The League of the Leopard Part 40

"Yes," said Dane; and again Bonita Castro astonished him.

"She loves you?" she asked simply.

The question was startling, and the man answered stupidly.

"I hope so. I--I do not know."

For a moment the swift laughter rose to the girl's eyes, but died in its birth, and the movement of her hands that followed it stirred the man's pity.

"You do not know? I saw the picture, and it was for her you went up into the Leopards' country. You are a strange people, Don Ilton--and the Senor Maxwell, he was like you?"

Dane afterward remained uncertain why he spoke as he did, but the words framed themselves, as it were, without his volition.

"No," he said; "n.o.body could compare me with Maxwell. Nor do I think I have met many such as he; but when he was dying, he spoke much of you.

He told me you had promised to help us, and that he could trust you. It was almost his last charge that I should tell you so."

Dane knew by her swift grateful glance that Bonita Castro blessed him for the speech. In impulsive southern fas.h.i.+on, she held out both hands to him.

"_Vaya con Dios_, and the good saints send you happiness! I think we neither of us forget what has happened here, Don Ilton."

The last words ended in something like a sob, and Dane, who could think of no fitting words to say, only crushed the little hot hands in his own and swung his hat low as he turned away. Dom Pedro walked to the surf-boat with him, but Dane scarcely heard what he said, for his thoughts were centered on the girl, who stood, a pathetic figure, gazing after him from the moonlit veranda.

The Krooboys were slow to reach the steamer, but Dane was the better pleased, for he hardly felt equal to facing the questions or the badinage of her pa.s.sengers just then.

CHAPTER XXVI

REWARDED

It was a sunny afternoon when the little West Coast mailboat's engines ceased their throbbing off the mole of Santa Cruz, Teneriffe. Clear skies had hung over her as she rolled northward in no great hurry, and the fresh breezes which curl the sparkling sea between Morocco and the fever coast had brought new life to her sickly pa.s.sengers. Dane felt his heart grow lighter as each league of deep blue water rolled astern, and the shadow of the dark land had almost fallen from him when the Canaries rose out of the sea. He had youth on his side, besides a comparatively clean conscience and a sound const.i.tution; and a little chest consigned by him to a British bank was locked in the steamer's specie room. Though he would gladly have flung its contents into the sea to undo the past, regrets were futile. So, with a courage which sprang rather from humility than pride, he had determined to ask Lilian Chatterton to either share his struggles or await his prosperity.

The long black mole slid past, the bows forged more slowly through the crystal brine, and the harbor opened up. Even before the yellow flag fluttered aloft, boats by the dozen shot out from the lava steps, and Dane eagerly scanned the faces of their occupants. They were fruit peddlers, s.h.i.+pping and coaling clerks, and he sighed with disappointment as he next swept his eyes along the mole. n.o.body among the loungers there raised a hat or a handkerchief.

"Expecting friends?" asked the purser, halting beside him.

"I was," Dane answered dejectedly. "Although I cabled from the Coast, I don't see them."

"I wouldn't count too much on that," smiled the purser. "n.o.body is very particular in Spanish possessions, and it's quite possible they lost your message or couldn't decipher the English name. We shall fill up here with tourists, and if you are going home with us you must let me know."

"I can't tell you now," Dane said. "It depends on what I hear ash.o.r.e."

"Well, I won't keep a berth for you."

He left Dane troubled when he turned away, for he had certainly expected Chatterton to welcome him and he had counted the days until he could ask Lilian an eventful question. He had hoped also that the cable message would have prepared them for his tidings; he shrank from again appearing unexpectedly as the bearer of tragic news. There was no time to be lost, however, and he went ash.o.r.e in the first boat. Strange faces looked down at him from the mole, and no friendly voice was raised in greeting; and further annoyance awaited him when he hurried into the hotel.

Mr. Chatterton and family had stayed there for a time, but had left, the major-domo said. He thought they had gone to Madeira, but they might have sailed for England, or anywhere. It was not his business to ask where any Englishman wandered to, but the clerk might know. The clerk, it appeared, was out, and might not be back for an hour or so, but the major-domo suggested that in the meantime something might be gathered by an examination of the visitors' letters in his office. He showed Dane where the office was, and then shrugged his shoulders.

"What pity! Ramon he have lock the door," he said.

"That's a very small obstacle," answered Dane. "n.o.body else has a key, I suppose, so I'm going to get in through the window, and I will most certainly break it if he has fastened that up, too."

There were murmurs of protest, and Dane fancied that half the staff gathered in the hall and watched him endeavor to wrench the sash out by main force. When he had almost accomplished it, somebody suggested that when Ramon locked the front door he usually left one at the side open.

It was a characteristic example of how things are managed in Latin countries; and the next minute Dane was busy turning over a bundle of letters in the office. There were several for Thomas and Mrs.

