Chapter 4

“To your entire satisfaction, no doubt, now that you’ve shown yourself an informer as well as—”

“Easy with the rough stuff, Mr. Carroll,” advised Cluff, his good-natured face clouding. “We’re all a little het up. Let’s have a drink, and cool down.”

“With you, with pleasure. I shall hope to meet you later, Mr. Perkins,” he added significantly.

“Well, I hope not,” retorted the other. “My voice is still for peace. Meantime, please assure Miss Brewster for me—”

“I warned you to keep that lady’s name from your lips.”

“You did. But I don’t know by what authority. You’re not her father, I suppose. Are you her brother, by any chance?”

As he spoke, Perkins experienced that curious feeling that some invisible person was trying to catch his eye. Now, as he turned directly upon Carroll, his glance, passing over his shoulder, followed a broad ray of light spreading from a second-story leaf-framed balcony of the hotel. There was a stir amid the greenery. The face of the Voice appeared, framed in flowers. Its features lighted up with mirth, and the lips formed the unmistakable monosyllable: “Boo!”

The identification was complete—“Boo to a goose.”

“Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll!” Unwittingly he spoke the name aloud, and, unfortunately, laughed.

To a less sensitive temperament, even, than Carroll’s, the provocation would have been extreme. Perkins was recalled to a more serious view of the situation by the choking accents of that gentleman.

“Take off your glasses!”

“What for?”

“Because I’m going to thrash you within an inch of your life!”

“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” cried the young Caracuñan. “This is no place for such an affair.”

Apparently Perkins held the same belief. Stepping aside, he abruptly sat down on the end of the bench, facing the fountain and not four feet from it. His head drooped a little forward; his hands dropped between his knees; one foot—but Cluff, the athlete, was the only one to note this—edged backward and turned to secure a firm hold on the pavement. Carroll stepped over in front of him and stood nonplused. He half drew his hand back, then let it fall.

“I can’t hit a man sitting down,” he muttered distressfully.

Perkins’s set face relaxed.

“Running true to tradition,” he observed, pleasantly enough. “I didn’t think you would. See here, Mr. Carroll, I’m sorry that I laughed at your name. In fact, I didn’t really laugh at your name at all. It was at something quite different which came into my mind at that moment.”

“Your apology is accepted so far,” returned the other stiffly. “But that doesn’t settle the other account between us, when we meet again. Or do you choose to threaten me with jail for that, also?”

“No. It’s easier to keep out of your way.”

“Good Lord!” cried the Southerner in disgust. “Are you afraid of everything?”

“Why, no!” Perkins rose, smiling at him with perfect equanimity. “As a matter of fact, if you’re interested to know, I wasn’t particularly afraid of Von Plaanden, and, if I may say so without offense, I’m not particularly afraid of you.”

Carroll studied him intently.

“By Jove, I believe you aren’t! I give it up!” he cried desperately. “You’re crazy, I reckon—or else I am.” And he took himself off without the formality of a farewell to the others.

Raimonda, with a courteous bow to his companions, followed him.

Wearily the goggled one sank back in his seat. Cluff moved across, planting himself exactly where Carroll had stood.

“Perkins!”

“Eh?” responded the sitter absently.

“What would you do if I should bat you one in the eye?”

“Eh, what?”

“What would you do to me?”

“You, too?” cried the bewildered Perkins. “Why on earth—”

“You’d dive into my knees, wouldn’t you, and tip me over backward?”

“Oh, that!” A slow grin overspread the space beneath the glasses. “That was the idea.”

“I know the trick. It’s a good one—except for the guy that gets it.”

“It wouldn’t have hurt him. He’d have landed in the fountain.”

“So he would. What then?”

“Oh, I’d have held him there till he got cooled off, and then made a run for it. A wet man can’t catch a dry man.”

“Say, son, _you’re_ a dry one, all right.”

“Eh?”

“Wake up! I’m saying you’re all right.”

“Much obliged.”

“You certainly took enough off him to rile a sheep. Why didn’t you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Tip him in.”

Perkins glanced upward at the balcony where the vines had closed upon a face that smiled.

“Oh,” he said mildly, “he’s a friend of a friend of mine.”

IV. TWO ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE

ORCHIDS do not, by preference, grow upon a cactus plant. Little though she recked of botany, Miss Brewster was aware of this fundamental truth. Neither do they, without extraneous impulsion, go hurtling through the air along deserted mountain-sides, to find a resting-place far below; another natural-history fact which the young lady appreciated without being obliged to consult the literature of the subject. Therefore, when, from the top of the appointed rock, she observed a carefully composed bunch of mauve Cattleyas describe a parabola and finally join two previous clusters upon the spines of a prickly-pear patch, she divined some energizing force back of the phenomenon. That energizing force she surmised was temper.

