Bat-Wing (3 page)

"The full moon?"

"It is at the full moon that the danger comes."

Paul Harley stood up, and watched by the Spanish colonel paced slowly
across the office. At the outer door he paused and turned.

"Colonel Menendez," he said, "that you would willingly waste the time
of a busy man I do not for a moment believe, therefore I shall ask you
as briefly as possible to state your case in detail. When I have heard
it, if it appears to me that any good purpose can be served by my
friend and myself coming to Cray's Folly I feel sure that he will be
happy to accept your proffered hospitality."

"If I am likely to be of the slightest use I shall be delighted," said
I, which indeed was perfectly true.

Whilst I had willingly agreed to accompany Harley to Norfolk I had none
of his passion for the piscatorial art, and the promise of novel
excitement held out by Colonel Menendez appealed to me more keenly than
the lazy days upon the roads which Harley loved.

"Gentlemen"—the Colonel bowed profoundly—"I am honoured and
delighted. When you shall have heard my story I know what your decision
will be."

He resumed his seat, and began, it seemed almost automatically, to roll
a fresh cigarette.

"I am all attention," declared Harley, and his glance strayed again in
a wondering fashion to the bat wing lying on his table.

"I will speak briefly," resumed our visitor, "and any details which may
seem to you to be important can be discussed later when you are my
guests. You must know then that I first became acquainted with the
significance belonging to the term 'Bat Wing' and to the object itself
some twenty years ago."

"But surely," interrupted Harley, incredulously, "you are not going to
tell me that the menace of which you complain is of twenty years'
standing?"

"At your express request, Mr. Harley," returned the Colonel a trifle
brusquely, "I am dealing with possibilities which are remote, because
in your own words it is sometimes the remote which proves to be the
intimate. It was then rather more than twenty years ago, at a time when
great political changes were taking place in the West Indies, that my
business interests, which are mainly concerned with sugar, carried me
to one of the smaller islands which had formerly been under—my
jurisdiction, do you say? Here I had a house and estate, and here in
the past I had experienced much trouble with the natives.

"I do not disguise from you that I was unpopular, and on my return I
met with unmistakable signs of hostility. My native workmen were
insubordinate. In fact, it was the reports from my overseers which had
led me to visit the island. I made a tour of the place, believing it to
be necessary to my interests that I should get once more in touch with
negro feeling, since I had returned to my home in Cuba after the
upheavals in '98. Very well.

"The manager of my estate, a capable man, was of opinion that there
existed a secret organization amongst the native labourers operating—
you understand?—against my interests. He produced certain evidences
of this. They were not convincing; and all my enquiries and
examinations of certain inhabitants led to no definite results. Yet I
grew more and more to feel that enemies surrounded me."

He paused to light his third cigarette, and whilst he did so I conjured
up a mental picture of his "examinations of certain inhabitants." I
recalled hazily those stories of Spanish mismanagement and cruelty
which had directly led to United States interferences in the islands.
But whilst I could well believe that this man's life had not been safe
in those bad old days in the West Indies, I found it difficult to
suppose that a native plot against his safety could have survived for
more than twenty years and have come to a climax in England. However, I
realized that there was more to follow, and presently, having lighted
his cigarette, the Colonel resumed:

"In the neighbourhood of the hacienda which had once been my official
residence there was a belt of low-lying pest country—you understand
pest country?—which was a hot-bed of poisonous diseases. It followed
the winding course of a nearly stagnant creek. From the earliest times
the Black Belt—it was so called—had been avoided by European
inhabitants, and indeed by the coloured population as well. Apart from
the malaria of the swampy ground it was infested with reptiles and with
poisonous insects of a greater variety and of a more venomous character
than I have ever known in any part of the world.

