Part 19

"My father went out there as a jackaroo, without a penny; and before he died he could ride straightaway all day across his own paddocks. Nothing ever turned him from his natural destiny, which was raising good sheep, and plenty of 'em. In twenty years I don't suppose he was off the station twice; it suited him. It would have suited me too. Roving and changing and mucking about in crowds--no; I was fed up with that when he sent me away to school. After his death I stepped into his place, of course, and I never had any notion except to carry on as he had done before me to the end of my billet. Never any notion up to a day about three months ago, when there came a cablegram from England.

"Well, it's what I say--a man is better off if he has some simple and handy system of accounting for life. He goes to bed in his own private heaven and he wakes up in the general hell. And what's the reason? There isn't any, unless you believe in black cats or astral influence, or the curse of Shielygh--or something.

"That cablegram was to inform me that my father had left another family back home. Previous, so to speak. Previous and legitimate. Naturally everything he'd acquired in Australia in near half a century belonged to them: the stock; the land; the house I was born in; the very picture of my mother on the wall--everything but me, being an encumbrance on the estate.... A fair knockout, wasn't it?"

His voice held the level acerbity that no man with a boy's eyes has any right to know.

"Did I fight? I started to--rather! At first, you see, I didn't begin to understand what it was had hit me. I took my two years' wages as overseer--I'd a right to that, at least--and I came on to England, with my comb over one eye, regularly scratching after trouble. And then I found the only people I could fight were three elderly gentlewomen who lived together on a Yorkshire lane in a little cottage covered with climbing roses. They were most polite and had me in to tea; and we talked about something--a sale of work in aid of the local church, I think.... At that it was rather heroic of them, you know. The entertainment of a new and unsuspected half brother--sinister, hey?--must present difficulties to the maiden mind.

"I made none, of course. I saw their solicitor next day and helped straighten out his papers for him. After which I departed.

"The only thing I took away was a bit of family history."

Such was his blunt way of putting it; yet I was not so dull as to miss a glimpse of what it meant, the sacrifice he had made in his bitter grievance; the true and knightly spirit he must have shown toward those three innocent gentlewomen, so lightly and whimsically touched in his narrative.

At this point he paused and reached into the side pocket of his dinner jacket.

"Have you seen the guidebook they sell about the streets here," he asked--"the English Guide to Madeira?"

I blinked again at the abrupt transition, but his hand came away empty.

"Never mind," he resumed. "I'll show you something presently to surprise you. Meanwhile hark to the family record:

"It seems my people had inhabited their corner of Yorkshire time out of mind. That's a common thing enough, a rural line rooted deep in the soil. But, what isn't so common, they've managed somehow to keep the precious old ancestral name alive and going--from the Ark, perhaps. Yeoman, franklin and squire, as they say, there is always a Robert Matcham above ground somewhere. Robert Matcham, the descendant of uncounted Robert Matchams--d'ye see? It was my father's name, and when he made his break to Australia the tradition was too strong for him: he never changed it--which explains how the solicitor came to trace him at last. You'd hardly call it a fortunate heirloom; but it's the only one I've got--my sole inheritance--for Robert Matcham happens to be my name as well."

He seemed to mean it as a sort of introduction, in spite of the discomfortable irony of his tone.

"It's now three months, as I tell you, since Nemesis or Belial or coincidence--whatever you like--began to play this scurvy joke on me. It hasn't quit yet. To what end, hey? What's it about? What's it damn well for? Perhaps that sounds like whining. Well, it's only whining for a chance to hit back at something or somebody. Wait till you've been caught up by the scruff and cuffed blind, as I've been, and no place to get your teeth in.... Listen now:

"My one idea was to get a part of what I'd lost, money enough to buy a little place of my own away there in the bush, the only thing I cared about or knew. I needed a stake--not much, just a bit of stake. An easy thing for an able-bodied man, you'd say. But could I get it? Well, I'm broke again as I sit here--you'll understand why your suggestion of a loan rather knocked the smoke out of me--and what I've been through in trying makes a pitiful comedy.

