Hayden had elected to spend one evening at home, a most unusual decision
for him, but one which the night fully justified, for a February gale was
in full progress and was forcing every citizen whether comfortably housed
or uncomfortably out in it, to stand at attention and listen to its
shrieking iterations of "a mad night, my masters."
But to be quite accurate, the state of the weather had nothing whatever
to do with the state of Hayden's mind. Let it be said, by way of
explanation, that since his return to New York, he had been going out so
steadily, accepting so many invitations, meeting so many people, pursuing
the social game so ardently, that the thought of a quiet evening at home,
recommended itself very alluringly to his imagination, and by sheer
virtue of contrast, assumed almost the proportions of an exciting
diversion.
Tatsu had, as usual, deftly, silently and with incredible rapidity
arranged everything for his comfort; and his leisurely dinner completed,
Robert settled himself for a long solitary evening undisturbed by any men
dropping in to interrupt his meditations, or by any vagrant desires to
wander out. The gale precluded both possibilities. It had risen to its
height now, and filled the air with the steady roar of artillery. Great
dashes of rain spattered sharply against the window panes, and Hayden
would lift his head to listen and then sink back more luxuriously than
ever into the depths of his easy chair. It was the sort of night to
throw, occasionally, another log on the fire and watch the flames dance
higher--illuminate with their glowing radiance the dim corridors and the
vast and stately apartments of a _Chateau en Espagne_. What an addition
those new pictures are to the noble gallery! And the vast library with
the windows opening on the Moorish court! But some of the tapestries need
renovating, those priceless tapestries!
[Illustration]
Then, surfeited with gazing on so much beauty and splendor, one turns to
more homely comforts, and while the logs sink to a bed of glowing ashes,
dreams over one's favorite essays, or skims the cream of the last new
novel.
It was such an evening as this that Hayden had planned; but plans, as
immemorial experience has taught us, but never quite convinced us, "gang
aft a-gley," and Robert's were no exception to the rule. Between him and
the open page before him, he saw continually the face of Marcia Oldham.
The sweet, wistful, violet eyes gazed earnestly at him, the delicately
cut mouth with the dimple in one corner smiled at him and his book
presently dropped from his fingers and lay unheeded on the rug while he
dreamed dreams and saw visions. Gradually, his thoughts wandered from the
future and its hopes to the past, and for the first time since his return
the old wanderlust stole over him, the wanderlust temporarily lulled and
quiescent, but always there, that passion for change which was so
integral a part of his nature. But he no longer wished for new scenes
with no companionship but that of a man friend or so, he dreamed instead
of a season of wandering with Marcia, with her to travel the uncharted,
with her to "follow October around the earth." He wondered if the lovely
lady of the silver butterfly cared only to breathe the air of cities, or
if she, like himself, delighted in gazing upon the strange and
unaccustomed, in getting,
"Out in the world's wide spaces,
Where the sky and the desert meet,
Where we shake from our feet all traces
Of the dust of the city street?"
He believed she did. He could not be so strongly conscious of some secret
and indefinable sympathy existing between them if their tastes were not
similar. Ah well, whatever her tastes might be he could gratify
them,--providing, of course, that she chose to look kindly upon him, and
if things only came his way, a little, just a little, and surely he had
reason to be gratified by the turn events had taken since he had come to
New York.
He had, of course, taken a chance in telling Horace Penfield as much as
he had about The Veiled Mariposa, the lost mine on which he had founded
his hopes. Hayden drew his shoulders up to his ears and pulled down the
corners of his mouth, the picture of a school-boy convicted of stealing
jam. He had had reason on many occasions to convict himself of such
indiscretions. He reflected a little dolefully, that he would probably be
a very poor business man, that is, if business depended on caution and a
lack of confidence in his fellow-beings. But, bent on cheering himself,
even if Horace should break faith with him and prattle to the limit--and
Horace's limit was a long one, the blue canopy of heaven, when it came to
gossip--what possible harm could it do? In fact, it might serve Hayden
immeasurably, for the talk might reach the ears of those who held some
interest in the property and thus get him into immediate communication
with them. In any event, let Horace gossip as he would, it could do no
possible injury, for Robert held the key of the situation with his
carefully drawn maps and his many photographs. Blessings on his camera!
There was a wild dash of hail against the window, a shriek of the wind,
and Hayden looked up surprised at the interruption and then fell again
into his reverie. What an odd thing that had been for Penfield to say,
that about hearing of the Veiled Mariposa, and how remarkably it had been
confirmed. From a source, too, that he would least have expected it. That
prophecy had certainly been literally fulfilled. Little Kitty Hampton was
the last person he should have expected to mention The Veiled Mariposa.
