CHAPTER XXIII.

WARNED.

Blue as the deepest gleam within the sapphire's depth were the heavens; bright as molten gold were the sun's rays the next morning when the storm was past--leaving, however, in its track some marks of its passage. For the flowers in the gardens round the house were beaten down now with the weight of water that had fallen on them; beneath the oleanders and the flamboyants, the allamandas and ixoras, the blossoms strewed the pampas grass in masses; while many crabs--which wander up from the seacoast in search of succulent plants whereon to feed--lay dead near the roots of the bushes and shrubs.

Yet a day's scorching sun, to be followed perhaps by an entire absence of further rain for a month, would soon cause fresh masses of bloom to take the place of those which were destroyed, especially as now they had received the moisture so necessary to their existence. And Julian, standing on his balcony and wondering who that strange nocturnal visitor was who had fled on to this very balcony a few hours before, thought that during his stay in this mysterious place he had never seen its surroundings look so fair.

Whether it was that he had received considerable benefit from the quinine which he had taken overnight, or whether it was from the total change of clothing which he had now assumed in place of the garments he had worn up to now, or perhaps from his not having lain through the night upon the bed which, particularly of late, had seemed so malodorous, he felt very much better this morning. His brain no longer appeared numbed nor his mind hazy, nor had he any headache.

"Which," he said to himself, "is a mighty good thing. For now I want all my wits about me. This affair has got to be brought to a conclusion somehow, and Julian Ritherdon is the man to do it. Only," he said, with now a smile on his face--"only, no more of the simple trusting individual you have been, my friend--if you ever have been such! Instead of suspecting Master Sebastian of being in the wrong box you have got to prove him so, and instead of suspecting him to be a--well! say a gentleman who hasn't got much regard for you, you have got to get to windward of him. Now go full speed ahead, my son."

Whereon, to commence the process of getting to windward of Sebastian and also of carrying out the movement known in his profession as going "full speed ahead," he informed the nigger who brought him his shaving-water that he felt very poorly indeed, and would, with Sebastian's permission, remain in his room that day.

"Because," he said to himself, "I think it would be as well if I kept a kind of watch upon this tastefully furnished apartment. Like all the rest of this house, it is becoming what the conjurers call 'a home of mystery,' and is consequently getting more and more interesting. And there are only the 'four clear days' left wherein the mystery can be solved--if ever."

A few moments after he had made these reflections he heard a tap at his bedroom door, and on bidding the person who was outside to come in, Sebastian made his appearance, there being on his face a look of regret at the information which he said the negro had just conveyed to him.

"I say, old fellow, this is bad news. It won't do at all. Not at all. What is the matter with you?" he exclaimed in his usual bluff, hearty way.

"A touch of fever, I'm afraid," Julian replied. "Not much, I fancy, but still worth being careful about. I'll keep my room to-day if you don't mind."

"Mind!" Sebastian exclaimed. "Mind; why, my dear Julian, that's the very best thing you can do, the very thing you ought to do. And I'll send you something appetizing by Zara. Let me see. They have brought in this morning some of that mountain mullet you liked so much; that will do first-rate for breakfast with some Guava jelly. How will that suit?"

"Nothing could be better. Those mountain mullet are superb. You are very good."

"Oh! that's nothing. And, look here, I have brought you a little phial of our physic-nut oil, which the natives say will cure anything, and almost bring a dead man back to life. Take three or four drops of that, my boy, in your coffee, and you'll feel a new man," whereon he drew a little phial from his pocket and stood it on the table. Then, after a few more sympathetic remarks he prepared to depart, saying he would have the breakfast prepared and sent up by Zara at once.

"I was glad," Julian said casually, as Sebastian approached the door, "to hear you wishing Madame Carmaux good-night, last night. I didn't know she was well enough to get downstairs yet."

"Oh! yes," the other replied in a more or less careless tone, "she came down to supper last night and sat up late with me. I was glad of her company, you know. So you heard us, eh? Did you hear us singing, too? We got quite inspirited over her return to health. If you'd only been down, my boy, we would have had a rollicking time of it."

"Never mind," said Julian, "better luck next time. You wait till I do come down and we'll have a regular chorus. When I give you some of my wardroom songs, you'll be surprised."

"Right," said Sebastian, with a laugh; "the sooner the better," whereon he took himself off.

"I didn't hear the silvery tones of Madame Carmaux, all the same," Julian thought to himself after the other was gone, "neither do I remember that I heard her return his 'good-night.' However, Sebastian's own tones are somewhat stentorian when he lets himself go, or as our Irish doctor used to say of the bo'sun's, 'enough to split a pitcher,' so I suppose that isn't very strange."

He took down his jacket now, and indeed the whole of his white drill suit which he had discarded for an exactly similar one that he had in his large Gladstone bag, and began to roll it up preparatory to packing it away. Though, as he did so, he again perceived the horrible f[oe]tid odour which it had emitted overnight--the same odour that had also been so perceptible when he had laid his head upon the pillow. The revolting smell that had driven him from the bed to seek repose on that sofa.

