Several minutes later found the three cars drawn up together on a deserted side street near the International Bridge. Hannaford had called a halt. Doctor Garfield’s home and office lay in the next block, and the old ex-Ranger felt it was necessary to prepare a plan of campaign before going farther.
“Doc Garfield was in a hurry when he phoned,” said Hannaford. “I know where his phone is—in a little room separated from his office. He was speaking low and hurried, while Ramirez waited. Doc couldn’t tell me much, only that Ramirez come in a car which he left standing at the curb, and he thinks there’s a woman in the car and a couple or three men.”
“This doctor, his office it is in the next block?” asked Don Ferdinand. Jack Hannaford nodded. “It grows dusk,” said the old Don, “but,” he added, in a tone of conviction, “but I am certain that ees my friend’s car I see.” He pointed.
Twilight had come. Purple dusk lay over the quiet street. Graceful pepper trees lining the curbing enhanced the shadows beneath them. Yet it was not so dark but what those who had seen it before felt pretty certain that the car parked at the opposite curb in the next block was that borrowed from his friend by Don Ferdinand and stolen from the latter by Ramirez. The shadows were growing deeper, yet the lines of the car and the occasional glimmer of polished trimmings could not be mistaken. Hannaford gave confirmation.
“That’s where Doc Garfield’s house is.”
“Look here,” said Jack, taking the initiative. “We’ve got the advantage of surprise. They won’t be expecting us. Let’s dash up beside them, and demand their surrender. We’ll be on them before they can know what is happening. Mr. Hannaford, who knows the house, can lead a group inside in a dash that ought to bag Ramirez without trouble, especially as he’s got a busted arm.”
Nobody could suggest any better plan.
“Furthermore,” said Jack, addressing the aviators, “the car you fellows are driving better fall to the rear. Ramirez’s men have seen it.”
Arrangements were quickly made, a number of aviators transferring to the taxi previously occupied by the older men, while Captain Cornell took his place in that occupied by the three boys. One was to range up alongside the stolen car, the other to draw up behind it, whereupon its occupants could pile out and take the gangsters on the other side. As for Hannaford and his group, who were to enter the house, they were to go up a side street and approach from the rear.
“Ramirez may see what’s going on out front, and take to his heels out the back door,” said Hannaford. “If he does, we’ll bag him.”
This arrangement was satisfactory to everybody except the three older men. Mr. Hampton was regretful because his wounded shoulder would keep him out of action. Mr. Temple was plainly nervous and disinclined to have the boys running into danger. And Don Ferdinand bounced up and down, demanding a revolver, so that he could take a hand in the fray. But there was none to spare, and he and his two companions were to stay in the aviators’ car. As for the drivers of the two rented taxis, they were not without experience in affrays of one sort and another in this tempestuous community, and their fares were sufficient guarantee that they would be compensated for any damages sustained. Moreover, they knew Jack Hannaford, whose word with them was law.
“Let’s go,” said Captain Cornell, impatiently.
The discussion of details, quickly though the latter had been arranged, had consumed several minutes. Dusk was deepening. Jumping into the leading taxi, Captain Cornell seated himself beside the driver, a position which fortunately would put him next to the car ahead. The boys were in the rear compartment, Jack crouching by the door and ready to throw it open and leap out at the crucial moment.
In such tense moments, it is emotion, not reason, which sways one. Certainly, Jack was in the grip of strong emotion. Certainly, the others were, too, as they bore down upon the car ahead. But how different in every case! Jack was filled with rage bordering upon despair as he thought of the possibility that Rafaela might have come to harm through the machinations of Ramirez. His whole idea was to lay hands on Ramirez at the earliest possible moment and to choke the truth out of him, to force him to confess where he had hidden Rafaela, if he or his lieutenants had stolen her from her home during her father’s absence. To none of the others, except Rafaela’s father, no, not even to Jack’s two comrades, did the affair appear in the same light as to him. They likewise were stirred by emotions, but only such as are incident to men hunting a criminal, in whose evil-doing their own personal fortunes or the fortunes of dear ones are not involved.
Only a very brief space of time was required to cover the ground intervening between the last halting place and the field of action, and, before the two taxis closed on the car ahead, the big car from the aviation field, under command of Jack Hannaford, swung into the intervening cross street. Mr. Hampton, who was among its occupants, shook his head as he lost sight of his son. He knew, if nobody else did, how Jack was shaken emotionally.
