had neither reached nor passed the inn on the way to Bogota. There
remained two alternatives. Had his companion been carried along by
the volunteers? Or, had he, by mistake, of course, taken a side trail
from the main road and thus lost himself in the labyrinth of mountains
and forests through which they were traveling? No one knew of such
a side trail. As for the other possibility, there was nothing to do
but await the coming of his own party of men and officers whom Herran
and David had left shortly after their departure from Honda, and who
must have met, in their turn, the volunteers somewhere on the road. In
the meantime, nothing could be gained from the landlord of the inn,
whose intelligence was at an even lower ebb in the morning than on the
preceding evening. This good-natured but fatuous boniface found it
difficult to sustain a conversation on the most ordinary topics; and
as a result of his intellectual labors with him, the sociable Herran
was nearing the extremity of misery when his own party arrived, several
hours after the last traveler had left the inn.
"Ah, yes, Senor General!" groaned Colonel Rodriguez, the bustling little
officer in charge of the men during Herran's absence; "we met the
volunteers. They wanted us to go with them to Panama. They waved their
flag, they shouted, they made speeches, they cheered the fatherland,
they cursed the Yankees, they said you would lead them to the Isthmus.
Their little capitan, who rode on a burro and talked peon very much,
said we belonged to them, and Colombia depended on us. It was very
terrible. We thought they would never leave us."
"Did you meet the Yankee, Don David, with them?" asked Herran.
"Don David? But--is he not with you?" they asked in return.
"I left him when we met those insane volunteers."
"But, Senor General, they said that a young man--it must be Don
David--went with you."
"Ah, caramba! Then they know nothing?"
"That is all, Senor."
"Then he is lost, that little fellow. He is not with me, he is not with
those canaille--unless they hide him, or kill him. No one has seen him;
he is lost--or dead."
Having reached this decision, there was nothing further to do
except march to Bogota and telegraph from there the news of David's
disappearance to his friends in Honda.
X
AN OLD MYSTERY
The vanishing of David Meudon in broad daylight while traveling on one
of the main thoroughfares of the Republic became the sensation of the
hour in Bogota. It excited more interest even than the return of General
Herran and his party from Panama. The tale of David's disappearance
three years before was revived, and gossip found plenty of material from
which to weave wild romance as to what had happened on both occasions.
But you can't build up a durable romance without some solid fact to
base it on, and since this whole affair was wrapped in mystery, lacking
anything tangible, public interest gradually and inevitably died out.
Among government leaders, however, owing to the strained relations
existing between the United States and Colombia, there was some anxiety
over the incident.
General Herran, who was related to the President of the Republic, and
who was proved to have had nothing to do--consciously, that is--with the
loss of Panama, declared that the government was responsible for David's
disappearance. He argued that, as the country was not in a state of war,
the marching of volunteer regiments on the public roads was a menace
to foreigners having business in Colombia, and that therefore these
regiments should either be disbanded or else ample protection be given
to all travelers who might encounter them. As it was too late to look
after David--so said the General--his friends, who were about to set
out for Bogota, should at least be guarded from a like fate on the way
thither. Accordingly, as this view of the case was approved, a company
of soldiers was sent to Honda--and thus it happened that Doctor Miranda,
Leighton and his niece, Mrs. Quayle and the schoolmaster--recovered
from his fever and the Doctor's pills--made the journey under military
escort, arriving in the capital quite like official personages.
This novel manner of traveling, although it kept off vagrant militia,
had its sinister features for the timid members of the party. Mrs.
