“O, I’m a lady,A Hottentot lady,A one-time-piecee lubly gal O.”
“O, I’m a lady,A Hottentot lady,A one-time-piecee lubly gal O.”
“O, I’m a lady,A Hottentot lady,A one-time-piecee lubly gal O.”
“O, I’m a lady,
A Hottentot lady,
A one-time-piecee lubly gal O.”
His friends kept time for him as he danced by clacking spoons on their front teeth.
Sard wondered how it had come about that a very nice lady and a very young gentleman had roused the employer of such a crew to take extreme measures against them. He reckoned that it would be quite impossible for him to find these Kingsboroughs and then visit Los Xicales. “The thing has always mocked me,” he said, “perhaps all things do, if you think too much of them.”
He entered the Club just as the clocks struck five.
“Why, for the love of Mike,” the Club porter said, “if it ain’t Mr. Harker! Why, sir, how are you? Maybe you’ll not remember me, but I was in the crowd with you in theVenturerone trip, ’way back.”
Sard saw before him a young man of about twenty-five with a smile which brought him back to memory. It was Richard Shullocker, a young American who had been stranded as a lad by the death of his parents during an epidemic in one of the fever ports. He had shipped himself aboard theVentureras an ordinary seaman, so as to reach a windward port from which he could sail for Boston. In spite of his age, he had done very well. He had been known on board as the Big Smiled Kid, for his smile stretched from ear to ear and never ceased in any trouble or any weather. Now here he was, prosperous and ambitious, a Club porter in Las Palomas.
“Why, Richard Shullocker,” Sard said. “So you are here. I’ve often wondered what became of you. You’re looking well.”
“Yes, sir. This place suits me. But I’m through here this month. I’ve figured out this hotel and club business. I’m going to start business in New York City on my own account. And I suppose you are Captain Harker now?”
“No, just mate; with Captain Cary still. And now I want you to help me. Do you know of any man in this Club, a courtesy member probably, of the name of Kingsborough?”
“Why, sure, Mr. Harker. A young fellow, Mr. Hilary Kingsborough. If that’s the man, he was in here for his mail only half an hour ago. He’s been here about three weeks. He’s staying at a place up the coast, General Martinez’ place, Los Xicales.”
“Los Xicales,” Sard said, startled. “That house near the beach?”
“Yes. Colonel Mackenzie hired it for him; the police colonel. He’s staying there with his sister, who is sure one lovely woman; but they’re going from here to-morrow, down to Ytá-Ytá.”
“Where do they come from?”
“England, I guess. He writes up these old Spanish buildings and his sister draws them. She’s just plum lovely.”
“I want to get out to them, to give them a warning. I believe that they’re threatened by a gang of rough-necks. I’m sailing at six and have very little time. While I go out to them (I know the way to Los Xicales), will you go to the Palace of Justice and ask Colonel Mackenzie to have a patrol along there to-night?”
“Sure, Mr. Harker, I’ll go right now. But how are you going to Los Xicales? Not in that shay, I guess, if you’re in any hurry. You’d best take my bicycle if you’re hurrying. Say, George, rouse up the bicycle for Mr. Harker.”
While the negro went into the basement for the bicycle, Sard said that the crowd on Las Palomas beach seemed tougher than formerly.
“That is so,” Richard said. “These rum-runners have made it a tough joint. They run rum in and they run guns out. That mush-nosed maggot, Don José, is doing it all, to rouse up trouble in Santa Barbara.”
“Don José, that scum, against the Dictator?”
“He ain’t called a scum here in Las Palomas, Mr. Harker. This rum-running has made him a very rich man and his stock is away up in G. You’ll find that Don José will have another try for Santa Barbara before long.”
“I’m bound for Santa Barbara,” Sard said. “Would Mr. Kingsborough be mixed up with, or against, the Don José gang?”
“I guess not,” Richard said. “One can’t ever tell. He wouldn’t bewithhim, that’s sure: Mr. Kingsborough’s a gentleman. But here’s your bicycle, and if you’re sailing at six, I guess you’ll have to roll your tail like the Arab or you’ll not make it. Don’t you heed your caleche, I’ll square your driver.”
“One other thing,” Sard said. “Do you know a priest, a Father Garsinton? A lone rogue bull of a man?”
“No, sir: he don’t come bullin’ around here any.”
“Well, thank you for your help,” Sard said. He swung the bicycle round and rode off, thinking that he would have to sprint to be on board by six.
“So,” he thought, “I lied. The dreams are true. Here I am, led to this house, and by what strange ways. She will be there then, stopping with the Kingsboroughs. Could she be this Miss Kingsborough? But that cannot be, of course; Juanita de la Torre cannot well become Margarita Kingsborough. But let that wait. The dreams are true. She will be there somehow.”
He rode through the market-place over a mess of corn-sheath and trodden pumpkin, and away through the North gate to the savannah. Outside the walls there were a few houses, then a few market gardens, then the rolling sage-green savannah to the forest. The road was not macadam but dirt-track, with soft going, after the first mile. The houses ceased with the macadam, then came nothing but a ruined hut or two, and from time to time a stone cross, with a tin mug of holy water, a bunch of tinsel flowers, and an inscription, begging all who passed to pray for the soul of such an one, who had been killed there. Most of these many dead had been killed by Indians in the three dreadful raids of Capa Roja, when Sard had been a little child. Seven stone crosses together marked where Capa Roja had with his own hands martyred “seven most Christian virgins” as recently as 1872. Indian trouble had not ceased there until 1876.
Passing these, Sard rode on up a rise into the wild, mainly upon grass. Las Palomas had shrunk away from this northern tract, perhaps because of these old Indian killings; the savannah was as it had been before the white man had landed, an expanse of grass which seemed always alive from the wind. On a rise, the forest hove in sight, stretching across Sard’s track from the sea to the mountains. Clumps of forest stood out in the savannah like bull-bisons in advance of the herd: the sun was in their tops in a way which told Sard that he had not a moment to lose. “Still,” he said to himself, “I am going to Los Xicales, to her. Time will not matter beyond a certain point.”
