CHAPTER XVII
Across the Isthmus to Panama! It had been a golden road for the ancestors of Teresa Fernandez to follow to the South Sea. It seemed a propitious road for her to follow in quest of Richard Cary. Early awake next morning, she felt less unhappy. It was not so much like groping in a blind alley. Those scraps of paper that had eddied in the breeze? She found a few more of them, but they told her nothing. She accepted it as a decree, perhaps of punishment. Not knowing whether Richard Cary loved her, in fear that he had died, she must set forth on her pilgrimage.
The good Señor de Mello would think it strange of her to go as unceremoniously as she had come. Anxiety for her uncle’s safety, the desire to persuade him to quit his senseless wanderings, the fact that he was in the company of such an unsavory mariner as Captain Bradley Duff—this would have to serve as her pretext. What other people thought of her was, after all, of no consequence.
In the harbor she had noticed an English steamer waiting for a berth at the wharf. It was the coastwise boat that picked up cargo and passengers here and there, and went on to Colon. Teresa was out of the house before the offices and shops were open. Over her rolls and coffee in an untidy little café, she scanned a newspaper for the shipping items. The English boat was expected to sail some time during the afternoon. It seemed best to go on board as soon as possible. After some delay she found the agent and secured a stateroom.
Then she went to the bank. Señor de Mello was just arriving with his green umbrella. In his private office she explained her sudden decision as well as she could, and showed him a letter of credit. She wished to draw some money, a considerable amount for a woman to carry with her. Some emergency might arise before she could present herself at another bank.
Alonzo de Mello stared at the letter of credit. It was for two thousand dollars, many times as much as the niece of Ramon Bazán had required when intending to visit him in Cartagena. It was, in fact, every dollar of Teresa’s savings, her precious anchor to windward. The banker looked up to say, in his bland, paternal manner:
“I am not one to pry, Teresa, but there is something in this that I fail to understand. Why this large letter of credit? Did you expect to travel farther than Cartagena? For transferring your funds a draft would have been proper. Ramon’s wretched voyage frets you, but you anticipated nothing like this. We are very fond of you, as you know, and—”
“Then you will have to trust in me, dear Señor de Mello,” pleaded Teresa. “You have known me all your life. I have tried to do what seemed right.”
“No question of that,” he assured her. “You will write me from Panama? And permit me to give you a letter to my agent commending you as though you were my own daughter.”
Teresa’s eyes filled with tears. She had little more to say. When she walked out of the bank she was still feeling the stress of emotion. A dapper young man in the uniform of a lieutenant of police stepped up to accost her. Apparently he had been waiting at the entrance. She trembled. Her lips parted. She was falling, falling into some black abyss. Her courage lifted her out of it. She did not faint. What was the lieutenant saying?
“To meet the Señorita Fernandez makes the day radiant. May I have a few words with you? It is a matter that has been waiting some time.”
“As you will,” she murmured, forcing a smile. “It tires me to stand. Shall we sit in the reception room of the bank? At this early hour it is seldom in use.”
The lieutenant bowed. He was a gallant fellow with an eye for a pretty woman. He sympathized with the señorita. She was, indeed, feeling indisposed. A glance at the closed door behind which Señor de Mello sat at his desk, and Teresa inquired:
“Your errand is what?”
“It is that eccentric old uncle of yours,” answered the lieutenant of police.
“Ah, and what of him?” said Teresa. The hand of fear released its strangling clutch.
As through a mist she gazed at the lieutenant, who replied: “I take the liberty of informing you, as his niece, señorita. It may be of interest now that you have found him gone. I had the felicity of seeing you drive to his house yesterday.”
“And you wish to tell me something about his voyage?”
“Yes. On the night he embarked in that wretched steamer of his, I was leaving a party of friends. It was quite late. A carriage came tearing along like the devil. Too fast, I thought. So I stepped out and halted it. Your uncle sat beside that Indian boy of his who was driving. The carriage was filled to the top with bags and valises and blankets. A reproof was all I intended. And it seemed worth looking into, this driving so fast late at night. I recognized your uncle and was about to say something pleasant, but he seemed immensely startled. He nearly tumbled from the seat, like a man stricken with illness. The boy caught hold of him and they went on through the gate. His steamer sailed the next morning, so I suppose it was nothing serious. His health interests you, I have no doubt, Señorita Fernandez. I said to myself that old Ramon Bazán should have stayed in his comfortable house if he was as feeble as that. Have you heard from him?”
“Not yet,” replied Teresa. “It is wonderfully kind of you. What else could be expected of an officer so polite and attractive? Yes, my uncle must have been ill. It was his heart. He is taken like that when excited or frightened.”
“He has my prayers,” exclaimed the lieutenant. “It must be lonely for you. I am at your feet. Any service in the world—”
He bowed himself out, having made an impression, so he flattered himself. It had been a clever excuse to win the favor of a girl who had inspired his passionate ardor. Teresa lingered in the reception room of the bank trying to read the riddle of a doddering uncle who had been driving at furious speed to board his ship late in the night. Why had he almost died with one of his heart attacks when an affable lieutenant of police had merely halted the carriage to question the driver? Uncle Ramon must have been mortally afraid of being detected in some secretive stratagem.
“That lieutenant is a handsome doll with a wooden head!” mused Teresa. “Why didn’t he poke inside the carriage? He might have found something under all that baggage. My trip to Panama looks wiser than ever. I shall never rest until I find out why my uncle was almost scared to death.”
