“Some legal document, I think, but I don’t know. The police can’t do much till they know what it is.”
“Perhaps it was a will,” said the widow, whose sole literature was that furnished by the daily press; “though I should think if it was a will she’d have told about it by now and not kept it hid away up there. Anyway, she thought a lot of it, for when she came to I told her her money was all right, and she said she didn’t care about the money, she wanted the paper.”
“I’ll see her when she wakes,” said Barron, “and find out what it was. Our affair now is to see that she is not frightened again and gets well.”
“Well, mother says to let her sleep. So that’s what we’re going to do. No one’s going to disturb her, and Pierpont, who got back an hour ago, has promised not to give any lessons all afternoon.”
The conversation was here interrupted by the appearance of the Chinaman, who loungingly issued from the kitchen, shouted an unintelligible phrase at his mistress, and disappeared into the dining-room. His words seemed to have meaning to her, for she pulled off her apron, saying briskly:
“There, dinner’s ready and we’re going to have enchilados. Don’t you smell them? The boys will be crazy.”
A cautious inspection made after dinner by young Mrs. Garcia, resulted in the information that Mariposa still slept. Barron, who was feverishly desirous to know how she progressed and also anxious to learn from her the nature of the lost document, was forced to leave without seeing her. A business engagement of the utmost importance claimed him at his office at two or he would have awaited her awakening.
It was nearly an hour later before this occurred. The drug the señora had administered was a heroic remedy, relic of the days when doctors were a rarity and the medicine chest of the hardy Spaniard contained few but powerful potions. The girl rose, feeling weak and dizzy. For some time she found it difficult to collect her thoughts and sat on the edge of her bed, eying the disordered room with uncomprehending glances. Bodily discomfort at first absorbed her mind. A fever burned through her, her head ached, her limbs felt leaden and stiff.
The sight of the opened desk gave the fillip to her befogged memory, and suddenly the events of the night rushed back on her with stunning force. She felt, at first, that it must be a dream. But the rifled desk, with the money which the Garcias had gathered up and laid in a glittering heap on the table, told her of its truth. The man’s face, yellow and flabby, with the dark line of the shaven beard clearly marked on his jaws, and the frightened rat’s eyes, came back to her as he had turned in the first paralyzed moment of fear. With hot, unsteady hands she searched through the scattered papers and then about the room, in the hope that he had dropped the paper in the struggle. But all search was fruitless. She remembered his tearing it from her grasp as Barron’s shout had sounded in the passage. He had escaped with it. The irrefutable evidence of the marriage was in Essex’s hands. He had her under his feet. It was the end.
She began to dress slowly and with constant pauses. Every movement seemed an effort; every stage of her toilet loomed colossal before her. The one horror of the situation kept revolving in her brain, and she found it impossible to detach her thoughts from it and fix them on anything else. At the same time she could think of no way to escape, or to fight against it.