Out of the forest a peon in a scarlet serape came loping on a pinto pony. He came with a jingle of plate, for horse, man and trappings were hung with discs and dangles beaten out of broad silver Mexican dollars. He rode, like a part of his horse, with matchless grace and swagger. He had a xicale flower in his hat, which he wore sideways, so as not to crush the yellow cigarettes behind one of his ears. He was probably an estancia peon, but he had the manners of a Master of the Horse to a Queen. “Xicales,” Sard thought, “you have come from there. Con Dios, caballero.”
The peon gravely saluted as he loped by, thinking that without doubt the English were mad, but that without doubt such was God’s will.
Almost immediately after the xicale flower had passed, the track, which had been trending inland (for the advantage of the rise in the Indian time) swerved seaward sharply, so that Sard as he rode had a glimpse of the sailing ship anchorage, and a part of Jib and Foresail Quay where the tug still lay at her berth. “There, Sard Harker,” he said to himself, “that has been your art hitherto and now you are a master of it. How much longer are you going to use your life in box-hauling another man’s yards around? Not long after you find ‘her,’ I know, and perhaps you will find ‘her’ this hour.”
The forest glowed in its tops across his path: myriads of its birds came in to roost. “I shall have to sprint all I know,” Sard thought, “if I am to reach Los Xicales and be back on board before we sail.”
Behind him, from out in the anchorage, but very clear in the quiet of the evening, came a cheer, followed by the chorus of men singing.
“There it is,” he said; “they are heaving in already. It must be half-past five already. I must set my stunsails or be done for.”
The glow became intenser upon the trees as he drew nearer to them, then, quite suddenly, he shot out of the glow into the gloom of the forest, which struck cold as well as gloom. On his left were pine trees all sighing together, on his right were Turkey oaks all hoary and evil with Spanish moss. They looked like evil Mr. Wiskeys grown bigger. They seemed to thrust out their heads and to wag their beards and to be wicked to the core. Through the crowds of these trees, Sard followed the track, in sound of the beating of the sea, till he dismounted at the lodge beside the gates. Wired to the side of the lodge was a white wooden roofing shingle marked in pale blue letters with the words “Los Xicales.” It had a look of having no one there, of being to let. As Sard looked at it, he felt an oppression in the air, as though all the life had gone out of it. “Here’s the norther,” he said; “and as it is coming on so slowly, it is going to be bad.”
Sard propped his bicycle against the gates and hammered on the lodge-door with his knife-handle.
Nobody answered. The door, which stood slightly ajar, let out a smell of stale tortilla. Sard could see little pale ants wandering on the floor within. He hammered again and again and called. Presently a slatternly-young negress, in a blue cotton gown patched with sacking, came up among the pine trees, and grinned at Sard like an idiot.
“O Jesu,” she said, “O Jesu!”
“Can I go to the house? Is anybody there?”
“The gates are always locked.”
“Yes, but I want to go to the house.”
“Tehee.”
“May I go to the house, to see Mr. Kingsborough?”
“O Jesu.”
“I am going to the house. See that no one steals this bicycle, or you’ll be a sick negress, mucha, mucha.”
He crossed the fence by the gap (the fence was indeed mainly gap) and set off down the weed-blinded drive under pines which had been tapped and were now either dead or dying. The effect was dismal in that muggy air, but Sard’s heart beat high with the expectation of adventure. Beyond all doubt, this was the house of his dream, the dreams were true, and he was going to meet her the very thought of whom made all that inner life of which no one had any suspicion. The turn in the drive brought him within sight of the house. He stood still, at the turning, to take stock of it. Then he went boldly up the steps and rang the bell.
An old white-haired negro, with charming manners, admitted and announced him. In a moment he returned, to say that Mr. Kingsborough would see him, at once, if he would follow. Sard followed, along the hall, which was paved, for the coolness, and grass-matted for ease in walking. The hall was bare of furniture save for an old Spanish chest, painted with the life of St. Dominic, which stood under a window, with its legs in glass jars (against the ants). Like all men accustomed to take bearings, Sard fixed the details of it. It was a long hall running along the length of the house, with doors opening off it, and a staircase at the western end. The old negro major-domo opened a door a few paces from this staircase, and announced him:
“Señor Don Harker.”
Sard went in and instinctively put back a hand to close the door. He felt the door as the negro closed it; he was amazed at its weight: it was black maruca wood from the house of some conquistador.
The room to which he entered was a long room at the southern corner of the house. The wall to his right, as he entered, contained a French window opening upon the verandah. A woman stood at the door of the French window, half in the verandah. He could not see her face, since it was turned from him, but there was something about her that made his heart stand still. She spoke as he closed the door:
“I will water the xicales, Hilary,” she said, “and come back when you are alone.” Her voice rang in his brain like a memory: she closed the glass door behind her, and passed by the verandah steps into the garden out of sight.
Sard turned to his left. A young man had risen from a chair to greet him. Sard looked at him eagerly for some trait or feature that would be like the face he sought, but the face was new to him: it was the face of a smiling young man, fond of fun and ease, perhaps twenty-five years old. Sard envied him the fun and ease, but felt that the lad was a child, compared with himself, who had dealt with the sea for ten years.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Harker?” the young man said.
Sard told what he had heard at the ringside and described the two men. The young man listened attentively and showed no sign of fear, but seemed puzzled.
“I know nobody like those two men,” he said; “and as for anyone called B., or Sagrado B., in Santa Barbara, I know no one of that name nor in that place. We have never been near Santa Barbara.”
“Nor met either the Dictator or Don José?”
“Never. I know nothing of either, except the gossip that one hears.”
“The danger threatened your sister more than yourself, Mr. Kingsborough. I gathered from what was said that this man in Santa Barbara had a grudge against your sister, perhaps of some years’ standing.”
