Manuel was no coward. Somewhere, back in his Spanish ancestry, had been a single drop of an Irish strain, adding a certain combativeness to the gallantry of his race. That drop, too, mixed badly with Spanish treachery, and made him doubly dangerous.

Certainly the Cuban was no coward. But, as he came out from the murk of those chambers with their rotting floors, many of them undermined by oubliettes and dungeons, he felt a chill of fear. Even the occasional bursts of sunshine through the cloud-fog which perpetually sweeps over La FerriÈre did not hearten him. He passed into the open space back of the outer walls and set himself to climb the long flight of stone steps that led to the battlements, where, he thought, his fellow conspirators might be. But, on the summit, he found himself alone.

The battlements cowed his spirits. With walls fifteen feet thick, wide enough to allow a carriage to be driven upon them, they looked over a sheer drop of two thousand feet. Sinister and forbidding, even the sunlight could not lessen their grimness.

As if in memory of the hundreds of victims who had been bidden jump off those ramparts, merely for Christophe's amusement, or who had been hurled, screaming, as penalty for his displeasure, a ruddy moss feeding upon decay, has spread over the stones, and this moss, ever kept damp by the cloud-banks which wreathe the Citadel continually is moistly red, like newly shed blood. In cracks and corners, fungi of poisonous hues adds another touch of wickedness. Manuel shivered with repulsion. Probably not in all the world, certainly not in the Western Hemisphere, is there a ruin of such historic terror as the Citadel of the Black Emperor on the summit of La FerriÈre.1

A gleam of sun revealed the extraordinary impregnability of the place. The double-walled entrance from the hillside, pierced by but a single gate, could only be battered down by heavy artillery, and no guns powerful enough for such a feat could be brought up the hill. The Inner Citadel, access to which was only by a long flight of steps, is unapproachable from any other point, and a handful of defenders could keep an army at bay.

The cliff-side is as sheer as Gibraltar, affording not even a foothold for the most venturesome climber. The walls are built upon its very verge and are as solid as the rock itself. Its gray mass conveys a sense of enormous power. "It towers upon the last and highest precipice," says Hesketh Prichard, "like some sinister monster of the elder world, ready to launch itself forth upon the spreading lands below."

The Citadel commands the whole of the Plain of the North clear to the distant sea. At its south-eastern end it faces toward the frontier of St. Domingo, the sister republic, fifty miles away. Christophe built it as a central base, controlling the only roads and passes which command the range from Dondon to ValliÈre, and rendering attack impossible, from the southern side, through Marmalade. (Many names in Haiti give an irresistible appearance of being comic, such as the Duke of Lemonade, Duke of Marmalade, Baron the Prophet Daniel, and Colonel the Baron Roast Beef, but they are intended seriously.)

Manuel had gazed over the landscape but a few moments when the sun was veiled in one of the cold, raw cloud-fogs which continually sweep the summit. Billowing, dank masses hurtled about him, blotting out even the outlines of the ruin. For several minutes the grey mists enwreathed him, then, as they lightened, the Cuban saw before him, shadow-like and strange, the figure of the Black Emperor himself.

The warders' terror of the ghost of Christophe cramped Manuel's heart for a moment and he fell back. His hand flashed to his pocket, none the less.

The figure laughed, a harsh coarse laugh which Manuel knew and recognized at once.

"General Leborge," he exclaimed, surprise and self-annoyance struggling in his voice. "It is you!"

"But Yes, my friend, it is I. You see, I am not so daring as you. I came secretly. I have been here three days, waiting for you."

"But the meeting was set for today!"

"It is true. But it was more difficult for me to get here than for you. See you, as a stranger you had not the suspicion of intrusion to combat. No, if it were known that I were here, there would be political difficulties—ah, many! Yes!"

The Cuban nodded. He was not especially interested in the political embroilments of his co-conspirator. As a matter of fact, the plot accomplished, it was Manuel's purpose to let enough of the truth leak out to make it seem that Leborge had been a traitor to the Haitian Republic.

"Have you seen Cecil?" he asked.

"Not yet, No!" answered the negro general. "Me, I had thought he would come with you."

"He didn't. And he wasn't on the road from Cap Haitien, either. Queer, too. First time I ever knew him to fail."

"So! But I have a feeling he will not fail. He will be here today. Come down to the place of meeting. I have some food and we can have a mouthful while waiting for him."

The big negro cast a look at himself.

"I do not think we shall be interrupted, No!" he commented.

The Cuban showed his teeth in the gleam of a quick smile.

"The guards are too much afraid of the ghost of Christophe to dare enter the place," he said. "That was a good idea of yours."

The two men turned away from the battlements to the steps which led down toward the dwelling rooms, and Manuel laid finger on lip.

"It is well to be a ghost," he said, "but if the guards should chance to hear me talking to the ghost, they might begin to think. And thinking, my dear Leborge, is sometimes dangerous."

The huge negro nodded assent and hung back while Manuel descended the stair.

