He went out with his suspicions hardened into certainty.
VII
“THAT WHICH THY SERVANT IS–“
A man that you’d call your friend. Such had been Fitzhugh Carroll’s reference to the Unspeakable Perk. With that characterization in her mind. Miss Brewster let herself drift, after her suitor had left her, into a dreamy consideration of the hermit’s attitude toward her. She was not prone lightly to employ the terms of friendship, yet this new and casual acquaintance had shown a readiness to serve–not as cavalier, but as friend–none too common in the experience of the much-courted and a little spoiled beauty. Being, indeed, a “lady nowise bitter to those who served her with good intent,” she reflected, with a kindly light in her eyes, that it was all part and parcel of the beetle’s man’s amiable queerness.
Still musing upon this queerness, she strolled back to find her mount waiting at the corner of the plaza. In consideration of the heat she let her cream-colored mule choose his own pace, so they proceeded quite slowly up the hill road, both absorbed in meditation, which ceased only when the mule started an argument about a turn in the trail. He was a well-bred trotting mule, worth six hundred dollars in gold of any man’s money, and he was self-appreciative in knowledge of the fact. He brought a singular firmness of purpose to the support of the negative of her proposition, which was that he should swing north from the broad into the narrow path. When the debate was over, St. John the Baptist–this, I hesitate to state, yet must, it being the truth, was the spirited animal’s name–was considerably chastened, and Miss Brewster more than a trifle flushed. She left him tied to a ceiba branch at the exit from the dried creek bed, with strict instructions not to kick, lest a worse thing befall him. Miss Brewster’s fighting blood was up, when, ten minutes late, because of the episode, she reached the summit of the rock.
“Oh, Mr. Beetle Man, are you there?” she called.
“Yes, Voice. You sound strange. What is it?”
“I’ve been hurrying, and if you tell me I’m late, I’ll–I’ll fall on your neck again and break it.”
“Has anything happened?”
“Nothing in particular. I’ve been boxing the compass with a mule. It’s tiresome.”
He reflected.
“You’re not, by any chance, speaking figuratively of your respected parent?”
“Certainly NOT!” she disclaimed indignantly. “This was a real mule. You’re very impertinent.”
“Well, you see, he was impertinent to me, saying he was out when he was in. What is his decision–yes or no?”
“No.”
A sharp exclamation came from the nook below.
“Is that the entomological synonym for ‘damn’?” she inquired.
“It’s a lament for time wasted on a–Well, never mind that.”
“But he wants you to carry a message by that secret route of yours. Will you do it for him?”
“NO!”
“That’s not being a very kind or courteous beetle man.”
“I owe Mr. Brewster no courtesy.”
“And you pay only where you owe? Just, but hardly amiable. Well, you owe me nothing–but–will you do it for me?”
“Yes.”
“Without even knowing what it is?”
“Yes.”
“In return you shall have your heart’s desire.”
“Doubted.”
“Isn’t the dearest wish of your soul to drive me out of Caracuna?”
“Hum! Well–er–yes. Yes; of course it is.”
“Very well. If you can get dad’s message on the wire to Washington, he thinks the Secretary of State, who is his friend, can reach the Dutch and have them open up the blockade for us.”
“Time apparently meaning nothing to him.”
“Would it take much time?”
“About four days to a wire.”
She gazed at him in amazement.
“And you were willing to give up four days to carry my message through, ‘unsight–unseen,’ as we children used to say?”
“Willing enough, but not able to. I’d have got a messenger through with it, if necessary. But in four days, there’ll be other obstacles besides the Dutch.”
“Quarantine?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that had to wait for Dr. Pruyn.”
“Pruyn’s here. That’s a secret, Miss Brewster.”
“Do you know EVERYTHING? Has he found plague?”
“Ah, I don’t say that. But he will find it, for it’s certainly here. I satisfied myself of that yesterday.”
“From your beggar friend?”
“What made you think that, O most acute observer?”
“What else would you be talking to him of, with such interest?”
“You’re correct. Bubonic always starts in the poor quarters. To know how people die, you have to know how they live. So I cultivated my beggar friend and listened to the gossip of quick funerals and unexplained disappearances. I’d have had some real arguments to present to Mr. Brewster if he had cared to listen.”
“He’ll listen to Dr. Pruyn. They’re old friends.”
“No! Are they?”
“Yes. Since college days. So perhaps the quarantine will be easier to get through than the blockade.”
“Do you think so? I’m afraid you’ll find that pull doesn’t work with the service that Dr. Pruyn is in.”
“And you think that there will be quarantine within four days?”
“Almost sure to be.”
“Then, of course, I needn’t trouble you with the message.”
“Don’t jump at conclusions. There might be another and quicker way.”
“Wireless?” she asked quickly.
“No wireless on the island. No. This way you’ll just have to trust me for.”
“I’ll trust you for anything you say you can do.”
“But I don’t say I can. I say only that I’ll try.”
“That’s enough for me. Ready! Now, brace yourself. I’m coming down.”
“Wh–why–wait! Can’t you send it down?”
“No. Besides, you KNOW you want to see me. No use pretending, after last time. Remember your verse now, and I’ll come slowly.”
Solemnly he began:–
“Scarab, tarantula, neurop–“
“‘Doodle-bug,'” she prompted severely. “–doodle-bug, flea,”–
he concluded obediently.
“Scarab, tarantula, doodle-bug, flea. Scarab, tarantula, doodle–“
“Oof! I–I–didn’t think you’d be here so soon!”
He scrambled to his feet, hardly less palpitating than on the occasion of their first encounter.
“Hopeless!” she mourned. “Incurable! Wanted: a miracle of St. Vitus. Do stop nibbling your hat, and sit down.”
“I don’t think it’s as bad as it was,” he murmured, obeying. “One gets accustomed to you.”
“One gets accustomed to anything in time, even the eccentricities of one’s friends.”
“Do you think I’m eccentric?”
“Do I think–Have you ever known any one who didn’t think you eccentric?”
Upon this he pondered solemnly.
“It’s so long since I’ve stopped to consider what people think of me. One hasn’t time, you know.”
“Then one is unhuman. _I_ have time.”
“Of course. But you haven’t anything else to do.”
As this was quite true, she naturally felt annoyed.
“Knowing as you do all the secrets of my inner life,” she observed sarcastically, “of course you are in a position to judge.”
Her own words recalled Carroll’s charge, and though, with the subject of them before her, it seemed ridiculously impossible, yet the spirit of mischief, ever hovering about her like an attendant sprite, descended and took possession of her speech. She assumed a severely judicial expression.
“Mr. Beetle Man, will you lay your hand upon your microscope, or whatever else scientists make oath upon, and answer fully and truly the question about to be put to you?”
“As I hope for a blessed release from this abode of lunacy, I will.”
“Mr. Beetle Man, have you got an awful secret in your life?”
So sharply did he start that the heavy goggles slipped a fraction of an inch along his nose, the first time she had ever seen them in any degree misplaced. She was herself sensibly discountenanced by his perturbation.
“Why do you ask that?” he demanded.
“Natural interest in a friend,” she answered lightly, but with growing wonder. “I think you’d be altogether irresistible if you were a pirate or a smuggler or a revolutionary. The romantic spirit could lurk so securely behind those gloomy soul-screens that you wear. What do you keep back of them, O dark and shrouded beetle man?”
“My eyes,” he grunted.
“Basilisk eyes, I’m sure. And what behind the eyes?”
“My thoughts.”
“You certainly keep them securely. No intruders allowed. But you haven’t answered my question. Have you ever murdered any one in cold blood? Or are you a married man trifling with the affections of poor little me?”
“You shall know all,” he began, in the leisurely tone of one who commences a long narrative. “My parents were honest, but poor. At the age of three years and four months, a maternal uncle, who, having been a proofreader of Abyssinian dialect stories for a ladies’ magazine, was considered a literary prophet, foretold that I–“
“Help! Wait! Stop!–
“‘Oh, skip your dear uncle!’ the bellman exclaimed, And impatiently tinkled his bell.”