"There was a syndicate undertook to send me out as managing partner on its big station in Victoria. They only required a deposit, which I paid; and when I went round for the receipt that syndicate had vanished into thin air. I found a place with a wool merchant, who promptly failed. Twice I booked for Sydney on my own--missed one boat through a train wreck, and the other was libeled at the dockhead. I tried stowing away, and got as far as Havre before they threw me off.

"Gamble? I gambled the way another man gets drunk--from exasperated craving, knowing the folly of it. Longchamp, Enghien, Monte Carlo--you follow my course? Once and again I made a winning, but never quite enough; and finally Monte Carlo left me flat. You say you saw me there? Then you know how flat that was. At Marseilles I had to ship for mere bread on a friendly tramp going round to Lisbon.

"Now notice how a man is made to look like a monkey on a string. I didn't even know where that tramp was bound till she anchored in the Tagus. The same evening I got caught in a monarchist riot on the Rocio, had the clothes torn off me and landed in a cell. They released me next morning, with handsome apologies and a coat, not so handsome, which they said was mine. It wasn't; mine was gone to rags. But in the lining of the one they gave me I found two Portuguese bills, and something else: a ticket by the Empreza Nacional steamer sailing for Madeira--within the hour! I took it. My word! What else was there to do?

"You'll observe I never was in Madeira before--never meant or wanted to come here; had hardly heard of the isle.

"I landed yesterday; and perhaps you can guess the first thing I did in a place where horses are so plenty and so cheap. Man, I was crazy to get a saddle between my knees again--me that was raised in a saddle. So I hopped aboard the likeliest nag and rode for the open, out the coast--eastward, it seems. Why again should it be eastward? I can't tell you; but it was the way that offered, winding along between the mountains and the sea, where the lava rocks prop the sugar terraces, black and green in layers, and the blue water below....

"Well, I rode on for an hour or more until the path led me down to the very edge of the tide, where I had rough going over a cobbled strand. At a certain place, which I need not describe, the girth slipped and I had to dismount to tighten it. And now, friend, I've brought you into the bit at last; and you can draw your own moral, for it was there, standing almost in the wash, as I was--"

He seemed to hesitate on the phrase.

"You found the doubloon?" I finished for him.

"Winking up at me from the beach like a yellow eye!" he roared, and his big fist crashed upon the table and dropped a silence between us. I sat non-plused.

"Nobody could blame you after that," I said, at length, "for thinking you had a lucky. As you tell it, the whole purpose of your Odyssey was the finding of that pocket piece."

I should have laughed--had I not chanced to meet his clear blue gaze fixed upon me with deadly candor.

"Is such your opinion?" he asked.

"You were certainly justified in backing the thing for all you were worth," I answered lamely.

"I see I may have to punch your head after all." He smiled quietly. "I've no skill to show you how it struck me; that's the trouble."

He reached into his pocket again and this time brought out and flattened carefully before him, with his powerful, deliberate hands, a little red-bound pamphlet. "Then let me show you what I'd been reading along the way."

* * * * *

I took the pamphlet from him with expectation at low ebb. It was the guidebook to Madeira, a product of the local printer, I judged, thrown together to catch the coppers of the tourist trade. I took it, I say, rather skeptically, and glanced down the page to which he had folded; but before I had scanned the half a shock went through me. My incredulity vanished like mist in a wind. For here is what I read:

_As for the dixovery of this lovely Island of Maderia, which is indeed a glorious pearl in the sea, it was probable in 1370; but not by the Portuguese, which come much later. The first was dixovered by sad accident by a lovely, oldest legend, by an Englishman named Robin à Machin, Roberto Machim, or Robert Matcham. He was brave lover of a too beautiful woman to describe, named Anna d'Arfet, his dear love, which he could not marry because the enterprise was not recommended by the patrons.

