For reasons best known to himself Mr. Geary blushed furiously. “I—I'd better go and break the news to Mother,” he suggested inanely. She held out her hand; and Billy, having been long enough in Sobrante to have acquired the habit, bent his malarial person over that hand and kissed it. As he went out it occurred to him that had the lobby of the Hotel Mateo been paved with eggs, he must have floated over them like a Wraith, so light did he feel within.
CHAPTER X
WEBSTER reached New Orleans at the end of the first leg of his journey, to discover that in the matter of sailings he was not fortunate. He was one day late to board the Atlanta—a banana boat of the Consolidated Fruit Company's line plying regularly between New Orleans and that company's depots at Limon and San Buenaventura—which necessitated a wait of three days for the steamer La Estrellita of the Caribbean Mail Line, running to Caracas and way ports.
This delay annoyed him, for he was the kind of man who, once he has made up his mind to embark upon a venture, is impatient to be up and doing. Accordingly, he decided to visit the ticket office of the Caribbean Mail Line immediately and avoid the rush in case the travel should be heavy—in which event a delay of an hour might be fatal—for should he be informed that the space on La Estrellita was entirely sold out, the knowledge would, he knew, set his reason tottering on its throne.
The steamship office was in Canal Street. Webster arrived there during the luncheon hour, due to which fact he found but one clerk on duty at the ticket counter when he entered. This clerk was waiting on two well-dressed and palpably low-bred sons of the tropics, to whom he had just displayed a passenger list which the two were scanning critically. Their interest in it was so obvious that unconsciously Webster peeped over their shoulders (no difficult task for one of his stature) and discovered it to be the passenger list of the steamer La Estrellita. They were conversing together in low tones and Webster, who had spent many years of his life following his profession in Mexico, recognized their speech as the bastard Spanish of the peon.
The clerk glanced up, caught Webster's eye and nodded to indicate that he would attend him directly.
“No hurry, old timer,” Webster told him, with the bluff, free-and-easy democracy of the man of broad, unkenned horizons. “Just save a place on that passenger list for my John Hancock when our friends here have finished with it.”
He sat down in the long wall seat and waited until the pair, having completed their scrutiny of the list, turned to pass out. He glanced at them casually.
Theirs were faces ordinary enough south of the Rio Grande but not likely to pass unnoticed in a northern crowd. One was a tall thin man whose bloodshot eyes were inclined to “pop” a little—infallible evidence in the Latin-American that he is drinking more hard liquor than is good for him. He was smooth-shaven, of pronounced Indian type, and wore considerable expensive jewellery.
His companion was plainly of the same racial stock, although Webster suspected him of a slight admixture of negro blood. He was short, stocky, and aggressive looking; like his companion, bejewelled and possessed of a thin, carefully cultivated mous, tache that seemed to consist of about nineteen hairs on one side and twenty on the other. Evidently once upon a time, as the story books have it, he had been shot. Webster suspected a Mauser bullet, fired at long range. It had entered his right cheek, just below the malar, ranged downward through his mouth and out through a fold of flabby flesh under his left jowl. It must have been a frightful wound, but it had healed well except at the point of entrance, where it had a tendency to pucker considerably, thus drawing the man's eyelid down on his cheek and giving to that visual organ something of the appearance of a bulldog's.
Both men observed Webster's swift but intense appraisal of them, and he of the puckered eye—perhaps because he was the cynosure of that scrutiny and morbidly sensitive of his facial disfigurement—replied with a cool, sullen stare that was almost belligerent.
Webster gazed after them whimsically as he approached the counter.
“I'd hate to wake up some night and find that hombre with the puckered eye leaning over me. To what branch of the genus Greaser do those two horse-thieves belong?” he queried.
“Central America, I take it,” the clerk answered. “They appear interested in the names of passengers bound for Caribbean ports. Looking for a friend, I suppose.”
“Hardly. I speak their kind of Spanish and a peon doesn't refer to his friends in the free-and-easy language these fellows employed. By the way,” he continued, suddenly apprehensive, “do you get much of that paraqueet travel on your line?”
“About 80 per cent, of it is off colour, sir.” Webster pondered the 80-per-cent, probability of being berthed in the same stateroom with one of these people and the prospect was as revolting to him as would be an uninvited negro guest at the dining table of a southern family. He had all a Westerner's hatred for the breed.
“Well, I want a ticket to San Buenaventura,” he informed the clerk, “but I don't relish the idea of a Greaser in the same stateroom with Me. I wonder if you couldn't manage to fix me up with a stateroom all to myself, or at least arrange it so that in the event of company I'll draw a white man. I can stand a slovenly white man where a clean peon would be unbearable, although—peon or Caballero—these people are apt to be tarred with the same stick. I don't care for any of them in mine.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but I cannot guarantee you absolute privacy nor any kind of white man. It's pretty mixed travel to all Central American ports.”
“How many berths in your first-class staterooms?”
“Two.”
Webster smiled brightly. He had found a way out of the difficulty. “I'll buy 'em both, son,” he announced.
“I cannot sell you an entire stateroom, sir. It's against the orders of the company to sell two berths to one man. The travel is pretty brisk and it's hardly fair to the public, you know.”
“Well, suppose I buy one ticket for myself and the other for—well, for my valet, let us say. Of course,” he added brightly, “I haven't engaged the valet yet and even should I do so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the rascal missed the boat!”
The clerk glanced at him with a slow smile, and pondered. “Well,” he said presently, “it's a poor rule that hasn't its exception, and when it comes to killing cats, strangulation with a butter-ball isn't the only method. If you care to buy a ticket for your valet, I'm sure I shouldn't worry whether or not he catches the boat. If my records show that the space is sold of two men and the purser collects two tickets, I think you'll be pretty safe from intrusion.”
“To the harassed traveller,” said Mr. Webster, “a meeting with a gentleman of your penetration is as refreshing as a canteen of cool water in the desert. Shoot!” and he produced a handful of gold.
“I will—provided I have one empty cabin,” and the clerk turned from the counter to consult his record of berths already sold and others reserved but not paid for. Presently he faced Webster at the counter.
