Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/93

Rh “Yes.”

Their glances met, and in Paul Harley’s expression there seemed to be a challenge.

“You have not yet told me,” said he, “the name of your neighbour.”

Colonel Menendez lighted his new cigarette.

“Mr. Harley,” he confessed, “I regret that I ever referred to this suspicion of mine. Indeed it is hardly a suspicion, it is what I may call a desperate doubt. Do you say that, a desperate doubt?”

“I think I follow you,” said Harley.

“The fact is this, I only know of one person within ten miles of Cray’s Folly who has ever visited Cuba.”

“Ah.”

“I have no other scrap of evidence to associate him with my shadowy enemy. This being so, you will pardon me if I ask you to forget that I ever referred to his existence.”

He spoke the words with a sort of lofty finality, and accompanied them with a gesture of the hands which really left Harley no alternative but to drop the subject.

Again their glances met, and it was patent to me that underlying all this conversation was something beyond my ken. What it was that Harley suspected I could not imagine, nor what it was that Colonel Menendez desired to conceal; but tension was in the very air. The Spaniard was on the defensive, and Paul Harley was puzzled, irritated.

It was a strange interview, and one which in the light of after events I recognized to possess extraordinary significance. That sixth sense of Harley’s was awake, was prompting him, but to what extent he understood its promptings at that hour I did not know,