priest particularly. He was a big bull of a man, with immense chest and
shoulders, a short, thick neck, a compact, forceful head and little
glittering eyes. There was something magnificent in his bearing. He was
of about the middle age, near that time in life when muscle goes to
flesh, but still on the sinewy side of it. At a first glance, his face,
which was fresh-coloured, looked wholesome, hearty and healthy; but at a
second glance Sard felt that there was something wanting. There was a
greyish puffiness under the eyes, and something unnatural, or at least
unusual, about the eyes themselves. The man’s face was unusual, the man
was unusual, he was an odd-looking man, with enormous bodily strength to
make his oddness felt. Sard, who had not seen any such Englishman
before, realised that a man so odd would choose a way of life followed
by few Englishmen. Father Garsinton wore new blacks; he was smart, for a
priest from a mining camp; his cloth smelt new; his voice, as he thanked
Captain Cary, was soft and gracious, but his eye was sidelong as he
spoke, taking stock of Sard.
“Mr. Harker,” Captain Cary said, “will you be away, then to make those
enquiries, and then follow us on board?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you should hear of those people, don’t let them entangle you into
delaying. There’s a norther coming and I cannot wait for you. I would
not like you to lose your passage.”
“I’ll not lose my passage, sir.”
“I see the tug’s down the quay there, with steam up. Now, Mr. Garsinton,
have you any gear to go aboard?”
“Yes, Captain Cary, a small trunk and that packing-case.”
“That packing-case? That sort of deckhouse by the bollard? It looks like
a pantechnicon van. What is in it?”
“Two sets of Las Palomas crockery for my sister, with the necessary
packing.”
“You’ll have to pay me freight on it. It will take a yard-tackle to get
it over the side. Now we must get a boatman and a couple of Carib boys
to get it aboard for us.”
Sard in his caleche was by this time turning about to go to the hotel.
He paid particular attention to the packing-case, which shone there in
new white wood beside the bollard. He thought that it looked big for two
sets of crockery, but supposed that the stuff was dunnaged against the
sea. He drove to the hotel.
At the hotel, the woman in charge remembered the name of Kingsborough.
“Yes,” she said, “a lady and her brother, rather more than three weeks
ago; they were here for two nights, on the first floor, in Rooms B and
D. Let me see. February the 20th and 21st, it was. They came in on the
_Palenque_ from San Agostino. They were going to stop somewhere here, he
said. He came in for letters a day or two after they left the hotel.”
Sard thanked her, turned to the 20th February and saw the names:
Hilary Kingsborough } Br. subjects, in trans.
Margarita Kingsborough }
written by the man in what is called a Civil Service hand. “Here they
are,” he said. “Do you happen to know where they went when they left?”
The woman turned up a register. “No,” she said. “They breakfasted here
on the 22nd, and then left the hotel. I’m not here in the mornings, but
he said they were going to stop here for a little. They were taking a
furnished flat, the upstairs maid thought.”
“Do you happen to know what he is doing here?”
“Writing something for some examination, so someone said. He was a very
young gentleman.”
“What was she like?”
“A very nice lady.”
“Could your colleague, who saw them go, tell me where they went, when
they left here? I want to give them a message.”
“The other clerk won’t be here till midnight,” the woman said. “Perhaps
you could come back, then?”
He drove on to the Club, much pleased to be on the track of these
Kingsboroughs. There was something odd about the names of Hilary and
Margarita. “‘A very young gentleman,’” he repeated, “and ‘a very nice
lady.’ And there, as it happens, is their enemy.”
There, on the pavement before a café on the water-front, was Mr. Wiskey
dancing a Hottentot breakdown to his friends. Mr. Wiskey’s hands were
behind his back, jutting out his coat-tails; his head was bowed forward
because of his boil; he was singing as he danced:
“O, I’m a lady,
A Hottentot lady,
A one-time-piecee lubly gal O.”
His friends kept time for him as he danced by clacking spoons on their
front teeth.
Sard wondered how it had come about that a very nice lady and a very
young gentleman had roused the employer of such a crew to take extreme
measures against them. He reckoned that it would be quite impossible for
him to find these Kingsboroughs and then visit Los Xicales. “The thing
has always mocked me,” he said, “perhaps all things do, if you think too
much of them.”
He entered the Club just as the clocks struck five.
“Why, for the love of Mike,” the Club porter said, “if it ain’t Mr.
Harker! Why, sir, how are you? Maybe you’ll not remember me, but I was
in the crowd with you in the _Venturer_ one trip, ’way back.”