Quayle, whose fear of a burro grew in proportion as she became familiar
with that harmless and necessary animal, believed that she and her
friends had fallen captives, through a skillful bit of strategy,
into the enemy's hands and were being led either to their death or
imprisonment. To this belief she stuck, in spite of the vehemence and
ridicule with which Doctor Miranda seasoned his arguments against
it. Indeed, had she dared express her full opinion her suspicions
would have involved the Doctor himself, whose explosive habits and
other eccentricities kept her in a continual state of alarm that was
increased, every now and then, by his malicious allusions to the jewelry
she wore. Andrew, inclined to attribute his fever to the famous pills
and the heroic treatment to which he had been subjected, secretly shared
her feeling, and was in hourly dread of some new calamity striking him
from the same quarter. Harold Leighton and Una, however, were too
much absorbed in David's mysterious fate to be greatly concerned by
what was going on immediately around them. The old savant, unable to
explain the disaster, was distressed beyond measure by the poignant
grief of his niece. In his own mind he was convinced that the singular
occurrence on the Honda road was related in some way to David's former
disappearance, and this belief stimulated his professional eagerness to
solve the puzzle presented by so strange a coincidence. Una's appeal,
therefore, to go any length in the rescue of David needed no urging. It
was met with a hearty promise of aid from Doctor Miranda, who stormed at
the government, in and out of season, for permitting bands of peons to
endanger the lives of harmless travelers.
The Doctor was especially indignant with Herran, who called upon the
Americans before they were fairly settled in their hotel in Bogota.
He pitched into this hapless officer with his choicest bits of
vituperation, until Herran began to think that the loss of one man,
under certain circumstances, was as serious an affair as the loss of an
isthmus. Leighton, however, did not share Doctor Miranda's views of the
matter.
"Miranda is unreasonable," he said to Herran. "There is a mystery in
this case. You have done all you could to save the young man, and you
are now offering to help us."
"That is right! That is right!" agreed Miranda. "We must find him."
"Anything I can do----" volunteered Herran.
"Do you know an American in this town by the name of Raoul Arthur?"
interrupted Leighton.
"How not! But--I don't like him."
"Never mind. I must see him. If any one can unravel this thing, he can."
"Mr. Meudon spoke of him. I will find him for you."
"Do you know where he lives?"
"Surely, Senor. In the Calle Mercedes."
"Take me to him."
"Very well, Senor," said Herran, apparently overcoming his reluctance;
"that is settled. First, I will be sure he is there. Then, this night, I
take you to his house."
Una, hearing of this decision, doubted its wisdom. From the few
references David had made to his partner in the Guatavita mining
venture she had felt instinctively that Raoul was his enemy, an opinion
strengthened by the psychometer test used at Stoneleigh. Leighton had
agreed in this opinion, more or less; hence Una's surprise that her
uncle, who was usually overcautious, should now turn to Raoul for help.
"I believe the man knows where David is," he declared.
"If he does, he will never tell you," remonstrated Una.
"I am not so sure of that."
"You may force him to do something fatal," she urged.
"On the contrary! By going to him at once I will prevent any foul
play--if there is to be any foul play."
The possibility alarmed her. The suspense, the mystery surrounding David
seemed more than she could bear. Bitterly she remembered Leighton's
attitude towards him in Rysdale. And now that their trip to Bogota,
insisted on from the first by her uncle, had ended as it had, her faith
in him was sadly shaken. She could not accept his judgment in a case
about which he had already shown so grave a lack of foresight. Leighton,
on his part, realized Una's distrust of him. He did not try to dispel
this feeling; but the knowledge that it was there spurred him on to do
his best and with the least possible delay.
So, that very evening Leighton, piloted by Herran, sought Raoul Arthur's
abode on the Calle Mercedes. Like most Bogota houses of the humbler
sort, this was a one-storied building, its heavy street door opening
upon a wide brick corridor leading to a central patio from which the
various rooms were reached. Following Colombian custom, the two men
entered without announcement and made their way along the unlighted
passage to the main living room, extending from the patio to the street.
A lamp at the center of a long table heaped with books and papers
distinguished this from the other rooms of the house, all of which were
in darkness and apparently uninhabited. A man, somewhat past thirty, his
hair slightly grizzled, his features pale and sharpened from study, sat
at the table in this main room reading a much-worn leather-bound volume,
the large black type and thick, yellowed paper of which gave ample proof
of age. Aroused by the noise made by Leighton and Herran, he closed his
book with a quick, nervous movement and turned to the doorway where his
two visitors stood.
"This is Mr. Raoul Arthur?" asked Leighton grimly.
"Who are you?" demanded the other, his strange, shifting eyes on the
massive figure before him.
"My name is Leighton. I am looking for David Meudon."
"He is not here," was the quick reply.
"I hardly expected to find him here," retorted the savant.
"Then why ask me for him?"
