IN THE HOUSE OF MYSTERY
Only to Mr. McClement, chief engineer of the Tarragona, had Teresa Fernandez made known her intention of leaving the ship at the end of the voyage. Never again did she wish to see the walls of Cartagena and the white moonlight in the plazas, or to hear the wind in the cocoanut palms and the bells in the church towers. The thoughtful McClement did not try to dissuade her. Convinced as she was that Richard Cary had been wickedly done to death, it was not a decision to be argued. Her plans were uncertain, she said. If she were fitted to earn a living ashore, she would not go to sea again. The sea made her sad.
She had a last talk with McClement the night before the ship was due at New York. It was a farewell, he suspected. Teresa had resolved to break all ties with the Tarragona and her shipmates.
“Will you let me look you up in New York?” he asked. “We might have dinner together, or something like that. If I can cheer you up a bit—”
“Thank you very much, Mr. McClement. I will let you know where to find me if I need you. On your next trip to Cartagena you may hear something—of how—of how it happened, but you will never find Mr. Cary.”
“I can’t be so cock-sure of that, Miss Fernandez. As I have insisted right along, a man like Dick Cary doesn’t vanish without a trace. Colonel Fajardo is the blighter for me to keep an eye on. He will be looking for you on the ship, won’t he? Hot after you again, I fancy. He may give himself away. He will be badly upset when he finds you have stayed in New York.”
“Do you truly expect to see Colonel Fajardo waiting on the wharf in Cartagena, Mr. McClement?” demanded Teresa. Her face was solemn, her dark eyes very large, her hands clasped. She was urged against her will to discover what this loyal friend might hold secluded in the secret places of his understanding. Sometimes he frightened her, he seemed so wise and penetrating and yet vouchsafed so little. To her tense question he replied, laying a hand on hers:
“No more of that, my dear girl. You must be up early when the ship docks to-morrow morning, so it’s time for you to say your prayers and go to bed.”
“Ah, yes, I always say my prayers,” she breathed in low tones. “And will you remember to say a prayer for the soul of poor Teresa who found her lover and lost him so soon?”
“God may be a trifle surprised at hearing from a perfect stranger,” he answered, with his cynical twinkle, “but I am always at your service, Miss Fernandez.”
“It will comfort me,” said she, “to know you believe I am still good—in spite of—no matter what—no matter what—oh, Mr. McClement, I am such a very, very unhappy woman.”
She sobbed the words. For the first time her proud and righteous composure had broken. It was the realization that in all the world there was no one else than this man who could comprehend her, in whom, if needs be, she could unreservedly confide. He was a link, as faithful as forged iron, between the brief joy of which she had been bereft and the dark perspective of the future.
McClement made no comment. He knew when silence was golden. Teresa quickly regained her poise. The display of emotion had been like the swirl of an eddy on the surface of a deep, swift stream.
“To have a second mate left on the beach means so little in a great fleet of ships like the Fruit Company’s,” said she. “The captain will report him absent from duty, and it is soon forgotten. Mr. Cary was a new man in the service—a stranger—they scratch him off the list. And you have packed his clothes in the two bags, Mr. McClement? And all the little things that belonged to him?”
“Yes. I found his home address—a letter from his mother. I kept it for you. Shall I send the stuff to her, or what? How about waiting another trip?”
“Wait for what?” Teresa exclaimed. “Mr. Cary is dead, I tell you. Colonel Fajardo killed him. How else can it be—think, Mr. McClement, two days the Tarragona was at Porto Colombia, and two days at Santa Marta loading bananas—a whole week on the coast before we sailed for Kingston. And the Company’s radio stations at those ports! I have told you this over and over again. Can you imagine Mr. Cary alive and not sending a radio to me—to the captain—to explain why he was missing? It is impossible. A whole week on the coast and then to Kingston.”
“I grant you all that,” replied McClement. “It has knocked the props pretty well from under me. What about Dick Cary’s mother? There’s the rub.”
