DOLORES
Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed,
clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it
annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely
with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the
hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining
there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard
return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an
event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator
thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit
the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a
possibility which neither of the two men wished to entertain. 'It
wouldn't look well in the papers,' Hamilton said, shaking his head
solemnly. So they remained on at Paulo's, and Paulo kept the green and
yellow flag of Gloria flying as if the guest beneath his roof were still
a ruling potentate.
But it was not the stay of the Dictator that in any way perplexed Mr.
Paulo. Paulo was honestly proud of the presence of Ericson in his house.
Paulo's father was a Spaniard who had gone out to Gloria as a waiter in
a _café_, and who had entered the service of a young Englishman in the
Legation, and had followed him to England and married an English wife.
Mr. Paulo--George Paulo--was the son of this international union. His
father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his
father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo
was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded
mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only
thing Spanish about him was his face--smooth-shaven with small, black
side whiskers--a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed
in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn,
married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and more
ideas. They had determined, soon after their marriage, to make a start
in life for themselves. They had kept a lodging-house in Sloane Street,
which soon became popular with well-to-do young gentlemen, smart
soldiers, and budding diplomatists, for both Paulo and his wife
understood perfectly the art of making these young gentlemen
comfortable.
Things went well with Paulo and his wife; their small economies were
made into small investments; the investments, being judicious,
prospered. A daring purchase of house property proved one stroke of
success, and led to another. When he was fifty years of age Paulo was a
rich man, and then he built Paulo's Hotel, and his fortune swelled
yearly. He was a very happy man, for he adored his wife and he idolised
his daughter, the handsome, stately, dark-eyed girl whom, for some
sentimental reason, her mother had insisted upon calling Dolores.
Dolores was, or at least seemed to be, that rarest creature among
women--an unconscious beauty. She could pass a mirror without even a
glance at it.
Dolores Paulo had everything she wanted. She was well taught; she knew
several languages, including, first of all, that Spanish of which her
father, for all his bull-fighter face, knew not a single syllable; she
could play, and sing, and dance; and, above all things, she could ride.
No one in the Park rode better than Miss Paulo; no one in the Park had
better animals to ride. George Paulo was a judge of horseflesh, and he
bought the best horses in London for Dolores; and when Dolores rode in
the Row, as she did every morning, with a smart groom behind her,
everyone looked in admiration at the handsome girl who was so perfectly
mounted. The Paulos were a curious family. They had not the least desire
to be above what George Paulo called their station in life. He and his
wife were people of humble origin, who had honestly become rich; but
they had not the least desire to force themselves upon a society which
might have accepted them for their money, and laughed at them for their
ambition. They lived in a suite of rooms in their own hotel, and they
managed the hotel themselves. They gave all their time to it, and it
took all their time, and they were proud of it. It was their business
and their pleasure, and they worked for it with an artistic
conscientiousness which was highly admirable. Dolores had inherited the
sense and the business-like qualities of her parents, and she insisted
on taking her part in the great work of keeping the hotel going. Paulo,
proud of his hotel, was still prouder of the interest taken in it by his
daughter.
Dolores came in from her ride one afternoon, and was hurrying to her
room to change her dress, when she was met by her father in the public
corridor.
'Dolores, my little girl'--he always called the splendidly? proportioned
young woman 'my little girl'--'I'm puzzled. I don't mind telling you, in
confidence, that I am extremely puzzled.'
'Have you told mother?'
'Oh, yes, of course I've told mother, but she don't seem to think there
is anything in it.'
'Then you may be sure there is nothing in it.' Mrs., or Madame, Paulo
was the recognised sense-carrier of the household.
'Yes, I know. Nobody knows better than I what a woman _your_ mother is.'
He laid a kindly emphasis on the word 'your' as if to carry to the
credit of Dolores some considerable part of the compliment that he was
paying to her parent. 'But still, I thought I should like to talk to
you, too, little girl. If two heads are better than one, three heads, I
take it, are better than two.'
'All right, dear; go ahead.'
'Well, its about this Captain Sarrasin--in number forty-seven--you
know.'
'Of course I know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to
me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house
for a long time.'
'Old gentleman,' Paulo said, with a smile. 'I fancy how much he would
like to be described in that sort of way, and by a handsome girl, too!
He don't think he is an old gentleman, you may be sure.'
'Why, father, he is almost as old as you; he must be fifty years old at
least--more than that.'
'So you consider me quite an old party?' Paulo said, with a smile.
'I consider you an old darling,' his daughter answered, giving him a
fervent embrace--they were alone in the corridor--and Paulo seemed quite
contented.