Hizory teaches us these two evaded together to establish in France and took shipment with a pilot captain friend named Pedro Morales, who was great fighting pilot of Spain. They delivered free on board and everything of best description, until the ship ran against a storm, which was indeed terrible. Many days they blow where the Pilots could not say; and after varied assortment of trouble they came against this strange shore of Maderia and all wrecked. So perished in each others arms this famous love story, which are indeed a sad and lovely legend.

The pilot Pedro Morales exaped and went away to Portugal, where he told the King about this Island. So it was dixovered again by a navigator for the King, and always the populations since named the place Machico, after Robert Matcham and Anna d'Arfet, which died together on the shore._

I had no least desire left to laugh when I had finished, not even to smile at the method of the quaint chronicler through whose commercial phrase there penetrated such a heroic gusto of sentiment. Again and more subtly, more alluringly, I felt the presence of that valid marvel, the delightful fantasy of truth, for which no man ever quite outgrows the yearning. It was here, under my hand....

"Where did you get this?" I demanded.

"Bought it from a hawker on the streets. Everybody buys 'em. They tell you the price of hammocks and seats in the theater and where to get sugarcane brandy and 'article of native indus'ry.'"

"But it is true?"

"Quite true. Do you suppose I wouldn't go to the municipal library and see? You'll find it in all the history books, just as he says there--the local tradition about the discovery of Madeira."

"And you yourself are Robert Matcham!" I murmured.

All the excitement was on my side. Except for his single outcry, with the vivid flash of color it had lent, he betrayed none. "Have you chanced to examine the coin yourself?" he asked in his level voice.

I felt a kind of anger against him, that any chap with such a yarn should take such an indifferent way to spin it; and presently plucking out the doubloon and holding it under the lights, I came to the crowning wonder of all.

It was a rude bit of coinage, in size and weight considerably better than a double eagle, of a metal too soft to have long withstood the direct friction of the waves. An incrusted discoloration gave me a hint that it must have lain well bedded down; the bright scratches told what recent battering it had suffered on the rocks. On the reverse I made out a coat of arms, almost obliterated; but the obverse was clearer. It bore a profile head, with the titles of Fernando I, King of Portugal, and under that--the date.

"Thirteen-seventy," I read; and repeated aloud with a gasp: "Thirteen-seventy! Why--that's the very year!"

He nodded slowly.

"Do you realize what this means?" I cried at him. "In the same year this piece was minted a man of your own name set sail from England and was lost on these shores!... It might easily have come with him--the ship was Spanish. It probably did come with him! He may have owned this gold; he may have held it, clinked it, gambled with it! And now to be flung up out of the wreck, more than five hundred years afterward, not for the first comer to find, not for just anybody, but for you--at your feet! Do you get that?"

"It figures out to fifteen generations, doesn't it?" was all the answer he made.

"And the place--the place! The book says they still call it Machico. Was it there--is it possible it was there you found the coin?"

"Within a stone's throw of the village itself."

I could only stare at him.

"Coincidence--what?" said Robert Matcham grimly.

He folded up the little book and put it away without haste, and pressed his hand over his eyes again; and suddenly the simplicity and passion of that action hit me like a blow. The man was seething. Within the stolid bulk of him lay pent a pit of emotion. He could not vent it; as he said himself, he had no skill. But I saw how each casual word had come molten from its source and how immeasurably that very lack of art had added to its stark sincerity.

I sat back with a long sigh.

"Go on telling in your own fashion, please," I begged.

"There's little left to tell. I was rather muddled at first--I don't know that I'm much better now. But, all the same, it was stupid of me to flash the doubloon when I got back to Funchal. I didn't even know what the thing was, you see; and so I asked the first shopkeeper with an English sign at his door. You should have seen the rascal's eyes bulge....

"It's clear enough I touched off a regular blessed conspiracy with that coin. What it means you can guess as well as I. I've had a pack of penny detectives on my trail ever since--the maestro here was dogging me all last night. I squeezed all I could out of one lad--how their head devil is called Number One. And that's all I know."

"But why should they be so eager after one doubloon?"

"I don't believe they are so eager after one doubloon," he answered with slow emphasis.

"And what do you propose to do about it?"