"I must explain that what I regarded as a weak point in my manager's
theory was this: Whilst he held that the native labourers to a man were
linked together under some head, or guiding influence, he had never
succeeded in surprising anything in the nature of a negro meeting.
Indeed, he had prohibited all gatherings of this kind. His answer to my
criticism was a curious one. He declared that the members of this
mysterious society met and received their instructions at some place
within the poison area to which I have referred, believing themselves
there to be safe from European interference.

"For a long time I disputed this with poor Valera—for such was my
manager's name; when one night as I was dismounting from my horse
before the veranda, having returned from a long ride around the estate,
a shot was fired from the border of the Black Belt which at one point
crept up dangerously close to the hacienda.

"The shot was a good one. I had caught my spur in the stirrup in
dismounting, and stumbled. Otherwise I must have been a dead man. The
bullet pierced the crown of my hat, only missing my skull by an inch or
less. The alarm was given. But no search-party could be mustered, do
you say?—which was prepared to explore the poison swamp—or so
declared my native servants. Valera, however, seized upon this incident
to illustrate his theory that there were those in the island who did
not hesitate to enter the Black Belt popularly supposed to cast up
noxious vapours at dusk of a sort fatal to any traveller.

"That night over our wine we discussed the situation, and he pointed
out to me that now was the hour to test his theory. Orders had
evidently been given for my assassination and the attempt had failed.

"'There will be a meeting,' said Valera, 'to discuss the next move. And
it will take place to-morrow night!'

"I challenged him with a glance and I replied:

"'To-morrow night is a full moon, and if you are agreeable we will make
a secret expedition into the swamp, and endeavour to find the clearing
which you say is there, and which you believe to be the rendezvous of
the conspirators.'

"Even in the light of the lamp I saw Valera turn pale, but he was a
Spaniard and a man of courage.

"'I agree, señor,' he replied. 'If my information is correct we shall
find the way.'

"I must explain that the information to which he referred had been
supplied by a native girl who loved him. That this clearing was a
meeting-place she had denied. But she had admitted that it was possible
to obtain access to it, and had even described the path." He paused.
"She died of a lingering sickness."

Colonel Menendez spoke these last words with great deliberation and
treated each of us to a long and significant stare.

"Presently," he added, "I will tell you what was nailed to the wall of
her hut on the night that she fell ill. But to continue my narrative.
On the following evening, suitably equipped, Valera and myself set out,
leaving by a side door and striking into the woods at a point east of
the hacienda, where, according to his information, a footpath existed,
which would lead us to the clearing we desired to visit. Of that
journey, gentlemen, I have most terrible memories.

"Imagine a dense and poisonous jungle, carpeted by rotten vegetation in
which one's feet sank deeply and from which arose a visible and
stenching vapour. Imagine living things, slimy things, moving beneath
the tread, sometimes coiling about our riding boots, sometimes making
hissing sounds. Imagine places where the path was overgrown, and we
must thrust our way through bushes where great bloated spiders weaved
their webs, where clammy night things touched us as we passed, where
unfamiliar and venomous insects clung to our garments.

"We proceeded onward for more than half an hour guided by the
moonlight, but this, although tropically brilliant, at some places
scarcely penetrated the thick vapour which arose from the jungle. In
those days I was a young and vigorous man; my companion was several
years my senior; and his sufferings were far greater than my own. But
if the jungle was horrible, worse was yet to come.

"Presently we stumbled upon an open space almost quite bare of
vegetation, a poisonous green carpet spread in the heart of the woods.
Here the vapour was more dense than ever, but I welcomed the sight of
open ground after the reptile-infested thicket. Alas! it was a snare, a
death-trap, a sort of morass, in which we sank up to our knees. Pah! it
was filthy—vile! And I became aware of great—lassitude, do you say?—
whilst Valera's panting breath told that he had almost reached the end
of his resources.

"A faint breeze moved through the clearing and for a few moments we
were enabled to perceive one another more distinctly. I uttered an
exclamation of horror.

"My companion's garments were a mass of strange-looking patches.

