“‘I skip forty years,’ said the baker in tears,”—
“You can’t,” she objected. “If you skipped half that, I don’t believe
it would leave you much.”
“When one is giving one’s life history by request,” he began, with
dignity, “interruptions—”
“It isn’t by request,” she protested. “I don’t want your life history.
I won’t have it! You shan’t treat an unprotected and helpless stranger
so. Besides, I’m much more interested to know how you came to be
familiar with Lewis Carroll.”
“Just because I’ve wasted my career on frivolous trifles like science,
you needn’t think I’ve wholly neglected the true inwardness of life, as
exemplified in ‘The Hunting of the Snark,’” he said gravely.
“Do you know”—she leaned forward, searching his face—“I believe you
came out of that book yourself. _Are_ you a Boojum? Will you, unless I
‘charm you with smiles and soap,’
“‘Softly and silently vanish away,
And never be heard of again’?”
“You’re mixed. _You’d_ be the one to do that if I were a real Boojum.
And you’ll be doing it soon enough, anyway,” he concluded ruefully.
“So I shall, but don’t be too sure that I’ll ‘never be heard of
again.’”
He glanced up at the sun, which was edging behind a dark cloud, over
the gap.
“Is your raging thirst for personal information sufficiently slaked?”
he asked. “We’ve still fifteen or twenty minutes left.”
“Is that all? And I haven’t yet given you the message!” She drew it
from the bag and handed it to him.
“Sealed,” he observed.
The girl colored painfully.
“Dad didn’t intend—You mustn’t think—” With a flash of generous wrath
she tore the envelope open and held out the inclosure. “But I shouldn’t
have thought you so concerned with formalities,” she commented
curiously.
“It isn’t that. But in some respects, possibly important, it would be
better if—” He stopped, looking at her doubtfully.
“Read it,” she nodded.
He ran through the brief document.
“Yes; it’s just as well that I should know. I’ll leave a copy.”
Something in his accent made her scrutinize him.
“You’re going into danger!” she cried.
“Danger? No; I think not. Difficulty, perhaps. But I think it can be
put through.”
“If it were dangerous, you’d do it just the same,” she said, almost
accusingly.
“It would be worth some danger now to get you away from greater danger
later. See here, Miss Brewster”—he rose and stood over her—“there must
be no mistake or misunderstanding about this.”
“Don’t gloom at me with those awful glasses,” she said fretfully. “I
feel as if I were being stared at by a hidden person.”
He disregarded the protest.
“If I get this message through, can you guarantee that your father will
take out the yacht as soon as the Dutch send word to him?”
“Oh, yes. He will do that. How are you going to deliver the message?”
Again her words might as well not have been spoken.
“You’d better have your luggage ready for a quick start.”
“Will it be soon?”
“It may be.”
“How shall we know?”
“I will get word to you.”
“Bring it?”
He shook his head.
“No; I fear not. This is good-bye.”
“You’re very casual about it,” she said, aggrieved. “At least, it would
be polite to pretend.”
“What am I to pretend?”
“To be sorry. Aren’t you sorry? Just a little bit?”
“Yes; I’m sorry. Just a little bit—at least.”
“I’m most awfully sorry myself,” she said frankly. “I shall miss you.”
“As a curiosity?” he asked, smiling.
“As a friend. You have been a friend to us—to me,” she amended sweetly.
“Each time I see you, I have more the feeling that you’ve been more of
a friend than I know.”
“‘That which thy servant is,’” he quoted lightly. But beneath the
lightness she divined a pain that she could not wholly fathom. Quite
aware of her power, Miss Polly Brewster was now, for one of the few
times in her life, stricken with contrition for her use of it.
“And I—I haven’t been very nice,” she faltered. “I’m afraid sometimes
I’ve been quite horrid.”
“You? You’ve been ‘the glory and the dream.’ I shall be needing
memories for a while. And when the glory has gone, at least the dream
will remain—tethered.”
“But I’m not going to be a dream alone,” she said, with wistful
lightness. “It’s far too much like being a ghost. I’m going to be a
friend, if you’ll let me. And I’m going to write to you, if you will
tell me where. You won’t find it so very easy to make a mere memory of
me. And when you come home—When _are_ you coming home?”
He shook his head.
“Then you must find out, and let me know. And you must come and visit
us at our summer place, where there’s a mountain-side that we can sit
on, and you can pretend that our lake is the Caribbean and hate it to
your heart’s content—”
“I don’t believe I can ever quite hate the Caribbean again.”
“From this view you mustn’t, anyway. I shouldn’t like that. As for our
lake, nobody could really help loving it. So you must be sure and come,
won’t you?”
“Dreams!” he murmured.
“Isn’t there room in the scientific life for dreams?”
“Yes. But not for their fulfillment.”
“But there will be beetles and dragon-flies on our mountain,” she went
on, conscious of talking against time, of striving to put off the
moment of departure. “You’ll find plenty of work there. Do you know,
Mr. Beetle Man, you haven’t told me a thing, really, about your work,
or a thing, really, about yourself. Is that the way to treat a friend?”
“When I undertook to spread before you the true and veracious history
of my life,” he began, striving to make his tone light, “you would none
of it.”
“Are you determined to put me off? Do you think that I wouldn’t find
the things that are real to you interesting?”
“They’re quite technical,” he said shyly.
“But they are the big things to you, aren’t they? They make life for
you?”
“Oh, yes; that, of course.” It was as if he were surprised at the need
of such a question. “I suppose I find the same excitement and adventure
in research that other men find in politics, or war, or making money.”
“Adventure?” she said, puzzled. “I shouldn’t have supposed research an
adventurous career, exactly.”
“No; not from the outside.” His hidden gaze shifted to sweep the far
distances. His voice dropped and softened, and, when he spoke again,
she felt vaguely and strangely that he was hardly thinking of her or
her question, except as a part of the great wonder-world surrounding
and enfolding their companioned remoteness.
“This is my _credo_,” he said, and quoted, half under his breath:—
“‘We have come in search of truth,
Trying with uncertain key
Door by door of mystery.
We are reaching, through His laws,
To the garment hem of Cause.
As, with fingers of the blind,
We are groping here to find
What the hieroglyphics mean
Of the Unseen in the seen;
What the Thought which underlies
Nature’s masking and disguise;
What it is that hides beneath
Blight and bloom and birth and death.’”
Other men had poured poetry into Polly Brewster’s ears, and she had
thought them vapid or priggish or affected, according as they had
chosen this or that medium. This man was different. For all his outer
grotesquery, the noble simplicity of the verse matched some veiled and
hitherto but half-expressed quality within him, and dignified him. Miss
Brewster suffered the strange but not wholly unpleasant sensation of
feeling herself dwindle.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said, with an effort. “Is it Matthew
Arnold?”
“Nearer home. You an American, and don’t know your Whittier? That
passage from his ‘Agassiz’ comes pretty near to being what life means
to me. Have I answered your requirements?”
“Fully and finely.”
She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated, and stretched
out both hands to him. He took and held them without awkwardness or
embarrassment. By that alone she could have known that he was suffering
with a pain that submerged consciousness of self.
“Whether I see you again or not, I’ll never forget you,” she said
softly. “You _have_ been good to me, Mr. Perkins.”
“I like the other name better,” he said.
“Of course. Mr. Beetle Man.” She laughed a little tremulously. Abruptly
she stamped a determined foot. “I’m _not_ going away without having
seen my friend for once. Take off your glasses, Mr. Beetle Man.”
“Too much radiance is bad for the microscopical eye.”
“The sun is under a cloud.”
“But you’re here, and you’d glow in the dark.”
“No; I’m not to be put off with pretty speeches. Take them off.
Please!”
Releasing her hand, he lifted off the heavy and disfiguring apparatus,
and stood before her, quietly submissive to her wish. She took a quick
step backward, stumbled, and thrust out a hand against the face of the
giant rock for support.
“Oh!” she cried, and again, “Oh, I didn’t think you’d look like that!”
“What is it? Is there anything very wrong with me?” he asked seriously,
blinking a little in the soft light.
“No, no. It isn’t that. I—I hardly know—I expected something different.
Forgive me for being so—so stupid.”