“Fie!” said she severely. “Beetle gentlemen should control their little feelings. Naughty, naughty!”

From below rose a fervid and startled exclamation.

“Naughtier, naughtier!” deprecated the visitor. “Are these the cold and measured terms of science?”

“You haven’t lived up to your bet,” complained the censured one.

“Indeed I have! I always play fair, and pay fair. Here I am, as per contract.”

“Nearly half an hour late.”

“Not at all. Four-thirty was the time.”

“And now it is three minutes to five.”

“Making twenty-seven minutes that I’ve been sitting here waiting for a welcome.”

“Waiting? Oh, Miss Brewster—”

“I’m not Miss Brewster. I’m a voice in the wilderness.”

“Then, Voice, you haven’t been there more than one minute. A voice isn’t a voice until it makes a noise like a voice. Q.E.D.”

“There is something in that argument,” she admitted. “But why didn’t you come up and look for me?”

“Does one look for a sound?”

“Please don’t be so logical. It tires my poor little brain. You might at least have called.”

“That would have been like holding you up for payment of the bet, wouldn’t it? I was waiting for you to speak.”

“Not good form in Caracuña. The señor should always speak first.”

“You began the other time,” he pointed out.

“So I did, but that was under a misapprehension. I hadn’t learned the customs of the country then. By the way, is it a local custom for hermits of science to climb breakneck precipices for golden-hearted orchids to send to casual acquaintances?”

“Is that what you are?” he queried in a slightly depressed tone.

“What on earth else could I be?” she returned, amused.

“Of course. But we all like to pretend that our fairy tales are permanent, don’t we?”

“I can readily picture you chasing beetles, but I can’t see you chasing fairies at all,” she asserted positively.

“Nor can I. If you chase them, they vanish. Every one knows that.”

“Anyway, your orchids were fit for a fairy queen. I haven’t thanked you for them yet.”

“Indeed you have. Much more than they deserve. By coming here to-day.”

“Oh, that was a point of honor. Are you going to let those lovely purple ones wither on that prickly plant down there? Think how much better they’d look pinned on me—if there were any one here to see and appreciate.”

If this were a hint, it failed of its aim, for, as the hermit scuttled out from his shelter, looking not unlike some bulky protrusive-eyed insect, secured the orchids, and returned, he never once glanced up. Safe again in his rock-bound retreat, he spoke:—

“‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair.’”

“So you do know something of fairies and fairy lore!” she cried.

“Oh, it wasn’t much more than a hundred years ago that I read my Grimm. In the story, only one call was necessary.”

“Well, I can’t spare any more of my silken tresses. I brought a string this time. Where’s the other hair line?”

“I’ve used it to tether a fairy thought so that it can’t fly away from me. Draw up slowly.”

“Thank you so much, and I’m so glad that you are feeling better.”

“Better?”

“Yes. Better than the day before yesterday.”

“Day before yesterday?”

“Bless the poor man! Much anxious waiting hath bemused his wits. He thinks he’s an echo.”

“But I was all right the day before yesterday.”

“You weren’t. You were a prey to the most thrilling terrors. You were a moving picture of tender masculinity in distress. You let bashfulness like a worm i’ th’ bud prey upon your damask cheek. Have you a damask cheek? Stand out! I wish to consider you impartially. _You_ needn’t look at _me_, you know.”

“I’m not going to,” he assured her, stepping forth obediently.

“Basilisk that I am!” she laughed. “How brown you are! How long did you say you’d been here? A year?”

“Fourteen weary Voiceless months. Not on this island, you know, but around the tropics.”

“Yet you look vigorous and alert; not like the men I’ve seen come back from the hot countries, all languid and worn out. And you do look clean.”

“Why shouldn’t I be clean?”

“Of course you should. But people get slack, don’t they, when they live off all alone by themselves? Still, I suppose you spruced up a little for me?”

“Nothing of the sort,” he denied, with heat.

“No? Oh, my poor little vanity! He wouldn’t dress up for us, Vanity, though we did dress up for him, and we’re looking awfully nice—for a voice, that is. Do you always keep so soft and pink and smooth, Mr. Beetle Man?”

“I own a razor, if that’s what you mean. You’re making fun of me. Well, _I_ don’t mind.” He lifted his voice and chanted:—

“Although beyond the pale of law, He always kept a polished jaw; For he was one of those who saw A saving hope In shaving soap.”

