RUBIO SANCHEZ FINDS FRIENDS
In the American bar of The Broadway Front, the mahogany counter ran the
length of the room. Mirrors glittered behind it. Here was a shrine of
Bacchus, extinct in its native land, in which the rites of the ritual
were faithfully observed. The presiding genius was a florid Irish
bartender in a crisp white jacket with a flower in the lapel. Assisting
him were three acolytes native to Panama. For them the lowly service of
pulling the shining handles of the beer-pumps, cracking ice and washing
glasses. With the skill of an artist and the speed of a prestidigitator,
their master hurled cocktails, fizzes, and punches together and served
them to the votaries who rested one foot upon the brass rail in the
traditional posture of those about to offer libations.
Women were excluded from this room. Across the hallway was the café, the
dancing-floor, the stage where entertainment more frivolous was
provided. The mahogany bar and the little tables were sacred to the wit
and wisdom of the sterner sex, to the discussion of weighty matters to
which Mike, the paragon of bartenders, would always lend a sympathetic
ear. He was a friend and philosopher of a vintage much riper and rarer
than the stuff he sold.
Alone at one of the tables sat a pensive young man of delicate features
whose black hair was smoothly parted. At this moment he was reminding
himself that his name was Rubio Sanchez. He sipped a claret lemonade
through a straw and eyed the passing show with a trepidation not easily
dissembled.
The bar was crowded—American soldiers from the Canal Zone garrisons
hilariously rolling the dice for the drinks, tanned bluejackets from
ships of the Pacific Fleet, dapper Panama merchants, brisk Yankee
salesmen spreading the gospel of safety razors, sewing machines, and
porous underwear from Mexico to Peru, solid master mariners and mates
who held aloof from the rabble of landsmen.
The solitary young man, Rubio Sanchez, was unmolested. No one even
noticed him. The sense of panicky uneasiness diminished. He perceived
that it was urgently advisable for him to make the acquaintance of Mike,
the suave and genial divinity behind the bar. He was the very man to
have stowed away the garrulous gossip and confidences that were forever
dinned at him. The place was repellent to young Rubio Sanchez, but not
as shocking as had been feared.
Disorder was smothered before it started. A lifted hand, a word of
reproof from Mike, or a threat to summon the boss, and quarrelsome
topers subsided. This threat of summoning the boss seemed to be most
effective. Unseen, he exercised a potent influence.
There would be no opportunity to engage the attention of the persuasive
bartender until the crowd had thinned. Rubio Sanchez lingered and looked
on with the curious feeling that a kindly star had guided the pilgrimage
to this Broadway Front. It was like a comforting intuition.
In the company that swirled along the bar was a boyish bluejacket,
clean-built, jolly, with the red bars of a petty officer on his sleeve.
He looked winsome and unspoiled, but eager to see what life was like.
His two companions were older and harder Navy men. It was his money that
carelessly paid for the rounds of drinks. He displayed crumpled bills by
the fistful. It was like so much trash that burned holes in his pockets.
An argument arose. His companions had another engagement for the
evening. They conferred with their heads together. The youngster laughed
and refused to be dragged along. He was heard to call them a pair of
boobs. The Navy patrol would be sure to pinch them if they rambled into
the red-light district and, anyhow, they ought to know better. None of
that for him. They borrowed money of him and rolled out to charter a
seagoing hack.
The youngster stood undecided what to do next. It was early for the
music and dancing in the cabaret across the hall. He drifted over to a
table, sprawled in a chair, and glanced around the room. Two or three
penniless loafers would have joined him, but he curtly told them to beat
it. The young South American sitting alone with a lemonade and a straw
impressed him favorably. He sauntered over, the round Navy hat balanced
on the back of his head, and affably remarked:
“Hello, kid! How’s tricks? Don’t you go drowning yourself in too many
buckets of that pink lemonade. What you need is one of Mike’s vermouth
stingarees. I’ll buy.”
“Too much sting in it for me,” said the black-haired Rubio Sanchez, with
a shy smile. “A little claret and vichy this time, if you don’t mind.”