In truth, Miss Polly Brewster had sustained a shock. She had become
accustomed to regard her beetle man rather more in the light of a
beetle than a man. In fact, the human side of him had impressed her
only as a certain dim appeal to sympathy; the masculine side had simply
not existed. Now it was as if he had unmasked. The visage, so grotesque
and gnomish behind its mechanical apparatus, had given place to a
wholly different and formidably strange face. The change all centered
in the eyes. They were wide-set eyes of the clearest, steadiest, and
darkest gray she had ever met; and they looked out at her from sharply
angled brows with a singular clarity and calmness of regard. In their
light the man’s face became instinct with character in every line.
Strength was there, self-control, dignity, a glint of humor in the
little wrinkles at the corner of the mouth, and, withal a sort of quiet
and sturdy beauty.
She had half-turned her face from him. Now, as her gaze returned and
was fixed by his, she felt a wave of blood expand her heart, rush
upward into her cheeks, and press into her eyes tears of swift regret.
But now she was sorry, not for him, but for herself, because he had
become remote and difficult to her.
“Have I startled you?” he asked curiously. “I’ll put them back on
again.”
“No, no; don’t do that!” She rallied herself to the point of laughing a
little. “I’m a goose. You see, I’ve pictured you as quite different.
Have you ever seen yourself in the glass with those dreadful disguises
on?”
“Why, no; I don’t suppose I have,” he replied, after reflection. “After
all, they’re meant for use, not for ornament.”
By this time she had mastered her confusion and was able to examine his
face. Under his eyes were circles of dull gray, defined by deep lines,
“Why, you’re worn out!” she cried pitifully. “Haven’t you been
sleeping?”
“Not much.”
“You must take something for it.” The mothering instinct sprang to the
rescue. “How much rest did you get last night?”
“Let me see. Last night I did very well. Fully four hours.”
“And that is more than you average?”
“Well, yes; lately. You see, I’ve been pretty busy.”
“Yet you’ve given up your time to my wretched, unimportant little
stupid affairs! And what return have I made?”
“You’ve made the sun shine,” he said, “in a rather shaded existence.”
“Promise me that you’ll sleep to-night; that you won’t work a stroke.”
“No; I can’t promise that.”
“You’ll break down. You’ll go to pieces. What have you got to do more
important than keeping in condition?”
“As to that, I’ll last through. And there’s some business that won’t
wait.”
Divination came upon her.
“Dad’s message!”
“If it weren’t that, it would be something else.”
Her hand went out to him, and was withdrawn.
“Please put on your glasses,” she said shyly.
Smiling, he did her bidding.
“There! Now you are my beetle man again. No, not quite, though. You’ll
never be quite the same beetle man again.”
“I shall always be,” he contradicted gently.
“Anyway, it’s better. You’re easier to say things to. Are you really
the man who ran away from the street car?” she asked doubtfully.
“I really am.”
“Then I’m most surely sure that you had good reason.” She began to
laugh softly. “As for the stories about you, I’d believe them less than
ever, now.”
“Are there stories about me?”
“Gossip of the club. They call you ‘The Unspeakable Perk’!”
“Not a bad nickname,” he admitted. “I expect I have been rather
unspeakable, from their point of view.”
A desire to have the faith that was in her supported by this man’s own
word overrode her shyness.
“Mr. Beetle Man,” she said, “have you got a sister?”
“I? No. Why?”
“If you had a sister, is there anything—Oh, _darn_ your sister!” broke
forth the irrepressible Polly. “I’ll be your sister for this. Is there
anything about you and your life here that you’d be afraid to tell me?”
“No.”
“I knew there wasn’t,” she said contentedly. She hesitated a moment,
then put a hand on his arm. “Does this _have_ to be good-bye, Mr.
Beetle Man?” she said wistfully.
“I’m afraid so.”
“No!” She stamped imperiously. “I want to see you again, and I’m going
to see you again. Won’t you come down to the port and bring me another
bunch of your mountain orchids when we sail—just for good-bye?”
Through the dull medium of the glasses she could feel his eyes
questioning hers. And she knew that once more before she sailed away,
she must look into those eyes, in all their clarity and all their
strength—and then try to forget them. The swift color ran up into her
cheeks.
“I—I suppose so,” he said. “Yes.”
“Au revoir, then!” she cried, with a thrill of gladness, and fled up
the rock.
The Unspeakable Perk strode down his path, broke into a trot, and held
to it until he reached his house. But Miss Polly, departing in her own
direction, stopped dead after ten minutes’ going. It had struck her
forcefully that she had forgotten the matter of the expense of the
message. How could she reach him? She remembered the cliff above the
rock, and the signal. If a signal was valid in one direction, it ought
to work equally well in the other. She had her automatic with her.
Retracing her steps, she ascended the cliff, a rugged climb. Across the
deep-fringed chasm she could plainly see the porch of the _quinta_ with
the little clearing at the side, dim in the clouded light. Drawing the
revolver, she fired three shots.
“He’ll come,” she thought contentedly.
The sun broke from behind the obscuring cloud and sent a shaft of light
straight down upon the clearing. It illumined with pitiless
distinctness the shimmering silk of a woman’s dress, hanging on a line
and waving in the first draft of the evening breeze. For a moment Polly
stood transfixed. What did it mean? Was it perhaps a servant’s dress.
No; he had told her that there was no woman servant.
As she sought the solution, a woman’s figure emerged from the porch of
the _quinta_, crossed the compound, and dropped upon a bench. Even at
that distance, the watcher could tell from the woman’s bearing and
apparel that she was not of the servant class. She seemed to be gazing
out over the mountains; there was something dreary and forlorn in her
attitude. What, then, did she do in the beetle man’s house?
Below the rock the shrubbery weaved and thrashed, and the person who
could best answer that question burst into view at a full lope.
“What is it?” he panted. “Was it you who fired?”
She stared at him mutely. The revolver hung in her hand. In a moment he
was beside her.
“Has anything happened?” he began again, then turned his head to follow
the direction of her regard. He saw the figure in the compound.
“Good God in heaven!” he groaned.
He caught the revolver from her hand and fired three slow shots. The
woman turned. Snatching off his hat, he signalled violently with it.
The woman rose and, as it seemed to Polly Brewster, moved in humble
submissiveness back to the shelter.
White consternation was stamped on the Unspeakable Perk’s face as he
handed the revolver to its owner.
“Do you need me?” he asked quickly. “If not, I must go back at once.”
“I do not need you,” said the girl, in level tones. “You lied to me.”
His expression changed. She read in it the desperation of guilt.
“I can explain,” he said hurriedly, “but not now. There isn’t time.
Wait here. I’ll be back. I’ll be back the instant I can get away.”
As he spoke, he was halfway down the rock, headed for the lower trail.
The bushes closed behind him.
Painfully Polly Brewster made her way down the treacherous footing of
the cliff path to her place on the rock. From her bag she drew one of
her cards, wrote slowly and carefully a few words, found a dry stick,
set it between two rocks, and pinned her message to it. Then she ran,
as helpless humans run from the scourge of their own hearts.
Half an hour later the hermit, sweat-covered and breathless, returned
to the rock. For a moment he gazed about, bewildered by the silence.
The white card caught his eye. He read its angular scrawl.
“I wish never to see you again. Never! Never! Never!”
A sulphur-yellow inquisitor, of a more insinuating manner than the
former participant in their conversation, who had been examining the
message on his own account, flew to the top of the cliff.
“Qu’est-ce qu’elle dit? Qu’est-ce qu’elle dit?” he demanded.
For the first time in his adult life the beetle man threw a stone at a
bird.
VIII.
LOS YANKIS
Luncheon on the day following the kiskadee bird’s narrow squeak for his
life was a dreary affair for Mr. Fitzhugh Carroll. Business had called
Mr. Brewster away. This deprivation the Southerner would have borne
with equanimity. But Miss Brewster had also absented herself, which was
rather too much for the devoted, but apprehensive, lover. Thus, ample
time was given him to consider how ill his suit was prospering. The
longer he stayed, the less he saw of Miss Polly. That she was kinder
and more gentle, less given to teasing him than of yore, was poor
compensation. He was shrewd enough to draw no good augury from that.
Something had altered her, and he was divided between suspicion of the
last week’s mail, the arrival of which had been about contemporaneous
with her change of spirit, and some local cause. Was a letter from
Smith, the millionaire, or Bobby, the friend of her childhood,
responsible? Or was the cause nearer at hand?
