Part 9

In a way General Herran felt responsible for the safety of the man with whom he had been traveling, the more so that this man was a foreigner, belonging to a nation whose citizens were not welcome just then in Colombia. Had David been other than an American, Herran would have taken his disappearance, puzzling though it was, with the cheerful indifference peculiar to him. But the fact that he was an American, alone in a hostile country, appealed to a chivalrous strain in his nature, urging him to do the best he could for his rescue. Unfortunately, the solving of the simplest of problems was not in the General's line, and he painfully turned the matter over and over without result, one way or the other. David, he told himself, had forced his way through the ranks of the volunteers without attracting attention. He felt sure of this because he had watched his ascent of the trail for a good part of the way. Hence, he could not be with the volunteers now. Only a few of the latter were mounted, and these marched in the front ranks where they had been carefully noted by Herran. If David had remained in the rear ranks of the regiment, voluntarily or as a captive, his horse would have made him conspicuous. Of course, during the commotion following the accident to Pedro and his burro almost anything might have happened; David might have been captured, bound and gagged, his horse taken away and he himself hidden by the peons who held him prisoner in the hope of future ransom. But this was all too bewildering, too complex for Herran seriously to consider. Instead, he convinced himself that David had escaped the volunteers, that he was no longer behind him on the trail, that he must therefore be in front, and that to find him there was only one thing to do--push forward as fast as possible.

Acting on this, General Herran rode without stopping until nightfall, reaching just after dusk--dusk comes swiftly enough in the tropics--one of the primitive little hostelries kept for the accommodation of travelers to and from Bogota. Here, as is usual in such places, there was a large number of guests intending to spend the night. This posada, or inn, was a one-storied, rambling affair consisting of three rooms and a verandah sheltered by the overhanging eaves of a thatched roof. All the rooms were filled with people, most of them lying on mats spread on the floor; the verandah was similarly occupied. In the dim light from smoky lanterns it was difficult to tell who these people were. Herran, confident that David was among them, appealed to the proprietor, a stolid looking peon, for information.

"You have a Yankee here, Senor?"

"No, Senor."

"A Yankee came to-day from Honda?"

"No, Senor."

"He was riding alone to Bogota?"

"No, Senor."

"A young man on a bay horse?"

"No, Senor."

"Is there a foreigner here?"

"No, Senor."

"A foreigner passed here to-day on a bay horse?"

"No, Senor."

"Caramba, hombre! Have you ever seen a foreigner here?"

"No--yes, Senor."

"To-day?"

"No, Senor."

Exasperated by what he considered the stupidity of the landlord, Herran addressed, in a loud voice, the various guests who were preparing to pass the night on such improvised beds as they could get for themselves.

"Senores, I am looking for a young man, a foreigner, a Yankee, who is riding to Bogota on a bay horse. He must be here. Have you seen him?"

There was a confused murmur. A number of the men sat up on their mats and repeated energetically the landlord's negative. Others grumblingly denounced all Yankees as robbers and disturbers of the country's peace. One young man, dressed in the uniform of an army officer, recognizing Herran's rank, politely offered to share his mat with him, suggesting, at the same time, that he could pursue his search to much better advantage in the morning. As further inquiries brought out nothing new, Herran accepted this officer's hospitality, wearily resigning himself to the conclusion that David had been mysteriously spirited away, and was about to be shot by a lot of insane peons, led on by the ridiculous Pedro. So it seemed to him as he sank into a nightmare-ridden sleep.

Morning failed to bring the expected solution of the General's difficulties. In the bedlam created by burros, horses, travelers--all trying to make their departure from the inn at the same early hour, and all finding their plans delayed by some fault in harness, mislaying of baggage, or other inconvenience peculiar to a four-footed conveyance--there was no sign of the missing David. A number of native merchants on their way from Bogota to the coast, who had lodged at the inn during the night, recognized Herran, and although their greetings were cordial, the oldtime friendliness was tempered by the uncertainty with which the average Colombian viewed this unfortunate officer's part in the so-called Panama revolution. As news of his presence spread among the departing guests, General Herran felt the restraint as well as the disagreeable curiosity with which he was regarded. This made his search for David more difficult. Under the circumstances it was not easy to explain why he, of all men, was traveling with an American; hence, he was forced to speak with more reserve than he would have liked of the young man's disappearance.

As a result of the little that he learned, he was convinced that David 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."