Hannaford pointed and, at his accompanying word of command, the young aviator at the wheel swung the car to the curb. Then the grizzled old Texan and the aviator—it was young Harincourt who had been detailed to this task—leaped out. Quickly he outlined his plan.
They were at the mouth of an alley running along the rear of Doctor Garfield’s house. Hannaford and young Harincourt would enter the house from the rear. Mr. Hampton, Mr. Temple and Don Ferdinand were to keep guard at the alley’s mouth. If Ramirez escaped Hannaford and came down the alley, it would be their job to pot him. Don Ferdinand, raging, protested. He wanted to be in the forefront.
“Two’s enough,” said Hannaford brusquely. “More would git in their own way. You stay here. Come on, lad.”
And with Harincourt at his heels, the old ex-Ranger darted up the deserted narrow alley, in which the shadows were deepening at the near approach of night, as briskly as a boy.
Mr. Hampton shook his head in admiration, a little smile on his lips.
“A tough breed,” he commented.
In the meantime, up the shadowy street in front of the house, with its air of Sabbath calm, sped the two taxis, while peal on peal of bells from the tower of a nearby church floated down on the still air. What irony, thought Jack, church bells and he and his comrades speeding on such a mission! Yet their mission was of the best, he comforted himself.
And then all thought except of the matter in hand fled, crouching against the door, ready to fling it open and spring out, his eyes, just tipping the rim of the panelled glass, beheld the other car at the curb, ahead, abreast. Now, now. As the brakes squeaked, and the taxi ground to a stop so suddenly as to fling all its occupants about, Jack thrust the door outward and sprang upon the running board of the other car, pistol in hand. Beside him was Captain Cornell, leaping down from the driver’s side, and at his back Bob and Frank, crowding close.
But what was this revealed in the depths of that other car? What, but one man struggling desperately yet unavailingly in the grasp of another? And of a third man cowering in a corner, with his upflung arms protecting his face, while over him bent a fury in woman’s clothes, one hand gripped in his hair and the other reaching talon-like for his features?
Ramon, the Hamptons’ old cook, face distorted. “Senor Jack, queek or he escape. I—cannot—hold—heem—”
And then Captain Cornell’s pistol butt falling on the head of him whom Ramon clasped, and the other lying still and Ramon rising to his knees with a sob of thankfulness.
And then, wonder of wonders, the fury faced about, and it was Rafaela. Rafaela, her face appearing as through a mist to Jack’s unbelieving eyes. And quick as thought he threw an arm about her and drew her close, while all the fighting fury which had nerved her to the attack went out of her, and she collapsed with a little trembling cry. And Bob and Frank, over there, on the other side of the car—though how they got there was a mystery to Jack!—sitting on the form of the ruffian whom Rafaela had faced and outfaced and at their back, only half-seen in the growing darkness, the other aviators from the second taxi.
“Is it all over? Anybody hurt?” the young aviators demanded.
But Jack could think of nothing except that here was Rafaela whom he had thought far away, and safe in his arms, when he had feared she was in Ramirez’s power. Safe in his arms—
For the first time he was aware of the broad grins upon the faces of his two comrades, and the scarcely less-pronounced smiles of his Border Patrol friends. He knew the reason, but he merely pressed Rafaela tighter in the circle of his arm. It was she who pulled away, with a “Thank you, Senor, but I can stand now.” And then—they were now in the street between car and taxi—the little witch must needs add, as if utterly surprised, “Oh, it is you, Jack.” And Jack, looking no more foolish than he felt, could only add, “Yes, it’s I. Who—who did you think it was?”
The grins became broader, someone laughed. Rafaela only shrugged.
Across the embarrassment cut Captain Cornell’s voice. “Tie ’em up, boys, and into the house, quick.”
“Oh, but, Senor, not Ramon,” protested Rafaela, facing the group about the volubly expostulating cook. The two other captives were sullen and silent. “He have been of a help to me.”
“Senor Jack,” Ramon held out supplicating hands.
Jack hesitated, but the old cook’s appeal coupled with a glance from Rafaela decided him. “I’ll answer for Ramon,” he said.
And Bob, remembering the old cook’s recalcitrance toward Ramirez outside the bull ring that afternoon—was it only a few short hours before?—spoke up with, “He’s all right. Let’s beat it into the house.”
A swirl and a whoop, a patter of running feet, and away dashed the others, up the walk toward Doctor Garfield’s house behind a wide lawn. The two hastily yet securely-trussed captives lay on the sidewalk, with Ramon leering about them, lighting a cigarette. The taxi driver looked down interestedly from his seat at the two young people standing so close to each other between his cab and the other car.