“The outlook is very blue,” he announced. “Every name on the passenger list has a preponderance of vowels in it. However, I have one berth in No. 34 reserved by a gentleman who was to call for it by two o'clock to-day.” He looked at his watch. “It is now a quarter of one. If the reservation isn't claimed promptly at two o'clock I shall cancel it and reserve for you both berths in that room. If you will be good enough to leave me your name and address I will telephone you after that hour. In the meantime, you may make reservation of the other berth in the same stateroom. I feel very confident that the reservation in No. 34 will not be called for, Mr.—er——”
“Webster—John S. Webster. You are very kind, indeed. I'm at the St. Charles.”
“Be there at a quarter after two, Mr. Webster, and you will hear from me promptly on the minute,” the clerk assured him; whereupon Webster paid for one berth and departed for his hotel with a feeling that the clerk's report would be favourable.
True to his promise, at precisely a quarter after two, the ticket clerk telephoned Webster at his hotel that the berth in No. 34 had been cancelled and the entire stateroom was now at his disposal.
“If you will be good enough to give me the name of your valet,” he concluded, “it will not be necessary for you to come down for your tickets, Mr. Webster. I will fill in both names on my passenger manifest and send the tickets to your hotel by messenger immediately. You can then sign the tickets—I have already signed them as witness—and pay the messenger.”
“Well, I haven't engaged that valet as yet,” Webster began, but the other interrupted cheerfully: “What's the odds? He's going to miss the boat, anyhow. All I require is a name.”
“That ought to be a simple request to comply with. Let me see! If I had a valet I think I should want him to be called Andrew or Martin.”
“I read a book once, Mr. Webster, and the valet in that book was called Andrew Bowers.”
“Bowers is a fine old English name. Let us seek no further. Andrew Bowers it is.”
“Thank you. All you have to do then is to remember to sign the name, Andrew Bowers, to one ticket. Don't forget your valet's name now, and ball everything up,” and the clerk hung up, laughing.
Half an hour later a boy from the steamship office arrived with the tickets, collected for them, and departed, leaving John Stuart Webster singularly pleased with himself and at peace with the entire world.
CHAPTER XI
A “LARGE” dinner at Antoine's that night (Webster had heard of Antoine's dinners, both large and small and was resolved not to leave New Orleans until he had visited the famous restaurant) and a stroll through the picturesque old French quarter and along the levee next day, helped to render his enforced stay in New Orleans delightful, interesting, and instructive. Webster was one of those distinctful individual types to whom a chamber of horrors would be productive of more enjoyment than the usual round of “points of interest.” Experience had demonstrated to him that such points usually are uninteresting and wearing on the imagination, for the reason that the tourist trappers and proprietors of automobile 'buses, who map out the tours have no imagination themselves. Consequently, Webster preferred to prowl around quietly on little tours of discovery, personally conducted by himself. The search for obscure restaurants of unquestioned merit was with him almost a mania, and since in quaint New Orleans the food and drink specialist finds his highest heaven, no cloud marked the serenity of his delightful peregrinations.
The next day would be Sunday, and Webster planned an early morning visit to the old French market, around which still lingers much of the picturesque charm and colourful romance of a day that is done—that echo of yesterday, as it were, which has left upon New Orleans an individuality as distinct as that which the olden, golden, godless days have left upon San Francisco.
He rose before six o'clock, therefore; found a taxi, with the driver sound asleep inside, at the curb in front of the hotel; gave the latter his instructions, and climbed in.
It being Sunday morning New Orleans slept late. Save for the few early morning worshippers hurrying to mass—mostly servants in a hurry to return to their kitchens and cook breakfast—the streets were deserted. The languorous air of dawn was redolent of the perfume of orange, rose, and sweet olive; from the four comers of the old town the mellow chimes of the Catholic church bells pealed their sweet, insistent call to the faithful; an atmosphere of subtle peace and sanctity pervaded the silent streets and awoke in John Stuart Webster's heart a vague nostalgia.
Perhaps it was because so much of his life had been spent in lonely mountain or desert camps, or perhaps it was because this taxi ride through the pleasant southern dawn was so typical of the swift passing of the youth which had gone from him before he had had an opportunity to taste, even moderately, of its joys and allurements. He sighed—a little regretful sigh.
“That's you, Johnny Webster,” he told himself, “breezing along through life like a tin-canned dog; f passing the sweet and the beautiful and battling with the harsh and unlovely; here to-day and gone to-morrow, a poor harried devil with your trunk on your back, a slave to the call of gold; restless, in a great hurry to get there and an equal hurry to leave for the new diggings, and all the time Life passes you by and you don't grab so much as a tail feather! On such a morn as this Eve entered the Garden of Eden, while I, consummate idiot, shut myself up in a taxi to watch a bill of expense run up on the clock, while sniffing myrrh and incense through this confounded window. I'll get out and walk!”
He was opposite Jackson Square and the cloying sweetness of palmetto, palm, and fig burdened the air. Above the rumble of the taxi he could hear the distant babel of voices in the French market across the square, so he halted the taxicab, alighted, and handed the driver a bill.
“I want to explore this square,” he said. He had recognized it by the heroic statue of General Jackson peeping through the trees. “I'll walk through the square Up the market, and you may proceed to the market and meet me there. Later we will return to the hotel.”
The chauffeur nodded, and Webster, every fibre of his alert, healthy body once more tingling with the sheer joy of living, entered the square, found a path that wound its way through the shrubbery, and came out at length in the main pathway, close to the Jackson memorial statue.
A Creole girl—starry-eyed, beautiful, rich with the glorious colouring of her race—passed him bound for the cathedral across the square, as Webster thought, for she carried a large prayer book on her arm. To Webster she seemed to fit perfectly into her surroundings, to lend to them the last, final touch of beauty, the apotheosis of peace, and again the nostalgic fever submerged the quiet joy with which he had approached his journey through the square. His glance followed the girl down the walk.
Presently she halted. A young man rose from a bench where evidently he had been waiting for her, and bowed low, his hat clasped to his breast, as only a Frenchman or a Spanish grandee can bow. Webster saw the Creole girl turn to him with a little gesture of pleasure. She extended her hand and the young man kissed it with old-fashioned courtesy.