For one preposterous moment he thought of the Unspeakable Perk. A quick
visualization of that gnomish, froggish face was enough to dispel the
suspicion. At least the petted and rather fastidious Miss Brewster’s
fancy would be captured only by a gentleman, not by any such homunculus
as the mountain dweller. Her interest, perhaps; the man possessed the
bizarre attraction of the freakish. But anything else was absurd. And
the knight was inclined to attaint his lady for a certain cruelty in
the matter; she was being something less than fair to the Unspeakable
Perk.
The searchlight of his surmise ranged farther. Raimonda! The young
Caracuñan was handsome, distinguished, manly, with a romantic charm
that the American did not underestimate. He, at least, was a gentleman,
and the assiduity of his attentions to the Northern beauty had become
the joke of the clubs—except when Raimonda was present. By the same
token, half of the gilded youth of the capital, and most of the young
diplomats, were the sworn slaves of the girl. It was a confused field,
indeed. Well, thank Heaven, she would soon be out of it! Word had come
down from her that she was busy packing her things. Carroll wandered
about the hotel, waiting for the news that would explain this
preparation.
It came, at mid-afternoon, in the person of Miss Polly herself. Why
packing trunks, with the aid of an experienced maid, should, even in a
hot climate, produce heavy circles under the eyes, a droop at the mouth
corners, and a complete submersion of vivacity, is a problem which
Carroil then and there gave up. He had too much tact to question or
comment.
“Oh, I’m so tired!” she said, giving him her hand. “Have you much
packing to do, Fitzhugh?”
“No one has given me any notice to get ready, Miss Polly.”
“How very neglectful of me! We may leave at any time.”
“Yes; you may. But my ship doesn’t seem to be coming in very fast.”
The _double entente_ was unintentional, but the girl winced.
“Aren’t you coming with us on the yacht?”
“Am I?” His handsome face lighted hopefully.
“Of course. Dad expects you to. What kind of people should we be to
leave any friend behind, with matters as they are?”
“Ah, yes.” The hope passed out of his face. “Dictates of humanity, and
that sort of thing. I think, if you and Mr. Brewster—”
“Please don’t be silly, Fitz,” she pleaded. “You know it would make me
most unhappy to leave you.”
Rarely did the scion of Southern blood and breeding lose the
self-control and reserve on which he prided himself, but he had been
harassed by events to an unwonted strain of temper.
“Is it making you unhappy to leave any one else here?” he blurted out.
The challenge stirred the girl’s spirit.
“No, indeed! I wouldn’t care if I never saw any of them again. I’m
tired of it all. I want to go home,” she said, like a pathetic child.
“Oh, Miss Polly,” he began, taking a step toward her, “if you’d only
let me—”
She put up one little sunburned hand.
“Please, Fitz! I—I don’t feel up to it to-day.”
Humbly he subsided.
“I’d no right to ask you the question,” he apologized. “It was kind of
you to answer me at all.”
“You’re really a dear, Fitz,” she said, smiling a little wanly.
“Sometimes I wish—”
She did not finish her sentence, but wandered over to the window, and
gazed out across the square. On the far side something quite out of the
ordinary seemed to be going on.
“The legless beggar seems to have collected quite an audience,” she
remarked idly.
Her suitor joined her on the parlor balcony.
“Possibly he’s starting a revolution. Any one can do it down here.”
Vehement adjuration, in a high, strident voice, came floating across to
them.
“Listen!” cried the girl. “He’s speaking. English, isn’t he?”
“It seems to be a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. Quite a
polyglot the friend of your friend Perkins appears to be.”
She turned steady eyes upon him.
“Mr. Perkins is not my friend.”
“No?”
“I never want to see him, or to hear his name again.”
“Ah, then you’ve found out about him?”
“Yes.” She flushed. “Yes—at least—Yes,” she concluded.
“He admitted it to you?”
“No, he lied about it.”
“I think I shall go up and make a call on Mr. Perkins,” said Carroll,
with formidable quiet.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she answered wearily. “He’d only run away and
hide.” As she said it, her inner self convicted her tongue of lying.
“Very likely. Yet, see here, Miss Polly,—I want to be fair to that
fellow. It doesn’t follow that because he’s a coward he’s a cad.”
“He isn’t a coward!” she flashed.
“You just said yourself that he’d run and hide.”
“Well, he wouldn’t, and he IS a cad.”
“As you like. In any case, I shall make it a point to see him before I
leave. If he can explain, well and good. If not—” He did not conclude.
“Our orator seems to have finished,” observed the girl. “I shall go
back upstairs and write some good-bye notes to the kind people here.”
“Just for curiosity, I think I’ll drive across and look at the legless
Demosthenes,” said her companion. “I was going to do a little shopping,
anyway. So I’ll report later, if he’s revoluting or anything exciting.”
From her own balcony, when she reached it, Polly had a less obstructed
view of the beggar’s appropriated corner, and she looked out a few
minutes after she reached the room to see whether he had resumed his
oratory. Apparently he had not, for the crowd had melted away. The
legless one was rocking himself monotonously upon his stumps. His head
was sunk forward, and from his extraordinary mouthings the spectator
judged that he must be talking to himself with resumed vehemence. From
what next passed before her astonished vision, Miss Brewster would have
suspected herself of a hallucination of delirium had she not been sure
of normal health.
One of the well-horsed, elegant little public victorias with which the
city is so well supplied stopped at the curb, and the handsome head of
Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was thrust forth. At almost the same
moment the Unspeakable Perk appeared upon the steps. He was wearing a
pair of enormous, misfit white gloves. He went down to the beggar,
reached forth a hand, and, to the far-away spectator’s wonder-struck
interpretation, seemed to thrust something, presumably a document, into
the breast of the mendicant’s shirt. Having performed this strange
rite, he leaped up the steps, hesitated, rushed over to Carroll’s
equipage, and laid violent hands upon the occupant, with obvious intent
to draw him forth. For a moment they seemed to struggle upon the
sidewalk; then both rushed upon the unfortunate beggar and proceeded to
kidnap him and thrust him bodily into the cab.
The driver turned in his seat at this point, his cue in the mad farce
having been given, and opened speech with many gestures, whereupon
Carroll arose and embraced him warmly. And with this grouping, the
vehicle, bearing its lunatic load, sped around the corner and
disappeared, while the sole interested witness retired to obscurity,
with her reeling head between her hands.
One final touch of phantasy was given to the whole affair when, two
hours later, she met Carroll, soiled and grimy, coming across the
plaza, smoking—he, the addict to thirty-cent Havanas!—an awful native
cheroot, whose incense spread desolation about him. Further and more
extraordinary, when she essayed to obtain a solution of the mystery
from him, he repelled her with emphatic gestures and a few
half-strangled words with whose unintelligibility the cheroot fumes may
have had some connection, and hurried into the hotel, where he remained
in seclusion the rest of the day.
What in the name of all the wonders could it mean? On Mr. Brewster’s
return, she laid the matter before him at the dinner table.
“Touch of the sun, perhaps,” he hazarded. “Nothing else I know of would
explain it.”
“Do two Americans, a half-breed beggar, and a local coachman get
sunstruck at one and the same time?” she inquired disdainfully.
“Doesn’t seem likely. By your account, though, the crippled beggar
seems to have been the little Charlie Ross of melodrama.”
“Then why didn’t he shout for help? I listened, but didn’t hear a sound
from him.”
“Movie-picture rehearsal,” grunted Mr. Brewster. “I can’t quite see the
heir of all the Virginias in the part. Isn’t he coming down to dinner
this evening?”
“His dinner was sent up to his room. Isn’t it extraordinary?”
“Ask Sherwen about it. He’s coming around this evening for coffee in
our rooms.”
But the American representative had something else on his mind besides
casual kidnapings.
“I’ve just come from a talk with the British Minister,” he remarked,
setting down his cup. “He’s officially in charge of American interests,
you know.”
“Thought you were,” said Mr. Brewster.
“Officially, I have no existence. The United States of America is wiped
off the map, so far as the sovereign Republic of Caracuña is concerned.
Some of its politicians wouldn’t be over-grieved if the local Americans
underwent the same process. The British Minister would, I’m sure, sleep
easier if you were all a thousand miles away from here.”
