“That’s enough,” said Cluff heartily. “The rest of us can take care of ourselves.”
“Meantime,” said Raimonda, “I think the whole matter can be arranged. Von Plaanden shall apologize to Miss Brewster to-morrow. It is not his first outbreak, and always he regrets. My uncle, who is of the Foreign Office, will see to it.”
“Then that’s settled,” remarked Perkins cheerfully.
Carroll turned upon him savagely:–
“To your entire satisfaction, no doubt, now that you’ve shown yourself an informer as well as–“
“Easy with the rough stuff, Mr. Carroll,” advised Cluff, his good- natured face clouding. “We’re all a little het up. Let’s have a drink, and cool down.”
“With you, with pleasure. I shall hope to meet you later, Mr. Perkins,” he added significantly.
“Well, I hope not,” retorted the other. “My voice is still for peace. Meantime, please assure Miss Brewster for me–“
“I warned you to keep that lady’s name from your lips.”
“You did. But I don’t know by what authority. You’re not her father, I suppose. Are you her brother, by any chance?”
As he spoke, Perkins experienced that curious feeling that some invisible person was trying to catch his eye. Now, as he turned directly upon Carroll, his glance, passing over his shoulder, followed a broad ray of light spreading from a second-story leaf- framed balcony of the hotel. There was a stir amid the greenery. The face of the Voice appeared, framed in flowers. Its features lighted up with mirth, and the lips formed the unmistakable monosyllable: “Boo!”
The identification was complete–“Boo to a goose.”
“Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll!” Unwittingly he spoke the name aloud, and, unfortunately, laughed.
To a less sensitive temperament, even, than Carroll’s, the provocation would have been extreme. Perkins was recalled to a more serious view of the situation by the choking accents of that gentleman.
“Take off your glasses!”
“What for?”
“Because I’m going to thrash you within an inch of your life!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” cried the young Caracunan. “This is no place for such an affair.”
Apparently Perkins held the same belief. Stepping aside, he abruptly sat down on the end of the bench, facing the fountain and not four feet from it. His head drooped a little forward; his hands dropped between his knees; one foot–but Cluff, the athlete, was the only one to note this–edged backward and turned to secure a firm hold on the pavement. Carroll stepped over in front of him and stood nonplused. He half drew his hand back, then let it fall.
“I can’t hit a man sitting down,” he muttered distressfully.
Perkins’s set face relaxed.
“Running true to tradition,” he observed, pleasantly enough. “I didn’t think you would. See here, Mr. Carroll, I’m sorry that I laughed at your name. In fact, I didn’t really laugh at your name at all. It was at something quite different which came into my mind at that moment.”
“Your apology is accepted so far,” returned the other stiffly. “But that doesn’t settle the other account between us, when we meet again. Or do you choose to threaten me with jail for that, also?”
“No. It’s easier to keep out of your way.”
“Good Lord!” cried the Southerner in disgust. “Are you afraid of everything?”
“Why, no!” Perkins rose, smiling at him with perfect equanimity. “As a matter of fact, if you’re interested to know, I wasn’t particularly afraid of Von Plaanden, and, if I may say so without offense, I’m not particularly afraid of you.”
Carroll studied him intently.
“By Jove, I believe you aren’t! I give it up!” he cried desperately. “You’re crazy, I reckon–or else I am.” And he took himself off without the formality of a farewell to the others.
Raimonda, with a courteous bow to his companions, followed him.
Wearily the goggled one sank back in his seat. Cluff moved across, planting himself exactly where Carroll had stood.
“Perkins!”
“Eh?” responded the sitter absently.
“What would you do if I should bat you one in the eye?”
“Eh, what?”
“What would you do to me?”
“You, too?” cried the bewildered Perkins. “Why on earth–“
“You’d dive into my knees, wouldn’t you, and tip me over backward?”
“Oh, that!” A slow grin overspread the space beneath the glasses. “That was the idea.”
“I know the trick. It’s a good one–except for the guy that gets it.”
“It wouldn’t have hurt him. He’d have landed in the fountain.”
“So he would. What then?”
“Oh, I’d have held him there till he got cooled off, and then made a run for it. A wet man can’t catch a dry man.”
“Say, son, YOU’RE a dry one, all right.”
“Eh?”
“Wake up! I’m saying you’re all right.”
“Much obliged.”
“You certainly took enough off him to rile a sheep. Why didn’t you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Tip him in.”
Perkins glanced upward at the balcony where the vines had closed upon a face that smiled.
“Oh,” he said mildly, “he’s a friend of a friend of mine.”
IV
TWO ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE
ORCHIDS do not, by preference, grow upon a cactus plant. Little though she recked of botany, Miss Brewster was aware of this fundamental truth. Neither do they, without extraneous impulsion, go hurtling through the air along deserted mountain-sides, to find a resting-place far below; another natural-history fact which the young lady appreciated without being obliged to consult the literature of the subject. Therefore, when, from the top of the appointed rock, she observed a carefully composed bunch of mauve Cattleyas describe a parabola and finally join two previous clusters upon the spines of a prickly-pear patch, she divined some energizing force back of the phenomenon. That energizing force she surmised was temper.
“Fie!” said she severely. “Beetle gentlemen should control their little feelings. Naughty, naughty!”
From below rose a fervid and startled exclamation.
“Naughtier, naughtier!” deprecated the visitor. “Are these the cold and measured terms of science?”
“You haven’t lived up to your bet,” complained the censured one.
“Indeed I have! I always play fair, and pay fair. Here I am, as per contract.”
“Nearly half an hour late.”
“Not at all. Four-thirty was the time.”
“And now it is three minutes to five.”
“Making twenty-seven minutes that I’ve been sitting here waiting for a welcome.”
“Waiting? Oh, Miss Brewster–“
“I’m not Miss Brewster. I’m a voice in the wilderness.”
“Then, Voice, you haven’t been there more than one minute. A voice isn’t a voice until it makes a noise like a voice. Q.E.D.”
“There is something in that argument,” she admitted. “But why didn’t you come up and look for me?”
“Does one look for a sound?”
“Please don’t be so logical. It tires my poor little brain. You might at least have called.”
“That would have been like holding you up for payment of the bet, wouldn’t it? I was waiting for you to speak.”
“Not good form in Caracuna. The senor should always speak first.”
“You began the other time,” he pointed out.
“So I did, but that was under a misapprehension. I hadn’t learned the customs of the country then. By the way, is it a local custom for hermits of science to climb breakneck precipices for golden- hearted orchids to send to casual acquaintances?”
“Is that what you are?” he queried in a slightly depressed tone.
“What on earth else could I be?” she returned, amused.
“Of course. But we all like to pretend that our fairy tales are permanent, don’t we?”
“I can readily picture you chasing beetles, but I can’t see you chasing fairies at all,” she asserted positively.
“Nor can I. If you chase them, they vanish. Every one knows that.”
“Anyway, your orchids were fit for a fairy queen. I haven’t thanked you for them yet.”
“Indeed you have. Much more than they deserve. By coming here to- day.”
“Oh, that was a point of honor. Are you going to let those lovely purple ones wither on that prickly plant down there? Think how much better they’d look pinned on me–if there were any one here to see and appreciate.”
If this were a hint, it failed of its aim, for, as the hermit scuttled out from his shelter, looking not unlike some bulky protrusive-eyed insect, secured the orchids, and returned, he never once glanced up. Safe again in his rock-bound retreat, he spoke:–
“‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.'”
“So you do know something of fairies and fairy lore!” she cried.
“Oh, it wasn’t much more than a hundred years ago that I read my Grimm. In the story, only one call was necessary.”
“Well, I can’t spare any more of my silken tresses. I brought a string this time. Where’s the other hair line?”