“Suit yourself, buddy. I’m no souse myself. What’s your game? I don’t
see anybody to play with but that bunch of doughboys with their bellies
against the bar. God may love the Army, but I pass. What’s your home
port? You were born under a cocoanut tree somewheres.”
“Colombia, but you can’t lose me in New York,” replied Rubio. “I used to
sail there.”
“You don’t look husky enough. What’s your ship?”
“A cargo boat in the Pacific trade, but she left me on the beach.”
It went against the grain to deceive this warm-hearted, attractive Navy
lad. In fact, there was no reason why he should be kept in the dark
concerning the vanished _Valkyrie_. He had won the respect of Teresa
Fernandez by his refusal to go roistering among the bad women of Panama.
“Gee, you are out of luck,” impulsively exclaimed the boyish petty
officer. “What’s your name? Rubio? Hey, Rube, if you need any coin, I’ve
got a bundle. You’re a good kid. I can size ’em up. Steve Brackett,
gunner’s mate, second class, is what they call me. I’m in the destroyer
_Patterson_. We’ve been chasing a division of seaplanes that made a
flight down from San Diego.”
“You ought not to carry so much money,” seriously advised young Rubio.
“Panama is just looking for fellows like you. I have money enough, thank
you with all my heart.”
“Let ’em try to ease me of my roll,” bragged the gunner’s mate. “I’m not
such a soft mark for these spiggoty crooks. On the level, kid, I ought
to convoy _you_. For a sailor you sure do look timid and tender.”
“Is that so? Here, let me take your hand,” smiled the soft-spoken young
Colombian.
Steve Brackett extended a brown, calloused paw. Before he could close
it, the fingers were squeezed in a quick, nervous grip that made him
wince and cry out. He wrenched them free and exclaimed:
“Easy, kid! Do you want to cripple one of the best gun-pointers in this
man’s Navy? Huh, you _are_ the deceivin’ guy! How do you get that way,
with a wrist as small as that, and a hand like a girl’s?”
The training of a ship’s stewardess might have had something to do with
it, but Rubio fancifully explained:
“There were some great swordsmen in my family one time. Listen, Steve,
do you know this nice, polite bartender? Tell me about him.”
“Who, Mike? They don’t grow ’em any better. Sure I know him. I was here
in a cruiser for the Fleet maneuvers last winter. The Navy swears by
Mike. Stick around and you’ll hear him bawl me out if I’m liable to
overstay my liberty to-night and get in trouble. He’s a regular daddy to
us young gobs.”
Just then the musicians in the café across the hall began to bang and
blare and tootle in a barbaric frenzy of syncopated discords. The
voluble patrons of the bar deserted it almost to a man. Mike was given a
respite to put the shrine of Bacchus in order and to rest his weary
frame. Having instructed his assistants, he donned a fresh jacket and
apron, and found a chair and a newspaper at a little table near the bar.
“Come on, Rube, if you want to chew the rag with him,” said the gunner’s
mate. “Now’s the time. This cease-firing interval won’t last long. Some
of those rum-hounds will be romping in as soon as they dance ’emselves
dusty.”
Rubio Sanchez complied with a fluttering timidity. This smooth,
sophisticated bartender had an eye like a hawk. For him the proper study
of mankind was man. He removed the glasses from his fleshy nose,
puckered his brows, and heartily exclaimed:
“Glad you shook them hard-boiled pals, Steve. They ain’t your class.
An’, mind, you drink no more hard stuff to-night, understand?”
“All done, Mike. Meet my friend Señor Rube Sanchez, a sailorman like
myself.”
“Howdy, señor. Set down, boys. What’s on your chests? I’m flattered to
have you prefer me company to the wild women in the cabaret yonder.”
Rubio’s clear voice trembled, but it held its contralto pitch as he
said:
“I have an errand of much importance to me, Mr. Mike. I want to find a
steamer that belongs to my uncle, Señor Ramon Bazán of Cartagena. He is
an old man as wrinkled as a monkey. He sailed in this vessel, which is a
little tramp named the _Valkyrie_ and flies the flag of Colombia. She
was at Balboa not long ago, bound to Buenaventura, but she didn’t go
there at all.”