A Fortune-teller! The Veiled Mariposa! There was, there could be no
question of coincidence here. It was design, beyond all peradventure, and
design he meant very speedily to fathom. Hayden set his nice, square jaw
firmly, and when Hayden set his jaw that way, you might look for things
to happen. He might be over-impulsive and lacking in caution, but he had
plenty of initiative, pluck and determination. Then, his face relaxed and
softened. He threw his cigarette into the bed of ashes on the hearth and
stretched his arms above his head. Ah-h-h! He felt like Monte Cristo.
Surely, surely, the world was his. Had he not, all in the space of a few
weeks, found his heart's love, and a clue to his fortune?
Again, he started, but this time not at the storm which seemed to be
dying down a bit, but at a sharp ring from the telephone on a desk at the
other side of the room.
"The deuce!" exclaimed Hayden getting on his feet. "Who on earth is
calling me such a night as this?" He walked over and lifted the receiver
with the usual curt, "Hello!"
"Is this Mr. Hayden's apartment?" asked a voice which made him start. It
was low, full, deliciously musical and with an unmistakable Spanish
accent.
"Yes, and this is Mr. Hayden speaking," was Robert's response, with a
lightning change of tone. A quick, excited thrill of interest ran over
him. He strove to place that voice, ransacked his memory in the effort to
do so, but quite in vain. He was, however, in spite of such swift,
momentary precautions, absolutely convinced that he was listening to
those enchanting tones for the first time. "Who is this speaking?" he
asked. But only a burst of low, rippling laughter with a faint hint of
mockery in it reached him.
"I'm afraid I'm rude enough to insist upon maintaining my incognito
to-night," was the demure answer.
"But that puts me at once at a disadvantage," protested Hayden.
"Naturally," the laughter in her voice was irresistible now. "That is
where a man ought to be."
"That is where he usually is anyway," he remarked. "But you must admit
that there is something awfully uncanny about a situation like this. On
so wild a night one would be justified in expecting almost any kind of a
ghostly visitant."
"Bar them out," she advised. "Remember Poe's Raven who still is sitting,
never flitting, on the pallid bust of Pallas, just above the chamber
door."
Hayden glanced up involuntarily. "There isn't any pallid bust of Pallas,"
he announced. "But that jolly old raven's method of paying a visit was
crude and commonplace compared to yours. He came tapping and rapping in
the most old-fashioned way; but you reach me with a wonderful disembodied
voice through the ever mysterious avenue of the telephone. It really
makes me creepy. Won't you locate it? Give it a name?"
"Scientists," she reminded him in her delicious, broken English, "can
reconstruct all kinds of extinct animals and birds from one small bone,
or a tooth, or a beak, or hoof."
"So might I," Hayden valorously asserted, "if I had as much to go on; but
a voice is different."
"Quite beyond your powers," she taunted.
"Not at all. I hadn't finished," Hayden was something of a Gascon at
heart, "I will go the scientists one better and reconstruct you from a
voice." He put back his hand and drew up a chair. He was enjoying himself
immensely. "Now," impressively, "you are dark, dark and lovely and young,
and you are sweet as chocolate and stimulating as coffee. And you wear a
rose in your hair and silken skirts like poppy-petals, and the tiniest of
black slippers over white silk stockings; and you flutter an enormous fan
that sends the fragrance of the jasmine on your breast all through the
air, and you have a beautiful name--oh a name as enchanting as your
voice, have you not, Anita, Rosita, Chiquita, Pepita, Carmencita, and all
the rest of it?"
"You are impertinent, much too bold," she admonished. "I will not talk to
you any more if you are not quite respectful; but the first part of your
description was pretty. Let me, if I can, do even half so well. You,
senor, are rather tall and quite slender, no superfluous flesh, all
muscle, and your eyes are a dark gray and your hair is brown, so is your
face, by the way; and you have a cool, leisurely sort of manner, although
your speech is quite rapid, and you have a charming, oh, a most unusually
charming smile."
"But you know me!" cried Hayden naively. "Of course, of course," as her
laughter swelled, "I know you've flattered me to death," the red rising
in his tanned cheek, "with all that rot about my grin. But," speaking
louder in the effort to drown those trills and ripples of melodious
laughter, more elfishly mocking and elusive than ever, "your portrait of
me, no matter how grossly exaggerated, is in the main, correct."
"Still talking?" droned the menacing voice of Central.
"But it isn't fair," Hayden continued to protest to the Unknown. "You
have me at a disadvantage, and I am going to drop all courtesy and any
pretense of good manners. Now, are you ready? Yes? Well then, who are you
and what do you want?"
"Who am I? Ah, senor, a waif of the wind, adrift on the night's Plutonian
shore; but an hour or two ago, the gale caught me up in Spain and swept
me over the seas. Regard me as a voice, merely a voice that would hold
speech with so distinguished a naturalist."
"A naturalist!" exclaimed Hayden both disappointed and disconcerted. "You
have mistaken your man. I can lay no claims to any scientific
accomplishments or achievements."