“His things ought to be sent to her, I suppose,” said Teresa. “What else can we do? And who will write to her? You or I? Maybe the port captain who hired him will send her a letter. I don’t know about that. But Mr. Cary is nothing but a second mate that jumped his ship.”
“Writing his mother! Humph!” grunted McClement. “What the deuce is there to tell her but to sit tight and hope for news? My word, but it is a rotten situation for her, isn’t it?”
“I am the one to write a letter to her,” said Teresa. “And I will tell her why. It is because I loved him, and was ready to die for him.”
Troubled sleep and wakeful hours were Teresa’s portion during this last night in the ship which had long been her home. The blind instinct of flight had driven her to break these familiar bonds. Abhorrent was the thought of returning to the long wharf at Cartagena with the ugly cargo sheds and the tapering masts of a Colombian schooner lifting beyond them. There was the fear that somehow she might betray herself, that out of the very air accusation might be directed against her.
She felt neither guilt nor remorse, but she was too young to die. And it would be hideously unjust if she should be taken and put to death for what she had done. Not by chance had she been delivered from punishment. The miraculous decree of fate had sheltered and absolved her.
She wondered if the evil spirit of Colonel Fajardo haunted the narrow strip of wharf beyond the cargo shed, waiting, waiting for the ship to bring Teresa Fernandez back to Cartagena. The unholy vision could not be thrust aside—the gaunt figure and the harsh, cruel face bleached with sudden terror—the whip-like crack of the little pistol—the strangled scream of “Jesus, have mercy”—the splash just astern of the schooner and the patch of frothy water with the widening circles. . .
Unpleasant and distressing, such a crimson page of remembrance as this, but not to be regretted or moaned over. Such was Teresa’s inflexible verdict. Raging more than once, grinding her small white teeth, she had been sorry that Colonel Fajardo had only one death to die. The Holy Office of the Inquisition would have known how to make it more lingering.
These thoughts would leave her alone, she hoped, as soon as she should have seen the last of the ship which had been so intimately associated with him.
There was something more troublesome, and she could see no way to meet it. Write a letter to the mother of Richard Cary? What in the name of God could she, Teresa, say to his mother by way of explanation? What could she tell the mother of a noble son? That he was dead? How? Where? Why? Where was the proof? Who had buried him and where was his grave? He was dead. This was all Teresa knew as she had read it in the hard eyes of Colonel Fajardo, in his twitching smile, gloating, gratified, unable to dissemble his own secret. But a mother of a son—and such a son—here was a wall of difficulty that loomed to the sky!
While the passengers were landing next morning, very impatient to run the gantlet of the customs inspectors and hurl themselves into taxicabs, Miss Fernandez was the efficient, light-footed stewardess with a blithe word and a quick readiness to aid the ladies and amuse the children. She turned aside from her duty only to accost Mr. McClement and say:
“Leave Mr. Cary’s things with the baggage-master of the wharf, to be sent for. This is my advice. They must not go to his home in New Hampshire till I write the letter. It is going to be a very hard letter to write. Good-bye, dear friend, good-bye.”
At her leisure she packed her trunk and shook hands with her good comrades, the purser, the doctor, the second steward, and the wireless operators, who expressed themselves as broken-hearted to a man. She was saucy to Mr. Schwartz, the bullying chief steward, and boxed his ears when he would have chucked her under the chin in token of an amicable parting.
From the ship she went to the office of the port steward and demanded her wages, also a first-class recommendation. These were promptly handed over. No longer a stewardess in trim uniform, with white cap and apron, Miss Fernandez reappeared in a small hotel below Madison Square where she would be unlikely to encounter passengers and officers with whom she had sailed.
Her savings banks books were a substantial anchor to windward. She had done well for herself at sea. There was little faith in Uncle Ramon Bazán’s promises of leaving her his property. He had too many bats in his aged cabeza. Meanwhile she had dreaded being cast on a lee shore of adversity and having to ask his help. There would be a string to it, as she said, that she would have to go and live in his Cartagena house, with the detestable brown monkey and the squawking green parrot and an uncle who had a worse temper than either.
