The White Mice Part 26

She was very near to him. Her eyes were looking into his. What she saw in them caused her to close her own quickly. Feeling blindly with outstretched hands, she let herself sway toward him, and in an instant she was wrapped in his arms with his breathless kisses covering her lips and cheeks.

For Roddy the earth ceased revolving, he was lifted above it and heard the music of the stars. He was crowned, exalted, deified. Then the girl who had done this tore herself away and ran from him through the garden.

Neither Inez nor Roddy was in a mood to exchange polite phrases in the presence of Mrs. Broughton, and they at once separated, each in a different direction, Roddy returning to his home. There he found Sam Caldwell. He was in no better frame of mind to receive him, but Caldwell had been two hours waiting and was angry and insistent.

"At last!" he exclaimed. "I have been here since eleven. Don't tell me," he snapped, "that you've been spearing eels, because I won't believe it."

"What can I tell you," asked Roddy pleasantly, "that you will believe?"

That Caldwell had sought him out and had thought it worth his while to wait two hours for an interview seemed to Roddy to show that in the camp of his enemies matters were not moving smoothly, and that, in their opinion, he was of more interest than they cared to admit.

Caldwell began with an uneasy a.s.sumption of good-fellows.h.i.+p.

"I have come under a flag of truce," he said grinning. "We want to have a talk and see if we can't get together."

"Who are 'we'?" asked Roddy.

"Vega, myself, and Senora Rojas."

"Senora Rojas!" exclaimed Roddy gravely. "Are you not mistaken?"

"She sent me here," replied Caldwell. "These are my credentials." With a flourish and a bow of marked ceremony, he handed Roddy a letter.

It came from Miramar, and briefly requested that Mr. Forrester would do the Senora Rojas the honor to immediately call upon her.

Roddy caught up his hat. The prospect of a visit to the home of Inez enchanted him, and he was as greatly puzzled as to what such a visit might bring forth.

"We will go at once!" he said.

But Caldwell hung back.

"I'd rather explain it first," he said.

Already Roddy resented the fact that Caldwell was serving as the amba.s.sador of Madame Rojas, and there was, besides, in his manner something which showed that in that service he was neither zealous nor loyal.

"Possibly Senora Rojas can do that herself," said Roddy.

"No, she can't!" returned Caldwell sharply, "because she doesn't know, and we don't mean to tell her. But I am going to tell _you_."

"Better not!" warned Roddy.

"I'll take the chance," said Caldwell. His manner was conciliating, propitiatory. "I'll take the chance," he protested, "that when you learn the truth you won't round on your own father. It isn't natural, it isn't human!"

"Caldwell on the Human Emotions!" exclaimed Roddy, grinning.

But Caldwell was too truly in earnest to be interrupted.

"Your father's spending two millions to make Vega President," he went on rapidly. "We've got to have him. We need him in our business. _You_ think Rojas would make a better President. Maybe he would. But not for us. He's too old-fas.h.i.+oned. He's----"

"Too honest?" suggested Roddy.

"Too honest," a.s.sented Caldwell promptly. "And there's another slight objection to him. He's in jail. And you," Caldwell cried, raising his finger and shaking it in Roddy's face, "can't get him out. We can't take San Carlos, and neither can you. They have guns there that in twenty minutes could smash this town into a dust-heap. So you see, what you hope to do is impossible, absurd! Now," he urged eagerly, "why don't you give up b.u.t.ting your head into a stone wall, and help your father and me?"

He stopped, and in evident anxiety waited for the other to speak, but Roddy only regarded him steadily. After a pause Roddy said: "_I'm_ not talking. You're the one that's talking. And," he added, "you're talking too much, too!"

"I'll risk it!" cried Caldwell stoutly. "I've never gone after a man of sense yet that I couldn't make him see things my way. Now, Senora Rojas," he went on, "only wants one thing. She wants to get her husband out of prison. She thinks Vega can do that, that he means to do it, that I mean to do it. Well--we _don't_."

Roddy's eyes half closed, the lines around his mouth grew taut, and when he spoke his voice was harsh and had sunk to a whisper.

"I tell you," he said, "you're talking too much!"

But neither in Roddy's face nor voice did Caldwell read the danger signals.

"It doesn't suit our book," he swept on, "to get him out. Until Vega is President he must stay where he is. But his wife must not know that. She believes in _us_. She thinks the Rojas crowd only interferes with us, and she is sending for you to ask you to urge the Rojas faction to give us a free hand."

"I see," said Roddy; "and while Vega is trying to be President, Rojas may die. Have you thought of that?"

"Can we help it?" protested Caldwell. "Did _we_ put him in prison?

We'll have trouble enough keeping ourselves out of San Carlos. Well,"

he demanded, "what are you going to do?"

"At present," said Roddy, "I'm going to call on Madame Rojas."

On their walk to Miramar, Caldwell found it impossible to break down Roddy's barrier of good nature. He threatened, he bullied, he held forth open bribes; but Roddy either remained silent or laughed.

Caldwell began to fear that in trying to come to terms with the enemy he had made a mistake. But still he hoped that in his obstinacy Roddy was merely stupid; he believed that in treating him as a factor in affairs they had made him vainglorious, arrogant. He was sure that if he could convince him of the utter impossibility of taking San Carlos by a.s.sault he would abandon the Rojas crowd and come over to Vega. So he enlarged upon the difficulty of that enterprise, using it as his argument in chief. Roddy, in his turn, pretended he believed San Carlos would fall at the first shot, and, as he intended, persuaded Caldwell that an attack upon the prison was the fixed purpose of the Rojas faction.