“I think that’s out of the question.”
“There is no other Miss Kingsborough here, or any Spanish lady?”
“Spanish lady? No, nor other Miss Kingsborough.”
“They meant your sister, then.”
“Yes, but that is impossible. Of course, I am very much obliged to you for coming to warn me. It was very good of you. Do you think that we are in danger?”
“They were a bad two, mixed up with others worse; and we have a saying, ‘It’s better to be sure than sorry.’ ”
“Well; thanks. Only, I must say that I do not understand it.”
“I see, sir,” Sard said, “that you do not take it very seriously. Well, perhaps it is best not to cross rivers till you reach the water.”
“Threatened men live long.”
“Not in seaport towns,” Sard answered.
“Well,” Hilary said, smiling, “what do you think we ought to do?”
“I have passed word to the police to stand by,” Sard said. “But you know how much that is worth, among these Occidentales. I would say this, Mr. Kingsborough: take your sister in to the hotel in town, the Santiago, until you leave Las Palomas. I understand that that will be to-morrow.”
“You really think that the danger is as great as that?”
“I don’t know the danger,” Sard said, “only the risk. That is what I should do, if it were myself and a sister of mine.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harker. Will you smoke?”
“Thank you, I don’t smoke.”
“Will you drink something?”
“I don’t drink.”
“I think you said, Mr. Harker, that you belonged to a ship here?”
“Yes, sir, thePathfinder, sailing now for Santa Barbara. And I must go aboard now or lose my passage. So I will say good-bye, Mr. Kingsborough. I hope to hear some day that nothing has come of all this.”
“Is your ship a steamer, did you say?”
“The ship in the sailing ship berths there, about to sail.”
“Well, a pleasant voyage to you. And thank you again for coming to warn me. I’ll see you to the gate.”
Outside, the sun had westered so that the light was off the house. The oppression in the air, added to the gloom of the evening, made the place menacing.
At the angle of the house, the woman was watering the xicales. She wore white gardening gauntlets and a sun hat. Sard felt his heart leap up with expectation. He took a step towards her.
“This way, Mr. Harker,” Hilary said, correcting him. “That way leads to the garden.”
The woman had turned from them; he did not see her face; she disappeared round the angle of the house.
“Excuse me,” Sard said. “But is there no Spanish lady here?”
“Spanish lady?” Hilary asked. “You asked me that before. No. You may mean Tia Eusebia: she’s coloured.”
“You’ll speak to your sister about this warning,” Sard said. “And tell her everything that I have told you.”
Hilary answered coldly that naturally he would. The thought came to Sard with the pain of a blow that the dreams were all lies, and that once again he had failed to find her.
“Is anything the matter, Mr. Harker?” Hilary asked.
“A little queer,” Sard said. “Don’t come any further. I’ll let myself out. I must hurry. But tell me . . . Are you Spanish?”
“No,” Hilary answered, looking at him oddly, “I’m English.”
“Right, then. Good-bye. And I hope all will go well.”
“Good-bye and thanks.”
Sard hurried away, trying to pull himself together. He knew that Hilary thought him mad or drunk. Hilary watched him as far as the gates: then waved a hand and turned back to the house. “Odd beggar,” Hilary thought, “a very odd beggar. I didn’t half like the looks of him. He seemed to me to be as mad as a hatter. And asking me if I am Spanish. And whether I kept a Spanish lady!”
At the gates Sard stopped, saying to himself that he must go back and warn the woman. “That boy does not believe,” he said; “he thinks me daft; and she is in danger. And beside all that, I must speak to her. I must ask her if she be that one; for I believe she is: I believe she must be. And yet she cannot be Juanita: the name and everything else is changed. Her brother thought me mad when I asked if he were Spanish. Yet she was like enough to her: and then there was my dream. Changed or not, I must know, one way or the other; and besides, she must be warned. She is older and wiser than this boy and she must be warned of the danger.”
He knew very well that if he went back, he would meet a Hilary convinced of his madness and not speak to Miss Kingsborough, yet he half turned. As he did so there came from the anchorage far behind him, yet very clearly, a beating of thePathfinder’sbells as though for a fire. In an instant’s hush after the stopping of the bells there was a shout, which he heard but could not distinguish, followed by three roaring cheers. He knew what it was. ThePathfinder, being about to sail, was cheering all the ships in port. The cheering was followed by a carillon of bells and a thunder of cheering as both anchorages made reply.
“There it is,” Sard muttered, “I have twenty minutes before they man the windlass. I’m due on the fo’c’sle-head to see the anchor grow. I’ll do it yet.”
He might have done it, no doubt, but when he reached the iron gates, his bicycle was gone.
Hilary Kingsboroughreturned to his sitting-room to think over what Sard had said.
“I didn’t half like that fellow’s looks,” he muttered. “If there are thieves about, he might well be their advance agent come to spy out the land. Besides, kidnapping ladies is simply not done. What rot! It isn’t easy to hide a dead body, but as for a living one, it’s out of the question. How are they going to get a living woman out of Las Palomas against her will, either by land or sea? They can’t do it.”
He walked to the window to look out at the port. “All the same,” he said, “old General Martinez may have heirlooms and things put away here. Burglars might have got wind of them, perhaps. I’ll lock up carefully to-night.”
He stood at the window, looking out at the glow. The coast mailboat was at her buoy from San Paulo. She was theOtoquethat was to take him down the coast on her return journey the next day. The launches ground and hove about her gangway, while the slings of crates swayed up, poised, swung and jolted down among cries and clanking. There was a run of sea in the harbour which had not been there that afternoon; launches squatting on to it under way split it white. A sort of swell seemed to be coming into the harbour from the north. His thoughts were of Sard: but he could not help noticing the swell. “It is all rubbish,” he said. “Someone at the Club has sent that fellow here for a rag. These things do not happen. This is one of that bounder Coghill’s rises. He is always planting rags on people. What an ass that I was not to see it at once! Now that fellow will be at the Club telling how he scared me. Then at midnight, I suppose, they will serenade us with firecrackers and expect us to let them in and give them cocktails. Well, they will not get.”
