iteful, injured disposition, not to be trusted. Then there was La
Clavel's maid, Jobaba, a girl with an alabaster beauty indefinitely
tainted by Africa. She was, Charles decided, the most corrupt being he
had ever encountered. Her life away from the St. Louis was incredibly,
wildly, debauched. Among other things, she danced, as the mulata, the
rumba, an indescribable affair; and she had connections with the rites
of brujeria, the degraded black magic of the Carabale in Cuba. She was
beautiful, with a perfection of grace, except for the direct gaze of
her brown eyes, which revealed an opacity, a dullness, like mud. She
was, even more than to La Clavel, the servant of Santacilla; she
reported, the dancer told Charles, every possible act and speech of
her mistress to the Spaniards, who, in return, supplied her with a
little money and a load of biting curses.

The chambermaid who attended La Clavel's room had lost a lover with
the forces of General Agramonte, and was of use to Charles; without
knowledge of the hidden actuality she yet brought him, unread,
communications for the patriotic party; and she warned him of
Santacilla's presence and uncertain humors. The laundress had been, in
her youth, an actress in the cheap local theatres, and, when she was
not sodden with drink, showed an admirable devotion to her famous
patron by the most delicate feats imaginable in ironing. She was
almost purely Spanish and had only a contempt for the Cubenos.

While Charles Abbott's duty was, on the surface, direct and easy, it was
complicated by the need for a constant watchfulness, a wit in countless
small details. Supporting, well enough, the boredom of his public
role, he had to manage with an unfailing dexterity the transmission of
the information that came to the insurrectionists through La Clavel.
These facts she gathered through the unguarded moments of Ceaza y
Santacilla's talk--he was close to the Captain-General and had
important connections at Madrid--and, at prolonged parties, from the
conversation of his intimates. Charles put these communications into
contracted written English sentences; in that way, even as against the
accidental chance of being, at any time, searched, he could better
convey their import; and gave them in carefully planned, apparently
incidental encounters, to any one of a score of correctly gloved and
boutonniered young men he had come to know by adroitly managed
assurances.

Charles had formed, as wel