, which occurred in the North, followed her there and married her. She then was very young and he an attache in the diplomatic service. Since their marriage, unlike many of his countrymen, Rojas had not looked with interest upon any other woman, and, with each year of their life together, their affection had grown stronger, their dependence upon each other had increased.

In wisdom, in experience, in honors, Rojas had grown rich. In countries where his own was only a spot upon the map, Rojas himself, the statesman, the diplomat, the man who spoke and read in many languages, the charming host with the brilliant wife, was admired, sought after. There were three children: the two girls, and a son, a lieutenant of artillery, whose death during the revolution of Andreda had brought to the family its first knowledge of grief.

Of the two sisters, Lolita, the elder, was like her father—grave, gracious, speaking but seldom and, in spite of the years spent in foreign capitals, still a Spanish-American. Her interests were in her church, her music and the duties of the household.

Of all the names given at her christening to the younger sister, the one that survived was Inez. Inez was a cosmopolitan. She had been permitted to see too much of the world to make it possible for her ever again to sit down tamely behind the iron bars of the Porto Cabello drawing-room. She was too much like her American mother; not as her mother was now, after thirty years in a Venezuelan's household, but as her mother had been when she left the New England college town. Unlike her sister, she could not be satisfied with the cloister-like life of the young girls of Spanish-America. During the time her father had served as minister to Paris she had been at school in the convent at Neuilly, but at the time he was transferred to London she was of an age to make her bow at court, and old enough to move about with a freedom which, had it been permitted her at home, would have created public scandal. She had been free to ride in the Row, to play tennis, to walk abroad, even through public streets and parks, even when it rained, even unattended. She had met men, not always as prospective suitors, but as friends and companions.

And there had been a wonderful visit to her mother's country and her mother's people, when for a summer she had rejoiced in the friendly, inconsequent, out-of-door life of a Massachusetts' seaside colony. Once on the North Shore, and later on Cape Cod, she had learned to swim, to steer a knockabout, to dance the "Boston," even in rubber-soled shoes, to "sit out" on the Casino balcony and hear young men, with desperate anxiety, ask if there were any more in South America like her. To this question she always replied that there were not; and that, in consequence, if the young man had any thoughts on the subject, she was the person to whom they should be addressed.

Then, following the calm, uneventful life of the convent, of London and its gayeties, of the Massachusetts coast with its gray fogs and open, drift-wood fires, came the return to her own country. There, with her father, she rode over his plantations among the wild cattle, or with her mother and sister sat in the patio and read novels in three languages, or sleepily watched the shadow of the tropical sun creep across the yellow wall.

And then, suddenly, all of these different, happy lives were turned into memories, shadows, happenings of a previous and unreal existence. There came a night, which for months later in terrified dreams returned to haunt her, a night when she woke to find her bed surrounded by soldiers, to hear in the court-yard the sobs of her mother and the shrieks of the serving-women, to see her father—concerned only for his wife and daughters—in a circle of the secret police, to see him, before she could speak with him, hurried to a closed carriage and driven away.

Then had begun the two years of exile in Willemstad, the two years of mourning, not of quiet grief for one at rest, but anxious, unending distress for one alive, one dearly loved, one tortured in mind, enduring petty indignities, bodily torments, degradations that killed the soul and broke the brave spirit.

To the three women Rojas had been more than husband or father. He had been their knight, their idol, their reason for happiness. They alone knew how brave he was, how patient, how, beyond imagination, considerate. That they should be free to eat and sleep, to work and play, while he was punished like a felon, buried alive, unable to carry on the work in the world God had given him to do, caused them intolerable misery. While he suffered there was no taste in life, and the three shut themselves from the world. They admitted only the Consul, who had been his friend, and those who, like themselves, were exiles, and in whose hatred of Alvarez lay their only hope of again seeing the one they loved. Time after time a plan of rescue had failed. A plot that promised release had been disclosed and the conspirators punished. Hope had left them, and, on the part of their friends, had been followed by lethargy.

But within the last three months a new hope had arisen, and with it, for the younger daughter, a new distress.

It was whispered that a revolution, backed by great wealth and sanctified by the prayers of the people, was to be started near Valencia. Its leader in the field was to be young Pino Vega, in several campaigns the personal aide-de-camp of General Rojas, a young man indebted to his chief for many favors, devoted to him by reason of mutual confidence and esteem. If successful, this revolt against Alvarez was to put Vega in command of the army, to free Rojas and to place him as president at Miraflores. To the women the thought that Rojas might become president was intolerable. It was because he had consented to be president that he had suffered. The mere thought of the office, and of the cruelties that had been practised by the man who held it, made it, to the women, terrifying.

For Rojas they wanted neither position nor power. They wanted Rojas free. They wanted to hold him close, to touch him, to look into his eyes, to see the gentle, understanding smile.

Each felt that there was nothing she could not do, no sacrifice she would not make, if once more she could sit beside him, holding his hand, waiting in silence for the joy of hearing him speak. And of the younger girl the sacrifice has been required. At least a way in which she could assist the cause that would lead to the freedom of her father had been presented to her. From Paris, Pino Vega had written her mother, requesting permission to ask Inez to be his wife.

To the girl, of all the men she knew in Venezuela, Pino was the most attractive. They both had lived for years outside of their own country and, in consequence, had much in common. He was thirty-seven, older than she by fourteen years, but, as has already been pointed out, in appearance, in manner, in spirits, he seemed much younger than his years. To his detriment nothing could be said that could not have been said of the other young men of his class in his country. But the girl was not in love with the young man of that class, nor with her country.

Her brother had been sacrificed in what to her had seemed but a squalid struggle for place between two greedy politicians; her father, for the very reason that he had served his country loyally, faithfully, and was, in consequence, beloved by the people, had been caged like a wild animal. She had no love for her native land. She distrusted and feared it.

Night after night, as she paced the walk along the cliff where the waves broke at her feet, she shuddered to think of returning to that land, only sixty miles from her, that had robbed her of so much that had made life beautiful; of all, up to the present, that had made it happy. She wished never to see it again. Could her father have been returned to her she would have rejoiced that they were exiles. And, as she distrusted the country, she distrusted the men of the country, at least those of the class to which Vega belonged. She knew them well, the born orators, born fighters, born conspirators. To scheme, to plot, to organize against the authority of the moment was in their blood.

If she thought of a possible husband, and, in a country where a girl marries at fifteen, and where her first, if not her only duty in life, is to marry, it would have been surprising if she had not, the man she considered as a husband was not a Venezuelan. For their deference to women, for their courtesy to each other, for their courage as shown in their campaigns, for their appreciation of art, of letters, of music, she greatly admired her countrymen; but that they themselves created nothing, that they scorned labor and all those who labored, made them, to Inez, intolerable.

That she was half an American of the North was to her a source of secret pride. With satisfaction she remembered young men she had known during the summers on the North Shore and Cape Cod, the young men who, during the first of the week, toiled and sweltered in their offices, and who, when the week-end came, took their pleasures strenuously, in exercise and sport. She liked to remember that her American and English devotees had treated her as a comrade, as an intelligent, thinking creature. They had not talked to her exclusively of the beauty of her eyes, her teeth and hair.

She preferred their breathless, "Well played, partner!" to the elaborate, "I saw the Senorita at mass this morning. As she raised her eyes to Heaven—the angels grew jealous."

When the mother told Inez that Colonel Vega had written, proposing on his return to pay his addresses to her, the girl was in genuine distress. She protested earnestly.

In thirty years Senora Rojas unconsciously had assimilated the thoughts, the habits, the attitude of mind of the women of her adopted country, and, when Inez had finished her protest, her mother, seeing the consequence from her own point of view, was greatly disturbed. "It is most unfortunate," she said. "Pino is selfish; when he learns you will not listen to him he will be very angry and he will be less eager to help your father. He will think only of himself. If you only could have cared——"

"Pino could not be so cruel," said the girl. But she spoke as though she were arguing against her own conviction. "He cannot be so vain—so spoiled," she protested, "that because one woman fails to fall on her knees to him, he must punish her."

The talk between the mother and daughter had taken place a week before Colonel Vega's arrival from Paris. On the day his steamer was due, Senora Rojas again spoke to Inez.

"After mass this morning," she said, "I consulted Father Paul about Pino. He hopes it will be possible for you not to give him a direct answer. He says Pino will be leaving us almost at once. He is to land north of Porto Cabello, and our people are to join him there. Father Paul thinks," the Senora hesitated, and then went on hastily, "you might let him go in ignorance. You might ask for time to consider. You might even tell him——"

The girl's cheeks flushed crimson and the tears came to her eyes. The mother looked away. After an instant's silence she exclaimed bitterly: "It is only a lie to a man who has lied to many women! I think of nothing," she declared, "but that it would keep him true to your father. What else matters!" she broke forth, "I would lie, cheat, steal," she cried, "if I could save your father one moment's suffering."