“Aw, rats,” he muttered, but grinning as he spoke the words. “Ain’t they the sweet young things.”
Then he climbed down stiffly and walked around on the other side of his taxi to talk to his brother chauffeur in the other car.
The rest can be briefly told. When the reserves, so to speak, entered Doctor Garfield’s office, they found Ramirez already captive in Hannaford’s clutches. The Mexican had been in the act of departing, he was, in fact, already at the front door, his hand on the knob, when the old Texan from the rear had commanded him to surrender.
Don Ferdinand, raging, had broken away from the restraint of Mr. Hampton and Mr. Temple, and had followed in the wake of Hannaford and young Harincourt. He stood, trembling with passion, in front of Ramirez, as the aviators under Captain Cornell, and ably supported by Bob and Frank, appeared in the doorway of the office.
“My daughter?” he was demanding, shaking his fist under Ramirez’s nose. “Where is my daughter?”
And the latter, his evil eyes gleaming from his swarthy face, was leering down at the smaller man.
“Where you cannot find her,” he was saying, for he believed that his shout of warning, emitted as Hannaford captured him, had been heard and heeded by the captors of Rafaela who were in the car outside.
But the malicious triumph that shone from his eyes departed when his attention was drawn by the loud trampling of feet in the hall and he swung around to face newcomers in the doorway. If these were more Americans from the front of the house, it was likely that his men had been captured and Rafaela rescued, was the thought that followed. And this suspicion of the downfall of his rascality was confirmed when Bob stepped up to Don Ferdinand.
“Don’t believe him, sir,” said the big fellow. “Your daughter is safe outside. Jack is with her.”
The last words fell on unheeding ears. Don Ferdinand went through the crowd and out the hall like an arrow.
Much had been done, but something still remained. Ramirez and several of his lieutenants had been captured, and Rafaela rescued. But a score of Ramirez’s followers were still at large, and the large band of Orientals whom Ramirez was smuggling into the United States in defiance of the immigration laws would have to be rounded up before the Border Patrol would consider its efforts a complete success.
“You see, it’s this way,” Captain Cornell hurriedly explained to Jack and his comrades; “the new immigration law which is under discussion in Congress right now proposes a practically complete ban of Orientals. Few enough have been admitted heretofore, the majority being permitted to enter under a so-called gentlemen’s agreement, and posing as students. Well, some have been students, but certainly not all.
“Now,” he added, “if you are not familiar with what is going on, I can tell you that our government is preparing to frame a law which will make it impossible for Orientals to enter our country. There have been frequent rumors of late to the effect that the Orientals were leaving their crowded home lands and migrating to Mexico, where there is no ban against them, in large numbers. Doubtless, Ramirez, who has a head on his shoulders, even if he does use it only for rascality, and who keeps abreast of the times, saw his opportunity in this situation. He has planned an ‘underground railway’ for running Orientals out of Mexico and into the United States. There used to be a traffic in the same sort of human contraband on the Pacific Coast, until it was broken up a few years ago. But,” he interrupted, surprised, “why these knowing looks at each other?”
His listeners laughed. “You tell him, Jack,” said Bob.
“Well, Captain,” said Jack, “you may not believe it, but we three happened to have a hand in breaking up that traffic. And a sweet time we had of it, too, for a while. By accident, we stumbled on something in San Francisco which made us dangerous to the Smuggling Ring. They kidnapped us and took us to sea. But we managed to escape and to bring the government forces down on their hiding place in the Santa Barbara Channel islands. Fellows,” he added, addressing Bob and Frank, “do you remember that inventor—Professor What’s-his-name, and his radio finder for locating uncharted stations? That’s how we managed to find the hiding place, Captain, through locating their radio calls between a shore station and their boats.”
“Those were the happy days,” said Bob reminiscently, and a faraway look came into his eyes as his thoughts turned back to the exciting events narrated in The Radio Boys on Secret Service Duty.
Frank nodded. “Lots of fun,” he said.
Captain Cornell threw up his hands in mock dismay, as he laughed. “You three must be regular trouble-finders,” he commented. “Do you always get into the thick of things like this?”
“Oh, not always,” said Jack. And Bob grumbled:
“Thick of things? Huh. We aren’t in the thick of things this time. You fellows flying to Carana are going to get the cream of the whole affair.”