The benevolent Mr. Mike was interested. He laid down the newspaper and
assumed his habitual manner of patient and tactful deference.
“Well, well,” said he, “’tis comical to have a steamer go playin’ hookey
with itself, ain’t it, Señor Sanchez? And you’ve tried the other coast
ports, north and south of here?”
“Yes. The vessel is nowhere on the coast, Mr. Mike.”
“So you’re adrift and forlorn without this uncle that looks like a
monkey? The _Valkyrie_, hey? Who else was in her?”
“Captain Bradley Duff, for one,” replied Rubio. “He is pretty well
known.”
“Bradley Duff? The lousy old skate!” said Mike, with an air of
reflection. “He was in jail in Panama a year ago, an’ I paid his fine
for him. The spiggoty cops run him in for disturbin’ the peace. A
first-class skipper was Bradley Duff till he piled a fine steamer up
when he was stewed, an’ that busted him.”
“My uncle was crazy when he hired him,” said Rubio, “but in Cartagena he
could find nobody else.”
“I dunno about that,” observed Mike. “A man may be down, but he’s never
out. But I’d never apply this motto to Bradley Duff if I hadn’t seen it
with me own two eyes. Your old uncle made no mistake, surprising as it
may sound. Not long ago, do you say? Right you are, Señor Sanchez. In
walks this same Bradley Duff, an’ you could ha’ knocked me down with a
lemonade straw. He was clean and smart as new paint. Blue serge coat
buttoned over that fat stummick of his, a chief officer’s stripes on the
sleeves, white duck pants, cap cocked over one eye an’ you be
billy-be-damned! He slaps his money on the bar an’ drinks a bottle of
beer.”
“Was he alone?” asked Rubio, leaning forward.
“In solitary grandeur he was, an’ minding his own business. Strong men
used to flee when he came into a bar-room, for it was him that could
talk your ear off, boomin’ an’ droolin’ along by the hour. Well, we
passed the time of day, an’ I handed him a few compliments an’ another
bottle of beer on the house. All he told me was that his ship was the
_Valkyrie_ an’ he was chief officer. Never a word about where he was
going nor what for. Something is in the wind, I says to meself, but I’m
not slick enough to pry it out of this human clam of a Bradley Duff.
“He sets down for a spell, very dignified, buyin’ no more drinks, as
indifferent as if him an’ booze had never been introjuced. Then he looks
at the clock, says he’s due back on board an’ pounds out. ’Twas like one
of these juicy young gobs on liberty. The discipline of the ship was not
to be trifled with. Something powerful had put the fear of God into
Bradley Duff. As the Good Book says, whilst the light holds out to burn,
the vilest sinner may come home to roost.”
The young Colombian had hearkened to this harangue with strained
attention. His slim fingers were playing a tattoo on the table. Forlorn
and adrift he was, indeed. The cup of hope had been dashed from his
lips. Again he was groping. He brushed a hand over his short, black hair
so smoothly parted. The gesture was a tragic symbol. The sacrifice had
been to no purpose.
“Did you ask him who was captain, Mr. Mike?” faltered Rubio. “Did any
other officers come in?”
“Nary a one. And from what he said, the crew was held pretty close. I
might have asked him more questions, but I was busy at the time.
Somebody had shut him up tight. He heard his master’s voice, did Bradley
Duff.”
“And you—you didn’t see a very big, splendid young man with bright
yellow hair—a man you could never forget, Mr. Mike? He may have been
the captain of the _Valkyrie_. A wonderful-looking man—there is nobody
like him on this coast.”
“You lose, son,” said the sympathetic Mr. Mike. His expression betokened
surprise. “To the best of me knowledge, there has been no young man like
that hereabouts. It is him you’re after, an’ not the old monkey of an
uncle?”
“He was very kind to me in a ship, Mr. Mike, when he was the second
mate. I—I wish I could see him again.”