Haste was not urgent, so Teresa walked several blocks at a leisurely gait in search of a carriage. She stopped to look into the dusty window of a pawnshop. It occurred to her that her pilgrimage might lead her into unpleasant places. In the sailors’ haunts of tropical ports a woman ran certain risks. She could not think of carrying another little automatic pistol in her pocket. The very sight of one in the pawnshop window made her shudder.
Idly standing there, she caught sight of another weapon that strongly attracted her fancy. It was an antique dagger, resembling themiséricordeof the age of chivalry, such as knights in armor had worn attached to the belt by a chain. On the tarnished handle of this relic a crest was still discernible. The blade had rusted thin, but the double edge could easily be ground sharp. It was a small weapon, only a few inches long, contrived for a thrust between the joints of a corselet or neck-piece at close quarters.
In the rubbish of a pawnshop in a side street, this dagger had escaped the search of collectors. It had come from some ancient house of Cartagena, a weapon that might have clinked on the steel-clad thigh of aconquistador. Teresa bought it for apeso. The pawnbroker rummaged until he found a sheath of embossed leather into which the dagger could be slipped. A ribbon could be sewn to the sheath, a ribbon long enough to pass around the neck. Then the dagger could be worn inside a woman’s dress.Miséricorde!The sad heart of Teresa and a dagger next it!
Returning to the house, she decided to leave her new clothes there. This cost her a pang, but it might be a rough road and a long one. A battered little sole-leather trunk, unearthed in Uncle Ramon’s storeroom, would serve her needs. In her handbag was Richard Cary’s briar pipe.
Two days after this, a trim young woman, very simply dressed in white, found shelter in an old stone hotel near the plaza of Panama. Her fastidious taste would have preferred the large American hotel on the Ancon hill in the Canal Zone, but this was too far removed from the crossroads of merchant mariners in drudging cargo boats. She was familiar with the noisy streets of Panama through which flowed a mixture of races from all the Seven Seas.
The afternoon was growing late when Teresa began her quest. It led her first to the bank in which Señor de Mello’s agent had his office. He was a native of the city and in close touch with west coast shipping. To Teresa’s dismay he informed her that Ramon Bazán’s steamerValkyriehad not been heard from since leaving the Balboa docks. It had not arrived at Buenaventura, only three hundred miles down the coast. The weather had been unusually fair, with no heavy winds. Already a week had elapsed.
The steamer carried no wireless, but had she been disabled some other vessel would have reported her by this time. They were coming in every day. In such good weather and near the coast, theValkyriecould not have foundered without trace. Her boats would have taken care of the crew. Furthermore, cable messages of inquiry, sent at the request of Señor Alonzo de Mello, disclosed that no steamer by this name was expected at Buenaventura. The shipping firms and export agents in that port had made no charter arrangements nor had there been any correspondence about cargo. Steamers of the regular services were taking care of all the freight offered at this season of the year.
“Then my old uncle never sailed for Buenaventura? And he had no intention of going there?” commented Teresa.
“He must have changed his plans,” suavely observed the agent.
“He is very capricious, señor. Did you happen to meet him while his ship was coaling at Balboa?”
“Yes, Señorita Fernandez. He came into the office to draw funds to pay the Canal tolls, having arranged a credit for that purpose. He had little to say and seemed quite feeble.”
“He would seem that way, at parting from so much money. Did he bring his captain with him?”
“No. I don’t know who commanded the steamer. I am extremely sorry, but I have to take a train to Colon late this afternoon to be gone until to-morrow. After that, I shall be delighted to go with you to Balboa. The records will tell you who the captain was, and there may be other details. I am acquainted with the officials and it will expedite your affairs. A young lady may feel a certain awkwardness—”
Teresa was cordially grateful. The situation had taken on aspects more complex and inexplicable than ever. As a seafarer herself, she accepted the theory that theValkyriehad met with no disaster while bound down the coast to Buenaventura. The vessel had steered some unknown course of her own to another destination. From the beginning her tortuous uncle had schemed and lied to mask his real purpose, whatever that might be. No mere hallucination could have lured him into the Pacific. It had not occurred to him that any one might try to follow him.
At Balboa, Teresa might be able to discover whether Richard Cary had been in the ship. This was of transcendent moment to her. But even were it true, her penitential pilgrimage was no more than begun. It was necessary to meet him face to face. Her own soul was at stake. What had happened to Ricardo that night in Cartagena, when he had been missing from his ship? What of the guilt of the dead Colonel Fajardo?
Teresa walked the floor of her room in the Panama hotel. What she said to herself was like this:
“Supposing Ricardo is commanding this Flying Dutchman of a ship. Where has he gone? No records in the Canal office can tell me that. A wonderful comfort, if it is the will of God to let me know Ricardo is alive and strong. But what of me? Ah, what of poor me? There must be some way of finding out, here in Panama, but how can I go into the places where this Bradley Duff and the sailors may have babbled with the liquor in them? Do I look like one of the wretched girls in these dirty cabarets?
“It is hard to keep a secret in a ship after she has left her own port. Something seems to whisper it—a look, a word, a feeling. Perhaps my Uncle Ramon muttered in his sleep, as he often does at home. He is too old to play such a hand as this for very long. Look what it did to him when he was frightened by that lieutenant of police! And if he loses his temper he may say too much. If those Colombian sailors got it into their heads that the voyage was to be longer than to Buenaventura, it would be like some of them to desert such an unseaworthy vessel in Panama. One thing I do know. I can never sit here and wait with folded hands for theValkyrieto come back to the Canal. It might be weeks and months or not at all.”