There were friends in New York, but she did not care to see them. They were mostly South Americans or seafaring people. Her intention was to rest a while and then to look for another position as stewardess on some route removed from the Caribbean, perhaps the Spanish line to Cadiz or a Lamport & Holt boat to Buenos Aires.
Prudent with her money as she was, she permitted herself the pleasure of buying some new clothes, preferring to dress in black. The results were admirable. She had excellent taste. A simple elegance distinguished her. It was partly an inheritance. There was a certain exotic charm about her, the eyes, the hair, the coloring of her race.
She was not so vivacious, alas, as when Richard Cary had wooed her in the tropics. At times she was like a nun, in moods pensive and wistful.
Day after day she postponed writing the letter to the widowed mother of the tall, ruddy son who had been so carelessly confident that nothing could harm him. The longer the delay the more impossible it became to put pen to paper. At last she ceased to deceive herself in the matter. That letter would never be written by Teresa Fernandez.
The dilemma held her like a vise. Every passing day was a merciless turn of the screw. Inevitably she was compelled to try to put herself in the mother’s place. Therefore she came to perceive, more and more clearly, that her flight from Cartagena had been futile. She had fled from the deed she had done, but there were consequences which she could neither flee nor evade.
In putting herself in the mother’s place, Teresa had to deny that Richard Cary was dead. What mother would accept such a message as anything more than flimsy conjecture, as meaning anything at all? A mother’s impulse would be to fly to Cartagena herself or to send some one. She would have to know before the tenacious illusions of hope could finally be extinguished.
For Teresa Fernandez to allow herself to hope was to destroy the whole fabric of her justification. Even the faintest whisper of hope and she was no longer absolved. She had killed Colonel Fajardo because he had deserved to die, because otherwise he would have gone unpunished. He was guilty. Of this she had been as certain as that the tides flowed and the sun set.
But this certainty could never convince Richard Cary’s mother. And in her heart of hearts did it entirely convince Teresa Fernandez? During the voyage northward to New York she had been visited by visions of hope. They had come not in her waking hours, however, but when she was asleep and dreaming. Then had Richard Cary appeared to her, masterful and tender, his deep voice vowing that he loved her, aye, for much longer than a little while. She had felt his kisses warm on her lips and his arms holding her close.
Cruel, empty dreams she had called them, but now they took substance and seemed to be calling her. For Richard Cary’s mother and for her own sake, she discerned that she must go back to Cartagena. It had been necessary for her to leave the ship and seclude herself amid different scenes where she might be solitary and detached. Now she was thinking clearly, recovered from that impulse of flight and concealment that had driven her away. It was ordained that she should go back to Cartagena in order to try to bring to light the hidden circumstances. She could do nothing else than attempt it. By sea or land she could find no peace or sanctuary.
A fortnight in New York sufficed to rid this conclusion of its fears and hesitations. It was the sequel, logical and unescapable, of the verdict which she had privately inflicted upon the wicked Colonel Fajardo.
Winter had gone. It was in the month of April when Teresa made this voyage to the southward. The tourist travel had slackened. There were few tired business men and restless wives and daughters. Teresa was fortunate enough to be given a stateroom to herself. She was also alone at a small table in the dining-saloon. It would have made her happier to have been helping the stewardess, who was a heavy, middle-aged woman with twinges of rheumatism.
There were novels to read, long hours in a deck-chair, and the chat of casual acquaintances. The men tried to flirt with her and found it wasted time. The voyage was something to be endured in quietude, with all the patience she could summon. Her courage was equal to the undertaking.
Apart and silent she stood, with an air of grave serenity, when the ship passed in through the Boca Chica and slowly followed the channel of the broad lagoon. The Colombian customs officials would come aboard and summon the passengers for Cartagena into the saloon to check them on the list and examine their passports. This was what Teresa was inwardly dreading. If suspicion had followed her departure, she would learn it now.