"You were once, if you are not now, Meudon's business partner. You
must have heard of his disappearance. On his way from Honda to Bogota
he--well, he simply vanished. That's the only way to describe it. It all
happened, no one knows how, a few days ago. The same thing took place
some years ago when he was living here with you. You know all about the
details of that first disappearance."
"You are mistaken," interrupted Raoul. "David Meudon left me for a
number of months. On his return he failed--or didn't think it worth
while--to explain his absence."
"That is all very well. Perhaps he could, perhaps he couldn't explain
it. At any rate, you thought that absence sufficiently peculiar to make
it the subject of an article for the Psychological Journal."
Raoul flinched perceptibly under this statement. His cool indifference
took on the sort of cordiality that repels one more than open enmity.
Bending over the table before which he was standing, he occupied himself
in elaborately sorting and rearranging some papers at which he had been
working.
"Of course," he said, "I know you now! Mr. Harold Leighton. I didn't
place the name at first, which was altogether stupid of me. I have often
wanted to meet you. As a matter of fact, I heard of your coming. It's a
rare treat in this out-of-the-way part of the world to run across a man
who has advanced our knowledge of psychology as you have."
The profuse compliment was not relished by the old savant. "I am not
aware that I have advanced our knowledge of psychology, as you put it,
one iota," he said testily. "But I am here to add to the small stock of
what I have already learned."
"You must have found David a rare problem!" exclaimed Raoul.
"You know him, perhaps, better than I do."
"Yes, I know him. That is, in a way. Engaging sort of chap. Clever,
and all that. Mysterious, too, don't you think? So, he has disappeared
again, you say?"
"Don't tell me that you have not known of it! The whole town has been
talking about it."
"Rumors, only rumors," protested Raoul. "I would like to hear the real
facts."
"This gentleman, General Herran, with whom Mr. Meudon was traveling, can
tell you the facts, such as they are. But I can't see why you should
need them."
Raoul turned to Leighton's companion, who had been trying to follow
what the two men were saying. As they talked in English, a language
of which he knew scarcely a word, he could make very little of it.
Asked, in Spanish, to give the details of his ride with David, he made
an excellent story of it, relating something of the discussion that
had absorbed them while on the road together, the friendly feeling
that had grown up between them, its touch of conviviality, and their
abrupt separation in the midst of their encounter with the regiment of
volunteers.
Raoul listened intently to Herran's narrative, his glance roving
restlessly from the narrator to his companion and back again, as if to
compare the effect on both of what was said.
"It's a strange tale, Senor," he commented when Herran had come to
the end. "These things with a touch of mystery in them are always
fascinating--until you stumble on the clew. Then it's very simple. I
suppose you have no theory to explain our friend's disappearance?"
"None, Senor."
"You have just told me, Mr. Leighton," he went on, addressing the
latter, "that you are here to add to your knowledge of psychology."
"I did."
"Well, what do you make of it? Here's what you are looking for--a neat
psychological problem right to your hand."
"I don't see it," said the savant impatiently.
"That's always the way with you great scientists! But--it's simple,"
declared Raoul, a note of triumph in his voice; "absolutely simple--if
you know David as well as I do."
"I said that you probably know him better. I have not known him as long
or as intimately as you have. But--again I fail to see what psychology
has to do with it."
"It has everything to do with it. David was not spirited away, as you
seem to imagine. He disappeared of his own accord."
"There is every reason to think the contrary," said Leighton
contemptuously.
"Oh, of course I may be wrong in my theory. But, as there is no other
evidence, I see only one solution. It's the clew we are after, you
know--and the clew is right under your nose."
"Perhaps you are on the wrong scent. Some investigators have a knack of
being cocksure about everything. But--explain your meaning."
"Very well. Let's talk as one psychologist to another, then. Meudon has
a peculiar temperament. You probably know that. But you may not know
that the dual personality is highly developed in him. Under strong,
sudden excitement this personality becomes greatly exaggerated."
"He was laboring under no particular excitement at the time of his
disappearance," objected Leighton.