To be a roving woman where sailors resorted in this and perhaps other ports of the Spanish Main was both hampering and repugnant. It made a difficult task unendurable. Unwelcome attentions, insults, nameless perils might be her lot. Not that Teresa flinched or hesitated, but it was possible to make the path easier. The most hopeful clue was Captain Bradley Duff. He was almost certain to have had disreputable friends in Panama. Birds of his feather flocked together, and they were always thirsty. Likely enough there had been money in his pocket to make him popular. He would be the boisterous good fellow, greedily sociable, anxious to parade the fact that he was no longer on the beach. And what he knew he would be apt to confide to this companion and that.
Yes, it was a handicap to be a good woman, reflected Teresa, and she did not propose to be a bad one. There was another way. It appealed to her as feasible. Some daring would be required to carry it off, but she was not one to lack faith in herself. At the masquerade ball in Cartagena, two years ago, she had played the part of acaballeroso well that the girls had boldly flirted with her. Her hair had been hidden by a huge sombrero adorned with silver braid.
Her hair was her crown and her glory. If she decided to play the part in Panama, it would have to be sacrificed. But what mattered a woman’s vanity now, or her desire to be thought beautiful, if she had lost her lover and knew not where to find him?
Teresa went shopping in Panama. It was rather amusing. A boy trudged behind her with a large, shiny new suitcase in which the various purchases were stowed. He followed her to a side-entrance of the hotel and so to her room.
Having dismissed him and locked the door, Teresa sat and looked at herself in the glass.Adiosto the girl who had been so proud of Ricardo’s admiration! She let down her black hair. It flowed over her lovely shoulders. Snip, snip, the wicked new shears severed the tresses. Her hand was unsteady. It was a dreadful thing to do. Even the sight of bobbed hair made her feel like swearing. This was much worse.
A ragged job it was when she gloomily surveyed the result. Carefully, tenderly, she gathered up her tresses and wrapped them in a silk scarf. She could not bear to throw them away. Presently she was slipping a belt through the loops of linen trousers. She scowled at the canvas shoes. The clumsy pattern disguised a narrow foot and an arching instep. The soft white shirt with a rolling collar was open at the throat. A loose coat of gray Palm Beach cloth completed the costume. The brim of her own Panama hat was bent down in front with a touch of jauntiness.
Teresa surveyed herself with a critical scrutiny. Her girlish bust and slender hips were unobtrusive. What she saw in the glass was a supple youth as straight as a lance, a youth with an oval face and dark eyes too somber for his years. At a glance he resembled a hundred others who strolled in the plazas or sat at the café tables of any Spanish-American city. His name was Rubio Sanchez, so he was informed, as the farewell message of Señorita Teresa Fernandez before she made her exit from the stage.
The young Colombian, Rubio Sanchez, busied himself in the room a little while longer. Then he sauntered down to the lobby in which men loafed and smoked and talked of many things. It was near the dinner hour. Behind the desk the night clerk was on duty. He had been denied the pleasure of welcoming Señorita Fernandez in the afternoon. The slim, debonair youth from Cartagena sauntered over to say to him in a voice of a pleasant contralto quality:
“The lady, my sister, wishes to leave her trunk in storage. I will pay her bill. Here is the key. Have your porter bring down the suitcase. I will look after it for her. She has been sent for in haste. An uncle old and sick needs her.”
The clerk was an obliging person. He expressed his regrets and arranged matters promptly. Young Rubio Sanchez and his large, shiny suitcase presently departed in a one-horse hack which was instructed to proceed until told to stop. The passenger sat indolently, a cigarette between his lips.
What made him alert was the blazing electric sign of “The Broadway Front” which seemed to be a pretentious lodging-house with a saloon, restaurant, and dance-hall on the ground front. It was the most flamboyant place of good-cheer along the street. It loomed like a beacon to draw the wandering footsteps of sailormen weary of the sea. Captain Bradley Duff and his shipmates of theValkyrienever could have passed it by.
Rubio Sanchez, a blasé young man who knew his way about, halted the hack and swung his shiny suitcase to the pavement. Here were rooms to rent. The building was new. It looked neither dingy nor dirty. It would do for the night, or until fortune beckoned elsewhere.
He spied a barber shop next door. It occurred to him as advisable to finish what the shears had so awkwardly begun. The barber eyed him critically, with a smirk of amusement. Never had he beheld such a ragged hair-cut. Rubio Sanchez curtly told him to make it smooth, leaving enough to part. The barber laughed and asked in Spanish:
“Was it chewed by the mice, señor? You had been letting it grow very long.”
“Not as long as your clacking tongue,” was the crisp retort. “Shall I cut it for you?”
The barber goggled at the slender youth in the chair, but held his peace. It was not good to jest too far with one whose voice was so cool and hard.
CHAPTER XVIII
In the American bar of The Broadway Front, the mahogany counter ran the length of the room. Mirrors glittered behind it. Here was a shrine of Bacchus, extinct in its native land, in which the rites of the ritual were faithfully observed. The presiding genius was a florid Irish bartender in a crisp white jacket with a flower in the lapel. Assisting him were three acolytes native to Panama. For them the lowly service of pulling the shining handles of the beer-pumps, cracking ice and washing glasses. With the skill of an artist and the speed of a prestidigitator, their master hurled cocktails, fizzes, and punches together and served them to the votaries who rested one foot upon the brass rail in the traditional posture of those about to offer libations.