Chatterton, and the sight of them filled him with satisfaction. Then his eye was caught by his own name on the top of two envelopes reforwarded to Chatterton, and after a swift glance at the embossed name on the back, he tore the first open.

It was from a celebrated engineering firm, and his blood pulsed faster as he read it:

"Although when you last called upon us we could not quite see our way to do so on the terms you mentioned, we are now prepared to undertake the manufacture and sale of your invention on the following conditions."

Dane saw that the conditions were as favorable as any non-capitalist inventor could expect, but he felt that the gold he had sent home would help him to improve them; and it was with a thrill of satisfaction that he opened the second letter. This was from his last employers, offering him reasonable remuneration if he would undertake the supervision of the machines and bridge work they were sending out to execute an important railroad-building contract abroad.

Here was one difficulty removed, at least. Dane hastened to the cable offices, and felt a great contentment when his messages were on the wires. His prospects were improving, and it was encouraging to know he would not pose as a wholly indigent suitor. When he reached the hotel once more, the clerk had returned, and informed him that Mr. Chatterton and family had retired for the sake of coolness to Laguna, five or six miles away.

Dane procured a horse, and within the next few minutes he was urging it at its best pace up the steep hillside. The horse, as it happened, was a good one, and its rider's spirits rose higher as each mile went by. It was a fine evening, and to one fresh from the enervating heat of Africa, there was a wonderful buoyancy in the cool air that came down from the cordillera. It was a refres.h.i.+ng change to see the merry brown faces of the peasants who saluted him as he pa.s.sed, and hear the laughter of the mule drivers as their climbing teams dropped behind. Dane had almost forgotten the dark land when the white walls of drowsy Laguna rose to view. The loungers in the plaza knew the Englishman Dane inquired for, and one of them preceded him down a narrow street with a dignified leisureliness which even the sight of a dollar failed to dissipate, and finally halted outside a high-walled garden doubtless laid out by some Castilian conquistador four centuries ago.

Dane swung himself from the saddle before a door ornamented by a beautiful bronze bell handle, and spent two minutes pulling the bell vigorously. There was no answer nor any sound within, and remembering that it did not necessarily follow that the handle had a wire attached, he stepped back into the roadway and flung himself against the barrier.

A hasp of some kind yielded, and he staggered forward into the garden.

The sun was dipping behind the cordillera, but its red light beat into his eyes, and at first he could see only a row of crimson oleanders stretching away before him. Their fragrance and the scent of heliotrope was heavy within his nostrils. Pa.s.sing through the shadow of an orange-tree he made out a white wall garlanded by blue bougainvillea, and halted at the sound of a startled voice as his eyes fell upon the group on the terrace beneath it.

Thomas Chatterton had flung his chair back, and stood up with a flushed face, speaking excitedly. His niece also had risen, and her gaze was fixed upon the man who came hurriedly out of the shadow of the tree. She was silent, but Dane read in her eyes that which set his heart beating, and for a second or two he saw only the dainty figure and the smiling face turned toward his own.

The elation suddenly died out within him, and it was by an effort that he moved forward, for there was a third in the party. A man with iron-gray hair stood a little apart from the rest, and while each of his companions showed that they rejoiced to see the new arrival, he was gazing fixedly at the open door behind him. Dane saw that it was Brandram Maxwell of Culmeny, and knew why he watched the door.

"This is even more than we hoped for, Hilton, though we have all been anxiously waiting for news of you," said Chatterton. "Thank Heaven you are safe anyway. Worth a good many dead men, isn't he, Lilian? She knew Maxwell would bring you out; and when I grew anxious her confidence rea.s.sured me. But why didn't you cable--and where is Maxwell?"

Dane disregarded the last question, for Lilian laid her hand in his. He was not certain what she said, but her eyes were s.h.i.+ning under the half-closed lashes in a fas.h.i.+on that was eloquent enough. Still Dane could not linger to wonder what, if they were fully opened, he might see within them, for Chatterton repeated his question.

"Where have you left Carsluith. Did he not come up with you from Santa Cruz?"

"No," Dane answered, and his voice shook a little. "Did you receive my cable?"

"We did not," said Chatterton. "What has gone wrong, Hilton. Speak out, man!"

Lilian, guided by some womanly instinct, laid her hand warningly on the speaker's arm, and Dane nerved himself for the hardest task of all, as the owner of Culmeny, moving forward, stood close beside him. He was very much like what Dane's dead comrade had been--wiry, spare, and grim.

The drooping gray moustache matched the pallor of his face; but his eyes were steady and keen, and only a deepening of the lines about them betrayed his anxiety.

"I fear you bring bad news," he said.

"I do," Dane answered as steadily as he could, though the older man's composure rendered his task even harder than a sign of weakness would have done. "I had hoped the cable I sent might have prepared you--and now I hardly know how to tell you."

It was just possible to see that a tremor ran through Maxwell and his lean hand closed a little more firmly than was needful on the back of a chair.

"Brevity is best. Disaster has overtaken him?"

"Yes."