At the entrance into the high room, ringed with windows, in a small ruined opening of which Stuart crouched watching, Manuel waited for Leborge. Together they entered.

At the door of the room the negro started back with an exclamation of astonishment, and even Manuel paused.

On a square block of stone in the center of the room, which Manuel could have sworn was not there when he looked into the chamber a short half-hour before, sat Guy Cecil, complacently puffing at a briar pipe. His tweeds were as immaculate as though he had just stepped from the hands of his valet, and his tan shoes showed mark neither of mud nor rough trails. Manuel's quick glance caught these details and they set him wondering.

"By the Ten Finger-Bones!" ejaculated Leborge. "How did you get in here?"

"Why?" asked Cecil, in mild surprise.

"Polliovo didn't see you come. I didn't see you come."

"No?"

The negation was insolent in its carelessness.

"But how did you get in?"

The Englishman took his pipe from his mouth, and, with the stem, pointed negligently to a window.

"That way," he said.

The negro blustered out an oath, but was evidently impressed, and looked at his fellow-conspirator with superstitious fear.

The Cuban, more curious and more skeptical, went straight to the window and looked out. The crumbling mortar-dust on the sill had evidently been disturbed, seeming to make good the Englishman's story, but, from the window, was a clear drop of four hundred feet of naked rock, without even a crack to afford a finger-hold, while the precipitous descent fell another fifteen hundred feet. To climb was a feat manifestly impossible.

"Permit me to congratulate you on your discovery of wings, Senor Cecil," remarked Manuel, with irony.

The Englishman bowed, as at a matter-of-course compliment, and, by tacit agreement, the subject dropped.

Yet Manuel's irritation was hard to hide. Not the least of the reasons for his animosity to Cecil was the Englishman's undoubted ability to cover his movements. In the famous case when the two conspirators had negotiated an indigo concession in San Domingo and the profits had suddenly slipped through Manuel's fingers, the Cuban was sure that the Englishman had made a winning, but he had no proof. Likewise, with this plot in hand, Manuel feared lest he should be outmanoeuvred at the last.

Following Cecil's example, Leborge and Manuel rolled out to the center of the room some blocks that had fallen from the walls, and sat down. Stuart noticed that the Cuban so placed himself that he was well out of a possible line of fire between the negro general and the embrasure where the boy was hidden. This carefulness, despite its air of negligence, reminded Stuart of the rÔle he was expected to play, and he concentrated his attention on the three conspirators.

Although the Cuban was apparently the only one who had reason to suspect being overheard, the three men talked in low tones. The language used was French, as Stuart gleaned from a word or two which reached his ears, but the subject of the conversation escaped him. One phrase, however, attracted his attention because it was so often repeated, and Stuart surmised that this phrase must bear an important relation to the main subject of the meeting. The boy did not fail to realize that a conference so important that it could only be held in so secret a place must be of extraordinary gravity. This phrase was——

"Mole St. Nicholas."

The words held no meaning for Stuart, though he had seen reference to them in his father's papers. He suspected that the phrase might be some catch-word referring to a subject too dangerous for mention, possibly the Presidency of Haiti. Following out this theme, the boy guessed that he was a witness to the hatching of one of the political revolutions, which, from time to time, have convulsed the Republic of Haiti. If so, the matter was serious, for, as the boy knew, ever since the treaty of 1915, the United States was actively interested in forcing the self-determination of Haiti, meanwhile holding the country under a virtual protectorate. Such a revolution, therefore, would be a deliberate attack upon the United States.

This impression was heightened by his catching the words "naval base," which could only deal with possible developments in a state of war. Stuart strained his ears to the utmost, but isolated words were all that he could glean.

Later, Stuart was to learn that his guess was at fault in general, but that the conclusion he had reached—namely, that injury to the United States was intended—was not far wide of the mark.

As the conference proceeded, it became evident to the hidden observer that the relations between the conspirators were growing strained. The Cuban seemed to be in taunting mood. The veins on the negro general's bull neck began to swell, and he turned and called Manuel,

"Pale Toad!"

A moment after, his raucous voice insulted the Englishman with the description,

"Snake that does not even hiss!"

Stuart expected to see violence follow these words, but the Cuban only moved restlessly under the insult; the Englishman smiled. It was a pleasant smile, but Stuart was keen enough to grasp that a man who smiles when he is insulted must either be a craven or a dangerous man with an inordinate gift of self-control. Cecil could not be a coward, or such men as Manuel and Leborge would not so evidently fear him, therefore the other character must befit him.

Another word which repeated itself frequently was——

"Panama."

This confirmed Stuart in his suspicions that the conspiracy, whatever it might portend, was directed against the authority of the United States, since the Panama Canal Zone is under American jurisdiction.

The conference was evidently coming to a crisis. The negro was becoming excited, the Cuban nervous, the Englishman more immovable than ever.

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?"

A revolver glittered in his hand, though no one had seen the action of drawing.