Presently as he sat reading at his table, he heard the song of men from the sailing ship anchorage. He went out into his verandah to listen. It had gone strangely still and close, he thought; the roar of the chorus came to him over the water as though it were in the grounds. They were only heaving in, but he concluded that they were getting the anchor.
“That part of it at least is true,” he thought, “sheissailing now: and if he were one of her crew, he must very nearly have lost his passage. Still, those silly devils at the Club would have chosen him for that reason; because he will be gone, out of the way, before the rag is apparent. The whole thing is a rag.”
In the closeness he heard, quite distinctly, the words of a song:
“The charming little girl down Tiger Bay.”
“The charming little girl down Tiger Bay.”
“The charming little girl down Tiger Bay.”
“The charming little girl down Tiger Bay.”
Then the singing stopped and discomfort grew upon him; it was really very close indeed. At the same time the glow on the masts in harbour died suddenly: all the colour became ashen: night seemed to prepare and advance in the one moment; he noticed the flash of the light on Point Manola. “How dark it is,” he thought, “the very instant the sun goes down.”
He shivered on his verandah, not from cold but from uneasiness; he stayed an instant longer, half thinking that he saw something stir among the mita shrubs. He turned his glasses on the spot, but decided that he had been mistaken: there was nothing there. “Yet it looked like a face,” he said; “like the face of a little evil elderly man, such as Mr. Harker described.”
Now that the light was off the day, the place looked forbidding. He saw, for the first time, how easy it would be to creep up to the house unobserved, and how hard it might fare with them if people did creep up, for revenge or lust. “Of course, it is absurd,” he said to himself, “but I will walk round the house before we settle in. I will make sure that that was not a face in the mita shrubs.”
He picked up a stick, in case of snakes, and stepped out into the garden towards the shrubs. The world had already taken the night like a garment: the bats and wood-owls were abroad: the frogs in the marsh were singing: the sparks of fireflies burned and died among the dusk. He thrust into the shrubbery to the place which had made him doubt; he beat all round it with his stick. No one had been there; no one was among the rocks beyond the shrubs, nor on the beach between the arms of the rocks. The place was as deserted as it always was at such a time. The ships’ lights shone out from the anchorage. He heard some men in a fishing boat a mile away. Nothing there told of anything but quiet and of day telling day; no wind, no sea, no tumult: nothing but night at the end of toil. He could see no footprints on the beach.
In the covert on his way round the house he paused to listen. He heard nothing but the noises of the anchorage: a hail, a clanking of something coming to anchor, the hush and hiss of waves on the beach. Listening intently, he heard the noise of the lesser world: the snake moving; the rat roving; the insect’s shrilling. The night seemed all whispering and stealthy; he did not like it. He was glad to see his sister’s lit window in the upper floor, with his sister’s shadow against the blind. “This will not do,” he told himself. “Very likely that ruffian Coghill is watching to see me go round the house. That devil Coghill is always springing his rags: then watching to see how they take. I will work a rag on him before I leave the coast.”
When he had walked through the covert all round the house, finding nothing suspicious, he looked into the ruins of the out-houses, where the Martinez’ slaves had lived in old time. They were plainly given over to the rats and scorpions; there was nothing suspicious there, except that in one of the ruins there was a faint smell of tobacco, as though someone had smoked there during the day. “And who could have smoked there? Who could have, or would have? No one living here.” He could see no cigar-stub, nor cigarette-end, no match, nor sign of smoker; there was nothing there except the memory or ghost of tobacco; it was hardly even a smell, hardly a flavour. By opening his mouth and breathing in, Hilary felt the record of tobacco against his palate. Then, on the wall, he saw a faint luminous streak, which at first he thought to be one of the centipedes which glow with the decay they live in. Looking at it with a light, he saw a match streak. Someone had struck a wax match there, probably during the day, since the phosphorescence still showed. Who could have been there with a wax-match? No native, no one employed about the house. “That limits it,” he said, “to members of the Club, like Coghill.”
When he left the out-houses, he walked along the foot of the perron to the verandah. All seemed quiet there: the night was darker, the stars brighter, and the harbour lights twinkled more, but the sea-breeze was not setting in. “It is a lovely night,” he said. “All this rag business is absurd. I will not give it another thought. I will send Ramón, or one of the boys, down to the police, perhaps, for Margaret’s sake; but I will see that Coghill is paid for this. What is that white thing on the shingle there?”
The white thing lay on the ground near the steps leading to the verandah, in such a position that he must have seen it, had it been there when he left the house. “It was not there when I came down,” he said. It was a large, coarse, dirty-white linen handkerchief with a coloured border.
“This will be Ramón’s,” he said.
He went into the house, and called for Ramón, but received no answer. At his fourth call, his sister answered over the railings of the floor above: “Ramón has gone out,” she said. “He went into the garden five minutes ago, to look for you. Did he not find you?”
“No; nor did I hear him. I will call him.”
He went out and called Ramón three times, but received no answer. “It is very odd,” he said, “he does not reply.”
“Probably he has gone to the lodge; and he is a little deaf.”
Hilary came within the house to examine the handkerchief by the lamp in the hall. It was a man’s pocket handkerchief with a blue border: in one corner the initials A.B. were roughly stitched with black cotton: the stitching looked liker a laundry mark than a mark of the owner.
“Margarita,” he said, “I found this handkerchief in the gravel outside. It is marked A.B.”
“It must be Ramón’s.”
“Ramón’s would not be marked A.B.”
“Then it must be your friend’s: the man who was here must have dropped it.”
“He would not have had a rag like this.”
“Then it’s Lotta’s; she is the woman at the lodge; feckless enough for any rag.”
“What would she be doing in front of the verandah?”
“Dropping her handkerchief. Leave it. She will come back for it.”
“I will.”
