Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/22

 and I began to consider his story from a new viewpoint. Seemingly rendered restless by his reflections, he stood up and began to pace the floor, a tall but curiously graceful figure. I noticed the bulldog tenacity of his chin, the intense pride in his bearing, and I wondered what kind of menace had induced him to seek the aid of Paul Harley; for whatever his failings might be, and I could guess at the nature of several of them, that this thin-lipped Spanish soldier knew the meaning of fear I was not prepared to believe.

“Before you proceed further, Colonel Menendez,” said Harley, “might I ask when you left Cuba?”

“Some three years ago,” was his reply. “Because—” he hesitated curiously—“of health motives, I leased a property in England, believing that here I should find peace.”

“In other words, you were afraid of something or someone in Cuba?”

Colonel Menendez turned in a flash, glaring down at the speaker.

“I never feared any man in my life, Mr. Harley,” he said, coldly.

“Then why are you here?”

The Colonel placed the stump of his first cigarette in an ash tray and lighted that which he had newly made.

“It is true,” he admitted. “Forgive me. Yet what I said was that I never feared any man.”

He stood squarely in front of the Burmese cabinet, resting one hand upon his hip. Then he added a remark which surprised me.

“Do you know anything of Voodoo?” he asked.

Paul Harley took his pipe from between his teeth and stared at the speaker silently for a moment. “Voodoo?” he echoed. “You mean negro magic?”