"As I understand the Dutch permit, it specifies AFTER to-day."
"It isn"t a question of the Dutch. Caracuna City goes under quarantine to-night, and Puerto del Norte to-morrow, as soon as proper official notification can be given."
"Then plague has actually been found?"
"Determined by bacteriological test this morning."
"How do you know?"
"I was present at the finding."
"Who did it? Dr. Pruyn?"
The other nodded.
Sherwen whistled.
"Better make ready to move, Mr. Brewster," he advised. "You can"t get out of port after quarantine is on. At least, you couldn"t get into any other port, even if you sailed, because your sailing-master wouldn"t have clearance papers."
The magnate smiled.
"I hardly think that any United States Consul, with a due regard for his future, would refuse papers to the yacht Polly," he observed.
"Don"t be a fool!"
Thatcher Brewster all but jumped from his chair. That this adjuration should have come from the freakish spectacle-wearer seemed impossible.
Yet Sherwen, the only other person in the room, was certainly not guilty.
"Did you address me, young man?"
"I did."
"Do you know, sir, that since boyhood no person has dared or would dare to call me a fool?"
"Well, I don"t want to set a fashion," said the other equably. "I"m only advising you not to be."
"Keep your advice until it"s wanted."
"If it were a question of you alone, I would. But there are others to be considered. Now, listen, Mr. Brewster: Wisner and Stark wouldn"t let you through that quarantine, after it"s declared, if you were the Secretary himself. A point is being stretched in giving you this chance. If you"ll agree to ship a doctor,--Stark will find you one,--stay out for six full days before touching anywhere, and, if plague develops, make at once for any detention station specified by the doctor, you can go. Those are Stark"s conditions."
"d.a.m.nable nonsense!" declared Mr. Brewster, jumping to his feet, quite red in the face.
"Let me warn you, Mr. Brewster," put in Sherwen, with quiet force, "that you are taking a most unwise course. I am advised that Mr. Perkins is acting under instructions from our consulate."
"You say that Dr. Pruyn is here. I want to see him before--"
"How can you see him? n.o.body knows where he is keeping himself. I haven"t seen him yet myself. Now, Mr. Brewster, just sit down and talk this over reasonably with Mr. Perkins."
"Oh, no," said the third conferee positively; "I"ve no time for argument. At six o"clock I "ll be back here. Unless you decide by then, I"ll telephone the consulate that the whole thing is off."
"Of all the impudent, conceited, self-important young whippersnappers!"
fumed Mr. Brewster. But he found that he had no audience, as Sherwen had followed the scientist out of the room.
Before the afternoon was over, the American concessionnaire had come to realize that the situation was less a.s.sured than he had thought.
Twice the British Minister had come, and there had been calls from the representatives of several other nationalities. Von Plaanden, in full uniform and girt with the short saber that is the special and privileged arm of the crack cavalry regiment to which he belonged at home, had dismounted to deliver personally a huge bouquet for Miss Brewster, from the garden of the Hochwald Legation, not even asking to see the girl, but merely leaving the flowers as a further expression of his almost daily apology, and riding on to an official review at the military park.
He had spoken vaguely to Sherwen of a restless condition of the local mind. Reports, it appeared, had been set afloat among the populace to the effect that an American sanitary officer had been bribed by the enemies of Caracuna to declare plague prevalent, in order to close the ports and strangle commerce. Urgante was going about the lower part of the city haranguing on street corners without interference from the police. In the arroyo of the slaughter-house, two American employees of the street-car company had been stoned and beaten. Much aguardiente was in process of consumption, it being a half-holiday in honor of some saint, and n.o.body knew what trouble might break out.
"Bolas are rolling around like b.a.l.l.s on a billiard table," said young Raimonda, who had come after luncheon to call on Miss Brewster. "In this part of the city there will be nothing. You needn"t be alarmed."
"I"m not afraid," said Miss Polly.
"I"m sure of it," declared the Caracunan, with admiration. "You are very wonderful, you American women."
"Oh, no. It"s only that we love excitement," she laughed.
"Ah, that is all very well, for a bull-fight or "la boxe." But for one of our street emeutes--no; too much!"
They were seated on the roof of the half-story of the house, which had been made into a trellised porch overlooking the patio in the rear and the street in front, an architectural wonder in that city of dead walls flush with the sidewalk line all the way up. Leaning over the rail, the visitor pointed through the leaves of a small gallito tree to a broad-fronted building almost opposite.
"That is my club. You have other friends there who would do anything for you, as I would, so gladly," he added wistfully. "Will you honor me by accepting this little whistle? It is my hunting-whistle. And if there should be anything--but I think there will not--you will blow it, and there will be plenty to answer. If not, you will keep it, please, to remember one who will not forget you."
Handsome and elegant and courtly he was, a true chevalier of adventurous pioneering stock, sprung from the old proud Spanish blood, but there stole behind the girl"s vision, as she bade him farewell, the undesired phantasm of a very different face, weary and lined and lighted by steadfast gray eyes--eyes that looked truthful and belonged to a liar!
Miss Polly Brewster resumed her final packing in a fume of rage at herself.
All hands among the visitors pa.s.sed the afternoon dully. Mr. Brewster, who had finally yielded to persuasion and decided not to venture out, though still deriding the restriction as the merest nonsense, was in a mood of restless silence, which his irrepressible daughter described to Fitzhugh Carroll as "the superior sulks."
Carroll himself kept pretty much aloof. He had the air of a man who wrestles with a problem. Cluff fussed and fretted and privately cursed the country and all its concessions. Between calls and the telephone, Sherwen was kept constantly busy. But a few minutes before six, central, in the blandest Spanish, regretted to inform him that Puerto del Norte was cut off. When would service be resumed? Quien sabe? It was an order.
Hasta manana. To-morrow, perhaps. Smoothing a furrow from his brow, the sight of which would have done n.o.body any good, he suggested that they all gather on the roof porch for a swizzle. The suggestion was hailed with enthusiasm.
Thus, when the Unspeakable Perk came hustling down the street some minutes earlier than the appointed time, he was hailed in Sherwen"s voice, and bidden to come directly up. No time, on this occasion, for Miss Polly to escape. She decided in one breath to ignore the man entirely; in the next to bow coldly and walk out; in the next to--He was there before the latest wavering decision could be formulated.
"Better all get inside," he said a little breathlessly. "There may be trouble."
Cluff brightened perceptibly.
"What kind of trouble?"
"Urgante is leading a mob up this way. They"re turning the corner now."
"I"m going to wait and see them," cried Miss Polly, with decision.
"Bend over, then, all of you," ordered Sherwen. "The vines will cover you if you keep down."
Around the corner, up the hill from where they were, streamed a rabble of boys, leaping and whooping, and after them a more compact crowd of men, shoeless, centering on a tall, broad, heavy-mustached fellow who bore on a short staff the Stars and Stripes.
"Where on earth did he get that?" cried Sherwen.
"Looted the Bazaar Americana," replied Perkins.