“Well, it would certainly be most undiplomatic for me to hint that the
great and friendly nation of Hochwald, which wields more influence and
has a larger market here than any other European power, has become a
little jealous of the growing American trade. But the fact remains that
the Hochwald minister and his secretary, Von Plaanden, who is a very
able citizen when sober,—and is, of course, almost always sober,—have
not exerted themselves painfully to compose the little misunderstanding
between President Fortuno and us. The Dutch diplomats, who are not as
diplomatic in speech as I am, would tell you, if there were any of them
left here to tell anything, that Von Plaanden’s intrigues brought on
the present break with them. So there you have a brief, but reliable
‘History of Our Times in the Island Republic of Caracuña.’”
“Highly informative and improving to the untutored mind,” Miss Brewster
complimented him. “I like seeing the wires of empire pulled. More,
please.”
“Perhaps you won’t like the next so well,” observed Carroll grimly.
“There is bubonic plague here.”
“Oh—ah!” protested Sherwen gently. “The suspicion of plague. Quite a
different matter.”
“Which usually turns out to be the same, doesn’t it?” inquired Mr.
Brewster.
“Perhaps. People disappear, and one is not encouraged to ask about
them. But then people disappear for many causes in Caracuña. Politics
here are somewhat—well—Philadelphian in method. But—there is smoke
rising from behind Capo Blanco.”
“What is there?” inquired the girl.
“The lazaretto. Still, it might be yellow fever, or only smallpox. The
Government is not generous with information. To have plague discovered
now would be very disturbing to the worthy plans of the Hochwald
Legation. For trade purposes, they would very much dislike to have the
port closed for a considerable time by quarantine. The Dutch difficulty
they can arrange when they will. But quarantine would bring in the
United States, and that is quite another matter. Well, we’ll see, when
Dr. Pruyn gets here.”
“Who is he?” asked Carroll.
“Special-duty man of the United States Public Health Service. The best
man on tropical diseases and quarantine that the service has ever had.”
“That isn’t Luther Pruyn, is it?” inquired Mr. Brewster.
“The same. Do you know him?”
“Yes.”
“More than I do, except by reputation.”
“He was in my class at college, but I haven’t seen him since. I’d be
glad to see him again. A queer, dry fellow, but character and grit to
his backbone.”
“I’d supposed he was younger,” said Sherwen. “Anyway, he’s
comparatively new to the service. His rise is the more remarkable. At
present, he’s not only our quarantine representative, with full powers,
but unofficially he acts, while on his roving commission, for the
British, the Dutch, the French, and half the South American republics.
I suppose he’s really the most important figure in the Caracuña
crisis—and he hasn’t even got here yet. Perhaps our Hochwaldian friends
have captured him on the quiet. It would pay ’em, for if there is
plague here, he’ll certainly trail it down.”
“Oh, I’m tired of plague,” announced Miss Polly. “Bring the others here
and let’s all go over to the plaza, where it’s cool.”
To their open and obvious delight, exhibited jauntily by the
Englishman, with awkward and admiring respectfulness by the
ball-player, and with graceful ease by the handsome Caracuñan, the rest
were invited to join the party.
“Don’t let them scare you about plague, Miss Brewster,” said Cluff, as
they found their chairs. “Foreigners don’t get it much.”
“Oh, I’m not afraid! But, anyway, we shouldn’t have time to catch even
a cold. We leave to-morrow.”
The men exchanged glances.
“How?” inquired Sherwen and Raimonda in a breath.
“In the yacht, from Puerto del Norte.”
“Not if it were a British battleship,” said Galpy. “Port’s closed.”
“What? Quarantine already?” said Carroll.
“Quarantine be blowed! It’s the Dutch.”
“I thought you knew,” said Sherwen. “All the town is ringing with the
news. It just came in to-night. Holland has declared a blockade until
Caracuña apologizes for the interference with its cable.”
“And nothing can pass?” asked Mr. Brewster.
“Nothing but an aeroplane or a submarine.”
There was a silence. Miss Polly Brewster broke it with a curious
question:—
“What day is day after to-morrow?”
Several voices had answered her, but she paid little heed, for there
had slipped over her shoulder a brown thin hand holding a cunningly
woven closed basket of reedwork. A soft voice murmured something in
Spanish.
“What does he say?” asked the girl “For me?”
“He thinks it must be for you,” translated Raimonda, “from the
description.”
“What description?”
“He was told to go to the hotel and deliver it to the most beautiful
lady. There could hardly be any mistaking such specific instructions
even by an ignorant mountain peon,” he added, smiling.