Her companion promptly capped her verse:–
“‘I skip forty years,’ said the baker in tears,”–
“You can’t,” she objected. “If you skipped half that, I don’t believe it would leave you much.”
“When one is giving one’s life history by request,” he began, with dignity, “interruptions–“
“It isn’t by request,” she protested. “I don’t want your life history. I won’t have it! You shan’t treat an unprotected and helpless stranger so. Besides, I’m much more interested to know how you came to be familiar with Lewis Carroll.”
“Just because I’ve wasted my career on frivolous trifles like science, you needn’t think I’ve wholly neglected the true inwardness of life, as exemplified in ‘The Hunting of the Snark,'” he said gravely.
“Do you know”–she leaned forward, searching his face–“I believe you came out of that book yourself. ARE you a Boojum? Will you, unless I ‘charm you with smiles and soap,’
“‘Softly and silently vanish away, And never be heard of again’?”
“You’re mixed. YOU’D be the one to do that if I were a real Boojum. And you’ll be doing it soon enough, anyway,” he concluded ruefully.
“So I shall, but don’t be too sure that I’ll ‘never be heard of again.'”
He glanced up at the sun, which was edging behind a dark cloud, over the gap.
“Is your raging thirst for personal information sufficiently slaked?” he asked. “We’ve still fifteen or twenty minutes left.”
“Is that all? And I haven’t yet given you the message!” She drew it from the bag and handed it to him.
“Sealed,” he observed.
The girl colored painfully.
“Dad didn’t intend–You mustn’t think–” With a flash of generous wrath she tore the envelope open and held out the inclosure. “But I shouldn’t have thought you so concerned with formalities,” she commented curiously.
“It isn’t that. But in some respects, possibly important, it would be better if–” He stopped, looking at her doubtfully.
“Read it,” she nodded.
He ran through the brief document.
“Yes; it’s just as well that I should know. I’ll leave a copy.”
Something in his accent made her scrutinize him.
“You’re going into danger!” she cried.
“Danger? No; I think not. Difficulty, perhaps. But I think it can be put through.”
“If it were dangerous, you’d do it just the same,” she said, almost accusingly.
“It would be worth some danger now to get you away from greater danger later. See here, Miss Brewster”–he rose and stood over her–“there must be no mistake or misunderstanding about this.”
“Don’t gloom at me with those awful glasses,” she said fretfully. “I feel as if I were being stared at by a hidden person.”
He disregarded the protest.
“If I get this message through, can you guarantee that your father will take out the yacht as soon as the Dutch send word to him?”
“Oh, yes. He will do that. How are you going to deliver the message?”
Again her words might as well not have been spoken.
“You’d better have your luggage ready for a quick start.”
“Will it be soon?”
“It may be.”
“How shall we know?”
“I will get word to you.”
“Bring it?”
He shook his head.
“No; I fear not. This is good-bye.”
“You’re very casual about it,” she said, aggrieved. “At least, it would be polite to pretend.”
“What am I to pretend?”
“To be sorry. Aren’t you sorry? Just a little bit?”
“Yes; I’m sorry. Just a little bit–at least.”
“I’m most awfully sorry myself,” she said frankly. “I shall miss you.”
“As a curiosity?” he asked, smiling.
“As a friend. You have been a friend to us–to me,” she amended sweetly. “Each time I see you, I have more the feeling that you’ve been more of a friend than I know.”
“‘That which thy servant is,'” he quoted lightly. But beneath the lightness she divined a pain that she could not wholly fathom. Quite aware of her power, Miss Polly Brewster was now, for one of the few times in her life, stricken with contrition for her use of it.
“And I–I haven’t been very nice,” she faltered. “I’m afraid” sometimes I’ve been quite horrid.”
“You? You’ve been ‘the glory and the dream.’ I shall be needing memories for a while. And when the glory has gone, at least the dream will remain–tethered.”
“But I’m not going to be a dream alone,” she said, with wistful lightness. “It’s far too much like being a ghost. I’m going to be a friend, if you’ll let me. And I’m going to write to you, if you will tell me where. You won’t find it so very easy to make a mere memory of me. And when you come home–When ARE you coming home?”
He shook his head.
“Then you must find out, and let me know. And you must come and visit us at our summer place, where there’s a mountain-side that we can sit on, and you can pretend that our lake is the Caribbean and hate it to your heart’s content–“
“I don’t believe I can ever quite hate the Caribbean again.”
“From this view you mustn’t, anyway. I shouldn’t like that. As for our lake, nobody could really help loving it. So you must be sure and come, won’t you?”
“Dreams!” he murmured.
“Isn’t there room in the scientific life for dreams?”
“Yes. But not for their fulfillment.”
“But there will be beetles and dragon-flies on our mountain,” she went on, conscious of talking against time, of striving to put off the moment of departure. “You’ll find plenty of work there. Do you know, Mr. Beetle Man, you haven’t told me a thing, really, about your work, or a thing, really, about yourself. Is that the way to treat a friend?”
“When I undertook to spread before you the true and veracious history of my life,” he began, striving to make his tone light, “you would none of it.”
“Are you determined to put me off? Do you think that I wouldn’t find the things that are real to you interesting?”
“They’re quite technical,” he said shyly.
“But they are the big things to you, aren’t they? They make life for you?”
“Oh, yes; that, of course.” It was as if he were surprised at the need of such a question. “I suppose I find the same excitement and adventure in research that other men find in politics, or war, or making money.”
“Adventure?” she said, puzzled. “I shouldn’t have supposed research an adventurous career, exactly.”
“No; not from the outside.” His hidden gaze shifted to sweep the far distances. His voice dropped and softened, and, when he spoke again, she felt vaguely and strangely that he was hardly thinking of her or her question, except as a part of the great wonder-world surrounding and enfolding their companioned remoteness.
“This is my credo,” he said, and quoted, half under his breath:–
“‘We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery.
We are reaching, through His laws, To the garment hem of Cause.
As, with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen;
What the Thought which underlies Nature’s masking and disguise;
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death.'”
Other men had poured poetry into Polly Brewster’s ears, and she had thought them vapid or priggish or affected, according as they had chosen this or that medium. This man was different. For all his outer grotesquery, the noble simplicity of the verse matched some veiled and hitherto but half-expressed quality within him, and dignified him. Miss Brewster suffered the strange but not wholly unpleasant sensation of feeling herself dwindle.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said, with an effort. “Is it Matthew Arnold?”
“Nearer home. You an American, and don’t know your Whittier? That passage from his ‘Agassiz’ comes pretty near to being what life means to me. Have I answered your requirements?”
“Fully and finely.”
She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated, and stretched out both hands to him. He took and held them without awkwardness or embarrassment. By that alone she could have known that he was suffering with a pain that submerged consciousness of self.
“Whether I see you again or not, I’ll never forget you,” she said softly. “You HAVE been good to me, Mr. Perkins.”
“I like the other name better,” he said.
“Of course. Mr. Beetle Man.” She laughed a little tremulously. Abruptly she stamped a determined foot. “I’m NOT going away without having seen my friend for once. Take off your glasses, Mr. Beetle Man.”
“Too much radiance is bad for the microscopical eye.”
“The sun is under a cloud.”
“But you’re here, and you’d glow in the dark.”
“No; I’m not to be put off with pretty speeches. Take them off. Please!”
Releasing her hand, he lifted off the heavy and disfiguring apparatus, and stood before her, quietly submissive to her wish. She took a quick step backward, stumbled, and thrust out a hand against the face of the giant rock for support.
“Oh!” she cried, and again, “Oh, I didn’t think you’d look like that!”
“What is it? Is there anything very wrong with me?” he asked seriously, blinking a little in the soft light.
“No, no. It isn’t that. I–I hardly know–I expected something different. Forgive me for being so–so stupid.”
In truth, Miss Polly Brewster had sustained a shock. She had become accustomed to regard her beetle man rather more in the light of a beetle than a man. In fact, the human side of him had impressed her only as a certain dim appeal to sympathy; the masculine side had simply not existed. Now it was as if he had unmasked. The visage, so grotesque and gnomish behind its mechanical apparatus, had given place to a wholly different and formidably strange face. The change all centered in the eyes. They were wide-set eyes of the clearest, steadiest, and darkest gray she had ever met; and they looked out at her from sharply angled brows with a singular clarity and calmness of regard. In their light the man’s face became instinct with character in every line. Strength was there, self-control, dignity, a glint of humor in the little wrinkles at the corner of the mouth, and, withal a sort of quiet and sturdy beauty.