“Tell Sir Willet that he’s very ungallant,” pouted Miss Polly. “When I
sat next to him at dinner last week he offered to establish woman
suffrage here and elect me next president if I’d stay.”
Sherwen hardly paid this the tribute of a smile.
“That was before he found out certain things. The Hochwald Legation”—he
lowered his voice—“is undoubtedly stirring up anti-American sentiment.”
“But why?” inquired Mr. Brewster. “There’s enough trade for them and
for us?”
“For one thing, they don’t like your concessions, Mr. Brewster. Then
they have heard that Dr. Pruyn is on his way, and they want to make all
the trouble they can for him, and make it impossible for him to get
actual information of the presence of plague. I happen to know that
their consul is officially declaring fake all the plague rumors.”
“That suits me,” declared the magnate. “We don’t want to have to run
Dutch and quarantine blockade both.”
“Meantime, there are two or three cheap but dangerous demagogues who
have been making anti-‘Yanki,’ as they call us, speeches in the slums.
Sir Willet doesn’t like the looks of it. If there were any way in which
you could get through, and to sea, it would be well to take it at once.
Am I correct in supposing that you’ve taken steps to clear the yacht,
Mr. Brewster?”
“Yes. That is, I’ve sent a message. Or, at least, so my daughter, to
whose management I left it, believes.”
“Don’t tell me how,” said Sherwen quickly. “There is reason to believe
that it has been dispatched.”
“You’ve heard something?”
“I have a message from our consul at Puerto del Norte, Mr. Wisner.”
“For me?” asked the concessionaire.
“Why, no,” was the hesitant reply. “It isn’t quite clear, but it seems
to be for Miss Brewster.”
“Why not?” inquired that young lady coolly. “What is it?”
“The best I could make of it over the phone—Wisner had to be
guarded—was that people planning to take Dutch leave would better pay
their parting calls by to-morrow at the latest.”
“That would mean day after to-morrow, wouldn’t it?” mused the girl.
“If it means anything at all,” substituted her father testily.
“Meantime, how do you like the Gran Hotel Kast, Miss Brewster?” asked
Sherwen.
“It’s awful beyond words! I’ve done nothing but wish for a brigade of
Biddies, with good stout mops, and a government permit to clean up. I’d
give it a bath!”
“Yes, it’s pretty bad. I’m glad you don’t like it.”
“Glad? Is every one ag’in’ poor me?”
“Because—well, the American Legation is a very lonely place. Now, the
presence of an American lady—”
“Are you offering a proposal of marriage, Mr. Sherwen?” twinkled the
girl. “If so—Dad, please leave the room.”
“Knock twenty years off my battle-scarred life and you wouldn’t be safe
a minute,” he retorted. “But, no. This is a measure of safety. Sir
Willet thinks that your party ought to be ready to move into the
American Legation on instant notice, if you can’t get away to sea
to-morrow.”
“What’s the use, if the legation has no official existence?” asked Mr.
Brewster.
“In a sense it has. It would probably be respected by a mob. And, at
the worst, it adjoins the British Legation, which would be quite safe.
If it weren’t that Sir Willet’s boy has typhoid, you’d be formally
invited to go there.”
“It’s very good of you,” said Miss Polly warmly. “But surely it would
be an awful nuisance to you.”
“On the contrary, you’d brace up my far-too-casual old housekeeper and
get the machinery running. She constantly takes advantage of my
bachelor ignorance. If you say you’ll come, I’ll almost pray for the
outbreak.”
“Certainly we’ll come, at any time you notify us,” said Mr. Brewster.
“And we’re very grateful. Shall you have room for Mr. Carroll, too?”
“By all means. And I’ve notified Mr. Cluff. You won’t mind his being
there? He’s a rough diamond, but a thoroughly decent fellow.”
“Useful, too, in case of trouble, I should judge,” said the magnate.
“Then I’ll wait for further word from you.”
“Yes. I’ve got my men out on watch.”
“Wouldn’t it be—er—advisable for us to arm ourselves?”
“By no means! There’s just one course to follow; keep the peace at any
price, and give the Hochwaldians not the slightest peg on which to hang
a charge that Americans have been responsible for any trouble that
might arise. May I ask you,” he added significantly, “to make this
clear to Mr. Carroll?”
“Leave that to me,” said Miss Brewster, with superb confidence.
“Content, indeed! You’ll find our locality very pleasant, Miss
Brewster. Three of the other legations are on the same block, not
including the Hochwaldian, which is a quarter of a mile down the hill.
On our corner is a house where several of the English railroad men
live, and across is the Club Amicitia, made up largely of the _jeunesse
dorée_, who are mostly pro-American. So you’ll be quite surrounded by
friends, not to say adherents.”
“Call on me to housekeep for you at any time,” cried Polly gayly. “I’ll
begin to roll up my sleeves as soon as I get dressed to-morrow.”
IX.
THE BLACK WARNING
That weird three-part drama in the plaza which had so puzzled Miss
Polly Brewster had developed in this wise:—
Coincidently with the departure of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll
from the hotel in his cab, the Unspeakable Perk emerged from a store
near the far corner of the square, which exploited itself in the purest
Castilian as offering the last word in the matter of gentlemen’s
apparel. “_Articulos para Caballeros_” was the representation held
forth upon its signboard.
If it had articled Mr. Perkins, it must be confessed that it had done
its job unevenly, not to say fantastically. His linen was fresh and
new, quite conspicuously so, and, therefore, in sharp contrast to the
frayed and patched, but scrupulously clean and neatly pressed khaki
suit, which set forth rather bumpily his solid figure. A serviceable
pith helmet barely overhung the protrusive goggles. His hands were
encased in white cotton gloves, a size or two too large. Dismal buff
spots on the palms impaired their otherwise virgin purity. As the
wearer carried his hands stiffly splayed, the blemishes were obtrusive.
Altogether, one might have said that, if he were going in for farce, he
was appropriately made up for it.
At the corner above the beggar’s niche he was turning toward a
pharmacist’s entrance, when the mirth of the departing crowd that had
been enjoying the free oratory attracted his attention. He glanced
across at the beggar, now rocking rhythmically on his stumps, hesitated
a moment, then ran down the steps.
At the same moment Carroll’s cab stopped on the other angle of the
curb. The occupant put forth his head, saw the goggled freak descending
to the legless freak, and sat back again.
“Hola, Pancho! Are you ill?” asked the newcomer.
The beggar only swung back and forth, muttering with frenzied rapidity.
With one hand the Unspeakable Perk stopped him, as one might intercept
the runaway pendulum of a clock, setting the other on his forehead.
Then he bent and brought his goblin eyes to bear on the dark face. The
features were distorted, the eyelids tremulous over suffused eyes, and
the teeth set. Opening the man’s loose shirt, Perkins thrust his hand
within. It might have been supposed that he was feeling for the heart
action, were it not that his hand slid past the breast and around under
the arm. When he drew it out, he stood for a moment with chin dropped,
in consideration.
Midday heat had all but cleared the plaza. As he looked about, the
helper saw no aid, until his eye fell upon the waiting cab. He fairly
bounded up the stairs, calling something to the coachman.
“No,” grunted that toiler, with the characteristic discourtesy of the
Caracuñan lower class, and jerked his head backward toward his fare.
“I beg your pardon,” said the Unspeakable Perk eagerly, in Spanish,
turning to the dim recess of the victoria. “Might I—Oh, it’s you!” He
seized Carroll by the arm. “I want your cab.”
“Indeed!” said Carroll. “Well, you’re cool enough about it.”
“And your help,” added the other.
“What for?”
“Do you have to ask questions? The man may be dying—is dying, I think.”
“All right,” said Carroll promptly. “What’s to be done?”
“Get him home. Help me carry him to the cab.”
Between them, the two men lifted the heavy, mumbling cripple, carried
him up the steps with a rush, and deposited him in the cab, while the
driver was still angrily expostulating. The beggar was shivering now,
and the cold sweat rolled down his face. His bearers placed themselves
on each side of him. Perkins gave an order to the driver, who seemed to
object, and a rapid-fire argument ensued.
“What’s wrong?” asked Carroll.
“Says he won’t go there. Says he was hired by you for shopping.”
Carroll took one look at the agony-wrung face of the beggar, who was
being held on the seat by his companion.
“Won’t he?” said he grimly. “We’ll see.”
