Julie stared hard at the thing. There was one thing about a carromata—it could keep on going. She climbed into the vehicle to the cochero, who wanted to know where he should take the Señorita; she replied, “Just drive!”
Familiar with the city’s nocturnal habits, he nodded. If this woman wished to ride in the night with her own soul, it was her own concern. To see nothing, say nothing, and to keep on—that was the code of the Manila Jehu.
Horse and driver moved in slumber through the moonlight. The city passed by all silvered, like one of God’s cities up in the skies. It was perfectly still, as if there were no mortals in it any more.
Pedro, the cochero, drove semi-consciously over the endless bridges, and streets—a great distance, clear to the moon, it seemed. He and Disgusto, his horse, in their perpetual slow movement had gone several times round the earth to be sure, but never had they gone so far in one journey in the dead of the night, when the spirits were out.
Once he had looked round to see what his fare was doing, and had discovered her looking very hard at something she held in the palm of her hand. The other hand, he had noticed, grasped the fading flower. She did not see him. She saw nothing at all. Her face wore a strange, fixed look. It was not within Pedro’s powers to fathom the things that concentrated look contained. They had gone on roaming. Once or twice into his inconsecutive dreaming a soft sound had broken, but his subconsciousness had virtuously reminded itself of the cochero’s code, to mind one’s, own concerns.
At last he sprang up out of his seat with a cry. Something had fallen heavily against his sleeping back. Pedro was used to almost all the startling developments of a vagabond’s career. He could have told strange tales of fares, but never before had one fallen dead in his vehicle. He knew at once what had happened. For a couple of hours, Disgusto had been carrying a dead fare over the city. Strange journey, indeed!
Pedro was deeply perturbed. He did not at all want the police to get after him, but he did urgently want to see what riches the lady had had upon her when she died. He directed Disgusto to a dark corner of the street, fastened up the rubber rain shield of the carromata, which concealed the body very well, and also his investigating activities.
The woman had a face like a cold star. There were moments when, his eye falling upon it, Pedro found it hard to prosecute his search. But she had rich raiment, and a gold ring with a fine stone in it on the finger of the hand from which hung downwards the red flower. Wasn’t that like a woman, Pedro thought, to drop dead with a flower in her hand? God had stricken her right in this vehicle. Undoubtedly a very wicked woman, though beautiful! Too bad one couldn’t sell a creature as lovely as this. Such splendid beings seldom rode in Pedro’s cart. He passed his dark paws over the body to see if there were anything more precious to bring to light, and discovered the gold chain. This delighted him and whetted his appetite for gain. He searched the carromata absorbedly, and unearthed out of the corner of the seat a small round box such as is used for medicine. It contained a number of small silver coins. His fare! He emptied it greedily out into his palm, counted the silver with devotion and slipped it into the pocket of his frayed cotton trousers. Then he smelled speculatively the inside of the box, turning it in every direction. His fare’s indefiniteness as to direction came, with a trail of suspicions, back to his mind. In matters like this, Pedro, who had lived all his life in the dregs of existence, had quick intuitions. This white creature had thrown herself away; nobody at all wanted her; therefore she and all about her were legitimate loot.
He knew a place, providentially, not very far away, where he might strike a good bargain. He propped the body up in the seat and secured it there by means of ropes and a halter. It glistened in the moonlight like an archangel, and made him afraid. He made the ragged storm-curtain fast in front of it, and crossed himself. Never by any chance would anybody at all know that he had a beautiful lady back there, a dead lady who had killed herself in his carromata, and whom he was going to sell in the place without a name where they trafficked in all things under the sun, even the dead.
He stopped at a spot where some old walls joined. No opening could be perceived in the darkness, but Pedro knew this spot better than the world which passed the walls daily but never stopped to think what might lodge back of them. He uttered a low whistle that pierced with a peculiar cadence the stillness of the night. Soon a shadow and then another shadow shot out from some invisible aperture. Pedro gestured to the carromata, flinging upon them an ejaculation. The shadows advanced stealthily to the cart, tore away the curtain with savage haste, flung it about the body, with which in an instant they had disappeared behind the darkness of the walls. Pedro, after having given Disgusto an admonitory kick, flew after them down the narrow crooked alley made by the turns of the broken walls. On the sandy beach not far from a crooked row of distorted dwellings the body had been deposited, and over it, the grease of their streaming candles falling upon it, knelt a brutal crew sweeping over it heavy, appraising paws.