The girl took the hand of the elder woman and pressed it to her cheek. "I know," she whispered, "I know."

There was a moment's silence. "If it were anything else!" protested the girl. "If I could change places with father I would run to do it—you know that—but this"—with a gesture of repugnance the girl threw out her hands—"to pretend—to care! It is degrading, it makes me feel unclean."

"You will make an enemy," asked the mother coldly, "of the only person who can bring your father back to us? Sooner than let Pino think you care for him, you would let him turn against us? You and Pino," she pleaded, "are old friends. Your father is his friend. What more natural!" She broke forth hysterically. "I beg of you," she cried, "I command you not to make an enemy of Pino. Tell him to wait, tell him that now you can think of nothing but your father, but that when your father is free, that if he will only set him free—" The mother held the girl toward her, searching her eyes. "Promise me," she begged.

Inez regarded her mother unhappily, and turned away.

This, then, on the afternoon of Colonel Vega's arrival at Curacao was the position toward him and toward each other of the three women of the Rojas household, and explains, perhaps, why, when that same afternoon Captain Codman told them the marvelous tale of Roddy's proposition, Senora Rojas and her daughter received the news each in a different manner.

Before she had fully understood, Senora Rojas exclaimed with gratitude:

"It is the hand of God. It is His hand working through this great company."

"Not at all," snapped Captain Codman. "The company has nothing to do with it. As far as I can see it is only the wild plan of a harum-scarum young man. He has no authority. He's doing it for excitement, for an adventure. He doesn't seem to know anything of—of what is going on—and, personally, I think he's mad. He and his friend are the two men who twice drove past your house this morning. What his friend is like I don't know; but Forrester seems quite capable of forcing his way in here. He wants what he calls 'credentials.' In fact, when I refused to help him, he as much as threatened to come here and get them for himself."

The voice of Senora Rojas was shaken with alarm. "He is coming here!" she cried. "But if he is seen here they will know at once at Caracas, and my husband will suffer. It may mean the end of everything." Her voice rose, trembling with indignation. "How dare he! How dare he, for the sake of an adventure, risk the life of my husband? How can he expect to succeed where our friends have failed, and now, when Pino has returned and there is hope."

"I told him that," said the Consul.

"You warned him," insisted the Senora; "you told him he must not come near us?"

Inez, who, with her sister, stood eagerly intent behind the chair in which their mother was seated, laid her hand soothingly upon the Senora's shoulder.

"Is it best," she asked, "to turn the young man away without learning what he wishes to do? Living in Porto Cabello, he may know something we could not know. Did you find out," she asked the Consul, "in what way Mr. Forrester wishes to help us?"

"No," confessed Captain Codman, "I did not. I was so taken aback," he explained; "he was so ignorant, so cocksure, that he made me mad. And I just ordered him out, and I told him, told him for his own good, of course," the Consul added hastily, "that he talked too much."

With critical eyes Inez regarded her old friend doubtfully, and shook her head at him.

"And how did he take that?" she asked.

"He told me," answered the Consul, painfully truthful, "that my parrot had said the same thing, and that we might both be wrong."

There was an instant's silence, and then Inez laughed. In shocked tones her mother exclaimed reprovingly.

"But he comes here," protested the girl, "to do us a service, the greatest service, and he is ordered away. Why should we refuse to let him help us, to let any one help us. We should make the most of every chance that offers."

Senora Rojas turned in her chair and looked steadily at her daughter.

"Your advice is good, Inez," she said, "but it comes strangely from you."

At the same moment, as though conjured by her thought, a servant announced Colonel Vega, and that gentleman, with several of those who had lunched with him at the Cafe Ducrot, entered the room. In alarm Captain Codman waited only to shake hands with the visitors and then precipitately departed. But in the meeting of the exiles there was nothing that would have compromised him. The reception of Colonel Vega by the three women was without outward significance. They greeted him, not as a leader of their conspiracy, but as they might have received any friend who, after an absence, had returned to them. When he bent over the hand of Inez he raised his liquid eyes to hers, but the girl welcomed him simply, without confusion.

He decided that her mother could not as yet have told her of his wishes. Had she done so he felt sure, in view of the honor he would pay her, her embarrassment at meeting him would have been apparent to all.

Vega himself elected to tell the ladies of the attack made upon him at the Cafe Ducrot. He made little of it. He let the ladies understand that his life, like that of all public men, was always at the mercy of assassins. To Roddy he gave full credit.

"Imagine this man reaching for his weapon," he related dramatically, "myself too far from him to fall upon him, and my arms resting upon the shoulders of my two good friends. Their safety, also, is in my mind. But I am helpless. I saw the villain smile confidently. He points the weapon. Then the young man springs upon him and the bullets pass us harmlessly. Believe me, but for Mr. Forrester all three of us, General Pulido, Colonel Ramon and myself, might now be dead."

The two gentlemen designated dismissed the thought with a negligent wave of the hand. It suggested that, to soldiers like themselves, being dead was an annoyance to which they had grown accustomed.

"Mr. Forrester!" exclaimed Inez, catching at the name.

"Mr. Forrester!" repeated her mother. "But I thought—I was told only just now that he knew nothing of our plans."

"That is quite true," Colonel Vega assured her. "He was not with us. He was there by accident."

"Let us rather say," corrected Senora Rojas piously, "he was placed there by a special Providence to save you."

That the Almighty should be especially concerned in his well-being did not appear to Vega as at all unlikely.

He nodded his head gravely.

"It may be so," he admitted.

Through force of habit Senora Rojas glanced about her; but the open windows showed the empty garden, and around her, seated in two rows of rocking-chairs, the ladies facing the door, the men facing the ladies, she saw only friends.

"But why," she asked, "is young Mr. Forrester not in the confidence of his father? Can he not trust his own son?"

As though sure of her answer she cast a triumphant glance at the daughter who had dared, against Captain Codman and herself, to champion Mr. Forrester's son. Pino frowned mysteriously. He did not like to say that with any action of the great Mr. Forrester he was not acquainted. So he scowled darkly and shook his head.

"It is a puzzle," he said; "the young man is a fine fellow. To him I owe my life." He appealed to his friends, who, in time to the sedate rocking of the chairs, nodded gravely. "But his father is very decided. He cables us to send him at once to Porto Cabello. He instructs us not to let him know what we plan to do. I learned that in Porto Cabello he is only a workman, or, a little better, the foreman of the Jamaica coolies. I do not say so," Pino pointed out, as though if he wished he might say a great deal, "but it looks as though he were here for some punishment—as though he had displeased his father. Or," he demanded, "why should his father, who is so wealthy, give his son the wages of a foreman?"

During the visit of the conspirators the traditions of Spanish etiquette gave Colonel Vega no opportunity to separate Inez from the others; and soon, without having spoken to her alone, he and his followers departed.

When they had gone, Inez, as was her custom when she wished to be by herself, ordered her pony and rode out on the cliff road toward the orange groves. Riding unattended was a breach of Spanish-American convention. But her mother permitted it, and, in the eyes of the people of Willemstad, her long residence abroad, and the fact that she was half American of the North, partially excused it. Every morning at sunrise, before the heat of the day, and just before the sun set, Inez made these excursions. They were the bright moments of her present life. If she did not wish to think, they prevented her from thinking; if she did wish to think, they protected her from intrusion, and gave her strength and health to bear the grinding anxiety of the other hours. They brought back to her, also, memories of rides of former days, before her father had been taken from her, when they had trotted politely over the tan bark of Rotten Row, or when, with her soldier brother, she had chased the wild cattle on the plantation.

Now, with her head bent, with the hand that held the reins lying loosely on her knee, she rode at a walk, her body relaxed, her eyes seeing nothing. Her mind was intent upon her problem, one in which her answer to Pino Vega was but a part. To carry out the plan she had in mind she needed a man to help her, and there were two men to whom she might appeal. But only one, not both of them, could help her. She was determined not to return from her ride until she had decided which one it should be.

After an hour, as though she had reached her decision and was fearful lest she might reconsider it, she lifted the pony into a gallop and raced to Casa Blanca. On arriving there she went directly to her room, wrote a note, and returned with it to the stable where the groom was just removing the saddle from her pony.

He was an old man, trusted by Inez. As a body servant he had first served her brother, then her father, and after the imprisonment of General Rojas, had volunteered to follow the women of the family into exile. For a moment the girl regarded him earnestly.

"Pedro," she asked, "what would you do to save the master?"

When the man was assured he had understood her he lowered the saddle to the ground, and standing erect threw out his arms with his open palms toward her. In pantomime he seemed to signify that for the purpose she named, his body, his life was at her disposition.

Inez showed him the note.

