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Page 33
Colonel Menendez seemed to be on the point of speaking again, but he
checked himself and in silence led the way through the ornate library
to a smaller room which opened out of it, and which was furnished as a
study.
Here the motif was distinctly one of officialdom. Although the Southern
element was not lacking, it was not so marked as in the library or in
the hall. The place was appointed for utility rather than ornament.
Everything was in perfect order. In the library, with the blinds drawn,
one might have supposed oneself in Trinidad; in the study, under
similar conditions, one might equally well have imagined Downing Street
to lie outside the windows. Essentially, this was the workroom of a man
of affairs.
Having settled ourselves comfortably, Paul Harley opened the
conversation.
"In several particulars," said he, "I find my information to be
incomplete."
He consulted the back of an envelope, upon which, I presumed during the
afternoon, he had made a number of pencilled notes.
"For instance," he continued, "your detection of someone watching the
house, and subsequently of someone forcing an entrance, had no visible
association with the presence of the bat wing attached to your front
door?"
"No," replied the Colonel, slowly, "these episodes took place a month
ago."
"Exactly a month ago?"
"They took place immediately before the last full moon."
"Ah, before the full moon. And because you associate the activities of
Voodoo with the full moon, you believe that the old menace has again
become active?"
The Colonel nodded emphatically. He was busily engaged in rolling one
of his eternal cigarettes.
"This belief of yours was recently confirmed by the discovery of the
bat wing?"
"I no longer doubted," said Colonel Menendez, shrugging his shoulders.
"How could I?"
"Quite so," murmured Harley, absently, and evidently pursuing some
private train of thought. "And now, I take it that your suspicions, if
expressed in words would amount to this: During your last visit to Cuba
you (_a_) either killed some high priest of Voodoo, or (_b_) seriously
injured him? Assuming the first theory to be the correct one, your
death was determined upon by the sect over which he had formerly
presided. Assuming the second to be accurate, however, it is presumably
the man himself for whom we must look. Now, Colonel Menendez, kindly
inform me if you recall the name of this man?"
"I recall it very well," replied the Colonel. "His name was M'kombo,
and he was a Benin negro."
"Assuming that he is still alive, what, roughly, would his age be to-
day?"
The Colonel seemed to meditate, pushing a box of long Martinique cigars
across the table in my direction.
"He would be an old man," he pronounced. "I, myself, am fifty-two, and
I should say that M'kombo if alive to-day would be nearer to seventy
than sixty."
"Ah," murmured Harley, "and did he speak English?"
"A few words, I believe."
Paul Harley fixed his gaze upon the dark, aquiline face.
"In short," he said, "do you really suspect that it was M'kombo whose
shadow you saw upon the lawn, who a month ago made a midnight entrance
into Cray's Folly, and who recently pinned a bat wing to the door?"
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