The profound wisdom of the veteran bartender prompted him to study the
slender, drooping youth whose emotion was so unexpected. The boyish
gunner’s mate had been keeping silent with the courtesy of a lad who had
been taught to listen to his elders. Now, however, he eagerly exclaimed:
“All right, kid. I didn’t want to butt in. Now you pipe down and give me
the deck. It seems to mean a whole lot to you to find that ship and the
big guy that makes you cry. I’ve got some dope for you. The _Valkyrie_!
Is that the hooker? A bum little tramp with red sides and a rusty
funnel, that somebody resurrected from the bone-yard? Moseyin’ along in
ballast, is she? Listen! My destroyer was coming south a few days ago,
see, and we fetched a course away from the coast of Costa Rica to search
for a seaplane that had engine trouble and was reported as blown
offshore. We sighted a steamer steering almost due west. Our skipper
thought perhaps she might have sighted the seaplane, so we tried her
with radio and got no answer. We ran down to speak her. It was unusual
to see a vessel as small as this tramp heading so far to the west’ard
instead of following the coast. The Pacific Ocean looked awful large and
wet for her to cross.
“The signal quartermaster tried her with a flag hoist in the
international code. All he got back was a string of ragged bunting that
looked as if the rats had chewed it. You couldn’t make out the code
letters to save your soul. So we kept on to run close and hail her with
a megaphone. Say, kid, the skipper of this _Valkyrie_ was one whale of a
big guy! He waved his straw hat, and he sure was a natural blond. Lazy
and good-natured, too, like he was enjoying a life on the ocean wave.
That’s how he looked when he grinned at us. The world was his buddy.
“He hollered over that he hadn’t seen any stray seaplanes, and would we
please give him the correct Greenwich time because his owner had bought
the chronometer in a junk-shop to save a dollar. We asked him where he
thought he was going, but he laughed and said he was going to Davy
Jones’s locker if the weather went back on him. It was nothing in our
young lives, so we hauled on our course and wished him luck. Now, kid,
I’ve found the big guy for you, but where he expects to head in is too
much for me. What’s your guess?”
The kid from Cartagena was guilty of the most unmanly behavior. He was
biting his lip and dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. He could not
speak. Steve Brackett, the gunner’s mate with the heart of a gentleman
and the manners of a prince, looked inquiringly at Mike, but said not
another word. The bartender nodded in the direction of the door. Steve
took the hint. A hand on Rubio’s soft shoulder, he said:
“So-long, kid! I’ve got to shove off. Glad I could do you a good turn.
Look me up if you get a chance, or drop a line care U.S.S. _Patterson_.
Tell Mike your troubles and don’t hold out on him. That goes double for
the boss of this dump. If the kid needs more than you can do for him,
Mike, be sure to steer him against the boss, won’t you?”
“Sure, Steve. The kid could ha’ done worse than camp in the bar-room of
The Broadway Front.”
The gunner’s mate hung his round white hat on three hairs and delayed to
roll a cigarette. Meditatively he scratched a match. Rubio’s hand stole
into his, in a clasp strong and grateful. Steve blushed a fiery red and
jerked his hand away. Then he moved briskly to the door without glancing
behind him.
Mike sat with his elbows on the table and regarded young Rubio Sanchez,
not with the eye of a hawk, but with a scrutiny both pitiful and
protective. The lad might have got away with it, he said to himself, if
it hadn’t been for the big guy with the yellow hair. Even now there was
more suspicion than proof. Taking Rubio by the arm, he spoke in
confidential tones.
“Where are you staying at, son? The Tivoli? No? Right here? Don’t try to
talk. You won’t be wanting to go through the crowded hall to get
upstairs, till you sort of pull yourself together. I’ll have to be
tending bar again. Here’s what you do. Go into the boss’s office an’
wait for him. The door in the corner yonder. No one’ll bother you. He
’phoned from his house that the wife had a headache an’ he would set
with her an hour or so. This place may seem rough to you, but betwixt
Mike an’ the boss you’re agoin’ to be looked after right.”
Alone in the private office, Teresa Fernandez heard Mike turn the key in
the lock. She was not so much frightened as chagrined that she had
miserably failed to play the rôle. But how could she help breaking down
for joy and thanksgiving that she had been granted a blessed vision of
Ricardo, alive, untouched by fate, towering on the bridge of a ship? God
had guarded him. She also would be guarded. Her faith glowed like an
illumined altar, and she felt safe even in a situation like this.
