The Silver Butterfly Part 10

"You think then that, as you suggested the other evening, we shall probably find an interest in common?" he said.

"Undoubtedly. Several of them, perhaps."

He bent nearer. "Including b.u.t.terflies?" he suggested.

She showed her white and even teeth. "Including b.u.t.terflies," she repeated.

"But first," he said impetuously, "do allay the curiosity which, I a.s.sure you, would otherwise continue to come between me and any business matters we might discuss."

She looked at him with an inquiry which held a sort of prescient reserve.

He could see that if not actually on guard, she held herself in readiness to be so.

"What do you mean?"

"You," he said daringly. "I have sat here watching and waiting to catch you tripping in that faultless accent of yours. It must be real. I have lived too much in Southern countries to be deceived."

She looked gratified, her pleasure showing itself in a deepening color.

"It was adopted for business purposes, now it has become second nature.

I, too, have lived much in Southern countries. The Romany strain, my mother was a Gipsy. You are a brother, Mr. Hayden, if not in blood, in kind. That kind that is so much more than kin. You are here to-day, there to-morrow. The doom of the wanderer is on you, and the blessing. Take it on the word of a fortune-teller." She spread out her hands smiling her wide, gay smile with a touch of irony, of feminine experience, the serpent-bought wisdom of Eve in it. "You know what it means to hear the red G.o.ds calling, calling; to know that no matter what binds you, whether white arms or ropes of gold, you have to go."

"You show yourself a true daughter of the road, senorita, and a student of Kipling. We brothers of the wild are usually not much given to books."

"That is true," she a.s.sented. "I have heard them say: 'We know cities and deserts, men and women of every race. What can books give us?' But I tell them: 'Everything can pay us toll if we ask it. A star in the sky, the tiniest grain of sand on the beach. We can demand their secrets and they will not withhold them.'" She mused a moment. "One must learn from all sources, knock upon every door. When I weary of gaining wisdom from the ant or considering a serpent on the rock, or the way of a man with a maid, why, I turn to books. They are my solace, my narcotics, my friends, and my teachers. I take a few, a very few with me on any rough journey I may be making; but when I am here or in London or Paris, any place where I may be living for months at a time, I have my books about me."

"But why do you tell fortunes?" asked Hayden involuntarily, and immediately flushed to the roots of his hair. There was the vaguest something in her smiling gaze, the merest flicker of an eyelash, which convicted him of impertinence. "Forgive me. I--I beg your pardon," he stammered.

She ignored his apologies. "Some day I will tell you," she whispered, going through a pantomime of looking about her cautiously as if it were a state secret of the most tremendous importance. "But we have talked enough about myself now, senor; the topic for discussion to-day is b.u.t.terflies."

"An interesting subject might be The Veiled Mariposa," he said.

"Just so. Why beat about the bush?" He felt that she disdained subterfuges, although when necessary for her purposes, he was a.s.sured that she could use diplomacy, as a master of fence might his foils. "You, Mr. Hayden, have been lucky enough to find the lost Mariposa, the lost Veiled Mariposa. Is it not so? But you are in a peculiarly tantalizing position. You can not convert gold into gold. Strange. It sounds so simple. But your hands are tied."

"Perfectly true," Hayden a.s.sented.

"Then to put the matter in a nutsh.e.l.l and to descend from metaphor to plain business facts, you can not organize a company and begin to operate the mine or rather group of mines, for the reason that you can not secure a clear t.i.tle, and what is worse, you have not, so far, succeeded in finding any trace of the present owners."

"You seem to know a lot about the matter," said Hayden pleasantly, "but do you know, I think that you are wrong on one point. I think, indeed I am quite sure, that I have found the owners, at least one of them."

"Yes?" Her tone still questioned. "And what then?"

"Well," he went slowly now, "there are some questions I would like to ask them. They may regard it as an awful impertinence; but it would be a lot of satisfaction to me."

"What would be the nature of those questions?"

"Among other things"--he still spoke slowly, seeming to consider his words--"I should like to ask them why, for years now, they should have let a valuable property remain idle. Even if they have the wealth of Midas it is still a puzzle. No one is ever quite rich enough, you know, and down there is Tom Tiddler's ground to their hand."

"Well, what do you make of it--this puzzle?" She was looking steadily at a ring she was turning about on her finger.

"This!" He leaned forward. For the life of him he could not keep a faint ring of triumph out of his tone. "This, senorita. There is only one reasonable, credible solution--" He paused cruelly.

"Yes?" Her eyes were on his, eager, almost voracious. "Yes?"

"The present owners can not locate the mine, or else they think it not worth the trouble and expense of attempting to do so. That they have allowed the estate to lie idle and in a measure go to waste is also curious and puzzling. I can not explain that."

"Admitting such a thing for the sake of argument," she asked, "what then?"

"Well, I think we will have several things to say to each other then.

For, if either of my suppositions is anywhere near correct their hands are tied just as much as mine, so I think we shall have to talk business, do not you?"

"I quite agree with you and I should add, the sooner the better."

"The sooner the better," he echoed, with emphasis.

She nodded. Again, she studied her nails, pink as almond-flowers, with interest.

"And you really believe, you are quite convinced, that this lost or abandoned mine is all that tradition says of it?" she asked at last.

"More," he replied laconically. "I have prospected over every foot of it, and I know that it contains a fortune. A fortune"--he struck the table with the palm of his hand--"beyond the dreams of avarice."

There were dancing sparkles in her green eyes. "Let me congratulate you, 'O gallant knight, gaily bedight, in suns.h.i.+ne or in shadow,' that you have been lucky enough to find Eldorado."

She rose in a sweeping impetuosity, drew up her slender height, and made him a curtsy, a flower bending buoyantly to the breeze, and springing upright again.

"But"--two or three sliding steps of the fandango, and then in her chair--"where did you find Eldorado? That's the history a daughter of the road wants to know. Is it truly 'over the mountains of the moon, down the valley of the shadow?'"

She swept him along on the tide of her high spirits; her laughter ran silver cascades down to the ocean of melody; her sun-flecked eyes held the heart-warming glow, the stimulation of wine. She was a breeze blowing from the South.

"The romance!" she cried. "Behold an anomaly! Some one actually longing for a traveler's tale. Begin!" Her voice rang imperious, alluring.

Hayden almost caught at the table, a giddiness of the mind, perhaps of the senses, confused him. His face was a shade paler.

"It is too plain and rough a tale to be told except as a matter of business. You are kind; but I should not venture to bore you."

She accepted temporary defeat nonchalantly. "But you"--she did not change her position even by the movement of a finger, and yet, the whole expression of her figure became suddenly tense as a strung bow--"are you so sure that you could ever find your way thither again?"

He looked at her in surprise. "You give me very little credit for ordinary common sense, mademoiselle," he said shortly. "Of course, I made a map, and have any number of photographs." Immediately, he could have bitten his tongue.

"Ah, of course, naturally."

Her indifference, the absent-minded answer rea.s.sured him. He did not notice that her whole figure had relaxed.

There was a faint tap on the door and the subdued secretary stood on the threshold. "It is half-after four o'clock, mademoiselle, and your next client is waiting."

Hayden rose. "Time's up," he said. "But, senorita, when do you think the heirs will be ready to talk business?"

"I think I can promise you an interview within a very short time; and in the meanwhile I will communicate with you. Oh, by the way, in private and domestic life, my name is Carrothers, Ydo Carrothers. Y-d-o," spelling it, "p.r.o.nounced Edo."

"Ydo," he exclaimed. "It is a name made in Spain; in color it is red and yellow, and it smells of jasmine."