"Oh, pardon!" There was an affected and exaggerated horror in her tones.
"I have made a mistake, oh, a great mistake. I had fancied that you were
a collector of butterflies."
Hayden nearly dropped the receiver. There was the smallest of pauses and
then he spoke in his accustomed tone, a little cooler and more leisurely
than usual, with some fleeting idea of caution.
"Ah, yes, yes, I am somewhat interested in that line. But the fact is
known to few. Perhaps you will kindly tell me how you learned of my
enthusiasm?"
"Are you quite sure that you may not have mentioned the subject to me
yourself." Her voice was full of subtle emphasis.
"No, senorita," he laughed. "That will not do. You can not throw me off
the track that way, by trying to make me doubt my memory."
"Then, truly, you do not recall the old glad days in Spain?" her voice
questioned incredulously, doubted, took on a little fall of
disappointment, almost of wounded vanity or sentiment.
"Senorita, emphatically, no. Had I, in the old glad days in Spain, or the
old glad days anywhere else, ever met a woman with a voice like yours, I
should never have forgotten her in a thousand years. No, senorita. Try
something else. That will not do."
"Zip!" There was unmistakable temper in the exclamation.
"We were speaking of butterflies," said Hayden, alarmed lest she should
ring him off. "Are you at all interested in that line?"
"Indeed, yes," she assured him, "although I doubt very much if my
interest is anything like as scientific as yours. I fancy I am more
interested in them because of their wonderful beauty, than for any more
particular reason. And what in all the world, senor, is so beautiful as
the butterflies of the tropics? Do you remember how they come floating
out into the sunlight from the dark mysterious depths of the forests?
Such colors! Such iridescence on their wings; but the most beautiful of
all are the great gray ones, senor, the silver butterflies."
Again Hayden started violently and again succeeded in controlling the
surprise her words aroused in him. "I quite agree with you," he said
politely. "The silver butterfly is one of the most beautiful of all the
tropical varieties."
"Yes, truly." Again there was the hint of irresistible laughter in the
lady's tones. "But there is a curious little fact that I fancy very few
of you naturalists know, and that is that it is not confined absolutely
to the tropics. Doubt the assertion if you will, but I make it calmly: I,
senor, with my own eyes have seen silver butterflies at New York, and in
the most unlikely places; oh, places you would never dream of, the opera,
for instance."
"You surprise me!" Hayden was prepared for anything now, and his voice
was carefully indifferent, almost drawling; but his mind was working like
lightning. What on earth could this mean? Was it a possibility that it
might be Marcia,--Marcia Oldham herself, thus cleverly disguising her
voice? No, no, a thousand times, no. He hastily rejected the thought.
Even if she possessed the skill--nevertheless the very tones themselves
revealed a woman of a totally different type and temperament.
"I am so anxious to see your collection," continued the rich,
warmly-colored voice. "I am wondering if you have been able to secure a
specimen of a very rare butterfly indeed, one which some naturalists
believe is quite extinct. It is called 'The Veiled Mariposa.'"
Hayden felt as if in some peculiar, intuitive sort of way, he had
expected this from the first. For a moment or two, he could not control
his excitement. His mouth felt curiously dry, and he noticed that his
hand was trembling.
"I--I think I have heard of it," he said at last, and objurgated himself
for his stammering banality.
"But," and the word seemed to express a pout, "I understood that it was
in your collection."
"Ah, one must not trust too much to report and rumor," Hayden reminded
her.
"Then it is not in your collection?" she persisted.
"Senorita, my collection is a large one." He smiled amusedly at the
thought of this hypothetical collection, and the grandiloquent tone in
which he referred to it. "I can not say, offhand, just what varieties it
contains."
"True," assented the voice reasonably, and Hayden felt that its possessor
was probably a person who was reasonable when one would naturally expect
her to be capricious, and capricious when one would naturally expect her
to be reasonable. "True," she repeated thoughtfully, "I only wanted to
say, senor, that should you find that you have that particular butterfly,
I am in touch with certain collectors who would be willing to pay a large
price for it."
"I have no desire to sell outright, senorita, please understand that,"
Hayden spoke quickly, taking a high tone. "But should I care to consider
your proposition, how am I to communicate with you? Shall I ring up
Central and say: 'Please give me the delicious voice?'"
"Ah, senor, you are of an absurdity! Never fear, you will hear from me
again, and soon. Good-by." Her voice died away like music.
Hayden mechanically hung up the receiver, and then sat for a moment or
two staring rather stupidly before him. At last, he shook his head and
laughed in whimsical perplexity: "Who would ever have considered New York
the haunt and home of mystery?" he murmured. "Every day connects me with
a new one, and the charming ladies who seem involved in them apparently
take delight in leaving me completely in the air, suspended, like
Mahomet's coffin, 'twixt Heaven and earth, with the pleasing promise that
I shall hear from them again--and soon."