"What about the mission he was on? I have an idea that it was of
absorbing importance to him. Remember, he was revisiting scenes
connected with an episode that for some years he has been trying to
forget but which he now wants to revive. And then, to cap the climax,
suddenly he comes, slap bang, right into the midst of a rabble of peons
who would be only too glad to kill him, or imprison him, or torture
him--or anything else unpleasant. The same crowd tried to get me once,
so I know what it all means."
"All this is true; but the excitement was hardly enough to drown David's
normal personality."
"It all helps, though. It predisposes things. It is, as I look at
it, the final stage setting, with all the characters in their places
awaiting the entrance of the villain to finish up the tragedy. And
in this case the villain entered just at the critical moment. Mr.
Leighton," he asked abruptly, "have you ever known David to drink a
glass of wine?"
"I can't say that I have," he answered doubtfully.
"Well, alcoholic stimulus, with certain temperaments--you know what it
does. It starts up an altogether abnormal psychology, doesn't it?"
"Very apt to."
"Depends a little on the stage setting, doesn't it? But, even without
that it has its odd effects. On rare occasions, for instance, I have
known Meudon to take a single drink of liquor. The result has been
similar to that brought on by hypnotism."
"Well?"
"There's your clew!" Raoul announced triumphantly. "You have heard
General Herran's story. He tells us that just before they parted he
and David drank several toasts together--and the toasts, I fancy, were
stronger than mere wine."
"You think, then----"
"Why, it's childishly simple! David was knocked over by a force, an
influence, to which he is unaccustomed. He is not at all a drinking
man, you understand. Quite the reverse. With him the effect of drink
would not be in the least like ordinary intoxication. From two former
experiences I know that it would be far subtler. It would produce what
you would call a pseudo-hypnosis, a condition of abnormal psychology."
"Well?"
"Don't you see what happened?"
"I have not had your experience with David," was the sarcastic reply.
"It is not a question of mere personal experience," said Raoul
irritably; "it involves what we know--or guess--of the eccentricities of
the human soul."
"You are an enthusiast. Be more explicit. Don't wander off in your
statements."
"Very well. I'll put it in the lingo of science as nearly as I can.
It appears to me, then, that David, by this little exchange of pistol
shots, as you call them, with General Herran, brought into activity
a portion of his brain that had not, for a number of years, intruded
itself upon his conscious life. It had literally been sleeping all that
time. On the last occasion when it was awake--when, in other words, he
was under the sway of this subconscious ego--he was here, amid the very
scenes in which he again finds himself. A moment ago you connected his
first disappearance with the one which has just taken place on the road
from Honda. Well, the General's 'pistol,' as he calls it, suddenly threw
David back into the memory of that first subconscious experience."
"The Ghost of the Forgotten found at last," mused Leighton, more to
himself than to Raoul.
"Exactly! That's a good way to put it."
"Suppose your theory correct; what happened after David's subconscious
memory was awakened?"
"As a psychologist, you are better able to answer that than I."
"I am not interested in abstruse problems just now. I am here simply to
find David."
"Difficult, perhaps. I couldn't find him before. But at least I have
given you the clew."
"Your clew doesn't explain. I don't know what to do with it."
"A restatement of my theory may clear things up. Through a combination
of certain circumstances, exerting upon him a peculiar influence, David
is living again in an environment and through a set of experiences that
belong to him only when he is in what we call a condition of secondary
personality. Discover that environment--the same, I believe, as the one
in which he was lost three years ago--and you will discover David."
Leighton made no comment. He regarded Raoul with characteristic
immobility. One gathered from his silence, however, that he was
impressed with what he had just heard. Slowly pacing the length of the
sala, he stopped before General Herran, who, through his ignorance of
English, was in a quite helpless state of bewilderment at the turn the
interview between the two men had taken.
"This young man will help us find Meudon," said Leighton in his broken
Spanish.
"He knows where he is?" asked Herran eagerly.
"He knows--something," replied the savant with significant emphasis.
"For one thing, General, those pistol shots you had with Meudon seem to
have played the devil."
"Caramba! Does he say so? But that is foolishness!"
"No, it is theory," said Leighton drily.
"How will he prove it?"
"By finding Meudon."
There was a finality in the tone of Leighton's rejoinder which, more
than the words themselves, indicated the seeker's conviction that the
road to David's discovery was in plain view. Raoul Arthur, however, said
nothing. Standing aloof from his two visitors, apparently not heeding
them, his silence aroused Leighton's curiosity.
