Chapter 11

He closed his eyes, and the girl sat studying his face in the dim light, graving it deep on her inner vision, seeking to formulate some conception of the strange being so still and placid before her. How had she ever thought him ridiculous and uncouth? How had she ever dared to insult him by distrust? What did it matter what other men, estimating him by their own sordid standards, said of him? As if her thought had established a connection with his, he opened his eyes and sat up.

“I knew there was something I wanted to ask you,” he said. “What did your ‘Never, never, never’ mean?”

“A foolish misunderstanding that I’m ashamed of.”

“Was it that—that woman-gossip business?”

“Yes. I was stupid. Will you forgive me?”

“What is there to forgive? Some time, perhaps, you’ll understand the whole thing.”

“Please don’t let’s say anything more about it. I _do_ understand.”

This was not quite true. All that Polly Brewster knew was that, with those clear gray eyes meeting hers, she would have believed his honor clean and high against the world. The presence of the woman, even that dress fluttering in the wind, was susceptible of a hundred simple explanations.

“Ah, that’s all right, then.” There was relief in his tone. “Of course, in a place like this there is a lot of gossip and criticism. And when one runs counter to the general law—”

“Counter to the law?”

“Yes. As a rule, I’m not ‘beyond the pale of law,’” he said, smiling. “But down here one isn’t bound by the same conventions as at home.”

The girl’s hand went to her throat in a piteous gesture.

“I—I—don’t understand. I don’t want to understand.”

“There’s got to be a certain broad-mindedness in these matters,” he blundered on, with what seemed to her outraged senses an abominable jauntiness. “But the risk was small for me, and, of course, for her, anything was better than the other life. At that, I don’t see how the truth reached you. What is it, Miss Polly?”

Rage, grief, and shame choked the girl’s utterance.

Without a word, she ran from the room, leaving her companion a prey to troubled wonder.

In the _patio_, she turned sharply to avoid a group gathered around Galpy, who, with a patch over one eye, was trying to impart some news between gasps.

“Got it from the bulletin board of _La Liberdad_,” he cried. “Killed; body gone; devil to pay all over the place.”

“What’s that?” demanded the Unspeakable Perk, running out, coatless and goggleless.

“There’s been another riot, and Dr. Luther Pruyn is killed,” explained Sherwen.

“Who says so?”

“Bulletin board—_La Liberdad_—just saw it,” panted Galpy.

“Nonsense! It’s a _bola_.”

“The whole city is ringing with it. They say it was a plot to get him out of the way to stop quarantine. The Foreign Office is buzzing with inquiries, and Puerto del Norte is burning up the wires.”

“Puerto del Norte! How did they hear?”

“Telephone, of course. I hear Wisner is coming up,” said Sherwen.

“I’ve got to get a wire to the port at once,” cried the scientist. “At once!”

“You! What for?”

“To stop off Wisner. To tell him it isn’t so.”

“You’re excited, my boy,” said Mr. Brewster kindly. “Better lie down again.”

“It’s true, right enough,” said the Englishman. “Sir Willet’s _cochero_ saw the mob get him.”

“When? Where?” asked Fitzhugh Carroll.

“Haven’t got any details, but the Government admits it.”

“I don’t care if the President and his whole cabinet swear to it,” vociferated the Unspeakable Perk. “It’s a fake. How can I get Puerto del Norte, Mr. Sherwen?”

“You can’t get it at all for any such purpose. How do you know it’s a fake?”

“How do I know? Oh, dammit! _I’m_ Luther Pruyn!”

He snatched off his glasses and faced them.

The little group stood petrified. Mr. Brewster was first to recover.

“Crazy, poor chap!” he said. “Luther Pruyn was my classmate.”

“That’s my father, Luther L.”

“Proofs,” said Sherwen sharply.

“In my coat pocket. In the room. Can I have your wire, Mr. Sherwen?”

“It’s cut.”

“Come to the railway wire,” offered Galpy. “My eye! Wot a game!”

The two men ran out, the scientist leaving behind coat and goggles.

“It was our little mix-up that started the rumor,” said Carroll thoughtfully. “Somebody recognized Perk—Dr. Pruyn.”

“When his glasses fell off,” said CLuff. “They’re some disguise.”

“He’s Luther Pruyn, sure enough!” said Mr. Sherwen, emerging from the room. “Here’s the proof.” He held out an official-looking document. “An order from the Dutch Naval Office, made out in his name.”

“What does it say?” asked Carroll.

