CHAPTER IV
A FOOTSTEP IN THE LANE
The moon had paled, and a greyness in the sky as we hurried down the hill betokened the approach of day. At length the city had sunk to rest; the port slumbered, and in the red-light quarter behind the docks the laughter and the guitars were stilled. How through that maze of mean streets and lanes I found the way back to Doña Luisa's cabin, I don't know; but I expect that a kind of instinct for marking a route once traversed, which, with me, is inborn, stood me in good stead.
The negro quarter was wrapped in silence. The swift rustling of a rat, a distant cock-crow from the sleeping city, were the only sounds to break the stillness of the night. At length we reached the narrow lane in which the shanty stood. It was almost dark; for the moon had gone in behind a bank of clouds and the day was not yet come.
The big wooden door stood wide. Across the little yard dimly we saw the dark outline of the shack. The mud surface of the court was wet and sticky and my rubber-soled shoes slipped on it as we crossed the threshold of the enclosure. John Bard touched my arm.
“Man alive,” he whispered, “look at your shoes!”
I did as I was bid and recoiled in horror.
The white buckskin was deeply smeared with crimson.
We dashed across the yard. The shanty door stood open. Within, amid a scene of hideous confusion, the body of the beach-comber hung head downwards from the rough couch, the throat cut from ear to ear. And behind the door in another welter of blood lay the corpse of Doña Luisa.
The place was a shambles. The hut had been turned upside-down and the few poor belongings of the outcast scattered all over the floor. The very maize cane on which his dead body lay had been tossed about. And blood was smeared everywhere, as though the murderer or murderers had brought it in on their boots.
John Bard's face was anxious.
“We'll do well to get out of here,” he said, “before it gets light. They mustn't find us here. Let's go out by the back and return by the way you came...”
I gladly acquiesced in his suggestion. To tell the truth, I was feeling a little sick. The fetid odours of the negro quarter reeked to heaven in the freshening morning air, and mingled with them was a suspicion of some unutterably horrid taint arising from the two corpses which had lain there all the warm night.
We had reached the threshold of the back door when suddenly a heavy footstep sounded from the front. In the absolute stillness all round, the sound rang out clearly. It was as though a heavy man were stumping slowly across the hard pounded earth of the front yard. He came with a step and a stump, a step and a stump, like a lame man walking with a stick or crutches.
John Bard made as though to bolt. But I restrained him. I felt I must see this mysterious visitant. And John Bard, loyal friend as he is, though he had nothing to gain by my rashness, stopped dead in his tracks and with me drew behind the cover of the back door. Through the chink between door and jamb we surveyed the entrance to the shack.
A huge black shape stood on the threshold. It was too dark within the hut to note the newcomer's features or his dress. One had only the sensation of a great form that bulked largely, immensely, in the doorway.
I turned noiselessly to Bard. He divined the unspoken proposal on my lips, for he shook his head curtly and his grip on my sleeve tightened. At the same moment the great form in the doorway moved and the next instant was swallowed up in the shadows of the courtyard. We heard the clip-clop of his limping step as he crossed the enclosure. Little by little it died away as he stumped up the lane.
“Smear some earth on your shoes!”
John Bard was speaking to me. Blindly I did as he bade me and rubbed dust over the damp, dark stains on the white buckskin. Then, gripping me by the arm, my friend ran me through the back yard and out by the door which now stood open.
In the freshness of the plantation, away from the stenches of the village and the nameless taint of that house of slaughter, my senses came back to me, and I felt ashamed of the rashness which might have had disastrous consequences for both of us. But, when at length we stood once more in the bungalow and Bard poured me out a stiff dose of brandy, I noticed that, contrary to his invariable rule, he had one himself as well.
“And now,” he said, and in his voice was a note of decision, “the sooner you leave Rodriguez, Desmond, the better for you. I don't want to appear inhospitable or I might add, the better for me, too. That poor devil, Adams, is dead and you can do nothing for him by staying. You are sufficiently acquainted, I take it, with the mentality of my distinguished fellow citizens to realize that very little fuss will be made over the untimely demise of Adams and his coloured lady. In the meantime you are in the greatest danger here...”
“I don't see why I should worry,” I argued. “If they had known of my visit to Adams, they would have raided the hut and butchered the three of us to get hold of the document. But they didn't; and they don't even know me by sight...”
“They evidently didn't know of your visit at the time,” remarked John Bard gravely. “But obviously something happened after your departure to put them wise. Hence the attack on the house. You were either seen going to the house or Doña Luisa gave you away. It looks to me as though they had only just traced the document to Adams. Black Pablo was set to watch, but, after the happy-go-lucky fashion of Latin America, he whiled away the time by serenading some of the dusky belles in the vicinity and failed to observe your arrival.”
I recalled the soft laughter I had heard, mingling with the strains of the guitar in the lane, and nodded.
“You think that this fellow Black Pablo was put on guard to see that Adams did not leave the house?...”
“Precisely,” agreed my friend, “while El Cojo was sent for...”
“El Cojo, the head of the gang?”
