It was through Delphine she received the only light she ever had on the old woman’s going. Disturbed over her disappearance from school, Delphine had sought her out at her quarters. She explained to him that she had been ill, and mentioned that she had not been able to procure any more of a medicine which had brought her great relief, and which she had been in the habit of buying from an old charm-woman near the school, who had mysteriously disappeared.
“Dicky-Dicky sent her away!” Delphine exclaimed excitedly. “I saw him come out suddenly upon her, a few squares from the school, and tell her over and over to go away—that danger threatened several people if she were seen around any more.”
What did the dwarf mean? Delphine did not know, he did not ask Dicky-Dicky questions because he got severely slapped on the head for such efforts.
Gone, taking her secret off with her! That was the way with these people—always under your feet, until some day, at some mysterious signal, they took themselves finally off! Julie thought with terror of all that lay ahead of her, to face unrelieved—the relentless hot season, her perilous hold on a disorganizing community, her bad health. With the aid of the medicine, she had managed to endure and to go unsteadily on, but the thought of trying to continue without it caused her limbs to grow cold. There was not fire nor force enough in her to fight the rest of the way. To her other trials it was impossible to add ceaseless and grilling pain. In a few weeks she might have to go out of this country—and the passage money was nowhere in sight. Something might yet happen to turn her fate. Until then she must find a way to get the medicine.
Old Kantz, the chemist on Calle Alean, had been in the East for forty years. He would be bound to know what the medicine was and to be able perhaps to get more of it. Julie preferred him to Señor Reredo whose shop was not far distant. So when Señor Sansillo went to Los Baños on business she seized the half holiday to go and see Kantz.
As she entered the Botica a native clerk slumbrously uprose behind the counter. It was a hot day. Nobody was about in it but tired, driven Americans who take account of neither day nor night. Julie made clear to him, however, that she must see Kantz at once.
The old chemist was finishing his siesta upstairs, but as he was accustomed to act as an emergency doctor to his neighborhood he came down, clad in white trousers and an undershirt that covered his fat person like his skin. This attire was not really unconventional in a land where attire might follow almost any persuasion of the mind.
He adjusted his huge lenses and nodded professionally to the girl. Julie, wondering at her own precipitancy and unable to set forth any explanation of it to Kantz, began in an uncertain voice. “I have a medicine here—that I have been taking for some time—for very bad head-aches. I can’t get any more of it and I want to see if you can.”
“What is it then?” He poked the pellet with a fat finger.
“I—don’t know!” she stammered uneasily. It seemed so foolish a reply to make in the face of this array of bottles confronting her like so many incontrovertible facts and to Kantz who looked like the biggest bottle and the most absolute fact of all.