The Fifth Ace Part 19

"Of course, we are at home!" Then, as Welsh withdrew. "Fancy, we did not even know he had returned! It's Starr Wiley!"

CHAPTER XI

A CHANGE OF FRONT

The following morning, Willa and Dan Morrissey went motor shopping.

The latter was still slightly bewildered by his sudden change of fortune, but it was plain to be seen that he regarded his new employer with wors.h.i.+pful admiration and respect, and she in turn was satisfied, from his discussion of technical details with the several automobile salesmen, that he was sufficiently expert for her purposes. His loyalty remained to be proven, but she had learned to read faces swiftly and surely, and she had formed an instinctive belief that he was worthy of trust.

The car she decided upon was a gray roadster, light and high-powered with long low lines like a racer and a multiplicity of cylinders which made Dan fairly delirious with joy. This important matter settled, she gave him his initial instructions.

"You are simply to hold yourself in readiness for a call from me at any hour of the day or night. You are to obey no summons unless you hear my voice over the telephone, or a written order in my handwriting is brought to you--unless a hunch backed boy about sixteen, a foreigner with very dark skin, should come to you. In that case, you are to accompany him wherever he directs. Do you drink, Dan?"

"Only beer, and not that when I'm on the job, Miss." He eyed her straightforwardly. "I don't go joy-ridin', and I keep my mouth shut, and ask no questions. I'll be on the spot when you want me, Miss, and there till the finish."

"I'm sure you will!" she smiled. "I sha'n't mind your asking questions so much as answering them. There are apt to be quite a few people interested in our doings, Dan; a young man and two older ones particularly, and they will try all sorts of methods to get information from you."

"Let 'em," he responded, briefly. "It's precious-little dope they'll get out of me! But have you forgotten the registry, Miss, and the license?"

"No." Willa drew a roll of bills from her purse. "It had better be attended to at once, for I don't know how soon I may need you. That's why I insisted upon having their exhibition car, without waiting for delivery. Take this and get yourself an outfit; something dark and neat, not noticeable so that it could be easily described. Then can't you take out the license in your own name? You can refer to me if you like, and say that I gave you the car."

"As if you'd set me up in the renting business, maybe," he observed shrewdly. "I guess I can put it over, Miss. I've got a good, clean record in taxi'-driving, and I know most of the cops. You'll 'phone when you want me?"

Taking leave of her new henchman, Willa crossed the Park on foot and swung down the Avenue, so intent upon her own thoughts that she all but collided with Vernon, descending the steps of his club. He appeared troubled and morose, but his brow cleared at sight of her.

"h.e.l.lo! May I walk a bit of the way with you?" He fell into step beside her. "I say, you aren't angry with me about last night, are you?"

"Indeed no, Vernon. Why should I be? You did nothing."

"That's just why." He reddened. "Perhaps you think I might have taken your part after what a bully pal you proved yourself the night you showed Cal s.h.i.+rley up, and I did feel like telling the whole bunch to stop hectoring you, the mater included, only--well, we can't do just what we'd like, always!"

"There wasn't anything you could have said, really," she a.s.sured him.

"I was the only one involved and I had to see it through."

"At least, I want you to believe I never mentioned any house on the Parkway, or saw you there. Angie made a mistake. Someone did say something about it once, but I didn't repeat it." He gave her a curious sidewise glance, but her face was inscrutable.

"I believe you, of course, but it doesn't matter anyway, Vernon. I'm sorry everyone was so worried about my absence last evening, but it was unavoidable. Don't let's discuss it any more."

"All right," he sighed. "I only wish, though, that I'd learned to stand up to the family the way you can. You're so different to the girls up here, but I suppose that is the result of the wonderful, free kind of a life you led in Mexico. You must have had some great experiences down there."

It was Willa's turn to glance curiously at him, for Vernon's tone was oddly constrained and hesitant as if he were endeavoring, awkwardly enough, to lead up to some point in his own mind.

"Yes," she a.s.sented quietly, and waited.

"Starr Wiley was disappointed last night at not seeing you," he pursued. "I never knew you had met him down there."

"You never asked." Her tone was serenely noncommittal.