"You will take this," she said, "to an American, Mr. Forrester. He is at one of the hotels. No one must know you are seeking him, no one must see you give him this note. Not even my mother must suspect that any message has been sent from this house to that gentleman. When he has read the note he will say 'yes' or 'no.' If he asks questions you will shake your head. As soon as you get your answer come directly to me."

She gave him the note and after an impressive delay continued: "There is a new plan to save my father. If you deliver this note safely you will have taken the first step to set him free. If you blunder, if it is found out that Mr. Forrester and one of the Rojas family are conspiring together, it will mean greater cruelties for my father; it may mean his death."

The girl had spoken in the way she knew would best appeal to the man before her. And she was not disappointed. His eyes shone with excitement. That he was conspiring, that he was a factor in a plot, that the plot had in view the end he so much desired, filled him with pleasure and pride. Crossing himself he promised to carry out her orders.

As Inez returned to the main portion of the house the sun was just sinking into the sea; and, to keep their daily tryst, her mother and sister were moving toward the cliff. While the crimson disk descended, the three women stood silent and immovable, the face of each turned toward the rim of the horizon. As though her eyes could pierce the sixty miles that lay between her and her father Inez leaned forward, her fingers interlaced, her lips slightly apart. That, at that moment, he was thinking of her, that he was looking to where he knew she was on guard, and thinking of him, moved her as greatly as though the daily ceremony was for the first time being carried forward. A wandering breeze, not born of the sea, but of the soil, of tropical plants and forests, and warm with sunshine, caressed her face. It came from the land toward which her eyes were turned. It was comforting, sheltering, breathing of peace. As it touched her she smiled slightly. She accepted it as a good omen, as a message sent from across the sea, to tell her that in the step she had taken she had done well.



IV

After their dinner at the hotel, Roddy and Peter strolled down the quay and over the tiny drawbridge that binds Otrabanda to Willemstad. There, for some time, half-way between the two towns, they loitered against the railing of the bridge, smoking and enjoying the cool night breeze from the sea. After his long nap Roddy was wakeful. He had been told that Willemstad boasted of a cafe chantant, and he was for finding it. But Peter, who had been awake since the ship's steward had aroused him before sunrise, doubted that there was a cafe chantant, and that if it did exist it could keep him from sleep, and announced his determination to seek his bed.

Left to himself, Roddy strolled slowly around the narrow limits of the town. A few of the shops and two of the cafes were still open, throwing bright spaces of light across the narrow sidewalks, but the greater number of houses were tightly barred; the streets slumbered in darkness. For a quarter of an hour Roddy sauntered idly, and then awoke to the fact that he was not alone. Behind him in the shadow, a man with his face hidden in a shawl, the sound of his footsteps muffled by his rope sandals, was following his wanderings.

Under the circumstances, after the developments of the day, Roddy was not surprised, nor was he greatly interested. Even in Porto Cabello, at one time or another, every one was beset by spies. And that here, in the central office of the revolutionists, Alvarez should be well represented was but natural.

Twice, softly and quickly, the man who followed had approached him from the rear, and each time, lest he should have some more serious purpose than to simply spy upon him, Roddy had stepped into the street. But when for the third time the man drew near, his approach was so swift that Roddy had no time to move away. The man brushed against him, and when he had passed Roddy found a letter had been pressed into his hand.

The hour was late, Roddy looked like a tourist, the note had been delivered covertly. Roddy concluded it contained an invitation to some disreputable adventure, and after calling the man the name associated with what Roddy believed to be his ancient and dishonorable profession, he tossed the note into the street.

With a cry of dismay the man ran toward it, but Roddy was before him. As the note had left his hand his fingers had touched upon heavy, waxen seals.

In an instant he had retrieved the note, and, followed eagerly by the man, carried it to the light of a gas lamp. The envelope was not illuminating, the sealing-wax was stamped with no crest or initials, the handwriting was obviously disguised.

After observing that from the shadow the man still watched him, while at the same time he kept an anxious lookout up and down the street, Roddy opened the note. It read: "You have come to Curacao for a purpose. One who has the success of that purpose most at heart desires to help you. To-morrow, just before sunrise, walk out the same road over which you drove to-day. Beyond the Cafe Ducrot the bearer of this letter will wait for you with a led horse. Follow him. If you think he is leading you into danger, order him to ride in advance, and cover him with your revolver. If you will come, say to the bearer, 'Vengo,' if not, 'No Vengo.' He has orders not to reply to any question of yours. If you speak of this to others, or if the bearer of this suspects you have arranged for others to follow you, he will only lead you back to your hotel, and your chance to right a great wrong will have passed."

There was no signature. But as though it were an afterthought, at the bottom of the page was written, "Adventures are for the adventurous."

Standing well in the light of the street lamp, with his back to the houses, with his face toward the waiting messenger, Roddy read the letter three times. But after the first reading his eyes neglected the body of the note and raced to the postscript. That was the line that beckoned and appealed; to him it seemed that whoever wrote the letter doubted he would come to the rendezvous, and was by that line enticing him, mocking him, daring him to refuse. It held forth both a promise and a challenge.

As to who the writer of the note might be, there were in Roddy's mind three explanations. He considered them hastily. Peter was the author of the note, and it was a poor joke intended to test him. It was a genuine offer from some one who had guessed the object of his visit to Curacao and honestly wished to be of service. It came from the man in the mask and his associates, who, resenting his interference of the morning, had pleasant thoughts of luring him down a lonely road and leaving him lying there. Which of the three suppositions might be correct it was impossible to know, but the postscript decided him. He beckoned to the messenger, and the man ran eagerly forward. "I will come," said Roddy. The man smiled with pleasure, bowed to him, and dived into the darkness. As he ran down the street Roddy stood listening until the soft patter of the sandals had ceased, and then slowly returned to the hotel.

For an hour, still speculating as to who his anonymous friend might be, he stood, smoking, upon the balcony. On the quay below him a negro policeman dozed against a hawser-post. A group of cargadores, stretched at length upon stacks of hides, chattered in drowsy undertones. In the moonlight the lamps on the fishing-boats and on the bridge, now locked against the outside world, burned mistily, and the deck of the steamer moored directly below him was as deserted and bare, as uncanny and ghostlike, as the deck of the ship of the Ancient Mariner. Except for the chiming of ships' bells, the whisper of the running tide, and the sleepy murmur of the longshoremen, the town of Willemstad was steeped in sleep and silence. Roddy, finding he could arrive at no satisfactory explanation of the note, woke the night porter, and telling that official he was off before daybreak to shoot wild pigeons, and wanted his coffee at that hour, betook himself to his cot. It seemed as though he had not twice tossed on the pillow before the night-watchman stood yawning at his side.

Roddy and Peter occupied adjoining rooms, and the door between the two was unlocked. When Roddy had bathed, dressed, and, with a feeling of some importance, stuck his revolver into his pocket, he opened the door, and, still suspicious that his faithful friend was sending him on a wild-goose chase, for a few moments stood beside his bed. But Peter, deep in the sleep of innocence, was breathing evenly, stentoriously. Not without envying him the hours of rest still before him, Roddy helped himself to Peter's revolver, left him a line saying it was he who had borrowed it, and went out into the dark and empty streets.

Half awake and with his hunger only partially satisfied, Roddy now regarded his expedition with little favor. He reverted strongly to the theory that some one was making a fool of him. He reminded himself that if in New York he had received such a note, he either would have at once dismissed it as a hoax or turned it over to the precinct station-house. But as the darkness changed to gray, and the black bulk of the Cafe Ducrot came into view, his interest quickened. He encouraged himself with the thought that while in New York the wording of the note would be improbable, hysterical, melodramatic, in hot, turbulent Venezuela it was in keeping with the country and with the people.

Since setting forth from the hotel a half hour had passed, and as he left the Cafe Ducrot behind him the night faded into the gray-blue mist of dawn. Out of the mist, riding slowly toward him, mounted on one pony and leading another, Roddy saw the man who on the night before had brought him the letter. He was leaning forward, peering through the uncertain light. When he recognized Roddy he galloped to him, and with evident pleasure but without speaking, handed him the reins of the led pony. Then motioning to Roddy to wait, he rode rapidly down the road over which the American had just come. Roddy settled himself in the saddle, and with a smile of satisfaction beamed upon the ghostlike world around him. So far, at least, the adventure promised to be genuine. Certainly, he argued, Peter could not have prepared a joke so elaborate.

Apparently satisfied that Roddy had brought no one with him, the messenger now rejoined him, and with a gesture of apology took the lead, and at a smart trot started in the same direction in which Roddy had been walking.

