Indeed, they all shrank from me as though I, too, were unclean. I
endeavoured to forget it. Who was I to be influenced by the threats of
natives?
"That night, just at the hour of sunset, a shot was fired at me from a
neighbouring clump of trees, only missing me I think by the fraction of
an inch. I realized that the peril was real, and was one against which
I could not fight.
"Permit me to be brief, gentlemen. Six attempts of various kinds were
made upon my life in Cuba. I crossed to the United States. In
Washington, the political capital of the country, an assassin gained
access to my hotel apartment and but for the fact that a friend chanced
to call me up on the telephone at that late hour of the night, thereby
awakening me, I should have received a knife in my heart. I saw the
knife in the dim light; I saw the shadowy figure. I leapt out on the
opposite side of the bed, seized a table-lamp which stood there, and
hurled it at my assailant.
"There was a crash, a stifled exclamation, shuffling, the door opened,
and my would-be assassin was gone. But I had learned something, and to
my old fears a new one was added.
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