CHAPTER IX
THE TOREADOR APPEARS
Slowly, with a gesture almost subconscious, Benton slipped an unopened envelope from his breast pocket; turned it over; looked at it and slipped it back, still unopened. Then, leaning heavily on his elbow, he gazed off, frowning, over the rail of the yacht's forward deck.
The waters that lap the quays and wharves of Old Cadiz, green as jade and quiet as farm-yard pools, were darkening into inkiness toward shore. White walls that had been like ivory were turning into ashy gray behind the Bateria San Carlos and the pillars of the Entrada. The molten sun was sinking into a rich orange sky beyond the Moorish dome and Christian towers of the cathedral.
Shafts of red and green wavered and quaked in the black dock waters.
Between the hulks of cork- and salt-freighters, the steam yacht Isis slipped with as graceful a motion as that of the gulls. Then when the anchor chains ran gratingly out, Benton turned on his heel and went to his cabin.
Behind a bolted door he dropped into a chair and sat motionless. Finally the right hand wandered mechanically to his breast pocket and brought out the envelope. He read for the thousandth time the endorsement in the corner.
"Not to be opened until the evening of March 5th," and under that, "I love you."
There was another envelope; an outer one much rubbed from the pocket. It was directed in her hand and the blurred postmark bore a date in February. He could have described every mark upon the enclosing cover with the precision of a careful detective. When his impatient fingers had first torn off the end, only to be confronted by the order: "Not to be opened until the evening of March 5th," he had fallen back on studying outward marks and indications. In the first place, it had been posted from Puntal, and instead of the familiar violet stamp of Maritzburg, with which her other letters had been franked during the two months past, this stamp was pink, and its medallion bore the profile of Karyl.
That she had left Maritzburg, and that she had written him a message to be sealed for a month, meant that the date of March 5th had significance. That she was in Galavia meant that the significance was—he winced.