Roddy gave his guide a start of fifty feet, and followed. With the idea of a possible ambush still in his mind, he held the pony well in hand, and in front of him, in his belt, stuck one of the revolvers. He now was fully awake. No longer in the darkness was he stumbling on foot over the stones and ruts of the road. Instead, the day was breaking and he had under him a good horse, on which, if necessary, he could run away. The thought was comforting, and the sense of possible danger excited him delightfully. When he remembered Peter, sleeping stolidly and missing what was to come, he felt a touch of remorse. But he had been warned to bring no one with him, and of the letter to speak to no one. He would tell Peter later. But, he considered, what if there should be nothing to tell, or, if there were, what if he should not be alive to tell it? If the men who had planned to assassinate Colonel Vega intended to punish him for his interference, they could not have selected a place or hour better suited to their purpose. In all the world, apparently, he was the only soul awake. On either side of him were high hedges of the Spanish bayonet, and back of them acres of orange groves. The homes of the planters lay far from the highway, and along the sides of the road there were no houses, no lodge gates, not even a peon's thatched hut.

Roddy was approaching a sharp turn in the road, a turn to the left at almost right angles. It was marked by an impenetrable hedge. Up to now, although the hedges would have concealed a regiment, the white road itself had stretched before him, straight and open. But now the turn shut it from his sight. The guide had reached the corner. Instead of taking it, he turned in his saddle and pulled his pony to a walk.

To Roddy the act seemed significant. It was apparent that they had arrived at their rendezvous. Sharply, Roddy also brought his pony to a walk, and with a heavy pull on the reins moved slowly forward. The guide drew to the right and halted. To Roddy's excited imagination this manoeuvre could have but one explanation. The man was withdrawing himself from a possible line of fire. Shifting the reins to his left hand, Roddy let the other fall upon his revolver. Holding in the pony and bending forward, Roddy peered cautiously around the corner.

What he saw was so astonishing, so unlike what he expected, so utterly out of place, that, still leaning forward, still with his hand on his revolver, he stared stupidly.

For half a mile the road lay empty, but directly in front of him, blocking the way, was a restless, pirouetting pony, and seated upon the pony, unmoved either by his gyrations or by the appearance of a stranger in her path, was a young girl.

As Roddy had cautiously made his approach he had in his mind a picture of skulking Venezuelans with pointed carbines; his ears were prepared for a command to throw up his hands, for the slap of a bullet. He had convinced himself that around the angle of the impenetrable hedge this was the welcome that awaited him. And when he was confronted by a girl who apparently was no more a daughter of Venezuela than she was a masked highwayman, his first thought was that this must be some innocent foreigner stumbling in upon the ambush. In alarm for her safety his eyes searched the road beyond her, the hedges on either side. If she remained for an instant longer he feared she might be the witness to a shocking tragedy, that she herself might even become a victim. But the road lay empty, in the hedges of spiked cactus not a frond stirred; and the aged man who had led him to the rendezvous sat motionless, watchful but undisturbed.



Roddy again turned to the girl and found her closely observing him. He sank back in his saddle and took off his hat. Still scanning the hedges, he pushed his pony beside hers and spoke quickly.

"Pardon me," he said, "but I think you had better ride on. Some men are coming here. They—they may be here now."

That his anxiety was entirely on her account was obvious. The girl colored slightly, and smiled. As she smiled, Roddy for the first time was looking directly at her, and as he looked his interest in assassins and his anxiety as to what they might do passed entirely from him. For months he had not seen a girl of his own people, and that this girl was one of his own people he did not question. Had he first seen her on her way to mass, with a lace shawl across her shoulders, with a high comb and mantilla, he would have declared her to be Spanish, and of the highest type of Spanish beauty. Now, in her linen riding-skirt and mannish coat and stock, with her hair drawn back under a broad-brimmed hat of black straw, she reminded him only of certain girls with whom he had cantered along the Ocean Drive at Newport or under the pines of Aiken. How a young woman so habited had come to lose herself in a lonely road in Curacao was incomprehensible. Still, it was not for him to object. That the gods had found fit to send her there was, to Roddy, sufficient in itself, and he was extremely grateful. But that fact was too apparent. Though he was unconscious of it, the pleasure in his eyes was evident. He still was too startled to conceal his admiration.

The girl frowned, her slight, boyish figure grew more erect.

"My name is Rojas," she said. "My father is General Rojas. I was told you wished to help him, and last night I sent you a note asking you to meet me here."

She spoke in even, matter-of-fact tones. As she spoke she regarded Roddy steadily. When, the night before, Inez had sent the note, she had been able only to guess as to what manner of man it might be with whom she was making a rendezvous at daybreak, in a lonely road. And she had been more than anxious. Now that she saw him she recognized the type and was reassured. But that he was worthy of the secret she wished to confide in him she had yet to determine. As she waited for him to disclose himself she was to all outward appearances tranquilly studying him. But inwardly her heart was trembling, and it was with real relief that, when she told him her name, she saw his look of admiration disappear, and in his eyes come pity and genuine feeling.

"Oh!" gasped Roddy unhappily, his voice filled with concern. "Oh, I am sorry!"

The girl slightly inclined her head.

"I came to ask you," she began, speaking with abrupt directness, "what you propose to do?"

It was a most disconcerting question. Not knowing what he proposed to do, Roddy, to gain time, slipped to the ground and, hat in hand, moved close to the pommel of her saddle. As he did not answer, the girl spoke again, this time in a tone more kindly. "And to ask why you wish to help us?"

As though carefully considering his reply, Roddy scowled, but made no answer. In a flash it had at last come to him that what to Peter and to himself had seemed a most fascinating game was to others a struggle, grim and momentous. He recognized that until now General Rojas had never been to him a flesh-and-blood person, that he had not appreciated that his rescue meant actual life and happiness. He had considered him rather as one of the pieces in a game of chess, which Peter and himself were secretly playing against the Commandant of the San Carlos prison. And now, here, confronting him, was a human being, living, breathing, suffering, the daughter of this chessman, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, demanding of the stranger by what right he made himself her father's champion, by what right he pushed himself into the tragedy of the Rojas family. In his embarrassment Roddy decided desperately to begin at the very beginning, to tell the exact truth, to omit nothing, and then to throw himself upon the mercy of the court.

The gray mist of the morning had lifted. Under the first warm rays of the sun, like objects developing on a photographer's plate, the cactus points stood out sharp and clear, the branches of the orange trees separated, assuming form and outline, the clusters of fruit took on a faint touch of yellow. From the palace yard in distant Willemstad there drifted toward them the boom of the morning gun.

With his reins over his arm, his sombrero crumpled in his hands, his face lifted to the face of the girl, Roddy stood in the road at attention, like a trooper reporting to his superior officer.

"We were in the tea-house of the Hundred and One Steps," said Roddy. "We called ourselves the White Mice."

Speaking quickly he brought his story down to the present moment. When he had finished, Inez, who had been bending toward him, straightened herself in the saddle and sat rigidly erect. Her lips and brows were drawn into two level lines, her voice came to him from an immeasurable distance.

"Then it was a joke?" she said.

"A joke!" cried Roddy hotly. "That's most unfair. If you will only give us permission we'll prove to you that it is no joke. Perhaps, as I told it, it sounded heartless. I told it badly. What could I say—that I am sorry? Could I, a stranger, offer sympathy to you? But we are sorry. Ever since Peter proposed it, ever since I saw your father——"

The girl threw herself forward, trembling. Her eyes opened wide.

"You saw my father!" she exclaimed. "Tell me," she begged, "did he look well? Did he speak to you? When did you—" she stopped suddenly, and turning her face from him, held her arm across her eyes.

"It was four months ago," said Roddy. "I was not allowed to speak to him. We bowed to each other. That was all."

"I must tell them," cried the girl, "they must know that I have seen some one who has seen him. But if they know I have seen you——"

She paused; as though asking advice she looked questioningly at Roddy. He shook his head.

"I don't understand," he said.

"My mother and sister don't know that I am here," Inez told him. "If they did they would be very angry. No one," she added warningly, "must know. They are afraid of you. They cannot understand why you offer to help us. And they mistrust you. That is why I had to see you here in this way." With a shrug of distaste the girl glanced about her. "Fortunately," she added, "you understand."

"Why, yes," Roddy assented doubtfully. "I understand your doing what you did, but I don't understand the others. Who is it," he asked, "who mistrusts me? Who," he added smiling, "besides yourself?"

"My mother," answered Inez directly, "your consul, Captain Codman, Colonel Vega, and——"

In surprise, Roddy laughed and raised his eyebrows.

"Vega!" he exclaimed. "Why should Vega mistrust me?" Knowing what was in his mind, the girl made him a formal little bow.

"It is not," she answered, "because you saved his life." In obvious embarrassment she added: "It is because you are not in the confidence of your father. You can see that that must make it difficult for Colonel Vega."

Bewildered, Roddy stared at her and again laughed.

"And what possible interest," he demanded, "can my father have in Colonel Vega?"

For a moment, with distrust written clearly in her eyes, the girl regarded him reproachfully. Then she asked coldly:

"Do you seriously wish me to think that you do not know that?"

