“I have instructed my agent in Panama to let me know when the Valkyrie reaches Buenaventura. Then you can cable your uncle, if you feel anxious for his safety or wish to adjust your own plans. I mentioned, I think, that the steamer had passed through the Canal. She was delayed a week at Balboa for repairs after some heavy weather on this coast.”
“Delayed a week at Balboa?” cried Teresa, with sudden eagerness. “I am glad he stopped to have his old ship patched up.”
After Alonzo de Mello had bade her good-night, she was able to discern quite clearly the path she was to follow. She would not try to find Richard Cary with cable messages and wait and wait for an answer which might never come. Her evidence that he still lived was so slight as to be grotesque. A briar pipe and an inquisitive monkey! Her faith was scarcely more than the substance of things hoped for. She was ready to swear on the cross that she had read his death in the gloating eyes of Colonel Fajardo.
Even though he were alive and had been in this house of mystery, this house that whispered of a carefully shrouded secret, why could she expect to receive any answer to a message? Old Ramon Bazán had carried his secrecy with him.
“His ship stayed a week at Balboa,” said Teresa. “Then her officers and crew must have been ashore in Panama. That is where I must go to find out anything. There is nothing for me in Cartagena.”
CHAPTER XVII
TERESA, HER PILGRIMAGE
Across the Isthmus to Panama! It had been a golden road for the ancestors of Teresa Fernandez to follow to the South Sea. It seemed a propitious road for her to follow in quest of Richard Cary. Early awake next morning, she felt less unhappy. It was not so much like groping in a blind alley. Those scraps of paper that had eddied in the breeze? She found a few more of them, but they told her nothing. She accepted it as a decree, perhaps of punishment. Not knowing whether Richard Cary loved her, in fear that he had died, she must set forth on her pilgrimage.
The good Señor de Mello would think it strange of her to go as unceremoniously as she had come. Anxiety for her uncle’s safety, the desire to persuade him to quit his senseless wanderings, the fact that he was in the company of such an unsavory mariner as Captain Bradley Duff—this would have to serve as her pretext. What other people thought of her was, after all, of no consequence.
In the harbor she had noticed an English steamer waiting for a berth at the wharf. It was the coastwise boat that picked up cargo and passengers here and there, and went on to Colon. Teresa was out of the house before the offices and shops were open. Over her rolls and coffee in an untidy little café, she scanned a newspaper for the shipping items. The English boat was expected to sail some time during the afternoon. It seemed best to go on board as soon as possible. After some delay she found the agent and secured a stateroom.