The conversation had been conducted in undertones. All four were standing on the outskirts of the group in Doctor Garfield’s office, which was brilliantly lighted while in one corner Captain Murray, finding he could obtain little information from the sullen Ramirez, was now pumping Ramon. Don Ferdinand had taken Rafaela to the home of his merchant friend, and the boys were to call on them on the morrow. Doctor Garfield had re-dressed Mr. Hampton’s wound, and the latter had departed for the hotel, accompanied by Mr. Temple, for the express purpose of trying to locate the owner of the flivver which Bob and Captain Cornell had made off with outside of the Nueva Laredo bull ring that afternoon, in their pursuit of Ramirez, and of reimbursing him.
The other aviators were listening to Captain Murray’s attempt to obtain information from Ramon. Presently the latter turned away impatiently, and, his eyes lighting on Jack, he beckoned him forward.
“Hampton, I can’t get anything out of your old cook. You try your hand.”
“Look here, Ramon,” said Jack, eyeing the old fellow keenly. “You’re afraid of something. You know you’ll not be prosecuted. You did us too good a turn outside for that. Now what is it? Tell me. Are you”—and he leaned closer, whispering so that only Ramon could hear—“afraid of what Ramirez may do if you betray any information about his plans?”
“Si, Senor,” breathed Ramon.
Jack in turn whispered to Captain Murray. The latter frowned thoughtfully for a second or two, then his eyes brightened, and he turned to Hannaford. The other stooped from his greater height, and the three put their heads together. The other Americans regarded them curiously. As for Ramirez he continued to glower while from beneath his lowered lids darted a poisonous glance which fell on Ramon and made the old fellow tremble.
“Come on, you,” said Hannaford, at length, turning to Ramirez; “we’ll just put you where you won’t be no trouble to anybody but yourself.”
With a hand as big as a ham gripping the more slightly built Mexican, Hannaford marched him outside and flung him into one of the taxicabs.
“Where to, Jack?”
“County jail. Step on ’er.”
Behind them, in the office, already Ramon was growing brighter, with Ramirez away. And now he no longer hesitated to answer questions, for Jack assured him that Ramirez would be sent to the Federal Penitentiary for violation of a national law, and that years would elapse before he would ever be free again.
“Senor Jack,” said Ramon, addressing Jack in Spanish, “you ask yourself why Ramon abandons you at the ranch? Ah, you do not know, you do not know that devil’s power? Once I was a bandit; that was years ago. Then I went to the Estados Unidos and became respectable. Senor, when I go to the village that day to buy supplies for our ranch, two lieutenants of Ramirez encounter me. Aye, Senor, those same two—Andreas and Jose—whom I fight and overcome in the car, myself, alone, single-handed, as you arrive.”
He thumped his chest, and Jack with difficulty restrained a burst of laughter. From behind him, where the others crowded close, came a tittering which betrayed that others were not so heedful of the old man’s feelings. But Ramon paid them no heed.
“Andreas and Jose tell me they have a fine job for me, Senor Jack, and when I decline and inform them I already have the fine job, they compel me to go with them. Of a certainty, I, Ramon, would have fought them then, except that they were armed while I had not even a knife.
“We get in the train, Senor, and we ride to Laredo. And then they take me to that house you know of, where they make me cook for thousands of stinking Orientals. And, Senor, Ramirez, he laugh at me.”
The old man bowed his head in shame, and this time no laughter came from the men crowding close behind Jack. The latter dropped a kindly hand on Ramon’s bowed shoulders.
“It’s all over now, Ramon, and he shall never get you in his clutches again,” Jack promised. “And now,” he added, at an impatient whisper from Captain Murray, “tell us where the Orientals are, and how they are to be brought into the United States.”
“Senor, tonight at midnight, they are to be at a point forty miles west, on the Rio Grande. A rough trail leads there, and it is wild country. At midnight, boats will meet them and they will be ferried across the river from Mexico into Texas. Guides will take them to Carana, where they will be housed until tomorrow night, when they will be sent on to San Antonio. There are no Americans at Carana, Senor, only Mexicans; and the whole town, which is not large, is in Ramirez’s pay or, else, fears him and keeps silent.”
And once more Ramon ceased speaking, while his hands went patting here and there about his person, but without success, until one of the aviators with a smile stopped his fruitless search by thrusting a packet of cigarettes into his hand. The old man gratefully accepted one, lighted it, and sat back, puffing.
Captain Murray walked to an open window and looked out. Then he turned back with a decisive set to his shoulders.