Women were excluded from this room. Across the hallway was the café, the dancing-floor, the stage where entertainment more frivolous was provided. The mahogany bar and the little tables were sacred to the wit and wisdom of the sterner sex, to the discussion of weighty matters to which Mike, the paragon of bartenders, would always lend a sympathetic ear. He was a friend and philosopher of a vintage much riper and rarer than the stuff he sold.
Alone at one of the tables sat a pensive young man of delicate features whose black hair was smoothly parted. At this moment he was reminding himself that his name was Rubio Sanchez. He sipped a claret lemonade through a straw and eyed the passing show with a trepidation not easily dissembled.
The bar was crowded—American soldiers from the Canal Zone garrisons hilariously rolling the dice for the drinks, tanned bluejackets from ships of the Pacific Fleet, dapper Panama merchants, brisk Yankee salesmen spreading the gospel of safety razors, sewing machines, and porous underwear from Mexico to Peru, solid master mariners and mates who held aloof from the rabble of landsmen.
The solitary young man, Rubio Sanchez, was unmolested. No one even noticed him. The sense of panicky uneasiness diminished. He perceived that it was urgently advisable for him to make the acquaintance of Mike, the suave and genial divinity behind the bar. He was the very man to have stowed away the garrulous gossip and confidences that were forever dinned at him. The place was repellent to young Rubio Sanchez, but not as shocking as had been feared.
Disorder was smothered before it started. A lifted hand, a word of reproof from Mike, or a threat to summon the boss, and quarrelsome topers subsided. This threat of summoning the boss seemed to be most effective. Unseen, he exercised a potent influence.
There would be no opportunity to engage the attention of the persuasive bartender until the crowd had thinned. Rubio Sanchez lingered and looked on with the curious feeling that a kindly star had guided the pilgrimage to this Broadway Front. It was like a comforting intuition.
In the company that swirled along the bar was a boyish bluejacket, clean-built, jolly, with the red bars of a petty officer on his sleeve. He looked winsome and unspoiled, but eager to see what life was like. His two companions were older and harder Navy men. It was his money that carelessly paid for the rounds of drinks. He displayed crumpled bills by the fistful. It was like so much trash that burned holes in his pockets.
An argument arose. His companions had another engagement for the evening. They conferred with their heads together. The youngster laughed and refused to be dragged along. He was heard to call them a pair of boobs. The Navy patrol would be sure to pinch them if they rambled into the red-light district and, anyhow, they ought to know better. None of that for him. They borrowed money of him and rolled out to charter a seagoing hack.
The youngster stood undecided what to do next. It was early for the music and dancing in the cabaret across the hall. He drifted over to a table, sprawled in a chair, and glanced around the room. Two or three penniless loafers would have joined him, but he curtly told them to beat it. The young South American sitting alone with a lemonade and a straw impressed him favorably. He sauntered over, the round Navy hat balanced on the back of his head, and affably remarked:
“Hello, kid! How’s tricks? Don’t you go drowning yourself in too many buckets of that pink lemonade. What you need is one of Mike’s vermouth stingarees. I’ll buy.”
“Too much sting in it for me,” said the black-haired Rubio Sanchez, with a shy smile. “A little claret and vichy this time, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself, buddy. I’m no souse myself. What’s your game? I don’t see anybody to play with but that bunch of doughboys with their bellies against the bar. God may love the Army, but I pass. What’s your home port? You were born under a cocoanut tree somewheres.”
“Colombia, but you can’t lose me in New York,” replied Rubio. “I used to sail there.”
“You don’t look husky enough. What’s your ship?”
“A cargo boat in the Pacific trade, but she left me on the beach.”
It went against the grain to deceive this warm-hearted, attractive Navy lad. In fact, there was no reason why he should be kept in the dark concerning the vanishedValkyrie. He had won the respect of Teresa Fernandez by his refusal to go roistering among the bad women of Panama.
“Gee, you are out of luck,” impulsively exclaimed the boyish petty officer. “What’s your name? Rubio? Hey, Rube, if you need any coin, I’ve got a bundle. You’re a good kid. I can size ’em up. Steve Brackett, gunner’s mate, second class, is what they call me. I’m in the destroyerPatterson. We’ve been chasing a division of seaplanes that made a flight down from San Diego.”
“You ought not to carry so much money,” seriously advised young Rubio. “Panama is just looking for fellows like you. I have money enough, thank you with all my heart.”
“Let ’em try to ease me of my roll,” bragged the gunner’s mate. “I’m not such a soft mark for these spiggoty crooks. On the level, kid, I ought to convoyyou. For a sailor you sure do look timid and tender.”
“Is that so? Here, let me take your hand,” smiled the soft-spoken young Colombian.
Steve Brackett extended a brown, calloused paw. Before he could close it, the fingers were squeezed in a quick, nervous grip that made him wince and cry out. He wrenched them free and exclaimed:
“Easy, kid! Do you want to cripple one of the best gun-pointers in this man’s Navy? Huh, youarethe deceivin’ guy! How do you get that way, with a wrist as small as that, and a hand like a girl’s?”