“I’ve used it to tether a fairy thought so that it can’t fly away from me. Draw up slowly.”
“Thank you so much, and I’m so glad that you are feeling better.”
“Better?”
“Yes. Better than the day before yesterday.”
“Day before yesterday?”
“Bless the poor man! Much anxious waiting hath bemused his wits. He thinks he’s an echo.”
“But I was all right the day before yesterday.”
“You weren’t. You were a prey to the most thrilling terrors. You were a moving picture of tender masculinity in distress. You let bashfulness like a worm i’ th’ bud prey upon your damask cheek. Have you a damask cheek? Stand out! I wish to consider you impartially. YOU needn’t look at ME, you know.”
“I’m not going to,” he assured her, stepping forth obediently.
“Basilisk that I am!” she laughed. “How brown you are! How long did you say you’d been here? A year?”
“Fourteen weary Voiceless months. Not on this island, you know, but around the tropics.”
“Yet you look vigorous and alert; not like the men I’ve seen come back from the hot countries, all languid and worn out. And you do look clean.”
“Why shouldn’t I be clean?”
“Of course you should. But people get slack, don’t they, when they live off all alone by themselves? Still, I suppose you spruced up a little for me?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he denied, with heat.
“No? Oh, my poor little vanity! He wouldn’t dress up for us, Vanity, though we did dress up for him, and we’re looking awfully nice–for a voice, that is. Do you always keep so soft and pink and smooth, Mr. Beetle Man?”
“I own a razor, if that’s what you mean. You’re making fun of me. Well, _I_ don’t mind.” He lifted his voice and chanted:–
“Although beyond the pale of law,
He always kept a polished jaw;
For he was one of those who saw
A saving hope
In shaving soap.”
“Oh, lovely! What a noble finish. What is it?”
“Extract from ‘Biographical Blurbings.'”
“Autobiographical?”
“Yes. By Me.”
“And are you beyond the pale of law?”
“Poetical license,” he explained airily. “Hold on, though.” He fell silent a moment, and out of that silence came a short laugh. “I suppose I AM beyond the pale of law, now that I come to think of it. But you needn’t be alarmed, I’m not a really dangerous criminal.”
Later she was to recall that confession with sore misgivings. Now she only inquired lightly:
“Is that why you ran away from the tram car yesterday?” “Ran away? I didn’t run away,” he said, with dignity. “It just happened that there came into my mind an important engagement that I’d forgotten. My memory isn’t what it should be. So I just turned over the matter in hand to an acquaintance of mine.”
“The matter in hand being me.”
“Why, yes; and the acquaintance being Mr. Cluff. I saw him throw four men out of a hotel once for insulting a girl, so I knew that he was much better at that sort of thing than I. May I go back now and sit down?” “Of course. I don’t know whether I ought to thank you about yesterday or be very angry. It was such an extraordinary performance on your part–“
“Nothing extraordinary about it.” His voice came up out of the shadow, full of judicial confidence. “Merely sound common sense.”
“To leave a woman who has been insulted–“
“In more competent hands than one’s own.”
“Oh, I give it up!” she cried. “I don’t understand you at all. Fitzhugh is right; you haven’t a tradition to your name.”
“Tradition,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Why, I don’t know. They’re pretty rigid things, traditions. Rusty in the joints and all that sort of thing. Life isn’t a process of machinery, exactly. One has to meet it with something more supple and adjustable than traditions.”
“Is that your philosophy? Suppose a man struck you. Wouldn’t you hit him back?”
“Perhaps. It would depend.”
“Or insulted your country? Don’t you believe that men should be ready to die, if necessary, in such a cause?”
“Some men. Soldiers, for instance. They’re paid to.”
“Good Heavens! Is it all a question of pay in your mind? Wouldn’t YOU, unless you were paid for it?”
“How can I tell until the occasion arises?”
“Are you afraid?”
“I suppose I might be.”
“Hasn’t the man any blood in his veins?” cried his inquisitor, exasperated. “Haven’t you ever been angry clear through?”
“Oh, of course; and sorry for it afterward. One is likely to lose one’s temper any time. It might easily happen to me and drive me to make a fool of myself, like–like–” His voice trailed off into a silence of embarrassment.
“Like Fitzhugh Carroll. Why not say it? Well, I much prefer him and his hot-headedness to you and your careful wisdom.”
“Of course,” he acquiesced patiently. “Any girl would. It’s the romantic temperament.”
“And yours is the scientific, I suppose. That doesn’t take into account little things like patriotism and heroism, does it? Tell me, have you actually ever admired–really got a thrill out of– any deed of heroism?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied tranquilly. “I’ve done my bit of hero worship in my time. In fact, I’ve never quite recovered from it.”
“No! Really? Do go on. You’re growing more human every minute.”
“Do you happen to know anything about the Havana campaign?”
“Not much. It never seemed to me anything to brag of. Dad says the Spanish-American War grew a crop of newspaper-made heroes, manufactured by reporters who really took more risks and showed more nerve than the men they glorified.”
“Spanish-American War? That isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m speaking of Walter Reed and his fellow scientists, who went down there and fought the mosquitoes.”
The girl’s lip curled.
“So that’s your idea of heroism! Scrubby peckers into the lives of helpless bugs!”
“Have you the faintest idea what you are talking about?”
His voice had abruptly hardened. There was an edge to it; such an edge as she had faintly heard on the previous night, when Carroll had pressed him too hard. She was startled.
“Perhaps I haven’t,” she admitted.
“Then it’s time you learned. Three American doctors went down into that pesthole of a Cuban city to offer their lives for a theory. Not for a tangible fact like the flag, or for glory and fame as in battle, but for a theory that might or might not be true. There wasn’t a day or a night that their lives weren’t at stake. Carroll let himself be bitten by infected mosquitoes on a final test, and grazed death by a hair’s breadth. Lazear was bitten at his work, and died in the agony of yellow-fever convulsions, a martyr and a hero if ever there was one. Because of them, Havana is safe and livable now. We were able to build the Panama Canal because of their work, their–what did you call it?–scrubby peeking into the lives of–“
“Don’t!” cried the girl. “I–I’m ashamed. I didn’t know.”
“How should you?” he said, in a changed tone. “We Americans set up monuments to our destroyers, not to our preservers, of life. Nobody knows about Walter Reed and James Carroll and Jesse Lazear –not even the American Government, which they officially served– except a few doctors and dried-up entomologists like myself. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to deliver a lecture.”
There was a long pause, which she broke with an effort.
“Mr. Beetle Man?”
“Yes, Voice?”
“I–I’m beginning to think you rather more man than beetle at times.”
“Well, you see, you touched me on a point of fanaticism,” he apologized.
“Do you mind standing up again for examination? No,” she decided, as he stepped out and stood with his eyes lowered obstinately. “You don’t seem changed to outward view. You still remind me,” with a ripple of irrepressible laughter, “of a near-sighted frog. It’s those ridiculous glasses. Why do you wear them?”
“To keep the sun out of my eyes.”
“And the moon at night, I suppose. They’re not for purposes of disguise?”
“Disguise! What makes you say that?” he asked quickly.
“Don’t bark. They’d be most effective. And they certainly give your face a truly weird expression, in addition to its other detriments.”
“If you don’t like my face, consider my figure,” he suggested optimistically. “What’s the matter with that?”
“Stumpy,” she pronounced. “You’re all in a chunk. It does look like a practical sort of a chunk, though.”
“Don’t you like it?” he asked anxiously.
“Oh, well enough of its kind.” She lifted her voice and chanted:–
“He was stubby and square,
But SHE didn’t much care.
“There’s a verse in return for yours. Mine’s adapted, though. Examination’s over. Wait. Don’t sit down. Now, tell me your opinion of me.”
“Very musical.”
“I’m not musical at all.”
