Stuart was not the only person on the streets of Cap Haitien the next
morning who was conscious of personal danger. Manuel Polliovo was ill at
ease. Bearing the secret that he bore, the Cuban knew that a hint of it
would bring him instant death, or, if the authorities had time to
intervene, incarceration in a Haitian prison, a fate sometimes worse
than death. Even the dreaded presence of U. S. Marines would not hold
the negro barbarians back, if they knew.
Manuel was by no means blind to his peril. He was relieved in the
thought that the American, Garfield, was where he could not do him any
harm, but there were other dangers. Hence he was startled and jumped
nervously, on hearing a voice by his elbow.
"Do you want a guide, Senor?"
"A guide, Boy! Where to?"
The answer came clear and meaningly:
"To the Citadel of the Black Emperor!"
The Cuban grew cold, under the burning sun, and, professional
conspirator though he was, his face blenched. His hand instinctively
sought the pocket wherein lay his revolver.
Yet he dare not kill. Five years of American occupation had bred a sense
of law and order in the coast towns, at least, which had not been known
in Haiti for a century and more. Any violence would lead to inquiry, and
Manuel's record was not one which would bear investigation.
How came this ragged Haitian urchin to know? Manuel's swift glance at
Stuart had shown him nothing but a Creole lad in clothes too big for him
and a pair of boots fastened with string. The messenger meant nothing,
it was the message which held menace.
To the Cuban this apparently chance street encounter was ominous of
black threat. It revealed treachery and might mean a trap. But from
whence? Swiftly Manuel's keen brain, the brain of an arch-plotter,
scanned the manifold aspects of this sudden threat.
How much labor, how many wild adventures, what a series of dangers would
Stuart have escaped, had he but been able to read the thoughts of that
crafty brain!
Did his fellow-conspirators want to get rid of him? So Manuel's doubts
ran. Did they count on his shooting the boy, in a panic, and being
lynched for it, there and then, on the street of Cap Haitien? Or of his
being imprisoned, tried and executed for murder? Such a plot was not
unlikely.
But, if so, who had sent the boy?
Was Cesar Leborge playing him false? True, from that bull-necked,
ferocious negro general, Manuel knew he could expect nothing but
brutality, envy and hate; but such a design as this boy's intervention
seemed too subtle for the giant Creole's brain. Manuel accounted himself
master of the negro when it came to treachery and cunning. Moreover, he
knew Leborge to be a sullen and suspicious character, little likely to
talk or to trust anyone.
What did the boy know? Manuel flashed a look at him. But Stuart was idly
fiddling in the dust with the toe of his ragged boot, and the Cuban's
suspicions flashed to another quarter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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