The training of a ship’s stewardess might have had something to do with it, but Rubio fancifully explained:
“There were some great swordsmen in my family one time. Listen, Steve, do you know this nice, polite bartender? Tell me about him.”
“Who, Mike? They don’t grow ’em any better. Sure I know him. I was here in a cruiser for the Fleet maneuvers last winter. The Navy swears by Mike. Stick around and you’ll hear him bawl me out if I’m liable to overstay my liberty to-night and get in trouble. He’s a regular daddy to us young gobs.”
Just then the musicians in the café across the hall began to bang and blare and tootle in a barbaric frenzy of syncopated discords. The voluble patrons of the bar deserted it almost to a man. Mike was given a respite to put the shrine of Bacchus in order and to rest his weary frame. Having instructed his assistants, he donned a fresh jacket and apron, and found a chair and a newspaper at a little table near the bar.
“Come on, Rube, if you want to chew the rag with him,” said the gunner’s mate. “Now’s the time. This cease-firing interval won’t last long. Some of those rum-hounds will be romping in as soon as they dance ’emselves dusty.”
Rubio Sanchez complied with a fluttering timidity. This smooth, sophisticated bartender had an eye like a hawk. For him the proper study of mankind was man. He removed the glasses from his fleshy nose, puckered his brows, and heartily exclaimed:
“Glad you shook them hard-boiled pals, Steve. They ain’t your class. An’, mind, you drink no more hard stuff to-night, understand?”
“All done, Mike. Meet my friend Señor Rube Sanchez, a sailorman like myself.”
“Howdy, señor. Set down, boys. What’s on your chests? I’m flattered to have you prefer me company to the wild women in the cabaret yonder.”
Rubio’s clear voice trembled, but it held its contralto pitch as he said:
“I have an errand of much importance to me, Mr. Mike. I want to find a steamer that belongs to my uncle, Señor Ramon Bazán of Cartagena. He is an old man as wrinkled as a monkey. He sailed in this vessel, which is a little tramp named theValkyrieand flies the flag of Colombia. She was at Balboa not long ago, bound to Buenaventura, but she didn’t go there at all.”
The benevolent Mr. Mike was interested. He laid down the newspaper and assumed his habitual manner of patient and tactful deference.
“Well, well,” said he, “ ’tis comical to have a steamer go playin’ hookey with itself, ain’t it, Señor Sanchez? And you’ve tried the other coast ports, north and south of here?”
“Yes. The vessel is nowhere on the coast, Mr. Mike.”
“So you’re adrift and forlorn without this uncle that looks like a monkey? TheValkyrie, hey? Who else was in her?”
“Captain Bradley Duff, for one,” replied Rubio. “He is pretty well known.”
“Bradley Duff? The lousy old skate!” said Mike, with an air of reflection. “He was in jail in Panama a year ago, an’ I paid his fine for him. The spiggoty cops run him in for disturbin’ the peace. A first-class skipper was Bradley Duff till he piled a fine steamer up when he was stewed, an’ that busted him.”
“My uncle was crazy when he hired him,” said Rubio, “but in Cartagena he could find nobody else.”
“I dunno about that,” observed Mike. “A man may be down, but he’s never out. But I’d never apply this motto to Bradley Duff if I hadn’t seen it with me own two eyes. Your old uncle made no mistake, surprising as it may sound. Not long ago, do you say? Right you are, Señor Sanchez. In walks this same Bradley Duff, an’ you could ha’ knocked me down with a lemonade straw. He was clean and smart as new paint. Blue serge coat buttoned over that fat stummick of his, a chief officer’s stripes on the sleeves, white duck pants, cap cocked over one eye an’ you be billy-be-damned! He slaps his money on the bar an’ drinks a bottle of beer.”
“Was he alone?” asked Rubio, leaning forward.
“In solitary grandeur he was, an’ minding his own business. Strong men used to flee when he came into a bar-room, for it was him that could talk your ear off, boomin’ an’ droolin’ along by the hour. Well, we passed the time of day, an’ I handed him a few compliments an’ another bottle of beer on the house. All he told me was that his ship was theValkyriean’ he was chief officer. Never a word about where he was going nor what for. Something is in the wind, I says to meself, but I’m not slick enough to pry it out of this human clam of a Bradley Duff.
“He sets down for a spell, very dignified, buyin’ no more drinks, as indifferent as if him an’ booze had never been introjuced. Then he looks at the clock, says he’s due back on board an’ pounds out. ’Twas like one of these juicy young gobs on liberty. The discipline of the ship was not to be trifled with. Something powerful had put the fear of God into Bradley Duff. As the Good Book says, whilst the light holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may come home to roost.”
The young Colombian had hearkened to this harangue with strained attention. His slim fingers were playing a tattoo on the table. Forlorn and adrift he was, indeed. The cup of hope had been dashed from his lips. Again he was groping. He brushed a hand over his short, black hair so smoothly parted. The gesture was a tragic symbol. The sacrifice had been to no purpose.
“Did you ask him who was captain, Mr. Mike?” faltered Rubio. “Did any other officers come in?”
“Nary a one. And from what he said, the crew was held pretty close. I might have asked him more questions, but I was busy at the time. Somebody had shut him up tight. He heard his master’s voice, did Bradley Duff.”
“And you—you didn’t see a very big, splendid young man with bright yellow hair—a man you could never forget, Mr. Mike? He may have been the captain of theValkyrie. A wonderful-looking man—there is nobody like him on this coast.”
