us. It is all right. Come along.”
“Right. Come along.”
“Leave the lamp for Ramón.”
They left the lamp burning, but turned it down: then they went into the
corridor and closed the kitchen door behind them.
The first thing which they noticed on coming into the hall was a draught
of air (blowing in from the sitting-room) which was causing the lamp to
smoke.
“I say,” Hilary said, “I shut the sitting-room door when I came out. Mr.
Brown must have opened it. The draught is from there.”
“He must have opened the window too,” Margaret said. “This is the
breeze.”
“The window was shut when I left the room.”
“Perhaps it blew open,” Margaret said. “It sometimes does if the catch
be not pushed home.”
“The catch was pushed home.”
Hilary picked up the two little handbags from the ledge, thinking that
this Mr. Brown had a pretty cool cheek to go opening people’s windows
and making their lamps smoke. He walked along to the sitting-room door,
carrying the bags; Margaret was just behind him. He pushed the door open
and came well into the room. A gush of air blew past him on the instant,
for the window opening into the verandah was wide open. “Come in, quick,
and close the door, Margarita,” he said. “This window’s wide open.”
Margarita closed the door to save the hall lamp; they were thus both
within the room.
Hilary saw at a glance that Mr. Brown had not only opened the window,
but had moved the lamp to the corner near the fire-place. “He has a
pretty cool cheek,” he thought again.
Mr. Brown was standing near the open window, facing them, with his hands
behind his back.
“Come in, Mr. Kingsborough,” Mr. Brown said. “I see you have done your
packing, so we can start right away.”
Hilary felt quickly that there was something wrong and deadly. There was
that rasp in Mr. Brown’s voice and that snap upon his mouth; and besides
these things, he stood still, and there was something in his last five
words which sounded like a signal, and thirty years seemed to fall from
him.
“Yes, sir,” he repeated, “we can start right away.” His hands came up
from behind him with a flash and a bang: something very hot struck
Hilary in the chest with a pang and a thud which came together: a
little, slow bluish smoke twisted out of Mr. Brown’s pistol: Hilary
found that he was on the floor. He heard Margarita cry aloud. He tried
to rise, but the place rocked so and surged: there was a sort of tight
red wave which got into his eyes. Then a lot of people seemed to dance
out of the night into the room; they seemed to dance all over him; they
seemed to be dancing with Margarita, and there was a smell of a cigar
which was pushed red-hot into his cheek. After that, he knew that he
climbed to his feet, and that somebody grinned in his face; then the
water seemed to fall all off the mill-wheel into a peacelike sleep or
death.
Everything seemed to be over when he came to himself again. The dancing
was done. Men were going out of the room by the verandah window: they
were carrying a great package which moaned and seemed to be moving, much
as a fly, trussed up by a spider, will move. He felt a weight in his
chest and found it difficult to understand what was happening. Then he
realised that the moaning package was Margarita, who was being carried
away by all these men.
“All right, Margarita,” he said, “I will set you free.” The words which
he spoke did not seem to be these, because the men laughed. He said,
“I’ll teach you to laugh,” and tried to rise from the floor, but the
floor rocked all round him, so that he had to lie down again. He shut
his eyes to make the floor steady, but it did not become steady. He
tried to steady it with his hands, then it started spinning.
Presently he managed to sit up. A man was looking down upon him; the
man’s hat was cocked on one side, he was smoking the stub of a cigar and
staring at him.
“Mr. Bloody Kingsborough,” the man said. “My dear old college pal,
dammit. You’ve no memory of me. You haven’t been introduced to me. I’m
one of the vulgar lower orders, dammit. Sumecta, my name is. I’m a
fellaw, dammit, a rude vulgar low fellaw. And I’m going to cork your
eyebrows with my cigar.”
He leaped upon Hilary and rubbed the burning cigar along his eyebrows.
Hilary noticed that the man wore earrings and had a wide mouth lacking
one tooth. The man straddled across him and slapped his cheeks and
puffed cigar-smoke into his face.
“I’m Sumecta,” he said. “And you’ve got no London police force here. You
can’t order the horrid man away. Your sister’s going to Mr. Holy B, and
nothing that you can do can stop us. You won’t see your sister again,
because the Chief wants her. The Chief wants her.”
Another man appeared behind Sumecta: he was a little elderly man with an
inflamed face and a dirty rag about his neck, covering a boil.
