Evidently Richard knew the red-headed man, for he crossed over to him at once with the words:
"I guess this is for you, Mr. Atkins?"
He handed him the despatch and retired. The red-headed man signed the receipt; the boy departed. Blix and Condy heard the sound of torn paper as the red-headed man opened the telegram.
Ten seconds pa.s.sed, then fifteen, then twenty. There was a silence.
Condy dared to steal a glance at the red-headed man"s reflection in the mirror. He was studying the despatch, frowning horribly. He put it away in his pocket, took it out again with a fierce movement of impatience, and consulted it a second time. His "supper Mexican"
remained untasted before him; Condy and Blix heard him breathing loud through his nose. That he was profoundly agitated, they could not doubt for a single moment. All at once a little panic terror seemed to take possession of him. He rose, seized his hat, jammed it over his ears, slapped a half-dollar upon the table, and strode from the restaurant.
This is what the read-headed man had read in the despatch; this is what Blix had written:
"ALL IS DISCOVERED. FLY AT ONCE."
And never in all their subsequent rambles about the city did Blix or Condy set eyes upon the red-headed man again, nor did Luna"s restaurant, where he seemed to have been a habitue, ever afterward know his presence. He disappeared; he was swallowed up. He had left the restaurant, true. Had he also left that neighborhood? Had he fled the city, the State, the country even? What skeleton in the red-headed man"s closet had those six words called to life and the light of day.
Had they frightened him forth to spend the rest of his days fleeing from an unnamed, unknown avenger--a veritable wandering Jew? What mystery had they touched upon there in the bald, bare back room of the Quarter"s restaurant? What dark door had they opened, what red-headed phantom had they evoked? Had they broken up a plot, thwarted a conspiracy, prevented a crime? They never knew. One thing only was certain. The red-headed man had had a past.
Meanwhile the minutes were pa.s.sing, and K. D. B. still failed to appear. Captain Jack was visibly growing impatient, anxious. By now he had come to the fiery liqueur called mescal. He was nearly through his supper. At every moment he consulted his watch and fixed the outside door with a scowl. It was already twenty minutes after seven.
"I know the red-headed man spoiled it, after all," murmured Blix. "K.
D. B. saw the two of them in here and was frightened."
"We could send Captain Jack a telegram from her," suggested Condy.
"I"m ready for anything now."
"What could you say?"
"Oh, that she couldn"t come. Make another appointment."
"He"d be offended with her. He"d never make another appointment. Sea captains are always so punctilious, y" know."
Richard brought them their coffee and kirsch, and Condy showed Blix how to burn a lump of sugar and sweeten the coffee with syrup. But they were disappointed. Captain Jack was getting ready to leave. K. D. B.
had evidently broken the appointment.
Then all at once she appeared.
They knew it upon the instant by a brisk opening and shutting of the street door, and by a sudden alertness on the part of Captain Jack, which he immediately followed by a quite inexplicable move. The street door in the outside room had hardly closed before his hand shot to his coat lapel and tore out the two marguerites.
The action was instinctive; Blix knew it for such immediately. The retired captain had not premeditated it. He had not seen the face of the newcomer. She had not time to come into the back room, or even to close the street door. But the instant that the captain had recognized a bunch of white marguerites in her belt he had, without knowing why, been moved to conceal his ident.i.ty.
"He"s afraid," whispered Blix. "Positively, I believe he"s afraid.
How absolutely stupid men are!"
But meanwhile, K. D. B., the looked-for, the planned-for and intrigued-for; the object of so much diplomacy, such delicate manoeuvring; the pivot upon which all plans were to turn, the storm-centre round which so many conflicting currents revolved, and for whose benefit the peace of mind of the red-headed man had been forever broken up--had entered the room.
"Why, she"s PRETTY!" was Blix"s first smothered exclamation, as if she had expected a harridan.
K. D. B. looked like a servant-girl of the better sort, and was really very neatly dressed. She was small, little even. She had snappy black eyes, a resolute mouth, and a general air of being very quiet, very matter-of-fact and complacent. She would be disturbed at nothing, excited at nothing; Blix was sure of that. She was placid, but it was the placidity not of the absence of emotion, but of emotion disdained.
Not the placidity of the mollusk, but that of a mature and contemplative cat.
Quietly she sat down at a corner table, quietly she removed her veil and gloves, and quietly she took in the room and its three occupants.
Condy and Blix glued their eyes upon their coffee cups like guilty conspirators; but a crash of falling crockery called their attention to the captain"s table.
Captain Jack was in a tremor. Hitherto he had acted the role of a sane and sensible gentleman of middle age, master of himself and of the situation. The entrance of K. D. B. had evidently reduced him to a semi-idiotic condition. He enlarged himself; he eased his neck in his collar with a rotary movement of head and shoulders. He frowned terribly at trifling objects in corners of the room. He cleared his throat till the gla.s.sware jingled. He pulled at his mustache. He perspired, fumed, fretted, and was suddenly seized with an insane desire to laugh. Once only he caught the eye of K. D. B., calmly sitting in her corner, picking daintily at her fish, whereupon he immediately overturned the vinegar and pepper casters upon the floor.
Just so might have behaved an overgrown puppy in the presence of a sleepy, unperturbed chessy-cat, dozing by the fire.
"He ought to be shaken," murmured Blix at the end of her patience.
"Does he think SHE is going to make the first move?"
"Ha, ah"m!" thundered the captain, clearing his throat for the twentieth time, twirling his mustache, and burying his scarlet face in an enormous pocket handkerchief.
Five minutes pa.s.sed and he was still in his place. From time to time K. D. B. fixed him with a quiet, deliberate look, and resumed her delicate picking.
"Do you think she knows it"s he, now that he"s taken off his marguerites?" whispered Condy.
"Know it?--of course she does! Do you think women are absolutely BLIND, or so imbecile as men are? And, then, if she didn"t think it was he, she"d go away. And she"s so really pretty, too. He ought to thank his stars alive. Think what a fright she might have been! She doesn"t LOOK thirty-one."
"Huh!" returned Condy. "As long as she SAID she was thirty-one, you can bet everything you have that she is; that"s as true as revealed religion."
"Well, it"s something to have seen the kind of people who write the personals," said Blix. "I had always imagined that they were kind of tough."
"You see they are not," he answered. "I told you they were not.
Maybe, however, we have been exceptionally fortunate. At any rate, these are respectable enough."
"Not the least doubt about that. But why don"t he do something, that captain?" mourned Blix. "Why WILL he act like such a ninny?"
"He"s waiting for us to go," said Condy; "I"m sure of it. They"ll never meet so long as we"re here. Let"s go and give "em a chance. If you leave the two alone here, one or the other will HAVE to speak. The suspense would become too terrible. It would be as though they were on a desert island."
"But I wanted to SEE them meet," she protested.
"You wouldn"t hear what they said."
"But we"d never know if they did meet, and oh--and WHO spoke first?"
"She"ll speak first," declared Condy.
"Never!" returned Blix, in an indignant whisper.
"I tell you what. We could go and then come back in five minutes.
I"ll forget my stick here. Savvy?"
"You would probably do it anyhow," she told him.
They decided this would be the better course. They got together their things, and Condy neglected his stick, hanging upon a hook on the wall.
At the counter in the outside room, Blix, to the stupefaction of Richard, the waiter, paid the bill. But as she was moving toward the door, Condy called her back.