“You lose, son,” said the sympathetic Mr. Mike. His expression betokened surprise. “To the best of me knowledge, there has been no young man like that hereabouts. It is him you’re after, an’ not the old monkey of an uncle?”
“He was very kind to me in a ship, Mr. Mike, when he was the second mate. I—I wish I could see him again.”
The profound wisdom of the veteran bartender prompted him to study the slender, drooping youth whose emotion was so unexpected. The boyish gunner’s mate had been keeping silent with the courtesy of a lad who had been taught to listen to his elders. Now, however, he eagerly exclaimed:
“All right, kid. I didn’t want to butt in. Now you pipe down and give me the deck. It seems to mean a whole lot to you to find that ship and the big guy that makes you cry. I’ve got some dope for you. TheValkyrie! Is that the hooker? A bum little tramp with red sides and a rusty funnel, that somebody resurrected from the bone-yard? Moseyin’ along in ballast, is she? Listen! My destroyer was coming south a few days ago, see, and we fetched a course away from the coast of Costa Rica to search for a seaplane that had engine trouble and was reported as blown offshore. We sighted a steamer steering almost due west. Our skipper thought perhaps she might have sighted the seaplane, so we tried her with radio and got no answer. We ran down to speak her. It was unusual to see a vessel as small as this tramp heading so far to the west’ard instead of following the coast. The Pacific Ocean looked awful large and wet for her to cross.
“The signal quartermaster tried her with a flag hoist in the international code. All he got back was a string of ragged bunting that looked as if the rats had chewed it. You couldn’t make out the code letters to save your soul. So we kept on to run close and hail her with a megaphone. Say, kid, the skipper of thisValkyriewas one whale of a big guy! He waved his straw hat, and he sure was a natural blond. Lazy and good-natured, too, like he was enjoying a life on the ocean wave. That’s how he looked when he grinned at us. The world was his buddy.
“He hollered over that he hadn’t seen any stray seaplanes, and would we please give him the correct Greenwich time because his owner had bought the chronometer in a junk-shop to save a dollar. We asked him where he thought he was going, but he laughed and said he was going to Davy Jones’s locker if the weather went back on him. It was nothing in our young lives, so we hauled on our course and wished him luck. Now, kid, I’ve found the big guy for you, but where he expects to head in is too much for me. What’s your guess?”
The kid from Cartagena was guilty of the most unmanly behavior. He was biting his lip and dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. He could not speak. Steve Brackett, the gunner’s mate with the heart of a gentleman and the manners of a prince, looked inquiringly at Mike, but said not another word. The bartender nodded in the direction of the door. Steve took the hint. A hand on Rubio’s soft shoulder, he said:
“So-long, kid! I’ve got to shove off. Glad I could do you a good turn. Look me up if you get a chance, or drop a line care U.S.S.Patterson. Tell Mike your troubles and don’t hold out on him. That goes double for the boss of this dump. If the kid needs more than you can do for him, Mike, be sure to steer him against the boss, won’t you?”
“Sure, Steve. The kid could ha’ done worse than camp in the bar-room of The Broadway Front.”
The gunner’s mate hung his round white hat on three hairs and delayed to roll a cigarette. Meditatively he scratched a match. Rubio’s hand stole into his, in a clasp strong and grateful. Steve blushed a fiery red and jerked his hand away. Then he moved briskly to the door without glancing behind him.
Mike sat with his elbows on the table and regarded young Rubio Sanchez, not with the eye of a hawk, but with a scrutiny both pitiful and protective. The lad might have got away with it, he said to himself, if it hadn’t been for the big guy with the yellow hair. Even now there was more suspicion than proof. Taking Rubio by the arm, he spoke in confidential tones.
“Where are you staying at, son? The Tivoli? No? Right here? Don’t try to talk. You won’t be wanting to go through the crowded hall to get upstairs, till you sort of pull yourself together. I’ll have to be tending bar again. Here’s what you do. Go into the boss’s office an’ wait for him. The door in the corner yonder. No one’ll bother you. He ’phoned from his house that the wife had a headache an’ he would set with her an hour or so. This place may seem rough to you, but betwixt Mike an’ the boss you’re agoin’ to be looked after right.”
Alone in the private office, Teresa Fernandez heard Mike turn the key in the lock. She was not so much frightened as chagrined that she had miserably failed to play the rôle. But how could she help breaking down for joy and thanksgiving that she had been granted a blessed vision of Ricardo, alive, untouched by fate, towering on the bridge of a ship? God had guarded him. She also would be guarded. Her faith glowed like an illumined altar, and she felt safe even in a situation like this.
For a few minutes she stood looking out of a barred, open window into a dark rear yard enclosed by a high wall. The room was small and plainly furnished, a rolltop desk, two chairs, and a massive steel safe. One of the chairs was against the wall, at one side of the open window. She sank into it and was soothed by the hum of the electric fan. She wondered what the boss could be like, and why he commanded the implicit respect of Mike and the fine young gunner’s mate. How could he help her find a vanished ship? This was all that mattered.
The doorknob turned. She jumped to her feet, again the young man Rubio Sanchez, alert and on the defensive. A burly man of middle age entered the office. First impressions were alarming. He looked brutal and overbearing, a man fitted to dominate this Broadway Front. He had a jaw like a rock and the neck of a bull. The deep-set eyes were as hard as agates. Teresa watched his mouth. It was human, with a whimsical twist as he spoke from a corner of it.