“I’m not much of a hand at Dutch, but it seems to direct the blockading warship to receive Dr. Luther Pruyn and wife and convey them to Curaçao.”

“And wife!” exclaimed Cluff loudly. He whistled as a vent to his amazement. “That explains all the talk about a woman—a lady in his _quinta_ on the mountains?”

“Apparently,” said Carroll. “May I see that document, Mr. Sherwen?”

The American representative handed him the paper. As he was studying it, Galpy reentered, still scant of breath from excitement and haste. “He’s gone back to the mountains,” he announced. “Sent word for you to get to the port before dawn, if you have to walk. See Mr. Wisner there. He’ll arrange everything.”

“Will Mr. Perk—Dr. Pruyn be there?” asked Mr. Brewster.

“He didn’t say.”

“But he’s gone without his coat!”

“And goggles,” said Cluff.

“And his pass,” added Sherwen.

“Trust him to come back for them when he gets ready. He’s a rum josser for doing things his own way. Now, about the train.” And Galpy outlined the plan of departure to the men, who, except Carroll, had gathered about him. The Southerner, unnoticed, had slipped into the room where the scientist’s coat lay. Coming out by the lower door, he was intercepted by Miss Polly Brewster. He interpreted the misery in her face, and turned sick at heart with the pain of what it told him.

“You heard?” he asked.

She nodded. “Is it true? Did you see the permit yourself?”

“Yes. Here it is.”

“I don’t want to see it. It doesn’t matter,” she said, with utter weariness in her voice. “When do we leave? I want to go home. Send father to me, please, Fitz.”

Mr. Brewster came to her, bearing the news that the sailing was set for the morrow.

“I’m glad to know that Dr. and Mrs. Pruyn are provided for,” she remarked, so casually that the troubled father drew a breath of relief, concluding that he must have misinterpreted the girl’s interest in the man behind the goggles.

On his way to the _patio_, he passed through the room where the scientist had lain. He came out looking perturbed.

“Has any one been in that room just now?” he asked Sherwen.

“Not that I’ve seen.”

“The coat and the other things are not there.”

Inquiry and search alike proved unavailing. Not until an hour later did they discover that Carroll had also disappeared. Sherwen found a note from him on the office desk:—

Please look after my luggage. Will join the others at the yacht to-morrow.

P. F. F. C.

XII. THE WOMAN AT THE QUINTA

Thanks to his rival’s map, Carroll had little difficulty in finding the trail to the mountain _quinta_. A brilliant new moon helped to make easy the ascent. What course he would pursue upon his arrival he had not clearly defined to himself. That would depend largely upon the attitude of the man he was seeking. The flame of battle, still hot from the afternoon’s melee, burned high in the Southerner’s soul, for he was not of those whose spirit rapidly cools. Bitter resentment on behalf of Miss Polly Brewster fanned that flame. On one point he was determined: neither he nor the so-called Perkins should leave the mountain until he had had from the latter’s own lips a full explanation.

Coming out into the open space, he got his first glimpse of the _quinta_. It was dark, except for one low light. From the farther side there came faintly to his ear a rhythmical sound, with brief intervals of quiet, as if some one hard at labor were stopping from time to time for breath. At that distance, Carroll could not interpret the sound, but some unidentified quality of it struck chill upon his fancy. Long experience in the woods had made him a good trailsman. He proceeded cautiously until he reached the edge of the clearing.

The sound had stopped now, but he thought he could hear heavy breathing from beyond the house. As he moved toward that side, a small but malevolent-looking snake slithered out from beneath a bush near by. Involuntarily he leaped aside. As he landed, a round pebble slipped under his foot. He flung up his arm. It met the low branch of a tree, and saved him a fall. But the thrashing of the leaves made a startling noise in the moonlit stillness. The snake went on about its business.

“Hola!” challenged a voice around the angle of the house.

Carroll recognized the voice. He stepped out of the shadows and strode across the open space. At the corner of the house he met the muzzle of a revolver pointing straight at the pit of his stomach. Back of it were the steady and now goggleless eyes of Luther Pruyn.

“I am unarmed,” said Carroll.

“Ah, it’s you!” said the other. He lowered his weapon, carefully whirled the cylinder to bring the hammer opposite an empty chamber, and dropped it in his pocket. “What do you want?”

“An explanation.”

“Quite so,” said the other coolly. “I’d forgotten that I invited you here. How long had you been watching me?”

“I saw you only when you came out from behind the house.”

