Chapter 2

From the depths of those limpid eyes welled up a little film of vexation.

“O Lord! Don’t do that!” he implored. “I didn’t mean—I’m a bear—a pig—a—a—a scarab—I’m anything you choose. Only don’t do that!”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Of course you’re not. That’s fine! As for your secrets, I dare say I wouldn’t know you again if I saw you.”

“Oh, wouldn’t you?” she cried in quite another tone.

“Quite likely not. These glasses, you see. They make things look quite queer.”

“Or if you heard me?” she challenged.

“Ah, well, that’s different. But I forget quite easily—even things like voices.”

She leaned forward, her hands in her lap, her eyes upon the goggled face before her.

“Then take them off.”

“What? My glasses?”

“Take them off!”

“Wh—wh—why should I?”

“So that you can see me better.”

“I don’t want to see you better.”

“Yes, you do. I’m much more interesting than a scarab.”

“But I know about scarabs and I don’t know about—about—”

“Girls. So one might suspect. Do you know what I’m doing, Mr. Beetle Man?”

“N-n-no.”

“I’m flirting with you. I never flirted with a scientific person before. It’s awfully one-sided, difficult, uphill work.”

This last was all but drowned out in his flood of panicky instructions, from which she disentangled such phrases as “first to left”—“dry river-bed-hundred-yards”—“dead tree—can’t miss it.”

“If you send me away now, I’ll cry. Really, truly cry, this time.”

“No, you won’t! I mean I won’t! I—I’ll do anything! I’ll talk! I’ll make conversation! How old are you? That’s what the Chinese ask. I used to have a Chinese cook, but he lost all my shirt studs, playing fan-tan. Can you play fan-tan? Two can’t play, though. They have funny cards in this country, like the Spanish. Have you seen a bullfight yet? Don’t do it. It’s dull and brutal. The bull has no more chance than—than—”

“Than an unprotected man with a conscienceless flirt, who falls on his neck and then threatens to submerge him in tears.”

“Now you’re beginning again!” he wailed. “What did you jump for, anyway?”

“I slipped. An awful, red-eyed, scrambly fiend scared me—a real, live, hairy devilkin on stilts. He ran at me across the rock. Was that one of your pet scarabs, Mr. Beetle Man?”

“That was a tarantula, I suppose, from the description.”

“They’re deadly, aren’t they?”

“Of course not. Unscientific nonsense. I’ll go up and chase him off.”

“Flying from perils that you know not of to more familiar dangers?” she taunted.

“Well, you see, with the tarantula out of the way, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t—er—”

“Go, and leave you in peace? What do you think of that for gallantry, Birdie?”

The gay-feathered inquisitor had come quite near.

“Qu’est-ce qu’il dit?” he queried, cocking his curious head.

“He says he doesn’t like me one little, wee, teeny bit, and he wishes I’d go home and stay there. And so I’m going, with my poor little feelings all hurted and ruffled up like anything.”

“Nothing of the sort,” protested the badgered spectacle-wearer.

“Then why such unseemly haste to make my path clear?”

“I just thought that maybe you’d go back on the top of the rock, where you came from, and—and be a voice again. If you won’t go, I will.”

He made three jumps of it up the boulder, bearing a stick in his hand. Presently his face, preternaturally solemn and gnomish behind the goggles, protruded over the rim. The girl was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, contemplating the scenery as if she’d never had another interest in her life. Apparently she had forgotten his very existence.

“Ahem!” he began nervously.

“Ahem!” she retorted so promptly that he almost fell off his precarious perch. “Did you ring? Number, please.”

“I wish I knew whether you were laughing at me or not,” he said ruefully.

“When?”

“All the time.”

“I am. Your darkest suspicions are correct. Did you abolish my devilkin?”

“I drove him back into his trapdoor home and put a rock over it.”

“Why didn’t you destroy him?”

“Because I’ve appointed him guardian of the rock, with strict instructions to bite any one that ever comes there after this except you.”

“Bravo! You’re progressing. As soon as you’re free from the blight of my regard, you become quite human. But I’ll never come again.”

“No, I suppose not,” he said dismally. “I shan’t hear you again, unless, perhaps, the echoes have kept your voice to play with.”

“Oh, oh! Is this the language of science? You know I almost think I should like to come—if I could. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because we leave to-morrow.”

“Not across to the southern coast? It isn’t safe. Fever—”

“No; by Puerto del Norte.”

“There’s no boat.”

