"Winnie," said Kathlyn, "I dread it."
Winnie set down the teacup; her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g.
"What can it all mean? Not a line from father since Colombo, five months gone."
"Do you think----"
"No, no!" replied Kathlyn hastily. "Father sometimes forgets. He may be hunting miles from telegraph wires and railroads; it is only that he should forget us so long. Who knows? He may have dropped down into Borneo. He wanted some pythons, so I heard him say."
The elder sister did not care to instil into the heart of her charge the fear which was in her own.
"Who knows but there may be good news in the envelope? Dad"s always doing something like that. New Year"s!"
The collie, released from the kitchen, came bounding in. In his exuberance he knocked over a cloisonne vase. Both girls were glad to welcome this diversion. They rose simultaneously and gave chase. The dog headed for the outdoor studio, where they caught him and made believe they were punishing him.
Quietly the watcher entered through the window, alert and tense. He flew to the desk, found the envelope, steamed it open at the kettle, extracted the sealed envelope and Colonel Hare"s note. He smiled as he read the letter and changed his plans completely. He would not play messenger; he would use a lure instead. With his ear strained for sounds, he wrote and subst.i.tuted a note. This houri of Sa"adi would not pause to note the difference in writing; the vitalness of the subject would enchain her thoughts. It was all accomplished in the s.p.a.ce of a few minutes. Smiling, he pa.s.sed out into the fast settling twilight.
They were shipping a lion to San Francisco, and the roaring and confusion were all very satisfactory to the trespa.s.ser.
Midnight. From afar came the mellow notes of the bells in the ancient Spanish mission. The old year was dead, the new year was born, carrying with it the unchanging sound of happiness and misery, of promises made and promises broken, of good and evil.
"The packet!" cried Winnie.
Kathlyn recognized in that call that Winnie was only a child. All the responsibility lay upon her shoulders. She ripped the cover from the packet and read the note.
"Kathlyn: If not heard from I"m held captive in Allaha. Sealed doc.u.ment can save me. Bring it yourself to Allaha by first steamer.
"Father."
"I knew it," said Kathlyn calmly. The fear in her heart had, as the brown man had antic.i.p.ated, blinded her to the fact that this was not her father"s characteristic blunt scrawl.
"Oh, Kit, Kit!"
"Hush, Winnie! I must go, and go alone. Where"s the evening paper?
Ah, there it is. Let me see what boat leaves San Francisco to-morrow.
The _Empress of India_, six a. m. I must make that. Now, you"re your father"s daughter, too, Winnie. You must stay behind and be brave and wait. I shall come back. I shall find father, if I have to rouse all India. Now, to pack."
When they arrived at the station the pa.s.senger train had just drawn out. For a while Kathlyn felt beaten. She would be compelled to wait another week. It was disheartening.
"Why not try the freight, then?" cried Winnie.
"You little angel! I never thought of that!"
But the crew would not hear of it. It was absolutely against the company"s rules. Kathlyn could have cried.
"It isn"t money, miss, it"s the rules," said the conductor kindly. "I can"t do it."
Kathlyn turned in despair toward the station. It was then she saw the boxed lion on the platform. She returned to the conductor of the freight.
"Why isn"t that lion shipped?"
"We can"t carry a lion without an attendant, miss. You ought to know that."
"Very well," replied Kathlyn. She smiled at the conductor confidently.
"I"ll travel as the lion"s attendant. You certainly can not object to that."
"I guess you"ve got me," admitted the conductor. "But where the d.i.c.kens will we put the cat? Every car is closed and locked, and there is not an empty."
"You can easily get the lion in the caboose. I"ll see that he doesn"t bother any one."
"Lions in the caboose is a new one on me. Well, you know your dad"s business better than I do. Look alive, boys, and get that angora aboard. This is Miss Hare herself, and she"ll take charge."
"Kit, Kit!"
"Winnie!"
"Oh, I"ll be brave. I"ve just got to be. But I"ve never been left alone before."
The two girls embraced, and Winnie went sobbing back to the maid who waited on the platform.
What happened in that particular caboose has long since been newspaper history. The crew will go on telling it till it becomes as fabulous as one of Sindbad"s yarns. How the lion escaped, how the fearless young woman captured it alone, unaided, may be found in the files of all metropolitan newspapers. Of the brown man who was found hiding in the coat closet of the caboose nothing was said. But the sight of him dismayed Kathlyn as no lion could have done. Any-dark skinned person was now a subtle menace. And when, later, she saw peering into the port-hole of her stateroom, dismay became terror.
Who was this man?
CHAPTER II
THE UNWELCOME THRONE
Kathlyn sensed great loneliness when, about a month later, she arrived at the basin in Calcutta. A thousand or more natives were bathing ceremoniously in the ghat--men, women and children. It was early morn, and they were making solemn genuflections toward the bright sun. The water-front swarmed with brown bodies, and great wheeled carts drawn by sad-eyed bullocks threaded slowly through the maze. The many white turbans, stirring hither and thither, reminded her of a field of white poppies in a breeze. India! There it lay, ready for her eager feet.
Always had she dreamed about it, and romanced over it, and sought it on the wings of her spirit. Yonder it lay, ancient as China, enchanting as storied Persia.
If only she were on pleasure bent! If only she knew some one in this great teeming city! She knew no one; she carried no letters of introduction, no letters of credit, nothing but the gold and notes the paymaster at the farm had hastily turned over to her. Only by constant application to maps and guide books had she managed to arrange the short cut to the far kingdom. She had been warned that it was a wild and turbulent place, out of the beaten path, beyond the reach of iron rails. Three long sea voyages: across the Pacific (which wasn"t), down the bitter Yellow Sea, up the blue Bay of Bengal, with many a sea change and many a strange picture. What though her heart ached, it was impossible that her young eyes should not absorb all she saw and marvel over it. India!
The strange elusive Hindu had disappeared after Hongkong. That was a weight off her soul. She was now a.s.sured that her imagination had beguiled her. How should he know anything about her? What was more natural than that he should wish to hurry back to his native state?
She was not the only one in a hurry. And there were Hindus of all castes on all three ships. By now she had almost forgot him.
There was one bright recollection to break the unending loneliness.
Coming down from Hongkong to Singapore she had met at the captain"s table a young man by the name of Bruce. He was a quiet, rather untalkative man, lean and sinewy, sun and wind bitten. Kathlyn had as yet had no sentimental affairs. Absorbed in her work, her father and the care of Winnie, such young men as she had met had scarcely interested her. She had only tolerated contempt for idlers, and these young men had belonged to that category. Bruce caught her interest in the very fact that he had but little to say and said that crisply and well. There was something authoritative in the shape of his mouth and the steadiness of his eye, though before her he never exercised this power. A dozen times she had been on the point of taking him into her confidence, but the irony of fate had always firmly closed her lips.
And now, waiting for the ship to warp into its pier, she realized what a fatal mistake her reticence had been. A friend of her father!
Bruce had left the Lloyder before dinner (at Singapore), and as Kathlyn"s British-India coaster did not leave till morning she had elected to remain over night on the German boat.
As Bruce disappeared among the disembarking pa.s.sengers and climbed into a rickshaw she turned to the captain, who stood beside her.