"Well, it's some time since I got any good of proposing anything much." I saw the lean muscles tighten along the jaw. "But I'm not dead yet." He glanced at his watch. "It's now eleven o'clock. I can get a horse up to midnight at the hotel. Before dawn I propose to take my morning plunge off the rocks, not far from the village of Machico."

"Alone?" I demanded.

He looked at me oddly.

"Suppose you answer that yourself."

I sprang to meet his grip across the table, and thereby almost lost the use of my fingers.

"Come," he said as he rose, with his compelling smile on me; "you're about the best coincidence I've met yet."

It was still raining when we climbed into a curtained bullock sled, one of those public conveyances that snatch the visitor over the pebbled streets of Funchal at a slithering speed of two miles an hour. The _carro_ is hardly a joyous vehicle at the best of times. We sat in close darkness, oppressed by an atmosphere of wet straw and leather, listening to the mimic thunder on the roof, the gibbering of the yoke pin and the wail of the driver, a goading fiend in outer space. Possibly these melancholy matters heightened the dour mood of my new friend, who stayed silent. To me they were nothing, for I hugged myself in a selfish content.

Gold! It was all gold--real gold of romance; sunken treasure; mystery; legend; and a most amazing and veridical trick of Fate that had cast back five centuries--no less!

I sought to conjure up that other Robert Matcham from the lost past; that "lover of a too beautiful woman," who ran across the sea with his heart's desire in the old wild way. A bold and gallant figure, I was pleased to fancy; an adventuring squire or swaggering free companion in those red, rude times; a traveler by the sword; perhaps a follower of the Black Prince to the Spanish Wars, wherein he might have made such stout allies as the "pilot captain" who served him for his flight.

I pictured him on the deck of his tempest-tossed galley against a strange and savage coast, standing among the hard-lipped sailors, with the woman at his side, facing death as one of that breed would know how to face it; but defiant, clinging to life and to love with grim tenacity, with a tremendous will to survive. He would be hard to kill--such a man--elemental; desperately resentful of the mischance. And I thought I could almost fix the image of him; and he was big-bodied, full-blooded, with arching great chest and tangled hair and fierce Saxon blue eyes.

The _carro_ drew up with a sudden jolt; the curtains parted on a dazzling flood of light.

"Would the gentlemen kindly to step down?"

The gentlemen would, both somewhat surprised at having reached the hotel so soon, but rather more surprised the next moment at finding that this was not the hotel at all....

We were in an open, wind-blown street on the water front, where the rain and salt spray drove in our faces and the few lamps showed neither house nor garden. Beside the sea wall lay an automobile; we could hear the churn of its engine, and its headlight split the dark in a sharp wedge and threw a bright zone against the high stone embankment across the road. Midway, and just before us, stood the one who welcomed us so suavely.

It was the roulette banker, he of the spade-cut beard and the superior clothes. He was still superior, in a topper that shone like varnish and a long cape tucked most jauntily over one arm. And he smiled and smiled, like a villain downstage with the spot full upon him.

"Now w'ere," he inquired--"w'ere are that damn doubloon?"

He was effective--the sartorial rogue; and doubtless he knew it. He stroked his beard and thrust his hand to his hip; and behind him on the embankment his huge shadow moved alike, as if some monstrous power there was pulling puppet strings upon him.

"Gentlemen, you been kidnap'," he was good enough to explain. "We are sorry; but it was of a necessitate. If you got away with that gol' piece you are--'ow you say?--leaving us dished up. Therefore"--he waved a ringed hand--"therefore, we arrange' to 'esitate you here, so nize and comfortable."

He would have passed in comic opera anywhere; but the dart of his black eye was keen, his voice crisp and assured.

I admired him--with reserve; aware that we were lost in a strange city and that this amiable brigand seemed to know quite well what he was about. Aware more particularly of the forward-drooping shoulders and lowering gaze of Robert Matcham.

I felt rather like a man who travels with a box of dynamite--in no position to kick very hard at any incidental pocket picking along the road.

"Is this a holdup or only the request of a loan?" I asked.