The girl opened the curious receptacle, and breathed a little gasp of
delight. Bedded in fern, lay a mass of long sprays aquiver with bells
of the purest, most lucent white, each with a great glow of gold at its
heart.
“Ah,” observed the young Caracuñan, “I see that you are _persona grata_
with our worthy President, Miss Brewster.”
“President Fortuno?” asked the girl, surprised. “No; not that I’m aware
of. Why do you say that?”
“That is his special orchid—almost the official flower. They call it
‘the President’s orchid.’”
“Has he a monopoly of growing them?” asked Miss Brewster.
“No one can grow them. They die when transplanted from their native
cliffs. But it’s only the President’s rangers who are daring enough to
get them.”
“Are they so inaccessible?”
“Yes. They grow nowhere but on the cliff faces, usually in the wildest
part of the mountains. Few people except the hunters and mountaineers
know where, and it’s only the most adventurous of them who go after the
flowers.”
“Do you suppose this boy got these?” Miss Brewster indicated the shy
and dusky messenger.
Raimonda spoke to the boy for a moment.
“No; he didn’t collect them. Nor is he one of the President’s men. I
don’t quite understand it.”
“Who did gather them?”
“All that he will say is, ‘the master.’”
“Oh!” said Miss Brewster, and retired into a thoughtful silence.
“They’re very beautiful, aren’t they?” continued the Caracuñan. “And
they carry a pretty sentiment.”
“Tell me,” commanded the girl, emerging from her reverie.
“The mountaineers say that their fragrance casts a spell which carries
the thought back to the giver.”
“Is that the language of science?” she queried absently, with a thought
far away.
“But no, señorita, assuredly not,” said the young Caracufian. “It is
the language—permit that I say it better in French—c’est le langage
d’amour.”
III.
THE BETTER PART OF VALOR
Night fell with the iron clangor of bells, and day broke to the
accompaniment of further insensate jangling, for Caracuña City has the
noisiest cathedral in the world; and still the graceful gray yacht
Polly lay in the harbor at Puerto del Norte, hemmed in by a thin film
of smoke along the horizon where the Dutch warship promenaded.
In one of the side caverns off the main dining-room of the Hotel Kast,
the yacht’s owner, breakfasting with the yacht’s tutelary goddess and
the goddess’s determined pursuer, discussed the blockade. Though Miss
Polly Brewster kept up her end of the conversation, her thoughts were
far upon a breeze-swept mountain-side. How, she wondered, had that dry
and strange hermit of the wilds known the news before the city learned
it? With her wonder came annoyance over her lost wager. The beetle man,
she judged, would be coolly superior about it. So she delivered herself
of sundry stinging criticisms regarding the conduct of the Caracuñan
Administration in having stupidly involved itself in a blockade. She
even spoke of going to see the President and apprising him of her
views.
“I’d like to tell him how to run this foolish little island,” said she,
puckering a quaintly severe brow.
“Now is the appointed time for you to plunge in and change the course
of empire,” her father suggested to her. “There’s an official morning
reception at ten o’clock. We’re invited.”
“Then I shan’t go. I wouldn’t give the old goose the satisfaction of
going to his _fiesta_.”
“Meaning the noble and patriotic President?” said Carroll. “Treason
most foul! The _cuartels_ are full of chained prisoners who have said
less.”
“Father can go with Mr. Sherwen. I shall do some important shopping,”
announced Miss Brewster. “And I don’t want any one along.”
Thus apprised of her intentions, Carroll wrapped himself in gloom, and
retired to write a letter.
Miss Polly’s shopping, being conducted mainly through the medium of the
sign language, presently palled upon her sensibilities, and about
twelve o’clock she decided upon a drive. Accordingly she stepped into
one of the pretty little toy victorias with which the city swarms.
“Para donde?” inquired the driver.
His fare made an expansive gesture, signifying “Anywhere.” Being an
astute person in his own opinion, the Jehu studied the pretty
foreigner’s attire with an appraising eye, profoundly estimated that so
much style and elegance could be designed for only one function of the
day, whirled her swiftly along the two-mile drive of the Calvario Road,
and landed her at the President’s palace, half an hour after the
reception was over. Supposing from the coachman’s signs that she was
expected to go in and view some public garden, she paid him, walked far
enough to be stopped by the apologetic and appreciative guard, and
returned to the highway, to find no carriage in sight. Never mind, she
reflected; she needed the exercise. Accordingly, she set out to walk.
But the noonday sun of Caracuia has a bite to it. For a time, Miss
Brewster followed the car tracks which were her sure guide from the
palace to the Kast; briskly enough, at first. But, after three cars had
passed her, she began to think longingly of the fourth. When it stopped
at her signal, it was well filled. The most promising ingress appeared
to be across the blockade of a robust and much-begilded young man, who
was occupying the familiar position of an “end-seat hog,” and
displaying the full glories of the Hochwaldian dress uniform.
