Plunkett seemed as unconcerned as if he were dining at his own table in Chatham County.  He was a gallant trencherman, and the strange tropic viands tickled his palate.  Heavy, commonplace, almost slothful in his movements, he appeared to be devoid of all the cunning and watchfulness of the sleuth.  He even ceased to observe, with any sharpness or attempted discrimination, the two men, one of whom he had undertaken with surprising self-confidence, to drag away upon the serious charge of wife-murder.  Here, indeed, was a problem set before him that if wrongly solved would have amounted to his serious discomfiture, yet there he sat puzzling his soul (to all appearances) over the novel flavour of a broiled iguana cutlet.

The consul felt a decided discomfort.  Reeves and Morgan were his friends and pals; yet the sheriff from Kentucky had a certain right to his official aid and moral support.  So Bridger sat the silentest around the board and tried to estimate the peculiar situation.  His conclusion was that both Reeves and Morgan, quickwitted, as he knew them to be, had conceived at the moment of Plunkett’s disclosure of his mission—­and in the brief space of a lightning flash—­the idea that the other might be the guilty Williams; and that each of them had decided in that moment loyally to protect his comrade against the doom that threatened him.  This was the consul’s theory and if he had been a bookmaker at a race of wits for life and liberty he would have offered heavy odds against the plodding sheriff from Chatham County, Kentucky.

When the meal was concluded the Carib woman came and removed the dishes and cloth.  Reeves strewed the table with excellent cigars, and Plunkett, with the others, lighted one of these with evident gratification.

“I may be dull,” said Morgan, with a grin and a wink at Bridger; “but I want to know if I am.  Now, I say this is all a joke of Mr. Plunkett’s, concocted to frighten two babes-in-the-woods.  Is this Williamson to be taken seriously or not?”

“‘Williams,’” corrected Plunkett gravely.  “I never got off any jokes in my life.  I know I wouldn’t travel 2,000 miles to get off a poor one as this would be if I didn’t take Wade Williams back with me.  Gentlemen!” continued the sheriff, now letting his mild eyes travel impartially from one of the company to another, “see if you can find any joke in this case.  Wade Williams is listening to the words I utter now; but out of politeness, I will speak of him as a third person.  For five years he made his wife lead the life of a dog—­No; I’ll take that back.  No dog in Kentucky was ever treated as she was.  He spent the money that she brought him—­spent it at races, at the card table and on horses and hunting.  He was a good fellow to his friends, but a cold, sullen demon at home.  He wound up the five years of neglect by striking her with his closed hand—­a hand as hard as a stone—­when she was ill and weak from suffering.  She died the next day; and he skipped.