When he had laid the handkerchief upon the shingle, he examined the floor of the verandah for footprints, but found none that he could read. He entered his study somewhat ill at ease. When he entered, he stood still for a few seconds listening intently: then he looked under the table, behind the chair, behind the curtains and into the outer passage. Finding nothing suspicious, he returned, locked the window door and drew the curtains across it.
“All the same,” he said, “it is just as well to be on the safe side. It probably is a rag, but, as that Harker fellow said, ‘it’s better to be sure than sorry.’ ”
His sister entered the room behind him.
“What are you looking at, Hilary?”
“Just the bay,” he answered. “We’re in for a storm.”
“It feels close enough for a cyclone,” she answered. “Who was your friend who was here?”
“No friend of mine. A Mr. Harker, a sailor.”
“Had you seen him before?”
“No.”
“What did he come about?”
“Just a minute,” he said. “If we are in for a cyclone, would you not prefer to go into town for the night? This forest will be a dree place in a gale.”
“It will be sheltered here,” she said. “I’d rather be in a forest than in a city during a cyclone.”
“I’m not so sure,” he answered. “These pine trees wail so.”
She looked out upon the darkness beside him.
“What did the sailor man come here for?” she asked.
“The sailor? Oh, nothing much. It was some rag of that bounder Coghill’s, I think. They said he was planning to get a rise out of us.”
“Do you mean Mr. Colin Coghill?”
“Yes.”
“He went up the coast to San Felipe three days ago. His brother has just died there.”
“How do you know?”
“Mrs. Pennington told me.”
“Oh, well, it was some other fellow’s rag, then.”
“He did not look to me to be the sort of man concerned in a rag. You say that his name was Harker? It seemed to me that I had met him somewhere. His face seemed familiar. Won’t you tell me what the rag is or was to be?”
“Yes, Margarita, of course; but it seems so absurd.” He told her in outline what Sard had said, omitting anything which might frighten her. He made his tale as light as possible, but he saw that she became very grave.
“Why are you so solemn, Pearl?”
“I was thinking of what you said.”
“Do you think that it is anything but a rag?”
“Yes, I do, Hilary. The man who came here this evening was in earnest.”
“You did not see him.”
“Yes, I did. I saw him in the garden. I noticed him very particularly, because I thought for a moment that he was someone else, a Mr. Chisholm. The only thing which puzzles me is the lack of motive. Why should burglars come here? There is nothing to steal here.”
“It is that which makes me think it is all a rag.”
“There was a case in Greece last Christmas of English people being kidnapped and held to ransom. We might be the . . . the swag, in this case.”
“Mr. Harker thought that the people were not burglars nor bandits, but rum-runners from Santa Barbara. He said that they spoke as if they all knew about us and that a Mr. B., or Sagrado B., apparently their director, had a score to settle with me. I cannot think of anyone of that name or nickname.”
“Sagrado B.? Sagrado? The holy or sacred.”
“Yes. It means nothing to you, does it?”
“Yes; it does, Hilary; at least it suggests something. It came into my mind directly you began to speak of this, and it explains it. You remember how, when you were a fresher, I went to Paris for a year? Well, when I was there, I met a man who tried to make love to me; a horrible man, who practised magic among other things. He wanted me to help him in a rite, and when I refused, he said that he would make me help him.”
“What was the rite?”
“Oh, one of the last infamies. It is unspeakable. When we were in Cuba last winter, I heard that the negroes practise it.”
“Who was this fellow?”
“He called himself the Holy One. His real name was Hirsch: I don’t know what his nationality was: he talked all languages. He was evil if ever a man was.”
“That was a good long time ago. He hasn’t bothered you since then, has he?”
“No; but he said then that the hour for that rite came once in every seven years, and it is now almost seven years since he made me that offer in Paris.”
“Sagrado does mean the Holy One. Do you suppose that this Hirsch would cherish a grudge or a desire for all that time?”
“Yes, I do. I know he would.”
“The sailor fellow advised me to take you into town to the Santiago, till we sail. Suppose we do that? After all, it would be wiser. I’ll send Ramón up to Paco’s for the buggy. We should be in the Santiago by half-past eight.”
“It seems like running away. Besides, if we go, we shall be leaving Ramón and his wife, as well as that lunatic Lotta, to meet whatever trouble may be coming.”
“No trouble threatens them, apparently. But I will explain it to them: if they wish, they can come with us. All the same, Ramón is a fighter. He was with General Martinez, under Juarez, in Maximilian’s time; he will not be easily moved from here. I’ll go send Ramón to Paco’s; he must be back from the lodge by this time. I’ll ring.” He moved over to the mantel and pulled the bell.
“Of course,” he went on, “if we can’t have the buggy, we can walk. If I put on a sombrero and you a mantilla, we should pass for two greasers. We will each take a revolver, of course, but we aren’t likely to meet any bad characters before midnight.”
“I’m not so sure of that; but I’d rather meet them than stay here for these others.”
“The roads are safe enough. Colonel Mackenzie told me that there had been no serious crime for over three months. Las Palomas is reformed. Of course twenty years ago people disappeared every night.”
“Where?”
“The quicksand out at Melilla is supposed to hide a good many. Now we’ll just take our things for the night and be ready to start. Ramón is a long time answering that bell. I’ll ring again.” He rang again, then walked to the window and peered out into the darkness.
“You never told me about Hirsch,” he said.
“He is not a fit topic for conversation.”
“I’m sorry that our happy stay here should end in a scare.”
“I am not scared. I am thinking about the people who disappeared. Do you think that any of them were women?”
“Good Lord, no! Don’t be distressed, my dear. They were these drunken diggers from Palo Seco at the time of the gold-rush. They were just floating men. Every nation has thousands of them, who cannot settle down. They wander off to sea or to drive cattle, and they get caught in a gold-rush or stuck with a knife in a brawl, or fall off a train or something. They have a run for their money. The solid fellow sticks at home and grows fat and bald and warlike in an office. The floating life has more dash about it.”