'But now,' he said, releasing himself from the prolonged osculation,
'about this Captain Sarrasin?'
'Yes, dear, about him. Only what about him?'
'Well, that's exactly what I want to know. I don't quite see what he's
up to. What does he have a room in this hotel for?'
'I suppose because he thinks it is a very nice hotel--and so it is,
dear, thanks to you.'
'Yes, that's all right enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the
personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance,
as the embrace had done in the other.
'I don't see where your trouble comes in, dear.'
'Well, you see, I have ascertained that this Captain Sarrasin is a
married man, and that he has a house where he and his wife live down
Clapham way,' and Paulo made a jerk with his hand as if to designate to
his daughter the precise geographical situation of Captain Sarrasin's
abode. 'But he sleeps here many nights, and he is here most of the day,
and he gets his letters here, and all sorts of people come to see him
here.'
'I suppose, dear, he has business to do, and it wouldn't be quite
convenient for people to go out and see him in Clapham.'
'Why, my little girl, if it comes to that, it would be almost as
convenient for people--City people for instance--to go to Clapham as to
come here.'
'Dear, that depends on what part of Clapham he lives in. You see we are
just next to a station here, and in parts of Clapham they are two miles
off anything of the kind. Besides, all people don't come from the City,
do they?'
'Business people do,' Mr. Paulo replied sententiously.
'But the people I see coming after Captain Sarrasin are not one little
bit like City people.'
'Precisely,' her father caught her up; 'there you have got it, little
girl. That's what has set me thinking. What are your ideas about the
people who come to see him? You know the looks of people pretty well by
this time. You have a good eye for them. How do you figure them up?'
The girl reflected.
'Well, I should say foreign refugees generally, and explorers, and all
that kind; Mr. Hiram Borringer comes with his South Pole expeditions,
and I see men who were in Africa with Stanley--and all that kind of
thing.'
'Yes, but some of that may be a blind, don't you know. Have you ever,
tell me, in all your recollection, seen a downright, unmistakable, solid
City man go into Captain Sarrasin's room?'
'No, no,' said the girl, after a moment's thought; 'I can't quite say
that I have. But I don't see what that matters to us. There are good
people, I suppose, who don't come from the City?'
'I don't like it, somehow,' Paulo said. 'I have been thinking it
over--and I tell you I don't like it!'
'What I can't make out,' the girl said, not impatiently but very gently,
'is what you don't like in the matter. Is there anything wrong with this
Captain Sarrasin? He seems an old dear.'
'This is how it strikes me. He never came to this house until after his
Excellency the Dictator made up his mind to settle here.'
'Oh!' Dolores started and turned pale. 'Tell me what you mean, dear--you
frighten one.'
Paulo smiled.
'You are not over-easily frightened,' he said, 'and so I'll tell you all
my suspicions.'
'Suspicions?' she said, with a drawing in of the breath that seemed as
emphatic as a shudder. 'What is there to suspect?'
'Well, there is nothing more than suspicion at present. But here it is.
I have it on the best authority that this Captain Sarrasin was out in
Gloria. Now, he never told _me_ that.'
'No? Well, go on.'
'He came back here to England long before his Excellency came, but he
never took a room in this house until his Excellency had made up his
mind to settle down here for all his time with Mr. Hamilton. Now, what
do you think his settling down here, and not taking a house, like
General Boulanger--what do you think his staying on here means?'
'I suppose,' the girl said, slowly, 'it means that he has not given up
the idea of recovering his position in Gloria.' She spoke in a low tone,
and with eyes that sparkled.
'Right you are, girl. Of course, that's what it does mean. Mr. Hamilton
as good as told me himself; but I didn't want him to tell me. Now,
again, if this Captain Sarrasin has been out in Gloria, and if he is on
the right side, why didn't he call on his Excellency and prove himself a
friend?'
'Dear, he has called on him.'
'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'
'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut
both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'
'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'
'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more
anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'
'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that,
to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come
to any conclusion one way or the other.'
'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'
Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still,
even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took
in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible
foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.
'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,'
Paulo went on to say. 'I may have _my_ sympathies and you may have
_your_ sympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't
have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as
good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off
it--better maybe.'
'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'
'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his
friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't
suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and
the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'
'No, no, of course not. Well?'
'It would get out that they were planning a return to Gloria. Now I
know--and I dare say you know--that a return to Gloria by his Excellency
would mean the stopping of the supplies to hundreds of rascals there,
who are living on public plunder, and who are always living on it as
long as he is not there, and who never will be allowed to live upon it
as long as he is there--don't you see?'