“As calm a night as one could desire,” he said to his confrere, Captain Cornell. “Three hours to midnight. And we could reach Carana in less than an hour. I know the village. Nobody there to telephone to, nobody to put on guard. What say?”
“You’ve landed there, haven’t you?”
“Yes. In bright moonlight like this, there’s no chance to miss it. A little settlement where the river takes that big bend to the north. Several good fields nearby. And in this flood of moonlight, landing ought to be easy.”
All were listening closely, and the atmosphere was tense.
“If those Orientals once get into Texas, they’ll be as hard to round up as jackrabbits.”
“Yes, and if we break up Ramirez’s gang, there’ll be no boats for the Orientals to cross in.”
“Just what I was thinking. Three ships ought to be enough, two in each.”
“Right. I’ll telephone the field to warm ’em up.” And Captain Murray turned to white-haired old Doctor Garfield, who like the others, had been an interested listener, and asked him for the location of his telephone. The Doctor silently threw open a door, and switched on the light in the next room, and Captain Murray sat down to the phone.
Anybody strolling into the dining room of the Hamilton Hotel after the dinner hour three nights later would have seen an amusing sight. The big room was being prepared as if for another dinner, when, as everybody knew, the regular diners had all been and departed. Nevertheless, instead of waiters clearing the tables and porters mopping up, here were the employees of the fashionable caterer of the town directing the waiters in assembling the tables down the center of the room into one long table, some putting on snowy linen and setting out silver and plate and flowers, others placing banks of flowers along the walls.
Rangy old Jack Hannaford, looking vastly different and uncomfortable in black coat and white collar, peered into the room and then precipitately withdrew. In his retreat he bumped into several other old-timers, likewise bent upon viewing the metamorphosis of the dining room, and they chaffed him unmercifully.
“Look at him all duded up.”
“Wouldn’ta knowed ye, Jack.”
“Huh. That ain’t Jack Hannaford. That’s an undertaker. Where’s the corpse?”
“It’s you that is mistaken. He’s the corp himself. See how white he is.”
This last witticism drew a roar of appreciative laughter.
“Think ye’re smart, don’t ye?” said Jack, beginning with dignity and ending in companionable mirth. “Waal, fellers, I look like I feel.”
Jack was going to the “party.” So were seven spruce young men in white ducks donned by command invitation instead of their hot uniforms, who entered the lobby at that moment. The foremost saw Hannaford and hailed him, and the old Texan at once deserted his tormentors to join the newcomers.
“Le’s sit down, boys,” invited Hannaford, “nobody but ourselves ain’t come yet.”
With comfortable sighs, all eight sank into chairs which were drawn in a semi-circle. Jack looked around the group. None of the aviators with whom he had shared the honor of Ramirez’s capture and the rounding-up and scattering of the Smuggling Band was absent.
“Ain’t seen you since that night, Captain,” said Hannaford, his deep voice booming as he sought ineffectually to modulate it, and addressing himself to Captain Cornell. “We got a minute’s time before the party begins. Lay ’er out for me. What happened?”
So then Hannaford was told of how three De Havilands, each with its crew of two men, had gone cruising through the moonlight of that memorable night, high above the silvery reaches of the Rio Grande, to a landing near Carana; how there the members of the Border Patrol, commandeering a battered flivver, had piled into it and departed down river in time to round up a full dozen of Ramirez’s band before ever a boat had put out across the river for the purpose of transferring the Orientals into the United States, and had sent the others flying.
“You know the rest, Jack,” said Captain Cornell. “The fellows that we rounded up were all Mexicans lured from Don Ferdinand’s mine by Ramirez with specious promises of the much gold they would receive. They’re still in jail, but I expect that Uncle Sam will make it easy for them, inasmuch as they were not caught in the act and as they had not yet brought Orientals into the country. Besides, Don Ferdinand needs them back at his mine, and he and the Mexican Consul are making representations which ought to carry weight. How about Ramirez?”
“With him and his two lieutenants,” Hannaford said, “it’s some different. We got enough on ’em to hang ’em. And good riddance, too, if it could really be done—but it cain’t.”
Captain Cornell laughed. “You bloodthirsty old villain.”
But Hannaford did not even smile. “I know him, you don’t. Listen, let me tell you, it’s a mighty good thing them boys took a hand.”
“They’re the real stuff, Jack,” Captain Cornell agreed heartily, and his companion nodded. “The real stuff,” he said. “But, say, Jack, what’s the reason for their giving us this party tonight?”