“If you want dash,” she said, “you should give up a planet and try a comet.”
“Ramón might try a little dash. I have rung twice. He must be in now. I’ll try a third. There; he cannot say that he didn’t hear that.”
“Listen.”
“I don’t hear him in the kitchen.”
“It is odd that he should be away at this time.”
“And on this night, too, Margarita. I will see what he is up to.”
He went into the corridor calling “Ramón,” but had no answer and heard no sound.
“Ramón!”
He went into the kitchen. The light was burning; the table was covered with the preparations for supper; grape-fruit, a dish of limes, mint, the long glasses with the crushing spoons for julep, eggs for an omelette, the patty-pans for hot bread.
“Ramón! Tia Eusebia!”
No one answered, but in the silence the clock ticked and the cazuela in the earthern pot began to boil over.
“Aren’t they there, Hilary?”
“No.”
“And they left the cazuela on the fire? Tia Eusebia never did such a thing before. Where can they be?”
“They must have gone to the lodge.”
“They would never have left these things like this. They would never both have gone.”
“They might, Margarita, with an urgent call, for a moment or two.”
“What urgent call has there been?”
“We ought to have heard any. Or Ramón would have told us.”
“They must have been gone ten minutes. Sudden death alone would make Tia leave her cooking.”
“I must go to the lodge to see what has happened.”
“Wait for one moment, Hilary; they may be upstairs. Tia may have swooned or Ramón had a stroke.”
“Tia! Tia Eusebia!”
“Ramón!”
They went upstairs together, into all the rooms, but the servants were not there.
“They must have been called to the lodge,” Hilary said.
“How? Without our hearing?”
“Lotta or one of her children ran to the window instead of coming to the door. We should not have heard that.”
“No. And of course if the call were very urgent, Ramón would not have stopped to tell us that he was going.”
“Put on a mantilla, then, Margarita; we will go together to the lodge. But before we start, we had better be a little cautious. Those rum-runners may have enticed them out.”
“I don’t think so,” his sister said. “Ramón went out to look for you, while you were in the garden.”
“What did he want with me?”
“He did not say. I thought he had something to ask you about supper. I don’t believe he ever came in again. I haven’t heard him. I believe that he has been out ever since; Tia Eusebia went on cooking, but at last became anxious, and then went out to look for him.”
“She would have called.”
“No she wouldn’t, Hilary. Ramón is rather deaf. She never calls him: she always goes to him. Old General Martinez has trained them both to be silent.”
“You’re right, I expect, Pearl,” Hilary said. “Most mysteries have commonplace explanations. But the question is, what has happened to poor old Ramón? He is an old man and may have had a stroke or a fall, and broken a bone.”
“I’m afraid that he may have turned down to the creek to find you and been bitten by one of those horrible moccasins.”
“Oh, Lord! Well. Let’s get a light and come to look for him.”
“We can’t, Hilary. See. Tia Eusebia has taken the lantern.”
“Well, we will take those old copies ofLa Nacionand light them up for flares. We’ll go to the lodge first, for Lotta and her children may be ill or something. You put on this mantilla and I’ll just get my revolver from the drawer.”
He swathed her in her mantilla, but was rather a long time getting the revolver.
“Buck up, Hilary,” she called.
“Just a minute,” he answered; “the catch of this beastly revolver seems to have jammed, or something. I can’t get it open, to load it.”
“Let me have a try.”
“I’m afraid it’s rusted-in, or something. I ought to have oiled it when I put it away.” He brought it to her. She thumbed at the catch, which was fixed tight.
“I’ll give it a bang or two with the tin-opener,” he said. He gave it a bang or three with the tin-opener, and then again with Tio Ramón’s hammer, but failed to release the catch.
“Open, you divil,” he said. He gave it a good clout with the hammer and cracked the catch across; a piece of metal fell with a clink upon the floor.
“Now I’ve done it,” he said, “I’ve broken the beastly thing.”
“You were just a little rough with it, weren’t you?”
“Yes; but who would have thought the metal would have cracked like that? It would have been dangerous work firing a thing as weak as that.”
“You have your pearl-handled pistol.”
“Yes, but the worst of it is, I’m afraid it won’t take these cartridges. I meant to have bought some for it only this afternoon, but like an ass I forgot.”
“Then we haven’t any firearms?”
“None that we can fire. We could use them as bluffs. And there’s a machete here, that Ramón cuts vines with.”
“Very well, then. Take that. Now, light up a torch and let us start.”
They rolled up some copies ofLa Nacionas torches and lit one of them while they examined the outer steps. They called loudly, “Tia Eusebia! Ho, Tia Eusebia!” but had no reply. They came down the steps into the drive, by the light of the flaming newspapers, which Margaret lit one by one as they proceeded. Small things crossing their track, scared by the light, reassured them, since their presence showed that no strangers had passed that way recently. It was dark night now. The shrubbery through which they passed glistened like a lot of eyes. The depth of the wood beyond was so ugsome, that it was a pleasure to them to turn the curve in the drive and see the light from the open door of the lodge.
Hilary called aloud, “Tia Eusebia!” and “Lotta!” but no answer came from the lodge or from the wood.
“There is something not quite right here,” Margaret said. “Jorge! Marianela! Even the children do not answer.”
“We will soon find what is amiss. Hola! Tia Eusebia! I believe that the lodge is empty.”
“That looks bad for Ramón; but we’ll soon know.”
They both ran to the lodge, calling.
“I’ll go in,” he said.
“Be careful, Hilary.”
“I will, my dear,” he said. “If one of these big black marimbas has come in, there’ll be somebody dead here.”
He rattled with his machete at the door and then went into the lodge. The oil lamp was burning on the table beside a pipkin full of frijoles. The room was empty: the bunks at the side were empty.
“Lotta,” he called. “Marianela! It’s as I thought, Pearl. There’s nobody here at all. But they’ve not been long gone; these frijoles in the dish are warm.”
