Reginald Wright Kauffman

“ Dan pleaded. “Would you have him die? He is a human being.”
“So are we all.” The gaunt Carib smiled grimly and made an impulsive sign of the cross as if to secure for himself a continuance of that state.
Dan took a few turns of the room. Then, stopping abruptly before Luis, he snapped out: “So you still love Don Ramon?”
The copper face took on a deeper shade. Luis' teeth set. “He is very cruel to a faithful servant. He will kill me one day. But what can I do? I am helpless! ”

“ Paper again! Dan thought that he had found a clew. “The what?”
But on that topic Luis would say no more. “I will aid you all I can, Señor Medico, but this Indian can help very little.” He beat his thin chest. “He must keep his own life if that is possible!”
Dan pursued the paper theme in vain. It became clear that Luis either could not or would not enlighten him, and his doctor's instinct told him that he must not be too insistent until the Indian had rested a bit. With a submissive sigh, he at last put a hand on the Carib's shoulder. ”

“ Don Ramon calls himself the proprietor of this hacienda, and it is him we must obey; but before God he has no right to these lands. That is why the Señorita Gertruda ran away and why, overtaking her, he brought her back from San Lorenzo. In San Domingo he may not marry the daughter of his wife's brother, but if he keeps her hidden, he may use—perhaps he may at last acquire—her lands.”
The Carib's eyes blazed. He was, after all, a wounded man, and he had told, in broad strokes, all he knew. Dan remembered his own profession and wondered if, in any case, Luis might not yet ease the situation. ”

“ Dan, however, was not long halted. He descended the stone steps. The guard made no attempt to hinder his movements, but Dan had gone a distance of perhaps only fifty yards into the patio toward the deserted graveyard when he realized that, not many feet behind him, the peon followed with a carelessness that was nevertheless deliberate enough.
He reversed his course. This would never do! He returned to the house. Within the palacio, he made his way to another exit. A second man, similarly armed and lariated, stood there, expressionless, unforbidding, but obviously prepared to follow. ”

“ Dan knew what it was. That knowledge of ecclesiastical archæology against which the Pennsylvania-Dutch lawyer of his home town had inferentially warned him—it was at last of real use. This door would lead to a compartment or gallery overlooking the chancel of the ruined chapel. Medieval noblemen in Europe had built their castles in just such a manner so that they and their families could, unseen by the more matutinal and soberly garbed serfs, attend early mass in their dressing gowns. ”

“ His first wife was my dead master's sister.”
“I gathered that from something he told me the other day. What I don't understand is why he, instead of the señorita, is the owner of all this.”
“Nor I. I do not know. Who am I that I should understand the law? I am only a Christian! ”