Barron’s business engagement detained him longer than he had expected. The heavy rain was shortening the already short February day with a premature dusk when he opened the gate of the Garcia house and mounted the steps.
He had made a cursory investigation of the ground under the pepper-tree when he went out in the early morning. Now, before the light died, he again stepped under its branches for a more thorough survey. The foliage was so thick that no grass grew where the tree’s shadow fell, and the rain sifted through it in occasional dribbles or shaken showers. The bare stretch of ground was now an expanse of mud, interspersed with puddles. Here and there a footprint still remained, full of water. He moved about the base of the tree studying these, then looking up into the branch along which the burglar had crept to the balcony. What paper could the girl have possessed of sufficient value to lure a man to such risks?
With his mind full of this thought his glance dropped to the root of the trunk. A piece of burnt paper, half covered with the trampled mud, caught his eye, and he picked it up and absently glanced at it. He was about to throw it over the fence into the road, when he saw the name of Jacob Shackleton. The next moment his eyes were riveted on the printed lines here and there filled in with writing. He moved so that the full light fell on it through a break in the branches. It was a minute or two before he grasped its real meaning. But he knew the name of Lucy Fraser, too. Mariposa had once told him it had been her mother’s maiden name.
For a space he stood motionless under the tree, staring at the paper, focusing his mind on it, seizing on waifs and strays from the past that surged to the surface of his memory. It dazed him at first. Then he began to understand. The mysterious drama that environed the girl upstairs began to grow clear to him. This was the document that had been stolen from her last night, the loss of which had thrown her into a frenzy of despair—the record of a marriage between her mother and Jake Shackleton.
Without stopping to think further he thrust it into his pocket and ran to the house. As he mounted the porch steps the scene of his first meeting with Mariposa flashed suddenly like a magic-lantern picture across his mind. He heard her hysterical cry of—“He was my father!” Another veil of the mystery seemed lifted.
And now he shrank from penetrating further, for he began to see. If Mariposa had some sore secret to hide let her keep it shut in her own breast. All he had to do was to give the paper to her as soon as he could. In the moment’s passage of the balcony and the pause while he inserted his latch-key in the door he tried to think how he could restore it to her without letting her think he had read it. The key turned and as the door gave he decided that it must be given her at once without wasting time or bothering about comforting lies.
He burst into the hall and then stood still, the door-handle in his hand. In the dim light, the two Garcia ladies and the two boys met his eyes, standing in a group at the foot of the stairs. There was something in their faces and attitudes that bespoke uneasiness and anxiety. Their four pairs of eyes were fastened on him with curious alarmed gravity.
He kicked the door shut and said:
“How’s Miss Moreau?”