While they had been speaking, even when Inez had made it most evident to Roddy that to herself and to her friends he was a discredited person, he had smiled patiently. His good humor had appeared unassailable. But now his eyes snapped indignantly. He pressed his lips together and made Inez an abrupt bow.

"I assure you, I know nothing," he said quickly.

He threw the reins over the neck of the pony, and with a slap on its flank drove it across the road within reach of the waiting Pedro. Then lifting his hat, and with another bow, he started in the direction of Willemstad. Inez, too surprised to speak, sat staring after him. But before he had taken a dozen steps, as though she had called him back and asked him to explain, he halted and returned. He had entirely recovered his good humor, but his manner when he spoke was not conciliatory.

"The trouble is this," he said, "your friends are so deep in plots that they have lost sight of the thing that counts. While they are 'mistrusting,' and suspecting, and spying on each other, a man is dying. I know that much, anyway. That is all I care to know." As though it were an extenuating fact, he added: "It is a question of character. It is a Venezuelan way of doing things. But it is not our way. It was very kind of you to give me this chance to explain our interfering. But I see now—everybody," he added dryly, "has taken pains to make it very plain—that we are a nuisance." He paused, and to assure her it was not she he was upbraiding, smiled cheerfully. In his most confidential manner he continued lightly: "For myself, I have always thought there was something to say for the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread. I remember once seeing a fool rush into a burning building and rescue a child, while I and some other angels shouted for ladders." He nodded, and again lifted his hat. "Good-by," he said, "and thank you." Leaving her seated silent in the saddle, he walked away.

This time he had turned the bend in the road and had proceeded along it some hundred yards, when from behind him he heard approaching at a reckless pace the hoof-beats of a pony. Looking back, he saw a whirlwind of fluttering skirts and scattered sparks and pebbles. Inez, followed by Pedro, drew up even with him; and as she dragged her pony to a halt, threw herself free of the pommel and dropped at his feet to the road. Had he not caught her by the shoulders she would have stumbled into his arms. A strand of hair had fallen across her face, her eyes were eager, flashing. She raised her gloved hands impulsively, and clasped them before him.

"Please!" she begged. "You must not go. It is true—what you say about us, but you must help us. I did not know. I had forgotten. It is three years since I talked to any one—any one from your country. I had forgotten. It is true; we are suspicious, we are not straightforward like you, like the people in the States. But you must not punish us for that. Not me!"

At all times the face raised to his was beautiful. Now, the delicate lips, like those of a child before it breaks into sobs, were trembling, the eyes, lifted appealingly, were eloquent with tears.

"You must advise me," said the girl. "You must help me."

She raised her clasped hands higher. She regarded him wistfully, "Won't you?" she begged.

Her attack had been swift, masterly; every feminine weapon had been brought into effective action; and the surrender of Roddy was sudden, and complete. In abject submission he proceeded incoherently:

"My dear young lady!" he cried. "But, my dear young lady!"

He was rewarded with a brilliant, blinding smile.

"Then you will help me?" Inez asked.

Roddy recovered himself quickly.

"My Spanish is very bad," he answered, "but what it sounds like in English is, 'I am at your feet.'"

The sun now was shining brightly, and in the open road they were as conspicuous as though they had stood in a shop window on Broadway. Across the road, in the hedge opposite, a gate barred a path that led into one of the plantations. Roddy opened the gate, and together, followed by Pedro with the ponies, they found a spot where they were hidden by the hedge from any one passing on the highway. Inez halted in the shade of one of the orange trees. Speaking rapidly, she sketched for Roddy a brief history of the various efforts that had been made to rescue her father. She explained why these efforts had failed. She told him of the revolution led by Pino Vega, and the good it was expected to accomplish.

At first the girl spoke in some embarrassment. She knew that to be where she was, at that hour, alone with a stranger, was, in the eyes of her friends and family, an unpardonable offense. And though she resented their point of view, the fact that it existed disquieted her. But the man at her side did not seem to consider talking to a girl in the open sunshine either as a novel experience or one especially disgraceful. Politely, with lowered eyes, he gave to what she said the closest attention. The circumstance that they were alone, even the fact that she was young and attractive, did not once appear to occur to him. Seeing this, Inez with each succeeding moment gained confidence in Roddy and in herself and spoke freely.

"That is what we have tried to do," she said. "Now I am going to tell you why I asked you to meet me here this morning, and how I believe you can help me. Three days ago I received a message from my father."

Roddy exclaimed with interest, but motioned eagerly for her to continue.

"It is in cipher," she continued, "but it is his handwriting. It is unmistakable. It was given to me when I was at church. I was kneeling in the chapel of St. Agnes, which is in the darkest corner of the building. At first I was alone, and then a woman came and knelt close beside me. She was a negress, poorly dressed, and her face was hidden by her shawl. For a moment I thought she was murmuring her prayers, and then I found she was repeating certain words and that she was talking at me. 'I have a letter, a letter from your father,' she whispered. I crowded closer, and she dropped a piece of paper in front of me and then got to her feet and hurried away. I followed, but there were many people at mass, and when I had reached the street she had disappeared. The message she brought me is this: 'Page 54, paragraph 4.' That is all. It is the second message we have had from my father in two years. The first one was by word of mouth, and came a month ago. The meaning of that was only too plain. But what this one means I cannot imagine, nor," proceeded Inez with distress, "can I see why, if he had the chance to write to us, he did not write more openly."

She looked appealingly at Roddy, and paused for him to speak.

"He was afraid the message would be intercepted," said Roddy. "What he probably means to do is to send it to you in two parts. The second message will be the key that explains this one. He knew if he wrote plainly, and it fell into the wrong hands—" Roddy interrupted himself, and for a moment remained silent. "'Page 54, paragraph 4,'" he repeated. "Has he sent you a book?" he asked. "Has any book come to you anonymously?"

The girl shook her head. "No, I thought of that," she said, "but no books have come to us that we haven't ordered ourselves."

"What do the others think?" asked Roddy.

The girl colored slightly and shook her head.

"I have not told them. I knew my mother would ask Pino to help her, and," she explained, "though I like Pino, for certain reasons I do not wish to be indebted to him for the life of my father. Before appealing to him I have been trying for two days to find out the meaning of the cipher, but I could not do it, and I was just about to show it to my mother when Captain Codman told us of your offer. That made me hesitate. And then, as between you and Pino, I decided you were better able to help us. You live in Porto Cabello, within sight of the prison. Pino will be in the field. His revolution may last a month, it may last for years. During that time he would do nothing to help my father. When you risked being shot yesterday, it seemed to me you showed you had spirit, and also, you are from the States, and Pino is a Venezuelan, so——"

"You needn't take up the time of the court," said Roddy, "in persuading me that I am the man to help you. To save time I will concede that. What was the other message you received from your father?"

The eyes of the girl grew troubled and her voice lost its eagerness.

"It was charged in a French paper," she said, "that the prisoners in San Carlos were being killed by neglect. The French minister is a friend of our family, and he asked Alvarez to appoint a committee of doctors to make an investigation. Alvarez was afraid to refuse, and sent the doctors to examine my father and report on his health. One of them told him that Alvarez would permit him to send a message to my mother, and to tell her himself whether he was, or was not, ill. This is the message that they gave us as coming from my father.

"'I don't know what you gentlemen may decide as to my health,' he said, 'but I know that I am dying. Tell my wife that I wish to be buried in my native country, and to place upon my tombstone my name and this epitaph: "He wrote history, and made history."'" The voice of the girl had dropped to a whisper. She recovered herself and continued sadly: "Until three days ago that is the only word we have received from my father in two years."

The expression on Roddy's face was one of polite incredulity. Seeing this, Inez, as though answering his thought, said proudly: "My father made history when he arranged the boundary line between British Guiana and Venezuela."

Roddy shook his head impatiently.

"I wasn't thinking of that," he said. "I was thinking of the message. It doesn't sound a bit like your father," he exclaimed. "Not like what I've heard of him."

The eyes of the girl grew anxious with disappointment.

"Do you mean," she asked, "that you think he did not send that message?"

"It doesn't sound to me," said Roddy, "like the sort of message he would send, knowing the pain it would cause. He isn't the sort of man to give up hope, either. Even if it were true, why should he tell your mother he is dying? And that epitaph!" cried Roddy excitedly. "That's not like him, either! It is not modest." With sudden eagerness he leaned toward her. "Did your father write history?" he demanded.

Unable to see the purpose of his question, the girl gazed at him in bewilderment. "Why, of course," she answered.

"And does any part of it refer to Porto Cabello?"

After a moment of consideration Inez nodded. "The third chapter," she said, "tells of the invasion by Sir Francis Drake."