For a few minutes she stood looking out of a barred, open window into a
dark rear yard enclosed by a high wall. The room was small and plainly
furnished, a rolltop desk, two chairs, and a massive steel safe. One of
the chairs was against the wall, at one side of the open window. She
sank into it and was soothed by the hum of the electric fan. She
wondered what the boss could be like, and why he commanded the implicit
respect of Mike and the fine young gunner’s mate. How could he help her
find a vanished ship? This was all that mattered.
The doorknob turned. She jumped to her feet, again the young man Rubio
Sanchez, alert and on the defensive. A burly man of middle age entered
the office. First impressions were alarming. He looked brutal and
overbearing, a man fitted to dominate this Broadway Front. He had a jaw
like a rock and the neck of a bull. The deep-set eyes were as hard as
agates. Teresa watched his mouth. It was human, with a whimsical twist
as he spoke from a corner of it.
“Sit down, Señor Sanchez, and make yourself at home. Have a cigar? No? I
am Jerry Tobin and I won’t bite you. So let’s be sociable. Mike told me
what he could, about your hunt for the _Valkyrie_ and so on. You banked
on picking up some news in Panama, didn’t you? And that goose is
cooked?”
“I did find some wonderful news, but it wasn’t enough, Mr. Tobin,”
replied Rubio, his voice steadied, his demeanor composed.
“I’m here to do what I can for you,” was the gruff response, “but I
don’t recommend your living in the Broadway Front. That’s too much to
have on my mind.”
“I was in a hotel, before the goose was cooked, Mr. Tobin. I—er—I
don’t want to go back there, but I can go somewhere else.”
“We can fix that up later,” said Jerry Tobin, peeling off his coat and
shoving back the top of the desk. “I can think better with a pencil and
paper. This destroyer kid met your ship off the coast of Costa Rica,
Mike tells me. And the voyage was a secret? Going to Buenaventura was
all a bluff?”
“My old uncle bluffs in his sleep,” laughed Rubio. “He whispers to
himself through a keyhole. But he was never so head over heels in a
secret as this time.”
“It makes ’em act that way,” barked Jerry Tobin, making marks with the
pencil. “If you hadn’t sort of knocked Mike off his pins by blubbering
in the bar-room, perhaps he would have put you wise. Wait a minute and
I’ll draw you a rough map. Panama Bay to the coast of Costa Rica and
then due west! I’ll put down a dot for an island that has made all kinds
of people as dippy as your uncle. An old pirate’s chart and some shovels
and dynamite—”
Jerry Tobin broke off abruptly. A turbulent life he must have led, but
now he was staring at the open window like a man whose wits were frozen.
His seamed, forbidding visage reflected terror, hatred, helplessness.
The hard eyes were unwinking.
Teresa Fernandez gazed at him in fixed fascination. She moved not so
much as a finger. She heard a voice at the open window, a wicked voice
that cut the stillness like a knife.
“Hands up, Jerry, you —— —— I’ve got you cold. Now back yourself
over to the safe. Turn around and open her up. Come clean, or I’ll plug
you in the back. The whole bankroll! Make it snappy!”
Burly John Tobin may have had some reason to recall that sinister voice.
Very cautiously he backed away from the desk with hands rigidly upraised
until his heel struck the safe. Then he knelt to fumble with the
combination knob. He was working as fast as he could. His face was gray.
Sweat bedewed it.
Almost without breathing, Teresa Fernandez watched him. She dared not
turn her head toward the window. She was unseen by the man outside. He
had spied only Jerry Tobin in the room. From where he stood in the yard,
the girl in the chair against the wall was invisible. It was a blunder.
From a corner of her eye, Teresa could perceive the window ledge. The
criminal was careful to stand a little way back from it, where he could
dodge for cover if the door should suddenly open. To steady himself, he
rested a hand upon the window ledge. Teresa could see this hand from
where she sat. She could have reached out and touched it. It was a hairy
hand with thick fingers and broken nails, a detestable hand. Teresa
looked at it, flattening herself in the chair. Then she looked at the
kneeling figure of Jerry Tobin who was removing a small drawer from the
open safe.
