CHAPTER IX.
NEWS FROM COLORADO.
Wycherley is right; Aleck has recognized the cloaked figure. There is some undefinable quality about her carriage that betrays her—a gliding movement, so totally unlike the action of an American. What adds power to the suspicion is the fact that she seems to follow the couple whose movements Aleck and his companion have been watching.
“I feel as though some sort of crisis were approaching, Claude. Now do you suppose she suspects what manner of face that veil hides?” he asks his friend.
“Oh, as to that, Dorothy has thrown back the veil impatiently a dozen times in order to look at some curio, but, being bothered withthe bold glances her beauty draws from some of the visitors here, lets it drop again. If this be Marda, as you seem to imagine, depend on it, she has seen the girl’s face.”
“What will she do?”
“Ah! there I must confess my weakness. We might consult the black Nubian who holds forth in that sacred chamber of the mosque.”
“To the deuce with him and his folly. I imagine we can get a better answer by watching these people, though, in one way, it goes against my grain to play the detective.”
“Bah! you’re too conscientious. Remember, we are not mere curiosity mongers, nor reporters seeking a sensation, but sworn protectors to this lovely Hebe, who lacks a brother’s care. Under such circumstances, Aleck, anything is fair in love or war.”
“Be it so. I must accept your version, and stifle my dislike to the task by remembering the demands of duty.”
“Bravo! you’ll get there yet. They are quitting the bazaar, and she is close behind. Now watch me play a little side game.”
In an instant Wycherley has managedto pass around a table and meet the cloaked and veiled figure at the doorway. The execution of the maneuver is first-class. A bent pin or some such object in the lapel of his coat catches the floating veil, and for the second time inside an hour the Cairo Street fortune teller finds herself shorn of the gauzy covering that has been used to screen her features.
“I really beg pardon! too awkward of me, to be sure. You—why, can it be Miss Dorothy Cereal?” says the vagabond, with a look of well-simulated surprise.
The other hastily replaces the veil, but not before he notices the alarm and perturbation his pretended recognition has caused.
“No, no,” she mutters wildly; “it is one mistake, sir. I assure you.”
Then she darts out of the bazaar door like a frightened deer. Wycherley laughs softly to himself at his success.
“What do you think, now?” he asks of Aleck, who joins him outside.
“There can be no mistake about her identity. We have yet to learn whether this can be the Marda of the past, the mother whom Dorothy has been taught to believe dead.”
“I believe I have settled even that,” declares the actor. “Come, let us continue to keep them in sight while we talk.”
“You said something to her as you bowed with the grace of a Chesterfield. I was not near enough to hear what it was.”
“But you noticed her confusion?”
“It was very apparent.”
“I pretended to believe it was Miss Cereal, and addressed her by that name.”
“Jove! and she——”
“Denied it with a trembling voice and great earnestness. I have known all along she was a foreigner from the quaint way she had of expressing herself in English. Upon my word I am more and more inclined to believe your remarkable theory to be true.”
So they saunter along, keeping a safe distance behind, yet close enough to see all that occurs. The two in front talk together in low tones such as would befit lovers. More than once Aleck finds a bitter feeling taking root in his heart, and it is only through severe measures that he is able to crush it. A new experience is being forced upon him, and when he realizes how his work of the early nightmust go for naught if there is another Richmond in the field, he smiles in the grim way some men have when inflicting torture upon themselves. He could not look more rigid and contemptuous were he holding a red-hot iron to his flesh and searing the fang-marks left by a mad dog.
As for Wycherley, that merry rascal appreciates the situation—and though incapable of experiencing the same sensations that creep over Aleck, he knows what it means. In his accustomed way he jokes about it.
“Feel like you’re marching to your own funeral, eh, Craig? Never mind, you can still be a brother to her. Great institution that. To my personal knowledge I occupy that delightful place of uncertainty to a dozen dainty despots here and abroad. I am connected, as it were, by ties of consanguinity to nearly every city of first importance in the world. Oh, take a veteran’s advice, my dear boy, and let no such little trouble disconcert you. A merry life—to enjoy pleasure as she flies—that’s my motto, and sad will be the day when I part from it.”
There are grains of sound philosophy inmuch that this strange genius says, if one can only separate the wheat from the chaff. Craig hears as in a dream, for his mind is upon those ahead. Shall he continue this espionage? Is it right? Where is the middle-aged duenna who was with Dorothy earlier in the evening? He knows she is secretly in the pay of the plotting pasha, but the young girl must as yet be ignorant of this fact. Perhaps she has left the other at a certain place, where she may be found later.
It is growing late.
By degrees even the Midway is thinning out, for people know the horrors awaiting them in the grand crush for accommodations on the street cars, and are urged to hurry on this account, though none of them ever escape the jam.
While passing the large building where the Tyrolese warblers invite the passers-by to gaze upon the cyclorama of the Alps, some impulse causes the couple ahead to enter, and the veiled woman, as if led by an attraction she cannot resist, follows.