Roddy, who as a sentimental burglar had so often forced his way into the grounds of Miramar, found a certain satisfaction in at last entering it by the front door, and by invitation. His coming was obviously expected, and his arrival threw the many servants into a state of considerable excitement. Escorted by the major-domo, he was led to the drawing-room where Madame Rojas was waiting to receive him.

As he entered, Inez and her sister, with Vega and General Pulido and Colonel Ramon, came in from the terrace, and Caldwell followed from the hall.

With the manner of one who considered himself already a member of the household, Vega welcomed Roddy, but without cordiality, and with condescension. To Inez, although the sight of her caused him great embarra.s.sment, Roddy made a formal bow, to which she replied with one as formal. Senora Rojas, having ordered the servants to close the doors and the windows to the terrace, asked Roddy to be seated, and then placed herself in a chair that faced his. The others grouped themselves behind her. Roddy felt as though the odds were hardly fair.

With the exception of Inez, who understood that any sign she might make in his favor would do him harm, all those present were opposed to him. This fact caused Roddy to gaze about him in pleasurable excitement and smile expectantly. He failed to see how the interview could lead to any definite result. Already he had learned from Caldwell more than he had suspected, and all that he needed to know, and, as he was determined on account of her blind faith in Vega to confide nothing to Senora Rojas, he saw no outcome to the visit as important as that it had so soon brought him again into the presence of Inez.

"Mr. Forrester," began Senora Rojas, "I have asked you to call on me to-day at the suggestion of these gentlemen. They believe that where they might fail, an appeal from me would be effective. I am going to speak to you quite frankly and openly; but when you remember I am pleading for the life of my husband you will not take offense. With no doubt the best of motives, you have allied yourself with what is known as the Rojas faction. Its object is to overthrow the President and to place my husband at Miraflores. To me, the wife of General Rojas, such an undertaking is intolerable. All I desire, all I am sure he desires, is his freedom. There are those, powerful and well equipped, who can secure it. They do not belong to the so-called Rojas faction. You, we understand, have much influence in its counsels. We know that to carry out its plans you have quarrelled with your father, resigned from his company. If I venture to refer to your private affairs, it is only because I understand you yourself have spoken of them publicly, and because they show me that in your allegiance, in your mistaken allegiance to my husband, you are in earnest. But, in spite of your wish to serve him, I have asked you here to-day to beg you and your friends to relinquish your purpose. His wife and his children feel that the safety of General Rojas is in other hands, in the hands of those who have his fullest confidence and mine." In her distress, Senora Rojas leaned forward. "I beg of you," she exclaimed, "do as I ask. Leave my husband to me and to his friends. What you would do can only interfere with them. And it may lead directly to his death."

She paused, and, with her eyes fixed eagerly on Roddy's face, waited for his answer. The men standing in a group behind her nodded approvingly. Then they also turned to Roddy and regarded him sternly, as though challenging him to resist such an appeal. Roddy found his position one of extreme embarra.s.sment. He now saw why Senora Rojas had received him in the presence of so large an audience. It was to render a refusal to grant her request the more difficult. In the group drawn up before him he saw that each represented a certain interest, each held a distinctive value. The two daughters were intended to remind him that it was against a united family he was acting; Caldwell was to recall to him that he was opposing the wishes of his father, and Vega and the two officers naturally suggested to whom Senora Rojas referred when she said her interests were in the hands of powerful and well-equipped friends. Should he tell the truth and say that of the plans of the Rojas faction he knew little or nothing, Roddy was sure he would not be believed. He was equally certain that if, in private, he confided his own plan to Senora Rojas and told her that within the next forty-eight hours she might hope to see her husband, she would at once acquaint Vega and Caldwell with that fact. And, after the confidence made him by Caldwell, what he and Vega might not do to keep Rojas off the boards, he did not care to think. He certainly did not deem it safe to test their loyalty. He, therefore, determined that as it was impossible to tell his opponents the truth, he had better let them continue to believe he was a leader in the Rojas party, and that, with it, his only purpose was an open attack upon the fortress.

"I need not say," protested Roddy gravely, "that I am greatly flattered by your confidence. It makes me very sorry that I cannot be equally frank. But I am only a very unimportant member of the great organization that has for its leader General Rojas----"

"And I," interrupted Senora Rojas, "am the wife of that leader. Are my wishes of no weight?"

"I fear, madame," begged Roddy, in deprecatory tones, "that to millions of Venezuelans General Rojas is considered less as the husband than as the only man who can free this country from the hands of a tyrant."

At this further sign of what seemed fatuous obstinacy, Senora Rojas lost patience.

"A tyrant!" she exclaimed quickly. "I must protest, Mr. Forrester, that the word comes strangely from one who has denounced my husband as a traitor."

The attack confused Roddy, and to add to his discomfort it was greeted by the men in the rear of Senora Rojas with a chorus of approving exclamations. Roddy raised his eyes and regarded them gravely. In a tone of stern rebuke Senora Rojas continued:

"We have been frank and honest," she said, "but when we cannot tell whether the one with whom we treat runs with the hare or the hounds, it is difficult."