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Updated: June 28, 2025
He decided to appear to believe this poorly woven story. "If you hate Leborge, and Leborge hates me," he said, "I suppose we are both his enemies. I presume," he added, shrewdly, "if I refused to take you with me to the Citadel of the Black Emperor, you would shadow me, and go any way." A flash of assent came into the boy's eyes, which, he was not quick enough to suppress.
Manuel accounted himself master of the negro when it came to treachery and cunning. Moreover, he knew Leborge to be a sullen and suspicious character, little likely to talk or to trust anyone. What did the boy know? Manuel flashed a look at him. But Stuart was idly fiddling in the dust with the toe of his ragged boot, and the Cuban's suspicions flashed to another quarter.
The boy looked down on a circular hall, the outer arc of which was pierced with ruined windows opening to the sky. "Leborge will sit there!" whispered Manuel, pointing. "Kill him, and you will be rich!" Stuart nodded. He did not trust himself to speak. Walking as silently as he could, Manuel left the place, pondering in his own mind what he was going to do with the boy.
He had never been to New York, and the idea of a voyage there, with his fare and all his expenses paid, tempted him. Besides, as the reporter had suggested, it would be almost impossible for him to continue the quest of Manuel, Leborge and Cecil alone. More than that, the boy felt that, if he could get a big metropolitan paper to back him, he would be in a position to find and rescue his father.
"All goes well, then," concluded Leborge, rising and shivering in the damp air, for the clouds were eddying through the ruined windows in raw and gusty blasts. "It can be done next spring!" declared the Cuban. "It will be done, as agreed," was the Englishman's more cautious statement.
Manuel, with great suavity, had overset the former and defied the latter. His story was of the smoothest. He was a military strategist, he declared, and General Leborge had asked him to investigate the citadel, in order to determine its value as the site for a modern fort. Stuart's part in the adventure was outwardly simple.
Impulsively, he leaped from the embrasure. A glitter told him that the gun was covering him. He spoke breathlessly. "Manuel expected me to kill Leborge. He'll kill me for not doing it." In answer to a commanding look of interrogation, Stuart went on: "I'm an American, and straight. I'll tell you all about it, later. Guess there isn't much time, now. Take me with you." Cecil knew men.
Came a sudden movement, following upon some phrase uttered by Manuel, but unheard by the boy, and the Cuban and Leborge leaped to their feet, a revolver in each man's right hand. Spoke the Englishman, in a quiet voice, but sufficiently deepened by excitement to reach the boy's ears: "Is there any reason, Gentlemen, why I should not shoot both of you and finish this little affair myself?"
"You's a big nigger," the preacher went on, his voice taking the high drone of prophetic utterance, "an' you's all cobered wit' gol' lace. 'Deir garments shall be mof-eaten, deir gol' an' silver shall be cankered, an' de worm' hear, you nigger! 'de worm, shall hab 'em'!" Leborge, superstitious like all the Haitian negroes, cowered before the preacher who advanced on him with shaking finger.
Undoubtedly Cesar Leborge and Manuel Polliovo would be there. Equally certainly, Guy Cecil, who had protected him before, would not. A companion would be of aid in a pinch. And it was all so dark, so mysterious, so incomprehensible! He had learned nothing new about the plot. He had no documents with which to confront the conspirators.
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