“And you wish to know about—about my companion in this place?” continued the other in an odd tone.

“Yes.”

“Understand that I don’t admit that you have the smallest right. But to clear up a situation which no longer exists, I’m ready to satisfy you. Come in.”

He held open the door of the room where the lone light was burning. In the middle of the floor was spread a sheet, beneath which a form was outlined in grisly significance. Carroll’s host lifted the cover.

The woman was white-haired, frail, and wrinkled. One side of her face shone in the lamplight with a strange hue, like tarnished silver. In her throat was a small bluish wound; opposite it a gaping hole.

“Shot!” exclaimed Carroll. “Who did it?”

“Some high-minded Caracuñan patriot, I suppose.”

“Why?”

“Well, I suspect that it was a mistake. From a distance and inside a window, she might easily have been taken for some one else.”

Carroll’s mind reverted to his companion’s ready revolver.

“Yourself, for instance?” he suggested.

“Why, yes.”

“Who was she?”

There was left in the Southerner’s manner no trace of the cross-examiner. Suspicion had departed from him at the first sight of that old and still face, leaving only sympathy and pity.

“My patient.”

“Have you been running a private hospital up here?”

“Oh, no. I took her because there was no other place fit for her to go to. And I had to keep her presence secret, because there’s a law against harboring lepers here. A pretty cruel brute of a law it is, too.”

“Leprosy!” exclaimed Carroll, looking at that strange silvery face with a shudder. “Isn’t it fearfully contagious?”

“Not in any ordinary sense. I was trying a new serum on her, and had planned to smuggle her across to Curaçao, when this ended it.”

“Curaçao? Then that pass for yourself and wife—By the way, that and your coat are over in the thicket, where I dropped them.”

“Thank you. But it doesn’t say ‘wife.’ It says simply ‘a woman.’”

“And you were encumbering yourself with an unknown leper, at a time like this, just as an act of human kindness?” There was something almost reverential in Carroll’s voice.

“Scientific interest, in part. Besides, she wasn’t wholly unknown. She’s a sort of cousin of Raimonda’s.”

Carroll’s mind flew back to his fatally misinterpreted conversation with the young Caracuñan.

“What did he mean by letting me think that you shouldn’t associate with Miss Polly?”

“Oh, he had the usual erroneous dread of leprosy contagion, I suppose.”

“May I ask you another question, Mr. Per—I beg your pardon, Dr. Pruyn?” said the visitor, almost timidly.

“Perkins will do.” The other smiled wanly. “Ask me anything you want to.”

“Why did you run away that day on the tram-car?”

“To avoid trouble, of course.”

“You? Why, you go about searching for dangerous and difficult jobs. That won’t do!”

“Not at all. It’s only when I can’t get away from them. But I couldn’t risk arrest then. Some one would surely have recognized me as Luther Pruyn. You see, I’ve been here before.”

“Then I don’t see why they didn’t identify you, anyway.”

“Three years ago I was much heavier, and wore a full beard. Then these glasses, besides being invaluable for protection, are a pretty thorough disguise.”

“So they are. But the game is up now.”

“Yes.” The scientist drew the sheet back over the dead woman. “I suppose the sharp-shooters who did the job will report me safely out of the way. It’s only a question of when the burial party will come for me.”

“Then, why are we waiting?” cried Carroll.

“I couldn’t leave her lying here,” replied the other simply.

The sound of rhythmical labor came back to Carroll’s memory.

“You were digging her grave?”

The other nodded. Carroll, stiffly, for his knifed arm was painful, got out of his coat.

“Where’s an extra spade?” he asked.

When their labor was over, and the leper laid beneath the leveled soil, Carroll cut two branches from a near-by tree, trimmed them, bound them in the form of a cross, and fixed the symbol firmly in the earth at the dead woman’s head.

“That was well thought of,” said the scientist. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t have occurred to me.”

“You can get word to Senor Raimonda?” asked Carroll.

His host nodded. A long silence followed. Carroll broke it:—

“Then there is no further secrecy about this?”

“About what?”

“Her identity.” He pointed to the grave.

“No; I suppose not. Why?”

“Because Miss Brewster has a right to know.”

“Do you propose to tell her?”

“Yes.”

“Very well,” agreed the scientist, after a pause for consideration. “But not until after the yacht is at sea.”

Carroll did not reply directly to this.

“What shall you do?”

“Get out, if I can. I’m ordered to Curaçao. Wisner left word for me.”

“Come down the mountain with me.”

“Impossible. There are matters here to be attended to.”