She had half-turned her face from him. Now, as her gaze returned and was fixed by his, she felt a wave of blood expand her heart, rush upward into her cheeks, and press into her eyes tears of swift regret. But now she was sorry, not for him, but for herself, because he had become remote and difficult to her.
“Have I startled you?” he asked curiously. “I’ll put them back on again.”
“No, no; don’t do that!” She rallied herself to the point of laughing a little. “I’m a goose. You see, I’ve pictured you as quite different. Have you ever seen yourself in the glass with those dreadful disguises on?”
“Why, no; I don’t suppose I have,” he replied, after reflection. “After all, they’re meant for use, not for ornament.”
By this time she had mastered her confusion and was able to examine his face. Under his eyes were circles of dull gray, defined by deep lines,
“Why, you’re worn out!” she cried pitifully. “Haven’t you been sleeping?”
“Not much.”
“You must take something for it.” The mothering instinct sprang to the rescue. “How much rest did you get last night?”
“Let me see. Last night I did very well. Fully four hours.”
“And that is more than you average?”
“Well, yes; lately. You see, I’ve been pretty busy.”
“Yet you’ve given up your time to my wretched, unimportant little stupid affairs! And what return have I made?”
“You’ve made the sun shine,” he said, “in a rather shaded existence.”
“Promise me that you’ll sleep to-night; that you won’t work a stroke.”
“No; I can’t promise that.”
“You’ll break down. You’ll go to pieces. What have you got to do more important than keeping in condition?”
“As to that, I’ll last through. And there’s some business that won’t wait.”
Divination came upon her.
“Dad’s message!”
“If it weren’t that, it would be something else.”
Her hand went out to him, and was withdrawn.
“Please put on your glasses,” she said shyly.
Smiling, he did her bidding.
“There! Now you are my beetle man again. No, not quite, though. You’ll never be quite the same beetle man again.”
“I shall always be,” he contradicted gently.
“Anyway, it’s better. You’re easier to say things to. Are you really the man who ran away from the street car?” she asked doubtfully.
“I really am.”
“Then I’m most surely sure that you had good reason.” She began to laugh softly. “As for the stories about you, I’d believe them less than ever, now.”
“Are there stories about me?”
“Gossip of the club. They call you ‘The Unspeakable Perk’!”
“Not a bad nickname,” he admitted. “I expect I have been rather unspeakable, from their point of view.”
A desire to have the faith that was in her supported by this man’s own word overrode her shyness.
“Mr. Beetle Man,” she said, “have you got a sister?”
“I? No. Why?”
“If you had a sister, is there anything–Oh, DARN your sister!” broke forth the irrepressible Polly. “I’ll be your sister for this. Is there anything about you and your life here that you’d be afraid to tell me?”
“No.”
“I knew there wasn’t,” she said contentedly. She hesitated a moment, then put a hand on his arm. “Does this HAVE to be good- bye, Mr. Beetle Man?” she said wistfully.
“I’m afraid so.”
“No!” She stamped imperiously. “I want to see you again, and I’m going to see you again. Won’t you come down to the port and bring me another bunch of your mountain orchids when we sail–just for good-bye?”
Through the dull medium of the glasses she could feel his eyes questioning hers. And she knew that once more before she sailed away, she must look into those eyes, in all their clarity and all their strength–and then try to forget them. The swift color ran up into her cheeks.
“I–I suppose so,” he said. “Yes.”
“Au revoir, then!” she cried, with a thrill of gladness, and fled up the rock.
The Unspeakable Perk strode down his path, broke into a trot, and held to it until he reached his house. But Miss Polly, departing in her own direction, stopped dead after ten minutes’ going. It had struck her forcefully that she had forgotten the matter of the expense of the message. How could she reach him? She remembered the cliff above the rock, and the signal. If a signal was valid in one direction, it ought to work equally well in the other. She had her automatic with her. Retracing her steps, she ascended the cliff, a rugged climb. Across the deep-fringed chasm she could plainly see the porch of the quinta with the little clearing at the side, dim in the clouded light. Drawing the revolver, she fired three shots.
“He’ll come,” she thought contentedly.
The sun broke from behind the obscuring cloud and sent a shaft of light straight down upon the clearing. It illumined with pitiless distinctness the shimmering silk of a woman’s dress, hanging on a line and waving in the first draft of the evening breeze. For a moment Polly stood transfixed. What did it mean? Was it perhaps a servant’s dress. No; he had told her that there was no woman servant.
As she sought the solution, a woman’s figure emerged from the porch of the quinta, crossed the compound, and dropped upon a bench. Even at that distance, the watcher could tell from the woman’s bearing and apparel that she was not of the servant class. She seemed to be gazing out over the mountains; there was something dreary and forlorn in her attitude. What, then, did she do in the beetle man’s house?
Below the rock the shrubbery weaved and thrashed, and the person who could best answer that question burst into view at a full lope.
“What is it?” he panted. “Was it you who fired?”
She stared at him mutely. The revolver hung in her hand. In a moment he was beside her.
“Has anything happened?” he began again, then turned his head to follow the direction of her regard. He saw the figure in the compound.
“Good God in heaven!” he groaned.
He caught the revolver from her hand and fired three slow shots. The woman turned. Snatching off his hat, he signalled violently with it. The woman rose and, as it seemed to Polly Brewster, moved in humble submissiveness back to the shelter.
White consternation was stamped on the Unspeakable Perk’s face as he handed the revolver to its owner.
“Do you need me?” he asked quickly. “If not, I must go back at once.”
“I do not need you,” said the girl, in level tones. “You lied to me.”
His expression changed. She read in it the desperation of guilt.
“I can explain,” he said hurriedly, “but not now. There isn’t time. Wait here. I’ll be back. I’ll be back the instant I can get away.”
As he spoke, he was halfway down the rock, headed for the lower trail. The bushes closed behind him.
Painfully Polly Brewster made her way down the treacherous footing of the cliff path to her place on the rock. From her bag she drew one of her cards, wrote slowly and carefully a few words, found a dry stick, set it between two rocks, and pinned her message to it. Then she ran, as helpless humans run from the scourge of their own hearts.
Half an hour later the hermit, sweat-covered and breathless, returned to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by the silence. The white card caught his eye. He read its angular scrawl.
“I wish never to see you again. Never! Never! Never!”
A sulphur-yellow inquisitor, of a more insinuating manner than the former participant in their conversation, who had been examining the message on his own account, flew to the top of the cliff.
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle dit? Qu’est-ce qu’elle dit?” he demanded.
For the first time in his adult life the beetle man threw a stone at a bird.
VIII
LOS YANKIS
Luncheon on the day following the kiskadee bird’s narrow squeak for his life was a dreary affair for Mr. Fitzhugh Carroll. Business had called Mr. Brewster away. This deprivation the Southerner would have borne with equanimity. But Miss Brewster had also absented herself, which was rather too much for the devoted, but apprehensive, lover. Thus, ample time was given him to consider how ill his suit was prospering. The longer he stayed, the less he saw of Miss Polly. That she was kinder and more gentle, less given to teasing him than of yore, was poor compensation. He was shrewd enough to draw no good augury from that. Something had altered her, and he was divided between suspicion of the last week’s mail, the arrival of which had been about contemporaneous with her change of spirit, and some local cause. Was a letter from Smith, the millionaire, or Bobby, the friend of her childhood, responsible? Or was the cause nearer at hand?
For one preposterous moment he thought of the Unspeakable Perk. A quick visualization of that gnomish, froggish face was enough to dispel the suspicion. At least the petted and rather fastidious Miss Brewster’s fancy would be captured only by a gentleman, not by any such homunculus as the mountain dweller. Her interest, perhaps; the man possessed the bizarre attraction of the freakish. But anything else was absurd. And the knight was inclined to attaint his lady for a certain cruelty in the matter; she was being something less than fair to the Unspeakable Perk.
