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His Unknown Wife
His Unknown Wife
CHAPTER I
SHARP WORK
“Prisoner, attention! His excellency the President has permitted Señor Steinbaum to visit you.”
The “prisoner” was lying on his back on a plank bed, with his hands tucked beneath his head to obtain some measure of protection from the roll of rough fiber matting which formed a pillow. He did not pay the slightest heed to the half-caste Spanish jailer’s gruff command. But the visitor’s name stirred him. He turned his head, apparently to make sure that he was not being deceived, and rose on an elbow.
“Hello, Steinbaum!” he said in English. “What’s the swindle? Excuse this terseness, but I have to die in an hour, or even less, if a sunbeam hasn’t misled me.”
“There’s no swindle this time, Mr. Maseden,” came the guttural answer. “I’m sorry I cannot help you, but I want you to do a good turn for a lady.”
“A lady! What lady?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t know the lady that is a recommendation in itself. At any rate, what sort of good turn can a man condemned to death do for any lady?”
“She wants to marry you.”
Then the man who, by his own showing, was rapidly nearing the close of his earthly career, sprang erect and looked so threatening that his visitor shrank back a pace, while the half-caste jailer’s right hand clutched the butt of a revolver.
“Whatever else I may have thought you, I never regarded you as a fool, Steinbaum,” he said sternly. “Go away, man! Have you no sense of decency? You and that skunk Enrico Suarez, have done your worst against me and succeeded. When I am dead the ‘state’ will collar my property – and I am well aware that in this instance the ‘state’ will be represented by Señor Enrico Suarez and Mr. Fritz Steinbaum. You are about to murder and rob me. Can’t you leave me in peace during the last few minutes of my life? Be off, or you may find that in coming here you have acted foolishly for once.”