John Stuart Webster knew now what was missing in his scheme of things, as with reverent and wistful eyes he watched their meeting.
“Forty years old,” he thought, “and I haven't spoken to a dozen women that caused me a second thought, or who weren't postmistresses or biscuit shooters! Forty years old and I've never been in love! Spring time down that little path and Indian summer in my old fool heart. Why, I ought to be arrested for failure to live!”
The lovers were walking slowly, arm in arm, back along the path by which the girl had come, so with a courtesy and gentleness that were innate in him, Webster stepped out of sight behind the statue of Old Hickory; for he did not desire, by his mere presence, to intrude a discordant note in the perfect harmony of those two human hearts. He knew they desired that sylvan path to themselves; that evidently they had sought their early morning tryst in the knowledge that the square was likely to be deserted at this hour. Therefore, to provoke selfconsciousness in them now savoured to John Stuart Webster of a high crime and misdemeanour, for which reason he was careful to keep General Jackson between himself and the lovers until they had gone by.
The young man was speaking as they passed; his voice was rich, pleasant, vibrant with the earnestness of what he had to say: with a pretty little silver-mounted walking stick he slashed at spears of grass alongside the path; the girl was crying a little. Neither of them had seen him, so he entered a path that led from them at right angles.
He had proceeded but a few feet along this trail when, through a break in the shrubbery ahead of him, he saw two men. They were crossing Webster's path and following a course paralleling that of the lovers in the broad main walk. Brief as was his glimpse of them, however, Webster instantly recognized the two Central Americans he had seen in the steamship ticket office two days previous.
They were not walking as walk two men abroad at this hour for a constitutional. Neither did they walk as walk men churchward bound. A slight, skulking air marked their progress, and caused Webster to wonder idly what they were stalking.
He turned into the path down which the two men had passed, not with the slightest idea of shadowing them, but because his destination lay in that direction. The Central Americans were approximately fifty yards in advance of him as he turned in their wake, and at sight of them his suspicion that they were stalking something was quickened into belief.
Both men had forsaken the gravelled path and were walking on the soft velvet of blue grass lawn that fringed it!
“Perhaps I'd better deaden my hoof beats also,” John Stuart Webster soliloquized, and followed suit immediately.
He had scarcely done so when the men ahead of him paused abruptly. Webster did likewise, and responding—subconsciously, perhaps, to the remembrance of the menace in the glance of the man with the puckered eye—he stepped out of sight behind a broad oak tree. Through the trees and shrubbery he could still see the lovers, who had halted and evidently were about to part.
Webster saw the young man glance warily about; then, apparently satisfied there was none to spy upon them, he drew the girl gently toward him. She clung to him for nearly a minute, sobbing; then he raised her face tenderly, kissed her, pressed her from him, and walked swiftly away without looking back.
It was a sweet and rather touching little tableau; to John Stuart Webster, imaginative and possessed of a romantic streak in his nature, it was more than a tableau. It was a moving picture!
“I suppose her old man objects to the young fellow,” he muttered to himself sympathetically, “and he can't come near the house. They've met here for the fond farewell, and now the young fellow's going out West to make his fortune, so he can come back and claim the girl. Huh! If he wants her, why the devil doesn't he take her? I'd tell her old man I'd picked on him for my father-in-law, and then if he didn't like me I'd let the old fellow rave; and see how much good it would do him. But the French are different; they always let the old folks step in and rock the boat——- Hello! By Judas priest! Now I know what those two paraqueets are up to. One of them is the father of that girl. They've been spying on the lovers, and now they're going to corner the young fellow and shingle him for his nerve.”
The girl had stood for a moment, gazing after her companion, before she turned with her handkerchief to her eyes, and continued on her way to the cathedral. Webster had observed that the two men ahead of him paid no attention to her, but pressed eagerly forward after the man.
Webster could look across about thirty yards of low shrubbery at the girl as she passed. He heard her sobbing as she stumbled blindly by, and he was distressed about her, for all the world loves a lover and John Stuart Webster was no exception to this universal rule.
“By George, this is pretty tough,” he reflected. “That young fellow treated that girl with as much gentleness and courtesy as any gentleman should, and I'm for him and against this idea of corporal punishment. Don't you worry, Tillie, my dear. I'm going to horn into this game myself if it goes too far.”
The two dusky skulkers ahead of him, having come to another crosspath, turned into it and came out on the main path in the rear of the young man. Webster noticed that they were walking twice as fast as when he had first observed them, and more than ever convinced that presently there might be work for a strong man and true, he hastened after them.
As he came out into the main walk again, he noticed that the pair were still walking on the grass. He padded gently along behind them.
The four were now rapidly approaching the old French market, and the steadily rising babel of voices speaking in French, Italian, Spanish, Creole patois and Choctaw, was sufficient to have drowned the slight noise of the pursuit, even had the young man's mind not been upon other things, and the interest of the two Central Americans centred upon their quarry, to the exclusion, of any thought of possible interruption.
Webster felt instinctively that the two men would rush and make a concerted attack from the rear. He smiled.
“I'll just fool you two hombres a whole lot,” he thought, and stooping, picked up a small stone. On the instant the two men, having approached within thirty feet of their quarry, made a rush for him.
Their charge was swift, but swift though it was, the little stone which John Stuart Webster hurled was swifter. It struck the young man fairly between the shoulderblades with a force sufficient to bring him out of his sentimental reverie with a jerk, as it were. He whirled, saw the danger that threatened him, and—sprang to meet it.
“Bravo!” yelled Webster, and ran to his aid, for he had seen now that it was to be knife work. Tragedy instead of melodrama.
The man with the puckered eye closed in with such eagerness it was apparent to Webster that here was work to his liking. The young man raised his light cane, but Pucker-eye did not hesitate. He merely threw up his left forearm to meet the expected blow aimed at his head, lunged forward and slashed viciously at the young man's abdomen. The latter drew back a step, doubled like a jack-knife, and brought his cane down viciously across the knuckles of his assailant's right hand.
