Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/89

Rh Menendez, kindly inform me if you recall the name of this man?”

“I recall it very well,” replied the Colonel. “His name was M’kombo, and he was a Benin negro.”

“Assuming that he is still alive, what, roughly, would his age be to-day?”

The Colonel seemed to meditate, pushing a box of long Martinique cigars across the table in my direction.

“He would be an old man,” he pronounced. “I, myself, am fifty-two, and I should say that M’kombo if alive to-day would be nearer to seventy than sixty.”

“Ah,” murmured Harley, “and did he speak English?”

“A few words, I believe.”

Paul Harley fixed his gaze upon the dark, aquiline face.

“In short,” he said, “do you really suspect that it was M’kombo whose shadow you saw upon the lawn, who a month ago made a midnight entrance into Cray’s Folly, and who recently pinned a bat wing to the door?”

Colonel Menendez seemed somewhat taken aback by this direct question. “I cannot believe it,” he confessed.

“Do you believe that this order or religion of Voodooism has any existence outside those places where African negroes or descendents of negroes are settled?”

“I should not have been prepared to believe it, Mr. Harley, prior to my experiences in Washington and elsewhere.”

“Then you do believe that there are representatives of this cult to be met with in Europe and America?”

“I should have been prepared to believe it possible in America, for in America there are many negroes, but in England”