“Oh, lovely! What a noble finish. What is it?”

“Extract from ‘Biographical Blurbings.’”

“Autobiographical?”

“Yes. By Me.”

“And are you beyond the pale of law?”

“Poetical license,” he explained airily. “Hold on, though.” He fell silent a moment, and out of that silence came a short laugh. “I suppose I _am_ beyond the pale of law, now that I come to think of it. But you needn’t be alarmed, I’m not a really dangerous criminal.”

Later she was to recall that confession with sore misgivings. Now she only inquired lightly:

“Is that why you ran away from the tram car yesterday?”

“Ran away? I didn’t run away,” he said, with dignity. “It just happened that there came into my mind an important engagement that I’d forgotten. My memory isn’t what it should be. So I just turned over the matter in hand to an acquaintance of mine.”

“The matter in hand being me.”

“Why, yes; and the acquaintance being Mr. Cluff. I saw him throw four men out of a hotel once for insulting a girl, so I knew that he was much better at that sort of thing than I. May I go back now and sit down?” “Of course. I don’t know whether I ought to thank you about yesterday or be very angry. It was such an extraordinary performance on your part—”

“Nothing extraordinary about it.” His voice came up out of the shadow, full of judicial confidence. “Merely sound common sense.”

“To leave a woman who has been insulted—”

“In more competent hands than one’s own.”

“Oh, I give it up!” she cried. “I don’t understand you at all. Fitzhugh is right; you haven’t a tradition to your name.”

“Tradition,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Why, I don’t know. They’re pretty rigid things, traditions. Rusty in the joints and all that sort of thing. Life isn’t a process of machinery, exactly. One has to meet it with something more supple and adjustable than traditions.”

“Is that your philosophy? Suppose a man struck you. Wouldn’t you hit him back?”

“Perhaps. It would depend.”

“Or insulted your country? Don’t you believe that men should be ready to die, if necessary, in such a cause?”

“Some men. Soldiers, for instance. They’re paid to.”

“Good Heavens! Is it all a question of pay in your mind? Wouldn’t _you_, unless you were paid for it?”

“How can I tell until the occasion arises?”

“Are you afraid?”

“I suppose I might be.”

“Hasn’t the man any blood in his veins?” cried his inquisitor, exasperated. “Haven’t you ever been angry clear through?”

“Oh, of course; and sorry for it afterward. One is likely to lose one’s temper any time. It might easily happen to me and drive me to make a fool of myself, like—like—” His voice trailed off into a silence of embarrassment.

“Like Fitzhugh Carroll. Why not say it? Well, I much prefer him and his hot-headedness to you and your careful wisdom.”

“Of course,” he acquiesced patiently. “Any girl would. It’s the romantic temperament.”

“And yours is the scientific, I suppose. That doesn’t take into account little things like patriotism and heroism, does it? Tell me, have you actually ever admired—really got a thrill out of—any deed of heroism?”

“Oh, yes,” he replied tranquilly. “I’ve done my bit of hero worship in my time. In fact, I’ve never quite recovered from it.”

“No! Really? Do go on. You’re growing more human every minute.”

“Do you happen to know anything about the Havana campaign?”

“Not much. It never seemed to me anything to brag of. Dad says the Spanish-American War grew a crop of newspaper-made heroes, manufactured by reporters who really took more risks and showed more nerve than the men they glorified.”

“Spanish-American War? That isn’t what I’m talking about. I’m speaking of Walter Reed and his fellow scientists, who went down there and fought the mosquitoes.”

The girl’s lip curled.

“So that’s your idea of heroism! Scrubby peckers into the lives of helpless bugs!”

“Have you the faintest idea what you are talking about?”

His voice had abruptly hardened. There was an edge to it; such an edge as she had faintly heard on the previous night, when Carroll had pressed him too hard. She was startled.

“Perhaps I haven’t,” she admitted.

“Then it’s time you learned. Three American doctors went down into that pesthole of a Cuban city to offer their lives for a theory. Not for a tangible fact like the flag, or for glory and fame as in battle, but for a theory that might or might not be true. There wasn’t a day or a night that their lives weren’t at stake. Carroll let himself be bitten by infected mosquitoes on a final test, and grazed death by a hair’s breadth. Lazear was bitten at his work, and died in the agony of yellow-fever convulsions, a martyr and a hero if ever there was one. Because of them, Havana is safe and livable now. We were able to build the Panama Canal because of their work, their—what did you call it?—scrubby peeking into the lives of—”

“Don’t!” cried the girl. “I—I’m ashamed. I didn’t know.”

