“He would seem that way, at parting from so much money. Did he bring his captain with him?”
“No. I don’t know who commanded the steamer. I am extremely sorry, but I have to take a train to Colon late this afternoon to be gone until to-morrow. After that, I shall be delighted to go with you to Balboa. The records will tell you who the captain was, and there may be other details. I am acquainted with the officials and it will expedite your affairs. A young lady may feel a certain awkwardness—”
Teresa was cordially grateful. The situation had taken on aspects more complex and inexplicable than ever. As a seafarer herself, she accepted the theory that the Valkyrie had met with no disaster while bound down the coast to Buenaventura. The vessel had steered some unknown course of her own to another destination. From the beginning her tortuous uncle had schemed and lied to mask his real purpose, whatever that might be. No mere hallucination could have lured him into the Pacific. It had not occurred to him that any one might try to follow him.
At Balboa, Teresa might be able to discover whether Richard Cary had been in the ship. This was of transcendent moment to her. But even were it true, her penitential pilgrimage was no more than begun. It was necessary to meet him face to face. Her own soul was at stake. What had happened to Ricardo that night in Cartagena, when he had been missing from his ship? What of the guilt of the dead Colonel Fajardo?
Teresa walked the floor of her room in the Panama hotel. What she said to herself was like this:
“Supposing Ricardo is commanding this Flying Dutchman of a ship. Where has he gone? No records in the Canal office can tell me that. A wonderful comfort, if it is the will of God to let me know Ricardo is alive and strong. But what of me? Ah, what of poor me? There must be some way of finding out, here in Panama, but how can I go into the places where this Bradley Duff and the sailors may have babbled with the liquor in them? Do I look like one of the wretched girls in these dirty cabarets?
“It is hard to keep a secret in a ship after she has left her own port. Something seems to whisper it—a look, a word, a feeling. Perhaps my Uncle Ramon muttered in his sleep, as he often does at home. He is too old to play such a hand as this for very long. Look what it did to him when he was frightened by that lieutenant of police! And if he loses his temper he may say too much. If those Colombian sailors got it into their heads that the voyage was to be longer than to Buenaventura, it would be like some of them to desert such an unseaworthy vessel in Panama. One thing I do know. I can never sit here and wait with folded hands for the Valkyrie to come back to the Canal. It might be weeks and months or not at all.”
To be a roving woman where sailors resorted in this and perhaps other ports of the Spanish Main was both hampering and repugnant. It made a difficult task unendurable. Unwelcome attentions, insults, nameless perils might be her lot. Not that Teresa flinched or hesitated, but it was possible to make the path easier. The most hopeful clue was Captain Bradley Duff. He was almost certain to have had disreputable friends in Panama. Birds of his feather flocked together, and they were always thirsty. Likely enough there had been money in his pocket to make him popular. He would be the boisterous good fellow, greedily sociable, anxious to parade the fact that he was no longer on the beach. And what he knew he would be apt to confide to this companion and that.
Yes, it was a handicap to be a good woman, reflected Teresa, and she did not propose to be a bad one. There was another way. It appealed to her as feasible. Some daring would be required to carry it off, but she was not one to lack faith in herself. At the masquerade ball in Cartagena, two years ago, she had played the part of a caballero so well that the girls had boldly flirted with her. Her hair had been hidden by a huge sombrero adorned with silver braid.
Her hair was her crown and her glory. If she decided to play the part in Panama, it would have to be sacrificed. But what mattered a woman’s vanity now, or her desire to be thought beautiful, if she had lost her lover and knew not where to find him?