“So it is thou, son of a pig,” he called pleasantly in Spanish. “I fooled you that time, didn't I?” he added in English. “Thought I would aim for your head, didn't you?”
The blow temporarily paralyzed the assassin's hand; he dropped the knife, and as he stooped to recover it with his left hand, the young man, before retreating from Pop-eye, kicked Pucker-eye in the face and quite upset him.
“Stop it!” shouted Webster.
Pop-eye turned his head at the outcry. The man he was attacking fell into the position of a swordsman en garde, and thrust viciously with the ferule at the face of the pop-eyed man, who, disregarding Webster's approach, seized the cane in his left hand and with a quick, powerful tug actually drew his victim toward him a foot before the latter let go the stick.
Before he could give ground again Pop-eye was upon him. He grasped the young man by the latter's left arm and held him, while he drew back for the awful disembowelling stroke; as his long arm sped forward the hook of John Stuart Webster's heavy cane descended upon that flexed arm in the brook of the elbow, snagging it cleverly.
The knife never reached its destination!
“You would, would you?” said Webster reproachfully, and jerked the fellow violently around. The man he had rescued promptly struck Pop-eye a terrible blow in the face with his left hand and broke loose from the grip that had so nearly been his undoing; whereupon Webster tapped the assassin a meditative tap or two on the top of his sinful head for good measure and to awaken in him some sense of the impropriety and futility of resistance, after which Webster turned to discuss a similar question of ethics with Pucker-eye.
The scar-cheeked man was on his knees, groping groggily for his knife, for he had received a severe kick under the chin, and for the nonce was far from dangerous. Stooping, Webster picked up the knife; then with knife and cane grasped in his left hand he seized Pucker-eye by the nape with his right and jerked him to his feet. The assassin stood glowering at him in a perfect frenzy of brutish, inarticulate fury.
“Take the knife away from the other fellow before he gets active again,” Webster called over his shoulder. “I'll manage this rascal. We'll march them over to the market and turn them over to the police.” He spoke in Spanish.
“Thanks, ever so much, for my life,” the young man answered lightly, and in English, “but where I come from it is not the fashion to settle these arguments in a court of law. To call an officer is considered unclublike; to shoot a prisoner in this country is considered murder, and consequently I have but one alternative and I advise you, my good friend, to have a little of the same. I'm going to run like the devil.”
And he did. He was in full flight before Webster could glance around, and in an instant he was lost to sight among the trees.
“That advice sounds eminently fair and reasonable,” Webster yelled after him, and was about to follow when he observed that the young man had abandoned his pretty little silver-chased walking stick.
“That's too nice a little stick to leave to these brigands,” he thought, and forthwith possessed himself of it and the pop-eyed man's knife, after which he tarried not upon the order of his going but went, departing at top speed.
The young man he had saved from being butchered was right. An entangling alliance with the police was, decidedly, not to John Stuart Webster's liking, for should, he, unfortunately, form such an alliance, he would be haled into court as a witness and perhaps miss the steamer to San Buenaventura.
“Drat it,” he soliloquized, as he emerged from the square and observed his taxi parked at the entrance to the market, “I came through that square so fast I haven't the slightest idea what the last half of it looks like. That's what I get for mixing in a little Donnybrook that's none of my business.”
He had planned to spend an hour in the market, drink a cup of café noir, smoke a cigarette, and return to his hotel in time for a leisurely breakfast, but his recent bout with grim reality had blunted the edge of romance. He ordered his driver to take him back to the hotel, sprang inside and congratulated himself on his lucky escape.
CHAPTER XII
WEBSTER'S trunk went aboard the steamer early the following morning, and at noon he entered a taxi with his hand baggage and was driven to the levee where La Estrellita lay tugging gently at her mooring lines. Owing to the congestion of freight and traffic the chauffeur stopped his cab a little distance from the gangplank, where Webster discharged him with a liberal tip.
The latter, however, swung his passenger's bag and suitcase to the ground, picked them up and started for the gangplank.
“Never mind my baggage, lad,” Webster called after him. “One of the deck boys will care for it.” The chauffeur turned. “You've been very generous with me, sir,” he answered, “so I think I had better carry your baggage aboard. If you permit a deck boy to handle it, you merely have to give another tip, and that would be sheer wanton waste. Why shouldn't I earn the one you gave me?”
“I hadn't figured it out that way, son, so here's another half dollar for being the only existing specimen of your species in captivity. My stateroom is No. 34, upper deck, port side,” Webster answered, smiling. The man took the tip eagerly and hurried toward the gangplank; the quartermaster on duty shouldered a way for him and he darted aboard?
Webster followed leisurely. At the gangplank the purser's clerk halted him, examined his tickets and punched them.
“Where is the other man?” he asked. “You have two tickets here.”
“Oh, that blamed valet of mine,” Webster answered, and glanced around as if in search of that mythical functionary. “It would be like the stupid fellow to miss the boat,” he added. “When he comes——”
Webster ceased speaking abruptly. He was looking straight into the malevolent orbs of Pucker-eye, who was standing just behind the clerk at the foot of the gangplank.
“I wonder if Popeye's around, also,” Webster thought, and he faced about. Pop-eye was standing in back of him, leaning over the railing of the gangway.
“Which is the valet?” the purser's clerk asked, scanning the names on the tickets.
“Andrew Bowers.”
“All right, Mr. Webster,” the other answered, with that genial camaraderie that seems inseparable from all of his calling. “When Andrew comes I'll send him aboard.”
He started to pass the tickets back to Webster, but a detaining hand rested on his arm, while a dark thumb and forefinger lifted the trailing strips of tickets. Pucker-eye was examining them also.
He sent his elbow backward violently into Pucker-eye's midriff and shook him off roughly.
“What do you mean, you black-and-tan hound?” he demanded. “Since when did you begin to O. K. my work?”
Pucker-eye made no reply to this stern reproof. He accepted the elbow with equanimity, and faced Webster with an evil smile that indicated mutual recognition.
“Bueno,” he said, with such genuine satisfaction that Webster could not help demanding:
“Por que es bueno? (Why is it good?)”