This man who had befriended her was unable to defend himself. There had
been a worse menace than robbery in that sinister voice from outside the
window. It signified some old score to settle, a vengeance to be slaked.
It was as wicked as a snake.
Jerry Tobin straightened himself and stood with the drawer in his hand.
His movements were as stiff and careful as those of a man with lumbago.
The drawer was filled with packages of bank-notes. His eyes roved to the
rolltop desk, but he could not reach the pistol in it. The voice outside
the window spoke again.
“Come through, Jerry, you dirty dog. No funny business. You ain’t got
coin enough to square it this side of hell. I’m liable to blow your head
off yet.”
It was the voice of a man lustful to kill, but not quite ready to risk
the consequences. Jerry Tobin’s life hung in the balance. The weight of
a feather might swing it either way. Teresa Fernandez could read in his
drawn, ashen face that he expected no mercy. It was the climax of a
mortal feud.
Teresa put her hand to her breast. Her fingers felt the handle of the
antique dagger under the soft shirt, the two-edged weapon in the leather
sheath hung by a ribbon around her neck. No matter what Jerry Tobin
might have done to deserve a bullet, he was a friend, and she was loyal.
She stole a glance at the hairy hand upon the window ledge.
Her own hand flew inside her shirt and whipped out the dagger. A jaguar
could have struck with no more speed and fury. The blade drove down
through the detestable hand upon the window ledge and quivered in the
soft wood. It was driven by a supple wrist and an explosion of energy.
It transfixed the evil hand and spiked it there.
Jerry Tobin leaped for the desk and snatched a pistol from a
pigeon-hole. From a corner of his mouth he growled like a mastiff:
“Guess again, you dumb-bell. Drop that gun.”
The dumb-bell had forgotten that he possessed a gun. He was writhing and
cursing, his one idea being to pull that dagger out of the window ledge.
Jerry Tobin preferred to let it stay there for the moment. Mildly he
said to the girl in the chair:
“On your way, señorita. You mustn’t get mixed up in this. Go upstairs
and wait there for me. Stay in your room. Tell Mike to come here. Excuse
me, but you’d better pull your shirt together. Rubio Sanchez is a dead
card.”
Teresa clutched at the bosom of her shirt. A button had been ripped off.
It revealed no more than did her evening gown of black lace, but it was
enough to prove to Jerry Tobin that he had taken on the responsibilities
of a chaperon. The color dyed her face from chin to brow as she buttoned
the gray coat over the shirt.
Looking neither at the window ledge nor at Jerry Tobin, she fled from
the office, whispered a hurried word to Mr. Mike as she passed the bar,
and stole into the hall and up the staircase. The straw hat was pulled
low over her eyes. Safely in her room, she shot the bolt and fairly
toppled over on the bed. To her ears came the thump, thump of the drums,
the frenzied wail of the saxophones, loud laughter, snatches of song.
An hour passed before she was aroused by a knock on the door. It was
Jerry Tobin. He entered rather gingerly, as if to apologize for an
intrusion. As a chaperon he was evidently a novice. His change of manner
was amusing. He was like a man afraid. From a pocket he took the antique
dagger. The blade had been cleaned of stains. Awkwardly he ventured to
say:
“Here’s something of yours. I didn’t want the police to find it. Sheeny
George, the bird you—ahem—left it with, don’t know how it happened.”
“What did you say to the police?” fearfully asked Teresa.
“No more than I had to. I made ’em a present of an outlaw with a record
as long as your arm, and they were tickled to death. He’ll get put away
for pretty near the rest of his life. So there’s that. You don’t show in
it at all.”
“But I don’t want the dagger, Mr. Tobin. Throw it away.”
“Not if you’ll let me keep it as a souvenir. You won’t have to pack any
more weapons. Understand? So cheer up, young lady. You’ve got a friend
to make the play for you. Do you mind telling me what name to call you
by?”
