"I"d no right to ask you the question," he apologized. "It was kind of you to answer me at all."
"You"re really a dear, Fitz," she said, smiling a little wanly.
"Sometimes I wish--"
She did not finish her sentence, but wandered over to the window, and gazed out across the square. On the far side something quite out of the ordinary seemed to be going on.
"The legless beggar seems to have collected quite an audience," she remarked idly.
Her suitor joined her on the parlor balcony.
"Possibly he"s starting a revolution. Any one can do it down here."
Vehement adjuration, in a high, strident voice, came floating across to them.
"Listen!" cried the girl. "He"s speaking. English, isn"t he?"
"It seems to be a mixture of English, French, and Spanish. Quite a polyglot the friend of your friend Perkins appears to be."
She turned steady eyes upon him.
"Mr. Perkins is not my friend."
"No?"
"I never want to see him, or to hear his name again."
"Ah, then you"ve found out about him?"
"Yes." She flushed. "Yes--at least--Yes," she concluded.
"He admitted it to you?"
"No, he lied about it."
"I think I shall go up and make a call on Mr. Perkins," said Carroll, with formidable quiet.
"Oh, it doesn"t matter," she answered wearily. "He"d only run away and hide." As she said it, her inner self convicted her tongue of lying.
"Very likely. Yet, see here, Miss Polly,--I want to be fair to that fellow. It doesn"t follow that because he"s a coward he"s a cad."
"He isn"t a coward!" she flashed.
"You just said yourself that he"d run and hide."
"Well, he wouldn"t, and he IS a cad."
"As you like. In any case, I shall make it a point to see him before I leave. If he can explain, well and good. If not--" He did not conclude.
"Our orator seems to have finished," observed the girl. "I shall go back upstairs and write some good-bye notes to the kind people here."
"Just for curiosity, I think I"ll drive across and look at the legless Demosthenes," said her companion. "I was going to do a little shopping, anyway. So I"ll report later, if he"s revoluting or anything exciting."
From her own balcony, when she reached it, Polly had a less obstructed view of the beggar"s appropriated corner, and she looked out a few minutes after she reached the room to see whether he had resumed his oratory. Apparently he had not, for the crowd had melted away. The legless one was rocking himself monotonously upon his stumps. His head was sunk forward, and from his extraordinary mouthings the spectator judged that he must be talking to himself with resumed vehemence. From what next pa.s.sed before her astonished vision, Miss Brewster would have suspected herself of a hallucination of delirium had she not been sure of normal health.
One of the well-horsed, elegant little public victorias with which the city is so well supplied stopped at the curb, and the handsome head of Preston Fairfax Fitzhugh Carroll was thrust forth. At almost the same moment the Unspeakable Perk appeared upon the steps. He was wearing a pair of enormous, misfit white gloves. He went down to the beggar, reached forth a hand, and, to the far-away spectator"s wonder-struck interpretation, seemed to thrust something, presumably a doc.u.ment, into the breast of the mendicant"s shirt. Having performed this strange rite, he leaped up the steps, hesitated, rushed over to Carroll"s equipage, and laid violent hands upon the occupant, with obvious intent to draw him forth. For a moment they seemed to struggle upon the sidewalk; then both rushed upon the unfortunate beggar and proceeded to kidnap him and thrust him bodily into the cab.
The driver turned in his seat at this point, his cue in the mad farce having been given, and opened speech with many gestures, whereupon Carroll arose and embraced him warmly. And with this grouping, the vehicle, bearing its lunatic load, sped around the corner and disappeared, while the sole interested witness retired to obscurity, with her reeling head between her hands.
One final touch of phantasy was given to the whole affair when, two hours later, she met Carroll, soiled and grimy, coming across the plaza, smoking--he, the addict to thirty-cent Havanas!--an awful native cheroot, whose incense spread desolation about him. Further and more extraordinary, when she essayed to obtain a solution of the mystery from him, he repelled her with emphatic gestures and a few half-strangled words with whose unintelligibility the cheroot fumes may have had some connection, and hurried into the hotel, where he remained in seclusion the rest of the day.
What in the name of all the wonders could it mean? On Mr. Brewster"s return, she laid the matter before him at the dinner table.
"Touch of the sun, perhaps," he hazarded. "Nothing else I know of would explain it."
"Do two Americans, a half-breed beggar, and a local coachman get sunstruck at one and the same time?" she inquired disdainfully.
"Doesn"t seem likely. By your account, though, the crippled beggar seems to have been the little Charlie Ross of melodrama."
"Then why didn"t he shout for help? I listened, but didn"t hear a sound from him."
"Movie-picture rehearsal," grunted Mr. Brewster. "I can"t quite see the heir of all the Virginias in the part. Isn"t he coming down to dinner this evening?"
"His dinner was sent up to his room. Isn"t it extraordinary?"
"Ask Sherwen about it. He"s coming around this evening for coffee in our rooms."
But the American representative had something else on his mind besides casual kidnapings.
"I"ve just come from a talk with the British Minister," he remarked, setting down his cup. "He"s officially in charge of American interests, you know."
"Thought you were," said Mr. Brewster.
"Officially, I have no existence. The United States of America is wiped off the map, so far as the sovereign Republic of Caracuna is concerned.
Some of its politicians wouldn"t be over-grieved if the local Americans underwent the same process. The British Minister would, I"m sure, sleep easier if you were all a thousand miles away from here."
"Tell Sir Willet that he"s very ungallant," pouted Miss Polly. "When I sat next to him at dinner last week he offered to establish woman suffrage here and elect me next president if I"d stay."
Sherwen hardly paid this the tribute of a smile.
"That was before he found out certain things. The Hochwald Legation"--he lowered his voice--"is undoubtedly stirring up anti-American sentiment."
"But why?" inquired Mr. Brewster. "There"s enough trade for them and for us?"
"For one thing, they don"t like your concessions, Mr. Brewster. Then they have heard that Dr. Pruyn is on his way, and they want to make all the trouble they can for him, and make it impossible for him to get actual information of the presence of plague. I happen to know that their consul is officially declaring fake all the plague rumors."
"That suits me," declared the magnate. "We don"t want to have to run Dutch and quarantine blockade both."
"Meantime, there are two or three cheap but dangerous demagogues who have been making anti-"Yanki," as they call us, speeches in the slums.
Sir Willet doesn"t like the looks of it. If there were any way in which you could get through, and to sea, it would be well to take it at once.