Then he had been violently snatched away and kept as a captive in the house of Señor de Mello, and there had been no chance to retrieve the briar pipe. He had been sitting at the top of the trellis wondering what made him feel so sorrowful and uneasy. At last he had remembered. It was the pipe, tucked away in the crack of the wall behind the green tubs.
In a happier frame of mind the monkey wandered across the patio, the pipe held firmly between his teeth, a finger in the bowl. He had the air of one for whom solace waited if only he could find a match and a pinch of tobacco.
Teresa caught sight of this absurdly gratified monkey with the pipe in its mouth. She gasped and sprang to her feet. Like a flash she dived to catch the horrid beast, but he flew from under her hands and raced for the nearest room. Teresa was after him. She picked up an empty flower pot and hurled it. The aim was wild, but the crash was startling. The monkey’s nervous system was so shaken that he dropped the pipe and vanished beneath a bed.
The panting Teresa swooped for the pipe. She was laughing hysterically. She could not believe her eyes. She fondled the pipe, turning it over and over in her hands. It was the pipe which once before she had rescued from the pest of a monkey, when she had brought Richard Cary from the ship for an evening call on her uncle.
This briar pipe was unmistakable. There were the initials neatly carved on the side of the smoke-blackened bowl—R. C.
She put a hand to her head. Richard Cary had taken the pipe back to the ship that night. She was certain of this because she had insisted upon cleaning it before he smoked it again. She had forced a jet of steam through it in the pantry, and then had sent it to his room by a cabin steward. Ricardo had returned his thanks. This had been her last word from him.
Later in the evening, about ten o’clock, he had gone ashore. A quartermaster had seen him walk off the wharf and through the custom-house gate. Betwixt that time and the present, then, he had been in the house of Uncle Ramon Bazán. The pipe was evidence unquestionable, or so it appeared to her confused sense. But if Richard Cary had been in her uncle’s house since leaving the ship that last time, why had he sent no word to explain his absence? Why had her uncle kept silent?
Both joy and anguish overwhelmed her. The room went suddenly dark before her eyes. Never before had she fainted.