Bell inhaled leisurely. His muscles were tense, but he gave no outward sign. Instead, he sat down comfortably upon the arm of a chair facing Ribiera"s. The only way to meet insolence is with equal insolence and a greater calm.
"Ah!" said Bell pleasantly. "So you found out it didn"t work, after all!"
Ribiera"s eyes contracted. He became suddenly enraged.
"You are trifling with me," he said furiously. "Do you know the penalty for that?"
"Why, yes," said Bell, and smiled amiably. "A dose of--er--poison of The Master"s private brand."
It was a guess, but based on a good deal of evidence. Ribiera turned crimson, then pale.
"What do you know?" he demanded in a deadly quietness. "You cannot leave this place. You are aware of that. The people here--guests and servants--are my slaves, the slaves of The Master. You cannot leave this place except also as my slave. I will have you bound and given _yague_ so that you cannot fail to tell me anything that I wish to know. I will have you tortured so that you will gladly say anything that I wish, in return for death. I will--"
"You will," said Bell dryly, "drop dead with seven bullets in your body if you give a signal for anyone to attack me."
Ribiera stared at him as his hand rested negligently in his coat pocket. And then, quite suddenly Ribiera began to chuckle. His rage vanished. He laughed, a monstrous, gross, cackling laughter.
"You have been my guest for two days," he gasped, slapping his fat knees, "and you have not noticed that your pistol his been tampered with! Senhor Bell! Senhor Bell! My uncle will be disappointed in you!"
It seemed to impress him as a victory that Bell had been depending upon an utterly futile threat for safety. It restored his good humor marvelously.
"It does not matter," he said jovially. "Presently you will tell me all that I wish to know. More, perhaps. My uncle is pleased with you.
You recall your little talk with the wireless operator on the _Almirante Gomez_? You tried to learn things from him, Senhor. He reported it. Of course. All our slaves report. He sent his report to my uncle, The Master, and I did not have it until to-day. I will admit that you deceived me. I knew you had talked with Ortiz, who was a fool. I thought that in his despair he might have spoken. I gave you _yague_, as I thought, and informed my uncle that you knew nothing.
And he is very much pleased with you. It was clever to deceive me about the _yague_. My uncle has high praise for you. He has told me that he desires your services."
Bell inhaled again. There was no question but that Ribiera was totally unafraid of the threat he had made. His gun must have been tampered with, the firing-pin filed off perhaps. So Bell said placidly:
"Well? He desires my services?"
Ribiera chuckled, in his gross and horrible good humor.
"He will have them. Senhor. He will have them. When you observe your hands writhing at the ends of your wrists, you will enter his service, through me. Of course. And he will reward you richly. Money, much money, such as I have. And slaves--such as I have. The Senhora...."
Ribiera looked at the terrified girl standing thirty or forty feet away. He chuckled again.
"My uncle desires that you should be induced to enter his service of your own will. So, Senhor, you shall see first what my uncle"s service offers. And later, when you know what pleasures you may some day possess as my uncle"s deputy in your own nation, why, then the fact that your hands are writhing at the ends of your wrists will be merely an added inducement to come to me. And I bear you no ill will for deceiving me. You may go."
Bell rose.
"And still," he said dryly, "I suspect that you are deceived. But now you deceive yourself."
He heard Ribiera chuckling as he walked away. He heard him call, amusedly, "Senhora." He heard the little gasp of terror with which the girl obeyed. He pa.s.sed her, stumbling toward the gross fat man with the light brown skin and curly hair. Her eyes were literally pools of anguish.
Bell threw away his cigarette and began to fumble for another. He was beginning to feel the first twinges of panic, and fought them down.
Ribiera had not lied. Bell had been at this _fazenda_ of his--which was almost a miniature Versailles three hundred miles from Rio--for two days. In all that time he had not seen one person besides himself who did not display the most abject terror of Ribiera. Ribiera had made no idle boast when he said that everyone about, guests and servants, were slaves. They were. Slaves of a terror vastly greater than mere fear of death. It--
"Senhor!... _Oh, Dios!_" It was the girl"s voice, in despair.
Ribiera laughed. Bell felt a red mist come before his eyes.
He deliberately steadied his hands and lighted his cigarette. He heard stumbling footsteps coming behind him. A hand touched his arm. He turned to see the girl Ribiera had pointed out, her cheeks utterly, chalky white, trying desperately to smile.
"Senhor!" she gasped. "Smile at me! For the love of G.o.d, smile at me!"
In the fraction of a second, Bell was mad with rage. He understood, and he hated Ribiera with a corrosive hatred past conception. And then he was deathly calm, and wholly detached, and he smiled widely, and turned and looked at Ribiera, and Ribiera"s whole gross bulk quivered as he chuckled. Bell took the girl"s arm with an excessive politeness and managed--he never afterward understood how he managed it--to grin at Ribiera.
"Senhora," he said in a low tone, "I think I understand. Stop being afraid. We can fool him. Come and walk with me and talk. The idea is that he must think you are trying to fascinate me, is it not?"
She spoke through stiffened lips.
"Ah, that I could die!"
Bell had a horrible part to play while he walked the length of the formal garden with her, and found a pathway leading out of it, and led her out of sight. He stopped.
"Now," he said sharply, "tell me. I am not yet his slave. He has ordered you...."
She was staring before her with wide eyes that saw only despair.
"I--I am to persuade you to be my lover," she said dully, "or I shall know the full wrath of The Master...."
Bell asked questions, crisply, but as gently as he could.
"We are his slaves," she told him apathetically. "I and _mi Arturo_--my husband. Both of us...." She roused herself little under Bell"s insistent questioning. "We were guests at his house at dinner.
Our friends, people high in society and in the Republic, were all about us. We suspected nothing. We had heard nothing. But two weeks later Arturo became irritable. He said that he saw red spots before his eyes. I also. Then Arturo"s hands writhed at the ends of his wrists. He could not control them. His nerves were horrible. And mine.
And we--we have a tiny baby.... And Senhor Ribiera called upon my husband. He was charming. He observed my husband"s hands. He had a remedy, he said. He gave it to my husband. He became normal again. And then--my hands writhed. Senhor Ribiera told my husband that if he would bring me to him.... And I was relieved. We were grateful. We accepted the invitation of the Senhor Ribiera to this place. And he showed us a man, in chains. He--he went mad before our eyes. He was a member of the United States Secret Service.... And then the Senhor Ribiera told us that we faced the same fate if we did not serve him...."
Bell had thrust aside rage as useless, now. He was deliberately cold.
"And so?"
"It is a poison," she said unsteadily. "A deadly, a horrible poison which drives men murder mad in two weeks from the time of its administration. The Senhor Ribiera has an antidote for it. But mixed with the antidote, which acts at once, is more of the horrible poison, which will act in two weeks more. So that we are entrapped. If we disobey him...."
Bell began to smile slowly, and not at all mirthfully.
"I think," he said softly, "that I shall gain a great deal of pleasure from killing the Senhor Ribiera."
"_Dios_--" She strangled upon the word. "Do you not see, Senhor, that if he dies we--we--" She stopped and choked. "We--have a tiny baby, Senhor. We--we would...."