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
“Hawley is his right name, and, as he has said, he is an artist. But he
does not wield a brush. He makes his pictures with a camera. He is a
newspaper photographer--on the staff of the New York _Sentinel_.”
The señora gave vent to a faint cry. “Hawley, of the New York
_Sentinel_!” she exclaimed agitatedly. “I have heard of him. He is that
wonderful photographer they call the Camera Chap.”
Her companion nodded. “I see that you realize, señora, how careful we
must be of him. The press is as much to be feared by us as our enemies
in Baracoa. If a Yankee newspaper were to get hold of our secret we
should be lost. I don’t know what he is after, but I shall----”
“I do,” the señora interrupted tensely. “Now that I know who that young
man is, I understand fully why he is going to Baracoa. And he must be
stopped,” she added, her voice vibrant with emotion. “He must not be
permitted to go ahead. We must find some way of preventing it.”
CHAPTER VII. DISCOURAGING NEWS.
It was not until the _Colombia_ was approaching Puerto Guerra, the
first port of call in Baracoa, that the Camera Chap exchanged a single
word with Señora Felix. Possibly he could have conversed with her
before that had he desired to do so, for she spent much time on deck,
and on several occasions, as he passed her steamer chair, he caught her
dark eyes regarding him with keen interest. Several incidents arose,
too, which seemed to offer him an opportunity to make her acquaintance,
and, modest young man though he was, he could not help suspecting that
these incidents were arranged by her in an effort to bring about that
result.
Once, for instance, as he walked past where she sat, she dropped the
magazine she was reading, and it seemed to Hawley that it was done
somewhat ostentatiously, as though she fully expected him to pick it
up. On another occasion her shawl fell from her shoulders to the deck
as she was promenading, when Hawley was standing near by, and once more
it seemed to him that the act was done deliberately.
But even at the sacrifice of having to appear boorish, he ignored these
and other advances--if they were advances--for although, under other
circumstances, he would have been delighted to make the fair señora’s
acquaintance, he had decided that it would be most indiscreet to do
so now. He had made up his mind to keep away from her throughout the
entire trip.
It was the mysterious, soft-treading passenger known as Señor José
Lopez who was responsible for this decision on his part. There was no
doubt now in Hawley’s mind that the fellow was a spy, a secret agent of
the Portiforo government, and such being the case he deemed it highly
necessary to keep Lopez from guessing that there was aught in common
between himself and the wife of the missing president of Baracoa. The
slightest evidence of friendship between himself and the woman, he
surmised, might give the spy cause to suspect the real object of his
mission to South America.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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