“How should you?” he said, in a changed tone. “We Americans set up monuments to our destroyers, not to our preservers, of life. Nobody knows about Walter Reed and James Carroll and Jesse Lazear—not even the American Government, which they officially served—except a few doctors and dried-up entomologists like myself. Forgive me. I didn’t mean to deliver a lecture.”

There was a long pause, which she broke with an effort.

“Mr. Beetle Man?”

“Yes, Voice?”

“I—I’m beginning to think you rather more man than beetle at times.”

“Well, you see, you touched me on a point of fanaticism,” he apologized.

“Do you mind standing up again for examination? No,” she decided, as he stepped out and stood with his eyes lowered obstinately. “You don’t seem changed to outward view. You still remind me,” with a ripple of irrepressible laughter, “of a near-sighted frog. It’s those ridiculous glasses. Why do you wear them?”

“To keep the sun out of my eyes.”

“And the moon at night, I suppose. They’re not for purposes of disguise?”

“Disguise! What makes you say that?” he asked quickly.

“Don’t bark. They’d be most effective. And they certainly give your face a truly weird expression, in addition to its other detriments.”

“If you don’t like my face, consider my figure,” he suggested optimistically. “What’s the matter with that?”

“Stumpy,” she pronounced. “You’re all in a chunk. It does look like a practical sort of a chunk, though.”

“Don’t you like it?” he asked anxiously.

“Oh, well enough of its kind.” She lifted her voice and chanted:—

“He was stubby and square, But _she_ didn’t much care.

“There’s a verse in return for yours. Mine’s adapted, though. Examination’s over. Wait. Don’t sit down. Now, tell me your opinion of me.”

“Very musical.”

“I’m not musical at all.”

“Oh, I’m considering you as a _voice_.”

“I’m tired of being just a voice. Look up here. Do,” she pleaded. “Turn upon me those lucent goggles.”

When orbs like thine the soul disclose, Tee-deedle-deedle-dee.

Don’t be afraid. One brief fleeting glance ere we part.”

“No,” he returned positively. “Once is enough.”

“On behalf of my poor traduced features, I thank you humbly. Did they prove as bad as you feared?”

“Worse. I’ve hardly forgotten yet what you look like. Your kind of face is bad for business.”

“What _is_ business?”

“Haven’t I told you? I’m a scientist.”

“Well, I’m a specimen. No beetle that crawls or creeps or hobbles, or does whatever beetles are supposed to do, shows any greater variation from type—I heard a man say that in a lecture once—than I do. Can’t I interest you in my case, O learned one? The proper study of mankind is—”

“Woman. Yes, I know all about that. But I’m a groundling.”

“Mr. Beetle Man,” she said, in a tremulous voice, “the rock is moving.”

“I don’t feel it. Though it might be a touch of earthquake. We have ’em often.”

“Not your rock. The tarantula rock, I mean.”

“Nonsense! A hundred tarantulas couldn’t stir it.”

“Well, it seems to be moving, and that’s just as bad. I’m tired and I’m lonely. Oh, please, Professor Scarab, have I got to fall on your neck again to introduce a little human companionship into this conversation?”

“Caesar! No! My shoulder’s still lame. What do you want, anyway?”

“I want to know about you and your work. _All_ about you.”

“Humph! Well, at present I’m making some microscopical studies of insects. That’s the reason for these glasses. The light is so harsh in these latitudes that it affects the vision a trifle, and every trifle counts in microscopy.”

“Does the microscope add charm to the beetle?”

“Some day I’ll show you, if you like. Just now it’s the flea, the national bird of Caracuña.”

“The wicked flea?”

“Nobody knows how wicked until he has studied him on his native heath.”

“Doesn’t the flea have something to do with plague? They say there’s plague in the city now. You knew all about the Dutch. Do you know anything about the plague?”

“You’ve been listening to _bolas_.”

“What’s a _bola?_”

“A _bola_ is information that somebody who is totally ignorant of the facts whispers confidentially in your ear with the assurance that he knows it to be authentic—in other words, a lie.”

“Then there isn’t any plague down under those quaint, old, red-tiled roofs?”

“Who ever knows what’s going on under those quaint, old, red-tiled roofs? No foreigner, certainly.”

“Even I can feel the mystery, little as I’ve seen of the place,” said the girl.