The searchlight of his surmise ranged farther. Raimonda! The young Caracunan was handsome, distinguished, manly, with a romantic charm that the American did not underestimate. He, at least, was a gentleman, and the assiduity of his attentions to the Northern beauty had become the joke of the clubs–except when Raimonda was present. By the same token, half of the gilded youth of the capital, and most of the young diplomats, were the sworn slaves of the girl. It was a confused field, indeed. Well, thank Heaven, she would soon be out of it! Word had come down from her that she was busy packing her things. Carroll wandered about the hotel, waiting for the news that would explain this preparation.
It came, at mid-afternoon, in the person of Miss Polly herself. Why packing trunks, with the aid of an experienced maid, should, even in a hot climate, produce heavy circles under the eyes, a droop at the mouth corners, and a complete submersion of vivacity, is a problem which Carroil then and there gave up. He had too much tact to question or comment.
“Oh, I’m so tired!” she said, giving him her hand. “Have you much packing to do, Fitzhugh?”
“No one has given me any notice to get ready, Miss Polly.”
“How very neglectful of me! We may leave at any time.”
“Yes; you may. But my ship doesn’t seem to be coming in very fast.”
The double entente was unintentional, but the girl winced.
“Aren’t you coming with us on the yacht?”
“Am I?” His handsome face lighted hopefully.
“Of course. Dad expects you to. What kind of people should we be to leave any friend behind, with matters as they are?”
“Ah, yes.” The hope passed out of his face. “Dictates of humanity, and that sort of thing. I think, if you and Mr. Brewster–“
“Please don’t be silly, Fitz,” she pleaded. “You know it would make me most unhappy to leave you.”
Rarely did the scion of Southern blood and breeding lose the self- control and reserve on which he prided himself, but he had been harassed by events to an unwonted strain of temper.
“Is it making you unhappy to leave any one else here?” he blurted out.
The challenge stirred the girl’s spirit.
“No, indeed! I wouldn’t care if I never saw any of them again. I’m tired of it all. I want to go home,” she said, like a pathetic child.
“Oh, Miss Polly,” he began, taking a step toward her, “if you’d only let me–“
She put up one little sunburned hand.
“Please, Fitz! I–I don’t feel up to it to-day.”
Humbly he subsided.
“I’d no right to ask you the question,” he apologized. “It was kind of you to answer me at all.”
“You’re really a dear, Fitz,” she said, smiling a little wanly. “Sometimes I wish–“
She did not finish her sentence, but wandered over to the window, and gazed out across the square. On the far side something quite out of the ordinary seemed to be going on.
“The legless beggar seems to have collected quite an audience,” she remarked idly.
Her suitor joined her on the parlor balcony.
“Possibly he’s starting a revolution. Any one can do it down here.”
Vehement adjuration, in a high, strident voice, came floating across to them.
“Listen!” cried the girl. “He’s speaking. English, isn’t he?”
“It seems to be a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. Quite a polyglot the friend of your friend Perkins appears to be.”
She turned steady eyes upon him.
“Mr. Perkins is not my friend.”
“No?”
“I never want to see him, or to hear his name again.”
“Ah, then you’ve found out about him?”
“Yes.” She flushed. “Yes–at least–Yes,” she concluded.
“He admitted it to you?”
“No, he lied about it.”
“I think I shall go up and make a call on Mr. Perkins,” said Carroll, with formidable quiet.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she answered wearily. “He’d only run away and hide.” As she said it, her inner self convicted her tongue of lying.
“Very likely. Yet, see here, Miss Polly,–I want to be fair to that fellow. It doesn’t follow that because he’s a coward he’s a cad.”
“He isn’t a coward!” she flashed.
“You just said yourself that he’d run and hide.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, and he IS a cad.”
“As you like. In any case, I shall make it a point to see him before I leave. If he can explain, well and good. If not–” He did not conclude.
“Our orator seems to have finished,” observed the girl. “I shall go back upstairs and write some good-bye notes to the kind people here.”
“Just for curiosity, I think I’ll drive across and look at the legless Demosthenes,” said her companion. “I was going to do a little shopping, anyway. So I’ll report later, if he’s revoluting or anything exciting.”
From her own balcony, when she reached it, Polly had a less obstructed view of the beggar’s appropriated corner, and she looked out a few minutes after she reached the room to see whether he had resumed his oratory. Apparently he had not, for the crowd had melted away. The legless one was rocking himself monotonously upon his stumps. His head was sunk forward, and from his extraordinary mouthings the spectator judged that he must be talking to himself with resumed vehemence. From what next passed before her astonished vision, Miss Brewster would have suspected herself of a hallucination of delirium had she not been sure of normal health.
One of the well-horsed, elegant little public victorias with which the city is so well supplied stopped at the curb, and the handsome head of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was thrust forth. At almost the same moment the Unspeakable Perk appeared upon the steps. He was wearing a pair of enormous, misfit white gloves. He went down to the beggar, reached forth a hand, and, to the far- away spectator’s wonder-struck interpretation, seemed to thrust something, presumably a document, into the breast of the mendicant’s shirt. Having performed this strange rite, he leaped up the steps, hesitated, rushed over to Carroll’s equipage, and laid violent hands upon the occupant, with obvious intent to draw him forth. For a moment they seemed to struggle upon the sidewalk; then both rushed upon the unfortunate beggar and proceeded to kidnap him and thrust him bodily into the cab.
The driver turned in his seat at this point, his cue in the mad farce having been given, and opened speech with many gestures, whereupon Carroll arose and embraced him warmly. And with this grouping, the vehicle, bearing its lunatic load, sped around the corner and disappeared, while the sole interested witness retired to obscurity, with her reeling head between her hands.
One final touch of phantasy was given to the whole affair when, two hours later, she met Carroll, soiled and grimy, coming across the plaza, smoking–he, the addict to thirty-cent Havanas!–an awful native cheroot, whose incense spread desolation about him. Further and more extraordinary, when she essayed to obtain a solution of the mystery from him, he repelled her with emphatic gestures and a few half-strangled words with whose unintelligibility the cheroot fumes may have had some connection, and hurried into the hotel, where he remained in seclusion the rest of the day.
What in the name of all the wonders could it mean? On Mr. Brewster’s return, she laid the matter before him at the dinner table.
“Touch of the sun, perhaps,” he hazarded. “Nothing else I know of would explain it.”
“Do two Americans, a half-breed beggar, and a local coachman get sunstruck at one and the same time?” she inquired disdainfully.
“Doesn’t seem likely. By your account, though, the crippled beggar seems to have been the little Charlie Ross of melodrama.”
“Then why didn’t he shout for help? I listened, but didn’t hear a sound from him.”
“Movie-picture rehearsal,” grunted Mr. Brewster. “I can’t quite see the heir of all the Virginias in the part. Isn’t he coming down to dinner this evening?”
“His dinner was sent up to his room. Isn’t it extraordinary?”
“Ask Sherwen about it. He’s coming around this evening for coffee in our rooms.”
But the American representative had something else on his mind besides casual kidnapings.
“I’ve just come from a talk with the British Minister,” he remarked, setting down his cup. “He’s officially in charge of American interests, you know.”
“Thought you were,” said Mr. Brewster.
“Officially, I have no existence. The United States of America is wiped off the map, so far as the sovereign Republic of Caracuna is concerned. Some of its politicians wouldn’t be over-grieved if the local Americans underwent the same process. The British Minister would, I’m sure, sleep easier if you were all a thousand miles away from here.”
“Tell Sir Willet that he’s very ungallant,” pouted Miss Polly. “When I sat next to him at dinner last week he offered to establish woman suffrage here and elect me next president if I’d stay.”
Sherwen hardly paid this the tribute of a smile.
“That was before he found out certain things. The Hochwald Legation”–he lowered his voice–“is undoubtedly stirring up anti- American sentiment.”
“But why?” inquired Mr. Brewster. “There’s enough trade for them and for us?”
