And before she could either protest or berate him further, he opened the door, stepped swiftly out, and closed it behind him. He rang for the elevator. When, after five minutes of waiting, there was no sign of response, he walked down the stairs to the street. The negro elevator boy was not on duty at his post, and Rodrigo wondered idly if the Ethiopian had fled from the place in fear of a repetition of the hold-up.
Walking out to Broadway, Rodrigo hailed a taxi and was soon being whirled swiftly in the gray awakening dawn down-town toward his own apartment. His first adventure upon Broadway since his arrival in America had not been a success, he told himself. It had resulted in Bill Terhune making a fool of himself and in Sophie becoming enraged at him again. However, it was just as well another break had come with Sophie. The sort of thing she represented had no thrill for him any more, he was now quite sure. He was quite contented to be a staid partner in Dorning and Son. Already business problems, speculations as to the success of John in his Philadelphia negotiations and what it meant to the firm, were filling his drowsy head. There was a momentary flash into his brain of the exotic face of Elise Van Zile, and then he slumped in the tobacco-smelling taxi seat. His chin drooped, and he was quite asleep.
The driver had to shake him lustily in order to awaken him when the car drew up in front of the Park Avenue apartment house.
CHAPTER IX
Elise Van Zile owed her dark beauty to her Spanish mother. Her olive skin, her smouldering black eyes, her slim, svelte body whose liquid grace made the fact that she was a little taller than the average woman an added charm rather than a defect, Elise had inherited from Elisa Alvarez.
Mrs. Porter Palmer was a Van Zile, and garrulously proud of the fact. Descended from the early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, her family had been for over three hundred years numbered among the social elite of the city. But there was also a Pacific Coast branch of the Van Ziles, as Mrs. Palmer, when she exhausted her account of the Manhattan constituency, was wont to relate. Derrick Van Zile had sailed in a clipper ship in 1849 to seek his fortune in the golden hills of California. Moreover, unlike thousands of his fellow argonauts, he had found it. The hoard of gold dust he had passed along to his son had been sufficient to enable the latter to abandon the valley of the Sacramento and journey to the town at its mouth, San Francisco. There Johann Van Zile had established a shipping business, running a fleet of swift American sailing vessels to the Orient and adding considerably to the family fortune. The grandson of Johann Van Zile had been eventually handed both the name and the business.
Though not distinguished by either the bold, adventure-seeking temperament of Derrick or the shrewd business sense of his grandfather, the present John Van Zile, father of Elise, was acute enough in his choice of subordinates and hence succeeded very nicely at managing an enterprise that by this time was extensive enough to manage itself. In one respect, John III had excelled both Derrick and Johann as well as the John who had been his own father. He had united himself in marriage to a fair daughter of the original Spanish aristocracy of California.
True, Elisa Alvarez had had very little to say in the matter. It had been an arrangement between her father and the awkward, loosely built young American, who, without perceptibly ever exerting himself, seemed to have an uncanny ability to get what he wanted. John Van Zile had met the pretty senorita and her aggressively protective father and his bristling moustachios during a voyage on one of his own ships to Mexico and return. The Alvarez' had been visiting relatives. They were Castillian-born, and proud and reserved, as is the habit of their caste. Becoming acquainted with the dark young lady, who had, almost at first glance, won his heart, had not been easy for Van Zile. In fact, not until Senor Alvarez had learned definitely that this was the rich shipping magnate, Van Zile, had the matter been arranged. After that the road had been smoothed. Senor Alvarez had lineage, but was in impecunious circumstances. Mr. Van Zile would make a settlement upon the consummation of the marriage. It was agreed.
Elise Van Zile seemed quite contented with her union. She had never been moved to any deep love for her husband. But he treated her well, and she rendered him wifely devotion. What deep thoughts lurked behind those dark, smouldering eyes and within that Spanish heart were locked with her in her grave when she quietly passed on at the birth of her only child, a daughter. The mother's name was French—Americanized into Elise, and the child was placed in the hands of a corps of nurses, housekeepers, and governesses.