“Himself and no other... the lame man who came to the door of the shack after the crime had been committed. In Spanish, 'El Cojo' means 'the lame man,' 'he who goes with a limp.'...”
John Bard went on talking, but I have no recollection of what he said. For my thoughts had flown back to another 'lame man' who had dominated the most thrilling episode in the whole of my life, the giant and ape-like cripple, head of the Kaiser's personal secret service in the days of Germany's greatness, who had dogged my brother Francis and myself until he had met his end at our hands in the château on the German-Dutch frontier. “Old Clubfoot,” as men called him in his hey-day, had been in his grave these four years past; yet once again I found the path of adventure barred at its outset by a great lame man. I thought of that huge figure blocking up the narrow doorway of the reeking hut and, as so often in the past, I felt welling up within me admiration for the extraordinary ingenuity of old man Destiny...
“... This gang of El Cojo's,” John Bard was saying impressively, leaning across the table at me, hands palms downwards before him, “is a tremendous organization with a network of spies as widespread and efficient as the Camorra and Mafia in Italy or the Carbonarios in Portugal and Brazil. I have long suspected that there was at the head of it a man much bigger and abler than that murdering ruffian, Black Pablo, and now we have the proof of it. I know a bit about men, Desmond, and that hulking dot-and-carry-one scoundrel we saw to-night gives me a damned unpleasant feeling. You mark my words: whether you were actually spotted or not, they'll trace that plan to you, and, if you stay here, they'll get you! And I know!”
He appeared to reflect for a moment whilst I considered him with attention, for I had never before seen old John so worked up. But there is nothing like the unknown for getting on a fellow's nerves.
Then he drove his fist into his palm as if a sudden idea had struck him.
“The Naomi,” he said; “the very thing for you!”
“The Naomi?" I repeated.
“Yes. The yacht that came in last evening. She's going down to Honolulu. We ought to be able to fix it for you so they'll take you with them...”
“What is this yacht?” I asked.
“She belongs to Sir Alexander Garth. By George! she's a beauty, Okewood! White paint and a gold line, green and white deck awnings, everything slap up. He's a millionaire, they say!”
“I don't know the name!”
“We looked him up in the 'Who's Who' at the club to-night. He's a baronet and a big man in cotton. J.P. and D.L. of the county. What brings him here, I don't know, except that cruising to the Southern Seas seems to be a fashionable rest-cure for millionaires whose nerves have been jaded by piling up money during the war.”
“But, see here, Bard,” I expostulated, “I can't go butting into a private pleasure cruise like this, I really can't. It isn't done, you know! And you can't expect these prosaic English folk to swallow a long yarn about my life being in danger!”
“Okewood,” said Bard—and now his voice was very stern—“you can take it from me that, if you don't clear out at once, you'll get your throat cut and probably mine into the bargain. There won't be a steamer for Colon for at least a fortnight. This yacht is a heaven-sent opportunity for making your lucky. If you wait for the steamer, it's a ten to one chance you'll go up the gangway in your coffin neatly packed in ice! Do you get that? For the Lord's sake, burn that damned rigmarole and beat it!”
We Celts have a broad strain of contrariness in our nature which probably accounts for my strong inclination to disregard Bard's advice. But his manner was so impressive for one of his unemotional disposition that I could not but feel convinced.
“Perhaps you're right, old man,” I said. “I won't burn the 'rigmarole' as you call it, but otherwise I will follow your suggestion. But it will be on one condition and one condition only. That is, that we part here and now, and that, should by any chance, your plan for forcing my company upon the excellent cotton-spinner and his party fail, you will not associate with me or in any way acknowledge me as long as I am in this city...”
I held out my hand. But Bard laughed and put his two hands on my shoulders.
“No, no,” he protested, “it's not so bad as all that. I'm coming down to the harbour to fix it up with Garth for you. He will probably call at the Consulate this morning, anyway, to fetch the stores we are holding for him.”
“John,” said I, “I've dragged you far enough into this mess. It's early enough yet for me to get down to the harbour and on to that yacht without attracting much attention. So let's part here, and ever so many thanks again for all your kindness...”
“Desmond”—John Bard's voice trembled a little—“I wouldn't hear of it...”
“My dear old man,” I said, “I'm in a proper mess and I've no intention of pulling you into it after me. And I'd like to say one thing more. You might have rubbed it in that the whole of this trouble was brought on us by my initial folly in accompanying an unknown messenger to the purlieus of the city in the middle of the night. You have never alluded to it; but I'd like you to know that your forbearance did not escape me...”
I stretched out my hand again. This time John Bard took it.
“I'll send your things down to the Consulate,” he said; “they can go on board with Garth's stores.”
And so, in perfect understanding, we settled it. At the verandah door I turned and said:
“And do you think now that there's anything in Adams's story, Bard?”
“Yes,” my host replied, “I do!”
Then he added, with his little indulgent smile:
“Are you going after it?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“I might!” said I.
But already fermenting in my brain was the germ of a great idea. The next moment the iron gate of the gardens clanged behind me and I was off at a good pace down the hill.