"We are many enough to make it whatever we please," he said with a gleam. "I think maybe you bes' call it a public ex'bition of rare and valuable coins."

I thought so too. He was not bluffing. I could detect the scrape of feet all about us in the dark. It seemed to me the one needful thing was to bring Robert Matcham through in safety. I certainly did not intend that there should be any explosion on my behalf or for the sake of any single doubloon. From which considerations I made haste to submit with the best possible grace.

"Allow me," I said, "to contribute to such a worthy design."

Robert Matcham took a lurching step, but I caught him by the sleeve and forestalled any other answer by tendering my prize.

There was no pose about the banker when he grabbed it, held it to the light and loosed a shrill Portuguese yelp of triumph. The whole street seemed to echo and then fell as suddenly quiet. It was daunting to feel that lonely place alive with unseen watchers. I hoped that now they might let us by; but I had not understood their purpose.

"Sir, I give you kindes' thanks." The banker was bowing, in character again. "Your intelligence are only equal', I 'ope, by that of your frien'. Jus' one more little, so little favor."

He turned to Robert Matcham and held up the doubloon between finger and thumb, so that his eyes blazed over it in the light; and I knew then, with a springing pulse, that the affair had passed quite beyond me and must take its own fateful course.

"You will inform us please w'ere you fin' this."

"Me?" said Robert Matcham with concentrated vehemence. "I'll see you fry in hell!"

The other's suavity fell away from him like a disguise. His teeth showed white in his beard; he gesticulated and the shadow behind him danced with fury.

"In 'ell! In 'ell? Look out! Tha's a place--tha's a place w'ere people speak out of their mouths the way they are told! They make you talk in 'ell, mister, whether you like or not!"

He controlled himself with a strong effort.

"Sir, why you should demand so peevish to be sorry? You got no business with that coin--no; not one damn little affair. What does it make to you? Be nize, now."

Robert Matcham only glowered at him.

"It was by Machico. Yes? Tell me anyways it was near Machico. It must 'ave been. Tell me that."

"No!" said Robert Matcham.

"No?" But once again he clutched his beard. "You want money to tell? Put your price."

"No!" said Robert Matcham; and the word came hot as an oath....

One instant I saw the banker toss his arms like a semaphore; the next we were overborne. Of that I retained chiefly a bewilderment at the force of our captors and the ease with which they dealt with us. Shy with the gun they might be, and indeed it is no natural weapon of their race; but these operators knew the use of trip and hamstring--the hugger-mugger arts; none better. My feet were driven from under me; my wrists paralyzed; I was caught and wound like a cocoon; and when I dropped it was on the cushions of the automobile. And, though this might be a slight-enough feat regarding myself, it was the measure of their cleverness that I found Robert Matcham already there, pocketed in a helpless bale. I believe he had no chance so much as to lift a hand.

"You won' be nize with me?" The banker's chuckle floated back to us. "Then you can try being not nize with our Number One, and see 'ow you like it!"

He left us that threat to ponder during our journey to Machico.... For it was Machico. Where else? As soon as they whisked us away toward the eastern coast road I knew it must be Machico. Where else should they take Robert Matcham, whose five centuries looked down on him this night? The rain had ceased; the clouds were lightening and shredding out to sea when we arrived.

There stands a tiny ruined _fortaleza_ on a hill near the southeast point of Madeira, whereof I know more than most folks. You may seek and never find it, for it is now quite lost among the sugar fields, over-topped by the rank cane. Its square tower, whence the first lords of the soil used to keep stern ward against the Moorish marauder, was long ago shorn to the lowly uses of husbandry and built about with arbors; but its walls are a yard thick under the plaster, thick enough for a dungeon--or an inquisition chamber. No place could be more secret, and a man might lie hid there, like a toad in a hollow rock, never to be traced.

This was the obscure prison to which they brought Robert Matcham and myself by tortuous ways along the terraces. And here they carried us in from the forecourt to a low-ceiled hall and set us up for judgment, where many another unhappy captive must have stood before.