"I like them all, the pretty girls,
I like them all whether dark or fair,
But above the rest, I like the best
The girl with the golden hair!"
rang out the charming tenor voice of José, while he thrummed a
delightful accompaniment on the piano.
Dinner was over, and the major, and his guests were sitting in the
moonlight on the broad piazza. Windows and doors were stretched as wide
as possible; the curtains in the red drawing room were drawn back and
José was entertaining the company.
"I sing it translated," he called, as he finished the song, "that it may
be understood."
Whereupon Jimmie winked at Stephen, and looked at Mollie; the major
smiled indulgently, and the others were all more or less conscious that
Spaniards always liked blond girls because they were so rare in Spain.
Mollie herself, however, was unconscious that she was being sung about.
She was looking out across the moonlit stretches of lawn and meadows,
her little hands folded placidly in her lap.
"Do you dance as well as sing, Mr. Martinez?" she asked in her high,
sweet voice.
"I can dance, yes," replied José, "but I like best dancing with another.
I do not like to dance alone."
"But there is no one else here who dances Spanish fancy dances, is
there?" demanded Miss Sallie.
There was a silence.
"Don't all speak at once," cried Jimmie. "I will play for you, José, if
you will try dancing alone," he added. "I am afraid we can't help you in
any of your Spanish dances."
"Very well," replied José. "I will, then, try a dance of the Basque
country, if Madamoiselle Mollie will be so kind as to lend me her scarf.
I must have a hat also."
He disappeared through the window and returned in a moment with a
broad-brimmed felt hat he had found in the hall. Mollie handed him her
pink scarf with a border of wild roses, and walking composedly up to the
end of the long piazza he stood perfectly still, waiting for the music
to begin. Jimmie struck up a Spanish dance with the sound of castanets
in the bass.
"How's that for a tune?" he called out.
"Very good, very good," answered José. Then he started the strange dance
while the others watched spellbound.
The boys, who had been rather scornful of a man's dancing fancy dances,
confessed afterwards that there was nothing effeminate in José's
dancing, no pirouetting and twisting on one toe like Jimmie Butler's one
accomplishment in ballet-dancing. They gathered that it was a sort of
bullbaiting dance. It began with a series of advances and retreats, with
a springy step always in time to the throb of the music.
The young Spaniard was very graceful and lithe. He seemed to have
forgotten that he was on the piazza of foreigners in a strange country.
The dance grew quicker and quicker. Suddenly he drew a long curved
dagger from his belt and made a lunge at some imaginary obstacle,
probably the bull he was baiting.
Bab, who was nearest the dancer, rose to her feet quickly, and then sat
down rather limply.
"The knife, the knife!" she said to herself. "It is the highwayman's
knife!"
And now the handsome dancer was kneeling at Mollie's feet offering her
the scarf.
He had risen and was bowing to the company, when whir-r-r! something had
whizzed past his head, just scratched his forehead and then planted
itself in the wooden frame of the window behind him.
Was Barbara dreaming; or had she lost her senses?
The knife in the wall was the same, or exactly like the knife José had
been using in the dance.
In a moment everything was in wild confusion.
"Go into the house, ladies!" commanded the major.
The four boys leaped from the piazza, to run down the assassin, so they
thought, but the figure vaguely outlined for an instant in the shadows
of the trees, was as completely hidden as if the earth had opened and
swallowed it up.
José, in a big chair in the drawing room, was being ministered to by
Miss Sallie and the girls, while the major, with a glass of water, was
standing over him on one side and the housekeeper, on the other, was
binding his head with a linen handkerchief.
[Illustration: Whir-r-r! Something Whizzed Past His Head.]
"Major," Miss Sallie was saying, "this country is full of assassins and
robbers. I believe we shall all be murdered in our beds. I am really
terribly frightened. We have had nothing but attacks since we left New
York. And, now, this poor young man is in danger. Who could it have
been, do you suppose, and what good did it do to hurl a knife into the
midst of a perfectly harmless company like that!"
"The country is a little wild, Sallie," replied the major
apologetically, "but I have never heard of anything like this happening
before. Of course, there are highwaymen everywhere. There are those
Gypsies in the forest. Perhaps it was one of them."
Just then the boys returned, and the attention of the others was
distracted from José, who still sat quietly, his lips pressed together.
Barbara, who had been standing a little way off, turned to him quickly.
"The knife?" she asked, but stopped without finishing, for José had
fixed her glance with a look of such appeal that she could say no more.
"By the way," observed Jimmie Butler, "where is the knife?"
"Sticking in the wall of course," replied Stephen.
The two boys ran out on the piazza, but returned empty-handed.
"Mystery of mysteries!" cried Jimmie, "the knife is gone!"
"It is impossible," exclaimed the major. "We have not left this room. We
could see anyone who came upon the piazza."
"Well, it's gone," said Jimmie. "While you were nursing José, somebody
must have crept up and got it."
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss Sallie. "Do you mean to say that the
murderer has been that close to us again? Do close those windows and
draw the curtains."
