The presidential snapshot : $b or, The all-seeing eyeLebhar, Bertram
General
The presidential snapshot : $b or, The all-seeing eye
Lebhar, Bertram
Americans -- South America -- Fiction; Dime novels; Photographers -- Fiction; Political prisoners -- Fiction
From the quarter of a column of smaller type which appeared beneath
this heading he learned that Señora Felix’s father was Doctor Emilio
Hernandez, a prominent physician of San Cristobal, the capital of
Baracoa. He had been seized with a paralytic stroke, and his daughter
had been hurriedly summoned.
It was not until the vessel was well out at sea that the Camera Chap
saw the señora again. She did not appear in the dining saloon for the
evening meal, nor did she show herself on deck during the first day of
the voyage. He inquired of one of the stewards, and learned that she
was indisposed. But on the second day he saw her reclining in a steamer
chair on the promenade deck, apparently absorbed in the pages of a
French novel. He stood with his back against the starboard rail at a
sufficient distance from her chair to avoid making his attention too
marked, and covertly studied her.
She was slender, dark-eyed, about forty, and of aristocratic bearing.
She was still beautiful, although suffering had imprinted deep lines on
her olive skin. The set of her chin and the shape of her delicate mouth
denoted character; in that respect the young man who was so intently
watching her felt that he had never seen a face which impressed him
more favorably. He recalled what Bates had said about the probability
of her knowing the whereabouts of her fugitive husband, and he decided
that the Washington correspondent must be wrong about that.
“If Felix isn’t the martyr I believe him to be--if his disappearance
was voluntary, that woman was not a party to it, either before or
afterward,” he told himself confidently. “A woman with a face like hers
wouldn’t shield a crook, even if he was her husband. I take her to be
the kind that would go through fire for a man worthy of her love, but a
woman who wouldn’t have a particle of use for a moral weakling.”
As he was thus soliloquizing, the subject of his thoughts looked up
from her book, and their eyes met. A faint tinge of pink made itself
visible beneath her dark skin, as though she were embarrassed by his
scrutiny. She frowned slightly; then resumed her reading.
Feeling that he owed her an apology for his seeming rudeness, Hawley
was debating in his mind whether it would be discreet to take her
into his confidence as to his mission to Baracoa, when an incident
occurred which diverted his attention. Two men strolling along the
promenade deck suddenly halted a short distance from where the señora
was sitting, and stood leaning with their elbows resting on the rail.
Hawley recognized both of these men. One of them, in fact, occupied
the stateroom opposite his own. He was a clean-shaven, swarthy man of
middle age, who was down on the passenger list as Señor José Lopez.
The first time he had seen him on the boat it had struck Hawley that
there was something familiar about the fellow’s face, but so far he had
cudgeled his brain in an effort to recall when and where he had seen
him before.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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