“Oh, I’m considering you as a VOICE.”
“I’m tired of being just a voice. Look up here. Do,” she pleaded. “Turn upon me those lucent goggles.”
When orbs like thine the soul disclose, Tee-deedle-deedle-dee.
Don’t be afraid. One brief fleeting glance ere we part.”
“No,” he returned positively. “Once is enough.”
“On behalf of my poor traduced features, I thank you humbly. Did they prove as bad as you feared?”
“Worse. I’ve hardly forgotten yet what you look like. Your kind of face is bad for business.”
“What is business?”
“Haven’t I told you? I’m a scientist.”
“Well, I’m a specimen. No beetle that crawls or creeps or hobbles, or does whatever beetles are supposed to do, shows any greater variation from type–I heard a man say that in a lecture once– than I do. Can’t I interest you in my case, O learned one? The proper study of mankind is–“
“Woman. Yes, I know all about that. But I’m a groundling.”
“Mr. Beetle Man,” she said, in a tremulous voice, “the rock is moving.”
“I don’t feel it. Though it might be a touch of earthquake. We have ’em often.”
“Not your rock. The tarantula rock, I mean.”
“Nonsense! A hundred tarantulas couldn’t stir it.”
“Well, it seems to be moving, and that’s just as bad. I’m tired and I’m lonely. Oh, please, Professor Scarab, have I got to fall on your neck again to introduce a little human companionship into this conversation?”
“Caesar! No! My shoulder’s still lame. What do you want, anyway?”
“I want to know about you and your work. ALL about you.”
“Humph! Well, at present I’m making some microscopical studies of insects. That’s the reason for these glasses. The light is so harsh in these latitudes that it affects the vision a trifle, and every trifle counts in microscopy.”
“Does the microscope add charm to the beetle?”
“Some day I’ll show you, if you like. Just now it’s the flea, the national bird of Caracuna.”
“The wicked flea?”
“Nobody knows how wicked until he has studied him on his native heath.”
“Doesn’t the flea have something to do with plague? They say there’s plague in the city now. You knew all about the Dutch. Do you know anything about the plague?”
“You’ve been listening to bolas.”
“What’s a bola?”
“A bola is information that somebody who is totally ignorant of the facts whispers confidentially in your ear with the assurance that he knows it to be authentic–in other words, a lie.”
“Then there isn’t any plague down under those quaint, old, red- tiled roofs?”
“Who ever knows what’s going on under those quaint, old, red-tiled roofs? No foreigner, certainly.”
“Even I can feel the mystery, little as I’ve seen of the place,” said the girl.
“Oh, that’s the Indian of it. The tiled roofs are Spanish; the speech is Spanish; but just beneath roof and speech, the life and thought are profoundly and unfathomably Indian.”
“Not with all the Caracunans, surely. Take Mr. Raimonda, for instance.”
“Ah, that’s different. Twenty families of the city, perhaps, are pure-bloods. There are no finer, cleaner fellows anywhere than the well-bred Caracunans. They are men of the world, European educated, good sportsmen, straight, honorable gentlemen. Unfortunately not they, but a gang of mongrel grafters control the politics of the country.”
“For a hermit of science, you seem to know a good deal of what goes on. By the way, Mr. Raimonda called on me–on us last evening.”
“So he mentioned. Rather serious, that, you know.”
“Far from it. He was very amusing.”
“Doubtless,” commented the other dryly. “But it isn’t fair to play the game with one who doesn’t know the rules. Besides, what will Mr. Preston Fairfax–“
“For a professedly shy person, you certainly take a rather intimate tone.”
“Oh, I’m shy only under the baleful influence of the feminine eye. Besides, you set the note of intimacy when you analyzed my personal appearance. And finally, I have a warm regard for young Raimonda.”
“So have I,” she returned maliciously. “Aren’t you jealous?”
He laughed.
“Please be a little bit jealous. It would be so flattering.”
“Jealousy is another tradition in which I don’t believe.”
“Then I can’t flirt with you at all?” she sighed. “After taking all this long hot walk to see you!”
PLOP! The sound punctured the silence sharply, though not loudly. Some large fruit pod bursting on a distant tree might have made such a report.
“What was that?” asked the girl curiously.
“That? Oh, that was a revolver shot,” he remarked.
“Aren’t you casual! Do revolver shots mean nothing to you?”
“That one shakes my soul’s foundations.” His tone by no means indicated an inner cataclysm. “It may mean that I must excuse myself and leave. Just a moment, please.”
Passing across the line of her vision, he disappeared to the left. When she next heard his voice, it was almost directly above her.
“No,” it said. “There’s no hurry. The flag’s not up.”
“What flag?”
“The flag in my compound.”
“Can you see your home from here?”
“Yes; there’s a ledge on the cliff that gives a direct view.”
“I want to come up and see it.”
“You can’t. It’s much too hard a climb. Besides, there are rock devilkins on the way.”
“And when you hear a shot, you go up there for messages?”
“Yes; it’s my telephone system.”
“Who’s at the other end?”
“The peon who pretends to look after the quinta for me.”
“A man! No man can keep a house fit to live in,” she said scornfully.
“I know it; but he’s all I’ve got in the servant line.”
“How far is the house from here?”
“A mile, by air. Seven by trail from town.”
“Isn’t it lonely?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly she felt very sorry for him. There was such a quiet, conclusive acceptance of cheerlessness in the monosyllable.
“How soon must you go back?”
“Oh, not for an hour, at least.”
“If it’s a call, it must be an important one, so far from civilization.”
“Not necessarily. Don’t you ever have calls that are not important?”
No answer came.
“Miss Brewster!” he called. “Oh, Voice! You haven’t gone?”
Still no response.
“That isn’t fair,” he complained, making his way swiftly down, and satisfying himself by a peep about the angle commanding her point of the rock that she had, indeed, vanished. Sadly he descended to his own nook–and jumped back with a half-suppressed yell.
“You needn’t jump out of your skin on my account,” said Miss Polly Brewster, with a gracious smile. “I’m not a devilkin.”
“You are! That is–I mean–I–I–beg your pardon. I–I–“
“The poor man’s having another bashful fit,” she observed, with malicious glee. “Did the bold, bad, forward American minx scare it almost out of its poor shy wits?”
“You–you startled me.”
“No!” she exclaimed, in wide-eyed mock surprise. “Who would have supposed it? You didn’t expect me down here, did you?”
Thereupon she got a return shock.
“Yes, I did,” he said; “sooner or later.”
“Don’t fib. Don’t pretend that you knew I was here.”
“W-w-well, no. Not just now. B-b-but I knew you’d come if–if–if I pretended I didn’t want you to long enough.”
“Young and budding scientist,” said she severely, “you’re a gay deceiver. Is it because you have known me in some former existence that you are able thus accurately to read my character?”
“Well, I knew you wouldn’t stay up there much longer.”
“I’m angry at you; very angry at you. That is, I would be if it weren’t that you really didn’t mean it when you said that you really didn’t want to see my face again.”
“Did any one ever see your face once without wanting to see it again?”
“Ah, bravo!” She clapped her hands gayly. “Marvelous improvement under my tutelage! Where, oh, where is your timidity now?”
“I–I–I forgot,” he stammered, “As long as I don’t think, I’m all right. Now, you–you–you’ve gone and spoiled me.”
“Oh, the pity of it! Let’s find some mild, impersonal topic, then, that won’t embarrass you. What do you do under the shadow of this rock, in a parched land?”
“Work. Besides, it isn’t a parched land. Look on this side.”
Half a dozen steps brought her around the farther angle, where, hidden in a growth of shrubbery, lay a little pool of fairy loveliness,
“That’s my outdoor laboratory.”