“We meet the senor first in the teeket office. We meet the senor again yesterday morning, no? After, we remember we have meet the senor in the teeket office! Quien sabe? The senor he ees sail on La Estrellita for San Buenaventura, no?”
“So you came nosing around to see about it, eh? Doing a little plain gumshoe work, I see.”
Pucker-eye bowed. By the simple exercise of courage and bad manners he had looked at John Stuart Webster's ticket and was now familiar with his name and destination.
The object of this solicitude had little difficulty in guessing the reason behind it all, and he was not happy. He would have preferred that the incident of their former meeting should not be held against him; he wished most devoutedly that his part in the ruction in Jackson Square on Sunday morning might have been forgotten by all concerned, and this revival of the unpleasant episode was slightly disconcerting.
As a usual thing he was loth to interject himself in the affairs of other people, and had a deep-seated animosity against those who did; he would have preferred to round out his existence without having to take into consideration the presence of a twin Nemesis. However, since the fat was in the fire, so to speak, Webster felt that there was nothing for him to do save brazen things out as best he could, so he glowered darkly at Pucker-eye and said:
“Well, you scoundrelly cutthroat, what are you going to do about it? Try a little of your knife work on me, I suppose?”
Pucker-eye did not answer, but his beady glance wavered and shifted before the cool, contemptuous menace of Webster's blue eyes.
“Listen, hombre,” Webster continued. “I know your kind of people like a nigger knows cologne. I know what you'd like to do to me in exchange for what I did to you yesterday morning, but you take a tip from me and don't try it, or one of these days they'll be walking slow behind you and your companero, and you won't know it!”
The fellow grinned—the kind of grin that is composed of equal parts of ferocity and knowledge of superior strength. That grin did more to disconcert Webster than the knowledge that he had earned for himself two bloodthirsty and implacable enemies, for Pucker-eye was the first of his breed that Webster had ever seen smile under insult. That cool smile infuriated him.
Pucker-eye took out a cigarette case, selected a cigarette, and presented the case to Webster. His bad manners in selecting his own cigarette first was deliberate, as Webster knew. It was the Latin-American's method of showing his contempt.
“We shall meet again, Meester Webstaire,” he said. “May I offer the senor a cigarette for the—what you Americans call—the keepsake? No?” He smiled brightly and closed his puckered eye in a knowing wink.
Webster took his tickets from the purser, folded them, placed them in his pocket and for a few seconds regarded Pucker-eye contemptuously.
“When we meet again, you scum,” he retorted quietly, “you shall have no difficulty in remembering me. You may keep your cigarette.”
His long, powerful right arm shot out; like a forceps his thumb and forefinger closed over Pucker-eve's rather flat nose; he squeezed, and with a shrill scream of agony Pucker-eye went to his knees.
Still holding the wretch by his proboscis, Webster turned quickly in order that his face might be toward Pop-eye.
“Pop-eye,” he said, “if you take a hand in this, I'll twist your nose, too, and afterward I'll throw you in the river.”
He turned to Pucker-eye.
“Up, thou curious little one,” he said in Spanish, and jerked the unhappy rascal to his feet. The latter clawed ineffectually at the terrible arm which held him, until, presently discovering that the harder he struggled the harder Webster pinched his nose, he ceased his struggles and hung limply, moaning with pain and rage in the grip of the American.
“Good!” Webster announced, slacking his grip a little. With his left hand he deftly extracted a hair from each flank of the screaming little scoundrel's scant moustache, and held them before the latter's tear-filled eyes.
“My friend,” he said gently, “mark how the gringo gives his little dark brother a lesson in deportment. Behold, if I have given thee a souvenir of our meeting, I also have taken one. By this pinched and throbbing nose shall I be remembered when I am gone; by these hairs from thy rat's moustache shall I remember thee. Go, and thrust not that nose into a gringo's business again. It is unsafe.”
He released Pucker-eye, nodded brightly to the purser's clerk and quartermaster, who, spellbound and approving, had watched him mete out retribution according to his code, and went aboard, just as an assistant steward came hurrying along the deck beating a lusty solo on a triangle—the signal for all non-passengers to go ashore.
Webster made his way through the crowd to his room, looked in, saw that his baggage was there, and walked around on the starboard side to join in the general farewell of all on board to the crowd on the levee.
At the shore end of the gangplank Pucker-eye and Pop-eye still waited. The unfortunate Pucker-eye was weeping with pain and futile rage and humiliation, but Webster noticed that Pop-eye's attention was not on his friend but upon each passenger that boarded the ship, of which there were the usual number of late arrivals. As each passenger approached, Pop-eye scanned him with more than casual interest.
Webster smiled. “Looking for that valet they heard me talking about,” he reflected. “Pop-eye, you're a fine, capable lad. I thought you had the brains of the two. You're not going away until you've had a chance to size up the reinforcements at my command, are you?”
Promptly at one o'clock the captain mounted the bridge and ordered the gangplank drawn ashore. The breastline was cast off; with a long-drawn bellow from her siren the wheel of La Estrellita commenced to churn the muddy water and her bow swung gently outboard, while the stern line acted as a spring. With the stern line slackened and cast overboard the vessel pushed slowly out into the stream where the current caught her and swung her in a wide arc. Webster watched Pucker-eye and Pop-eye leave the landing arm in arm. Pop-eye was sporty enough to wave at him, and Webster, not to be outdone in kind, waved back.
He lighted a cigar and leaned over the rail as the steamer, gathering speed, swept down river.
“Good-bye, you golden fizz and chicken gumbo,” he called, as the city receded and the low, wooded shores below the city came into view. He had forgotten Pucker-eye and Pop-eye in the flood of poignant regret that swept over him at the memory of the peerless Antoine!
CHAPTER XIII
WHEN he had finished his cigar he cast the stump overboard, watched it until it disappeared astern, and then went around to state-room No. 34. As he stepped in, and closed the door a masculine voice said very pleasantly:
“How do you do?”