“Let us wait here. They must come out by this door,” says Craig, glad of a chance to consider the matter in its several bearings.
Presently he becomes aware of the fact that Wycherley is shaking hands with a gentleman and indulging in a chat. Their voices are deadened by the many sounds of the Midway, which never quiets down until midnight, but when he glances toward them a few minutes later, Aleck can see from the dramatic gestures of his friend that the vagabond Thespian has received information on some score that excites him, but the rapid thoughts crowding upon his brain prohibit his taking any interest in what they may be gossiping over. He takes a second look at the man, however, and upon seeing his style, somehow inclines toward the belief that whoever he may be he comes out of the rowdy West. His laugh is like the roar of a bull, and his voice reminds one of a storm muttering in the Rockies, it is so deep and bass.
Craig begins to gather the several threads of his opinions together, just as the driver of a four-in-hand might secure the various reins, in order to make a clean run. He is making fair headway when an interruption occurs, and frowning, Aleck looks up to see the jocund actor at his side, having the unknown in tow.
“My friend, Bob Rocket—Aleck Craig. Two good fellows who should know each other,” says Wycherley, and the Canadian feeling his hand caught as in a vise, realizes that his comrade has betrayed him, and is in duty bound to return the grip.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Craig. Had a chum by your name once, poor fellow.”
“Ah! something happened to him, then?” Aleck is interested enough to remark.
“Hoss thieves—Mexicans—shot the poor boy. I made ’em sweat, you understand. There was no rest for me till that score was wiped out,” returns the ruddy faced man, gritting his strong teeth, and with a strange light flashing in his eyes.
“I judge you are from the West, Mr. Rocket.”
“Yes. Colorado is my roost at present. I was born on the border and brought up among the wildest scenes a man ever looked on. In Mexico I’ve been with the revolutionists. I’ve mined in Idaho and Montana, and been peace officer in a dozen Territories and States. At present I’m a sheriff in Colorado.”
“Indeed! You know my friend here.Where did you ever run across this rolling stone?”
The sheriff’s face suddenly grows soft, as he turns his head upon Wycherley, and there is unassumed tenderness in his voice as he says:
“I’ll tell you, sir. It was several years back, that terrible winter we had in Colorado. I had hard luck and came near passing in my checks on account of a gunshot wound received while arresting a desperado—but I got him, and he stretched hemp, I’m telling you.
“Things went wrong at home, and my mother and little sister were nigh starved. As soon as I could travel I went to Denver and found that only for the kindness of a man who had a room in the same tenement, and who was constitutionally dead broke, they would have given up the ghost. He had spent every cent he could lay hold of on them, strangers as they were. That man was Claude Wycherley, the actor. Do you wonder I love him like a brother?”
“Come, come, you make me blush. What I did pleased me. God knows I couldn’t have followed any other course. Say no more about it,” cries the vagabond.
“You are doing the Fair, I presume?” remarks Craig, glad to hear such a good report of one who hides his light under a bushel.
The sheriff and Claude exchange glances.
“Yes; I may say I have taken it in, but only as a secondary consideration.”
“Come, I like that. Better not let a Chicagoan hear such a remark. They are very sensitive. I have no doubt Colorado could have done better, but——”
“Oh, you mistake me, Mr. Craig. I meant that as I was here to look for a man, I had to give much of my time to the search, and, therefore, what I have seen of the Fair has been, as you might say, on the sly,” returns the sheriff, whose manner lacks the ease of a polished gentleman.
“And have you met with any success?”
“I have located him at last. He is in yonder building. A clever and a daring fellow. He made way with fifty thousand dollars belonging to the Hecla Mining Company, of which this same John Phœnix was treasurer. The president and manager of the company, probably as wealthy a man as Colorado boasts, though a stranger to me, wasaway, but in his absence the directors wired me to start after Phœnix, and said a photograph of him would be sent to me in Chicago. When it arrived I set to work, and gradually ran the fellow down. Would you believe me, he actually had the brass to take the president’s name. Yes, at a small hotel I found him registered as John Atherton, and putting on all the airs of a substantial mine king. I didn’t take him in at once—some little legal affair to comply with, you understand. Besides, I wanted to learn something about him, so I wired my employers and ever since I’ve just kept an eye on Phœnix while waiting for an answer.”
Craig is interested in the narrative, because, being a man who has seen something of life, he appreciates such a dramatic situation.
“You are fortunate then, Mr. Rocket,” he says.
“I mention these facts to you because you see, Claude, here, says you’re interested in the young fellow,” continues the Colorado sheriff.
“I? Impossible!” exclaims Aleck, glancing from his friend to the man from the West.
“Oh, yes you are! Show him the photo, Bob.”
Whereupon the sheriff takes out a cardboard and hands it over to the Canadian. It is somewhat battered from lying in the pocket of the officer, but the picture is plainly seen, and Craig holds his breath with sudden awe as the electric lights fall upon the features of the young miner whom he saw in the company of Dorothy.