Plotting in Pirate Seas | Page 6

record was not one which would bear investigation.
How came this ragged Haitian urchin to know? Manuel's swift glance at Stuart had shown him nothing but a Creole lad in clothes too big for him and a pair of boots fastened with string. The messenger meant nothing, it was the message which held menace.
To the Cuban this apparently chance street encounter was ominous of black threat. It revealed treachery and might mean a trap. But from whence? Swiftly Manuel's keen brain, the brain of an arch-plotter, scanned the manifold aspects of this sudden threat.
How much labor, how many wild adventures, what a series of dangers would Stuart have escaped, had he but been able to read the thoughts of that crafty brain!
Did his fellow-conspirators want to get rid of him? So Manuel's doubts ran. Did they count on his shooting the boy, in a panic, and being lynched for it, there and then, on the street of Cap Haitien? Or of his being imprisoned, tried and executed for murder? Such a plot was not unlikely.
But, if so, who had sent the boy?
Was Cesar Leborge playing him false? True, from that bull-necked, ferocious negro general, Manuel knew he could expect nothing but brutality, envy and hate; but such a design as this boy's intervention seemed too subtle for the giant Creole's brain. 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.
Could the Englishman, Guy Cecil, be to blame? That did not seem any more likely. Manuel was afraid of Cecil, though he would not admit it, even to himself. The Englishman's chill restraint, even in moments of the most tense excitement, cowed the Cuban. Never had he been able to penetrate into his fellow-conspirator's thoughts. But that Cecil should have talked loosely of so vital, so terrible a secret? No. The grave itself was not more secretive than that quiet schemer, of whom nothing ever seemed to be known. And to a negro boy! No, a thousand times, no!
Stay--was this boy a negro boy? Suspicion changed its seat in the wily Cuban's brain. That point, at least, he would find out, and swiftly. He looked at his ragged questioner, still fiddling with his toe in the dust, and answered.
"Well," he said, "you can show me what there is to be seen in this place. But first I will go to the Caf��. No," he continued, as the boy turned towards the new part of the town, built under American oversight, "not there. To the Caf�� de l'Op��ra. Go down the street and keep a few steps in front."
Stuart obeyed. He had seen the first swift motion of the Cuban's hand, when he had been accosted, and had guessed that it was pistolwards. It was uncomfortable walking in front of a man who was probably aching to blow one's brains out. Nasty little cold shivers ran up and down Stuart's back. But the tents of the U. S. Marines, in camp a little distance down the beach, gave him courage. With his sublime faith in the United States, Stuart could not believe that he could come to any harm within sight of the Stars and Stripes floating from the flagstaff in front of the encampment.
While Stuart was thus getting backbone from his flag, Manuel was concentrating his wits and experience on this problem which threatened him so closely.
Was this boy a negro?
A life spent in international trickery on a large scale had made the Cuban a good judge of men. He knew native races. He knew--what the white man generally ignores or forgets--that between the various black races are mental differences as wide as between races of other color. He knew that the Ewe negro is no more like the Riff in character, than the phlegmatic Dutchman resembles the passionate Italian. If a black, to what race did this boy belong? Was he a black, at all?
The bright sun threw no reflected lights on the boy's skin, the texture of which was darker than that of a mulatto, and had a dead, opaque look, lacking the golden glow of mulatto skin. The lad's hair showed little hint of Bantu ancestry and his feet were small. True, all this might betoken any of the Creole combinations common in Haiti, but the Cuban was not satisfied. If the skin had been stained, now----
"Boy!" he called.
Stuart looked around.
"Here are some coppers for you."
The boy slouched toward him, extended his hand negligently and the Cuban dropped some three-centime pieces into