"And now," said he, and in his voice was a note of decision, "the sooner you leave Rodriguez, Desmond, the better for you. I don't want to appear inhospitable or I might add, the better for me too. That poor devil, Adams, is dead and you can do nothing for him by staying. You are sufficiently acquainted, I take it, with the mentality of my distinguished fellow-citizens to realise that very little fuss will be made over the untimely demise of Adams and his coloured lady. In the meantime you are in the greatest danger here.
"I don't see why I should worry," I argued. "If they had known of my visit to Adams they would have raided the hut and butchered the three of us to get hold of the document. But they didn't; and they don't even know me by sight...."
"They evidently didn't know of your visit _at the time_," remarked John Bard gravely. "But obviously something happened after your departure to put them wise. Hence the attack on the house. You were either seen going to the house or Doña Luisa gave you away. It looks to me as though they had only just traced the document to Adams. Black Pablo was set to watch but, after the happy-go-lucky fashion of Latin America, he whiled away the time by serenading some of the dusky belles in the vicinity and failed to observe your arrival."
I recalled the soft laughter I had heard, mingling with the strains of the guitar in the lane, and nodded.
"You think that this fellow Black Pablo was put on guard to see that Adams did not leave the house?...."
"Precisely," agreed my friend, "while El Cojo was sent for.
"Himself and no other.... the lame man who came to the door of the shack after the crime had been committed. In Spanish 'El Cojo' means 'the lame man,' 'he who goes with a limp'...."
John Bard went on talking but I have no recollection of what he said. For my thoughts had flown back to another "lame man" who had dominated the most thrilling episode in the whole of my life, the giant and ape-like cripple, head of the Kaiser's personal Secret Service in the days of Germany's greatness, who had dogged my brother Francis and myself until he had met his end at our hands in the château on the German-Dutch frontier. Old Clubfoot, as men called him in his heyday, had been in his grave these four years past; yet once again I found the path of adventure barred at its outset by a great lame man. I thought of that huge figure blocking up the narrow doorway of the reeking hut and, as so often in the past, I felt welling up within me admiration for the extraordinary ingenuity of old man Destiny....