“Don’t try to stop your sister going,” he said, “or you’ll line an
elmwood shell with name engraved. We’ll just tample his dags, Sumecta,
and then frolly the dusty.”
They emptied the cigarette-box and took a drink or two. The little man
began to sing a song:
“Travelling with the lady,
You’d best pull down the blind,
Make it cosy and shady . . .”
He came round the table close to Hilary and danced a little breakdown,
with two of Hilary’s cigarettes in his mouth. “O I’m a lady, a Hottentot
lady,” he sang. “One-time-piecee lubly gal, O.”
“I’ll singe my college pal’s lips,” Sumecta said. “Baillon de cigare
chaud.” He straddled down over Hilary, sucked his cigar to a glow and
prepared to burn his victim’s lips.
“Cut that out, Sumecta,” Mr. Brown said, at the window. “Come on here,
the two of you. The train’s just going.” Mr. Brown’s beard was sticking
out of his pocket, but his white eyebrows were still in place.
The two men followed Mr. Brown through the window, which they closed
behind them. Mr. Brown opened it again an instant later, to take a last
look round the room. Mr. Brown seemed to have no further interest in
Hilary, he neither spoke to him nor looked at him. Hilary to him had
been simply something to shove aside and leave. After they had gone,
Hilary heard footsteps and voices; presently the light went out; he was
alone in the dark. A bat flew about the room after insects; presently it
knocked down a tumbler which dripped water on to the floor for a long,
long time.
Tio Ramón and his wife did not see the miraculous appearance again,
though they waited in the clearing, near the stone, till after eleven.
They then walked to Las Palomas, and heard a midnight office at a
monastery, then stayed on praying in side-chapels of the church till
after dawn. After some more prayer and the offering of all that was
precious in their apparel to the image in a side-chapel, they walked and
partly danced to Los Xicales. They did not enter the house even then,
for they had to compare notes with Lotta at the lodge.
At eight in the stormy morning, they found Hilary lying in a chair in
the sitting-room, in pain and fever. In the wild weather Tio Ramón
summoned Paco, who summoned Enrique, who sent Lotta to find Miguel, who
shook his head, and thought it better to call Enobbio. Enobbio was an
elderly Italian with a clear wit; he at once rode in to Las Palomas and
called a doctor and Colonel Mackenzie. By midday Los Xicales was
thronged by detectives, who looked mysterious and took a lot of
measurements and shook their heads. Their Indian trackers said that
there were seven men concerned in the raid and that two were “little
Indians”; that five, including the Indians, had come from the beach,
while the other two had driven from the north, in a buggy, which had
waited at the gate for some time.
After the raid (the trackers said) the men had carried Margarita to this
buggy and had driven her away. Lotta, Lotta’s children, Ramón and
Eusebia, all admitted that they had seen the buggy go past, full of men,
and that they had heard a woman among them crying for help, but they had
not known that it was more than a joke. They had not noticed where the
buggy went after it passed them; but this the trackers explained. It
drove out of the forest by the city road, turned to the left, and
crossed the savannah to the beach. Near the beach it stopped, five of
the men carried Margarita to the water; there, presumably, they found a
boat and put to sea. The two men remaining in the buggy drove off to Las
Palomas, where all trace of them disappeared.
The rain was heavy before noon: the tracks were rained out.
No further trace or track was found. No more evidence was forthcoming.
Enobbio had seen a stranger looking for a lost bicycle; but this
stranger was proven to have been Sard Harker, mate of the _Pathfinder_,
which had now sailed. Acting on Enobbio’s evidence, the police recovered
Richard Shullocker’s bicycle, but found no trace of Margarita. Hilary’s
story of the events was not very clear. He could repeat only what he
could remember of Sard’s story, which he had not much wished to hear,
and of Abner Brown’s story, which had not told him much. He maintained
that the abductors were mixed up with Santa Barbara and with the boxing
hall, the Circo Romano.
Ben Hordano was questioned, but his movements on the night of the raid
were well known: he had been drunk by six, disorderly by seven, and in
jail by eight. One curious thing, which none could explain, was how the
man Abner Brown knew that Richard Shullocker had warned Colonel
Mackenzie of an intended raid at Los Xicales. The warning had been given
privately, in person: no one could possibly have overheard it. Paco and
his son Enrique denied having had any dealings (horse-hire or other)
with anyone outside their hamlet. This denial was backed by sufficient
proof.
