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He sat listening to the President's harangue, twirling the upturned waxen ends of his artificially black mustache. A wave of perfume enveloped him. A ladies' courtier, this Perona by the look of him. His white uniform was immaculate, carefully tailored and carefully worn to set off at its best his still trim and erect figure.
Spawn, the big the only big quicksilver producer here! The President interrupted my startled thoughts. "I hope you did not intimate your real purpose?" "No." We both turned at the sound of an opening door. Markes called, "Ah, come in Perona! Are you alone? Good! Close that slide. Here is Chief Hanley's representative." He introduced us all in a breath. "This is interesting, Perona.
There were times when only my feel of the path under my feet kept me from straying, to fall into a ravine or crevice. I prowled perhaps two hundred yards behind Perona. He was using a tiny hand-flash now; it bobbed and winked in the darkness ahead, vanishing sometimes when a curve in the path hid him, or when he plunged down into a gully and up again. I had no search-beam.
Hanley repeated vehemently, "Phil, they'll find you! Get out of there: the way is still open!" Gutierrez was approaching the archway. But I lingered a moment longer. "Chief, you heard about that girl, Jetta, Spawn's daughter " I stopped. Perona was saying, "Spawn, was Jetta still in her room? You did not untie her?" "No." "And gagged? Suppose the Americano was back there now?
Perona: "An hour now. Spawn will be at his home asleep." "And you will go to the mine?" "Yes. Now, from here. You seize this fellow Grant, and then attack the mine. Our regular plan, De Boer. This does not change it." Attack Spawn's mine! Half a million of treasure was there to-night! Perona was chuckling: "You give Spawn's guards the signal. They are all my men in my pay.
Has it not been a scandal that this administration does very little for its citizens abroad?" "And you want to get rid of this fellow? Why, Perona?" "That is not your concern. The ransom is to be all yours. Make away with him in the depths somewhere. Demand your ransom. Fifty thousand gold-standards! Demand it of me. Of Nareda!" "And you will pay it?" "I promise it.
Spawn undoubtedly was in this plot to attack his mine! He said, "At the mine we have arranged everything. Damn this American! But for Perona I would not bother with him." "But you will bother," Perona interjected. De Boer laughed again. "I would be witless could I not figure this! He is a young man, and so handsome he has frightened you with the little Jetta! Is that it, Perona? Jealous, eh?"
And abruptly I heard Spawn's voice, floating out softly in the hushed silence of the house. "So, Perona?" A brief silence, in which it seemed that I could hear a tiny aerial answer. Then Spawn again. A startled oath. "De duvel! You say " I stood frozen, listening. "She is here.... Yes, I will keep her close. I am no fool, Perona." Spawn's laugh was like a growl. "Later to-day, yes. Fear not!
Their combined glow made a radiance which illumined the path and rocks. I could see the figures of several men whom Perona had joined. They stood a moment and then moved off. To the right a ragged cliff wall towered the path. The spots of light bobbed toward it. I caught the vague outline of a huge broken opening, like a cave mouth in the cliff. The lights were swallowed by it.
He turned to the left and shot a swift glance up the alley, which I anticipated, provided for by drawing back. When I looked again, he was gone. I have had some experience at playing the shadow. But it was not easy here along the almost deserted and fairly bright Nareda streets. Perona was walking swiftly down the slope toward the outskirts of the village where it bordered upon the Nares Sea.
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