CHAPTER XIII
WHEN Strawbridge entered the library of the palace he found only Coronel Saturnino, who was working at his desk. Near the entrance stood one of the palace guards. The silence was almost complete; Strawbridge could hear the faint scratch of the colonel's pen as he toiled at his endless preparations to seize San Geronimo.
The drummer was on the verge of calling out to ask the whereabouts of General Fombombo, when it occurred to him that this Coronel Saturnino was at that moment devising plans upon which, quite possibly, his own safety depended.
It was rather an extraordinary thought for the salesman. There was something dramatic about it—a man working silently in the great, still library, determining whether Strawbridge should live or die. And there stood Strawbridge, near the door, unable to assist in the slightest degree in this determination of his fate. It was a queer, almost a ghostly feeling. Somehow it clothed Coronel Saturnino with a kind of awesome superiority. A sort of premonition of the raid on San Geronimo came to the drummer, a charging of horsemen, sword thrusts, the flash of small arms. . . . His visualization was based largely upon a cheap chromo called "The Fall of the Alamo" which had hung in the parlor of his home in Keokuk. In this picture the artist had been very liberal with blood and dead men. Strawbridge decided not to call to Coronel Saturnino, but to allow him to work undisturbed.
The drummer nodded the guard to him. The little brown man glanced around at the colonel, then moved silently toward the American, evidently with scruples. When he was close enough, Strawbridge whispered:
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