“Yes, there is. You can just see her funnel over that white slope. It’s our yacht.”

“And you think you are going in her to-morrow?”

“Think? I know it.”

“No,” he contradicted.

“Yes,” she asserted, quite as concisely.

“No,” he repeated. “You’re mistaken.”

“Don’t be absurd. Why?”

“Look out there, over that tree to the horizon.”

“I’m looking.”

“Do you see anything?”

“Yes; a sort of little smudge.”

“That’s why.”

“It’s a very shadowy sort of why.”

“There’s substance enough under it.”

“A riddle? I’ll give it up.”

“No; a bet. I’ll bet you the treasures of my mountain-side. Orchids of gold and white and purple and pink, butterflies that dart on wings of fire opal—”

“Beetles, to know which is to love them, and love but them forever,” she laughed. “And my side of the wager—what is that to be?”

“That you will come to the rock day after to-morrow at this hour and stand on the top and be a voice again and talk to me.”

“Done! Send your treasures to the pier, for you’ll surely lose. And now take me to the road.”

It was a single-file trail, and he walked in advance, silent as an Indian. As they emerged from a thicket into the highway, above the red-tiled city in its setting of emerald fields strung on the silver thread of the Santa Clara River, she turned and gave him her hand.

“Be at your rock to-morrow, and when you see the yacht steam out, you’ll know I’ll be saying good-bye, and thank you for your mountain treasures. Send them to Miss Brewster, care of the yacht Polly. She’s named after me. Is there anything the matter with my shoes?” she broke off to inquire solicitously.

“Er—what? No.” He lifted his eyes, startled, and looked out across the quaint old city.

“Then is there anything the matter with my face?”

“Yes.”

“Yes? Well, what?”

“It’s going to be hard to forget,” complained he of the goggles.

“Then look away before it’s too late,” she cried merrily; but her color deepened a little. “Good-bye, O friend of the lowly scarab!”

At the dip of the road down into the bridged arroyo, she turned, and was surprised—or at least she told herself so—to find him still looking after her.

II. AT THE KAST

One dines at the Gran Hotel Kast after the fashion of a _champignon sous cloche_. The top of the _cloche_ is of fluted glass, with a wide aperture between it and the sides, to admit the rain in the wet season and the flies in the dry. Three balconies run up from the dining-room well to this roof, and upon these, as near to the railings as they choose, the rather conglomerate patronage of the place sleeps, takes baths, dresses, gossips, makes love, quarrels, and exchanges prophecies as to next Sunday’s bullfight, while the diners below strive to select from the bill of fare special morsels upon which they will stake their internal peace for the day. No cabaret can hold a candle to it for variety of interest. When the sudden torrential storms sweep down the mountains at meal times, the little human _champignons_, beneath their insufficient _cloche_, rush about wildly seeking spots where the drippage will not wash their food away. Commercial travelers of the tropics have a saying: “There are worse hotels in the world than the Kast—but why take the trouble?” And, year upon year, they return there for reasons connected with the other hostelries of Caracuña, which I forbear to specify.

To Miss Polly Brewster, the Kast was a place of romance. Five miles away, as the buzzard flies, she could have dined well, even elegantly, on the Brewster yacht. Would she have done it? Not for worlds! Miss Brewster was entranced by the courtly manners of her waiter, who had lost one ear and no small part of the countenance adjacent thereto, only too obviously through the agency of some edged instrument not wielded in the arts of peace. She was further delightedly intrigued by the abrupt appearance of a romantic-hued gentleman, who thrust out over the void from the second balcony an anguished face, one side of which was profusely lathered, and addressed to all the hierarchy of heaven above, and the peoples of the earth beneath, a passionate protest upon the subject of a cherished and vanished shaving brush; what time, below, the head waiter was hastily removing from sight, though not from memory, a soup tureen whose agitated surface bore a creamy froth not of a lacteal origin. One may not with impunity balance personal implements upon the too tremulous rails of the ancient Kast.

With an appreciative and glowing eye, Miss Brewster read from her mimeographed bill of fare such legends as “_ropa con carne_,” “_bacalao secco_,” “_enchiladas_,” and meantime devoured _chechenaca_, which, had it been translated into its just and simple English of “hash,” she would not have given to her cat.