A new Comandante of the Port entered the saloon. He was a white-haired, kindly man wearing spectacles. Importantly he scrutinized the purser’s papers and ticked off the names with a pencil. Teresa sat watching him. He had not come to her name. One little white shoe tapped the floor with a quick pit-pat. Otherwise she appeared calm. He held the pencil in air and exclaimed: “Señorita Teresa Fernandez.”
Glancing over his spectacles, he perceived her sitting there. In tones of surprise he repeated the name. She flinched and held her breath. Rising from his chair, the Comandante crossed over to her and put out his hand. It was a friendly gesture. With a sigh she took the hand he offered. Her fingers were as cold as ice.
“It is an agreeable surprise, my dear young lady,” said he, “to find you among the passengers, bound homeward to Cartagena. I welcome the lovely niece of my friend Señor Ramon Bazán.”
Teresa murmured words vaguely polite. The Comandante returned to his papers. He was fussily preoccupied. Presently Teresa slipped away to her room, there to remain until the other passengers had disembarked. She wished to have no reunions on the wharf with friends who had come to see the steamer arrive.
The barrier had been safely passed. She was free to enter the city as a woman innocent of suspicion so far as the officials were concerned. No information had been lodged against her, or the Comandante and his harbor police would have summarily detained her.
In the heat of the day she hired one of the carriages at the gate and was driven to the residence of her uncle. She would tell him what her errand was, to search for tidings of Richard Cary’s fate. With a will to help her, Uncle Ramon might be able to burrow beneath the surface of things. In years gone by he had pulled strings in the complex politics of the city, and was still respected in certain quarters for the things he knew and didn’t tell. Crochety as he was, she thought he was really fond of her when she refrained from teasing. And he had expressed an unusual liking for the big second mate of the Tarragona.
Teresa rang the bell of the ancient house with the rose-tinted walls and the jutting gallery. Expectantly she waited for the Indian lad to come pattering through the hall, or the shuffling slippers of Uncle Ramon himself. Again she pulled the brass knob. She could hear the echoing jingle of the bell. It awakened no response in the silent house. Possibly they were asleep, her uncle, the muchacho, the fat black woman in the kitchen. It was early, however, for the siesta. Uncle Ramon should now be eating the midday breakfast in a shady corner of the patio.
This was a situation awkward and unforeseen. She had taken it implicitly for granted that her funny old uncle would be found in his house because he had always been there. To her he was a lifelong habit and fixture, growing no older or more infirm.
While Teresa stood on the pavement, the carriage waiting with her trunk, the neighbor who lived next door came strolling home under an enormous green umbrella. He was a courtly, bland gentleman with grayish side whiskers who was manager of a bank and had large commercial interests in the interior of the country. Teresa had known this affluent Alonzo de Mello ever since he had been wont to carry her across the plaza upon his shoulder and toss her squealing into a clump of plumed pampas grass. He was her uncle’s financial adviser and loyal friend, ignoring his twists of temper.
Teresa walked along the pavement to meet him. His green umbrella was a familiar sight. Now it was like a beacon in troubled waters. At sight of her, Alonzo de Mello swept off his hat with the graceful homage of an hidalgo. He was a gentleman of the old school. Very much surprised he was to see Teresa. Kissing her on the cheek, as was his privilege, he sonorously exclaimed:
“Old Ramon told me you had failed to come south in the Tarragona last voyage, my child! Come into my house and have breakfast. The family will thank me a thousand times for bringing you.”
“And as many thanks to you, dear Señor de Mello,” replied Teresa, grasping his arm as they walked with the umbrella over them, “but I must find out how to get into my uncle’s house. I came to make him a visit and the house is locked as tight as a jail. Where is he? What do you know? Is anything wrong?”
“The house is closed. He has gone away,” answered the banker, with an oddly perplexed manner. “Ah, you have your trunk in the carriage, Teresa? Then stay with us. I beseech it of you as a favor.”