“Then when will you come down?”

“Before you sail. I must be sure that you get off.”

“You’ll come to the yacht, then?”

“No.”

“I think you should. There are reasons why—why—Miss Brewster—”

“It isn’t a question that I can argue,” the other cut him off. “I can’t do it.” There was so much pain in his voice that Carroll forbore to press him. “But I’ll ask you to take a note.”

Carroll nodded, and his host, disappearing within the quinta, returned almost at once with an envelope on which the address was written in pencil. The Southerner took it and rose from the porch, where he had flung himself to rest.

“Perkins,” he said, with some effort, “I’ve thought and said some hard things about you.”

“Naturally enough,” murmured the other.

“Do you want me to apologize?”

The scientist stared. “Do you want me to thank you for to-night’s work?” he countered.

“No.”

“Well—”

“All right.”

The two men, different in every quality except that of essential manhood, smiled at each other with a profound mutual understanding. There was a silent handshake, and Carroll set off down the mountain toward the sunrise glow.

XIII. LEFT BEHIND

Dawn crested, poised, and broke in a surf of splendor upon the great mountain-line that overhangs Puerto del Norte. Where, at the corporation dock, there had lurked the shadow of a yacht, gray-black against blue-black, there now swung a fairy ship of purest silver, cradled upon a swaying mirror. Tiny insects, touched to life by the radiance, scuttled busily about her decks and swarmed out upon the dock. The seagoing yacht Polly had awakened early.

Down the mule path that forms the shortest cut from the railway station straggled a group of minute creatures. To one watching from the mountain-side with powerful field-glasses—such as, for example, a convinced and ardent hater of the Caribbean Sea, curled up with his back against a cold and Voiceless rock—it might have appeared that the group was carrying an unusual quantity of hand luggage. Yet they were not porters; so much, even at a great distance, their apparel proclaimed. The pirates of porterdom do not get up to meet five-o’clock-in-the-morning specials in Caracuña.

The little group gathered close at the pier, then separated, two going aboard, and the others disappearing into sundry streets and reappearing presently at the water-front with other figures. The human form cannot be distinctly seen, at a distance of three miles, to rub its eyes; neither can it be heard to curse; but there was that in the newer figures which suggested a sudden and reluctant surrender of sleeping privileges. Had our supposititious watcher possessed an intimate and contemptuous knowledge of Caracuña officialdom, he would have surmised that lavish sums of money had been employed to stir the port and customs officials to such untimely activity.

But not money or any other agency is potent to stir Caracuñan officialdom to undue speed. Hence the observer from the heights, supposing that he had a personal interest in the proceedings, might have assured himself of ample time to reach the coast before the formalities could be completed and the ship put forth to sea. Had he presently humped himself to his feet with a sluggish effort, abandoned his field-glasses in favor of a pair of large greenish-brown goggles, and set out on a trail straight down the mountains, staggering a bit at the start, a second supposititious observer of the first supposititious observer—if such cumulative hypothesis be permissible—might have divined that the first supposititious observer was the Unspeakable Perk, going about other people’s business when he ought to have been in bed. And so, not to keep any reader in unendurable suspense, it was.

While the Unspeakable Perk was making his way down the dim and narrow trail, another equally weary figure shambled out from the main road upon the flats and made for the landing. The apparel of Mr. Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was in a condition that he would have deemed quite unfit for one of his station, had he been in a frame of mind to consider such matters at all. He was not. Affairs vastly more weighty and human occupied his mind. What he most wished was to find Miss Polly Brewster and unburden himself of them.

At the entrance to the pier, he was detained by the American Consul. Cluff came running down the long structure in great strides.

“Moses, Carroll! I’m glad to see you! Where’ve you been?”

A week earlier, the scion of all the Virginias would have resented this familiarity from a professional athlete. But neither Mr. Carroll’s mind nor his heart was a sealed inclosure. He had learned much in the last few days.

“Up on the mountain,” he said. “For Heaven’s sake, give me a drink, Cluff!”

The other produced a flask.

“You do look shot to pieces,” he commented. “Find Perk—Pruyn?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you later. Where’s Miss Brewster?”

“In her stateroom. Asleep, I guess. Said she wanted rest, and nobody was to disturb her till we sail.”

“When do we start?”

“Eight o’clock, they say. That means ten. Will Dr. Pruyn get here?”

“He isn’t going with us.”

“Oh, no. I forgot his Dutch permit. Well, he’d better use it quick, or he’ll go in a box when he does go. I wouldn’t insure his life for a two-cent stamp in this country.”

