"Bess! And let them murder me too?"
"Or marry you--" cooed Bess.
One month later I was climbing out of a lumbering hack before the
Tivoli hotel, which rises square and white and imposing on the low
green height above the old Spanish city of Panama. In spite of the
melting tropical heat there was a chill fear at my heart, the fear
that Aunt Jane and her band of treasure-seekers had already
departed on their quest. In that case I foresaw that whatever
narrow margin of faith my fellow-voyagers on the _City of Quito_
had had in me would shrink to nothingness. I had been obliged to
be so queer and clam-like about the whole extraordinary
rendezvous--for how could I expose Aunt Jane's madness to the
multitude?--that I felt it would take the actual bodily presence of
my aunt to convince them that she was not a myth, or at least of
the wrong sex for aunts. To have traveled so far in the desperate
hope of heading off Aunt Jane, only to be frustrated and to lose my
character besides! It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told
myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad gallery and plunged
into the cool dimness of the lobby in the wake of the bellboys who,
discerning a helpless prey, had swooped en masse upon my bags.
"Miss Jane Harding?" repeated the clerk, and at the cool negation
of his tone my heart gave a sickening downward swoop. "Miss Jane
Harding and party have left the hotel!"
"For--for the island?" I gasped.
He raised his eyebrows. "Can't say, I'm sure." He gave me an
appraising stare. Perhaps the woe in my face touched him, for he
descended from the eminence of the hotel clerk where he dwelt apart
sufficiently to add, "Is it important that you should see her?"
"I am her niece. I have come all the way from San Francisco
expecting to join her here."
The clerk meditated, his shrewd eyes piercing the very secrets of
my soul.
"She knew nothing about it," I hastened to add. "I intended it for
a surprise."
This candor helped my cause. "Well," he said, "that explains her
not leaving any word. As you are her niece, I suppose it will do
no harm to tell you that Miss Harding and her party embarked this
morning on the freighter _Rufus Smith_, and I think it very likely
that the steamer has not left port. If you like I will send a man
to the water-front with you and you may be able to go on board and
have a talk with your aunt."
Did I thank him? I have often wondered when I waked up in the
night. I have a vision of myself dashing out of the hotel, and
then the hack that brought me is bearing me away. Bellboys hurled
my bags in after me, and I threw them largess recklessly. Some
arch-bellboy or other potentate had mounted to the seat beside the
driver. Madly we clattered over cobbled ways. Out on the smooth
waters of the roadstead lay ships great and small, ships with
stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray
spirals wreathing upward from their stacks. Was one of these the
_Rufus Smith_, and would I reach her--or him--before the thin gray
feather became a thick black plume? I thought of my aunt at the
mercy of these unknown adventurers with whom she had set forth,
helpless as a little fat pigeon among hawks, and I felt,
desperately, that I must reach her, must save her from them and
bring her safe back to shore. How I was to do this at the eleventh
hour plus about fifty-seven minutes as at present I hadn't
considered. But experience had taught me that once in my clutches
Aunt Jane would offer about as much resistance as a slightly melted
wax doll. She gets so soft that you are almost afraid to touch her
for fear of leaving dents.
So to get there, get there, get there, was the one prayer of my
soul.
I got there, in a boat hastily commandeered by the hotel clerk's
deputy. I suppose he thought me a belated passenger for the Rufus
Smith, for my baggage followed me into the boat. "_Pronto_!" he
shouted to the native boatman as we put off. "_Pronto_!" I urged
at intervals, my eyes upon the funnels of the _Rufus Smith_, where
the outpouring smoke was thickening alarmingly. We brought up
under the side of the little steamer, and the wide surprised face
of a Swedish deckhand stared down at us.
"Let me aboard! I must come aboard!" I cried.
Other faces appeared, then a rope-ladder. Somehow I was mounting
it--a dizzy feat to which only the tumult of my emotions made me
indifferent. Bare brawny arms of sailors clutched at me and drew
me to the deck. There at once I was the center of a circle of
speechless and astonished persons, all men but one.
"Well?" demanded a large breezy voice. "What's this mean? What do
you want aboard my ship?"