“I knew you would say just that, Señor de Mello, but if you don’t mind I shall stay in my uncle’s house if there is any way to get into it. He must be coming back soon. Where has he gone? What has become of his two servants?”
“You are a girl not to be cajoled if her mind is made up,” smiled the affectionate neighbor. “Wait, if you please, while I get the key. Uncle Ramon left it with me. Let the driver carry in your trunk, if you insist. Then you can run in and out as you please and have your meals with us. Your uncle’s servants have been sent away, you ought to know, until he returns to the city.”
Señor de Mello was obviously fencing with the story of Uncle Ramon’s curious departure, as if it might require considerable explanation. Teresa was mystified, but she asked no more questions until the banker came back with the heavy iron key. At his heels galloped a little brown monkey squeaking its annoyance at something or other. Teresa eyed it with dislike. She knew that monkey of old. It was not to be mistaken for any other wretched monkey in Colombia. It pulled at her skirt with tiny black paws and would have frisked to her shoulder, but she thrust it away with her foot.
“Little imp of the pit! You are no friend of mine. It is beyond me how my uncle could bear to part with you.”
The monkey grinned at her, showing every tooth in its head, and it was a most malevolent grin. Tail looped over its back, it scampered into the house ahead of them, casting back proud and hateful glances. This house belonged to it. These two persons were intruders. Into the silent patio scampered the monkey and went hand over hand up the trellis from which it swayed in a contemptuous manner.
Teresa was not interested in the antics of little brown monkeys. She went into the library. It was clean and orderly. The other rooms had been left in the same condition by the faithful servants.
“Yes, I think I will stay here, Señor de Mello. It will amuse me to keep house, after living so much in ships. Just now I am tired. I have not been feeling as strong as usual. Will you excuse me from calling on your family till later in the afternoon? I had breakfast on the ship.”
“As you say, Teresa. You have everything here for your comfort. You will dine with us to-night, of course. And now where has your uncle gone? Let us sit down? Your uncle is self-willed and like a mule to handle, as you know. And an old man must not be crossed too much. In the inscrutable wisdom of God, our Ramon Bazán took it into his head to become a shipowner and engage in the west coast trade. A bolt from a clear sky, I assure you, when he came to me to turn his securities into cash and finance the affair. He insisted on buying the old Valkyrie some time ago, very secretly, before he announced what he proposed to do with her.
“You remember the small German tramp steamer, Teresa, that was idle so long in the harbor. Then suddenly he told me he had decided to make repairs and go to Buenaventura for a cargo. It took much more money than he could afford to invest in such a scheme, but I could not refuse to get the funds together for him. My advice amounted to nothing. Objections drove him quite frantic. He had the bit between his teeth. Restless, craving change and excitement before death snatched him, he hit upon this foolish enterprise.”
“He did not tell you everything,” wisely observed Teresa. “I have not the slightest idea of what was in his ridiculous mind, but he expected to bring back more dollars than he spent. Uncle Ramon was never an idiot when it came to his precious money.”
“I called him an idiot,” said Señor Alonzo de Mello, “and he grinned precisely like that monkey on the trellis. So away he sailed and that was the last seen of him.”
“What did he do for a crew?” asked Teresa, the deep-water mariner. “And where did he find a captain?”
“He picked up a man called Captain Bradley Duff, and Cartagena was very well pleased to get rid of him. All the vices of the famous Anglo-Saxon race and none of its virtues were visible to the eye. An unsanctified swine of a wind-bag, down at the heel, who had been annoying this coast for some time.”
“Captain Bradley Duff?” said the disgusted Teresa. “He was kicked off the wharf when I was in the Tarragona. He came on board and tried to borrow money from the officers and passengers. Then he got drunk in the smoking-room. And this is the man that my uncle took as captain in his old steamer? You were too soft with Uncle Ramon, my dear sir. He is in his second childhood. You should have locked him in a room and given him some toys to play with. Has anything been heard of this Valkyrie?”