In the flash of a second, Stuart understood Manuel's plot. It was the Cuban who had provoked the negro to draw his weapon, counting on the boy's shooting his supposed enemy, as had been agreed upon. Then Manuel would drag him out of his hiding-place and kill him for an eavesdropper. He crouched, motionless, and watched.

"Sit down, and put up your weapons," continued Cecil, his voice still tense enough to be heard clearly. "This is childishness. Our plans need all three of us. It will be time enough to quarrel when we come to divide the spoils. First, the spoils must be won."

Negro and Cuban, without taking their eyes from other, each fearing that the other might take an advantage, realized from Cecil's manner, that he must have the drop on them. With a simultaneous movement, they put away their guns. The negro sat down, beaten. Manuel, with a swift and hardly noticeable side-step, moved a little nearer to Cecil, putting himself almost within knife-thrust distance.

A slight, a very slight elevation of the barrel of the tiny revolver glittering in the Englishman's hand warned the Cuban that the weapon was covering his heart. An even slighter narrowing of the eyelids warned him that Cecil was fully ready to shoot.

With a low curse, the Cuban retreated to his stone and sat down. He did not sprawl loosely in dejection, as had the negro, but he sat with one foot beside the stone and his body leaning half-forward, his muscles tense, like a forest cat awaiting its spring.

The conference came to a head quickly, as Stuart saw. The outbreak of mistrust and hostility, followed by discussion, proved how closely linked were the plotters. Yet each man wanted the business done as quickly as possible, and wanted to be free from the danger of assassination by his comrades.

Leborge drew from his pocket a paper which he showed to the other two, and, in turn, Manuel and Cecil produced documents, the Englishman using his left hand only and never dropping the barrel of his revolver. Few words were exchanged, and these in the low tones in which the conference had been carried on before. Of the contents of the papers, Stuart could not even guess. Whatever they were, they seemed to be satisfactory, for, so far as the boy could judge, harmony returned among the conspirators. But the Englishman kept wary watch with his gun.

"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.

"Then," said Manuel, raising his voice a trifle in a way which Stuart knew he was meant to hear, "the sooner I get down to Cap Haitien the better. I had trouble enough to get up."

"It might be well," suggested the Englishman, "if Leborge should repeat his trick of appearing as the ghost of Christophe. The guards will be so frightened that they will think of nothing else, and you will be able to get away without any unpleasantness."

"And you?" queried the Cuban. "How will you go?"

Again the Englishman nodded toward the window.

"I will use the wings you were kind enough to say I must possess," he answered, enigmatically.

Peering out cautiously from his post of observation in the embrasure, Stuart saw that both Manuel and Leborge hesitated at the entrance to the dark passage which led from the Dining Hall and Queen's Chamber to the inner court, from whence went the paths leading respectively to the outer gate, whither Manuel must go, and to the battlements, where Leborge was to reappear as the ghost of Christophe.

"You are afraid of each other?" queried Cecil, with his faint smile. "Well, perhaps you have reason! I will go through the passage with both of you. As I said before, each of us needs the other."

Relief and hate passed like shadows across the faces of Leborge and Manuel. Each had intended to kill the other in the dark of those passages, each had feared that he might be slain himself. As Cecil knew, once out in the open, mutual distrust and watchfulness would ensure the keeping of the peace.

Stuart, listening intently for the sound of shots, heard in the distance the Englishman's voice:

"I forgot my pipe. I'll just go back for it."

And then he heard steps coming at a light, but fast run. Evidently Cecil wanted to gain time.

The Englishman came in swiftly, picked up his pipe—which he had left on the stone—slipped across toward the window, moved a loosened stone and drew out from a cavity in the wall a green bundle from which some straps were hanging. These he buckled on as a body-harness. Stuart had never seen fingers that moved so quickly, or which had less appearance of hurry.

A thought struck him. 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. He looked at the boy, piercingly, and answered:

"Very well. If you've got the nerve."

"I have!"

Eye flashed to eye.

Came the decision:

"Your belt's too small. Take mine!"

The Englishman unfastened his own belt, grasped the boy by the shoulders, spun him round, ran the belt under his arms and through the two sides of the harness he had strapped on himself. He took a step and a heave and both were on the window-sill.

At the sight of the abyss below, a sudden panic caught Stuart's breath and heart, and he seemed to choke.

"What do we do?" he gasped.

"We jump!" said Cecil.

They leaped clear.

For a hundred feet they fell, and Stuart closed his eyes in that sickening dizziness which comes from a high fall.

Then he felt Cecil's arm grip him in a bear hug, and, a second after, his breast bone seemed to cave in, as a sudden jerk and strain came on the strap by which he was bound to the Englishman.

Instinctively he tried to squirm free, but the grip and the strap held firm.

Then the falling motion changed into a slow rocking see-saw, coupled with a sense of extraordinary lightness, and Stuart, looking overhead, saw the outstretched circle of a modern parachute.