“Sit down, Señor Sanchez, and make yourself at home. Have a cigar? No? I am Jerry Tobin and I won’t bite you. So let’s be sociable. Mike told me what he could, about your hunt for theValkyrieand so on. You banked on picking up some news in Panama, didn’t you? And that goose is cooked?”
“I did find some wonderful news, but it wasn’t enough, Mr. Tobin,” replied Rubio, his voice steadied, his demeanor composed.
“I’m here to do what I can for you,” was the gruff response, “but I don’t recommend your living in the Broadway Front. That’s too much to have on my mind.”
“I was in a hotel, before the goose was cooked, Mr. Tobin. I—er—I don’t want to go back there, but I can go somewhere else.”
“We can fix that up later,” said Jerry Tobin, peeling off his coat and shoving back the top of the desk. “I can think better with a pencil and paper. This destroyer kid met your ship off the coast of Costa Rica, Mike tells me. And the voyage was a secret? Going to Buenaventura was all a bluff?”
“My old uncle bluffs in his sleep,” laughed Rubio. “He whispers to himself through a keyhole. But he was never so head over heels in a secret as this time.”
“It makes ’em act that way,” barked Jerry Tobin, making marks with the pencil. “If you hadn’t sort of knocked Mike off his pins by blubbering in the bar-room, perhaps he would have put you wise. Wait a minute and I’ll draw you a rough map. Panama Bay to the coast of Costa Rica and then due west! I’ll put down a dot for an island that has made all kinds of people as dippy as your uncle. An old pirate’s chart and some shovels and dynamite—”
Jerry Tobin broke off abruptly. A turbulent life he must have led, but now he was staring at the open window like a man whose wits were frozen. His seamed, forbidding visage reflected terror, hatred, helplessness. The hard eyes were unwinking.
Teresa Fernandez gazed at him in fixed fascination. She moved not so much as a finger. She heard a voice at the open window, a wicked voice that cut the stillness like a knife.
“Hands up, Jerry, you —— —— I’ve got you cold. Now back yourself over to the safe. Turn around and open her up. Come clean, or I’ll plug you in the back. The whole bankroll! Make it snappy!”
Burly John Tobin may have had some reason to recall that sinister voice. Very cautiously he backed away from the desk with hands rigidly upraised until his heel struck the safe. Then he knelt to fumble with the combination knob. He was working as fast as he could. His face was gray. Sweat bedewed it.
Almost without breathing, Teresa Fernandez watched him. She dared not turn her head toward the window. She was unseen by the man outside. He had spied only Jerry Tobin in the room. From where he stood in the yard, the girl in the chair against the wall was invisible. It was a blunder.
From a corner of her eye, Teresa could perceive the window ledge. The criminal was careful to stand a little way back from it, where he could dodge for cover if the door should suddenly open. To steady himself, he rested a hand upon the window ledge. Teresa could see this hand from where she sat. She could have reached out and touched it. It was a hairy hand with thick fingers and broken nails, a detestable hand. Teresa looked at it, flattening herself in the chair. Then she looked at the kneeling figure of Jerry Tobin who was removing a small drawer from the open safe.
This man who had befriended her was unable to defend himself. There had been a worse menace than robbery in that sinister voice from outside the window. It signified some old score to settle, a vengeance to be slaked. It was as wicked as a snake.
Jerry Tobin straightened himself and stood with the drawer in his hand. His movements were as stiff and careful as those of a man with lumbago. The drawer was filled with packages of bank-notes. His eyes roved to the rolltop desk, but he could not reach the pistol in it. The voice outside the window spoke again.
“Come through, Jerry, you dirty dog. No funny business. You ain’t got coin enough to square it this side of hell. I’m liable to blow your head off yet.”
It was the voice of a man lustful to kill, but not quite ready to risk the consequences. Jerry Tobin’s life hung in the balance. The weight of a feather might swing it either way. Teresa Fernandez could read in his drawn, ashen face that he expected no mercy. It was the climax of a mortal feud.
Teresa put her hand to her breast. Her fingers felt the handle of the antique dagger under the soft shirt, the two-edged weapon in the leather sheath hung by a ribbon around her neck. No matter what Jerry Tobin might have done to deserve a bullet, he was a friend, and she was loyal. She stole a glance at the hairy hand upon the window ledge.
Her own hand flew inside her shirt and whipped out the dagger. A jaguar could have struck with no more speed and fury. The blade drove down through the detestable hand upon the window ledge and quivered in the soft wood. It was driven by a supple wrist and an explosion of energy. It transfixed the evil hand and spiked it there.
Jerry Tobin leaped for the desk and snatched a pistol from a pigeon-hole. From a corner of his mouth he growled like a mastiff:
“Guess again, you dumb-bell. Drop that gun.”
The dumb-bell had forgotten that he possessed a gun. He was writhing and cursing, his one idea being to pull that dagger out of the window ledge. Jerry Tobin preferred to let it stay there for the moment. Mildly he said to the girl in the chair:
“On your way, señorita. You mustn’t get mixed up in this. Go upstairs and wait there for me. Stay in your room. Tell Mike to come here. Excuse me, but you’d better pull your shirt together. Rubio Sanchez is a dead card.”
Teresa clutched at the bosom of her shirt. A button had been ripped off. It revealed no more than did her evening gown of black lace, but it was enough to prove to Jerry Tobin that he had taken on the responsibilities of a chaperon. The color dyed her face from chin to brow as she buttoned the gray coat over the shirt.