Hannaford looked mysterious but confessed ignorance. “Only,” he added, “don’t fool yourselves none. This party ain’t bein’ give for us, or I miss my reckonin.’ We’re only the lookers-on.”
“Great guns,” cried Captain Cornell, half rising from his chair, and gazing toward the doorway. “Look who’s here.”
All eyes followed his gaze. And, truly, the vision entering the lobby was worth attention. It was Rafaela, leaning on her father’s arm, but a Rafaela so gloriously beautiful and so quaintly dressed in Spanish costume—or was it merely a touch here and there, such as the lacy black mantilla, which made her costume appear so much more picturesque than that of the more Americanized beauties who followed her?—that she took away the collective breath of the entire group.
Across the lobby Don Ferdinand, impeccably clad in dinner clothes, saw the standing group of aviators clustered about Jack Hannaford, and with a word to Rafaela, he made his way toward them. And then while the aviators gallantly professed themselves captivated, and while Rafaela and her attendant beauties blushed and bowed as prettily as ladies of the Sixties, introductions finally were achieved. Strangely enough, there was a beauty for each, with a handful left over. Even Jack Hannaford, confirmed old bachelor, groaned inwardly, as he saw a duenna—the counterpart of Donna Ana, Jack could have told him—being gently manoeuvred his way.
And Jack, where was he? And Bob and Frank? Ah, there! Coming down the stair; at their heels, Mr. Hampton and Bob’s father. Nor could any of the group, watching the approach across the lobby, guess that for the last hour tall, curly-haired Jack Hampton had been dressing with more painstaking preparations than he had ever bestowed on this operation before in his life. Nor could any have guessed that during that time he had been the target of unmerciful chaffing on the part of his chums—until at length he had attempted to expel them from his room, and a tussle had ensued, and he had been compelled at the end to undertake dressing all over again, for it had left him a ghastly ruin.
No, none of these things could have been surmised from his appearance. For, fortunately, he had not yet donned dinner jacket and vest when the tussle had begun.
A merry clatter of voices rose as the two parties met and mingled, only to be temporarily stilled when Mr. Hampton announced that they would move into the dining room. So in they poured, each gallant aviator doing his best to be a ladies’ man, with a Creole beauty on his arm, and Bob and Frank in the same case, while Jack walked beside Rafaela and neither spoke a word, yet eyes were far more eloquent than any speech could have been. And last of all came the three elders of the party—while the fourth, the real elder of all, old Jack Hannaford, strode fiercely just ahead of them, with the duenna’s fingers resting on his high-crooked arm.
The room was a blaze of light. The decorations miraculously had all been arranged. And down the center, under its canopy of snowy linen, with the silver gleaming and sparkling, ran the long table. Place cards? Yes, here they were. And amid much laughter the various couples found their places.
Then silence, while Mr. Hampton at the head of the table, looking impressive and yet mischievous, lifted his glass—of sparkling grape juice.
“Friends,” he said, “under other circumstances, the announcement I am about to make would come in an utterly different way. But the people involved—oh, yes, there are people involved—lead such scatterbrain lives that the customary manner of announcing engagements must be a bit scatterbrained, too.”
Bob and Frank, standing beside their partners across the table from Jack, looked pointedly at him and Rafaela, grinning widely the while. And in the little pause following Mr. Hampton’s last words, the aviators who had been unaware of what was coming and felt sadly puzzled, caught the significance of that glance. Jack tried to grin back manfully, but it was what his two comrades privately considered a sickly attempt. As for Rafaela, she looked as demure and unconcerned as if not she, but some other of the beautiful girls nodding to her with parted lips, was about to be named.
“I ask you to drink,” cried Mr. Hampton, “to my son and his affianced bride.”
There, the secret was a secret no longer. And in the hubbub that followed, with girls crowding around Rafaela, and the men about Jack, telling him what a lucky fellow he was, the dinner bade fair to be forgotten.
But suddenly a waiter wearing an anxious frown appeared at Mr. Hampton’s elbow, apologetically but firmly pleading for a hearing.
“It’s that crazy fella you says must be master of ceremonies,” he said. “He says you must go on with the dinner or it will be spoiled. He’s out there in the kitchen, tearin’ around like wild. I says no good would come of havin’ one o’ these Spanish chefs in the kitchen, bossin’ everybody. There,” pointing toward the kitchen door—“there he is now.”
