Page:Weird Tales volume 32 number 05.djvu/18

528 like," I answered. "Each word was plain enough, and none of them over ten letters. But I am afraid the pleasure of this chat is causing me to neglect important duties elsewhere," I added; "so if you will pardon the abruptness, I will wish you good afternoon."

"You mean"

"That the interview is over."

Manuel De Costa sprang to his feet. "There will be others!" he shouted in a voice that trembled with rage. "There will be others, I promise you! Do you think I will sit idly by while you make a fool of Manuel De Costa? That I, who have defied the highest, should know defeat from an upstart? Your crude manner might have been overlooked on the assumption of ignorance, but now that chance is lost forever by your defiance. If my name is unknown to the Señor, this effrontery has insured him good reason to remember it."

I was walking toward him as I answered: "Perhaps I have heard it mentioned. Who knows but the name might be known to me—infamously?"

Then before my surprised visitor could answer, I had bowed him from the room and shut the door in his face.

following nine days passed as a century while I waited the departure of the great ship that was to speed me to adventure and the unknown.

During that time there had been nothing to warn of the powerful enemy I had made, or the lengths to which he would go to strike at those who opposed him. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed Manuel De Costa. This silence was not what I had expected. Inwardly I was certain there would be other calls—by phone at least—and was both surprised and pleased by their absence.

But it was soon to be shown that an enemy of Manuel De Costa's was never forgotten. The night previous to my departure I had returned from the theatre to find a note and driver waiting. The missive contained but a single line in a feminine hand, and asked that I accompany the bearer. Though unsigned I reasoned it could have come from none other than The Midnight Lady herself; though it had been my belief that at this moment that dark-eyed beauty was rapidly nearing the sandy edge of the great Sahara.

Of course it might mean trickery of some sort, yet

There could be but one answer to such a message. In an instant I had got into the waiting car, and a moment later was being whisked through a broad thoroughfare of lights and roaring traffic.

I had been struck with the appearance of the driver from the first. He was not tall, but one of the broadest men I had ever seen. Now as he sat silently beside me, dodging the car in and out of the heavy night traffic with a skill that told of long practise, I was once more conscious of his great size.

Not that there was any reason why I should know alarm. Standing three inches over six feet, I held the heavy-weight championship during my college years, and at one time had seriously considered the prize-ring as a profession. So possibly it was more an admiration for his physique than anything else that commanded my attention. I lay back in my seat as the car shot ahead through the heart of the great city, then on past what seemed endless miles of lights and smaller buildings. Several times I caught a glimpse of the river to our left, and once a far-flung glimmer I knew to be the outline of some bridge.