“Teresa Fernandez. As a young man I was—I was a failure, Mr. Tobin.”
“Oh, not so worse, until you just naturally blew up,” was his verdict.
“Now, Miss Fernandez, I can’t make your head of black hair grow again,
but they’re wearing it short. Against that, you can credit yourself with
a large, elegant’s night’s work. You saved my bankroll, twenty thousand
dollars. I run a game on the third floor. And you just about saved my
wife from being a widow. Sheeny George was working up steam to croak me.
It was the yellow streak that held him back just long enough for you to
get action.”
“His voice told me so,” shakily replied Teresa. “Oh, Mr. Jerry Tobin, I
am going all to pieces. What can I do? You don’t know—you don’t know—I
did it to help you—I was so angry—but I never, never want to see a
pistol or a knife again, not in all my life. I used to be a happy girl
and I never harmed anybody—and I never dreamed of things like this—”
This was too much for battling Jerry Tobin to handle. As he said to
himself, it was time to pass the buck. Fingering that iron jaw of his,
he issued his instructions.
“Please scramble your stuff into that suitcase, Miss Fernandez, or let
me do it for you, seeing as it’s the duds of the late Rubio Sanchez. You
are going home with me. This is a job for Mrs. Jerry Tobin, a woman
that’s too good for this world. The best bet for you is a mother. Savvey
that? Have you got any other clothes?”
“A trunk at the Hotel Las Palmas,” meekly answered Teresa. “What will
Mrs. Tobin say? My goodness, I am scared again.”
“You scare easy, don’t you?” he grunted. “I know different. I ’phoned
the missus, but I didn’t tell her too much. I never do. You and she will
cuddle up like two kittens in a basket. My car is outside. Now let’s
make it _pronto_.”
Teresa obeyed. Discussion seemed absurd. The boss had proclaimed an
edict. She had one question to ask.
“That island, Mr. Tobin, where you said my uncle’s ship had gone? You
were going to show me with a pencil.”
“Cocos Island? What’s the hurry? I’ll get you there. If I know anything
about these treasure-hunting nuts, this locoed uncle of yours will be
blasting rock and making the gravel fly from now till the Fourth of
July.”
“Cocos Island?” murmured Teresa. “I never heard of any treasure on Cocos
Island. That was just my hard luck, Mr. Tobin, or maybe I am thick.”
“Not thick, Miss Fernandez. For fast work you have me stopped. You
wouldn’t be so apt to hear this treasure dope over on the Atlantic side.
Leave the proposition to me. As a fixer, I’m good.”
Jerry Tobin carried the shiny suitcase into the lower hall. Teresa had a
farewell glimpse of the devoted Mr. Mike. He was manipulating a cocktail
shaker and patiently listening to the sorrows of a stranger who clung to
the bar like a limpet to a reef.
While they drove through the city and into a suburb of trim lawns and
bungalows, Jerry Tobin was taciturn. Teresa felt grateful for it. For
the time she had ceased to fret and suffer. Quietude enfolded her.
Through troubled waters and muddy, her pilgrimage had led her to a
haven. She was tolerant of the faults and follies of mankind as she had
known them on land and sea. God’s grace might visit the heart of a Mr.
Mike or a Jerry Tobin as well as the heart of a priest. Saints or
sinners, who was she to condemn, a woman who had yet to cleanse her own
soul of stain?
Jerry Tobin marched her into a wide-roofed bungalow on the side of a
green hill. A woman came forward to meet them. She was slight and
plain-featured, insignificant to the eye. To Jerry Tobin she was the
Colleen Bawn. He kissed her like a knight paying homage to a lady love.
The Jerry Tobin, boss of The Broadway Front, was unknown inside this
threshold.
His wife saw the slender girl who waited hesitant, uncertain of her
welcome. Mary Tobin took her hands as she said:
“Jerry ’phoned me you were a lady and a darling, Miss Fernandez, and I
would love to have you in the house. Once in a while the lump of a man
says something real sensible. Now run away, Jerry, and leave us two
women alone. You have done your bit for to-night.”