Mr. Webster looked up and beheld a young man, arrayed in a very fancy pair of light blue silk pyjamas, stretched at his ease in the upper berth. In his right hand he held an open book; his left hand grasped his bare right foot, which he was rubbing comfortably; in his mouth he held an aromatic Turkish cigarette. He was very much at home, no doubt of that, for he was smiling in the friendliest fashion imaginable.
John Stuart Webster stared at the stranger for several seconds and concluded he was invading the sanctity of another's stateroom. “Excuse me,” he said, “I guess I'm in the right church but the wrong pew,” and he stepped out and looked for the number on the stateroom. To his surprise it was No. 34 after all, so he stepped back into the stateroom and favoured the stranger with another scrutiny.
“It does appear to me, my friend,” he said presently, “that I detect something strangely familiar about your pyjamas.”
“I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, Mr. Webster. I found them in your suitcase.”
“Well, how do you do?” Webster declared. “Pretty well, all things considered. May I offer you one of your own cigarettes? I found them in the suitcase also, and can recommend them highly.”
“Thank you very much.” Webster helped himself to a cigarette and sat down on the settee. Fell a silence of perhaps half a minute. Then:
“I dislike to appear inquisitive,” Webster began, “but the fact is, neighbour, I'm curious to know where you got that book. I observe you are reading Samuel Butler's 'Way of all Flesh,' and that the book is slightly damaged. Recently I purchased such a book in——”
“Pray do not take the trouble to explain,” the other answered airily. “I discovered this excellent book in your suitcase also. In fact, for me, that suitcase has proved to be a repository of treasures.” John Stuart Webster's neck came out of his collar with the suddenness of a turtle snapping at a fly; he drew himself up beside the top berth until his face was on a level with his unbidden guest's, upon whom he bent a look of mingled emotions. On his part the stranger returned his gaze with grave interest, and when the silence threatened to become embarrassing he said:
“Will you have the goodness to press that button? I think we should drink a bumper to our better acquaintance and I have no doubt but that the barkeeper on this packet can manufacture a golden fizz. Do you care for the famous New Orleans golden fizz?”
“It is a wonderful institution,” Webster replied, “and I'll have one. I need it to sustain me, for I am faint with amazement.” He pressed the button. “'While the golden fizz is fizzing,” he continued, “suppose you let me have a look at your ticket.”
“Ticket?” echoed his visitor. “I haven't any ticket. A kind gentleman bought one for me and has it in his possession. Do you, sir, by any chance, happen to be that philanthropic individual?”
“Well, I'll be——”
“Hush!” the stranger warned, raising an admonitory finger. “No profanity, please. I have been tenderly reared and cuss words will only shock me and clog the atmosphere. I'm here to do you and do you a delicate brown, so bear up, kind sir, and take your walloping like a sport.”
“Who the devil are you?” John Stuart Webster demanded.
“I regret I have no card, but even if I had it would be no kindness to inflict upon an American gentleman the cognomen my parents honoured me with, for it is long and many-jointed, like a peanut, and embodies the names of all the saints in the calendar. Moreover, just at present I am travelling under an alias. I am known as Mr. Andrew Bowers.”
“And your occupation?” Webster managed to articulate.
“Valet de chambre to that prince of gentlemen, Mr. John S. Webster,” the other replied with a mischievous gleam in his dark eyes.
Mr. Webster sat down limply on the settee. He was undecided whether to roar with laughter or shriek with rage; while he struggled for a decision Andrew Bowers blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
“Haven't I seen you before?” Webster queried presently.
“I wouldn't be surprised. I drove you down to the steamer in a taxi half an hour ago. You will recall that the taxi driver carried your luggage aboard.”
Webster gazed around the stateroom. “Where have you hidden your livery?” he demanded.
“I wrapped it in a newspaper; then, seeking a moment when the deck outside was deserted, I stepped forth in my—I beg your pardon, your—pyjamas and tossed it overboard.”
“But apparently you did not bring aboard with you a suit of clothes to take the place of your livery?”
“Quite true—lamentably so, Mr. Webster. Perhaps you will accept my desperate need as an excuse for borrowing your pyjamas. I notice you have another suit of them. Fortunate man!”
When confronted by something mysterious it was not John Stuart's habit to ask innumerable questions, and for the space of two minutes he gave himself up to deduction and a close scrutiny of his companion.
Andrew Bowers was a man of perhaps thirty years, five feet ten inches tall, and apparently in excellent health. He might have weighed a hundred and seventy pounds and he was undeniably handsome. His head was nobly formed and covered with thick, wavy hair, shiny and black as ebony; his eyes were dark blue; the eyebrows, thick but fine and silky, almost met over the bridge of a thin, high nose that was just a trifle too long for his face. Webster decided it was the nose of a thinker. Andrew Bowers's forehead was broad and high and his head was thick forward of the ears, infallible sign of brains; his mouth and chin were full of determination, although capable of a smile of singular sweetness; while the skin on his legs was milk-white, his hands and face were tanned to the colour of a manzanita stick, seeming to indicate that he had lived an outdoor life.
While Webster was wondering whether his companion was merely a high-class tramp or an absconding bank cashier, a knock sounded on the stateroom door. He opened it and the purser stood in the entrance.
“Tickets, please?” he announced.
Webster surrendered both tickets, receiving in turn two seat checks for the dining saloon, and the purser passed on to the next cabin.
Andrew Bowers smiled a small, prescient smile, but said nothing and presently John Stuart Webster broke the silence. “Well,” he ordered “sing the song or tell the story.”
“I noticed you surrendered my ticket to the purser,” the young man answered irrelevantly, “and I am glad of that. I take it as prima facie evidence that you have made up your mind to accept my company.”
“You're too infernally cool and cocksure, my friend,” Webster warned him testily. “I pride myself on a sense of humour and I dearly love a joke until it's carried too far, but be advised in time, young man, and don't try to play horse with me. I haven't made up my mind to accept your company, although, provided you do not rub my fur the wrong way, I may decide to put up with you, for whether you are a decayed gentleman or an engaging scoundrel, you are, at least, intelligent and impressive, clean, white, resourceful, and pleasant. However, my acceptance or non-acceptance of you is a subject for future discussion, since at present we have some fiduciary matters before us. You owe me fifty dollars for your ticket, Andrew Bowers, and in view of the fact that I never saw you before to-day, suppose we start the voyage by squaring the account.”