Herr von Plaanden was both sleepy and cross, for, having lingered after
the reception to have a word and several drinks with the Minister of
Foreign Affairs, he had come forth to find neither coach nor automobile
in attendance. There had been nothing for it but the plebeian trolley.
Accordingly, when he heard a foreign voice of feminine timbre and felt
a light pressure against his knee, he only snorted. What he next felt
against his knee was the impact of a half-shove, half-blow, brisk
enough to slue him around. The intruder passed by to the vacant seat,
while the now thoroughly awakened and annoyed Hochwaldian whirled, to
find himself looking into a pair of expressionless brown goggles.
With a snort of fury, the diplomat struck backward. The glasses and the
solemn face behind them dodged smartly. The next moment, Herr von
Plaanden felt his neck encircled by a clasp none the less warm for
being not precisely affectionate. He was pinned. Twisting, he worked
one arm loose.
“Be careful!” warned the cool voice of Polly Brewster, addressing her
defender. “He’s trying to draw his sword.”
The gogglesome one’s grip slid a little lower. The car had now stopped,
and the conductor came forward, brandishing what was apparently the
wand of authority, designed to be symbolic rather than utile, since at
no point was it thicker than a man’s finger. From a safe distance on
the running-board, he flourished this, whooping the while in a shrill
and dissuasive manner. Somewhere down the street was heard a responsive
yell, and a small, jerky, olive-green _policia_ pranced into view.
Thereupon a strange thing happened. The rescuing knight relaxed his
grip, leaped the back of his seat, dropped off the car, and darted like
a hunted hare across a compound, around a wall, and so into the
unknown, deserting his lady fair, if not precisely in the hour of
greatest need, at least in a situation fraught with untoward
possibilities. Indeed, it seemed as if these possibilities might
promptly become actualities, for the diplomat turned his stimulated
wrath upon the girl, and was addressing her in tones too emphatic to be
mistaken when a large angular form interposed itself, landing with a
flying leap on the seat between them.
“Move!” the newly arrived one briefly bade Herr von Plaanden.
Herr von Plaanden, feeling the pressure of a shoulder formed upon the
generous lines of a gorilla’s, and noting the approach of the _policia_
on the other side, was fain to obey.
“Don’t you be scared, miss,” said Cluff, turning to the girl. “It’s all
over.”
“I’m not frightened,” she said, with a catch in her voice.
“Of course you ain’t,” he agreed reassuringly. “You just sit quiet—”
“But I—I—I’m _mad_, clean through.”
“You gotta right. You gotta perfect right. Now, if this was New York,
I’d spread that gold-laced guy’s face—”
“I’m not angry at him. Not particularly, I mean.”
“No?” queried her friend in need. “What got your goat, then?”
Miss Brewster shot a quick and scornful glance over her shoulder.
“Oh, _him!_” interpreted the athlete. “Well, he made his get-away like
a man with some reason for being elsewhere.”
“Reason enough. He was afraid.”
“Maybe. Being afraid’s a queer thing,” remarked her escort
academically. “Now, me, I’m afraid of a fuzzy caterpillar. But I ain’t
exactly timid about other things.”
“You certainly aren’t. And I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Aw, that’s awright, miss. What else could I do? Our departed friend,
Professor Goggle-Eye, when he made his jump, landed right in my shirt
front. ‘Take my place,’ he says; ‘I’ve got an engagement.’ Well, I was
just moving forward, anyway, so it was no trouble at all, I assure
you,” asserted the doughty Cluff, achieving a truly elegant conclusion.
“Most fortunate for me,” said the girl sweetly. “Mr. Perkins scuttled
away like one of his own little wretched beetles. When I see him
again—”
“Again? Oh, well, if he’s a friend of yours, accourse he’d awtuv stood
by—”
“He isn’t!” she declared, with unnecessary vehemence.
“Don’t you be too hard on him, miss,” argued her escort. “Seems to me
he did a pretty good job for you, and stuck to it until he found some
one else to take it up.”
“Then why didn’t he stand by you?”
“Oh, I don’t carry any ‘Help-wanted’ signs on me. You know, miss, you
can’t size up a man in this country like he was at home. Now, me, I’d
have natcherly hammered that Von Plaanden gink all to heh—heh—hash. But
did I do it? I did not. You see, I got a little mining concession out
here in the mountains, and if I was to get into any diplomatic mix-up
and bring in the police, it’d be bad for my business, besides maybe
getting me a couple of tons of bracelets around my pretty little
ankles. Like as not your friend, Professor Lamps, has got an equally
good reason for keeping the peace.”