Nor did her visual and prandial preoccupations inhibit her from a lively interest in the surrounding Babel of speech in mingled Spanish, Dutch, German, English, Italian, and French, all at the highest pitch, for a few rods away the cathedral bells were saluting Heaven with all the clangor and din of the other place, and only the strident of voice gained any heed in that contest. Even after the bells paused, the habit of effort kept the voices up. Miss Brewster, dining with her father a few hours after her return from the mountain, absolved her conscience from any intent of eavesdropping in overhearing the talk of the table to the right of her. The remark that first fixed her attention was in English, of the super-British _patois_.

“Can’t tell wot the blighter might look like behind those bloomin’ brown glasses.”

“But he’s not bothersome to any one,” suggested a second speaker, in a slightly foreign accent. “He regards his own affairs.”

“Right you are, bo!” approved a tall, deeply browned man of thirty, all sinewy angles, who, from the shoulders up, suggested nothing so much as a club with a gnarled knob on the end of it, a tough, reliable, hardwood club, capable of dealing a stiff blow in an honest cause. “If he deals in conversation, he must _sell_ it. I don’t notice him giving any of it away.”

“He gave some to Kast the last time he dined here,” observed a languid and rather elegant elderly man, who occupied the fourth side of the table. “Mine host didn’t like it.”

“I should suppose Señor Kast would be hardened,” remarked the young Caracuñan who had defended the absent.

“Our eyeglassed friend scored for once, though. They had just served him the usual table-d’hôte salad—you know, two leaves of lettuce with a caterpillar on one. Kast happened to be passing. Our friend beckoned him over. ‘A little less of the fauna and more of the flora, Señor Kast,’ said he in that gritty, scientific voice of his. I really thought Kast was going to forget his Swiss blood, and chase a whole peso of custom right out of the place.”

“If you ask me, I think the blighter is barmy,” asserted the Briton.

“Well, I’ll ask you,” proffered the elegant one kindly. “Why do you consider him ‘barmy,’ as you put it?”

“When I first saw him here and heard him speak to the waiter, I knew him for an American Johnny at once, and I went, directly I’d finished my soup, and sat down at his table. The friendly touch, y’ know. ‘I say,’ I said to him, ‘I don’t know you, but I heard you speak, and I knew at once you were one of these Americans—tell you at once by the beastly queer accent, you know. You are an American, ay—wot?’ Wot d’ you suppose the blighter said? He said, ‘No, I’m an ichthyo’—somethin’ or other—”

“Ichthyosaurus, perhaps,” supplied the Caracunuan, smiling.

“That’s it, whatever it may be. ‘I’m an ichthyosaurus,’ he says. ‘It’s a very old family, but most of the buttons are off. Were you ever bitten by one in the fossil state? Very exhilaratin’, but poisonous,’ he says. ‘So don’t let me keep you any longer from your dinner.’ Of course, I saw then that he was a wrong un, so I cut him dead, and walked away.”

“Served him right,” declared the elderly American, with a solemn twinkle directed at the tall brown man, who, having opened his mouth, now thought better of it, and closed it again, with a grin.

“But he is very kind,” said the native. “When my brother fell and broke his arm on the mountain, this gentleman found him, took care of him, and brought him in on muleback.”

“Lives up there somewhere, doesn’t he, Mr. Raimonda?” asked the big man.

“In the _quinta_ of a deserted plantation,” replied the Caracuñan.

“Wot’s he do?” asked the Englishman.

“Ah, _that_ one does not know, unless Senor Sherwen can tell us.”

“Not I,” said the elderly man. “Some sort of scientific investigation, according to the guess of the men at the club.”

“You never can tell down here,” observed the Englishman darkly. “Might be a blind, you know. Calls himself Perkins. Dare say it isn’t his name at all.”

“Daughter,” said Mr. Thatcher Brewster at this juncture, in a patient and plaintive voice, “for the fifth and last time, I implore you to pass me the butter, or that which purports to be butter, in the dish at your elbow.”

“Oh, poor dad! Forgive me! But I was overhearing some news of an—an acquaintance.”

“Do you know any of the gentlemen upon whose conversation you are eavesdropping?”

In financial circles, Mr. Brewster was credited with the possession of a cold blue eye and a denatured voice of interrogation, but he seldom succeeded in keeping a twinkle out of the one and a chuckle out of the other when conversing with his daughter.

“Not yet,” observed that damsel calmly.

“Meaning, I suppose I am to understand—”

“Precisely. Haven’t you noticed them looking this way? Presently they’ll be employing all their strategy to meet me. They’ll employ it on you.”

Mr. Brewster surveyed the group dubiously.