Sard saw before him a young man of about twenty-five with a smile which
brought him back to memory. It was Richard Shullocker, a young American
who had been stranded as a lad by the death of his parents during an
epidemic in one of the fever ports. He had shipped himself aboard the
_Venturer_ as an ordinary seaman, so as to reach a windward port from
which he could sail for Boston. In spite of his age, he had done very
well. He had been known on board as the Big Smiled Kid, for his smile
stretched from ear to ear and never ceased in any trouble or any
weather. Now here he was, prosperous and ambitious, a Club porter in Las
Palomas.
“Why, Richard Shullocker,” Sard said. “So you are here. I’ve often
wondered what became of you. You’re looking well.”
“Yes, sir. This place suits me. But I’m through here this month. I’ve
figured out this hotel and club business. I’m going to start business in
New York City on my own account. And I suppose you are Captain Harker
now?”
“No, just mate; with Captain Cary still. And now I want you to help me.
Do you know of any man in this Club, a courtesy member probably, of the
name of Kingsborough?”
“Why, sure, Mr. Harker. A young fellow, Mr. Hilary Kingsborough. If
that’s the man, he was in here for his mail only half an hour ago. He’s
been here about three weeks. He’s staying at a place up the coast,
General Martinez’ place, Los Xicales.”
“Los Xicales,” Sard said, startled. “That house near the beach?”
“Yes. Colonel Mackenzie hired it for him; the police colonel. He’s
staying there with his sister, who is sure one lovely woman; but they’re
going from here to-morrow, down to Ytá-Ytá.”
“Where do they come from?”
“England, I guess. He writes up these old Spanish buildings and his
sister draws them. She’s just plum lovely.”
“I want to get out to them, to give them a warning. I believe that
they’re threatened by a gang of rough-necks. I’m sailing at six and have
very little time. While I go out to them (I know the way to Los
Xicales), will you go to the Palace of Justice and ask Colonel Mackenzie
to have a patrol along there to-night?”
“Sure, Mr. Harker, I’ll go right now. But how are you going to Los
Xicales? Not in that shay, I guess, if you’re in any hurry. You’d best
take my bicycle if you’re hurrying. Say, George, rouse up the bicycle
for Mr. Harker.”
While the negro went into the basement for the bicycle, Sard said that
the crowd on Las Palomas beach seemed tougher than formerly.
“That is so,” Richard said. “These rum-runners have made it a tough
joint. They run rum in and they run guns out. That mush-nosed maggot,
Don José, is doing it all, to rouse up trouble in Santa Barbara.”
“Don José, that scum, against the Dictator?”
“He ain’t called a scum here in Las Palomas, Mr. Harker. This
rum-running has made him a very rich man and his stock is away up in G.
You’ll find that Don José will have another try for Santa Barbara before
long.”
“I’m bound for Santa Barbara,” Sard said. “Would Mr. Kingsborough be
mixed up with, or against, the Don José gang?”
“I guess not,” Richard said. “One can’t ever tell. He wouldn’t be _with_
him, that’s sure: Mr. Kingsborough’s a gentleman. But here’s your
bicycle, and if you’re sailing at six, I guess you’ll have to roll your
tail like the Arab or you’ll not make it. Don’t you heed your caleche,
I’ll square your driver.”
“One other thing,” Sard said. “Do you know a priest, a Father Garsinton?
A lone rogue bull of a man?”
“No, sir: he don’t come bullin’ around here any.”
“Well, thank you for your help,” Sard said. He swung the bicycle round
and rode off, thinking that he would have to sprint to be on board by
six.
“So,” he thought, “I lied. The dreams are true. Here I am, led to this
house, and by what strange ways. She will be there then, stopping with
the Kingsboroughs. Could she be this Miss Kingsborough? But that cannot
be, of course; Juanita de la Torre cannot well become Margarita
Kingsborough. But let that wait. The dreams are true. She will be there
somehow.”
He rode through the market-place over a mess of corn-sheath and trodden
pumpkin, and away through the North gate to the savannah. Outside the
walls there were a few houses, then a few market gardens, then the
rolling sage-green savannah to the forest. The road was not macadam but
dirt-track, with soft going, after the first mile. The houses ceased
with the macadam, then came nothing but a ruined hut or two, and from
time to time a stone cross, with a tin mug of holy water, a bunch of
tinsel flowers, and an inscription, begging all who passed to pray for
the soul of such an one, who had been killed there. Most of these many
dead had been killed by Indians in the three dreadful raids of Capa
Roja, when Sard had been a little child. Seven stone crosses together
marked where Capa Roja had with his own hands martyred “seven most
Christian virgins” as recently as 1872. Indian trouble had not ceased
there until 1876.
Passing these, Sard rode on up a rise into the wild, mainly upon grass.