"'Chapter three, page fifty-four, paragraph four!'" shouted Roddy. "I'll bet my head on it! Don't you see what he has done?" he cried. "He sent you the key before he sent you the cipher. The verbal message is the key to the written one. They gave him a chance to send word to your mother, and he took it. He told her he was dying only that he might give her a direction, apparently about an epitaph, a boastful epitaph. He never boasted while he was alive—why should he boast on his tombstone? His real message is this: 'Look in the history I wrote of Venezuela, on page fifty-four, paragraph four,' and when we have found it," cried Roddy, "we'll have found the way to get him out of prison!"

Inez was not convinced, but his enthusiasm was most inspiriting.

"We have the history at the house," she cried, "and I know you can find it in the Spanish bookstore in Willemstad. I must go at once."

She moved forward, greatly excited, her eyes lit with the happiness of this new hope. Roddy ran to bring her pony, and making a bridge of his hands lifted her to the saddle. "If I am right about this," he said, "I must see you again to-day. Where can I meet you?"

In spite of her eagerness, the girl hesitated. One by one the traditions of a lifetime were smashing about her.

"I must tell my mother," she pleaded. "And I know she will not allow me——"

"And she'll tell Pino," interrupted Roddy. To detain her, he laid his hand upon the reins and shook them sharply.

"Are you helping Pino to win a revolution," he demanded, "or are you helping me to get your father out of prison?"

Inez gazed at him in dismay. In her brief twenty-two years no man had spoken to her in such a manner. Among her friends she knew of no Venezuelan who, no matter what the provocation, would have addressed his wife, his sister, his daughter in a tone so discourteous. And yet this stranger was treating her, who, as she had been frequently and reliably informed, was the loveliest and most lovable of her sex, as he might a mutinous younger brother. In spite of the new and serious thought that now occupied her mind, this one was also sufficiently novel to compel her attention. It both amused and fascinated her. Here was at last one man who was working to help her father, and not only in order to find favor in her bright eyes. He needed her wits and her courage; he wanted her help, but he wanted it as from a comrade, as he would have asked it of another man. Unconsciously he was paying her the compliment that best pleased her. When she nodded in assent she laughed delightedly, partly at him for bullying, partly at herself that she should for a moment have resented it.

"I am helping you!" she said.

Not understanding why she laughed, Roddy regarded her doubtfully.

Imitating the directness of his manner, Inez spoke quickly. "You can keep the pony. It is new to our stable and not known to belong to us. To-morrow morning, before sunrise, ride out again, but this time take the road to Otrabanda and along the cliff. Be sure to pass our house before sunrise. Ride about a mile and turn down a bridle-path to your left. That will bring you to the beach. If I cannot go, Pedro will meet you. You will get the history my father wrote at Belancourts, in Willemstad." For a moment she regarded him with friendly eyes. "If you should be right," she exclaimed, "how can I ever thank you?"

Roddy smiled back at her and shook his head.

"I don't know that we were exactly looking for gratitude," he said. "Now, go!" he ordered, "for I can't leave until you are well out of sight."

With another delightful laugh, that to Roddy was again inexplicable, the girl accepted her dismissal. It was her first rendezvous, but, in spite of her inexperience, she knew that had it been made with a Venezuelan the man would not have been the one first to bring it to an end.

Roddy impatiently waited until a quarter of an hour had passed, then galloped to Willemstad. On the way he put up the pony at a livery-stable in the suburbs, and on foot made his way as quickly as possible to the bookstore. What he wanted, he explained, were guidebooks and histories of Venezuela. Among those the man showed him was one in three volumes, in Spanish, by Senor Don Miguel Rojas. Roddy's fingers itched to open it, but he restrained himself and, after buying half a dozen other books, returned to his hotel. Peter was still asleep, and he could not wait to waken him. Locking himself in, he threw the books he did not want upon the floor, and, with fingers that were all thumbs, fumbled at the first volume of the history until he had found page fifty-four. His eyes ran down it to the fourth paragraph. His knowledge of Spanish was slight, but it was sufficient. Page fifty-four was the description of an attack from the sea by Drake, upon the Fortress of San Carlos. Translated by Roddy, paragraph four read as follows: "Seeing that it was no longer possible to hold the fortress, the defenders were assembled in the guard-room, and from there conducted to the mainland, through the tunnel that connects San Carlos with the Fortress of El Morro."

Like a man in a trance, Roddy walked to the adjoining room and shook the sleeping Peter by the shoulder. Peter opened his eyes, and the look in Roddy's face startled him into instant wakefulness.

"What's wrong?" he demanded.

"Nothing!" said Roddy. Forgetting that to Peter it was unintelligible, he pointed with a triumphant finger at paragraph four.

"I have found an underground passage into the cell of General Rojas," he said. "We must go back and dig him out."

In order to avoid the heat, those planters who lived some distance from Willemstad were in the habit of rising by candlelight, and when the sun rose it found them well advanced upon their journey. So when on the following morning Roddy again set forth to meet Inez Rojas, the few servants who knew of his early departure accepted it, and the excuse he gave of wild-pigeon shooting, as a matter of course.

Without difficulty Roddy found the bridle-path leading down from the cliff road to the sea, and after riding for a short distance along the beach came upon Inez, guarded by the faithful Pedro. The cliff, hollowed at its base by the sea, hung over them, hiding them from any one on the cliff road, and the waves, breaking into spray on an outer barrier of rock, shut them from the sight of those at sea.

As Inez rose from the rock on which she had been seated and came eagerly to meet him, her face was radiant with happiness. Over night she appeared to have gained in health and strength, to have grown younger, and, were it possible, more beautiful. The satisfaction in the eyes of Roddy assured her that he, also, had solved the riddle.

"You have seen the book," she called; "you understand?"

"I think so," replied Roddy. "Anyway, I've got a sort of blueprint idea of it. Enough," he added, "to work on."

"I didn't tell my mother," Inez announced. "Nor," she continued, as though defying her own misgivings, "do I mean to tell her. Until you can get back word to me, until you say that this time you believe we may hope, it seems to me it would be kinder to keep her in ignorance. But I told Pedro," she added. She flashed a grateful smile at the old man, and he bowed and smiled eagerly in return. "And he has been able to help me greatly. He tells me," she went on, "that his father, who was in the artillery, was often stationed at Morro before it was abandoned. That was fifty years ago. The tunnel was then used daily and every one knew of it. But when the troops were withdrawn from Morro the passage was walled up and each end blocked with stone. In San Carlos it opened into the guard-room. El Morro was hardly a fortress. It was more of a signal-station. Originally, in the days of the pirates, it was used as a lookout. Only a few men were kept on guard there, and only by day. They slept and messed at San Carlos. Each morning they were assembled in the guard-room, and from there marched through the tunnel to El Morro, returning again at sunset."

"I don't know El Morro," said Roddy.

"You have probably seen it," Inez explained, "without knowing it was a fort. It's in ruins now. Have you noticed," she asked, "to the right of the town, a little hill that overlooks the harbor? It is just above the plain where the cattle are corralled until they are shipped to Cuba. Well, the ruins of El Morro are on top of that hill. It is about a quarter of a mile from San Carlos, so we know that is the length of the tunnel. Pedro tells me, for a part of the way it runs under the water of the harbor. It was cut through the solid rock by the prisoners at San Carlos."

"There must be a lot of people," objected Roddy, "who know of it."

"Fifty years ago they knew of it," returned Inez eagerly, "but, remember, for half a century it has virtually ceased to exist. And besides, to my people there is nothing unusual in such a tunnel. You will find them connected with every fort the Spaniards built along this coast, and in Cuba, and on the Isthmus of Panama. All along the Spanish Main, wherever there is more than one fort, you will find them linked together by tunnels. They were intended to protect the soldiers from the fire of the enemy while they were passing from one position to another."

The young people had been standing ankle-deep in the soft, moist sand. Now the girl moved toward her pony, but Roddy still stood looking out to sea. He appeared to have entirely forgotten that Inez was present, and to be intently regarding the waves that surged against the rocks, and burst into glittering walls of foam. At last, with a serious countenance, he came toward her.

"I shall tell the authorities at Porto Cabello," he said, "that they ought to build a light-house on El Morro. At any rate, I will ask permission to make a survey. As they don't intend to pay father for any of his light-houses, they are not likely to object. And as I don't intend to build one, father can't object. He will attribute my offer to mistaken zeal on behalf of the company. And he will consider it another evidence of the fact that I don't understand his business. As soon as I find out anything definite I will let you know. And, by the way," he asked, "how am I to let you know?"

Inez gave him the address of a fellow-exile from Venezuela, living in Willemstad, who was in secret communication with Pedro. Through this man letters would reach her safely.

She turned to him in farewell, and held out her hand.

"You must be very careful," she said.

