XII.
THE WOMAN AT THE QUINTA
Thanks to his rival’s map, Carroll had little difficulty in finding the
trail to the mountain _quinta_. A brilliant new moon helped to make
easy the ascent. What course he would pursue upon his arrival he had
not clearly defined to himself. That would depend largely upon the
attitude of the man he was seeking. The flame of battle, still hot from
the afternoon’s melee, burned high in the Southerner’s soul, for he was
not of those whose spirit rapidly cools. Bitter resentment on behalf of
Miss Polly Brewster fanned that flame. On one point he was determined:
neither he nor the so-called Perkins should leave the mountain until he
had had from the latter’s own lips a full explanation.
Coming out into the open space, he got his first glimpse of the
_quinta_. It was dark, except for one low light. From the farther side
there came faintly to his ear a rhythmical sound, with brief intervals
of quiet, as if some one hard at labor were stopping from time to time
for breath. At that distance, Carroll could not interpret the sound,
but some unidentified quality of it struck chill upon his fancy. Long
experience in the woods had made him a good trailsman. He proceeded
cautiously until he reached the edge of the clearing.
The sound had stopped now, but he thought he could hear heavy breathing
from beyond the house. As he moved toward that side, a small but
malevolent-looking snake slithered out from beneath a bush near by.
Involuntarily he leaped aside. As he landed, a round pebble slipped
under his foot. He flung up his arm. It met the low branch of a tree,
and saved him a fall. But the thrashing of the leaves made a startling
noise in the moonlit stillness. The snake went on about its business.
“Hola!” challenged a voice around the angle of the house.
Carroll recognized the voice. He stepped out of the shadows and strode
across the open space. At the corner of the house he met the muzzle of
a revolver pointing straight at the pit of his stomach. Back of it were
the steady and now goggleless eyes of Luther Pruyn.
“I am unarmed,” said Carroll.
“Ah, it’s you!” said the other. He lowered his weapon, carefully
whirled the cylinder to bring the hammer opposite an empty chamber, and
dropped it in his pocket. “What do you want?”
“An explanation.”
“Quite so,” said the other coolly. “I’d forgotten that I invited you
here. How long had you been watching me?”
“I saw you only when you came out from behind the house.”
“And you wish to know about—about my companion in this place?”
continued the other in an odd tone.
“Yes.”
“Understand that I don’t admit that you have the smallest right. But to
clear up a situation which no longer exists, I’m ready to satisfy you.
Come in.”
He held open the door of the room where the lone light was burning. In
the middle of the floor was spread a sheet, beneath which a form was
outlined in grisly significance. Carroll’s host lifted the cover.
The woman was white-haired, frail, and wrinkled. One side of her face
shone in the lamplight with a strange hue, like tarnished silver. In
her throat was a small bluish wound; opposite it a gaping hole.
“Shot!” exclaimed Carroll. “Who did it?”
“Some high-minded Caracuñan patriot, I suppose.”
“Why?”
“Well, I suspect that it was a mistake. From a distance and inside a
window, she might easily have been taken for some one else.”
Carroll’s mind reverted to his companion’s ready revolver.
“Yourself, for instance?” he suggested.
“Why, yes.”
“Who was she?”
There was left in the Southerner’s manner no trace of the
cross-examiner. Suspicion had departed from him at the first sight of
that old and still face, leaving only sympathy and pity.
“My patient.”
“Have you been running a private hospital up here?”
“Oh, no. I took her because there was no other place fit for her to go
to. And I had to keep her presence secret, because there’s a law
against harboring lepers here. A pretty cruel brute of a law it is,
too.”
“Leprosy!” exclaimed Carroll, looking at that strange silvery face with
a shudder. “Isn’t it fearfully contagious?”
“Not in any ordinary sense. I was trying a new serum on her, and had
planned to smuggle her across to Curaçao, when this ended it.”
“Curaçao? Then that pass for yourself and wife—By the way, that and
your coat are over in the thicket, where I dropped them.”
“Thank you. But it doesn’t say ‘wife.’ It says simply ‘a woman.’”
“And you were encumbering yourself with an unknown leper, at a time
like this, just as an act of human kindness?” There was something
almost reverential in Carroll’s voice.
“Scientific interest, in part. Besides, she wasn’t wholly unknown.
She’s a sort of cousin of Raimonda’s.”
Carroll’s mind flew back to his fatally misinterpreted conversation
with the young Caracuñan.
“What did he mean by letting me think that you shouldn’t associate with
Miss Polly?”
“Oh, he had the usual erroneous dread of leprosy contagion, I suppose.”
“May I ask you another question, Mr. Per—I beg your pardon, Dr. Pruyn?”
said the visitor, almost timidly.
“Perkins will do.” The other smiled wanly. “Ask me anything you want
to.”
“Why did you run away that day on the tram-car?”
“To avoid trouble, of course.”
“You? Why, you go about searching for dangerous and difficult jobs.
That won’t do!”
“Not at all. It’s only when I can’t get away from them. But I couldn’t
risk arrest then. Some one would surely have recognized me as Luther
Pruyn. You see, I’ve been here before.”
“Then I don’t see why they didn’t identify you, anyway.”
“Three years ago I was much heavier, and wore a full beard. Then these
glasses, besides being invaluable for protection, are a pretty thorough
disguise.”
“So they are. But the game is up now.”
“Yes.” The scientist drew the sheet back over the dead woman. “I
suppose the sharp-shooters who did the job will report me safely out of
the way. It’s only a question of when the burial party will come for
me.”
“Then, why are we waiting?” cried Carroll.
“I couldn’t leave her lying here,” replied the other simply.
The sound of rhythmical labor came back to Carroll’s memory.
“You were digging her grave?”
The other nodded. Carroll, stiffly, for his knifed arm was painful, got
out of his coat.
“Where’s an extra spade?” he asked.
When their labor was over, and the leper laid beneath the leveled soil,
Carroll cut two branches from a near-by tree, trimmed them, bound them
in the form of a cross, and fixed the symbol firmly in the earth at the
dead woman’s head.
“That was well thought of,” said the scientist. “I’m afraid that
wouldn’t have occurred to me.”
“You can get word to Senor Raimonda?” asked Carroll.