Mr. Hampton, lips quirked in a smile, let his gaze travel down the room. In the kitchen door, outlined against the gleaming ranges beyond, stood a figure, arms akimbo. Mr. Hampton said to the waiter, “All right, tell him to begin.” And to the distant figure, he waved a hand, a signal which the latter apparently understood, for he disappeared.
“Ramon says we must begin dinner,” Mr. Hampton announced, turning to Don Ferdinand on his right. And he rapped on the table, and made a similar announcement. “You’ll all have to sit down and be good,” he added, “or the old fellow’s heart will be broken. He wouldn’t let anybody, not even the caterer, oversee this dinner but himself. Says he owes it to Jack for lifting from him a load that oppressed him for years.”
It was a hot June day when little more than a month later, two commodious limousines keeping close together rolled along the last few miles of the Boston Post Road, coming from the South, and entered New Haven. How strange and yet familiar seemed the streets of the famous college city to the lithe, sunburned young fellow at the wheel of the foremost car. This way and that darted his glance, as the car passed Poli’s and many another place enshrined in memories and traditions, and he was kept continually busy pointing out landmarks to the dark olive-tinted beauty beside him.
It was still early in the day, for they had left New York at an early hour. But already the crush of automobiles coming and going in the streets was dense. And as they drew near a great green square resembling a public park, in the very heart of the business section, the traffic became so dense and slow-moving that the young fellow was compelled to give all his attention to his driving and to crawl, start, stop continually.
It was on his companion that the first sight of the noble group of buildings, wide-stretching amid stately elms, on the other side of the green square, dawned. She clutched his arm, while her eyes opened wide.
“Oh, Jack, how you must love it.”
“Uh-huh,” grunted Jack, casting one swift look toward the dear familiar buildings of Old Eli. “But don’t grab me like that again, please, or we’ll be crawling up on top of this car ahead.”
A few blocks farther, on a side street, Jack rolled into a garage already almost filled with cars and, while he was assisting Rafaela to alight, the second car drew in. From it stepped Mr. and Mrs. Temple and Mr. Hampton. From the first car Jack helped out Don Ferdinand and then Bob’s sister, Della. A slim, charming girl, with the springy step and quick yet graceful movements of a veteran tennis player, she well merited all the devotion which Frank Merrick showered on her. During Rafaela’s week in New York, shopping for her trousseau, a warm friendship had grown up between the two girls. Della’s chum, Marjorie, to whom big Bob had of late been paying marked attentions, was already in New Haven, and would meet them later.
“Now to find the fellows,” said Jack, when all were assembled. “And there’s no getting around the streets in a car in this crowd, which is why I brought you here. Come on, fall in line.”
Chattering gaily, the little party set out with Jack leading, Rafaela clinging to his arm.
“It’s rather old-fashioned, Mother, for a girl to lean on a man’s arm like this,” whispered Della in an undertone. “But I like it. I think she’s charming, don’t you?”
“These Southern girls,” replied Mrs. Temple in the same guarded tone, “I always did consider them more attractive than you mannish young women.”
Whereat Della laughed lightly, nor felt any hurt. She knew none was intended.
“Oh, there’s Tubby Devore,” she cried the next moment. And running forward, she gripped Jack’s free arm and pointed. “Jack, Jack, there’s Tubby Devore, and Johnny Malcolm, and Pinky Atwell, and—and—why, there are Frank and Bob. Oh, call to them, Jack.”
Whereat Jack raised his voice, and in a moment the group thus hailed came plunging through the crowd, to surround the newcomers, pay their laughing respects to Della—an old acquaintance—and to slap Jack thunderously on the back and hail him as “Benedict.” To all of which Jack appeared brazenly indifferent, and presented each in turn to Rafaela, “who,” he said, “is soon going to have an awful job on her hands. Give her your pity lads. She’s going to look after me.”
But if we were to follow our friends throughout the festivities and occasions of that and succeeding days, we would need another book or two. It was Commencement Week, and New Haven was going through its annual madness. Enough to say that indoors or out, at dance or tea or in the Bowl, Jack everywhere came in for attention as a distinguished young alumnus whose radio research already was bringing him and the institution fame, while Rafaela with her Spanish beauty offset by a ravishing accent and a spirit of mischief forever lurking beneath the surface was acclaimed by all Jack’s friends as a jolly good sort, indeed. As for big Bob, it was with genuine regret that those old alumni who followed Yale sports from season to season spoke of his graduation. He was leaving a record in practically all departments of athletics which everybody considered would remain unsurpassed for a long time to come. And Frank’s graduation equally was a matter for regret, among the undergraduate body especially, inasmuch as he had endeared himself to its members by his democratic spirit and charm of manner.