Andrew Bowers sat up in the berth and let his legs drape over the side. “Mr. Webster,” he began seriously, “had I sung my song or told my story before you surrendered that ticket to the purser I might have found myself in a most embarrassing predicament. If, prior to the arrival of the purser to collect the tickets, you had handed my ticket to me, saying: 'Here is your ticket, Mr. Bowers. Be kind enough to reimburse me to the extent of fifty dollars,' I should have been compelled to admit then, as I do now, that I haven't fifty dollars. Fortunately for me, however, you surrendered the ticket to the purser before acquainting yourself with the state of my fortunes; the voyage has commenced and whether you like it or not, my dear sir, I am your guest from now until we reach San Buenaventura. Rather an interesting situation, don't you think?”
John Stuart Webster was of Scotch ancestry. He had an hereditary regard for his baubees. He was a business man. Prodigal spender though he was and generous to a fault, the fact remained that he always made it a point to get value received, and he was prodigal with his own money; he preferred that the privilege of prodigality with the Websterian funds should remain an inalienable prerogative of the sole surviving member of the Webster family. He gazed contemplatively now upon his devil-may-care, unbidden guest, torn between a desire to whisk him out of the berth and shake him until his teeth fell out, and another to be just and patient, in the hope that some great extenuating circumstance might be adduced to account for this impudent daylight robbery. Mr. Webster had been deluded, cheated, robbed, and pillaged many a time and oft in the course of his rather eventful career, but he had yet to meet the man who, having swindled him out of fifty dollars, had the effrontery to add insult to injury by exhibiting a perfectly obvious intention of making him like it. Indeed, John Stuart Webster was obsessed with a secret fear that the smiling bandit in the upper berth was going to succeed in his nefarious design, and, in the contemplation of this unheard-of contretemps, the genial John was struck temporarily speechless.
“The last cent I had in the world went to that taxi person whose taxi I borrowed and whose old uniform I purchased,” Andrew Bowers supplemented his confession.
“You asked me to ring for two golden fizzes,” Webster reproached him. “Am I to be stuck for the drinks? Not satisfied with rooking me for a first-class passage to San Buenaventura you plan to tack on extras, eh?”
“Oh, I'll pay for the drinks,” Andrew Bowers assured him.
“How can you, if you gave your last cent to that taxi driver?”
“You tipped me very liberally for carrying your baggage aboard,” Andrew Bowers retorted slyly.
“Ouch!” cried Mr. Webster, and laughed. The very next instant he was provoked at himself for having done so. That laugh gave the brigand Andrew a decided advantage, for it placed Webster on defensive ground. He was convinced of this when the brigand said:
“Thanks for that laugh, Mr. Webster. It arouses hope in my sad heart. I have outraged your patience, your privacy, and your pocketbook—yet you laughed. Bueno. I will be equally good-natured and forgive you for questioning my sincerity in the matter of dispensing my hospitality; even the little slur cast on my veracity in the matter of my finances shall pass unnoticed.”
“I think you're too cool, young man,” Webster retorted. “Just a trifle too cocksure. Up to the present moment you have proffered no evidence why you should not be adjudged a cad, and I do not like cads and must decline to permit one to occupy the same stateroom at my expense. You are clever and amusing and I laughed at you, but at the same time my sense of humour is not so great as to cause me to overlook your impudence and laugh with you. Now, if you have anything to say, say it quickly, because you're going to go away from here—in a hurry.”
“I plead guilty to the indictment, Mr. Webster, and submit as an excuse the fact that desperate circumstances require desperate measures. I am not begging my way, neither am I beating it, for the reason that both forms of travel are repugnant to me. I am merely taking advantage of certain fortuitous circumstances to force you, an entire stranger, to extend to me a credit of fifty dollars until we reach San Buenaventura when you will be promptly reimbursed. I had thought,” he added sadly, “that my face might prove ample security for a fifty-dollar loan. There has never been a crook in my family and I have never been charged with a penal offence or been in jail.”
“It is not my habit,” Webster retorted stiffly, “to extend credit to strangers who demand it.”
“I do not demand it, sir. I beg it of you, and because I cannot afford to be refused I took care to arrange matters so that you would not be likely to refuse my request. Really, I do not mean to be cocksure and impudent, but before you throw me out I'd like to let you in on a secret about yourself.”
“Well?”
“You're not going to throw me out.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can't.”
“That's fighting talk. Now, just to prove to you the depth of error in which you flounder, young man, I am about to throw you out.” And he grasped Andrew Bowers in the grip of a grizzly bear and whisked him out of the top berth.
“Wait one second,” his helpless victim cried. “I have something to say before you go any further.”
“Say it,” Webster ordered. “Your tongue is the only part of you that I cannot control.”
“When you throw me out on deck,” Andrew Bowers queried, “do your pyjamas go with me? Does the hair go with the hide?”
“They cost me sixteen dollars in Salt Lake City, but—good lord, yes. I can't throw you out mother naked; damn it, I can't throw you out at all.”
“Didn't I tell you so? Be a good fellow and turn me loose.”
“Certainly—for the time being. You'll stay locked in this stateroom while I have a talk with the captain. He'll probably dig up a shirt, a pair of dungarees, and some old shoes for you and set you ashore before we get out of the river. If he doesn't do that he'll keep you aboard and you'll shovel coal for your passage.”
“But I'm Andrew Bowers and the purser has collected my first-class ticket!”
“What of it? I shall declare—and with truth—that you are not Andrew Bowers, that you are not my valet, and that I did not buy the ticket for you. I dare you to face the captain in my pyjamas and prove you aren't a stowaway.”