"Trust me!" answered Roddy heartily. "I promise you I'll be as mysterious a double-dealer as any Venezuelan that ever plotted a plot. I admit," he went on, "that when I came down here I was the frank, wide-eyed child, but, I assure you, I've reformed. Your people have made me a real Metternich, a genuine Machiavelli. Compared to me now, a Japanese business man is as honest and truth-loving as Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch."

With a grin, Roddy invited the girl to sympathize with his effort to conceal the seriousness of their undertaking, but she regarded him doubtfully, and frowned. In his heart Roddy felt sorry for her. It hurt him to think that any one so charming could not accept his theory, that the only way to treat a serious matter was with flippancy. But the girl undeceived him.

"You don't understand me," she said quietly. "I didn't mean to be careful to protect our interests. I meant you to be careful of yourself. If anything were to happen to you through this—" She hesitated and looked away from him toward the sea. "Do you imagine," she demanded, "that it is easy for me to ask what I am asking of you? I know I have no right to do it. I know the only possible excuse for me is that I am not asking it for myself, but for my father—although, of course, that is asking it for myself."

"Beauty in distress," began Roddy briskly, "is the one thing——"

"That's what I mean," interrupted the girl gratefully, "the way you take it, the way you make it easier for me. Every other man I know down here would tell me he was doing it only for me, and he would hope I would believe him. But when you say you are helping beauty in distress, you are secretly frightened lest I may not have a sense of humor—and believe you. I know you are doing this because you feel deeply for my father. If I didn't know that, if I didn't feel that that were true, all this I have asked of you would be impossible. But it is possible, because I know you first tried to save my father of your own accord. Because I know now that it is your nature to wish to help others. Because you are brave, and you are generous."

But Roddy refused to be ennobled.

"It's because I'm a White Mice," he said. "My oath compels me! How would you like," he demanded, frowning, "if we turned you into an Honorary White Mouse?"

For an instant, with perplexed eyes and levelled brows, the girl regarded him fixedly. Then she smiled upon him. It was the same flashing, blinding smile which the morning before had betrayed him into her hands, bound and captive. It was a smile that passed swiftly, like a flash of sunshine over a garden of gay flowers. It brought out unsuspected, ambushed dimples. It did fascinating and wholly indefensible things to her lips. It filled her eyes with gracious, beautiful meanings. Inez raised her head challengingly.

"You think," she declared, "that I cannot be foolish, too. But I can. Let's sit down here on this rock and be quite foolish."



V

"I can be quite as foolish as you," Inez repeated as Roddy continued to regard her. "Some day, when this is over, when you have made it all come right, we will sit out here and pretend that we have escaped from Venezuela, that we are up North in my mother's country—in your country. We will play these are the rocks at York Harbor, and we'll be quite young and quite happy. Have you ever sat on the rocks at York Harbor," she demanded eagerly, "when the spray splashed you, and the waves tried to catch your feet?"

Roddy was regarding her in open suspicion. He retreated warily.

"York Harbor!" he murmured. "I discovered it! It is named after me. But you! I never imagined you'd been there, and I never imagined you could be anything but serious, either. It makes you quite dangerous."

"Dangerous?" murmured the girl.

"One is dangerous," said Roddy, "when one is completely charming."

The girl frowned, and her shoulders moved slightly. "You speak," she said, "like a Venezuelan."

But Roddy was in no mood to accept reproof.

"I told you," he said, "I admire the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread. There is another man I admire equally, 'the man who runs away.' It takes great courage to run away. I must do it now."

He retreated from her. His eyes were filled with a sudden, deep delight in her, and a growing wonder. The girl regarded him steadily.

"Come here," she commanded, "and say 'Good-by' to me."

Roddy took the slim, gauntleted hand stretched out to him, and for an instant the girl held his hand firmly, and then nodded. The smile this time was very near to tears.

"What you are going to do," she said, "is the dangerous thing. You don't know how dangerous. If I should not see you again——"

Roddy looked down into her eyes, and laughed from utter happiness.

"You will see me again," he said.

His tone gave to the words a meaning which the girl entirely disregarded.

"You will remember," she went on, as though he had not spoken, "that we—that I am grateful."

Roddy turned and smiled out at the sunlit sea.

"You have given me," he answered, "other things to remember."

He pulled off his sombrero and took the gauntleted hand in both of his. He bowed over it and brushed it with his lips. The girl still regarded him steadily, questioningly.

"Good-by," faltered Roddy.

His eyes sought hers wistfully, appealingly, with all that he felt showing in them. But her own told him nothing. Roddy released her hand with an effort, as though it were bound to his with manacles.

"Now I know," he said gently, "why I came to Venezuela."

The girl made no answer, and silently Roddy mounted and rode away. When he had reached the place where the rocks would hide her from sight he glanced back. He saw Inez standing beside her pony, leaning with her arms across the saddle, looking after him. Then, as he waved his hand, she raised hers with a gesture that seemed to Roddy partly a farewell, partly a benediction.

The stable at which Roddy had told Pedro he would leave the pony was far in the suburbs, and by the time he had walked to Willemstad the morning was well advanced.



As he approached the quay he recognized that in his absence some event of unusual interest had claimed the attention of the people. Everywhere men were gathered in little groups, gesticulating, laughing, frowning importantly, and at the hotel Roddy was surprised to see, on the balcony leading from his room, Peter and the American Consul. The sight of him apparently afforded them great satisfaction, and they waved and beckoned to him frantically. Ignoring their last meeting, the Consul greeted Roddy as though he were an old friend.

"Have you heard the news?" he demanded. "It is of great local interest, and it should interest you. Last night," he explained, "President Alvarez declared an amnesty for his political opponents living in foreign countries. All exiles may now return to their homes."

He pointed at the small passenger steamer lying at the quay directly below the window. The Blue Peter was at the fore, and her deck was crowded with excited, jubilant Venezuelans.

"You see," explained Captain Codman, "they have lost no time."

In a tone that precluded the possibility of discussion, Peter briskly added: "And we are going with them. I have packed your bag and paid the bill. We sail in an hour."

The news of the amnesty bewildered Roddy. The wonderful possibilities it so suddenly presented thrilled him. They were so important that with difficulty he made his voice appear only politely interested.

"And Senora Rojas?" he asked.

"I regret to say," answered Captain Codman, "she decides to take advantage of the amnesty. As soon as she can arrange her affairs here she will return to Miramar, her home in Porto Cabello."

To Miramar! Roddy turned suddenly to the window, and with unseeing eyes stared at the busy harbor. By sight he knew the former home of the Rojas family. In his walks he had often passed before its yellow-pillared front and windows barred with intricate screens of wrought iron. Through the great gates that had hung before Miramar since it had been the palace of the Spanish Governor-General, and through which four horses could pass abreast, he had peered at the beautiful gardens. He had wondered at the moss-covered statues, at the orchids on the flamboyant trees, with their flowers of scarlet, at the rare plants, now neglected and trailing riotously across the paths, choked with unkempt weeds. Not an hour before, when he had parted from Inez, he had determined to make sentimental journeys to that same house. For she had walked in those gardens, it was through those gates she had swept in her carriage to take the air in the Plaza; at night, when she slept, some high-ceilinged, iron-barred room of that house had sheltered her. He had pictured himself prowling outside the empty mansion and uncared-for garden, thinking of the exile, keeping vigil in the shadow of her home, freshly resolving to win back her father to health and freedom.

And now, by a scratch of the pen, the best that could happen had come to him. The house would waken to life. Instead of only the fragrance clinging to the vase, the rose itself would bloom again. Again Inez would walk under the arch of royal palms, would drive in the Alameda, would kneel at Mass in the cool, dark church, while, hidden in the shadows, he could stand and watch her. And though, if he hoped to save her father, stealth and subterfuge would still be necessary, he could see her, perhaps, speak to her; at least by the faithful Pedro he could send her written words, flowers, foolish gifts, that were worth only the meaning they carried with them.

Feeling very much of a hypocrite, Roddy exclaimed fervently:

"How wonderful for Senora Rojas! To be near him again! Is she happy? Does it make it easier for her?"

With a disturbed countenance the Consul nodded gravely.

"Yes," he answered, "she welcomed the change. She believes it means for her husband better conditions. She hopes even for his pardon; but—" The Consul shook his head impatiently, and with pitying eyes looked down upon the excited men on the steamer below them.

"But what?" demanded Roddy.

"I suspect every act of Alvarez," the Consul explained. "This looks like the act of a generous opponent. But I cannot believe it is that. I believe he knows all that is being plotted against him. I believe this act of amnesty is only a device to put the plotters where he can get his hand on them. He is the spider inviting the flies into his parlor."

As the little steamer passed the harbor mouth and pushed her nose toward Porto Cabello, Roddy, with Peter at his side, leaned upon the starboard rail. Roddy had assured Inez that Peter must be given their full confidence, and he now only waited a fitting moment to tell him of what had occurred that morning, in so far, at least, as it referred to the tunnel.