Las Palomas had shrunk away from this northern tract, perhaps because of
these old Indian killings; the savannah was as it had been before the
white man had landed, an expanse of grass which seemed always alive from
the wind. On a rise, the forest hove in sight, stretching across Sard’s
track from the sea to the mountains. Clumps of forest stood out in the
savannah like bull-bisons in advance of the herd: the sun was in their
tops in a way which told Sard that he had not a moment to lose. “Still,”
he said to himself, “I am going to Los Xicales, to her. Time will not
matter beyond a certain point.”
Out of the forest a peon in a scarlet serape came loping on a pinto
pony. He came with a jingle of plate, for horse, man and trappings were
hung with discs and dangles beaten out of broad silver Mexican dollars.
He rode, like a part of his horse, with matchless grace and swagger. He
had a xicale flower in his hat, which he wore sideways, so as not to
crush the yellow cigarettes behind one of his ears. He was probably an
estancia peon, but he had the manners of a Master of the Horse to a
Queen. “Xicales,” Sard thought, “you have come from there. Con Dios,
caballero.”
The peon gravely saluted as he loped by, thinking that without doubt the
English were mad, but that without doubt such was God’s will.
Almost immediately after the xicale flower had passed, the track, which
had been trending inland (for the advantage of the rise in the Indian
time) swerved seaward sharply, so that Sard as he rode had a glimpse of
the sailing ship anchorage, and a part of Jib and Foresail Quay where
the tug still lay at her berth. “There, Sard Harker,” he said to
himself, “that has been your art hitherto and now you are a master of
it. How much longer are you going to use your life in box-hauling
another man’s yards around? Not long after you find ‘her,’ I know, and
perhaps you will find ‘her’ this hour.”
The forest glowed in its tops across his path: myriads of its birds came
in to roost. “I shall have to sprint all I know,” Sard thought, “if I am
to reach Los Xicales and be back on board before we sail.”
Behind him, from out in the anchorage, but very clear in the quiet of
the evening, came a cheer, followed by the chorus of men singing.
“There it is,” he said; “they are heaving in already. It must be
half-past five already. I must set my stunsails or be done for.”
The glow became intenser upon the trees as he drew nearer to them, then,
quite suddenly, he shot out of the glow into the gloom of the forest,
which struck cold as well as gloom. On his left were pine trees all
sighing together, on his right were Turkey oaks all hoary and evil with
Spanish moss. They looked like evil Mr. Wiskeys grown bigger. They
seemed to thrust out their heads and to wag their beards and to be
wicked to the core. Through the crowds of these trees, Sard followed the
track, in sound of the beating of the sea, till he dismounted at the
lodge beside the gates. Wired to the side of the lodge was a white
wooden roofing shingle marked in pale blue letters with the words “Los
Xicales.” It had a look of having no one there, of being to let. As Sard
looked at it, he felt an oppression in the air, as though all the life
had gone out of it. “Here’s the norther,” he said; “and as it is coming
on so slowly, it is going to be bad.”
Sard propped his bicycle against the gates and hammered on the
lodge-door with his knife-handle.
Nobody answered. The door, which stood slightly ajar, let out a smell of
stale tortilla. Sard could see little pale ants wandering on the floor
within. He hammered again and again and called. Presently a
slatternly-young negress, in a blue cotton gown patched with sacking,
came up among the pine trees, and grinned at Sard like an idiot.
“O Jesu,” she said, “O Jesu!”
“Can I go to the house? Is anybody there?”
“The gates are always locked.”
“Yes, but I want to go to the house.”
“Tehee.”
“May I go to the house, to see Mr. Kingsborough?”
“O Jesu.”
“I am going to the house. See that no one steals this bicycle, or you’ll
be a sick negress, mucha, mucha.”
He crossed the fence by the gap (the fence was indeed mainly gap) and
set off down the weed-blinded drive under pines which had been tapped
and were now either dead or dying. The effect was dismal in that muggy
air, but Sard’s heart beat high with the expectation of adventure.
Beyond all doubt, this was the house of his dream, the dreams were true,
and he was going to meet her the very thought of whom made all that
inner life of which no one had any suspicion. The turn in the drive
brought him within sight of the house. He stood still, at the turning,
to take stock of it. Then he went boldly up the steps and rang the bell.
An old white-haired negro, with charming manners, admitted and announced
him. In a moment he returned, to say that Mr. Kingsborough would see
him, at once, if he would follow. Sard followed, along the hall, which
was paved, for the coolness, and grass-matted for ease in walking. The
hall was bare of furniture save for an old Spanish chest, painted with
the life of St. Dominic, which stood under a window, with its legs in
glass jars (against the ants). Like all men accustomed to take bearings,
Sard fixed the details of it. It was a long hall running along the
length of the house, with doors opening off it, and a staircase at the
western end. The old negro major-domo opened a door a few paces from
this staircase, and announced him:
“Señor Don Harker.”