'Oh yes, dear; I see very plainly.'
'It's all true what I say, isn't it?'
'Quite true--quite--quite true.'
'Well, now, I dare say you begin to take my idea. You know how little
that gang of scoundrels care about the life of any man.'
'Oh, father, please don't!' She had her riding-whip in her hand, and she
made a quick movement with it, expressively suggesting how she should
like to deal with such scoundrels.
'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in
your usual form to-day----'
'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really
think people are plotting to kill--him?'
'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out
there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'
'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.
'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby
tricks to be done short of that--there's spying and eavesdropping, to
find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it----'
'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief--the
tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded
that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.
'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo
proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean
that it ever should be the way.'
'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea,
indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort of _mouchards_ and spies, to
find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as
guests!'
'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain
Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side
of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'
'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may
be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and
I dare say you _are_ quite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him.
Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find
out all about _him_.'
'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'
'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I
never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book
after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss
Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no
questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the
art is there.'
'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said,
half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering
how women came to have such gifts.
While they were speaking, Hamilton and Sir Rupert Langley came out of
the Dictator's rooms together. Dolores knew that the Dictator had been
out of the hotel for some hours. Mr. Paulo disappeared. Dolores knew Sir
Rupert perfectly well by sight, and knew who he was, and all about him.
She had spoken now and again to Hamilton. He took off his hat in
passing, and she, acting on a sudden impulse, asked if he could speak to
her for a moment.
Hamilton, of course, cheerfully assented, and asked Sir Rupert to wait a
few seconds for him. Sir Rupert passed along the corridor and stood at
the head of the stairs.
'Only a word, Mr. Hamilton. Excuse me for having stopped you so
unceremoniously.'
'Oh, Miss Paulo, please don't talk of excuses.'
'Well, it's only this. Do you know anything about a Captain Sarrasin,
who stays here a good deal of late?'
'Captain Sarrasin? Yes, I know a little about him; not very much,
certainly; why do you ask?'
'Do you think he is a man to be trusted?'
She spoke in a low tone; her manner was very grave, and she fixed her
deep, dark eyes on Hamilton. Hamilton read earnestness in them. He was
almost startled.
'From all I know,' he answered slowly, 'I believe him to be a brave
soldier and a man of honour.'
'So do I!' the girl said emphatically, and with relief sparkling in her
eyes.
'But why do you ask?'
'I have heard something,' she said; 'I don't believe it; but I'll soon
find out about his being here as a spy.'
'A spy on whom?'
'On his Excellency, of course.'
'I don't believe it, but I thank you for telling me.'
'I'll find out and tell you more,' she said hurriedly. 'Thank you very
much for speaking to me; don't keep Sir Rupert waiting any longer.
Good-morning, Mr. Hamilton,' and with quite a princess-like air she
dismissed him.
Hamilton hastily rejoined Sir Rupert, and was thinking whether he ought
to mention what Dolores had been saying or not. The subject, however, at
once came up without him giving it a start.
'See here, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said as he was standing on the hotel
steps, about to take his leave, 'I don't think that, if I were you, I
would have Ericson going about the streets at nights all alone in his
careless sort of fashion. It isn't common sense, you know. There are all
sorts of rowdies--and spies, I fancy--and very likely hired
assassins--here from all manner of South American places; and it can't
be safe for a marked man like him to go about alone in that free and
easy way.'
'Do you know of any danger?' Hamilton asked eagerly.
'How do you mean?'
'Well, I mean have you had any information of any definite danger--at
the Foreign Office?'
'No; we shouldn't be likely to get any information of that kind at the
Foreign Office. It would go, if there were any, to the Home Office?'
'Have you had any information from the Home Office?'
'Well, I may have had a hint--I don't know what ground there was for
it--but I believe there was a hint given at the Home Office to be on the
look-out for some fellows of a suspicious order from Gloria.'
Hamilton started. The words concurred exactly with the kind of warning
he had just received from Dolores Paulo.
'I wonder who gave the hint,' he said meditatively. 'It would immensely
add to the value of the information if I were to know who gave the
hint.'
'Oh! So, then, you have had some information of your own?'
'Yes, I may tell you that I have; and I should be glad to know if both
hints came from the same man.'
'Would it make the information more serious if they did?'
'To my mind, much more serious.'
'Well, I may tell you in confidence--I mean, not to get into the
confounded papers, that's all--the Home Secretary in fact, made no
particular mystery about it. He said the hint was given at the office by
an odd sort of person who called himself Captain Oisin Sarrasin.'
'That's the man,' Hamilton exclaimed.
'Well, what do you make of that and of him?'