Margaret peeped in at the door. “Aren’t the children in their bunks?” she asked.
“No, but they’ve been in their bunks. These blankets are warm still, and the bichos are on the hop, too, still, good Lord!”
“Well, where are they?”
“It’s very odd; but it can’t be foul play; it is on too big a scale for that: three adults and two children. Come to the door and let us both shout together.”
They shouted and yodelled and clapper-shouted for the missing five.
“Now,” Hilary said, “anyone within three hundred yards must have heard; even a deaf person must have heard. If they’ve been within hearing, they’ve heard us. Keep quite still now. We may hear an answer.”
They kept as still as mice on the grass near the gate, but heard no noise at all except the dropping and rustling never absent from the forest at night.
“It’s the spring equinox, or near it,” Margaret said. “Just listen a moment longer, Hilary; I seem to catch a noise like drums and a guitar, very far away.”
“Yes, there is some sort of tom-tom going; it’s in the forest, to the west, in that clearing called Los Jardinillos.”
“Well, Hilary, don’t you think it likely that the negroes have been called to some fiesta of the equinox?”
“That doesn’t fit it. They would have told us. It’s more likely that a priest has come with extreme unction, in need of a guide through the forest.”
“No. That doesn’t fit it. The man who fetched the priest would be the guide. And the priests here need no guide to any of their flock.”
“A revivalist preacher would draw these negroes,” Hilary said.
“Not these Catholics, and certainly not without telling us,” his sister answered. “It must be one of two things, Hilary. Either there has been some miraculous appearance in the wood, which would draw them out to worship, or these rum-runners have devised something. I begin to be afraid, Hilary.”
“I’m not afraid,” he said. “Do not you be afraid. Listen a moment. That tom-tom noise seems louder.”
They listened, while the thudding resolved itself into the plodding of a trotting carriage-horse coming from the direction of the port.
“A carriage,” she said. “It may be Paco with his buggy.”
“It’s more likely to be Colonel Mackenzie,” he said.
They listened, while the jog-trot of the horse drew so near that they could hear the noise of the wheels behind him. A carriage lamp shone through the trees. One of the city caleches came to a standstill before them. The driver told his fare that this was Los Xicales.
Hilary lit a new copy ofLa Nacion, so that he might see this fare. The man got out of the caleche and came towards him. He was a sleepy-looking man with a face seemingly made of wood. He blinked as he spoke. His speech came from somewhere in the northern midlands.
“Is thy name, Kingsboora?” he asked, “and has oor Mr. ’Arker bin ’ere?”
“Yes,” Hilary said; “he’s been gone from here an hour and a half.”
“Dostha know which way ’e went?”
“No.”
“Oor Captain Cary sent me to find oor Mr. ’Arker. Tha see, there’s a norther coomin’ on. We’re in thePathfinder, sailing. We don’t want to wait all night, tha see. Did ’e go back into the town, choom?”
“He went back to his ship, I think,” Hilary said. “You must have crossed him.”
“That’s it, tha see,” the man said. “ ’E didna coom by t’reet way. Look, choom, if ’e coom ’ere again, will tha tell ’im to coom aboard? Ma neem is Dorney. Now, lad,” he added to the driver, with pantomime instead of Spanish, “tak’ me back to Jib and Foresail, will tha?”
The driver turned his caleche and carried Mr. Dorney away into the darkness. When the wheels were almost out of hearing, Hilary suddenly remembered.
“We were asses,” he said. “We might have gone into Las Palomas with him.”
“I was thinking that,” she said. “But we couldn’t have gone, not knowing about Ramón. I hope that Mr. Harker has not met with any trouble on his way.”
“Not he,” Hilary said. “He took a short cut and passed this Mr. Dorney on the road somewhere. Let us call those negroes again.”
They called, but had no other answer than the distant drumming noise, which seemed to be a part of the tenseness of the night.
“It began with Lotta,” Hilary said. “Her handkerchief proves that Lotta came for Ramón. Any folly may have come from Lotta. We have given them a fair chance, now we will go.”
“Listen.”
“No; there’s no one.”
It was close, still, tense night, save for the sighing in the pines and that beating, like a heart-beat, from the distant drum.
“Come along, then, Hilary,” she said. “We will take Paco’s buggy and go into town.”
They set out for Paco’s estancia. They were both glad to be out of the grounds of Los Xicales. When they had gone about a hundred yards, they stopped and looked at each other.
“We’re both thinking the same thing,” Hilary said. “We can’t leave quite like this, without knowing what has happened to these people. We had better go round the estate before we go to Paco’s. Or how would it be if you went to Paco’s alone, while I went back to the house? Or wait: I’ll walk with you to Paco’s, get Paco and the buggy and Paco’s son Enrique, with their guns, and then we’ll all come back together, search the estate and then go to Las Palomas. Let’s do that: come along.”
“No,” she said. “All that will take time. I’m afraid that Lotta, or one of her children, or her imbecile man, or poor old Ramón, is in extremis somewhere. And our losing time may be fatal. I don’t like leaving the estate. I’m not afraid of desperadoes. If they were about, why did they not set upon us when we were shouting at the lodge?”
“I wondered that, myself, at the time,” he said.
“Surely it shows that they are not here. Besides, it is full early for desperadoes to be abroad.”
“I see all that,” he said. “We owe it to Ramón to be sure about him before we leave. We will turn down here, along the creek, and so circle back to the house. We shall have newspapers enough to light us there. But I don’t think we shall find him on this side of the house.”
“We may find him at the house,” she said.
“If he be not there, and if we do not meet him or learn about him within the next ten minutes, then, Pearl, you and I will go off to Las Palomas, by Paco’s buggy or on foot. Is that agreed?”
“Yes; agreed. We shall have really done all that we can, then.”
“I think we have done a good deal in turning off here for him; but he is a fine old boy.”
“He would do more than this for us,” she said.
“That is true, he would.”