Rising, he threw a pair of long arms around those of the driver,
pinning him, caught the reins, and turned the horses.
“Now ask him if he’ll drive,” he directed Perkins.
“Si, señor!” gasped the coachman, whose breath had been squeezed almost
through his crackling ribs.
“See that you do,” the Southerner bade him, in accents that needed no
interpretation.
Presently Perkins looked up from his charge.
“Got a cigar?” he asked abruptly.
“No,” replied the other, a little disgusted by this levity in the
presence of imminent death.
Perkins bade the driver stop at the corner.
“Don’t let him fall off the seat,” he admonished Carroll, and jumped
out.
In the course of a minute he reappeared, smoking a cheroot that
appeared to be writhing and twisting in the effort to escape from its
own noxious fumes.
“Have one,” he said, extending a handful to his companion.
“I don’t care for it,” returned the other superciliously. While willing
to aid in a good work, he did not in the least approve either of the
Unspeakable Perk or of his offhand manners.
Before they had gone much farther, his resentment was heated to the
point of offense.
“Is it necessary for you to puff every puff of that infernal smoke in
my face?” he demanded ominously.
“Well, you wouldn’t smoke, yourself.”
“If it weren’t for this poor devil of a sick man—” began Carroll, when
a second thought about the smoke diverted his line of thought. “Is it
contagious?” he asked.
“It’s so regarded,” observed the other dryly.
“I’ll take one of those, thank you.”
Perkins handed him one of the rejected spirals. In silence, except for
the outrageous rattling of the wheels on the cobbles, they drove
through mean streets that grew ever meaner, until they drew up at the
blind front of a building abutting on an arroyo of the foothills. Here
they stopped, and Carroll threw his jehu a five-bolivar piece, which
the driver caught, driving away at once, without the demand for more
which usually follows overpayment in Caracuña. Convenient to hand lay a
small rock. Perkins used it for a knocker, hammering on the guarded
wooden door with such vehemence as to still the clamor that arose from
within.
Through the opening, as the barrier was removed by a leather-skinned
old crone, Carroll gazed into a passageway, beyond which stretched a
foul mule yard, bordered by what the visitor at first supposed to be
stalls, until he saw bedding and utensils in them. The two men lifted
the cripple in, amid the outcries and lamentations of the aged woman,
who had looked at his face and then covered her own. At once they were
surrounded by a swarm of women and children, who pressed upon them,
hampering their movements, until a shrill voice cried:—
“_La muerte negra!_”
The swarm fell into silence, scattered, vanished, leaving only the
moaning woman to help. At her direction they settled the patient on a
straw pallet in a side room.
“That’s all you can do,” said the Unspeakable Perk to his companion.
“And thank you.”
“I’ll stay.”
The goggles gloomed upon him in the dim room.
“I thought probably you would,” commented Perkins, and busied himself
over the cripple with a knife and some cloths. He had stuffed his
ludicrous white gloves into his pocket, and was tearing strips from his
handkerchief with skillful fingers.
“Oughtn’t he to have a doctor?” asked Carroll. “Shall I go for one?”
“His mother has sent. No use, though.”
“He can’t be saved?”
“Not a chance on earth. I should say he was in the last stages.”
“What is it?” said Carroll hesitantly.
“_La muerte negra_. The black death.”
“Plague?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? Are you an expert?”
“One doesn’t have to be to recognize a case like that. The lump in the
armpit is as big as a pigeon’s egg.”
“Why have you interested yourself in the man to such an extent?” asked
Carroll curiously.
“He’s a friend of mine. Why did you?”
“Oh, that’s quite different. One can’t disregard a call for help such
as yours.”
“A certain kind of ‘one’ can’t,” returned the Unspeakable Perk, with
his half-smile. “You don’t mind my saying, Mr. Carroll, you’re a brave
man.”
“And I’d have said that you weren’t,” replied the other bluntly. “I
give it up. But I know this: I’m going to be pretty wretchedly
frightened until I know that I haven’t got it. I’m frightened now.”
“Then you’re a braver man than I thought. But the danger may be less
than you think. Stick to that cigar—here are two more—and wait for me
outside. Here’s the doctor.”
Profound and solemn under a silk hat, the local physician entered,
bowing to Carroll as they passed in the hallway. Almost immediately
Perkins emerged. On his face was a sardonic grin.
“Malaria,” he observed. “The learned professor assures me that it’s a
typical malaria.”
“Then it isn’t the plague,” said Carroll, relieved.
His relief was of brief duration.
“Of course it’s plague. But if Professor Silk Hat, in there, officially
declared it such, he’d have bracelets on his arms in twelve hours. The
present Government of Caracuia doesn’t believe in bubonic plague. I
fancy our unfortunate friend in there will presently disappear, either
just before or just after death. It doesn’t greatly matter.”
“What is to be done now?” asked Carroll.
“See that brush fire up there?” The hermit pointed to the hillside. “If
we steep ourselves in that smoke until we choke, I think it will
discourage any fleas that may have harbored on us. The flea is the only
agent of communication.”
Soot-begrimed, strangling, and with streaming eyes, they emerged, five
minutes later, from the cloud of smoke. From his pocket the Unspeakable
Perk dragged forth his white gloves. The action attracted his
companion’s attention.
“Good Lord!” he cried. “What has happened to your hands?”
“They’re blistered.”
“Stripped, rather. They look as if you’d fallen into a fire, or rowed a
fifty-mile race. That message of Mr. Brewster’s—See here, Perkins, you
didn’t row that over to the mainland? No, you couldn’t. That’s absurd.
It’s too far.”
“No; I didn’t row it to the mainland.”
“But you’ve been rowing. I’d swear to those hands. Where? The
blockading Dutch warship?”
The other nodded.
“Last night. Yah-h-h!” he yawned. “It makes me sleepy to think of it.”
“Why didn’t they blow you out of the water?”
“Oh, I was semiofficially expected. Message from our consul. They
transferred the message by wireless. I’m telling you all this, Mr.
Carroll, because I think you’ll get your release within forty-eight
hours, and I want you to see that some of your party keeps constantly
in touch with Mr. Sherwen. It’s mighty important that your party should
get out before plague is officially declared.”
“Are you going to report this case?”
“All that I know about it.”
“But, of course, you can’t report officially, not being a physician,”
mused the other. “Still, when Dr. Pruyn comes, it will be evidence for
him, won’t it?”
“Undoubtedly. I should consider any delay after twenty-four hours risky
for your party.”
“What shall you do? Stay?”
“Oh, I’ve my place in the mountains. That’s remote enough to be safe.
Thank Heaven, there’s a cloud over the sun! Let’s sit down by this tree
for a minute.”
Unthinkingly, as he stretched himself out, the Unspeakable Perk pushed
his goggles back and presently slipped them off. Thus, when Carroll,
who had been gazing at the mist-capped peak of the mountain in front,
turned and met his companion’s eyes, he underwent something of the same
shock that Polly Brewster had experienced, though the nature of his
sensation was profoundly different. But his impression of the suddenly
revealed face was the same. Ribbed-in though his mind was with
tradition, and distorted with falsely focused ideals and prejudices,
Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll possessed a sound underlying judgment
of his fellow man, and was at bottom a frank and honorable gentleman.
In his belief, the suddenly revealed face of the man beside him came
near to being its own guaranty of honor and good faith.
“By Heavens, I don’t believe it!” he blurted out, his gaze direct upon
the Unspeakable Perk.
“What don’t you believe?”
“That rotten club gossip.”
“About me?”
“Yes,” said Carroll, reddening.
The hermit pushed his glasses down, settled into place the white
gloves, with their soothing contents of emollient greases, and got to
his feet.
“We’d best be moving. I’ve got much to do,” he said.
“Not yet,” retorted Carroll. “Perkins, is there a woman up there on the
mountains with you?”
“That is purely my own business.”
“You told Miss Brewster there wasn’t. If you tell me—”
“I never told her any such thing. She misunderstood.”
“Who is the woman?”
“If you want it even more frankly, that is none of your concern.”
“You have been letting Miss Brewster—”
“Are you engaged to marry Miss Brewster?”
“No.”
“Then you have no authority to question me. But,” he added wearily, “if
it will ease your mind, and because of what you’ve done to-day, I’ll
tell you this—that I do not expect ever to see Miss Brewster again.”