“Do you mean that this man will make trouble for you over this?”
“Not as things stand. So long as nothing was done—no arrests or
anything like that—he’ll be glad to forget it, when he sobers up. I’ll
forget it, too, and maybe, miss, it wouldn’t be any harm to anybody if
you did a turn at forgetting, yourself.”
But neither by the venturesome Miss Polly nor by her athlete servitor
was the episode to be so readily dismissed. Late that afternoon, when
the Brewster party were sitting about iced fruit drinks amid the dingy
and soiled elegance of the Kast’s one private parlor, Mr. Sherwen’s
card arrived, followed shortly by Mr. Sherwen’s immaculate self,
creaseless except for one furrow of the brow.
“How you are going to get out of here I really don’t know,” he said.
“Why should we hurry?” inquired Miss Brewster. “I don’t find Caracuña
so uninteresting.”
“Never since I came here has it been so charming,” said the legation
representative, with a smiling bow. “But, much as your party adds to
the landscape, I’m not at all sure that this city is the most healthful
spot for you at present.”
“You mean the plague?” asked Mr. Brewster.
“Not quite so loud, please. ‘Healthful,’ as I used it, was, in part, a
figure of speech. Something is brewing hereabout.”
“Not a revolution?” cried Miss Polly, with eyes alight. “Oh, do brew a
revolution for me! I should so adore to see one!”
“Possibly you may, though I hardly think it. Some readjustment of
foreign relations, at most. The Dutch blockade is, perhaps, only a
beginning. However, it’s sufficient to keep you bottled up, though if
we could get word to them, I dare say they would let a yacht go out.”
“Senator Richland, of the Committee on Foreign Relations, is an old
friend of my family,” said Carroll, in his measured tones. “A cable—”
“Would probably never get through. This Government wouldn’t allow it.
There are other possibilities. Perhaps, Mr. Brewster,” he continued,
with a side glance at the girl, “we might talk it over at length this
evening.”
“Quite useless, Mr. Sherwen,” smiled the magnate. “Polly would have it
all out of me before I was an hour older. She may as well get it
direct.”
“Very well, then. It’s this quarantine business. If Dr. Pruyn comes
here and declares bubonic plague—”
“But how will he get in?” asked Carroll.
“So far as the blockade goes, the Dutch will help him all they can. But
this Government will keep him out, if possible.”
“He is not persona grata?” asked Brewster.
“Not with any of the countries that play politics with pestilence. But
if he’s sent here, he’ll get in some way. In fact, Stark, the
public-health surgeon at Puerto del Norte, let fall a hint that makes
me think he’s on his way now. Probably in some cockleshell of a small
boat manned by Indian smugglers.”
“It sounds almost too adventurous for the scholarly Pruyn whom I
recall,” observed Mr. Brewster.
“The man who went through the cholera anarchy on the lazar island off
Camacho, with one case of medical supplies and two boxes of cartridges,
may have been scholarly; he certainly didn’t exhibit any distaste for
adventure. Well, I wish he’d arrive and get something settled. Only I’d
like to have you out of the way first.”
“Oh, don’t send _me_ away, Mr. Sherwen,” pleaded Miss Polly, with
mischief in her eyes. “I’d make the cunningest little office assistant
to busy old Dr. Pruyn. And he’s a friend of dad’s, and we surely ought
to wait for him.”
“If only I _could_ send you! The fact is, Americans won’t be very
popular if matters turn out as I expect.”
“Shall we be confined to our rooms and kept _incomunicado_, while Dr.
Pruyn chases the terrified germ through the streets of Caracuña?”
queried the irrepressible Polly.
“You’ll probably have to move to the legation, where you will be very
welcome, but none too comfortable. The place has been practically
closed and sealed for two months.”
“I’m sure we should bother you dreadfully,” said the girl.
“It would bother me more dreadfully if you got into any trouble. Just
this morning there was some kind of an affair on a street car in which
some Americans were involved.”
Miss Polly’s countenance was a design—a very dainty and ornamental
design—in _insouciance_ as her father said:—
“Americans? Any one we have met?”
“No news has come to me. I understand one of the diplomatic corps,
returning from the President’s matinée, spoke to an American woman, and
an American man interfered.”
“When did this happen?” asked Carroll.
“About noon. Inquiries are going on quietly.”
The young man directed a troubled and accusing look from his fine eyes
upon Miss Brewster.
“You see, Miss Polly,” he said, “no lady should go about unprotected
down here.”