Sard went in and instinctively put back a hand to close the door. He
felt the door as the negro closed it; he was amazed at its weight: it
was black maruca wood from the house of some conquistador.
The room to which he entered was a long room at the southern corner of
the house. The wall to his right, as he entered, contained a French
window opening upon the verandah. A woman stood at the door of the
French window, half in the verandah. He could not see her face, since it
was turned from him, but there was something about her that made his
heart stand still. She spoke as he closed the door:
“I will water the xicales, Hilary,” she said, “and come back when you
are alone.” Her voice rang in his brain like a memory: she closed the
glass door behind her, and passed by the verandah steps into the garden
out of sight.
Sard turned to his left. A young man had risen from a chair to greet
him. Sard looked at him eagerly for some trait or feature that would be
like the face he sought, but the face was new to him: it was the face of
a smiling young man, fond of fun and ease, perhaps twenty-five years
old. Sard envied him the fun and ease, but felt that the lad was a
child, compared with himself, who had dealt with the sea for ten years.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Harker?” the young man said.
Sard told what he had heard at the ringside and described the two men.
The young man listened attentively and showed no sign of fear, but
seemed puzzled.
“I know nobody like those two men,” he said; “and as for anyone called
B., or Sagrado B., in Santa Barbara, I know no one of that name nor in
that place. We have never been near Santa Barbara.”
“Nor met either the Dictator or Don José?”
“Never. I know nothing of either, except the gossip that one hears.”
“The danger threatened your sister more than yourself, Mr. Kingsborough.
I gathered from what was said that this man in Santa Barbara had a
grudge against your sister, perhaps of some years’ standing.”
“I think that’s out of the question.”
“There is no other Miss Kingsborough here, or any Spanish lady?”
“Spanish lady? No, nor other Miss Kingsborough.”
“They meant your sister, then.”
“Yes, but that is impossible. Of course, I am very much obliged to you
for coming to warn me. It was very good of you. Do you think that we are
in danger?”
“They were a bad two, mixed up with others worse; and we have a saying,
‘It’s better to be sure than sorry.’”
“Well; thanks. Only, I must say that I do not understand it.”
“I see, sir,” Sard said, “that you do not take it very seriously. Well,
perhaps it is best not to cross rivers till you reach the water.”
“Threatened men live long.”
“Not in seaport towns,” Sard answered.
“Well,” Hilary said, smiling, “what do you think we ought to do?”
“I have passed word to the police to stand by,” Sard said. “But you know
how much that is worth, among these Occidentales. I would say this, Mr.
Kingsborough: take your sister in to the hotel in town, the Santiago,
until you leave Las Palomas. I understand that that will be to-morrow.”
“You really think that the danger is as great as that?”
“I don’t know the danger,” Sard said, “only the risk. That is what I
should do, if it were myself and a sister of mine.”
“Thank you, Mr. Harker. Will you smoke?”
“Thank you, I don’t smoke.”
“Will you drink something?”
“I don’t drink.”
“I think you said, Mr. Harker, that you belonged to a ship here?”
“Yes, sir, the _Pathfinder_, sailing now for Santa Barbara. And I must
go aboard now or lose my passage. So I will say good-bye, Mr.
Kingsborough. I hope to hear some day that nothing has come of all
this.”
“Is your ship a steamer, did you say?”
“The ship in the sailing ship berths there, about to sail.”
“Well, a pleasant voyage to you. And thank you again for coming to warn
me. I’ll see you to the gate.”
Outside, the sun had westered so that the light was off the house. The
oppression in the air, added to the gloom of the evening, made the place
menacing.
At the angle of the house, the woman was watering the xicales. She wore
white gardening gauntlets and a sun hat. Sard felt his heart leap up
with expectation. He took a step towards her.
“This way, Mr. Harker,” Hilary said, correcting him. “That way leads to
the garden.”
The woman had turned from them; he did not see her face; she disappeared
round the angle of the house.
“Excuse me,” Sard said. “But is there no Spanish lady here?”
“Spanish lady?” Hilary asked. “You asked me that before. No. You may
mean Tia Eusebia: she’s coloured.”
“You’ll speak to your sister about this warning,” Sard said. “And tell
her everything that I have told you.”
Hilary answered coldly that naturally he would. The thought came to Sard
with the pain of a blow that the dreams were all lies, and that once
again he had failed to find her.