“That isn’t enough,” insisted Carroll, his face darkening. “Her name
has already been connected with yours, and I intend to follow this
through. I am going to find out who the woman is at your place.”
“How do you propose to do it?”
“By coming to see.”
“You’ll be welcome,” said the other grimly. “By the way, here’s a map.”
He made a quick sketch on the back of an envelope. “I’ll be there at
work most of to-morrow. Au revoir.” He rose and started down the hill.
“Better keep to yourself this evening,” he warned. “Take a dilute
carbolic bath. You’ll be all right, I think.”
Slowly and thoughtfully the Southerner made his way back to the hotel.
After dining in his own room, he found time heavy on his hands; so,
dispatching a note of excuse to Miss Brewster on the plea of personal
business, he slipped out into the city. Wandering idly toward the
hills, he presently found himself in a familiar street, and, impelled
by human curiosity, proceeded to turn up the hill and stop opposite the
blank door.
Here he was puzzled. To go in and inquire, even if he cared to and
could make himself understood, would perhaps involve further risk of
infection. While he was considering, the door slowly opened, and the
leather-skinned crone appeared. Her eyes were swollen. In her hand she
carried a travesty of a wreath, done in whitish metal, which she had
interwoven with her own black mantilla, the best substitute for crape
at hand. This she undertook to hang on the door. As Carroll crossed to
address her, a powerful, sullen-faced man, with a scarred forehead and
the insignia of some official status, apparently civic, on his coat,
emerged from a doorway and addressed her harshly. She raised her
reddened eyes to him and seemed to be pleading for permission to set up
the little tribute to her dead. There was the exchange of a few more
words. Then, with an angry exclamation, the official snatched the
wreath from her. Carroll’s hand fell on his shoulder. The man swung and
saw a stranger of barely half his bulk, who addressed him in what
seemed to be politely remonstrant tones. He shook himself loose and
threw the wreath in the crone’s face. Then he went down like a log
under the impact of a swinging blow behind the ear. With a roar he
leaped up and rushed. The foreigner met him with right and left, and
this time he lay still.
Hanging the tragically unsightly wreath on the door, through which the
terrified mourner had vanished, Carroll returned to the Gran Hotel
Kast, his perturbed and confused thoughts and emotions notably relieved
by that one comforting moment of action.
X.
THE FOLLY OF PERK
Of the comprehensive superiority of the American Legation over the Gran
Hotel Kast there could be no shadow of a doubt. From the moment of
their arrival at noon of the day after the British Minister’s warning,
the refugees found themselves comfortable and content, Miss Brewster
having quietly and tactfully taken over the management of internal
affairs and reigning, at Sherwen’s request, as generalissima. No
disturbance had marked the transfer to their new abode. In fact, so
wholly lacking was any evidence of hostility to the foreigners on the
part of the crowds on the streets that the Brewsters rather felt
themselves to be extorting hospitality on false pretenses. Sherwen,
however, exhibited signal relief upon seeing them safely housed.
“Please stay that way, too,” he requested.
“But it seems so unnecessary, and I want to market,” protested Miss
Polly.
“By no means! The market is the last place where any of us should be
seen. It is in that section that Urgante has been doing his work.”
“Who is he?”
“A wandering demagogue and cheap politician. Abuse of the ‘Yankis’ is
his stock in trade. Somebody has been furnishing him money lately.
That’s the sole fuel to his fires of oratory.”
“Bet the bills smelled of sauerkraut when they reached him,” grunted
Cluff, striding over to the window of the drawing-room, where the
informal conference was being held.
“They may have had a Hochwaldian origin,” admitted Sherwen. “But it
would be difficult to prove.”
“At least the Hochwald Legation wouldn’t shed any tears over a
demonstration against us,” said Carroll.
“Well within the limits of diplomatic truth,” smiled the American
official.
“Pooh!” Mr. Brewster puffed the whole matter out of consideration. “I
don’t believe a word of it. Some of my acquaintances at the club, men
in high governmental positions, assure me that there is no
anti-American feeling here.”
“Very likely they do. Frankness and plain-speaking being, as you
doubtless know, the distinguishing mark of the Caracuñan statesman.”
The sarcasm was not lost upon Mr. Brewster, but it failed to shake his
skepticism.
“There are some business matters that require that I should go to the
office of the Ferro carril del Norte this afternoon,” he said.
“I beg that you do nothing of the sort,” cried Sherwen sharply.
The magnate hesitated. He glanced out of the window and along the
street, close bounded by blank-walled houses, each with its eyes closed
against the sun. A solitary figure strode rapidly across it.
“There’s that bug-hunting fellow again,” said Mr. Brewster. “He’s an
American, I guess,—God save the mark! Nobody seems to be interfering
with _him_, and he’s freaky enough looking to start a riot on
Broadway.”
Further comment was checked by the voice of the scientist at the door,
asking to see Mr. Sherwen at once. Miss Polly immediately slipped out
of the room to the _patio_, followed by Carroll and Cluff.
“My business, probably,” remarked Mr. Brewster. “I’ll just stay and
see.” And he stayed.
So far as the newcomer was concerned, however, he might as well not
have been there; so he felt, with unwonted injury. The scientist,
disregarding him wholly, shook hands with Sherwen.
“Have you heard from Wisner yet?”
“Yes. An hour ago.”
“What was his message?”
“All right, any time to-day.”
“Good! Better get them down to-night, then, so they can start to-morrow
morning.”
“Will Stark pass them?”
“Under restrictions. That’s all been seen to.”
At this point it appeared to Mr. Brewster that he had figured as a
cipher quite long enough.
“Am I right in assuming that you are talking of my party’s departure?”
he inquired.
“Yes,” said Sherwen. “The Dutch will let you through the blockade.”
“Then my cablegram reached the proper parties at Washington,” said the
magnate, with an I-knew-it-would-be-that-way air.
“Thanks to Mr. Perkins.”
“Of course, of course. That will be—er—suitably attended to later.”
The Unspeakable Perk turned and regarded him fixedly; but, owing to the
goggles, the expression was indeterminable.
“The fact is it would be more convenient for me to go day after
to-morrow than to-morrow.”
“Then you’d better rent a house,” was the begoggled one’s sharp and
brief advice.
“Why so?” queried the great man, startled.
“Because if you don’t get out to-morrow, you may not get out for
months.”
“As I understand the Dutch permit, it specifies _after_ to-day.”
“It isn’t a question of the Dutch. Caracuña City goes under quarantine
to-night, and Puerto del Norte to-morrow, as soon as proper official
notification can be given.”
“Then plague has actually been found?”
“Determined by bacteriological test this morning.”
“How do you know?”
“I was present at the finding.”
“Who did it? Dr. Pruyn?”
The other nodded.
Sherwen whistled.
“Better make ready to move, Mr. Brewster,” he advised. “You can’t get
out of port after quarantine is on. At least, you couldn’t get into any
other port, even if you sailed, because your sailing-master wouldn’t
have clearance papers.”
The magnate smiled.
“I hardly think that any United States Consul, with a due regard for
his future, would refuse papers to the yacht Polly,” he observed.
“Don’t be a fool!”
Thatcher Brewster all but jumped from his chair. That this adjuration
should have come from the freakish spectacle-wearer seemed impossible.
Yet Sherwen, the only other person in the room, was certainly not
guilty.
“Did you address me, young man?”
“I did.”
“Do you know, sir, that since boyhood no person has dared or would dare
to call me a fool?”
“Well, I don’t want to set a fashion,” said the other equably. “I’m
only advising you not to be.”
“Keep your advice until it’s wanted.”
“If it were a question of you alone, I would. But there are others to
be considered. Now, listen, Mr. Brewster: Wisner and Stark wouldn’t let
you through that quarantine, after it’s declared, if you were the
Secretary himself. A point is being stretched in giving you this
chance. If you’ll agree to ship a doctor,—Stark will find you one,—stay
out for six full days before touching anywhere, and, if plague
develops, make at once for any detention station specified by the
doctor, you can go. Those are Stark’s conditions.”
“Damnable nonsense!” declared Mr. Brewster, jumping to his feet, quite
red in the face.
“Let me warn you, Mr. Brewster,” put in Sherwen, with quiet force,
“that you are taking a most unwise course. I am advised that Mr.
Perkins is acting under instructions from our consulate.”