The eyes of both were turned toward Casa Blanca, now rapidly retreating from them. And, as they watched it, the mind of each occupied with thoughts of its inmates, they saw a white figure leave the house, and, moving slowly, halt at the edge of the cliff.

Roddy, his eyes straining toward the coast-line, took off his hat and stood with it clasped in his hands. Peter saw the movement, and to hide a smile of sympathy, looked down at the white foam rushing below them.

"Roddy," he asked, "what sort of a girl is Inez Rojas?"

His eyes still seeking the figure on the rocks, and without turning his head, Roddy answered with startling directness:

"What sort of a girl?" he growled. "The sort of a girl I am going to marry!"

More moved than he knew, and thinking himself secure in the excited babel about him and in the fact that the others spoke in Spanish, Roddy had raised his voice. He was not conscious he had done so until, as he spoke, he saw a man leaning on the rail with his back toward him, give an involuntary start. Furious with himself, Roddy bit his lip, and with impatience waited for the man to disclose himself. For a moment the stranger remained motionless, and then, obviously to find out who had spoken, slowly turned his head. Roddy found himself looking into the glowing, angry eyes of Pino Vega. Of the two men, Roddy was the first to recover. With eagerness he greeted the Venezuelan; with enthusiasm he expressed his pleasure at finding him among his fellow-passengers, he rejoiced that Colonel Vega no longer was an exile. The Venezuelan, who had approached trembling with resentment, sulkily murmured his thanks. With a hope that sounded more like a threat that they would soon meet again, he begged to be allowed to rejoin his friends.

"Now you've done it!" whispered Peter cheerily. "And he won't let it rest there, either."

"Don't you suppose I know that better than you do," returned Roddy miserably. He beat the rail with his fist. "It should not have happened in a thousand years," he wailed. "He must not know I have ever even seen her."

"He does know," objected Peter, coming briskly to the point. "What are you going to do?"

"Lie to him," said Roddy. "He is an old friend of the family. She told me so herself. She thought even of appealing to him before she appealed to us. If he finds out I have met her alone at daybreak, I have either got to tell him why we met and what we are trying to do, or he'll believe, in his nasty, suspicious, Spanish-American way, that I am in love with her, and that she came there to let me tell her so."

Roddy turned on Peter savagely.

"Why didn't you stop me?" he cried.

"Stop you—talking too much?" gasped Peter. "Is that my position? If it is, I resign."

The moon that night threw black shadows of shrouds, and ratlines across a deck that was washed by its radiance as white as a bread-board. In the social hall, the happy exiles were rejoicing noisily, but Roddy stood apart, far forward, looking over the ship's side and considering bitterly the mistake of the morning. His melancholy self-upbraidings were interrupted by a light, alert step, and Pino Vega, now at ease, gracious and on guard, stood bowing before him.

"I do not intrude?" he asked.

Roddy, at once equally on guard, bade him welcome.

"I have sought you out," said the Venezuelan pleasantly, "because I would desire a little talk with you. I believe we have friends in common."

"It is possible," said Roddy. "I have been in Porto Cabello about four months now."

"It was not of Porto Cabello that I spoke," continued Vega, "but of Curacao." He looked into Roddy's eyes suddenly and warily, as a swordsman holds the eyes of his opponent. "I did not understand," he said, "that you knew the Rojas family?"

"I do not know them," answered Roddy.

Vega turned his back to the moon, so that his face was in shadow. With an impatient gesture he flicked his cigarette into the sea. As though he found Roddy's answer unsatisfactory, he paused. He appeared to wish that Roddy should have a chance to reconsider it. As the American remained silent, Vega continued, but his tone now was openly hostile.

"I have been Chief of Staff to General Rojas for years," he said. "I have the honor to know his family well. Senora Rojas treats me as she did her son, who was my dearest friend. I tell you this to explain why I speak of a matter which you may think does not concern me. This morning, entirely against my will, I overheard you speaking to your friend. He asked you of a certain lady. You answered boldly you intended to marry her." Vega's voice shook slightly, and he paused to control it. "Now, you inform me that you are not acquainted with the Rojas family. What am I to believe?"

"I am glad you spoke of that," said Roddy heartily. "I saw that you overheard us, and I was afraid you'd misunderstand me——"

The Venezuelan interrupted sharply.

"I am well acquainted with your language!"

"You speak it perfectly," Roddy returned, "but you did not understand it as I spoke it. The young lady is well known in Willemstad. Our Consul, as you are aware, is her friend. He admires her greatly. He told me that she is half American. She has been educated like an American girl, she rides, she plays tennis. What my friend said to me was, 'What sort of a girl is Senorita Rojas?' and I answered, 'She is the sort of girl I am going to marry,' meaning she is like the girls in my own country, one of our own people, like one of the women I some day hope to marry."

Roddy smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

"Now do you understand?" he asked.

The Venezuelan gave no answering smile. His eyes shone with suspicion. Roddy recognized that between his desire to believe and some fact that kept him from believing, the man was acutely suffering.

"Tell me, in a word," demanded Vega sharply, "give me your word you do not know her."

"I don't see," said Roddy, "that this is any of your damned business!"

The face of Vega checked him. At his refusal to answer, Roddy saw the look of jealousy that came into the man's eyes and the torment it brought with it. He felt a sudden pity for him, a certain respect as for a fellow-sufferer. He himself had met Inez Rojas but twice, but, as he had told her, he knew now why he had come to Venezuela. This older man had known Inez for years, and to Roddy, arguing from his own state of mind regarding her, the fact was evidence enough that Vega must love her also. He began again, but now quietly, as he would argue with a child.

"I see no reason for making any mystery of it," he said. "I did meet Miss Rojas. But I can't say I know her. I met her when she was out riding with her groom. I thought she was an American. She needed some help, which I was able to give her. That is all."

Vega approached Roddy, leaning forward as though he were about to spring on him. His eyes were close to Roddy's face.

"And what was the nature of this help?" he demanded.

"You are impertinent," said Roddy.

"Answer me!" cried the Venezuelan. "I have the right. No one has a better right."

He flung up his right arm dramatically, and held it tense and trembling, as though it were poised to hurl a weapon.

"You were watched!" he cried hysterically. "I know that you met. And you tried to deceive me. Both of you. She will try, also——"

The moonlight disappeared before the eyes of Colonel Vega, and when again he opened them he was looking dizzily up at the swaying masts and yards. Roddy, with his hand at Vega's throat, was forcing his shoulders back against the rail. His free hand, rigid and heavy as a hammer, swung above the Venezuelan's face.

"Yesterday," panted Roddy, "I saved your life. If you insult that girl with your dirty, Latin mind, so help me—I will take it!"

He flung the man from him, but Vega, choking with pain and mortification, staggered forward.

"It is you who insult her," he shrieked. "It is I who protect her. Do you know why? Do you know what she is to me? She is my promised wife!"

For a moment the two men stood, swaying with the gentle roll of the ship, staring into each other's eyes. Above the sound of the wind in the cordage and the whisper of the water against the ship's side, Roddy could hear himself breathing in slow, heavy respirations. Not for an instant did he doubt that the man told the truth. Vega had spoken with a conviction that was only too genuine, and his statement, while it could not justify, seemed to explain his recent, sudden hostility. With a sharp effort, Roddy recovered himself. He saw that no matter how deeply the announcement might affect him, Vega must believe that to the American it was a matter of no possible consequence.

"You should have told me this at first," he said quietly. "I thought your questions were merely impertinent."

Roddy hesitated. The interview had become poignantly distasteful to him. He wished to get away; to be alone. He was conscious that a possibility had passed out of his life, the thought of which had been very dear to him. He wanted to think, to plan against this new condition. In discussing Inez with this man, in this way, he felt he was degrading her and his regard for her. But he felt also that for her immediate protection he must find out what Vega knew and what he suspected. With the purpose of goading him into making some disclosure, Roddy continued insolently:

"And I still think they are impertinent."

Roddy's indignation rose and got the upper hand. He cast caution aside.

"With us," he continued, "when a woman promises to marry a man—he does not spy on her."

"We spied on you," protested Vega. "We did not think it would lead us to——"

Roddy cut him off with a sharp cry of warning.

"Be careful!" he challenged.

"You met in the road——"

"So I told you," returned Roddy.

"You dismounted and talked with her."

Roddy laughed, and with a gesture of impatience motioned Vega to be silent.

"Is that all?" he demanded.

The Venezuelan saw the figure he presented. Back of him were hundreds of years of Spanish traditions, in his veins was the blood of generations of ancestors by nature suspicious, doubting, jealous. From their viewpoint he was within his rights; they applauded, they gave him countenance; but by the frank contempt of the young man before him his self-respect was being rudely handled. Not even to himself could he justify his attitude.