"Faugh!" he exclaimed, "it is loathsome. Even now, with the room full of the fresh morning air, I feel as if I were getting giddy and bemused again." Whereon, and while uttering some remarks that were by no means complimentary to Honduras and some of its perfumes, he began rolling the clothes up as quickly as he could. Yet while he did so, being now engaged with the jacket, his eye was attracted by the lapel of the collar, the white surface of which was discoloured--though only in the faintest degree discoloured--a yellowish, grey colour. Each lapel, down to where the topmost button was! Then, after a close inspection of the jacket all over, he perceived that nowhere else was it similarly stained.

His curiosity becoming excited by this, since in no way could he account for such a thing (he distinctly remembered that there had been no stain, however faint, on the lapel before), he regarded the waistcoat next; and there, on the small lapel of that--both left and right--were the same marks.

"Strange," he muttered, "strange. Very strange. One might say that the washerwoman had spilt something on coat and waistcoat--purposely. Something, too, that smells uncommonly nasty."

For, by inspection, or rather test with his nostrils, he was easily able to perceive that no other part of his discarded clothing emitted any such disagreeable odour. While, too, as he applied his nose again and again to the faint stains, he also perceived that in his brain there came once more the giddiness and haziness from which he had suffered so much last night--as well as the feeling of stupid density amounting almost to dreaminess or delirium.

"If that stuff was under my nose all day long yesterday, and perhaps for a week or so before," he reflected, "I don't wonder that at last I became almost wandering in my mind, as well as stupefied." Then, a thought striking him, he went over to the pillow on the bed and gazed down on it. And there, upon it, on either side, was the same stain--faint, yellow, and emitting the same acrid, loathsome odour.

"So, so," he said to himself, "I begin to understand. I begin to understand very well, and to comprehend Sebastian's chemical experiments. The woman who washed my jacket and waistcoat in England is not the same woman who washed that pillow-case in British Honduras. Yet the same stain and the same odour are on both. All right! A good deal may happen in the next four days."

Then, as he thus meditated, he opened the little phial of physic-nut oil, which Sebastian had thoughtfully brought him and left behind with injunctions that he should take three or four drops of it in his coffee, and smelt it. After which he said, "Certainly, I won't fail to do so. All right, Sebastian, it's full speed ahead now!"

A little later, Zara arrived bearing in her hands a large tray on which were all the necessaries for a breakfast that would have satisfied a hungry man, let alone an "invalid." There were, of course, innumerable other servants about this vast house, but Zara always seemed to perform the principal duties of waiting upon those who constituted the superiors, and in many cases to issue orders to the others, in much such a way as a butler in England issues orders to his underlings.

Now, having deposited the tray upon the table, which she cleared for the purpose, she uncovered the largest dish and submitted to Julian's gaze a good-sized trout reposing in it and looking extremely appetizing.

"But," said Julian, as he regarded the fish, "that isn't what Sebastian promised me. He said he would send one of those delicious mountain mullet we had the other night."

For a moment the half-caste girl's lustrous eyes dwelt almost meditatively, as it seemed, on him; then she said, "There are none. The men have not caught any for a long time."

"But Mr. Ritherdon said there were. That the men----"

"He was wrong," she interrupted, her eyes roaming all round the room, while it seemed almost to Julian as though, particularly, they sought the spot where the pillow was. "He was wrong. You eat that," looking at the dish. "That will do you no--will do you good."

And it appeared to Julian, now thoroughly on the _qui vive_ as to everything that went on around him as well as to every word that was uttered, as though she emphasized the word "that."

"I'm glad to hear Madame Carmaux is so much better," he said, conversationally, as she finished arranging the breakfast before him and poured out his coffee. "They were pretty gay below last night."

"Below last night," she repeated, her eyes full on him. "Below last night. Were they? Did you hear her below last night?"

"Didn't you?"

"I was not there," she answered; "I was nursing a sick woman in the plantation."

"Oh! You didn't pass your evening on the balcony, then, as you have sometimes done?"

"No," she said, and still her eyes gazed so intently into his that he wondered what was going on in her mind.

"No." Then, suddenly, she asked, "When are you going away?"

"That is not polite, Zara. One never asks a guest----"

"Why," she interrupted, speaking almost savagely and showing her small white teeth, as though with an access of sudden temper--"why do you turn everything into a--a--_chanza_--a joke. Are you a fo--a madman?"

"Really, Zara!" Then, seeing that the girl was contending with some inward turbulence of spirit which seemed almost likely to end in an outbreak, Julian said quietly, seriously, "No, Zara, I am neither a fool nor a madman. Look here, I believe you are a good, honest, straightforward girl. Therefore, I will be plain with you. I have told Mr. Ritherdon that I am going on Monday. In four days----"

"Go at once!" she interrupted again. "At once. Get news from Belize, somehow, that calls you away. Leave Desolada. Begone!" she continued in her quaint, stilted English, which she spoke well enough except when obliged to use either a Spanish or Carib word. "Begone!" And as she said this it seemed almost to Julian that, with those dark gleaming eyes of hers, she was endeavouring to convey some intelligence to him which she would not put into words.

"That," he said, referring to her last sentence, "is what I am thinking about doing. Only, even then, I shall not have done with Desolada and its inhabitants. There is more for me to do yet, Zara."