“Oh, that’s the Indian of it. The tiled roofs are Spanish; the speech is Spanish; but just beneath roof and speech, the life and thought are profoundly and unfathomably Indian.”

“Not with all the Caracuñans, surely. Take Mr. Raimonda, for instance.”

“Ah, that’s different. Twenty families of the city, perhaps, are pure-bloods. There are no finer, cleaner fellows anywhere than the well-bred Caracuñans. They are men of the world, European educated, good sportsmen, straight, honorable gentlemen. Unfortunately not they, but a gang of mongrel grafters control the politics of the country.”

“For a hermit of science, you seem to know a good deal of what goes on. By the way, Mr. Raimonda called on me—on us last evening.”

“So he mentioned. Rather serious, that, you know.”

“Far from it. He was very amusing.”

“Doubtless,” commented the other dryly. “But it isn’t fair to play the game with one who doesn’t know the rules. Besides, what will Mr. Preston Fairfax—”

“For a professedly shy person, you certainly take a rather intimate tone.”

“Oh, I’m shy only under the baleful influence of the feminine eye. Besides, you set the note of intimacy when you analyzed my personal appearance. And finally, I have a warm regard for young Raimonda.”

“So have I,” she returned maliciously. “Aren’t you jealous?”

He laughed.

“Please be a little bit jealous. It would be so flattering.”

“Jealousy is another tradition in which I don’t believe.”

“Then I can’t flirt with you at all?” she sighed. “After taking all this long hot walk to see you!”

_Plop!_ The sound punctured the silence sharply, though not loudly. Some large fruit pod bursting on a distant tree might have made such a report.

“What was that?” asked the girl curiously.

“That? Oh, that was a revolver shot,” he remarked.

“Aren’t you casual! Do revolver shots mean nothing to you?”

“That one shakes my soul’s foundations.” His tone by no means indicated an inner cataclysm. “It may mean that I must excuse myself and leave. Just a moment, please.”

Passing across the line of her vision, he disappeared to the left. When she next heard his voice, it was almost directly above her.

“No,” it said. “There’s no hurry. The flag’s not up.”

“What flag?”

“The flag in my compound.”

“Can you see your home from here?”

“Yes; there’s a ledge on the cliff that gives a direct view.”

“I want to come up and see it.”

“You can’t. It’s much too hard a climb. Besides, there are rock devilkins on the way.”

“And when you hear a shot, you go up there for messages?”

“Yes; it’s my telephone system.”

“Who’s at the other end?”

“The peon who pretends to look after the _quinta_ for me.”

“A man! No man can keep a house fit to live in,” she said scornfully.

“I know it; but he’s all I’ve got in the servant line.”

“How far is the house from here?”

“A mile, by air. Seven by trail from town.”

“Isn’t it lonely?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly she felt very sorry for him. There was such a quiet, conclusive acceptance of cheerlessness in the monosyllable.

“How soon must you go back?”

“Oh, not for an hour, at least.”

“If it’s a call, it must be an important one, so far from civilization.”

“Not necessarily. Don’t you ever have calls that are not important?”

No answer came.

“Miss Brewster!” he called. “Oh, Voice! You haven’t gone?”

Still no response.

“That isn’t fair,” he complained, making his way swiftly down, and satisfying himself by a peep about the angle commanding her point of the rock that she had, indeed, vanished. Sadly he descended to his own nook—and jumped back with a half-suppressed yell.

“You needn’t jump out of your skin on my account,” said Miss Polly Brewster, with a gracious smile. “I’m not a devilkin.”

“You are! That is—I mean—I—I—beg your pardon. I—I—”

“The poor man’s having another bashful fit,” she observed, with malicious glee. “Did the bold, bad, forward American minx scare it almost out of its poor shy wits?”

“You—you startled me.”

“No!” she exclaimed, in wide-eyed mock surprise. “Who would have supposed it? You didn’t expect me down here, did you?”

Thereupon she got a return shock.

“Yes, I did,” he said; “sooner or later.”

“Don’t fib. Don’t pretend that you knew I was here.”

“W-w-well, no. Not just now. B-b-but I knew you’d come if—if—if I pretended I didn’t want you to long enough.”

“Young and budding scientist,” said she severely, “you’re a gay deceiver. Is it because you have known me in some former existence that you are able thus accurately to read my character?”

“Well, I knew you wouldn’t stay up there much longer.”

“I’m angry at you; very angry at you. That is, I would be if it weren’t that you really didn’t mean it when you said that you really didn’t want to see my face again.”

“Did any one ever see your face once without wanting to see it again?”