'I believe he is an honest fellow and a brave soldier,' Hamilton said.
'But I have heard that some others have thought differently, and were
inclined to suspect that he himself was over here in the interests of
his Excellency's enemies. I don't believe a word of it myself.'
'Well, he will be looked after, of course,' Sir Rupert said decisively.
'But in the meantime I wouldn't let Ericson go about in that sort of
way--at night especially. He never ought to be alone. Will you see to
it?'
'If I can; but he's very hard to manage.'
'Have you tried to manage him on that point?' 'I have--yes--quite
lately.'
'What did he say?'
'Wouldn't listen to anything of the kind. Said he proposed to go about
where he liked. Said it was all nonsense. Said if people want to kill a
man they can do it, in spite of any precautions he takes. Said that if
anyone attacks him in front he can take pretty good care of himself, and
that if fellows come behind no man can take care of himself.'
'But if someone walks behind him--to take care of him----'
'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.
'Yes; certainly. Why not?'
'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say,
"I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a
benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the
subject.'
'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens!
Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a
question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London
police system.'
'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is
it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.
'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that
one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its
police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure
the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like
Ericson--himself an Englishman, too--by Jove! it forfeits in so far its
claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you
might put this to Ericson.'
'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take
it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his
own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he
feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'
'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite
enough, I dare say. _He_ wouldn't be on his guard, but _you_ would, for
_him_.'
'Oh, if he would let _me_, that would be all right enough. I am always
pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to
use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he
won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home
from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by
night.'
'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did
not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the
grandest occupations of humanity.
'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some
fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I
walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers'
Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and
looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon--and when I came nearer I
saw it was his Excellency--and not a policeman or any other human being
but myself within a quarter of a mile of him. It was before I had had
any warning about him; but, by Jove! it made my blood run cold.'
'Did you make any remonstrance with him?'
'Of course I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke--said
he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether
I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice
a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him with
daggers in their hands. No, it's no use,' Hamilton wound up
despondingly.
'Perhaps I might try,' Sir Rupert said.
'Yes, I think you had better. At all events, he will take it from you. I
don't think he would take it from me. I have worried him too much about
it, and you know he can shut one up if he wants to.'
'I tell you what,' Sir Rupert suddenly said, as if a new idea had dawned
upon him. 'I think I'll get my daughter to try what she can do with
him.'
'Oh--yes--how is that?' Hamilton asked, with a throb at his heart and a
trembling of his lips.
'Well, somehow I think my daughter has a certain influence over him--I
think he likes her--of course, it's only the influence of a clever child
and all that sort of thing--but still I fancy that something might be
made to come of it. You know she professes such open homage for him, and
she is all devoted to his cause--and he is so kind to her and puts up so
nicely with all her homage, which, of course, although she _is_ my
daughter and I adore her, must, I should say, bore a man of his time of
life a good deal when he is occupied with quite different ideas--don't
you think so, Hamilton?'
'I can't imagine a man at any time of life or with any ideas being bored
by Miss Langley,' poor Hamilton sadly replied.
'That's very nice of you, Hamilton, and I am sure you mean it, and don't
say it merely to please me--and she likes you ever so much, that I know,
for she has often told me--but I think I could make some use of her
influence over him. Don't you think so? If she were to ask him as a
personal favour--to her and to me, of course--leaving the Government
altogether out of the question--as a personal favour to her and to me to
take some care of himself--don't you think he could be induced? He is so
chivalric in his nature that I don't think he would refuse anything to a
young woman like her.'
'What is there that I could refuse to her;' poor Hamilton thought sadly
within himself. 'But she will not care to plead to me that I should take
care of my life. She thinks my poor, worthless life is safe enough--as
indeed it is--who cares to attack me?--and even if it were not safe,
what would that be to her?' He thought at the moment that it would be
sweetness and happiness to him to have his life threatened by all the
assassins and dynamiters in the world if only the danger could once
induce Helena Langley to ask him to take a little better care of his
existence.
'What do you think of my idea?' Sir Rupert asked. He seemed to find
Hamilton's silence discouraging. Perhaps Hamilton knew that the Dictator
would not like being interfered with by any young woman. For the fondest
of fathers can never quite understand why the daughter, whom he himself
adores, might not, nevertheless, seem sometimes a little of a bore to a
man who is not her father.
Hamilton pulled himself together.
'I think it is an excellent idea, Sir Rupert--in fact, I don't know of
any other idea that is worth thinking about.'
'Glad to hear you say so, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said, greatly cheered.
'I'll put it in operation at once. Good-bye.'