“A dreamery, I’d call it. May I sit down? Are there devilkins here? There’s an elfkin, anyway,” she added, as a silvered dragon- fly hovered above her head inquisitively before darting away on his own concerns.
“One of my friends and specimens. I’m studying his methods of aviation with a view to making some practical use of what I learn, eventually.”
“Really? Are you an inventor, too? I’m crazy about aviation.”
“Ah, then you’ll be interested in this,” he said, now quite at his ease. “You know that the mosquito is the curse of the tropics.”
“Of other places, as well.”
“But in the tropics it means yellow fever, Chagres fever, and other epidemic illness. Now, the mosquito, as you doubtless realize, is a monoplane.”
“A monoplane?” repeated the girl, in some puzzlement. “How a monoplane?”
“I thought you claimed some knowledge of aviation. Its wings are all on one plane. The great natural enemy of the mosquito is the dragon-fly, one of which just paid you a visit. Now, modern warfare has taught us that the most effective assailant of the monoplane is a biplane. You know that.”
“Y-y-yes,” said the girl doubtfully.
“Therefore, if we can breed a biplane dragonfly in sufficient numbers, we might solve the mosquito problem at small expense.”
“I don’t know much about science,” she began, “but I should hardly have supposed–“
“It’s curious how nature varies the type of aviation,” he continued dreamily. “Now, the pigeon is, of course, a Zeppelin; whereas the sea urchin is obviously a balloon; and the thistledown an undirigible–“
“You’re making fun of me!” she accused, with sharp enlightenment.
“What else have you done to me ever since we met?” he inquired mildly.
“Now I AM angry! I shall go home at once.”
A second far-away PLOP! set a period to her decision.
“So shall I,” said he briskly.
“Does that signal mean hurry up?” she asked curiously.
“Well, it means that I’m wanted. You go first. When will you come again?”
“Not at all.”
“Do you mean that?”
“Of course. I’m angry. Didn’t I tell you that? I don’t permit people to make fun of me. Besides, you must come and see me next. You owe me two calls. Will you?”
“I–I–don’t know.”
“Afraid?”
“Rather.”
“Then you must surely come and conquer this cowardice. Will you come to-morrow?”
“No; I don’t think so.”
Miss Brewster opened wide her eyes upon him. She was little accustomed to have her invitations, which she issued rather in the manner of royal commands, thus casually received. Had the offender been any other of her acquaintance, she would have dropped the matter and the man then and there. But this was a different species. Graceful and tactful he might not be, but he was honest.
“Why?” she said.
“I’ve got something more important to do.”
“You’re reverting to type sadly. What is it that’s so important?”
“Work.”
“You can work any time.”
“No. Unfortunately I have to eat and sleep sometimes.”
The implication she accepted quite seriously.
“Are you really as busy as all that? I’m quite conscience-stricken over the time I’ve wasted for you.”
“Not wasted at all. You’ve cheered me up.”
“That’s something. But you won’t come to the city to be cheered up?”
“Yes, I will. When I get time.”
“Perhaps you won’t find me at home.”
“Then I’ll wait.”
“Good-bye, then,” she laughed, “until your leisure day arrives.”
She climbed the rock, stepping as strongly and surely as a lithe animal. At the top, the spirit of roguery, ever on her lips and eyes, struck in and possessed her soul.
“O disciple of science!” she called.
“Well?”
“Can you see me?”
“Not from here.”
“Good! I’m a Voice again. So don’t be timid. Will you answer a question?”
“I’ve answered a hundred already. One more won’t hurt.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“What?”
“Don’t I speak plainly enough? Have–you–ever–been–in–love?”
“With a woman?”
“Why, yes,” she railed. “With a woman, of course. I don’t mean with your musty science.”
“No.”
“Well, you needn’t be violent. Have you ever been in love with ANYTHING?”
“Perhaps.”
“Oh, perhaps!” she taunted. “There are no perhapses in that. With what?”
“With what every man in the world is in love with once in his life,” he replied thoughtfully.
She made a little still step forward and peeped down at him. He stood leaning against the face of the rock, gazing out over the hot blue Caribbean, his hat pushed back and his absurd goggles firm and high on his nose. His words and voice were in preposterous contrast to his appearance.
“Riddle me your riddle,” she commanded. “What is every man in love with once in his life?”
“An ideal.”
“Ah! And your ideal–where do you keep it safe from the common gaze?”
“I tether it to my heart–with a single hair,” said the man below.
“Oh,” commented Miss Brewster, in a changed tone. And, again, “Oh,” just a little blankly. “I wish I hadn’t asked that,” she confessed silently to herself, after a moment.
Still, the spirit of reckless experimentalism pressed her onward.
“That’s a peril to the scientific mind, you know,” she warned. “Suppose your ideal should come true?”
“It won’t,” said he comfortably.
Miss Brewster’s regrets sensibly mitigated.
“In that case, of course, your career is safe from accident,” she remarked.
He moved out into the open.
“Mr. Beetle Man,” she called,
He looked up and saw her with her chin cupped in her hand, regarding him thoughtfully.
“I’m NOT just a casual acquaintance,” she said suddenly. “That is, if you don’t want me to be.”
“That’s good,” was his hearty comment. “I’m glad you like me better than you did at first.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure that I like you, exactly. But I’m coming to have a sort of respectful curiosity about you. What lies under that beetle shell of yours, I wonder?” she mused, in a half breath.
Whether or not he heard the final question she could not tell. He smiled, waved his hand, and disappeared. Below, she watched the motion of the bush-tops where the shrubbery was parted by the progress of his sturdy body down the long slope.
V
AN UPHOLDER OF TRADITIONS
One day passes much like another in Caracuna City. The sun rises blandly, grows hot and angry as it climbs the slippery polished vault of the heavens, and coasts down to its rest in a pleased and mild glow. From the squat cathedral tower the bells clang and jangle defiance to the Adversary, temporarily drowning out the street tumult in which the yells of the lottery venders, the braying of donkeys, the whoops of the cabmen, and the blaring of the little motor cars with big horns, combine to render Caracuna the noisiest capital in the world. Through the saddle-colored hordes on the moot ground of the narrow sidewalks moves an occasional Anglo-Saxon resident, browned and sallowed, on his way to the government concession that he manages; a less occasional Anglo-Saxoness, browned and marked with the seal that the tropics put upon every woman who braves their rigors for more than a brief period; and a sprinkling of tourists in groups, flying on cheek, brow, and nose the stark red of their newness to the climate.
Not of this sorority Miss Polly Brewster. Having blithe regard to her duty as an ornament of this dull world, she had tempered the sun to the foreign cuticle with successively diminishing layers of veils, to such good purpose that the celestial scorcher had but kissed her graduated brownness to a soft glow of color. Not alone in appreciation of her external advantages was Miss Brewster. Such as it was,–and it had its qualities, albeit somewhat unformulated,–Caracuna society gave her prompt welcome. There were teas and rides and tennis at the little club; there were agreeable, presentable men and hospitable women; and always there was Fitzhugh Carroll, suave, handsome, gentle, a polished man of the world among men, a courteous attendant to every woman, but always with a first thought for her. Was it sheer perversity of character, that elfin perversity so shrewdly divined by the hermit of the mountain, that put in her mind, in this far corner of the world, among these strange people, the thought:
“All men are alike, and Fitz, for all that he’s so different and the best of them, is the MOST alike.”
Which paradox, being too much for her in the heat of the day, she put aside in favor of the insinuating thought of her beetle man. Whatever else he might or might not be, he wasn’t alike. She was by no means sure that she found this difference either admirable or amiable. But at least it was interesting.
