Appleby smiled curiously as he laid the paper down. Tony, it was evident, would no longer be hampered by financial embarrassments, and Appleby did not envy him the prosperity he had not hitherto been accustomed to. Still, he wondered vaguely why Tony had never written to the address in Texas, from which letters would have reached him, especially since it appeared that Godfrey Palliser was dead. He was also curious as to whether Tony was married yet, and would have liked to have heard that he was. That, he felt, would have snapped the last tie that bound him to the post, and made it easier to overcome the longing he was sensible of when he remembered Violet Wayne. It would, he fancied, be less difficult if he could think of her as Tony’s wife. Then he brushed away the fancies as Harper noisily moved his chair.
“Hallo!” he said. “Another of their blamed officers coming to worry us!”
Appleby heard a beat of hoofs, and looking down saw a man riding along the tramway on a mule. It was too dark to see the stranger clearly, and he sat still until there was a murmur of voices below, and a patter of feet on the stairway.
“He is coming up,” he said, with a trace of displeasure in his voice. “I fancied I had made it plain that nobody was to be shown in until I knew his business. Still, we can’t turn him out now. Tell Pancho to bring in the lights.”
Harper rose, but as he did so the major-domo flung the door open, and stood still with a lamp in his hand as a man walked into the room. He made a little gesture of greeting, and Appleby checked a gasp of astonishment. The major-domo set the lamp on the table, and then slipped out softly, closing the door behind him.
“Don Maccario!” said Harper, staring at the stranger. “Now, I wonder where he got those clothes.”
Maccario smiled, and sat down uninvited. He was dressed in broadcloth and very fine linen, and laid a costly Panama hat on the table. Then he held out a little card towards Appleby.
“With permission!” he said. “Don Erminio Peralla, merchant in tobacco, of Havana!”
Harper laughed when he had laid out a bottle and glasses, and the faint rose-like bouquet of Canary moscatel stole into the room.
“That’s a prescription you are fond of,” he said. “The tobacco business is evidently flourishing.”