“You say that Dr. Pruyn is here. I want to see him before—”
“How can you see him? Nobody knows where he is keeping himself. I
haven’t seen him yet myself. Now, Mr. Brewster, just sit down and talk
this over reasonably with Mr. Perkins.”
“Oh, no,” said the third conferee positively; “I’ve no time for
argument. At six o’clock I’ll be back here. Unless you decide by then,
I’ll telephone the consulate that the whole thing is off.”
“Of all the impudent, conceited, self-important young whippersnappers!”
fumed Mr. Brewster. But he found that he had no audience, as Sherwen
had followed the scientist out of the room.
Before the afternoon was over, the American concessionnaire had come to
realize that the situation was less assured than he had thought. Twice
the British Minister had come, and there had been calls from the
representatives of several other nationalities. Von Plaanden, in full
uniform and girt with the short saber that is the special and
privileged arm of the crack cavalry regiment to which he belonged at
home, had dismounted to deliver personally a huge bouquet for Miss
Brewster, from the garden of the Hochwald Legation, not even asking to
see the girl, but merely leaving the flowers as a further expression of
his almost daily apology, and riding on to an official review at the
military park.
He had spoken vaguely to Sherwen of a restless condition of the local
mind. Reports, it appeared, had been set afloat among the populace to
the effect that an American sanitary officer had been bribed by the
enemies of Caracuña to declare plague prevalent, in order to close the
ports and strangle commerce. Urgante was going about the lower part of
the city haranguing on street corners without interference from the
police. In the arroyo of the slaughter-house, two American employees of
the street-car company had been stoned and beaten. Much _aguardiente_
was in process of consumption, it being a half-holiday in honor of some
saint, and nobody knew what trouble might break out.
“_Bolas_ are rolling around like balls on a billiard table,” said young
Raimonda, who had come after luncheon to call on Miss Brewster. “In
this part of the city there will be nothing. You needn’t be alarmed.”
“I’m not afraid,” said Miss Polly.
“I’m sure of it,” declared the Caracuñan, with admiration. “You are
very wonderful, you American women.”
“Oh, no. It’s only that we love excitement,” she laughed.
“Ah, that is all very well, for a bull-fight or ‘_la boxe_.’ But for
one of our street _émeutes_—no; too much!”
They were seated on the roof of the half-story of the house, which had
been made into a trellised porch overlooking the _patio_ in the rear
and the street in front, an architectural wonder in that city of dead
walls flush with the sidewalk line all the way up. Leaning over the
rail, the visitor pointed through the leaves of a small _gallito_ tree
to a broad-fronted building almost opposite.
“That is my club. You have other friends there who would do anything
for you, as I would, so gladly,” he added wistfully. “Will you honor me
by accepting this little whistle? It is my hunting-whistle. And if
there should be anything—but I think there will not—you will blow it,
and there will be plenty to answer. If not, you will keep it, please,
to remember one who will not forget you.”
Handsome and elegant and courtly he was, a true chevalier of
adventurous pioneering stock, sprung from the old proud Spanish blood,
but there stole behind the girl’s vision, as she bade him farewell, the
undesired phantasm of a very different face, weary and lined and
lighted by steadfast gray eyes—eyes that looked truthful and belonged
to a liar! Miss Polly Brewster resumed her final packing in a fume of
rage at herself.
All hands among the visitors passed the afternoon dully. Mr. Brewster,
who had finally yielded to persuasion and decided not to venture out,
though still deriding the restriction as the merest nonsense, was in a
mood of restless silence, which his irrepressible daughter described to
Fitzhugh Carroll as “the superior sulks.”
Carroll himself kept pretty much aloof. He had the air of a man who
wrestles with a problem. Cluff fussed and fretted and privately cursed
the country and all its concessions. Between calls and the telephone,
Sherwen was kept constantly busy. But a few minutes before six,
central, in the blandest Spanish, regretted to inform him that Puerto
del Norte was cut off. When would service be resumed? _Quién sabe?_ It
was an order. _Hasta mañana_. To-morrow, perhaps. Smoothing a furrow
from his brow, the sight of which would have done nobody any good, he
suggested that they all gather on the roof porch for a swizzle. The
suggestion was hailed with enthusiasm.
Thus, when the Unspeakable Perk came hustling down the street some
minutes earlier than the appointed time, he was hailed in Sherwen’s
voice, and bidden to come directly up. No time, on this occasion, for
Miss Polly to escape. She decided in one breath to ignore the man
entirely; in the next to bow coldly and walk out; in the next to—He was
there before the latest wavering decision could be formulated.
“Better all get inside,” he said a little breathlessly. “There may be
trouble.”
Cluff brightened perceptibly.
“What kind of trouble?”
“Urgante is leading a mob up this way. They’re turning the corner now.”
“I’m going to wait and see them,” cried Miss Polly, with decision.
“Bend over, then, all of you,” ordered Sherwen. “The vines will cover
you if you keep down.”
Around the corner, up the hill from where they were, streamed a rabble
of boys, leaping and whooping, and after them a more compact crowd of
men, shoeless, centering on a tall, broad, heavy-mustached fellow who
bore on a short staff the Stars and Stripes.
“Where on earth did he get that?” cried Sherwen.
“Looted the Bazaar Americana,” replied Perkins.
“That’s Urgante,” growled Cluff; “that devil with the flag.”
“But he seems to be eulogizing it,” cried the girl.
The orator had set down his bright burden, wedging it in the iron guard
railing of a tree, and was now apostrophizing it with extravagant bows
and honeyed accents in which there was an undertone of hiss. For
confirmation, Miss Polly turned to the others. The first face her eyes
fell on was that of the ball-player. Every muscle in it was drawn, and
from the tightened lips streamed such whispered curses as the girl
never before had heard. Next him stood the hermit, solid and still, but
with a queer spreading pallor under his tan. In front of them Sherwen
was crouched, scowlingly alert. The expression of Mr. Brewster and
Carroll, neither of whom understood Spanish, betokened watchful
puzzlement.
Enlightenment burst upon them the next minute. From the motley crowd
below rose a snarl of laughter and savage jeering, the object of which
was unmistakable.
“By G—d!” cried Mr. Brewster, straightening up and grasping the
railing. “They’re insulting the flag!”
“I’ve left my pistol!” muttered Carroll, white-lipped. “I’ve left my
pistol!”
Polly Brewster’s hand flew to her belt.
She drew out the automatic and held it toward the Southerner. But it
was not Carroll’s hand that met hers; it was the Unspeakable Perk’s.
“No,” said he, and he flung the weapon back of him into the _patio_.
“Oh! Oh!” cried the girl. “You unspeakable coward!”
Carroll jumped forward, but Sherwen was equally quick. He interposed
his slight frame.
“Perkins is right,” he said decisively. “No shooting. It would be worth
the life of every one here. We’ve got to stand it. But somebody is
going to sweat blood for this day’s work!”
The instinct of discipline, characteristic of the professional athlete,
brought Cluff to his support.
“What Mr. Sherwen says, goes,” he said, almost choking on the words.
“We’ve got to stand it.”
In the breast of Miss Polly Brewster was no response to this spirit.
She was lawless with the lawlessness of unconquered youth and beauty.
“Oh!” she breathed “If I had my pistol back, I’d shoot that _beast_
myself!”
The scientist turned his goggles hesitantly upon her.
“Miss Brewster,” he began, “please don’t think—”
“Don’t speak to me!” she cried.
Another clamor of derision sounded from the street as Urgante resumed
the standard of his mockery and led his rabble forward. Behind the
dull-colored mass appeared a spot of splendor. It was Von Plaanden,
gorgeous in his full regalia, who had turned the corner, returning from
the public reception. Well back of the mob, he pulled his horse up, and
sat watching. The coincidence was unfortunate. It seemed to justify
Sherwen’s bitter words:—
“Come to _visa_ his work. There’s the Hochwaldian for you!”
Forward danced and reeled the “Yanki” baiters below, until they were
under the balcony where the little group of Americans sheltered and
raged silently. There the orator again spewed forth his contempt upon
the alien banner, and again the ranks behind him shrieked their
approval of the affront. Miss Polly Brewster, American of Americans,
whose great-grandfathers had fought with Herkimer and
Steuben,—themselves the sons of women who had stood by the loopholes of
log houses and caught up the rifles of their fallen pioneer husbands,
wherewith to return the fire of the besieging Mohawks,—ran forward to
the railing, snatching her skirt from the detaining grasp of her
father. In the corner stood a huge bowl of roses. Gathering both hands
full, she leaned forward and flung them, so that they fell in a shower
of loveliness upon the insulted flag of her nation.