“In a country such as this, one can’t be too—too cau—”

“Too particular, as you were saying,” cut in his daughter cheerfully. “Men are scarce—except Fitzhugh, who is rather less scarce than I wish he were lately. You know,” she added, with a covert glance at the adjoining table, “I wouldn’t be surprised if you found yourself an extremely popular papa immediately after dinner. It might even go so far as cigars. Do you suppose that lovely young Caracuñan is a bullfighter?”

“No; I believe he’s a coffee exporter. Less romantic, but more respectable. Quite one of the gilded youth of Caracuña. His name is Raimonda. Fitzhugh knows him. By the way, where on earth is Fitzhugh?”

“Trying to fit a kind and gentlemanly expression over a swollen sense of injury, for a guess,” replied the girl carelessly. “I left him in sweet and lone communion with nature three hours ago.”

“Polly, I wish—”

“Oh, dad, dear, don’t! You’ll get your wish, I suppose, and Fitz, too. Only I don’t want to be hurried. Here he is, now. Look at that smile! A sculptor couldn’t have done any better. Now, as soon as he comes, I’m going to be quite nice and kind.”

But Mr. Fairfax Preston Fitzhugh Carroll did not come direct to the Brewster table. Instead, he stopped to greet the elderly man in the near-by group, and presently drew up a chair. At first, their conversation was low-toned, but presently the young native added his more vivacious accents.

“Who can tell?” the Brewsters heard him say, and marked the fatalistic gesture of the upturned hands. “They disappear. One does not ask questions too much.”

“Not here,” confirmed the big man. “Always room for a few more in the undersea jails, eh?”

“Always. But I think it was not that with Basurdo. I think it was underground, not undersea.” He brushed his neck with his finger tips.

“Is it dangerous for foreigners?” asked Carroll quickly.

“For every one,” answered Sherwen; adding significantly: “But the Caracuñan Government does not approve of loose fostering of rumors.”

Carroll rose and came over to the Brewsters.

“May I bring Mr. Graydon Sherwen over and present him?” he asked. “I can vouch for him, having known his family at home, and—”

“Oh, bring them all, Fitzhugh,” commanded the girl.

The exponent of Southern aristocracy looked uncomfortable.

“As to the others,” he said, “Mr. Raimonda is a native—”

“With the manners of a prince. I’ve quite fallen in love with him already,” she said wickedly.

“Of course, if you wish it. But the other American is an ex-professional baseball player, named Cluff.”

“What? ‘Clipper’ Cluff? I knew I’d seen him before!” cried Miss Polly. “He got his start in the New York State League. Why, we’re quite old friends, by sight.”

“As for Galpy, he’s an underbred little cockney bounder.”

“With the most naive line of conversation I’ve ever listened to. I want all of them.”

“Let me bring Sherwen first,” pleaded the suitor, and was presently introducing that gentleman. “Mr. Sherwen is in charge here of the American Legation,” he explained.

“How does one salute a real live minister?” queried Miss Brewster.

“Don’t mistake me for anything so important,” said Sherwen. “We’re not keeping a minister in stock at present. My job is being a superior kind of janitor until diplomatic relations are resumed.”

“Goodness! It sounds like war,” said Miss Brewster hopefully. “Is there anything as exciting as that going on?”

“Oh, no. Just a temporary cessation of civilities between the two nations. If it weren’t indiscreet—”

“Oh, do be indiscreet!” implored the girl, with clasped hands. “I admire indiscretion in others, and cultivate it in myself.”

Mr. Carroll looked pained, as the other laughed and said:—

“Well, it would certainly be most undiplomatic for me to hint that the great and friendly nation of Hochwald, which wields more influence and has a larger market here than any other European power, has become a little jealous of the growing American trade. But the fact remains that the Hochwald minister and his secretary, Von Plaanden, who is a very able citizen when sober,—and is, of course, almost always sober,—have not exerted themselves painfully to compose the little misunderstanding between President Fortuno and us. The Dutch diplomats, who are not as diplomatic in speech as I am, would tell you, if there were any of them left here to tell anything, that Von Plaanden’s intrigues brought on the present break with them. So there you have a brief, but reliable ‘History of Our Times in the Island Republic of Caracuña.’”

“Highly informative and improving to the untutored mind,” Miss Brewster complimented him. “I like seeing the wires of empire pulled. More, please.”

“Perhaps you won’t like the next so well,” observed Carroll grimly. “There is bubonic plague here.”