“For one thing, they don’t like your concessions, Mr. Brewster. Then they have heard that Dr. Pruyn is on his way, and they want to make all the trouble they can for him, and make it impossible for him to get actual information of the presence of plague. I happen to know that their consul is officially declaring fake all the plague rumors.”
“That suits me,” declared the magnate. “We don’t want to have to run Dutch and quarantine blockade both.”
“Meantime, there are two or three cheap but dangerous demagogues who have been making anti-‘Yanki,’ as they call us, speeches in the slums. Sir Willet doesn’t like the looks of it. If there were any way in which you could get through, and to sea, it would be well to take it at once. Am I correct in supposing that you’ve taken steps to clear the yacht, Mr. Brewster?”
“Yes. That is, I’ve sent a message. Or, at least, so my daughter, to whose management I left it, believes.”
“Don’t tell me how,” said Sherwen quickly. “There is reason to believe that it has been dispatched.”
“You’ve heard something?”
“I have a message from our consul at Puerto del Norte, Mr. Wisner.”
“For me?” asked the concessionaire.
“Why, no,” was the hesitant reply. “It isn’t quite clear, but it seems to be for Miss Brewster.”
“Why not?” inquired that young lady coolly. “What is it?”
“The best I could make of it over the phone–Wisner had to be guarded–was that people planning to take Dutch leave would better pay their parting calls by to-morrow at the latest.”
“That would mean day after to-morrow, wouldn’t it?” mused the girl.
“If it means anything at all,” substituted her father testily.
“Meantime, how do you like the Gran Hotel Kast, Miss Brewster?” asked Sherwen.
“It’s awful beyond words! I’ve done nothing but wish for a brigade of Biddies, with good stout mops, and a government permit to clean up. I’d give it a bath!”
“Yes, it’s pretty bad. I’m glad you don’t like it.”
“Glad? Is every one ag’in’ poor me?”
“Because–well, the American Legation is a very lonely place. Now, the presence of an American lady–“
“Are you offering a proposal of marriage, Mr. Sherwen?” twinkled the girl. “If so–Dad, please leave the room.”
“Knock twenty years off my battle-scarred life and you wouldn’t be safe a minute,” he retorted. “But, no. This is a measure of safety. Sir Willet thinks that your party ought to be ready to move into the American Legation on instant notice, if you can’t get away to sea to-morrow.”
“What’s the use, if the legation has no official existence?” asked Mr. Brewster.
“In a sense it has. It would probably be respected by a mob. And, at the worst, it adjoins the British Legation, which would be quite safe. If it weren’t that Sir Willet’s boy has typhoid, you’d be formally invited to go there.”
“It’s very good of you,” said Miss Polly warmly. “But surely it would be an awful nuisance to you.”
“On the contrary, you’d brace up my far-too-casual old housekeeper and get the machinery running. She constantly takes advantage of my bachelor ignorance. If you say you’ll come, I’ll almost pray for the outbreak.”
“Certainly we’ll come, at any time you notify us,” said Mr. Brewster. “And we’re very grateful. Shall you have room for Mr. Carroll, too?”
“By all means. And I’ve notified Mr. Cluff. You won’t mind his being there? He’s a rough diamond, but a thoroughly decent fellow.”
“Useful, too, in case of trouble, I should judge,” said the magnate. “Then I’ll wait for further word from you.”
“Yes. I’ve got my men out on watch.”
“Wouldn’t it be–er–advisable for us to arm ourselves?”
“By no means! There’s just one course to follow; keep the peace at any price, and give the Hochwaldians not the slightest peg on which to hang a charge that Americans have been responsible for any trouble that might arise. May I ask you,” he added significantly, “to make this clear to Mr. Carroll?”
“Leave that to me,” said Miss Brewster, with superb confidence.
“Content, indeed! You’ll find our locality very pleasant, Miss Brewster. Three of the other legations are on the same block, not including the Hochwaldian, which is a quarter of a mile down the hill. On our corner is a house where several of the English railroad men live, and across is the Club Amicitia, made up largely of the jeunesse doree, who are mostly pro-American. So you’ll be quite surrounded by friends, not to say adherents.”
“Call on me to housekeep for you at any time,” cried Polly gayly. “I’ll begin to roll up my sleeves as soon as I get dressed to- morrow.”
IX
THE BLACK WARNING
That weird three-part drama in the plaza which had so puzzled Miss Polly Brewster had developed in this wise:–
Coincidently with the departure of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll from the hotel in his cab, the Unspeakable Perk emerged from a store near the far corner of the square, which exploited itself in the purest Castilian as offering the last word in the matter of gentlemen’s apparel. “Articulos para Caballeros” was the representation held forth upon its signboard.
If it had articled Mr. Perkins, it must be confessed that it had done its job unevenly, not to say fantastically. His linen was fresh and new, quite conspicuously so, and, therefore, in sharp contrast to the frayed and patched, but scrupulously clean and neatly pressed khaki suit, which set forth rather bumpily his solid figure. A serviceable pith helmet barely overhung the protrusive goggles. His hands were encased in white cotton gloves, a size or two too large. Dismal buff spots on the palms impaired their otherwise virgin purity. As the wearer carried his hands stiffly splayed, the blemishes were obtrusive. Altogether, one might have said that, if he were going in for farce, he was appropriately made up for it.
At the corner above the beggar’s niche he was turning toward a pharmacist’s entrance, when the mirth of the departing crowd that had been enjoying the free oratory attracted his attention. He glanced across at the beggar, now rocking rhythmically on his stumps, hesitated a moment, then ran down the steps.
At the same moment Carroll’s cab stopped on the other angle of the curb. The occupant put forth his head, saw the goggled freak descending to the legless freak, and sat back again.
“Hola, Pancho! Are you ill?” asked the newcomer.
The beggar only swung back and forth, muttering with frenzied rapidity. With one hand the Unspeakable Perk stopped him, as one might intercept the runaway pendulum of a clock, setting the other on his forehead. Then he bent and brought his goblin eyes to bear on the dark face. The features were distorted, the eyelids tremulous over suffused eyes, and the teeth set. Opening the man’s loose shirt, Perkins thrust his hand within. It might have been supposed that he was feeling for the heart action, were it not that his hand slid past the breast and around under the arm. When he drew it out, he stood for a moment with chin dropped, in consideration.
Midday heat had all but cleared the plaza. As he looked about, the helper saw no aid, until his eye fell upon the waiting cab. He fairly bounded up the stairs, calling something to the coachman.
“No,” grunted that toiler, with the characteristic discourtesy of the Caracunan lower class, and jerked his head backward toward his fare.
“I beg your pardon,” said the Unspeakable Perk eagerly, in Spanish, turning to the dim recess of the victoria. “Might I–Oh, it’s you!” He seized Carroll by the arm. “I want your cab.”
“Indeed!” said Carroll. “Well, you’re cool enough about it.”
“And your help,” added the other.
“What for?”
“Do you have to ask questions? The man may be dying–is dying, I think.”
“All right,” said Carroll promptly. “What’s to be done?”
“Get him home. Help me carry him to the cab.”
Between them, the two men lifted the heavy, mumbling cripple, carried him up the steps with a rush, and deposited him in the cab, while the driver was still angrily expostulating. The beggar was shivering now, and the cold sweat rolled down his face. His bearers placed themselves on each side of him. Perkins gave an order to the driver, who seemed to object, and a rapid-fire argument ensued.
“What’s wrong?” asked Carroll.
“Says he won’t go there. Says he was hired by you for shopping.”
Carroll took one look at the agony-wrung face of the beggar, who was being held on the seat by his companion.
“Won’t he?” said he grimly. “We’ll see.”
Rising, he threw a pair of long arms around those of the driver, pinning him, caught the reins, and turned the horses.
“Now ask him if he’ll drive,” he directed Perkins.
“Si, senor!” gasped the coachman, whose breath had been squeezed almost through his crackling ribs.
“See that you do,” the Southerner bade him, in accents that needed no interpretation.
Presently Perkins looked up from his charge.
“Got a cigar?” he asked abruptly.
“No,” replied the other, a little disgusted by this levity in the presence of imminent death.
Perkins bade the driver stop at the corner.