"He was telling us of some of the queer characters he has run across in that part of the country." Vernon paused, and then plunged in desperately. "He said you knew one old woman who was a wonder; a half-caste hoodoo-worker who brewed magic potions in a big pot, and knew all the legends of the countryside. 'Tia--' something, her name is. Do you know what has become of her?"

He blurted the question point-blank, and Willa smiled in spite of herself.

"Tia Juana, you mean? Did Mr. Wiley say she had left her home? I never heard of her doing that before," she remarked innocently enough.

"It seems she disappeared some time ago, and no one knows what happened to her. She must have been a queer old bird."

"Why are you so interested in her?"

He started, blinking at the swift directness of the question.

"Oh, I was thinking what a hit she'd make telling fortunes at some of the charity bazaars, if she ever came up here. People are always so nutty about anything new and a genuine witch would be a sensation."

"Tia Juana is not a witch and she doesn't tell fortunes. She is a little bit peculiar, perhaps, like many other very old people, but that is all." Willa laughed lightly. "Mr. Wiley must have been stringing you! What else did he tell you about Mexico?"

But Vernon's mind was apparently hazy on the subject of his friend's further reminiscences, and he left her at the door with ill-concealed alacrity. She knew that the conversation had not been uninspired, and his otherwise futile questions had served a useful purpose in forewarning her.

"You will go to the opera with us to-night?" It was more a query than a command which Mrs. Halstead addressed to her. "We are going on afterward to the Judsons', but we can drop you at home if you don't care to accompany us."

"Thank you, no," Willa responded. "If you don't mind I think I will stay quietly at home this evening, but I'll try to keep my engagements in future. I wish there were not quite so many of them!"

"That can be arranged," Mrs. Halstead a.s.sured her stiffly. "I wish to give you every opportunity to meet all the eligible people in our circle and then you must select your own friends."

The truce between them was evidently to be an armed one, but it was a respite at least. Willa realized that her cousin would not soon forgive defeat at her hands, but her att.i.tude was more fortuitous than open war.

She had intended to write a long-delayed letter to Jim Baggott, but after the family departed and she settled herself at her desk, the words would not frame themselves in her thoughts. A spirit of unrest took possession of her, a sensation of suspense which did not lighten with the dragging minutes, and in despair she flung down her pen and wandered into the music-room.

Piano lessons had appeared to Willa to be a sheer waste of time and patience in this era of mechanism, and she had not responded with any degree of enthusiasm to Mrs. Halstead's suggestion made shortly after her arrival, but now she touched the keys wistfully. Oh, for one of Mestiza Bill's tinkley old tunes on the piano in the Blue Chip!

She was turning blindly away, when the phonograph in the corner caught her eye and on an idle impulse she started it. By chance, the record left on the machine had been that of the latest tango, and as she listened to the pulsing, languorous strains, Willa commenced half-unconsciously to sway in rhythm with its lilting harmony.

The next minute she was dancing, but not in the dull, mincing fas.h.i.+on in which she had so recently been coached. The music caught at her homesick heart-strings, the old familiar scent of blossoming gardenias was in her nostrils and she was out under a Mexican night. Her pulses leaped to the throbbing notes, and she flung herself sinuously into the measures of the tango, snapping her fingers in lieu of castanets.

All thought of her present environment had slipped away from her, but she was recalled sharply to herself when the music stopped and she halted, flushed and panting.

"Brava!" a cool, slightly mocking voice called from the doorway, and the soft pad of gloved hands sounded upon her startled ears. Whirling about, she found herself face to face with Starr Wiley.

"Brava!" he repeated. "Charming, Miss Murdaugh! I would not have missed it for worlds!"

"How did you come here?" she stammered.

"By way of the front door, most conventionally, I a.s.sure you. I heard the phonograph and told Welsh not to announce me." He shrugged, and drew off his glove. "Aren't you going to greet me, Miss Murdaugh?"

There was a covert sneer in the repet.i.tion of her name, and Willa made no advance.

"My cousin is not at home."

"I did not come to see your cousin. I came to renew my acquaintance and make my peace with you. Are you going to punish me still for my temerity in Limasito?"