Colonel Mackenzie, acting on Richard’s warning, had sent two patrols to
Los Xicales during the night of the raid, but as one had gone at
midnight and the other at four in the morning, and both had shrunk from
the weather, neither had seen anything suspicious.
In those days there was no direct cable to Santa Barbara. A message
thither had to be cabled to the Florida station, thence to Punto
Poniente, thence to Tres Dientes, and thence on. The Santa Barbara
police declared that they knew of no one known as Mr. B. or Sagrado B.,
and that if the raid had been carried out by one of the liquor gangs,
which seemed possible, those liquor gangs were composed of Occidentales,
not of men from the State of Santa Barbara.
Hilary had been wounded in the wall of the chest by an American revolver
bullet. He was in bed with his wound for thirteen days. On the
fourteenth day he heard the final reports of the police, that they did
not know where his sister was, and that they had no clue whatsoever to
her abductors. The story had by this time reached the American and
English newspapers. A question was asked in Parliament, whether it were
true that an Englishwoman had been abducted by brigands in Las Palomas,
and whether Her Majesty’s Ministers were making such representations,
etc., etc., as would, etc. The Ministers replied that they had heard the
report, and that they had every confidence in Her Majesty’s
representatives on the spot and in the police of Las Palomas.
Colonel Mackenzie, who was newly in charge of that police, had less
confidence. He told Hilary privately that many in the Occidental police
force were bribed by the liquor gangs, and that in this case they were
determined not to help. Hilary asked whether it would be any use to look
for Margarita in Santa Barbara. “Do you yourself think that she will be
there?” he asked.
“No, I don’t, Mr. Kingsborough.”
“Well,” Hilary said, “we know that the raiders were not Occidentales,
and that they took her away by sea. The men at the boxing-match said
that the raid was planned by a Santa Barbara leader, who had some grudge
against us. My sister said that there was one man with a grudge against
her. Why should not an international ruffian of that sort, speaking all
tongues, establish himself at Santa Barbara, work with the
liquor-smugglers, and use his gangs to gratify his grudge when he heard
of our presence here?”
“That is a theory, Mr. Kingsborough; but remember, that it is very
unlikely that members of a gang would talk in public of their gang’s
headquarters without any disguise whatsoever. If they spoke of Santa
Barbara, be sure that they meant some other place. Santa Barbara is a
big place, however, with seven hundred miles of coast. However, I had a
flimsy from Santa Barbara this morning; here it is.”
“Quite impossible Kingsborough lady landed here during past fortnight.
Paris Surete report the magician Hirsch committed suicide Monte Carlo,
1894.”
“Good God! then, what do you suppose?”
“That we may put aside this Santa Barbara theory as untenable. Let us
waste no further time on it.”
“What other theory have you? Who would have taken my sister? What motive
could anyone have?”
“I do not know who took your sister, Mr. Kingsborough, but I am working
and hoping to find out. The motive is obvious to anyone who has had the
honour to see your sister: she is a very beautiful woman. That was the
motive, as I read the case.”
“And where do you suppose she is?”
“I hope to find out and restore her.”
“You mean that she has been shipped to some damned tolerated house?”
“Mr. Kingsborough, it is no good thinking thoughts like those: that way
madness lies. I believe that we shall find your sister wherever she may
be.”
“Well,” Hilary said, “I believe that she is in Santa Barbara, in spite
of all your beliefs, and I shall go there to look for her. At least, if
I go there, I shall be following the only clue there is. And I shall see
that mate of the _Pathfinder_ and get descriptions from him of those men
at the boxing-match.”
“Unfortunately, Mr. Kingsborough, the _Pathfinder_ has not yet arrived
at Santa Barbara.”
“What; not in a fortnight, running dead to leeward?”
“No.”
“She’s overdue?”
“No, not yet; but making a bad passage.”
“Has she been met with?”
“No. She has not been reported.”
“Is there a single thing in this,” Hilary cried, “which doesn’t go dead,
dead against us? I’ll see whether the Dictator of Santa Barbara is as
helpless as a bribed bureaucracy.”
He was unjust to Colonel Mackenzie, but then he was young, very fond of
Margarita, shaken by his wound, and new to reality of any kind.
Colonel Mackenzie was sorry for him, but sorrier for a very lovely woman
in the hands of ruffians.
* * * * *
PART THREE
When Sard found that his bicycle was gone, he thought that the
lodge-keepers had taken it within the lodge. He knocked at the lodge
door to ask; getting no answer, he looked within: the lodge was empty,
the bicycle was not there.