At length, however, all good things must end, and it was so with Commencement Week. The day came when New Haven was only a memory, and all our friends were back in New York, though not in New York City, but on the adjoining Hampton and Temple estates near Southampton. Ahead of the young folks lay a long Summer with the prospects of gay companions coming and going, tennis, yachting, motor boating on the waters of Great South Bay and the broad Atlantic, golf and dancing, motoring and horseback riding. Della who was a born manager had taken charge of affairs, and had planned a round of gayeties leading up to the approaching marriage of Jack and Rafaela. The latter and Don Ferdinand were guests of the Temples. And, of course, in between everything else and, in fact, forming at first the major attraction for at least two members of the party, were the innumerable visits to New York paid by the two girls and Mrs. Temple in pursuit of that elusive thing known as “Rafaela’s trousseau.”
Many times did the swift-moving events at Laredo and at Don Ferdinand’s Mexican estate come up for discussion, and every item of occurrences had to be rehearsed time and again, with the exception of how Rafaela had been captured and conveyed to Laredo.
By tacit consent, that was never brought up for discussion because of the horrors surrounding it in Rafaela’s recollection. It was known that a lieutenant of Ramirez’s, who had been hiding in the hills near the estate, had swooped down the day after Jack and his father had concluded their brief visit, and, after smashing the radio station, had carried Rafaela off from under the eyes of the few peons left behind by Don Ferdinand and Pedro and from the despairing clutches of Donna Ana. More dead than alive, the poor girl had been swept up into the hills. But when she found that whatever fate was intended for her was to be deferred until she could be transported on horseback to Nueva Laredo and turned over to Ramirez, her courage and resourcefulness revived. She watched for an opportunity, and, when on arrival at Nueva Laredo, she found Ramon in almost as sad plight as herself, she instantly began working to bring the old fellow around to the point of helping her escape. The two, as we know, were in the act of carrying out their desperate attempt when Jack fortunately and opportunely arrived with his comrades and the aviators to rescue her.
But, of the tortured hours that lay between the sudden attack of the bandits on her home and Jack’s arrival, she could never be persuaded to talk, and so, by common consent, the matter was never pressed.
One day during this golden vacation period Jack went into New York, not returning until the next day. Then he arrived jubilant. He had come straight from hours spent with the chief engineers and officials of the great radio trust, and so fulsome had been the praise heaped on his young head on account of the successful outcome of his year’s experiments that modesty forbade him to repeat more than a tithe of it. Indeed, many another head—and many a good deal older than Jack’s—might have been turned; but his sat too squarely, he saw too sanely for conceit to gain a foothold.
Enough to say that all Jack’s work had been fully approved, and that he would soon have the pleasure of seeing his improved radio equipment on the world market. He had solved the problem of providing super-selectivity with a radio receiver permitting the operator to select any station he wanted to hear, whether or not local stations were in operation—a receiver that brought volume from distant stations along with selectivity, that attained a more faithful reproduction of broadcasted voice and music than ever deemed possible before, and that, moreover, was eternally “non-radiating;” that is to say, that no matter how handled it would never interfere with a neighboring radio enthusiast’s enjoyment. And he had transformed the Super-Heterodyne, theretofore so complicated that engineering skill was required for its operation, until now it was improved in sensitiveness and selectivity and simplified so that anybody could operate it.
“And what do you get for your work?” the practical Mr. Temple wanted to know.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Maybe, millions. The radio trust financed my experiments, as you know, and you might think it would now offer me a lump sum and buy my work outright. But, although there were one or two men who wanted to do that, the balance were very decent about it. The upshot is that I have a contractual agreement, paying me a fixed royalty on all sales of my patented articles.”
“You got them to do that?” said Mr. Temple, getting up and shaking Jack by the hand. “Well, I’ll say you’re a business man. How about it, Hampton?” And he turned toward Jack’s father.
“Jack knows how I feel,” said Mr. Hampton, smiling. “But the big thing to him, and I guess to me, too, is not the fact that he probably will reap a fortune but rather that he has succeeded in advancing the cause of science.”
“And now what are you planning to do?” persisted Mr. Temple, while the others—the whole party was present on the shaded slope of lawn beside the Temple tennis courts—listened for Jack’s answer.