[Pg 5]

“Yes. She is here with a priest and a notary.”

Maseden peered over the jailer’s shoulder into the whitewashed passage beyond the half-open door, as though he expected to find a shrouded figure standing there. Steinbaum interpreted his glance.

“She is in the great hall,” he said. “The guard is waiting at the end of the corridor.”

“Oh, it’s to be a military wedding, then?”

“Yes, in a sense.”

The younger man appreciated the nice distinction Steinbaum was drawing. The waiting “guard” was the firing-party.

“What time is it?” he demanded, so sharply that the fat man started. For a skilled intriguer Steinbaum was ridiculously nervous.

“A quarter past seven.”

“Allow me to put the question as delicately as possible, but—er—is there any extension of time beyond eight o’clock?”

“Señor Suarez would not give one minute.”

“He knows about the ceremony, of course?”

“Yes.”

“What a skunk the man is! How he must fear me! Such Spartan inflexibility is foreign to the Spanish nature.... By the way, Steinbaum, did you ever, in your innocent youth, hear the opera ‘Maritana,’ or see a play called ‘Don Cesar de Bazan’?”

[Pg 6]

[Pg 6]

“Why waste time, Mr. Maseden?” cried the other impatiently. He loathed the environment of that dim cell, with its slightly fœtid air, suggestive of yellow jack and dysentery. He was so obviously ill at ease, so fearful lest he should fail in an extraordinary negotiation, that, given less strenuous conditions, the younger man must have read more into the proposal than appeared on the face of it.

But the sands of life were running short for Maseden. Outwardly cool and imperturbably American, his soul was in revolt. For all that he laughed cheerfully.

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