“You would win on that point,” the baffling guest admitted, “but it is a point you will not raise. Why? Because I have another trump up my kimono.” He climbed back into the upper berth and from that vantage point gazed down benevolently upon John Stuart Webster. “I'm disappointed in you,” he continued sadly. “I thought you'd show a little normal human curiosity about me—and you haven't. You do not ask questions or I could explain, while I cannot volunteer information without seeming to seek your pity, and that course would be repugnant to me. I have never shovelled coal, although I daresay I could manage to earn my passage as a stoker; indeed, I daresay I shall have to, if you insist on being belligerent, and if you insist I shall not oppose you. I am hoping, however, that you will not insist, but that you will, on the contrary, accept my word of honour that you shall be reimbursed two hours after you land in San Buenaventura.”
“New music to your song, my friend, but the same old words,” Webster retorted, and stepped to the stateroom door. “You're doomed to shovel coal or go ashore.”
“Listen. If I go ashore, your responsibility for my life ceases, Mr. Webster, but if the chief engineer happens to be short one coal-passer and the captain sends me down to the stokehole, your responsibility for my death begins, for I'll be put ashore publicly at San Buenaventura and two hours later I'll be facing a firing squad in the cemetery of the Catedrâl de la Vera Cruz.”
“Gosh,” John Stuart Webster murmured dazedly, “I'm afraid I can't take a chance like that for fifty dollars.”
A knock sounded on the door and Webster opened it. A waiter stood in the entrance. “Did you ring, sir?” he queried.
“I did,” replied John Stuart Webster. “Bring up two glasses and a quart of the best wine aboard the ship.”
The waiter hastened away and Webster turned to face the little, cryptic, humorous smile that made his travelling companion so singularly boyish and attractive.
“You win, son,” Webster declared. “I'm whipped to a frazzle. Any time I'm sitting in back of a royal flush and the other fellow bluffs me out of the pot, I always buy the wine. When it arrives we shall drink to our better acquaintance. Pending its arrival, please be advised that you are welcome to my pyjamas, my cigarettes, my book, and my stateroom. You are my guest and you owe me nothing, except, perhaps, your confidence, although I do not insist upon that point. Where I come from every man kills his own snakes.”
And he held up his hand for Andrew Bowers to shake.
“Mr. Webster,” the latter declared feelingly, “I am not a lord of language, so I cannot find words to thank you. I agree with you that you are entitled to my confidence. My name is——”
“Tut, tut, my boy. Your name is Andrew Bowers, and that identifies you sufficiently for the time being. Your face is a guaranty of your character and entitles you to a nominal credit.”
“But——”
“Make me no buts. I care not who you are; perhaps what I do not know will not distress me. When I suggested that I was entitled to a measure of your confidence, I meant on a few minor points only—points on which my curiosity has been abnormally aroused.”
“Very well, my friend. Fire away.”
“Are you an American citizen?”
“No, I am a citizen of Sobrante.”
“You have assured me that you are not a crook; consequently I know you are not fleeing from the United States authorities. You had no money to pay for your passage to San Buenaventura so you schemed to make me pay your way. Hence I take it that your presence in the capital of your native country is a matter of extreme importance and that the clerk in the ticket office of the Caribbean Mail Line is a friend of yours.”
“Quite true. He knew my need.”
“You were under surveillance and could not leave New Orleans for San Buenaventura unless you left secretly. When I purchased both berths in this stateroom and the ticket clerk knew I held a firstclass ticket for a valet that was not, he decided to saw off on me a valet that was. So he gave you my name and the name of my hotel, you arranged matters with the taxi starter and the taxi driver and drove me to the steamer. Disguised in the livery of a chauffeur and carrying hand baggage you hoped to get aboard without being detected by your enemies who watched the gangplank.”
Andrew Bowers nodded.
“Do you think you succeeded?” Webster continued.
“I do not know, Mr. Webster. I hope so. If I did not—well, the instant this steamer drops anchor in the roadstead at San Buenaventura, she will be boarded and searched by the military police, I will be discovered and——” He shrugged.
“Lawn party in the cemetery, eh?” Webster suggested.
Andrew Bowers reached under his pillow and produced two heavy automatic pistols and a leathern box containing five clips of cartridges. These he exhibited in silence and then thrust them back under the pillow.
“I see, Andrew. In case you're cornered, eh? Well, I think I would prefer to die fighting myself. However, let us hope you will not have to face any such unpleasant alternative.”
“I'm not worried, Mr. Webster. Somehow, I think I ran the gauntlet safely.”
“But why did you throw your livery overboard?”
“It was of no further use to me. A chauffeur on shipboard would be most incongruous, and the sight of the livery hanging on yonder peg would be certain to arouse the curiosity of the room steward. And I'm not going to appear on deck throughout the voyage, might meet somebody who knows me.”
“But you'll have to have some clothes in which to go ashore, you amazing man.”
“Not at all. The steamer will arrive in the harbour of San Buenaventura late in the afternoon—too late to be given pratique that day. After dark I shall drop overboard and endeavour to swim ashore, and in view of that plan clothes would only prove an embarrassment. I shall land in my own country naked and penniless, but once ashore I shall quickly find shelter. I'll have to risk the sharks, of course.”
“Man-eaters?”
“The bay is swarming with them.”
“You're breaking my heart,” Webster declared sympathetically. “I suppose you're going to feign illness throughout the voyage.”
“Not the land of illness that will interfere with my appetite. I have prescribed for myself a mild attack of inflammatory rheumatism, as an excuse for remaining in bed and having my meals brought to me. This service, of course, will necessitate some slight expense in the way of tips, but I am hoping you will see your way clear to taking care of that for your guest.”
Silently Webster handed Andrew Bowers ten dollars in silver. “That ought to hold you,” he declared. “For the rest, you're up to some political skullduggery in Sobrante, and what it is and what's your real name are two subjects in which I am not interested. I am on a vacation and intend to amuse myself. If I find you as amusing as you appear at the outset of our acquaintance I shall do my best to break the tedium of your confinement in this stateroom and if I find you dull I shall leave you to your own devices. Let us talk anything but business and personalities and let it be understood that you are my valet, Andrew Bowers. That's all I know about you and that's all I care to know about you. In fact, the less I know about you the less will I have to explain in the event of your sudden demise.”
“Fair enough,” quoth Andrew Bowers. “You're a man after my own heart. I thank you.”