"Even as I noticed them I glanced rapidly down—and found myself in
similar condition. As I did so one of these patches upon the sleeve of
my tunic intruded coldly upon my bare wrist. At that I cried out aloud
in fear. Valera and I commenced what was literally a fight for life.

"Gentlemen, we were attacked by some kind of blood-red leeches, which
came out of the slime! In detaching them one detached patches of skin,
and they swarmed over our bodies like ants upon carrion.

"They penetrated beneath our garments, these swollen, lustful, unclean
things; and it was whilst we staggered on through the swamp in agony of
mind and body that we saw the light of many torches amid the trees
ahead of us, and in their smoky glare witnessed the flight of hundreds
of bats. The moonlight creeping dimly through the mist, and the
torchlight—how do you say?—enflaming the vegetation, created a scene
like that of Inferno, in which naked figures danced wildly, uttering
animal cries.

"Above the shrieking and howling, which rose and fell in a sort of
unholy chorus, I heard one long, wailing sound, repeated and repeated.
It was an African word. But I knew its meaning.

"It was '
Bat Wing
!'

"My doubts were dispersed. This was a meeting-place of Devil-
worshippers, or devotees of the cult of Voodoo! One man only could I
see clearly so as to remember him, a big negro employed upon one of my
estates. He seemed to be a sort of high priest or president of the
orgies. Attached to his arms were giant imitations of bat wings which
he moved grotesquely as if in flight. There were many women in the
throng, which numbered fully I should think a hundred people. But the
final collapse of my brave, unhappy Valera at this point brought home
to me the nature of the peril in which I stood.

"He lay at my feet, moving convulsively, and sinking ever deeper in the
swamp, red leeches moving slowly, slowly over his fast-disappearing
body."

Colonel Menendez paused in his appalling narrative and wiped his moist
forehead with a silk handkerchief. Neither Harley nor I spoke. I knew
not if my friend believed the Spaniard's story. For my own part I found
it difficult to do so. But that the narrator was deeply moved was a
fact beyond dispute.

He suddenly commenced again:

"My next recollection is of awakening in my own bed at the hacienda. I
had staggered back as far as the veranda, in raving delirium, and in
the grip of a strange fever which prostrated me for many months, and
which defied the knowledge of all the specialists who could be procured
from Cuba and the United States. My survival was due to an iron
constitution; but I have never been the same man. I was ordered to
leave the West Indies directly it became possible for me to be moved. I
arranged my affairs accordingly, and did not return for many years.

"Finally, however, I again took up my residence in Cuba, and for a time
all went well, and might have continued to do so, but for the following
incident. One night, being troubled by insomnia—sleeplessness—and the
heat, I walked out on to the balcony in front of my bedroom window. As
I did so, a figure which had been—you say lurking?—somewhere under
the veranda ran swiftly off; but not so swiftly that I failed to obtain
a glimpse of the uplifted face.

"It was the big negro! Although many years had elapsed since I had seen
him wearing the bat wings at those unholy rites, I knew him instantly.

"On a little table close behind me where I stood lay a loaded revolver.
I snatched it in a flash and fired shot after shot at the retreating
figure."

Colonel Menendez shrugged his shoulders and selected a fresh cigarette
paper.

"Gentlemen," he continued, "from that moment until this I have gone in
hourly peril of my life. Whether I hit my man or missed him, I have
never known to this day. If he lives or is dead I cannot say. But—" he
paused impressively—"I have told you of something that was nailed to
the hut of a certain native girl? Before she died I knew that it was a
death-token.

"On the morning after the episode which I have just related attached to
the main door of the hacienda was found that same token."

"And it was??" said Harley, eagerly.

"It was the wing of a bat!

"I am perhaps a hasty man. It is in my blood. I tore the unclean thing
from the panel and stamped it under my feet. No one of the servants who
had drawn my attention to its presence would consent to touch it.
Indeed, they all shrank from me as though I, too, were unclean. I
endeavoured to forget it. Who was I to be influenced by the threats of
natives?