“You wouldn’t if you’d seen what I saw last night,” said the Southerner, very low.

Wisner, the busy, efficient little consul, who had been arranging with the officials for Carroll’s embarkation, now returned, bringing with him a viking of a man whom he introduced as Dr. Stark, of the United States Public Health Service.

“Either of you know anything about Dr. Pruyn?” he inquired anxiously.

“He’s on his way down the mountain now,” said Carroll.

“Good! He’s ordered away, I’m glad to say. Just got the message.”

“Then perhaps he will go out with us,” said Cluff, with obvious relief. “I sure did hate to think of leaving that boy here, with the game laws for goggle-eyed Americans entirely suspended.”

“No. He’s ordered to Curaçao to stay and watch. We’ve got to get him out to the Dutch ship somehow.”

“Couldn’t the yacht take him and transfer him outside?” asked Carroll.

“Mr. Carroll,” said Dr. Stark earnestly, “before this yacht is many minutes out from the dock, you’ll see a yellow flag go up from the end of the corporation pier. After that, if the yacht turns aside or comes back for a package that some one has left, or does anything but hold the straightest course on the compass for the blue and open sea—well, she’ll be about the foolishest craft that ever ploughed salt water.”

“I suppose so,” admitted Carroll. “Well, I have matters to look after on board.”

Into Mr. Carroll’s cabin it is nobody’s business to follow him. A man has a right to some privacy of room and of mind, and if the Southerner’s struggle with himself was severe, at least it was of brief duration. Within half an hour, he was knocking at Polly Brewster’s door.

“_Please_ go ’way, whoever it is,” answered a pathetically weary voice.

“Miss Polly, it’s Fitzhugh. I have a note for you.”

“Leave it in the saloon.”

“It’s important that you see it right away.”

“From whom is it?” queried the spent voice.

“From Dr. Pruyn.”

“I—I don’t want to see it.”

“You must!” insisted her suitor.

“Did he say I must?”

“No. I say you must. Forgive me, Miss Polly, but I’m going to wait here till you say you’ll read it.”

“Push it under the door,” said the girl resignedly.

He obeyed. Polly took the envelope, summoned up all her spirit, and opened it. It contained one penciled line and the signature:—

Good-bye. All my heart goes with you forever.

L. P.

Something fluttered from the envelope to her feet. She stooped and picked it up. It was the tiniest and most delicate of orchids, purple, with a glow of gold at its heart. To her inflamed pride, it seemed the final insult that he should send such a message and such a reminder, without a word of explanation or plea for pardon. Pardon she never would have granted, but at least he might have had the grace of shame.

“Have you read it?” asked the patient voice from without.

“Yes. There is no answer.”

“Dr. Pruyn said there wouldn’t be.”

“Then why are you waiting?”

“To see you.”

“Oh, Fitz, I’m too worn out, and I’ve a splitting headache. Won’t it wait?”

“No.” The voice was gently inflexible.

“More messages?”

“No; something I must tell you. Will you come out?”

“I suppose so.”

Her tone was utterly listless and limp. Utterly listless and limp, she looked, too, as she opened the door and stood waiting.

“Miss Polly, it’s about the woman at Perkins’s—at Dr. Pruyn’s house.”

Her eyes dilated with anger.

“I won’t hear! How dare you come to me—”

“You must! Don’t make it harder for me than it is.”

She looked up, startled, and noted the haggard lines in his face.

“I’ll hear it if you think I should, Fitz.”

“She is dead.”

“Dead? His—his wife?”

“She wasn’t his wife. She was a helpless leper, whom he was trying to cure with some new serum. He had to do it secretly because there is a law forbidding any one to harbor a leper.”

“Oh, Fitz!” she cried. “And she died of it?”

“No. They killed her. Last night.”

“They? Who?”

“Government agents, probably. They were after Pruyn.”

“How horrible! And—and Mrs. Pruyn. Where was she?”

“There isn’t any Mrs. Pruyn. There never was.”

“But the Dutch permit! It was for Dr. Pruyn and his wife.”

“Sherwen misread the form. So did I. It read for Dr. Pruyn and a woman. He hoped to take her to Curaçao and complete his experiment.”

“That’s what he meant when he spoke of being lawless, and I’ve been thinking the basest things of him for it!” The girl, dazed by a flash of complete enlightenment, caught at Carroll’s arm with beseeching hands. “Where is he, Fitz?”