“Don’t let him fall off the seat,” he admonished Carroll, and jumped out.
In the course of a minute he reappeared, smoking a cheroot that appeared to be writhing and twisting in the effort to escape from its own noxious fumes.
“Have one,” he said, extending a handful to his companion.
“I don’t care for it,” returned the other superciliously. While willing to aid in a good work, he did not in the least approve either of the Unspeakable Perk or of his offhand manners.
Before they had gone much farther, his resentment was heated to the point of offense.
“Is it necessary for you to puff every puff of that infernal smoke in my face?” he demanded ominously.
“Well, you wouldn’t smoke, yourself.”
“If it weren’t for this poor devil of a sick man–” began Carroll, when a second thought about the smoke diverted his line of thought. “Is it contagious?” he asked.
“It’s so regarded,” observed the other dryly.
“I’ll take one of those, thank you.”
Perkins handed him one of the rejected spirals. In silence, except for the outrageous rattling of the wheels on the cobbles, they drove through mean streets that grew ever meaner, until they drew up at the blind front of a building abutting on an arroyo of the foothills. Here they stopped, and Carroll threw his jehu a five- bolivar piece, which the driver caught, driving away at once, without the demand for more which usually follows overpayment in Caracuna. Convenient to hand lay a small rock. Perkins used it for a knocker, hammering on the guarded wooden door with such vehemence as to still the clamor that arose from within.
Through the opening, as the barrier was removed by a leather- skinned old crone, Carroll gazed into a passageway, beyond which stretched a foul mule yard, bordered by what the visitor at first supposed to be stalls, until he saw bedding and utensils in them. The two men lifted the cripple in, amid the outcries and lamentations of the aged woman, who had looked at his face and then covered her own. At once they were surrounded by a swarm of women and children, who pressed upon them, hampering their movements, until a shrill voice cried:–
“La muerte negra!”
The swarm fell into silence, scattered, vanished, leaving only the moaning woman to help. At her direction they settled the patient on a straw pallet in a side room.
“That’s all you can do,” said the Unspeakable Perk to his companion. “And thank you.”
“I’ll stay.”
The goggles gloomed upon him in the dim room.
“I thought probably you would,” commented Perkins, and busied himself over the cripple with a knife and some cloths. He had stuffed his ludicrous white gloves into his pocket, and was tearing strips from his handkerchief with skillful fingers.
“Oughtn’t he to have a doctor?” asked Carroll. “Shall I go for one?”
“His mother has sent. No use, though.”
“He can’t be saved?”
“Not a chance on earth. I should say he was in the last stages.”
“What is it?” said Carroll hesitantly.
“La muerte negra. The black death.”
“Plague?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? Are you an expert?”
“One doesn’t have to be to recognize a case like that. The lump in the armpit is as big as a pigeon’s egg.”
“Why have you interested yourself in the man to such an extent?” asked Carroll curiously.
“He’s a friend of mine. Why did you?”
“Oh, that’s quite different. One can’t disregard a call for help such as yours.”
“A certain kind of ‘one’ can’t,” returned the Unspeakable Perk, with his half-smile. “You don’t mind my saying, Mr. Carroll, you’re a brave man.”
“And I’d have said that you weren’t,” replied the other bluntly. “I give it up. But I know this: I’m going to be pretty wretchedly frightened until I know that I haven’t got it. I’m frightened now.”
“Then you’re a braver man than I thought. But the danger may be less than you think. Stick to that cigar–here are two more–and wait for me outside. Here’s the doctor.”
Profound and solemn under a silk hat, the local physician entered, bowing to Carroll as they passed in the hallway. Almost immediately Perkins emerged. On his face was a sardonic grin.
“Malaria,” he observed. “The learned professor assures me that it’s a typical malaria.”
“Then it isn’t the plague,” said Carroll, relieved.
His relief was of brief duration.
“Of course it’s plague. But if Professor Silk Hat, in there, officially declared it such, he’d have bracelets on his arms in twelve hours. The present Government of Caracuia doesn’t believe in bubonic plague. I fancy our unfortunate friend in there will presently disappear, either just before or just after death. It doesn’t greatly matter.”
“What is to be done now?” asked Carroll.
“See that brush fire up there?” The hermit pointed to the hillside. “If we steep ourselves in that smoke until we choke, I think it will discourage any fleas that may have harbored on us. The flea is the only agent of communication.”
Soot-begrimed, strangling, and with streaming eyes, they emerged, five minutes later, from the cloud of smoke. From his pocket the Unspeakable Perk dragged forth his white gloves. The action attracted his companion’s attention.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “What has happened to your hands?”
“They’re blistered.”
“Stripped, rather. They look as if you’d fallen into a fire, or rowed a fifty-mile race. That message of Mr. Brewster’s–See here, Perkins, you didn’t row that over to the mainland? No, you couldn’t. That’s absurd. It’s too far.”
“No; I didn’t row it to the mainland.”
“But you’ve been rowing. I’d swear to those hands. Where? The blockading Dutch warship?”
The other nodded.
“Last night. Yah-h-h!” he yawned. “It makes me sleepy to think of it.”
“Why didn’t they blow you out of the water?” “Oh, I was semiofficially expected. Message from our consul. They transferred the message by wireless. I’m telling you all this, Mr. Carroll, because I think you’ll get your release within forty-eight hours, and I want you to see that some of your party keeps constantly in touch with Mr. Sherwen. It’s mighty important that your party should get out before plague is officially declared.”
“Are you going to report this case?”
“All that I know about it.”
“But, of course, you can’t report officially, not being a physician,” mused the other. “Still, when Dr. Pruyn comes, it will be evidence for him, won’t it?”
“Undoubtedly. I should consider any delay after twenty-four hours risky for your party.”
“What shall you do? Stay?”
“Oh, I’ve my place in the mountains. That’s remote enough to be safe. Thank Heaven, there’s a cloud over the sun! Let’s sit down by this tree for a minute.”
Unthinkingly, as he stretched himself out, the Unspeakable Perk pushed his goggles back and presently slipped them off. Thus, when Carroll, who had been gazing at the mist-capped peak of the mountain in front, turned and met his companion’s eyes, he underwent something of the same shock that Polly Brewster had experienced, though the nature of his sensation was profoundly different. But his impression of the suddenly revealed face was the same. Ribbed-in though his mind was with tradition, and distorted with falsely focused ideals and prejudices, Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll possessed a sound underlying judgment of his fellow man, and was at bottom a frank and honorable gentleman. In his belief, the suddenly revealed face of the man beside him came near to being its own guaranty of honor and good faith.
“By Heavens, I don’t believe it!” he blurted out, his gaze direct upon the Unspeakable Perk.
“What don’t you believe?”
“That rotten club gossip.”
“About me?”
“Yes,” said Carroll, reddening.
The hermit pushed his glasses down, settled into place the white gloves, with their soothing contents of emollient greases, and got to his feet.
“We’d best be moving. I’ve got much to do,” he said.
“Not yet,” retorted Carroll. “Perkins, is there a woman up there on the mountains with you?”
“That is purely my own business.”
“You told Miss Brewster there wasn’t. If you tell me–“
“I never told her any such thing. She misunderstood.”
“Who is the woman?”
“If you want it even more frankly, that is none of your concern.”
“You have been letting Miss Brewster–“
“Are you engaged to marry Miss Brewster?”
“No.”
“Then you have no authority to question me. But,” he added wearily, “if it will ease your mind, and because of what you’ve done to-day, I ‘ll tell you this–that I do not expect ever to see Miss Brewster again.”
“That isn’t enough,” insisted Carroll, his face darkening. “Her name has already been connected with yours, and I intend to follow this through. I am going to find out who the woman is at your place.”
“How do you propose to do it?”
“By coming to see.”
“You’ll be welcome,” said the other grimly. “By the way, here’s a map.” He made a quick sketch on the back of an envelope. “I’ll be there at work most of to-morrow. Au revoir.” He rose and started down the hill. “Better keep to yourself this evening,” he warned. “Take a dilute carbolic bath. You’ll be all right, I think.”