"Yes, do so," said the major. "Mary," he continued to the housekeeper,
who was entering at that moment with a basin of water, "I wish you would
have all the men on the place sent to me. Some of them may be asleep,
but wake them up. We shall scour every part of the estate to-night. If
there's anybody hiding around here we shall rout him out."
Mary hurried off to deliver her orders, while the boys ran to their
rooms to get on tennis shoes and collect various weapons.
"I am sorry José was scratched," Martin confided to Alfred, "but--well,
this is pretty good sport, old man. Don't you think so?"
"By Jove, it is," replied Alfred with enthusiasm. "If that assassin
should leap at us in the dark I should like to give him a nip with this
shillalah. What a beastly coward he was to attack a man when his back
was turned!"
And with that, he waved a big knotted club, one of Stephen's
possessions, around his head, and glared ferociously.
"Come on, boys," called Stephen. "We haven't a moment to lose. The man
will be well away if we don't hurry. We are going to ride in twos and
divide the place in sections."
In another ten minutes a company of horsemen rode off in the moonlight,
two by two, while the frightened maid-servants locked and barred the
house doors and windows.
José had begged to be allowed to go along, but the major had silenced
him by saying that Miss Sallie and the girls needed a protector, and
that under the circumstances it was better for him to stay at home and
look after them. Even the old major was rather enjoying the zest of a
man-hunt, and his eyes flashed with a new fire under his grizzled
eyebrows.
But nothing happened and the assassin remained at large. The hunters
scoured the country, searched the forest on the outskirts of the Ten
Eyck estate, and woke the sleeping Gypsies to demand what they knew. The
Gypsies knew nothing, and at midnight the horsemen returned.
The house was silent. Everyone had gone to bed except José, who sat in
the library listening for every sound that creaked through the old
place. He met Major Ten Eyck and the boys at the front door, holding a
candle high and peering anxiously into the dark to see what quarry they
had brought home.
And, when he saw they had no prisoner bound to the horse with the ropes
that the major had ordered his man to take along, a look of strange
relief came into the Spaniard's face. He breathed a deep sigh, smiled as
he thanked them, said good-night and went up the broad stairway with the
same smile still clinging to his lips.
In the meantime Bab was stretched out beside the sleeping Ruth, wide
awake, going over the events of that tumultuous day.
She felt that these events had no connection with each other, and yet
deep down in her inner consciousness she was searching for the link that
bound all the strange happenings together. She was not quite sure now
whether she had seen the face in the library or not. She had been so
tired and hot. It might, after all, have been a dream. But the footsteps
in the dust on the attic floor, coming from the wall, what of them?
And last, though most strange and mysterious of all, the two daggers?
José had been saved just in time from the stigma of suspicion by the
appearance of the other dagger, for, in the moment she had seen the two,
Bab had realized they were absolutely alike.
She could not believe José was a highwayman, and yet there were certain
things that looked very black. It was true he had not known where they
were going, but she imagined he could have found it out.
Was it his figure she had seen behind the curtain that morning,
listening? Whoever it was heard the exact route of their trip, with
explicit directions from the major. Undoubtedly, Bab believed, the
eavesdropper was the highwayman.
Furthermore, what did they know about José? It is true he had come
bearing credentials, but such things were easily fixed up by experts,
and the major was a simple old fellow who never doubted anybody until he
had to.
On the other hand, José had every appearance of being a gentleman. He
had proved himself to be brave by knocking down the tramp twice his size
at Sleepy Hollow. There was an air of sincerity about him which she
could not fail to recognize. He was graceful and charming. Everybody
liked him, even those who had been inclined to feel prejudiced at first.
Would the Spaniard have dared to use the same dagger in the dance that
he had used to slash their tires with? It was assuredly amazingly
reckless, and yet he might have trusted to the darkness and risked it.
But the look he gave her when she started to speak of the twin daggers!
What could that have meant? Was he trying to shield his own enemy?
Should she speak to the major or should she say nothing?
On the whole, Barbara thought it would be better to keep quiet for a day
or two. It might be that Miss Sallie would insist on taking them away
after this last attack; but she believed Ruth's and the major's prayers
would prevail, and that they would all stay through the visit.
They had planned so many delightful parties it seemed a shame to break
up on the very first day of their visit. And, after all, Miss Sallie had
a great tenderness for the major, a tenderness lasting through thirty
years.
Then Barbara dropped off to sleep, and in the old house only one other
soul was still awake as the clock in the hall chimed the hour of two.
In his room, by the light of a flickering candle, José sat examining the
dagger that had so baffled Bab's curiosity. On his face was an
expression of sorrow and bitterness that would certainly have aroused
her pity had she seen him that moment. At last he shook his head
hopelessly, muttered something in Spanish, and blew out the candle.
But before getting into bed he picked up the dagger again.
"Even in America," he said in English, "even in this far country it is
the same. But I will not endure it," he muttered. "It is too much!"
Putting his dagger under the pillow, he crept to bed.