Looking neither at the window ledge nor at Jerry Tobin, she fled from the office, whispered a hurried word to Mr. Mike as she passed the bar, and stole into the hall and up the staircase. The straw hat was pulled low over her eyes. Safely in her room, she shot the bolt and fairly toppled over on the bed. To her ears came the thump, thump of the drums, the frenzied wail of the saxophones, loud laughter, snatches of song.
An hour passed before she was aroused by a knock on the door. It was Jerry Tobin. He entered rather gingerly, as if to apologize for an intrusion. As a chaperon he was evidently a novice. His change of manner was amusing. He was like a man afraid. From a pocket he took the antique dagger. The blade had been cleaned of stains. Awkwardly he ventured to say:
“Here’s something of yours. I didn’t want the police to find it. Sheeny George, the bird you—ahem—left it with, don’t know how it happened.”
“What did you say to the police?” fearfully asked Teresa.
“No more than I had to. I made ’em a present of an outlaw with a record as long as your arm, and they were tickled to death. He’ll get put away for pretty near the rest of his life. So there’s that. You don’t show in it at all.”
“But I don’t want the dagger, Mr. Tobin. Throw it away.”
“Not if you’ll let me keep it as a souvenir. You won’t have to pack any more weapons. Understand? So cheer up, young lady. You’ve got a friend to make the play for you. Do you mind telling me what name to call you by?”
“Teresa Fernandez. As a young man I was—I was a failure, Mr. Tobin.”
“Oh, not so worse, until you just naturally blew up,” was his verdict. “Now, Miss Fernandez, I can’t make your head of black hair grow again, but they’re wearing it short. Against that, you can credit yourself with a large, elegant’s night’s work. You saved my bankroll, twenty thousand dollars. I run a game on the third floor. And you just about saved my wife from being a widow. Sheeny George was working up steam to croak me. It was the yellow streak that held him back just long enough for you to get action.”
“His voice told me so,” shakily replied Teresa. “Oh, Mr. Jerry Tobin, I am going all to pieces. What can I do? You don’t know—you don’t know—I did it to help you—I was so angry—but I never, never want to see a pistol or a knife again, not in all my life. I used to be a happy girl and I never harmed anybody—and I never dreamed of things like this—”
This was too much for battling Jerry Tobin to handle. As he said to himself, it was time to pass the buck. Fingering that iron jaw of his, he issued his instructions.
“Please scramble your stuff into that suitcase, Miss Fernandez, or let me do it for you, seeing as it’s the duds of the late Rubio Sanchez. You are going home with me. This is a job for Mrs. Jerry Tobin, a woman that’s too good for this world. The best bet for you is a mother. Savvey that? Have you got any other clothes?”
“A trunk at the Hotel Las Palmas,” meekly answered Teresa. “What will Mrs. Tobin say? My goodness, I am scared again.”
“You scare easy, don’t you?” he grunted. “I know different. I ’phoned the missus, but I didn’t tell her too much. I never do. You and she will cuddle up like two kittens in a basket. My car is outside. Now let’s make itpronto.”
Teresa obeyed. Discussion seemed absurd. The boss had proclaimed an edict. She had one question to ask.
“That island, Mr. Tobin, where you said my uncle’s ship had gone? You were going to show me with a pencil.”
“Cocos Island? What’s the hurry? I’ll get you there. If I know anything about these treasure-hunting nuts, this locoed uncle of yours will be blasting rock and making the gravel fly from now till the Fourth of July.”
“Cocos Island?” murmured Teresa. “I never heard of any treasure on Cocos Island. That was just my hard luck, Mr. Tobin, or maybe I am thick.”
“Not thick, Miss Fernandez. For fast work you have me stopped. You wouldn’t be so apt to hear this treasure dope over on the Atlantic side. Leave the proposition to me. As a fixer, I’m good.”
Jerry Tobin carried the shiny suitcase into the lower hall. Teresa had a farewell glimpse of the devoted Mr. Mike. He was manipulating a cocktail shaker and patiently listening to the sorrows of a stranger who clung to the bar like a limpet to a reef.
While they drove through the city and into a suburb of trim lawns and bungalows, Jerry Tobin was taciturn. Teresa felt grateful for it. For the time she had ceased to fret and suffer. Quietude enfolded her. Through troubled waters and muddy, her pilgrimage had led her to a haven. She was tolerant of the faults and follies of mankind as she had known them on land and sea. God’s grace might visit the heart of a Mr. Mike or a Jerry Tobin as well as the heart of a priest. Saints or sinners, who was she to condemn, a woman who had yet to cleanse her own soul of stain?
Jerry Tobin marched her into a wide-roofed bungalow on the side of a green hill. A woman came forward to meet them. She was slight and plain-featured, insignificant to the eye. To Jerry Tobin she was the Colleen Bawn. He kissed her like a knight paying homage to a lady love. The Jerry Tobin, boss of The Broadway Front, was unknown inside this threshold.
His wife saw the slender girl who waited hesitant, uncertain of her welcome. Mary Tobin took her hands as she said:
“Jerry ’phoned me you were a lady and a darling, Miss Fernandez, and I would love to have you in the house. Once in a while the lump of a man says something real sensible. Now run away, Jerry, and leave us two women alone. You have done your bit for to-night.”