“Oh—ah!” protested Sherwen gently. “The suspicion of plague. Quite a different matter.”

“Which usually turns out to be the same, doesn’t it?” inquired Mr. Brewster.

“Perhaps. People disappear, and one is not encouraged to ask about them. But then people disappear for many causes in Caracuña. Politics here are somewhat—well—Philadelphian in method. But—there is smoke rising from behind Capo Blanco.”

“What is there?” inquired the girl.

“The lazaretto. Still, it might be yellow fever, or only smallpox. The Government is not generous with information. To have plague discovered now would be very disturbing to the worthy plans of the Hochwald Legation. For trade purposes, they would very much dislike to have the port closed for a considerable time by quarantine. The Dutch difficulty they can arrange when they will. But quarantine would bring in the United States, and that is quite another matter. Well, we’ll see, when Dr. Pruyn gets here.”

“Who is he?” asked Carroll.

“Special-duty man of the United States Public Health Service. The best man on tropical diseases and quarantine that the service has ever had.”

“That isn’t Luther Pruyn, is it?” inquired Mr. Brewster.

“The same. Do you know him?”

“Yes.”

“More than I do, except by reputation.”

“He was in my class at college, but I haven’t seen him since. I’d be glad to see him again. A queer, dry fellow, but character and grit to his backbone.”

“I’d supposed he was younger,” said Sherwen. “Anyway, he’s comparatively new to the service. His rise is the more remarkable. At present, he’s not only our quarantine representative, with full powers, but unofficially he acts, while on his roving commission, for the British, the Dutch, the French, and half the South American republics. I suppose he’s really the most important figure in the Caracuña crisis—and he hasn’t even got here yet. Perhaps our Hochwaldian friends have captured him on the quiet. It would pay ’em, for if there is plague here, he’ll certainly trail it down.”

“Oh, I’m tired of plague,” announced Miss Polly. “Bring the others here and let’s all go over to the plaza, where it’s cool.”

To their open and obvious delight, exhibited jauntily by the Englishman, with awkward and admiring respectfulness by the ball-player, and with graceful ease by the handsome Caracuñan, the rest were invited to join the party.

“Don’t let them scare you about plague, Miss Brewster,” said Cluff, as they found their chairs. “Foreigners don’t get it much.”

“Oh, I’m not afraid! But, anyway, we shouldn’t have time to catch even a cold. We leave to-morrow.”

The men exchanged glances.

“How?” inquired Sherwen and Raimonda in a breath.

“In the yacht, from Puerto del Norte.”

“Not if it were a British battleship,” said Galpy. “Port’s closed.”

“What? Quarantine already?” said Carroll.

“Quarantine be blowed! It’s the Dutch.”

“I thought you knew,” said Sherwen. “All the town is ringing with the news. It just came in to-night. Holland has declared a blockade until Caracuña apologizes for the interference with its cable.”

“And nothing can pass?” asked Mr. Brewster.

“Nothing but an aeroplane or a submarine.”

There was a silence. Miss Polly Brewster broke it with a curious question:—

“What day is day after to-morrow?”

Several voices had answered her, but she paid little heed, for there had slipped over her shoulder a brown thin hand holding a cunningly woven closed basket of reedwork. A soft voice murmured something in Spanish.

“What does he say?” asked the girl “For me?”

“He thinks it must be for you,” translated Raimonda, “from the description.”

“What description?”

“He was told to go to the hotel and deliver it to the most beautiful lady. There could hardly be any mistaking such specific instructions even by an ignorant mountain peon,” he added, smiling.

The girl opened the curious receptacle, and breathed a little gasp of delight. Bedded in fern, lay a mass of long sprays aquiver with bells of the purest, most lucent white, each with a great glow of gold at its heart.

“Ah,” observed the young Caracuñan, “I see that you are _persona grata_ with our worthy President, Miss Brewster.”

“President Fortuno?” asked the girl, surprised. “No; not that I’m aware of. Why do you say that?”

“That is his special orchid—almost the official flower. They call it ‘the President’s orchid.’”

“Has he a monopoly of growing them?” asked Miss Brewster.

“No one can grow them. They die when transplanted from their native cliffs. But it’s only the President’s rangers who are daring enough to get them.”

“Are they so inaccessible?”

“Yes. They grow nowhere but on the cliff faces, usually in the wildest part of the mountains. Few people except the hunters and mountaineers know where, and it’s only the most adventurous of them who go after the flowers.”