Zorro Hunts A Jackal - Phosphorus Message

"It is yet early in the night. Perhaps the man we expect will come to us yet."

"I doubt it," the capitán said. "Zorro strikes when men expect it not. Perhaps he has been near, had something planned, and the howling of the guards ruined his calculations."

"I'll to bed again," Felipe Garzo decided.

"'Noches!"

The capitán stalked away tovard the barracks building with rage in his stride, and Felipe Garzo closed the door of the guest house and walked across to his bed. He surveyed the room an instant, then plunged the head of the torch into the bowl of sand to extinguish it. That made the interior of the big room black dark, for the heavy draperies had been drawn across the windows.

Garzo stretched out upon the couch half dressed, as he had appeared at the door a while before, and reached down to pull the protecting quilt of skins up to his chin, for he had grown cold running about the patio. He turned on one side, so facing the opposite wall of the room. And suddenly he gave a gasp of surprise and struggled to sit up. For there, on the adobe wall of the room, in quivering shining letters, was the one word: Muerte. And below it was a big jagged letter Z. – "Death!" And the sign of Zorro.

Felipe Garzo sprang out of bed and grasped the torch again. Feverishly, he kindled it, meanwhile straining his ears for sounds inside the room, but hearing nothing. The light flared up and Garzo gave a sigh of relief to find that Señor Zorro was not standing before him, his eyes gleaming through the slits in his mask.

Across the room he went, and to the wall. But it seemed innocent of anything except a damp smear. He could not understand it.

"Am I, too, growing into an imbecile?" Felipe Garzo growled aloud to himself. "A pest, this Zorro! He grows on the imagination of a man. If ever I stand face to face with him, blade in hand–!"

He left the threat unfinished and retired to the couch again. Once more he extinguished the torch. And as he did so, there flamed out on the wall again the letter and the sign!

"I shall go mad!" Garzo breathed. "It is some trick, such as was played on the guards. – A boy's trick! – It will take something more substantial than writing on a wall to harm me."


- Zorro Hunts A Jackal, Chapter 3