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Page 8
Whilst I had willingly agreed to accompany Harley to Norfolk I had none
of his passion for the piscatorial art, and the promise of novel
excitement held out by Colonel Menendez appealed to me more keenly than
the lazy days upon the roads which Harley loved.
"Gentlemen"--the Colonel bowed profoundly--"I am honoured and
delighted. When you shall have heard my story I know what your decision
will be."
He resumed his seat, and began, it seemed almost automatically, to roll
a fresh cigarette.
"I am all attention," declared Harley, and his glance strayed again in
a wondering fashion to the bat wing lying on his table.
"I will speak briefly," resumed our visitor, "and any details which may
seem to you to be important can be discussed later when you are my
guests. You must know then that I first became acquainted with the
significance belonging to the term 'Bat Wing' and to the object itself
some twenty years ago."
"But surely," interrupted Harley, incredulously, "you are not going to
tell me that the menace of which you complain is of twenty years'
standing?"
"At your express request, Mr. Harley," returned the Colonel a trifle
brusquely, "I am dealing with possibilities which are remote, because
in your own words it is sometimes the remote which proves to be the
intimate. It was then rather more than twenty years ago, at a time when
great political changes were taking place in the West Indies, that my
business interests, which are mainly concerned with sugar, carried me
to one of the smaller islands which had formerly been under--my
jurisdiction, do you say? Here I had a house and estate, and here in
the past I had experienced much trouble with the natives.
"I do not disguise from you that I was unpopular, and on my return I
met with unmistakable signs of hostility. My native workmen were
insubordinate. In fact, it was the reports from my overseers which had
led me to visit the island. I made a tour of the place, believing it to
be necessary to my interests that I should get once more in touch with
negro feeling, since I had returned to my home in Cuba after the
upheavals in '98. Very well.
"The manager of my estate, a capable man, was of opinion that there
existed a secret organization amongst the native labourers operating--
you understand?--against my interests. He produced certain evidences
of this. They were not convincing; and all my enquiries and
examinations of certain inhabitants led to no definite results. Yet I
grew more and more to feel that enemies surrounded me."
He paused to light his third cigarette, and whilst he did so I conjured
up a mental picture of his "examinations of certain inhabitants." I
recalled hazily those stories of Spanish mismanagement and cruelty
which had directly led to United States interferences in the islands.
But whilst I could well believe that this man's life had not been safe
in those bad old days in the West Indies, I found it difficult to
suppose that a native plot against his safety could have survived for
more than twenty years and have come to a climax in England. However, I
realized that there was more to follow, and presently, having lighted
his cigarette, the Colonel resumed:
"In the neighbourhood of the hacienda which had once been my official
residence there was a belt of low-lying pest country--you understand
pest country?--which was a hot-bed of poisonous diseases. It followed
the winding course of a nearly stagnant creek. From the earliest times
the Black Belt--it was so called--had been avoided by European
inhabitants, and indeed by the coloured population as well. Apart from
the malaria of the swampy ground it was infested with reptiles and with
poisonous insects of a greater variety and of a more venomous character
than I have ever known in any part of the world.
"I must explain that what I regarded as a weak point in my manager's
theory was this: Whilst he held that the native labourers to a man were
linked together under some head, or guiding influence, he had never
succeeded in surprising anything in the nature of a negro meeting.
Indeed, he had prohibited all gatherings of this kind. His answer to my
criticism was a curious one. He declared that the members of this
mysterious society met and received their instructions at some place
within the poison area to which I have referred, believing themselves
there to be safe from European interference.
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