Moreover, she was piqued. For four days had passed and the recluse had not returned her call. True, there had come to her hotel a wicker full of superb wild tree blooms, and, again, a tiny box, cunning in workmanship of scented wood, containing what at first glance she had taken to be a jewel, until she saw that it was a tiny butterfly with opalescent wings, mounted on a silver wire. But with them had come no word or token of identification. Perhaps they weren’t from the queer and remote person at all. Very likely Mr. Raimonda had sent them; or Fitzhugh Carroll was adding secret attention to his open homage; or they might even be a further peace offering from the Hochwald secretary.
That occasionally too festive diplomat had, indeed, made amends both profound and, evidently, sincere. Soliciting the kind offices of both Sherwen and Raimonda, he had presented himself, under their escort, stiff and perspiring in his full official regalia, before Mr. Brewster; then before his daughter, whose solemnity, presently breaking down before his painfully rehearsed English, dissolved in fluent French, setting him at ease and making him her slave. Poor penitent Von Plaanden even apologized to Carroll, fortunately not having heard of the American’s threat, and made a most favorable impression upon that precisian.
“Intoxicated, he may be a rough, Miss Polly,” Carroll confided to the girl. “But sober, the man is a gentleman. He feels very badly about the whole affair. Offered to your father to report it all through official channels and attach his resignation.”
“Not for worlds!” cried Miss Polly. “The poor man was half asleep. And Mr. Bee–Mr. Perkins DID jog him rather sharply.”
“Yes. Von Plaanden asked my advice as an American about his attitude toward Cluff and Perkins.”
“I hope you told him to let the whole thing drop.”
“Exactly what I did. I explained about Cluff; that he was a very good fellow, but of a different class, and probably wouldn’t give the thing another thought.”
“And Mr. Perkins?”
“Von Plaanden wanted to challenge him, if he could find him. I suggested that he leave me to deal with Mr. Perkins. After some discussion, he agreed.”
“Oh! And what are you going to do with him?”
“Find him first, if I can.”
“I can tell you where.” Carroll stared at her, astonished. “But I don’t think I will.”
“He announced his intention of keeping out of my way. The man has no sense of shame.”
“You probably scared the poor lamb out of his wits, fire-eater that you are.”
Carroll would have liked to think so, but an innate sense of justice beneath his crust of prejudice forbade him to accept this judgment.
“The strange part of it is that he doesn’t impress me as being afraid. But there is certainly something very wrong with the fellow. A man who will deliberately desert a woman in distress”– Carroll’s manner expanded into the roundly rhetorical–“whatever else he may be, cannot be a gentleman.”
“There might have been mitigating circumstances.”
“No circumstances could excuse such an action. And, after that, the fellow had the effrontery to send you a message.”
“Me? What was it?” asked Miss Polly quickly.
“I don’t know. I didn’t let him finish. I forbade his even mentioning your name.”
“Indeed!” cried the girl, in quick dudgeon. “Don’t you think you are taking a great deal upon yourself, Fitz? What do you really know about Mr. Perkins, anyway, that you judge him so offhandedly?”
“Very little, but enough, I think. And I hardly think you know more.”
“Then you’re wrong. I do.”
“You KNOW this man?”
“Yes; I do.”
“Does your father approve of–“
“Never mind my father! He has confidence enough in me to let me judge of my own friends.”
“Friends?” Carroll’s handsome face clouded and reddened. “If I had known that he was a friend of yours, Miss Polly, I never would have spoken as I did. I’m most sincerely sorry,” he added, with grave courtesy.
The girl’s color deepened under the brown.
“He isn’t exactly a friend,” she admitted. “I’ve just met and talked with him a few times. But your judgment seemed so unfair, on such a slight basis.”
“I’m sorry I can’t reverse my judgment,” said the Southerner stiffly, “But I know of only one standard for those matters.”
“That’s just your trouble.” Her eyes took on a cold gleam as she scanned the perfection and finish of the man before her. “Fitzhugh, do you wear ready-made clothing?”
“Of course not,” he answered, in surprise at this turn.
“Your suits are all made to order?”
“Yes, Miss Polly.”
“And your shirts?”
“Yes, and shoes, and various other things.” He smiled.
“Why do you have them specially made?”
“Beeause they suit me better, and I can afford it.”
“It’s really because you want them individualized for you, isn’t it?”
“Yes; I suppose so.”
“Then why do you always get your mental clothes ready-made?”
“I don’t think I understand, Miss Polly,” he said gently.
“It seems to me that all your ideas and estimates and standards are of stock pattern,” she explained relentlessly. “Inside, you’re as just exactly so as a pair of wooden shoes. Can’t you see that you can’t judge all men on the same plane?”
“I see that you’re angry with me, and I see that I’m being punished for what I said about–about Mr. Perkins. If I’d known that you took any interest in him, I’d have bitten my tongue in two before speaking as I did. As for the message, if you wish it, I’ll go to him–“
“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she interrupted.
“This much I can say, in honesty,” continued the Southerner, with an effort: “I had a talk, almost an encounter, with him in the plaza, and I don’t believe he is the coward I thought him.”
His intent to be fair to the object of his scorn was so genuine that his critic felt a swift access of compunction.
“Oh, Fitz,” she said sweetly, “you’re not to blame. I should have told you. And you’re honest and loyal and a gentleman. Only I wish sometimes that you weren’t quite so awfully gentlemanly a gentleman.”
The Southerner made a gesture of despair.
“If I could only understand you, Miss Polly!”
“Don’t hope it. I’ve never yet understood myself. But there’s a sympathy in me for the under dog, and this Mr. Perkins seems a sort of helpless creature. Yet in another way he doesn’t seem helpless at all. Quite the reverse. Oh, dear! I’m tired of Perkins, Perkins, Perkins! Let’s talk about something pleasanter– like the plague.”
“What’s that about Perkins?” Galpy had entered the drawing-room where the conversation had been carried on, and now crossed over to them. “I’ll tell you a good one on the little blighteh. D’ you know what they call him at the Club Amicitia since his adventure on the street car, Miss Brewster?”
“What?”
“‘The Unspeakable Perk.’ Rippin’, ain’t it? Like ‘The Unspeakable Turk,’ you know.”
Despite herself, Polly’s lips twitched; in some ways he WAS unspeakable.
“They’ve nicknamed him that because of his trying to help me, and then–leaving?” she asked.
“Oh, not entirely. There’s other things. He’s a nahsty, stand- offish way with him, you know. Don’t-want-to-know-yeh trick. Wouldn’t-speak-to-yeh-if-I-could-help-it twist to his face. ‘The Unspeakable Perk.’ Stands him right, I should say. There’s other reasons, too.”
“What are they?”
She saw a quick, warning frown on Carroll’s sharply turned face. Galpy noted it, too, and was lost in confusion.
“Oh–ah–just gossip–nothing at all. I say, Miss Brewster, the railway–I’m in the Ferrocarril-del-Norte office, you know–has offered your party a special on an hour’s notice, any time you want it.”
“That’s most kind of your road, Mr. Galpy. But why should we want it?”
“Things might be getting a bit ticklish any day now. I’ve just taken the message from the manager to your father.”
The young Englishman took his leave, and Polly Brewster went to her room, to freshen up for luncheon, carrying with her the sobriquet she had just heard. Certainly, applied to its subject, it had a mucilaginous consistency. It stuck.
“‘The Unspeakable Perk,'” she repeated, with a little chuckle. “If I had a month to train him in, eh, what a speakable Perk I’d make him! I’d make him into a Perk that would sit up and speak when I lifted my little finger.” She considered this. “I’m not so sure,” she concluded, more doubtfully. “How can one tell through those horrid glasses, particularly when one doesn’t see him for days and days?”
Without moving, she might, however, have seen him forthwith, for at that precise and particular moment, the Unspeakable Perk was in plain sight of her window, on a bench in the corner of the plaza, engaged in light conversation with a legless and philosophical beggar whom he had just astonished by the presentation of a whole bolivar, of the value of twenty cents gold.