They turned into the path beside the creek. There was plenty of water in the creek and plenty of snags in the water. The current was tearing at the snags with a lashing noise.
“You mentioned a Mr. Chisholm,” Hilary said. “Did I ever meet your Mr. Chisholm, or was he one of your Paris friends?”
They had stopped at this point to light a new torch from the stump of an old one. He saw her face blush a little in the light, and her eyes sparkled.
“By George, Pearl,” he said, “you are a lovely woman.”
“About Mr. Chisholm,” she said. “I met him at Passion Courtenay when I was a girl: long before I went to Paris. I have never seen him since. I don’t expect that you ever met him. He came with some people called Penger or Penga.”
“No. I never met him. And this Mr. Harker was like him?”
“Yes.”
“He was a pretty rough customer, if you ask me, that same Mr. Harker.”
“I would be very glad of his help, Hilary, if we were to be mixed up with the friends of that Paris man.”
“Put him out of your mind, my dear.”
“I wish I could, Hilary.”
They walked on until they came to a cleared space by the water. A wooden bridge had once spanned the creek here, but it had been swept away in a wash-out. The palings of it stuck out, like rib-bones, from an island in midstream. The water went past in a rush, curved out into the sands, and made a bar of seven white breakers as it reached the sea.
“It is from here, on, that one gets the moccasins,” Hilary said. “If any rum-runners come by this swampy bit, they’ll meet their match.”
They went warily forward, lighting themselves with their last copies ofLa Nacion. They met with no moccasins, but as they crossed the swampy patch by the causeway, the croaking of the bull-frogs hushed for a moment.
“This was the sort of place the Conquistadores landed in,” Hilary said. “Cortés landed in just such another, and burned his ships on the beach behind him. When we go down the coast, we will draw the very beach where he landed. Imagine landing like that, a thousand miles from any store, or any friend, in an unknown world. It was a lonely night for those fellows, when their ships were burned and they turned inland to what was waiting for them.”
“I would not pity them too much,” Margaret answered. “They were there from choice, mainly from greed; nor were they novices at the work. They had also three great advantages, guns, horses and Cortés. The prizes to be won were enormous, and the dangers to be faced only thirst, which was probably chronic with them; hunger, which they must have known in Spain; and death, which they would have had on the gallows if they had not emigrated.”
“I see all that,” he said; “yet there it is. Cortés came to the difficult new thing and did it. Then four hundred years afterwards, fellows like me appear, who write how Cortés did it and how he ought to have done it. Do you think that we last fulfil a function?”
They had now turned off on their way to the house through the forest.
“Yes, Hilary,” she said. “It is even called a kind of wisdom.”
Something in her tone made him pause to look at her.
“I don’t quite see your point,” he said.
“It is a kind of wisdom,” she said, “to be wise after the event.”
A moment later they came in sight of the bulk of the house looming up among the trees. A light from a scullery window shone directly upon their path, making the tops of the leaves to glisten like silver. As they came to the sight of this window, they both smelt on the instant a flavour of hot bread.
“They’ve come back,” Margaret said. “They have brought a candle to the scullery and Tia Eusebia is making the hot rolls.”
“Well, I’m blest,” Hilary said. “But you’re right; there is Tia Eusebia, taking away the candle.”
“I wonder where they have been.”
“We shall soon know.”
They hurried past the out-houses and up the steps to the door. Hilary knocked. After an interval Ramón and Eusebia opened to them. Both the old servants were flustered. They closed the door carefully behind Margaret and Hilary and then began to tell in swift soft Spanish of the wonders which they had seen.
“We have both been great sinners and thankless for God’s great mercies, O Señor and Señorita, but henceforth we shall live in sight of the throne, having been called, having been chosen. O the beauty and the grace and the sweetness that we have known this night. She, Herself, who is all good and grace, looked upon us and blest us. The most blessed Virgin has trodden upon these soils, O Señorita and Señor, and all the Blessed Fellowship will follow where she has trodden, and all the devils will be driven away. And the man with the two heads has gone already from by the blasted pine, and Black Peter with his tongue out has gone, and old Master that used to look sideways with yellow eyes, ran straight away out to sea, where all the lost go, and oh, hallelujah, hallelujah, be Thou seven times blest, O seven times Wounded One!”
“What has happened, Ramón?” Hilary asked.
“O Señor, the woman Lotta is surely a great saint, with all inner perfection.”
Hilary hoped that it might be so, but doubted.
“But where have you been, Ramón?” he asked. “We have been to and fro, shouting for you. Did you not hear us?”
“O Señor, yes, but we could not turn to you, having Her before us. The most blessed Virgin was at the Cross of the Stranger near the forest edge. Lotta ran to tell us, and we all ran, and oh it is blessed grace to be so blest as to behold, and oh joy, she looked upon us and blessed us; and oh joy to be set free, and oh bliss to be white who before was scarlet; oh triumph, oh glory; hallelujah, hallelujah!”
“For oh Lord, Señor Hilario, she was there, shining in her glory, in a blue skirt and white lace mantilla, and all diamond glory spangles and hairpins of purest gold, oh hallelujah, come down to set us free from wicked flesh and all damned temptation; and her face shone, and oh her voice, my dear, her voice, it was like a ripple.”
“How many were privileged to behold her?” Margaret asked. “Were there any beside yourselves?”
“Lotta and Jorge and Marianela, and we two, Ramón and Eusebia, by special grace, and the two from Los Jardinillos, Pablo Paloverde and his wife; we seven; only we seven of all the world: we seven dreadful deadly sinners; and now we are ransomed and released, and the precious grace comes floating in; oh sing and give thanks; oh sing before the throne, sing the glad happy psalm, knock the timbrel of glory.”
Here both the two old servants became possessed by religious excitement. Ramón’s words for the last two minutes had been running in a rhythm, now they became almost a song. The two old heads went back, their eyes closed, while their bodies began to sway in a dance, to which their hands kept time. “Oh,” they sang,