"The fact is this, I only know of one person within ten miles of Cray's
Folly who has ever visited Cuba."

"Ah."

"I have no other scrap of evidence to associate him I with my shadowy
enemy. This being so, you will pardon me if I ask you to forget that I
ever referred to his existence."

He spoke the words with a sort of lofty finality, and accompanied them
with a gesture of the hands which really left Harley no alternative but
to drop the subject.

Again their glances met, and it was patent to me that underlying all
this conversation was something beyond my ken. What it was that Harley
suspected I could not imagine, nor what it was that Colonel Menendez
desired to conceal; but tension was in the very air. The Spaniard was
on the defensive, and Paul Harley was puzzled, irritated.

It was a strange interview, and one which in the light of after events
I recognized to possess extraordinary significance. That sixth sense of
Harley's was awake, was prompting him, but to what extent he understood
its promptings at that hour I did not know, and have never known to
this day. Intuitively, I believe, as he sat there staring at Colonel
Menendez, he began to perceive the shadow within a shadow which was the
secret of Cray's Folly, which was the thing called Bat Wing, which was
the devilish force at that very hour alive and potent in our midst.