After she had finished luncheon and returned to her room, he was still there. Not until the mid-heat of the afternoon, however, did she observe, first with puzzlement, then with a start of recognition, the patiently rounded brown back of the forward- leaning figure in the corner. Greatly wroth was Miss Polly Brewster. For some hours–two, at least–the man to keep tryst and wager with whom she had tramped up miles of mountain road had been in town and hadn’t called upon her! Truly was he an Unspeakable Perk!
Wasn’t there possibly a mistake somewhere, though? A second peep at the far-away back interpreted into the curve a suggestion of resigned waiting. Maybe he had called, after all. Thought being usually with Miss Brewster the mother of the twins, Determination and Action, she slipped downstairs and inquired of the three guardians of the door, in such Spanish as she could muster, whether a Mr. Perkins, wearing large glasses–this in the universal sign manual–had been to see her that day.
“Si, Senorita”–he had.
Why, then, hadn’t his name been brought to her?
Extended hands and up-shrugged shoulders that might mean either apology or incomprehension.
Straightway Miss Brewster pinned a hat upon her brown head at an altogether casual and heart-distracting angle and sallied down into the tesselated bowl of the park. Quite unconscious of her approach, until she was close upon him, her objective chatted fluently with the legless one, until she spoke quietly, almost in his ear. Then it was only by a clutch at the bench back that he saved himself from disaster on his return to earth.
“Wh–wh–what–wh–where–how did you come here?” he stuttered.
“Now, now, don’t be alarmed,” she admonished. “Shut your eyes, draw a deep breath, count three. And, as soon as you are ready I’ll give you a talisman against social panic. Are you ready?”
“Y-yes.”
“Very well. Whenever I come upon you suddenly, you mustn’t try to jump up into a tree as you did just now–“
“I didn’t!”
“Oh, yes. Or burrow under a rock, as you did the other day–“
“Miss B-B-Brewster–“
“Wait until I’ve finished. You must turn your thoughts firmly upon your science, until you’ve recovered equilibrium and the power of human speech.”
“But when you jump at me that way, I c-c-can’t think of anything but you.”
“That’s where the charm comes in. As soon as you see me or hear me approaching, you must repeat, quite slowly, this scientific incantation.” She beat time with a pink and rhythmic finger as she chanted:–
“Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea.”
The beggar rapidly made the sign that protects one from the influence of the malign and supernatural. The scientist scowled.
“Repeat it!” she commanded.
“There is no such insect as a doodle-bug,” he protested feebly.
“Isn’t there? I thought I heard you mention it in your conversation with Mr. Carroll the other night.”
“You put that into my head,” he accused.
“Truly? Then life is indeed real and earnest. To have introduced something unscientific into that compendium of science–there’s triumph enough for any ambition. Besides, see how beautifully it scans.”
Again she beat time, and again the beggar crooked defensive fingers as she declaimed:–
“SCAR-ab, tar-ANT-u-la, DOO-dle-bug, FLEA!”
Homeric, I call it. Perhaps you think you could improve on it.”
“Would you mind substituting ‘neuropter’ in the third strophe?” he ventured. “It would be just as good as ‘doodle-bug,’ and more– more accurate.”
“What’s a neuropter? You didn’t make him up for the occasion?”
“Heaven forbid! The dragon-fly is a neuropter. The dragon-fly we’re going to breed to a biplane, you know,” he reminded her slyly.
“Indeed! Well, I shall stick to my doodle-bug. He’s more euphonious. Now, repeat it.”
“Let me off this time,” he pleaded. “I’m all right–quite recovered. It’s only at the start that it’s so bad.”
“Very well,” she agreed. “But you’re not to forget it. And next time we meet you’re to be sure and say it over until you’re sane.”
“Sane!” he said resentfully. “I’m as sane as any one you know. It’s the job of KEEPING sane in this madhouse of the tropics that’s almost driven me crazy.”
“Lovely!” she approved. “Well, now that you’ve recovered, I’ll tell you what I came out to say. I’m sorry that I missed you.”
“Missed me?” he repeated. “Oh, you have missed me, then? That’s nice. You see, I’ve been so busy for the last three or four days–“
“No; I haven’t missed you a bit,” she declared indignantly. “The conceit of the man!”
“But you said you w-w-were sorry you’d–“
“Don’t be wholly a beetle! I meant I was sorry not to see you when you came to call on me this morning.”
“I didn’t come to call on you this morning.”
“No? The boy at the door said he’d seen you, or something answering to your description.”
“So he did. I came to see your father. He was out.”
“What time?”
“From eleven on.”
“Father? No, I don’t think so.”
“His secretary came down and told me so, or sent word each time.”
She smiled pityingly at him.
“Of course. That’s what a secretary is for.”
“To tell lies?”
“White lies. You see, dad is a very busy man, and an important man, and many people come to see him whom he hasn’t time to see. So, unless he knew your business, he would naturally be ‘out’ to you.”
The corners of the young man’s rather sensitive mouth flattened out perceptibly.
“Ah, I see. My mistake. Living in countries where, however queer the people may be, they at least observe ordinary human courtesies, one forgets–if one ever knew.”
“What did you want of dad?”
“Oh, to borrow four dollars of him, of course,” he replied dryly.
“You needn’t be angry at me. You see, dad’s time is valuable.”
“Indeed? To whom?”
“Why, to himself, of course.”
“Oh, well, my time–However, that doesn’t matter. I haven’t wholly wasted it.” He glanced toward the beggar, who was profoundly regarding the cathedral clock.
“If you like, I’ll get you an interview with dad,” she offered magnanimously.
“Me? No, I thank you,” he said crisply. “I’m not patient of unnecessary red tape.”
Miss Brewster looked at him in surprise. It was borne in upon her, as she looked, that this man was not accustomed to being lightly regarded by other men, however busy or important; that his own concerns in life were quite as weighty to him, and in his esteem, perhaps, to others, as were the interests of any magnate; and that, man to man, there would be no shyness or indecision or purposelessness anywhere in his make-up.
“If it was important,” she began hesitantly, “my father would be–“
“It was of no importance to me,” he cut in. “To others–Perhaps I could see some one else of your party.”
“Well, here I am.” She smiled. “Why won’t I do?”
Behind the obscuring disks she could feel his glance read her. The grimness at the mouth’s corners relaxed.
“I really don’t know why you shouldn’t.”
“Dad says I’d have made a man of affairs,” she remarked.
“Why, it’s just this. You should be planning to leave this country.”
Miss Brewster bewailed her harsh lot with drooping lip.
“Every one wants to drive me away!”
“Who else?”
“That railroad man, Mr. Galpy, was offering us special inducements to leave, in the form of special trains any time we liked. It isn’t hospitable.”
“A jail is hospitable. But one doesn’t stay in it when one can get out.”
“If Caracuna were the jail and I the ‘one,’ one might. I quite love it here.”
He made a sharp gesture of annoyance.
“Don’t be childish,” he said.
“Childish? You come down like Freedom from the mountain heights, and unfurl your warnings to the air, and complain of lost time and all that sort of thing, and what does it all amount to?” she demanded, with spirit. “That we should sail away, when you know perfectly well that the Dutch won’t let us sail away! Childish, indeed! Don’t you be BEETLISH!”
“There’s a way out, without much risk, but some discomfort. You could strike south-east to the Bird Reefs, take a small boat, and get over to the mainland. As soon as the blockade is off, the yacht can take your luggage around. The trip would be rough for you, but not dangerous. Not as dangerous as staying here may be.”
“Do you really think it so serious?”
“Most emphatically.”
“Will you come with us and show us the way?” she inquired, gazing with exaggerated appeal into his goggles.
“I? No.”
“What shall you do?”