“Yes, she passed through the Canal. I interested myself to find that out, but she is not yet reported as arriving at Buenaventura. I feel some anxiety, for soon she will be overdue.”
“There will be gray hairs in my head if I sit here in his house until he comes back,” cried Teresa, in a sudden gust of anger. “He has gone the good God knows where. May He protect the silliest voyage that a ship ever made! Yes, Señor de Mello, I think I had better stay alone for a while this afternoon and reflect on what I am to do.”
As the good Señor de Mello bowed himself out, it escaped his notice that the little brown monkey was still roosting on the trellis. Teresa, also, was unobservant. She had discovered that the galleon bell had been removed from its framework of Spanish oak. This was more food for speculation. It was fairly easy to fathom, however, for one who knew Señor Ramon Bazán and the history of the sonorous bell of Nuestra Señora del Rosario. It had been his notion to take the bell along in his steamer by way of precaution. Quite sensible of him, thought Teresa, but to be regretted because with the bell still in the patio she might have been told if any catastrophe was about to put an end to her erratic old kinsman.
While Teresa was pondering this odd discovery, the monkey descended to the floor and bethought himself of some urgent business of his own. With a furtive glance at Teresa, who paid no attention, he scuttled into a corner where two green tubs had formerly stood. The cocoanut palms had been carried into the house of Señor de Mello that they might not perish of thirst. The monkey was exceedingly indignant, as his language conveyed, at finding his favorite depositary of loot disturbed.
There was the wide crack in the masonry, however, where he had hidden the fragments into which he had torn the letter purloined from the library desk. Into this crevice he now inserted a paw and found what he so anxiously sought.
It was a briar pipe with an amber bit, the choicest treasure acquired during a long career of zealous burglary. The huge guest of Papa Bazán had forgotten the pipe that night when he had gone away in the dark. A prize beyond compare for the covetous monkey who had found it in the library next morning and had fled to hide it in the safest, surest place he knew!
Then he had been violently snatched away and kept as a captive in the house of Señor de Mello, and there had been no chance to retrieve the briar pipe. He had been sitting at the top of the trellis wondering what made him feel so sorrowful and uneasy. At last he had remembered. It was the pipe, tucked away in the crack of the wall behind the green tubs.
In a happier frame of mind the monkey wandered across the patio, the pipe held firmly between his teeth, a finger in the bowl. He had the air of one for whom solace waited if only he could find a match and a pinch of tobacco.
Teresa caught sight of this absurdly gratified monkey with the pipe in its mouth. She gasped and sprang to her feet. Like a flash she dived to catch the horrid beast, but he flew from under her hands and raced for the nearest room. Teresa was after him. She picked up an empty flower pot and hurled it. The aim was wild, but the crash was startling. The monkey’s nervous system was so shaken that he dropped the pipe and vanished beneath a bed.
The panting Teresa swooped for the pipe. She was laughing hysterically. She could not believe her eyes. She fondled the pipe, turning it over and over in her hands. It was the pipe which once before she had rescued from the pest of a monkey, when she had brought Richard Cary from the ship for an evening call on her uncle.
This briar pipe was unmistakable. There were the initials neatly carved on the side of the smoke-blackened bowl—R. C.
She put a hand to her head. Richard Cary had taken the pipe back to the ship that night. She was certain of this because she had insisted upon cleaning it before he smoked it again. She had forced a jet of steam through it in the pantry, and then had sent it to his room by a cabin steward. Ricardo had returned his thanks. This had been her last word from him.
Later in the evening, about ten o’clock, he had gone ashore. A quartermaster had seen him walk off the wharf and through the custom-house gate. Betwixt that time and the present, then, he had been in the house of Uncle Ramon Bazán. The pipe was evidence unquestionable, or so it appeared to her confused sense. But if Richard Cary had been in her uncle’s house since leaving the ship that last time, why had he sent no word to explain his absence? Why had her uncle kept silent?
Both joy and anguish overwhelmed her. The room went suddenly dark before her eyes. Never before had she fainted.