“Ordinarily it’s as safe as any city,” said Sherwen. “Just now I can’t
be so certain.”
“I hate being watched over like a child!” pouted Miss Brewster. “And I
love sight-seeing alone. The flowers along the Calvario Road were so
lovely.”
“That’s the road to the palace,” remarked Carroll, looking at her
closely.
“And the butterflies are so marvelous,” she continued cheerfully. “Who
lives in that salmon-pink pagoda just this side of the curve?”
Trouble sat dark and heavy upon the handsome features of Mr. Preston
Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll, but he was too experienced to put a direct
query to his _inamorata_. What suspicion he had, he cherished until
after dinner, when he took it to the club and made it the foundation of
certain inquiries.
Thus it happened that at eleven o’clock that evening, he paused before
a bench in the plaza, bowered in the bloom of creepers which flowed
down from a balcony of the Kast, and occupied by the comfortably
sprawled-out form of Mr. Thomas Cluff, who was making a burnt offering
to Morpheus.
“Good-evening!” said Mr. Carroll pleasantly.
“Evenin’! How’s things?” returned the other.
“Right as can be, thanks to you. On behalf of the Brewster family, I
want to express our appreciation of your assistance to Miss Brewster
this morning.”
“Oh, that was nothing,” returned the other.
“But it might have been a great deal. Mr. Brewster will wish to thank
you in person—”
“Aw, forget it!” besought Mr. Thomas Cluff. “That little lady is all
right. I’d just as soon eat an ambassador, let alone a gilt-framed
secretary, to help her out.”
“Miss Brewster,” said the other, somewhat more stiffly, “is a wholly
admirable young lady, but she is not always well advised in going out
unescorted. By the way, you can doubtless confirm the rumor as to the
identity of her insulter.”
“His name is Von Plaanden. But I don’t think he meant to insult any
one.”
“You will permit me to be the best judge of that.”
“Go as far as you like,” asserted the big fellow cheerfully. “That
fellow Perkins can tell you more about the start of the thing than I
can.”
“From what I hear, he has no cause to be proud of his part in the
matter,” said the Southerner, frowning.
“He’s sure a prompt little runner,” asserted Cluff. “But I’ve run away
in my time, and glad of the chance.”
“You will excuse me from sympathizing with your standards.”
“Sure, you’re excused,” returned the athlete, so placidly that Carroll,
somewhat at a loss, altered his speech to a more gracious tone.
“At any rate, you stood your ground when you were needed, which is more
than Mr. Perkins did. I should like to have a talk with him.”
“That’s easy. He was rambling around here not a quarter of an hour ago
with young Raimonda. That’s them sitting on the bench over by the
fountain.”
“Will you take me over and present me? I think it is due Mr. Perkins
that some one should give him a frank opinion of his actions.”
“I’d like to hear that,” observed Cluff, who was not without humanistic
curiosity. “Come along.”
Heaving up his six-feet-one from the seat, he led the way to the two
conversing men. Raimonda looked around and greeted the newcomers
pleasantly. Cluff waved an explanatory hand between his charge and the
bench.
“Make you acquainted with Mr. Perkins,” he said, neglecting to mention
the name of the first party of the introduction.
Perkins, goggling upward to meet a coldly hostile glance, rose, nodded
in some wonder, and said: “How do you do?” Raimonda sent Cluff a glance
of interrogation, to which that experimentalist in human antagonisms
responded with a borrowed Spanish gesture of pleasurable uncertainty.
“I will not say that I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Perkins,” began Carroll
weightily, and paused.
If he expected a query, he was doomed to a disappointment. Such of the
Perkins features as were not concealed by his extraordinary glasses
expressed an immovable calm.
“Doubtless you know to what I refer.”
Still those blank brown glasses regarded him in silence.
“Do you or do you not?” demanded Carroll, struggling to keep his temper
in the face of this exasperating irresponsiveness.
“Haven’t the least idea,” replied Perkins equably.
“You were on the tram this morning when Miss Brewster was insulted,
weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And ran away?”
“I did.”
“What did you run away for?”
“I ran away,” the other sweetly informed him, “on important business of
my own.”
Cluff snickered. The suspicion impinged upon Carroll’s mind that this
wasn’t going to be as simple as he had expected.
“Let that go for the moment. Do you know Miss Brewster’s insulter?”
“No.”
“Are you telling me the truth?” asked the Southerner sternly.
The begoggled one’s chin jerked up. To the trained eye of Cluff, swift
to interpret physical indications, it seemed that Perkins’s weight had
almost imperceptibly shifted its center of gravity.
“Our Southern friend is going to run into something if he doesn’t look
out,” he reflected.