“Stick.”
“Pins through scarabs,” she laughed, “while beneath you Caracuna riots and revolutes and massacres foreigners. Nero with his fiddle was nothing to you.”
“Miss Brewster, I’m afraid you are suffering from a misplaced sense of humor. Will you believe me when I tell you that I have certain sources of information in local matters both serviceable and reliable?”
“You seem to have bet on a certainty in the Dutch blockade matter.”
“Well, it’s equally certain that there is bubonic plague here.”
“A bola. You told me so yourself.”
“Perhaps there was nothing to be gained then by letting you know, as you were bottled up, with no way out. Now, through the good offices of a foreign official, who, of course, couldn’t afford to appear, this opportunity to reach the mainland is open to you.”
“Had you anything to do with that?” she inquired suspiciously.
“Oh, the official is a friend of mine,” he answered carelessly.
“And you really believe that there is an epidemic of plague here? Don’t you think that I’d make a good Red Cross nurse?”
His voice was grave and rather stern.
“You’ve never seen bubonic plague,” he said, “or you wouldn’t joke about it.”
“I’m sorry. But it wasn’t wholly a joke. If we were really cooped up with an epidemic, I’d volunteer. What else would there be to do?”
“Nothing of the sort,” he cried vehemently. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Anyway, isn’t the wonderful Luther Pruyn on his way to exorcise the demon, or something of the sort?”
“What about Luther Pruyn? Who says he’s coming here?”
“It’s the gossip of the diplomatic set and the clubs. He’s the favorite mystery of the day.”
“Well, if he does come, it won’t improve matters any, for the first case he verifies he’ll clap on a quarantine that a mouse couldn’t creep through. I know something of the Pruyn method.”
“And don’t wholly approve it, I judge.”
“It may be efficacious, but it’s extremely inconvenient at times.”
Again the cathedral clock boomed.
“See how I’ve kept you from your own affairs!” cried Miss Polly contritely. “What are you going to do now? Go back to your mountains?”
“Yes. As soon as you tell me that your father will go out by the reefs.”
“Do you expect him to make up his mind, on five minutes’ notice, to abandon his yacht?”
“I thought great magnates were supposed to be men of instant and unalterable decisions. I don’t know the type.”
“Anyway, dad has gone out. I saw him drive away. Wouldn’t to- morrow do?”
“Why, yes; I suppose so.”
“I’ll tell you. The Voice will report at the rock to-morrow, at four.”
“No.”
“What a very uncompromising ‘no’!”
“I can’t be there at four. Make it five.”
“What a very arbitrary beetle man! Well, as I’ve wasted so much of your time to-day, I’ll accept your orders for to-morrow.”
“And please impress your father with the extreme advisability of your getting off this island.”
“Yes, sir,” she said meekly. “You’ll be most awfully glad to get rid of us, won’t you?”
“Very greatly relieved.”
“And a little bit sorry?”
The begoggled face turned toward her. There was a perceptible tensity in the line of the jaw. But the beetle man made no answer.
“Now, if I could see behind those glasses,” said Miss Polly Brewster to her wicked little self, “I’d probably BITE myself rather than say it again. Just the same–And a little bit sorry?” she persisted aloud.
“Does that matter?” said the man quietly.
Miss Polly Brewster forthwith bit herself on her pink and wayward tongue.
“Don’t think I’m not grateful,” she employed that chastened member to say. “I am, most deeply. So will father be, even if he decides not to leave. I’m afraid that’s what he will decide.”
“He mustn’t.”
“Tell him that yourself.”
“I will, if it becomes necessary.”
“Let me be present at the interview. Most people are afraid of dad. Perhaps you’d be, too.”
“I could always run away,” he remarked, unsmiling. “You know how well I do it.”
“I must do it now myself, and get arrayed for the daily tea sacrifice. Au revoir.”
“Hasta manana,” he said absently.
She had turned to go, but at the word she came slowly back a pace or two, smiling.
“What a strange beetle man you are!” she said softly. “I have no other friends like you. You ARE a friend, aren’t you, in your queer way?” She did not wait for an answer, but went on: “You don’t come to see me when I ask you. You don’t send me any word. You make me feel that, compared to your concerns with beetles and flies, I’m quite hopelessly unimportant. And yet here I find you giving up your own pursuits and wasting your time to plan and watch and think for us.”
“For you,” he corrected.
“For me,” she accepted sweetly. “What an ungrateful little pig you must think me! But truly inside I appreciate it and thank you, and I think–I feel that perhaps it amounts to a lot more than I know.”
He made a gesture of negation.
“No great thing,” he said. “But it’s the best I can do, anyway. Do you remember what the mediaeval mummer said, when he came bearing his poor homage?”
“No. Tell it to me.”
“It runs like this: ‘Lady, who art nowise bitter to those who serve you with a good intent, that which thy servant is, that he is for you.'”
“Polly Brewster,” said the girl to herself, as she walked, slowly and musingly, back to her room, “the busy haunts of men are more suited to your style than the free-and-untrammeled spaces of nature, and well you know it. But you’ll go to-morrow and you’ll keep on going until you find out what is behind those brown-green goblin spectacles. If only he didn’t look so like a gnome!”
The clause conditional, introduced by the word “if,” does not always imply a conclusion, even in the mind of the propounder. Miss Brewster would have been hard put to it to round out her subjunctive.
VI
FORKED TONGUES
“Pooh!” said Thatcher Brewster.
Thatcher Brewster’s “Pooh!” is generally recognized in the realm of high finance as carrying weight. It is not derisive or contemptuous; it is dismissive. The subject of it simply ceases to exist. In the present instance, it was so mild as scarcely to stir the smoke from his after-dinner cigar, yet it had all the intent, if not the effect, of finality. The reason why it hadn’t the effect was that it was directed at Thatcher Brewster’s daughter.
“Perhaps not quite so much ‘Pooh!’ as you think,” was that damsel’s reception of the pregnant monosyllable.
“A bug-hunter from nowhere! Don’t I know that type?” said the magnate, who confounded all scientists with inventors, the capital-seeking inventor being the bane and torment of his life.
“He knew about the Dutch blockade.”
“Or pretended he did. I’m afraid my Pollipet has let herself romanticize a little.”
“Romanticize!” The girl laughed. “If you could see him, dad! Romance and my poor little beetle man don’t live in the same world.”
Out of the realm of memory, where the echoes come and go by no known law, sounded his voice in her ear: “‘That which thy servant is, that he is for you.'” Dim doubt forthwith began to cloud the bright certainty of Miss Brewster’s verdict.
“If he’s gone to all the trouble that I told you of, it must be that he has some good reason for wanting to get us safely out,” she argued to her father.
“Perhaps he feels that his peace of mind would be more assured if you were in some other country,” he teased. “No, my dear, I’m not leaving a full-manned yacht in a foreign harbor and smuggling myself out of a friendly country on the say-so of an unknown adviser, whose chief ability seems to lie in the hundred-yard dash.”
“I think that’s unfair and ungrateful. If a man with a sword–“
“When I begin a row, I stay with it,” said Mr. Brewster grimly. “Quitters and I don’t pull well together.”
“Then I’m to tell him ‘No’?”
“Positively.”
“Not so positively at all. I shall say, ‘No, thank you,’ in my very nicest way, and say that you’re very grateful and appreciative and not at all the growly old bear of a dad that you pretend to be when one doesn’t know and love you. And perhaps I’ll invite him to dine here and go away on the yacht with us–“
“And graciously accept a couple of hundred thousand dollars bonus, and come into the company as first vice-president,” chuckled her father. “And then he’ll wake up and find he’s been sitting on a cactus. See here,” he added, with a sharpening of tone, “do you suppose he could get a cablegram for transmission to Washington over to the mainland for us by this mysterious route of his?”