Slowly and thoughtfully the Southerner made his way back to the hotel. After dining in his own room, he found time heavy on his hands; so, dispatching a note of excuse to Miss Brewster on the plea of personal business, he slipped out into the city. Wandering idly toward the hills, he presently found himself in a familiar street, and, impelled by human curiosity, proceeded to turn up the hill and stop opposite the blank door.
Here he was puzzled. To go in and inquire, even if he cared to and could make himself understood, would perhaps involve further risk of infection. While he was considering, the door slowly opened, and the leather-skinned crone appeared. Her eyes were swollen. In her hand she carried a travesty of a wreath, done in whitish metal, which she had interwoven with her own black mantilla, the best substitute for crape at hand. This she undertook to hang on the door. As Carroll crossed to address her, a powerful, sullen- faced man, with a scarred forehead and the insignia of some official status, apparently civic, on his coat, emerged from a doorway and addressed her harshly. She raised her reddened eyes to him and seemed to be pleading for permission to set up the little tribute to her dead. There was the exchange of a few more words. Then, with an angry exclamation, the official snatched the wreath from her. Carroll’s hand fell on his shoulder. The man swung and saw a stranger of barely half his bulk, who addressed him in what seemed to be politely remonstrant tones. He shook himself loose and threw the wreath in the crone’s face. Then he went down like a log under the impact of a swinging blow behind the ear. With a roar he leaped up and rushed. The foreigner met him with right and left, and this time he lay still.
Hanging the tragically unsightly wreath on the door, through which the terrified mourner had vanished, Carroll returned to the Gran Hotel Kast, his perturbed and confused thoughts and emotions notably relieved by that one comforting moment of action.
X
THE FOLLY OF PERK
Of the comprehensive superiority of the American Legation over the Gran Hotel Kast there could be no shadow of a doubt. From the moment of their arrival at noon of the day after the British Minister’s warning, the refugees found themselves comfortable and content, Miss Brewster having quietly and tactfully taken over the management of internal affairs and reigning, at Sherwen’s request, as generalissima. No disturbance had marked the transfer to their new abode. In fact, so wholly lacking was any evidence of hostility to the foreigners on the part of the crowds on the streets that the Brewsters rather felt themselves to be extorting hospitality on false pretenses. Sherwen, however, exhibited signal relief upon seeing them safely housed.
“Please stay that way, too,” he requested.
“But it seems so unnecessary, and I want to market,” protested Miss Polly.
“By no means! The market is the last place where any of us should be seen. It is in that section that Urgante has been doing his work.”
“Who is he?”
“A wandering demagogue and cheap politician. Abuse of the ‘Yankis’ is his stock in trade. Somebody has been furnishing him money lately. That’s the sole fuel to his fires of oratory.”
“Bet the bills smelled of sauerkraut when they reached him,” grunted Cluff, striding over to the window of the drawing-room, where the informal conference was being held.
“They may have had a Hochwaldian origin,” admitted Sherwen. “But it would be difficult to prove.”
“At least the Hochwald Legation wouldn’t shed any tears over a demonstration against us,” said Carroll.
“Well within the limits of diplomatic truth,” smiled the American official.
“Pooh!” Mr. Brewster puffed the whole matter out of consideration. “I don’t believe a word of it. Some of my acquaintances at the club, men in high governmental positions, assure me that there is no anti-American feeling here.”
“Very likely they do. Frankness and plain-speaking being, as you doubtless know, the distinguishing mark of the Caracunan statesman.”
The sarcasm was not lost upon Mr. Brewster, but it failed to shake his skepticism.
“There are some business matters that require that I should go to the office of the Ferro carril del Norte this afternoon,” he said.
“I beg that you do nothing of the sort,” cried Sherwen sharply.
The magnate hesitated. He glanced out of the window and along the street, close bounded by blank-walled houses, each with its eyes closed against the sun. A solitary figure strode rapidly across it.
“There’s that bug-hunting fellow again,” said Mr. Brewster. “He’s an American, I guess,–God save the mark! Nobody seems to be interfering with HIM, and he’s freaky enough looking to start a riot on Broadway.”
Further comment was checked by the voice of the scientist at the door, asking to see Mr. Sherwen at once. Miss Polly immediately slipped out of the room to the patio, followed by Carroll and Cluff.
“My business, probably,” remarked Mr. Brewster. “I’ll just stay and see.” And he stayed.
So far as the newcomer was concerned, however, he might as well not have been there; so he felt, with unwonted injury. The scientist, disregarding him wholly, shook hands with Sherwen.
“Have you heard from Wisner yet?”
“Yes. An hour ago.”
“What was his message?”
“All right, any time to-day.”
“Good! Better get them down to-night, then, so they can start to- morrow morning.”
“Will Stark pass them?”
“Under restrictions. That’s all been seen to.”
At this point it appeared to Mr. Brewster that he had figured as a cipher quite long enough.
“Am I right in assuming that you are talking of my party’s departure?” he inquired.
“Yes,” said Sherwen. “The Dutch will let you through the blockade.”
“Then my cablegram reached the proper parties at Washington,” said the magnate, with an I-knew-it-would-be-that-way air.
“Thanks to Mr. Perkins.”
“Of course, of course. That will be–er–suitably attended to later.”
The Unspeakable Perk turned and regarded him fixedly; but, owing to the goggles, the expression was indeterminable.
“The fact is it would be more convenient for me to go day after to-morrow than to-morrow.”
“Then you’d better rent a house,” was the begoggled one’s sharp and brief advice.
“Why so?” queried the great man, startled.
“Because if you don’t get out to-morrow, you may not get out for months.”
“As I understand the Dutch permit, it specifies AFTER to-day.”
“It isn’t a question of the Dutch. Caracuna City goes under quarantine to-night, and Puerto del Norte to-morrow, as soon as proper official notification can be given.”
“Then plague has actually been found?”
“Determined by bacteriological test this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“I was present at the finding.”
“Who did it? Dr. Pruyn?”
The other nodded.
Sherwen whistled.
“Better make ready to move, Mr. Brewster,” he advised. “You can’t get out of port after quarantine is on. At least, you couldn’t get into any other port, even if you sailed, because your sailing- master wouldn’t have clearance papers.”
The magnate smiled.
“I hardly think that any United States Consul, with a due regard for his future, would refuse papers to the yacht Polly,” he observed.
“Don’t be a fool!”
Thatcher Brewster all but jumped from his chair. That this adjuration should have come from the freakish spectacle-wearer seemed impossible. Yet Sherwen, the only other person in the room, was certainly not guilty.
“Did you address me, young man?”
“I did.”
“Do you know, sir, that since boyhood no person has dared or would dare to call me a fool?”
“Well, I don’t want to set a fashion,” said the other equably. “I’m only advising you not to be.”
“Keep your advice until it’s wanted.”
“If it were a question of you alone, I would. But there are others to be considered. Now, listen, Mr. Brewster: Wisner and Stark wouldn’t let you through that quarantine, after it’s declared, if you were the Secretary himself. A point is being stretched in giving you this chance. If you’ll agree to ship a doctor,–Stark will find you one,–stay out for six full days before touching anywhere, and, if plague develops, make at once for any detention station specified by the doctor, you can go. Those are Stark’s conditions.”
“Damnable nonsense!” declared Mr. Brewster, jumping to his feet, quite red in the face.
“Let me warn you, Mr. Brewster,” put in Sherwen, with quiet force, “that you are taking a most unwise course. I am advised that Mr. Perkins is acting under instructions from our consulate.”
“You say that Dr. Pruyn is here. I want to see him before–“
“How can you see him? Nobody knows where he is keeping himself. I haven’t seen him yet myself. Now, Mr. Brewster, just sit down and talk this over reasonably with Mr. Perkins.”
“Oh, no,” said the third conferee positively; “I’ve no time for argument. At six o’clock I ‘ll be back here. Unless you decide by then, I’ll telephone the consulate that the whole thing is off.”
“Of all the impudent, conceited, self-important young whippersnappers!” fumed Mr. Brewster. But he found that he had no audience, as Sherwen had followed the scientist out of the room.