"Naturally, I depend on you, Arthur," said the old man, with an emphasis
that sounded like a threat.
"I don't know why," he demurred. "David was with your party when this
happened. I failed to find him three years ago, you know."
"There is no proof that you did anything then to rescue the man who was
your friend and business partner," retorted Leighton. "This time failure
might be fatal--for you."
The words and Leighton's manner had their effect. Shaking off his real,
or assumed, apathy, Raoul faced his accuser angrily.
"I have given you the one clew of which I have any knowledge," he said,
meeting Leighton for the first time eye to eye. "I have done what I
could, I will still do what I can. But I won't act at the dictation of a
man of whom I know nothing, whom I never even met until this moment."
"That's all very well," replied the other imperturbably. "But, as I
said, I depend on you--quite naturally, it seems to me--to help in the
recovery of your friend. My niece and I are in this country for the
express purpose of solving David's former disappearance."
"Your niece?"
"Yes; the woman whom David expects to marry."
Raoul's defiant attitude vanished before this announcement. Irritation
gave place to amazement, distrust turned to friendliness. Nor did he
attempt to conceal his appetite for further news of David's personal
affairs.
"David wrote me nothing of this," he said. "From his letter I learned
that he was coming with friends. He did not tell me who these friends
were."
"Well, there's every reason why I should be frank with you--as I expect
you to be frank with me."
"You are still suspicious. What can I do, or say? I tell you, I don't
know where David is."
"Do you know where he was when he disappeared from Bogota three years
ago?"
"No."
"Strange! A man with all your interests at stake in this puzzle--surely
you must have reached some conclusion?"
"I tell you, I have not," he replied sharply. "I know nothing,
absolutely nothing."
"You admit you have a theory--let's call it that--a theory that fits the
facts so far as you know them?"
"That's your deduction," sneered the other.
"But, I'm right?"
"Possibly," Raoul answered, turning again to the papers that littered
his writing table.
"That's all I want," declared Leighton with satisfaction. "Now, we will
plan our campaign."
Raoul, engrossed in a large, musty document which he had spread before
him, greeted the proposal with a shrug of his shoulders. General Herran,
impatient at the apparently futile and--to him--incomprehensible
discussion, consumed innumerable cigarettes, while Leighton, with the
air of one for whom waiting is an enjoyment, settled himself comfortably
in a capacious rocking-chair.
The ensuing silence was rudely broken. There was a vigorous pounding
upon the outer door, followed by the abrupt and noisy entrance into the
house of some one from the street. Whoever it was, this late visitor
stood little upon ceremony. But Leighton and General Herran had no
difficulty in recognizing the nervous shuffle of feet along the stone
corridor, the thump of the heavy walking-stick, accompanied by grunts of
dissatisfaction and suppressed wrath. When Doctor Miranda finally bolted
into the room, fanning himself as usual--although fans were a decidedly
uncomfortable superfluity in the chilly night air of Bogota--they were,
in a way, prepared for him.
"He is gone! He is lost--that leetle fellow! There is one more lost of
them!" he shouted, repeating his disjointed English in staccato Spanish,
as soon as he caught sight of his two friends.
Leighton and Herran exchanged amazed glances at this enigmatic bit of
intelligence, while Raoul, preoccupied and restless though he was, could
not restrain a grin at the unconventional being who had rolled his way,
unannounced, into his house.
"What do you mean?" demanded Leighton.
"I tell you, he is lost, that leetle schoolmaster!" Miranda exploded.
"Andrew Parmelee lost? Impossible!"
"You are an estupido," retorted the Doctor angrily. "I say he is lost.
Before my eyes he disappear. I never lie, I never mistake."
Not caring to discuss this announcement, Leighton tried to divert the
torrent of words into something like a coherent statement. But in his
present excitable mood Doctor Miranda floundered hopelessly in a morass
of verbal difficulties and ended by telling his story in alternate
layers of Spanish and English. From his account, however, his hearers
were able to put together the main points of an occurrence that,
vehemently vouched for though it was by the narrator, strained their
credulity to the limit.