“Very likely.”
“You’re really sure you want to go, Pollipet? This is your cruise, you know.”
“Yes, I do.”
Hitherto Miss Polly had been declaring to all and sundry, including the beetle man himself, that it was her firm intent and pleasure to stay on the island and observe the presumptively interesting events that promised. That she had reversed this decision, on the unsolicited counsel of an extremely queer stranger, was a phenomenon the peculiarity of which did not strike her at the time. All that she felt was a settled confidence in the beetle man’s sound reason for his advice.
“Very good,” said Mr. Brewster. “If I can get through a message to the State Department, they’ll bring pressure to bear on the Dutch, and we can take the yacht through the blockade. It’s only a question of finding a way to lay the matter before the Dutch authorities, anyway. I’ve been making inquiries here, and I find there’s no intention of bottling up neutral pleasure craft. I dare say we could get out now. Only it’s possible that the Hollanders might shoot first and ask questions afterward.”
“It would have to be done quickly, dad. They may quarantine at any time.”
“Dr. Pruyn ought to be here any day now. Let’s leave that matter for him. There’s a man I have confidence in.”
“Mr. Perkins says that Dr. Pruyn will bottle up the port tighter than the Dutch.”
“Let him, so long as we get out first. Now, Polly, you tell this man Perkins that I’ll pay all expenses and give him a round hundred for himself if he’ll bring me a receipt showing that my cablegram has been dispatched to Washington.”
“I don’t think I’d quite like to do that, dad. He isn’t the sort of man one offers money to.”
“Every one’s the sort of man one offers money to–if it’s enough,” retorted her father. “And a hundred dollars will look pretty big to a scientific man. I know something about their salaries. You try him.”
“So far as expenses go, I will. But I won’t hurt his feelings by trying to pay him for something that he would do for friendship or not at all.”
“Have it your own way. When is he coming in?”
“He isn’t coming in.”
“Then where are you going to see him?”
“Up on the mountain trail, when I ride tomorrow afternoon.”
“With Carroll?”
“No; I’m going alone.”
“I don’t quite like to have you knocking about mountain roads by yourself, though Mr. Sherwen says you’re safe anywhere here. Where’s that little automatic revolver I gave you?”
“In my trunk. I’ll carry that if it will make you feel any easier.”
“Yes, do. But I can’t see why you can’t send word to Perkins that I want to see him here.”
“I can. And I can guess just what his answer would be.”
“Well, guess ahead.”
“He’d tell you to go to the bad place, or its scientific equivalent.” She laughed.
“Would he?” Mr. Brewster did not laugh. “And perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me why.”
“Because you sent word that you were out when he called.”
“Humph! I see people when _I_ want to see THEM, not when they want to see me.”
“Then Mr. Perkins is likely to prove permanently invisible to you, if I’m any judge of character.”
“Well, well,” said Mr. Brewster impatiently, “manage it yourself. Only impress on him the necessity of getting the message on the wire. I’ll write it out to-night and give it to you with the money to-morrow.”
After luncheon on the following day, Polly, with the cablegram and money in her purse and her automatic safely disposed in her belt, walked in the plaza with Carroll. The legless beggar whined at them for alms. Handing him a quartillo, the Southerner would have passed on, but his companion stood eyeing the mendicant.
“Now, what can there be in that poor wreck to captivate the scientific intellect?” she marveled.
“If you mean Mr. Perkins–” began Carroll.
“I do.”
“Then I think perhaps the reason for some of that gentleman’s associations will hardly stand inquiry.”
The girl turned her eyes on him and searched the handsome, serious face.
“Fitz, you’re not the man to say that of another man without some good reason.”
“I am not, Miss Polly.”
“You think that Mr. Perkins is not the kind of man for me to have anything to do with?”
“I–I’m afraid he isn’t.”
“Don’t you think that, having gone so far, you ought to tell me why?”
Carroll flushed.
“I would rather tell your father.”
“Are you implying a scandal in connection with my timid, little dried-up scientist?”
“I’m only saying,” said the other doggedly, “that there’s something secret and underhanded about that place of his in the mountains. It’s a matter of common gossip.”
The girl laughed outright.
“The poor beetle man! Why, he’s so afraid of a woman that he goes all to pieces if one speaks to him suddenly. Just to see his expression, I’d like to tell him that he’s being scandalized by all Caracuna.”
“You’re going to see him again?”
“Certainly. This afternoon.”
“I don’t think you should, Miss Polly.”
“Have you any actual facts against him? Anything but casual gossip?”
“No; not yet.”
“When you have, I’ll listen to you. But you couldn’t make me believe it, anyway. Why, Fitz, look at him!”
“Take me with you,” insisted the other, “and let me ask him a question or two that any honorable man could answer. They don’t call him the Unspeakable Perk for nothing, Miss Polly.”
“It’s just because they don’t understand his type. Nor do you, Fitz, and so you mistrust him.”
“I understand that you’ve shown more interest in him than in any one you know,” said the other miserably.
Her laugh rang as free and frank as a child’s.
“Interest? That’s true. But if you mean sentiment, Fitz, after once having looked into the depths of those absurd goggles, can you, COULD you think of sentiment and the beetle man in the same breath?”
“No, I couldn’t,” he confessed, relieved. “But, then, I never have been able to understand you, Miss Polly.”
“Therein lies my fatal charm,” she said saucily. “Now, to the beetle man, I’m a specimen. HE understands as much as he wants to. Probably I shall never see him after to-day, anyway. He’s going to get a message through for us that will deliver us from this land of bondage.”
“He can’t do it–too soon for me,” declared Carroll. “And, Miss Polly, you don’t think the worse of me for having said behind his back what I’m just waiting to say to his face?”
“Not a bit,” said the girl warmly. “Only I know it’s nonsense.”
“I hope so,” said Carroll, quite honestly. “I would hate to think anything low-down of a man you’d call your friend.”
Carroll had learned more than he had told, but less than enough to give him what he considered proper evidence to lay before Polly’s father. After some deliberation as to the point of honor involved, he decided to go to Raimonda, who, alone in Caracuna City, seemed to be on personal terms with the hermit. He found the young man in his office. With entire frankness, Carroll stated his errand and the reason for it. The Caracunan heard him with grave courtesy.
“And now, senior,” concluded the American, “here’s my question, and it’s for you to determine whether, under the circumstances, you are justified in giving me an answer. Is there a woman living in Mr. Perkins’s quinta on the mountains?”
“I cannot answer that question,” said the other, after some deliberation.
“I’m sorry,” said Carroll simply.
“I also. The more so in that my attitude may be misconstrued against Mr. Perkins. I am bound by confidence.”
“So I infer,” returned his visitor courteously. “Then I have only to ask your pardon–“
“One moment, if you please, senor. Perhaps this will serve to make easy your mind. On my word, there is nothing in Mr. Perkins’s life on the mountain in any manner dishonorable or–or irregular.”
In a flash, the simple solution crossed Carroll’s mind. That a woman was there, and a woman not of the servant class, could hardly be doubted, in view of almost direct evidence from eyewitnesses. If there was nothing irregular about her presence, it was because she was Perkins’s wife. In view of Raimonda’s attitude, he did not feel free to put the direct query. Another question would serve his purpose.
“Is it advisable, and for the best interests of Miss Brewster, that she should associate with him under the circumstances?”
The Caracunan started and shot a glance at his interlocutor that said, as plainly as words, “How much do you know that you are not telling?” had the latter not been too intent upon his own theory to interpret it.
“Ah, that,” said Raimonda, after a pause,–“that is another question. If it were my sister, or any one dear to me–but”–he shrugged–“views on that matter differ.”
“I hardly think that yours and mine differ, senior. I thank you for bearing with me with so much patience.”