It was dim in that track through the forest: Sard struck a match to see
what marks were on the ground. The earth was still moist from the rains.
Two or three matches showed him that someone with long feet had taken
two strides out of the road, wheeled the bicycle into the road and had
then ridden away upon it. The tyre tracks were firmly printed on the
road; the thief was no doubt heavy as well as tall.
Sard had never been heard to swear, either on deck or aloft; he did not
swear now. He thought, “I am well paid, for leaving it out of my sight
in a place like this. But he cannot be more than five minutes ahead of
me, and may be only a minute. If I run, I may catch him.”
He took two more matches, carefully examined the tracks and made sure,
mainly from the length of the feet, that the thief was a tall negro,
wearing boots which needed soling, and that he was riding, not very
fast, into the forest, away from Las Palomas. “I’ll catch him,” he said,
“but I’ll have to be quick.”
He set off at a slow lope along the forest road, thinking that when he
reached Enobbio’s, if he had not caught the thief, he would have to hire
a horse, and gallop back to his duty. “I’m running it very close,” he
said, “but I’ll do it yet. If the worst comes to the worst, the
police-boat would run me on board, even if she’s out as far as the
Rip-Raps. I’ve got half an hour of possible time; if I ride by the
beach, thirty-five minutes.”
He stopped at the bridge to have another look at the tracks: they were
still there, leading on towards Enobbio’s; so he set off again, at a
quicker pace, through the forest, which was evil all about him all the
time. He made good way to the clearing, which shone from the forge fire.
A lamp was lit in the inn. Enobbio sat with his wife at a table there,
eating frijoles from earthen platters and drinking wine and water from
cups of horn. Sard hailed them at the door:
“Good-evening, señora and señor. May I intrude upon your peace to ask:
Have you seen anyone ride by on a bicycle?”
“Yes, señor,” Enobbio’s wife said, “a negro rode by two minutes past.”
“It was more than two minutes, my heart,” Enobbio said, “for to my mind
it cannot have been since we sat down to supper.”
“Desire of my eyes,” his wife said, “it was when you went to the forge
for the bread. When I say two minutes, I do not tie myself to a second,
but to two minutes, which the world knows to be a space of time. It was
a space of time since the negro rode past. I am not one, as it is well
known, like these giglots and inglesas and ayankiadas, whom one sees in
Las Palomas, may the Lord have vengeance on them, shameless as they are,
even as Jezebel, always painting and purple-powdering and making their
eyes to shine with poison; I am not one, I say, like these, to spend my
time in noticing each male who passes and in endeavouring to ensnare his
soul. No, my heart’s affection, Enobbio mio, when a male passes, I thank
God that God has created women differently, in such a way that they can
regard such passing with indifference. Therefore, when a negro passes or
when a white man passes, be he an Emperor of Rome or decked even as a
pumper in the fire-brigade, I can control myself, I can think calmly,
even as St. Lawrence upon the gridiron, of other things. Therefore, when
this negro who so suddenly excites your jealousy, rode past, I did not
hasten to the clock of San Agostino, nor yet to my confessor, nor to the
Four Liars of Las Palomas, where four clocks together tell each a
different time to a different road, to make sure of the precise instant
at which he passed. For to me, as one more dowered with knowledge would
have known, a negro is but a negro and a passing a passing.”
“This, O affection of my life,” Enobbio said, “no man dare question.
But, señor, permit us to request you to eat and drink, reclining at your
ease upon this chair, so that you may enquire concerning this negro more
as becomes you.”
“Thank you, indeed,” Sard said, “would that I might; but I am pressed
both by spur and quirt, and cannot stay. May I ask the señora whether
she noticed in which direction the negro rode, when it fortuned that he
had the honour to pass her?”
“In which direction, joy of my hearth,” Enobbio asked, “did this negro
proceed?”
“Sun of my worldly life,” his wife replied, “it is said that, at the
allotting of talents, the Padre Eterno gave to woman such talents as man
would not sensibly feel the need of. Even as, in equipping her with
flesh, He allotted to her that rib which man could not use and has not
missed, so in endowing her with mental faculties, which some call reason
and others soul, He chose those qualities of acuteness which man, though
made loutish by their lack, could not, when he had them, use. Thus it
comes about that the wife blushes for her husband in conversation before
strangers. For, behold, had not the Padre Eterno deprived you of such
acuteness, you would have perceived that sitting as I have been sitting,
facing the open door, which we have not yet to keep closed (as is our
custom, señor, later in the season, on account of the flies) I could
indeed perceive the approach of the negro upon the bicycle, coming from
the forest towards me, but not without showing indecent curiosity could
I tell into which direction he proceeded; nor, as I have said, should I,
in any case, have observed, since as it is well known, a road is as a
brook, in which one regards what passes, but not what is past.”
