The Web of the Golden Spider

by Frederick Orin Bartlett

“Ring ’em hard. I know there is someone there.”

But nothing Central could do roused any reply. Either the line was out of order or the occupants of the house refused to answer the call. He left the booth 104 with an uneasy feeling that something was wrong with the girl. He should not have allowed her to leave the telephone without telling him her address. It was possible she was held a prisoner––possible that Sorez, failing to persuade her to go with him in any other way, might attempt to abduct her. Doubtless she had told him her story, and he knew that with only an indifferent housekeeper to look after the girl no great stir would be made over her disappearance. Like dozens of others, she would be accounted for as having gone to the city to work. The more he thought of it, the more troubled he became. One thing was certain; under these circumstances he could no longer remain passive and wait for her letter. The chances were that she would not be allowed to write.

He had intended to go out and see Danbury that afternoon, but he made up his mind to take a car and go to Belmont on the chance of securing, through the local office, some information which would enable him to trace the house. If worse came to worse, he might appeal to the local police for aid.

Before starting, he returned to the hospital and had his wound examined. It was in good condition and the surgeon was able this time to use a very much smaller dressing.

“Will it need any further treatment?” Wilson inquired.

“You ought to have the dressing changed once more, but on a pinch even that will not be necessary so long as the cut keeps clean. If, however, it begins to 105 pain you, that means trouble. Don’t neglect it a day if that happens. But I don’t anticipate anything of the sort. Probably you can have the stitches out in a week.”

It was a relief to be able to go out upon the street again without attracting attention. The snapshot judgment upon every man with a bandaged head is that he has been in a street fight––probably while intoxicated. He bought a clean collar and a tie and indulged in the luxury of a shoe polish and a shave. When he stepped out upon the street after this he looked more like himself than he had for six months. Had it not been for his anxiety over the girl, he would have felt exultant, buoyant.

The Belmont car took him through green fields and strips of woods rich leaved and big with sap. The sun flecked them with gold and a cooling breeze rustled them musically. After the rain of the night before the world looked as fresh as though new made. He was keenly sensitive to it all and yet it mingled strangely with the haunting foreign landscape of his imagination––a landscape with a background of the snow-tipped summits of the Andes, a landscape with larger, cruder elements. He felt as though he stood poised between two civilizations. His eyes met the conventional details of surroundings among which he had been born and brought up; he was riding on an open trolley car, surrounded by humdrum fellow-passengers who pursued the sober routine of their lives as he had expected, until within a day, to do, passing through 106 a country where conditions were settled––graded, as it were, so that each might lay his track and move smoothly upon it; and yet his thoughts moved among towering mountains untouched by law, among people who knew not the meaning of a straight path, among heathen gods and secret paths to hidden gold. Yes, sitting here staring at the stereotyped inscription upon the wooden seat-back before him, “Smoking on the three rear seats only”––sitting here in the midst of advertisements for breakfast foods, canned goods, and teas,––sitting here with the rounded back of the motorman and the ever moving brass brake before his eyes, he still felt in his pocket the dry parchment which had lain perhaps for centuries in the heart of a squat idol. While riding through the pretty toy suburbs in the comfort of an open car, he was still one with Raleigh and his adventurous crew sailing the open seas; while still a fellow with these settled citizens of a well-ordered Commonwealth, he was, too, comrade to the reckless Quesada––lured by the same quest. And this was not a dream––it was not a story––it was dead, sober reality. The world about him now was no vision; he saw, felt, and smelled it; the other was equally real, he had shared in a struggle to possess it, he had the testimony of his eyes to substantiate it, and the logic of his brain to prove it. If the wound upon his head was real, if this girl in search of whom he was now bent was real, if that within his pocket was real––if, in brief, he were not a lunatic in complete subjection to a delusion––then, 107 however extravagant it might appear, all was real.

The fact which made it substantial, as nothing else did, was the girl––the girl and all she meant to him. It must be a very genuine emotion to turn the world topsy-turvy for him as it had. This afternoon for instance, it was she who filled the sunbeams with golden light, who warmed the blue sky until it seemed of hazy fairy stuff, who sang among the leaves, who urged him on with a power that placed no limit on distance or time. Within less than a day she had so obsessed him as to cause him to focus upon the passion the entire strength of his being. The fortune of gold and jewels before him was great, but if necessary he could sacrifice it without hesitancy to bring her nearer to him. That was secondary and so was everything which lay between him and that one great need.

He sought out the telephone exchange at Belmont at once and was referred to the superintendent. He found the latter a brisk, unimaginative man––a creature of rules and regulations.