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Page 6
"In other words, you were afraid of something or someone in Cuba?"
Colonel Menendez turned in a flash, glaring down at the speaker.
"I never feared any man in my life, Mr. Harley," he said, coldly.
"Then why are you here?"
The Colonel placed the stump of his first cigarette in an ash tray and
lighted that which he had newly made.
"It is true," he admitted. "Forgive me. Yet what I said was that I
never feared any man."
He stood squarely in front of the Burmese cabinet, resting one hand
upon his hip. Then he added a remark which surprised me.
"Do you know anything of Voodoo?" he asked.
Paul Harley took his pipe from between his teeth and stared at the
speaker silently for a moment. "Voodoo?" he echoed. "You mean negro
magic?"
"Exactly."
"My studies have certainly not embraced it," replied Harley, quietly,
"nor has it hitherto come within my experience. But since I have lived
much in the East, I am prepared to learn that Voodoo may not be a
negligible quantity. There are forces at work in India which we in
England improperly understand. The same may be true of Cuba."
"The same _is_ true of Cuba."
Colonel Menendez glared almost fiercely across the room at Paul Harley.
"And do I understand," asked the latter, "that the danger which you
believe to threaten you is associated with Cuba?"
"That, Mr. Harley, is for you to decide when all the facts shall be in
your possession. Do you wish that I proceed?"
"By all means. I must confess that I am intensely interested."
"Very well, Mr. Harley. I have something to show you."
From an inside breast pocket Colonel Menendez drew out a gold-mounted
case, and from the case took some flat, irregularly shaped object
wrapped in a piece of tissue paper. Unfolding the paper, he strode
across and laid the object which it had contained upon the blotting pad
in front of my friend.
Impelled by curiosity I stood up and advanced to inspect it. It was of
a dirty brown colour, some five or six inches long, and appeared to
consist of a kind of membrane. Harley, his elbow on the table, was
staring down at it questioningly.
"What is it?" I said; "some kind of leaf?"
"No," replied Harley, looking up into the dark face of the Spanish
colonel; "I think I know what it is."
"I, also, know what it is." declared Colonel Menendez, grimly. "But
tell me what to you it seems like, Mr. Harley?"
Paul Harley's expression was compounded of incredulity, wonder, and
something else, as, continuing to stare at the speaker, he replied:
"It is the wing of a bat."
CHAPTER II
THE VOODOO SWAMP
Often enough my memory has recaptured that moment in Paul Harley's
office, when Harley, myself, and the tall Spaniard stood looking down
at the bat wing lying upon the blotting pad.
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