“Señor,” Enobbio said, “beyond the forge there are three ways; to the
sea, to the north and to the mines. The negro must have ridden on one of
these. Let us examine the tracks, since there is light enough. Is it
possible that you should desire to stay this negro?”
“He has stolen the bicycle, which I need.”
“Let us, then, be swift,” Enobbio said.
The tracks at the road-meet led away to the left, into the forest.
“You see,” Enobbio said, “it goes there, this wheel-track, to the
direction of the mines. You see, Camilla mia, this thief will be one of
the negroes of Los Jardinillos.”
“They are indeed a thievish company,” Camilla said. “But if the señor be
swift, he will confound the thief in the moment of his exultation.”
“How far is it to Los Jardinillos?” Sard asked.
“It cannot take long if taken swiftly,” Camilla said.
“My love,” Enobbio said, “it is the half of a league, or two kilometres.
It would take the señor twenty minutes or more, only to the clearing.”
“It may well be, my earthly consolation,” Camilla said, “that if the
señor should walk, or indeed trot, to Los Jardinillos, his progress
would not be swifter than a walk or trot. But as my remark suggested,
comrade of my earthly trial, if the señor should proceed swiftly, his
arrival would be likewise swift.”
“Can you lend me a bicycle or horse,” Sard asked, “so that I can go in
chase?”
“Alas, we have neither.”
“Is there anyone here who might lend either?”
“There is no one here with horse or bicycle. I have, by the blessing of
God, a small ass; but God has afflicted him with worms, doubtless lest I
should become proud.”
“Are there many negroes in Los Jardinillos?”
“There are fifty, señor, and no whites. Doubtless you know him who has
taken your bicycle.”
“I do not,” Sard said: “I am following so that I may know him.”
Enobbio did not answer this. Sard noticed that the husband and wife
looked at each other, with a look as though the bottom had fallen out of
their comprehension.
“Assuredly,” Enobbio said at last.
“Assuredly,” Camilla answered. They looked at each other again. As in a
Latin exercise, Sard was conscious of a good many words “understood.”
“Assuredly,” Enobbio said at last, in a different tone, “the señor will
carry weapons?”
“I am a sailor,” Sard answered. “A sailor has always ten weapons and a
knife.”
He saw in a flash that he had no chance of retaking the bicycle that
night by himself.
“I am a sailor,” he continued. “The bicycle was to take me to the quay,
where I must be in all speed. Has anyone here a cart or conveyance to
take me there, for money paid, or had I better run?”
“Paco has a horse, which is in Las Palomas this day,” Enobbio said. “His
son, Enrique, has a mule.”
“Enrique is indeed by God’s mercy the owner of a mule,” Camilla said,
“but on this day he is with the mule, packing stores to the railway
siding for the miners.”
“A railway siding,” Sard said. “They might run me to Las Palomas in a
truck.”
“The rail does not run to Las Palomas, señor. It runs from the mines of
Tloatlucan to the seashore here, where barges come for the copper.”
“Then I had better run,” Sard said.
“Run,” Enobbio said, “run to Las Palomas?”
“Yes.”
“It is a league and a half.”
“Even so. I must be on board my ship within half an hour.”
“But you could not run more than a league. Stay, señor, let me consult
my wife. Tell me, my heart, is not Miguel stabling horses each night in
the old huts near the salt-pans?”
“Who knows what Miguel does? His doings, being modernist, do not concern
us, but rather stir our horror.”
“It is true, my life, that Miguel errs in mind, but not, my delight, in
heart. In his heart he may be the instrument of good. Listen, señor. In
less than one kilometre north-east from this are salt-pans near the
beach, with huts. Run thither by this track to the right. It is likely
that at this time you will find Miguel there with the horses of his
occupation. He, for money if not for love, will lend you a horse and
ride with you, so that he may lead it back. Say that I, Enobbio, sent
you, knowing the goodness of his nature. Thus will you reach your ship
in time, and in no other way can you do this.”
“You say that it is only _likely_ that he will be there.”
“He will be there, señor,” Camilla said; “he is always there at this
hour with his horses: never does he fail.”