Before the afternoon was over, the American concessionnaire had come to realize that the situation was less assured than he had thought. Twice the British Minister had come, and there had been calls from the representatives of several other nationalities. Von Plaanden, in full uniform and girt with the short saber that is the special and privileged arm of the crack cavalry regiment to which he belonged at home, had dismounted to deliver personally a huge bouquet for Miss Brewster, from the garden of the Hochwald Legation, not even asking to see the girl, but merely leaving the flowers as a further expression of his almost daily apology, and riding on to an official review at the military park.
He had spoken vaguely to Sherwen of a restless condition of the local mind. Reports, it appeared, had been set afloat among the populace to the effect that an American sanitary officer had been bribed by the enemies of Caracuna to declare plague prevalent, in order to close the ports and strangle commerce. Urgante was going about the lower part of the city haranguing on street corners without interference from the police. In the arroyo of the slaughter-house, two American employees of the street-car company had been stoned and beaten. Much aguardiente was in process of consumption, it being a half-holiday in honor of some saint, and nobody knew what trouble might break out.
“Bolas are rolling around like balls on a billiard table,” said young Raimonda, who had come after luncheon to call on Miss Brewster. “In this part of the city there will be nothing. You needn’t be alarmed.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Miss Polly.
“I’m sure of it,” declared the Caracunan, with admiration. “You are very wonderful, you American women.”
“Oh, no. It’s only that we love excitement,” she laughed.
“Ah, that is all very well, for a bull-fight or ‘la boxe.’ But for one of our street emeutes–no; too much!”
They were seated on the roof of the half-story of the house, which had been made into a trellised porch overlooking the patio in the rear and the street in front, an architectural wonder in that city of dead walls flush with the sidewalk line all the way up. Leaning over the rail, the visitor pointed through the leaves of a small gallito tree to a broad-fronted building almost opposite.
“That is my club. You have other friends there who would do anything for you, as I would, so gladly,” he added wistfully. “Will you honor me by accepting this little whistle? It is my hunting-whistle. And if there should be anything–but I think there will not–you will blow it, and there will be plenty to answer. If not, you will keep it, please, to remember one who will not forget you.”
Handsome and elegant and courtly he was, a true chevalier of adventurous pioneering stock, sprung from the old proud Spanish blood, but there stole behind the girl’s vision, as she bade him farewell, the undesired phantasm of a very different face, weary and lined and lighted by steadfast gray eyes–eyes that looked truthful and belonged to a liar! Miss Polly Brewster resumed her final packing in a fume of rage at herself.
All hands among the visitors passed the afternoon dully. Mr. Brewster, who had finally yielded to persuasion and decided not to venture out, though still deriding the restriction as the merest nonsense, was in a mood of restless silence, which his irrepressible daughter described to Fitzhugh Carroll as “the superior sulks.”
Carroll himself kept pretty much aloof. He had the air of a man who wrestles with a problem. Cluff fussed and fretted and privately cursed the country and all its concessions. Between calls and the telephone, Sherwen was kept constantly busy. But a few minutes before six, central, in the blandest Spanish, regretted to inform him that Puerto del Norte was cut off. When would service be resumed? Quien sabe? It was an order. Hasta manana. To-morrow, perhaps. Smoothing a furrow from his brow, the sight of which would have done nobody any good, he suggested that they all gather on the roof porch for a swizzle. The suggestion was hailed with enthusiasm.
Thus, when the Unspeakable Perk came hustling down the street some minutes earlier than the appointed time, he was hailed in Sherwen’s voice, and bidden to come directly up. No time, on this occasion, for Miss Polly to escape. She decided in one breath to ignore the man entirely; in the next to bow coldly and walk out; in the next to–He was there before the latest wavering decision could be formulated.
“Better all get inside,” he said a little breathlessly. “There may be trouble.”
Cluff brightened perceptibly.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Urgante is leading a mob up this way. They’re turning the corner now.”
“I’m going to wait and see them,” cried Miss Polly, with decision.
“Bend over, then, all of you,” ordered Sherwen. “The vines will cover you if you keep down.”
Around the corner, up the hill from where they were, streamed a rabble of boys, leaping and whooping, and after them a more compact crowd of men, shoeless, centering on a tall, broad, heavy- mustached fellow who bore on a short staff the Stars and Stripes.
“Where on earth did he get that?” cried Sherwen.
“Looted the Bazaar Americana,” replied Perkins.
“That’s Urgante,” growled Cluff; “that devil with the flag.”
“But he seems to be eulogizing it,” cried the girl.
The orator had set down his bright burden, wedging it in the iron guard railing of a tree, and was now apostrophizing it with extravagant bows and honeyed accents in which there was an undertone of hiss. For confirmation, Miss Polly turned to the others. The first face her eyes fell on was that of the ball- player. Every muscle in it was drawn, and from the tightened lips streamed such whispered curses as the girl never before had heard. Next him stood the hermit, solid and still, but with a queer spreading pallor under his tan. In front of them Sherwen was crouched, scowlingly alert. The expression of Mr. Brewster and Carroll, neither of whom understood Spanish, betokened watchful puzzlement.
Enlightenment burst upon them the next minute. From the motley crowd below rose a snarl of laughter and savage jeering, the object of which was unmistakable.
“By G–d!” cried Mr. Brewster, straightening up and grasping the railing. “They’re insulting the flag!”
“I’ve left my pistol!” muttered Carroll, white-lipped. “I’ve left my pistol!”
Polly Brewster’s hand flew to her belt.
She drew out the automatic and held it toward the Southerner. But it was not Carroll’s hand that met hers; it was the Unspeakable Perk’s.
“No,” said he, and he flung the weapon back of him into the patio.
“Oh! Oh!” cried the girl. “You unspeakable coward!”
Carroll jumped forward, but Sherwen was equally quick. He interposed his slight frame.
“Perkins is right,” he said decisively. “No shooting. It would be worth the life of every one here. We’ve got to stand it. But somebody is going to sweat blood for this day’s work!”
The instinct of discipline, characteristic of the professional athlete, brought Cluff to his support.
“What Mr. Sherwen says, goes,” he said, almost choking on the words. “We’ve got to stand it.”
In the breast of Miss Polly Brewster was no response to this spirit. She was lawless with the lawlessness of unconquered youth and beauty.
“Oh!” she breathed “If I had my pistol back, I’d shoot that BEAST myself!”
The scientist turned his goggles hesitantly upon her.
“Miss Brewster,” he began, “please don’t think–“
“Don’t speak to me!” she cried.
Another clamor of derision sounded from the street as Urgante resumed the standard of his mockery and led his rabble forward. Behind the dull-colored mass appeared a spot of splendor. It was Von Plaanden, gorgeous in his full regalia, who had turned the corner, returning from the public reception. Well back of the mob, he pulled his horse up, and sat watching. The coincidence was unfortunate. It seemed to justify Sherwen’s bitter words:–
“Come to visa his work. There’s the Hochwaldian for you!”
Forward danced and reeled the “Yanki” baiters below, until they were under the balcony where the little group of Americans sheltered and raged silently. There the orator again spewed forth his contempt upon the alien banner, and again the ranks behind him shrieked their approval of the affront. Miss Polly Brewster, American of Americans, whose great-grandfathers had fought with Herkimer and Steuben,–themselves the sons of women who had stood by the loopholes of log houses and caught up the rifles of their fallen pioneer husbands, wherewith to return the fire of the besieging Mohawks,–ran forward to the railing, snatching her skirt from the detaining grasp of her father. In the corner stood a huge bowl of roses. Gathering both hands full, she leaned forward and flung them, so that they fell in a shower of loveliness upon the insulted flag of her nation.
For an instant silence fell upon the “great unwashed” below. Out of it swelled a muttering as the leader made a low, mocking obeisance to the girl, following it with a word that brought a jubilant yelp from his adherents. Stooping, he ladled up in his cupped hand a quantity of gutter filth. Where the flowers had but a moment before fluttered in the folds, he splotched it, smearing star, bar, and blue with its blackness. At the sight, the girl burst into helpless tears, and so stood weeping, openly, bitterly, and unashamed.
No brain is so well ordered, no emotion so thoroughly controlled,