Page:Under three flags; a story of mystery (IA underthreeflagss00tayliala).pdf/198

 "Quite the contrary. They were together about all the time."

"Now, Don Manada, there is one query I should like to put to you."

"Come," smiles Manada, "I can guess what your question is to be."

"I will save you the trouble and ask it. As a man of years and experience, of keen discernment and calm conclusions, what should you say were the precise relations existing between Phillip Van Zandt and Louise Hathaway?"

Manada appears to reflect deeply. Then he says, with a gravity belied by the twinkle in his eyes: "Serious, my dear Senor Ashley; very serious."

"Thank you," responds Ashley. "Well, I believe I'll go ashore and get better acquainted with the natives. I hope to see you again, Don Manada."

"I shall probably be here until the yacht leaves, senor. Adios."

As Ashley is borne shoreward he digests the information extracted from his Cuban friend.

"So far as Miss Hathaway's tender regard is concerned, I appear to be a rank outsider," he soliloquizes. "But I have the consolation of knowing that I did not permit myself to fall in love with her. Rather a melancholy consolation, but philosophy was invented for just such cases as this.

"And Van Zandt. Well, Barker can doubt as much as he pleases, but I will stake my reputation as a soothsayer that Van Zandt and Ernest Stanley are one and the same man. And if Phillip Van Zandt is not a Nemesis, stalking on the trail of his prospective victim or victims, then I am indeed a prophet unworthy of honor in 'mine ain countree' or in the world at large."