The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [356]
The Doctor’s eyes had gone wide. “Are you saying,” he asked quietly, “that you deliberately tried to suppress knowledge of your daughter’s abduction in order to keep political extremists in your country from obtaining further rationalizations for declaring war on the United States?”
Looking not at all ashamed of it, the señor answered, “What would you have done, Doctor? The Spanish Empire is sick—dying of its own arrogance, which seeks any excuse to be unleashed. I know this. Yet at the same time, I was raised to be a part of that empire. My family has served it for three hundred years. I must do all that I can to hold off the final destruction.”
“Including letting your own daughter quite possibly die?” Miss Howard said.
Señor Linares didn’t look at her as he answered. “Spain needs sons—not daughters. The cost had to be weighed against the return, as you Americans say.”
“So now,” Marcus went on for him, “you’re just trying to make sure that they won’t resurface somewhere. You want to be certain the matter is really ended.”
The señor shrugged. “I should like an annulment from my wife, if she will not return to me. I shall marry again. As I say, Spain needs sons.”
Suddenly standing up, his eyes burning, the Doctor said, “I have told you that we know nothing of the whereabouts of your family, Señor Linares. That is the truth. And now I must ask that you leave my house.”
The señor didn’t look like the fairly rude order came as much of a surprise: he got up, leaning on his stick, then nodded and walked into the hall.
“Señor,” Miss Howard called after him. The man stopped at the top of the staircase and turned. “If a man can place a greater priority on his country than his own child—and if his country not only tolerates but encourages such a choice—then hasn’t that country already been destroyed?”
“In the months to come,” Señor Linares answered quietly, “I suspect that we shall learn the answer to that question.”
Stepping quickly, almost lightly, the señor made his way out of the house and back to his carriage, leaving the rest of us to sit quietly and think over this, the last missing piece in the case of Libby Hatch.
CHAPTER 59
Of course, war between the United States and the Empire of Spain did come, just months after we sat in the Doctor’s parlor with Señor Linares; and in spite of what a lot of people seem to’ve taken to believing since, what the señor had called Spanish “arrogance” was just as responsible for the bloodbath as were all the rantings and ravings of those Americans what favored the idea. Señor Linares’s predictions about the outcome of the thing proved just as accurate as his ideas about its causes: the Spanish Empire was pretty well destroyed, and the United States found itself in possession of a whole string of new foreign possessions—including the Philippine Islands. I don’t guess that much of anybody, even in Washington, had a really sound idea of what they were getting themselves into by taking over such places: as Mr. Finley P. Dunne, the newspaper wag, wrote at the time, most Americans couldn’t have told you whether the Philippines “were islands or canned goods” before the war. As for me, I had only one thought—a question, really—when I heard that we were the new rulers of the place: Had El Niño returned to his homeland before we invaded, and had he then become part of the native army what quickly began