“Is anything the matter, Mr. Harker?” Hilary asked.
“A little queer,” Sard said. “Don’t come any further. I’ll let myself
out. I must hurry. But tell me . . . Are you Spanish?”
“No,” Hilary answered, looking at him oddly, “I’m English.”
“Right, then. Good-bye. And I hope all will go well.”
“Good-bye and thanks.”
Sard hurried away, trying to pull himself together. He knew that Hilary
thought him mad or drunk. Hilary watched him as far as the gates: then
waved a hand and turned back to the house. “Odd beggar,” Hilary thought,
“a very odd beggar. I didn’t half like the looks of him. He seemed to me
to be as mad as a hatter. And asking me if I am Spanish. And whether I
kept a Spanish lady!”
At the gates Sard stopped, saying to himself that he must go back and
warn the woman. “That boy does not believe,” he said; “he thinks me
daft; and she is in danger. And beside all that, I must speak to her. I
must ask her if she be that one; for I believe she is: I believe she
must be. And yet she cannot be Juanita: the name and everything else is
changed. Her brother thought me mad when I asked if he were Spanish. Yet
she was like enough to her: and then there was my dream. Changed or not,
I must know, one way or the other; and besides, she must be warned. She
is older and wiser than this boy and she must be warned of the danger.”
He knew very well that if he went back, he would meet a Hilary convinced
of his madness and not speak to Miss Kingsborough, yet he half turned.
As he did so there came from the anchorage far behind him, yet very
clearly, a beating of the _Pathfinder’s_ bells as though for a fire. In
an instant’s hush after the stopping of the bells there was a shout,
which he heard but could not distinguish, followed by three roaring
cheers. He knew what it was. The _Pathfinder_, being about to sail, was
cheering all the ships in port. The cheering was followed by a carillon
of bells and a thunder of cheering as both anchorages made reply.
“There it is,” Sard muttered, “I have twenty minutes before they man the
windlass. I’m due on the fo’c’sle-head to see the anchor grow. I’ll do
it yet.”
He might have done it, no doubt, but when he reached the iron gates, his
bicycle was gone.
PART TWO
Hilary Kingsborough returned to his sitting-room to think over what Sard
had said.
“I didn’t half like that fellow’s looks,” he muttered. “If there are
thieves about, he might well be their advance agent come to spy out the
land. Besides, kidnapping ladies is simply not done. What rot! It isn’t
easy to hide a dead body, but as for a living one, it’s out of the
question. How are they going to get a living woman out of Las Palomas
against her will, either by land or sea? They can’t do it.”
He walked to the window to look out at the port. “All the same,” he
said, “old General Martinez may have heirlooms and things put away here.
Burglars might have got wind of them, perhaps. I’ll lock up carefully
to-night.”
He stood at the window, looking out at the glow. The coast mailboat was
at her buoy from San Paulo. She was the _Otoque_ that was to take him
down the coast on her return journey the next day. The launches ground
and hove about her gangway, while the slings of crates swayed up,
poised, swung and jolted down among cries and clanking. There was a run
of sea in the harbour which had not been there that afternoon; launches
squatting on to it under way split it white. A sort of swell seemed to
be coming into the harbour from the north. His thoughts were of Sard:
but he could not help noticing the swell. “It is all rubbish,” he said.
“Someone at the Club has sent that fellow here for a rag. These things
do not happen. This is one of that bounder Coghill’s rises. He is always
planting rags on people. What an ass that I was not to see it at once!
Now that fellow will be at the Club telling how he scared me. Then at
midnight, I suppose, they will serenade us with firecrackers and expect
us to let them in and give them cocktails. Well, they will not get.”
Presently as he sat reading at his table, he heard the song of men from
the sailing ship anchorage. He went out into his verandah to listen. It
had gone strangely still and close, he thought; the roar of the chorus
came to him over the water as though it were in the grounds. They were
only heaving in, but he concluded that they were getting the anchor.
“That part of it at least is true,” he thought, “she _is_ sailing now:
and if he were one of her crew, he must very nearly have lost his
passage. Still, those silly devils at the Club would have chosen him for
that reason; because he will be gone, out of the way, before the rag is
apparent. The whole thing is a rag.”
In the closeness he heard, quite distinctly, the words of a song:
“The charming little girl down Tiger Bay.”
Then the singing stopped and discomfort grew upon him; it was really
very close indeed. At the same time the glow on the masts in harbour
died suddenly: all the colour became ashen: night seemed to prepare and
advance in the one moment; he noticed the flash of the light on Point
Manola. “How dark it is,” he thought, “the very instant the sun goes
down.”