For an instant silence fell upon the “great unwashed” below. Out of it
swelled a muttering as the leader made a low, mocking obeisance to the
girl, following it with a word that brought a jubilant yelp from his
adherents. Stooping, he ladled up in his cupped hand a quantity of
gutter filth. Where the flowers had but a moment before fluttered in
the folds, he splotched it, smearing star, bar, and blue with its
blackness. At the sight, the girl burst into helpless tears, and so
stood weeping, openly, bitterly, and unashamed.
No brain is so well ordered, no emotion so thoroughly controlled, but
that under sudden pressure—click!—the mechanism slips a cog and runs
amuck. Just that thing happened inside the Unspeakable Perk’s
smooth-running, scientific brain upon incitement of his flag’s
desecration and his lady’s grief. To her it seemed that he shot past
her horizontally like a human dart. The next second he was over the
railing, had swung from a branch of the neighboring tree to the trunk,
and leaped to the ground, all in one movement of superhuman agility. To
the mob his exploit was apparently without immediate significance.
Perhaps they didn’t notice the descent; or perhaps those few who saw
were so astonished at the apparition of a chunky tree-man with
protuberant eyes scrambling down upon them in the manner of an ape,
that they failed to appreciate what it might portend of trouble.
The hermit landed solidly on his feet a few yards from Urgante, the
flag bearer. With a berserker yell, he rushed. Taken by surprise, the
assailed one still had time to lift the heavy staff. As quickly, the
American lowered his head and dove. It may not have been magnificent;
it certainly was not war by the rules; but it was eminently effective.
To say that the leader went down would be absurdly inadequate. He
simply crumpled. Over and over he rolled on the cobbles, while the
smirched flag flew clear of his grasp, and fell on the farther
sidewalk.
“Wow!” yelled Cluff, leaping into the air. “Football! That cost him a
couple of ribs. Hey, Rube!”
And he rushed for the stairs, followed by Carroll, Sherwen, and, only
one jump behind, Mr. Thatcher Brewster, cursing in a manner that did
credit to his patriotism, but would have added no luster to his record
as an elder of the Pioneer Presbyterian Church, of Utica, New York.
Meantime, the Unspeakable Perk, having rolled free of the fallen enemy,
staggered to his feet and caught up the flag. Stunned surprise on the
part of the crowd gave him an instant’s time. He edged along the curb,
hoping to gain the legation door by a rush. But the foe threw out a
wing, cutting him off. Several eager followers had lifted Urgante,
whose groans and curses suggested a sound basis for Cluff’s diagnosis.
Himself quite _hors de combat_, he spat at the Unspeakable Perk, and
cried upon his henchmen to kill the “Yanki.” It seemed not improbable
to the latter that they would do it. Perkins set his back to the wall,
twirled the flag folds tight around the pole, reversed and clubbed the
staff, and prepared to make any attempt at killing as uncomfortable and
unprofitable as possible. The rabble, by no means favorably impressed
by these businesslike proceedings, stood back, growling.
A hand flew up above the crowd. The Unspeakable Perk ducked sharply and
just in time, as a knife struck the wall above him and clattered to the
pavement. Instantly he caught it up, but the blade had snapped off
short. As he stooped, one bold spirit rushed in. Perkins met him with a
straight lance-thrust of the staff, which sent him reeling and
shrieking with pain back to his fellows. But now another knife, and
another, struck and fell from the wall at his back; badly aimed both,
but presumably the forerunners of missiles, some of which would show
better marksmanship. The assailed man cast a swift, desperate look
about him; the crowd closed in a little. Obviously he must keep “eyes
front.”
“To your left! To your left!” The voice came to him clear and sweet
above the swelling growl of the rabble. “The doorway! Get into the
doorway, Mr. Beetle Man.”
A few paces away, how far Perkins could only guess, was the entrance to
the house. He surmised that, like many of the better-class houses, it
had a small set-in door, at right angles to the main entrance, that
would serve as a shallow shelter. Without raising his eyes, he nodded
comprehension, and began to edge along the wall, swinging his stout
weapon. As he went, he wondered what was keeping the others. At that
moment the others were frantically wrestling with the all-too-adequate
bars with which Sherwen had reinforced the wide door.
Perkins, feeling with a cautious heel, found himself opposite the entry
indicated by the voice. Turning, he darted into the narrow embrasure.
Here he was comparatively safe from the missiles that were now coming
from all directions. On the other hand, he now lacked room to swing his
formidable club. The peons, with a shout, closed in to arm’s length.
Alone on her balcony, the girl turned her head away and cried aloud,
hopelessly, for help. She wanted to close her ears against the bestial
shouts of a mob trampling to death a defenseless man, but her arms were
of lead. She listened and shivered.
Instead of the sound that she dreaded there came the ringing of hoofs
on stones, followed by yells of alarm. She opened her eyes to see Von
Plaanden, bent forward in his saddle at the exact angle proper to the
charge, urging his great horse down upon the mass of people as
ruthlessly as if they had been so many insects. Through the circle he
broke, swinging his mount around beside the shallow doorway before
which three Caracuñans already lay sprawled, attesting the vigor of the
defender’s final resistance. Back of the horseman lay half a dozen
other figures. The Hochwaldian jerked out his sword and stood, a
splendid spectacle. Very possibly he was not wholly unmindful of his
own pictorial quality or of the lovely American witness thereto.
His intervention gave a few seconds’ respite, one of those checks that
save battles and make history. Now, in the further making of this
particular history, sounded a lusty whoop from the opposite direction;
such a battle slogan as only the Anglo-Saxon gives. It emanated from
Galpy the bounder, bounding now, indeed, at full speed up the slope,
followed by two of his fellow railroad men, flannel-clad and still
perspiring from their afternoon’s cricket. Against bare legs a cricket
bat is a highly dissuasive argument. The Britons swung low and hard for
the ancient right of the breed to break into a row wherever white men
are in the minority against other races. The downhill wing of the mob
being much the weakest, opened up for them with little resistance,
leaving them a free path to the cavalryman, to whose side Perkins, with
staff ready brandished, had advanced from his shelter.
“Wot’s the merry game?” inquired the cockney cheerfully.
Before them the crowd swayed and parted, and there appeared, lifted by
many arms, a figure with a dead-white face streaked with blood, running
from a great gash in the scalp.
“He went down in front of my horse,” explained the Hochwald secretary
coolly.
At the sight, there rose from the crowd a wailing cry, quite different
from its former voice. Galpy’s teeth set and his cricket bat went up in
the air.
“There’ll be killing for this,” he said. “I know these blightehs. That
yell means blood. We must make a bolt for it. Is this all there is of
us?”
At the moment of his asking, it was. One half a second later, it
wasn’t, as the last of the legation’s stubborn bars yielded, the door
burst open, and the four Americans tumbled out at the charge, Cluff
yelling insanely, Carroll in deadly quiet, Sherwen alertly scanning the
adversaries for identifiable faces, and Elder Brewster still imperiling
his soul by the fervor of his language. Each was armed with such casual
weapons as he had been able to catch up. Carroll, a leap in advance of
the rest, encountered an Indian drover, half-dodged a swinging blow
from his whip, and sent him down with a broken shoulder from a chop
with a baseball club that he had found in the hallway. A bull-like
charge had carried Cluff deep among the Caracuñans, where he
encountered a huge peon, whom he seized and flung bodily over the iron
guard of a _samon_ tree, where the man hung, yelling dismally. Two
other peons, who had seized the athlete around the knees, were all but
brained by a stoneware gin bottle in the hands of Sherwen. Meanwhile,
Mr. Brewster was performing prodigies with a niblick which he had
extracted, at full run, from a bag opportunely resting against the
hat-rack. Almost before they knew it, the rescue party had broken the
intercepting wing of the mob, and had joined the others.
Cluff threw a gorilla-like arm across the Unspeakable Perk’s shoulder,
“Hurt, boy?” he cried anxiously.
“No, I’m all right. Who’s left with Miss Brewster?”
“Nobody. We must get back.”