Libré, to Don José, to the lovely Noña Juanita. Then, blushing very prettily, but in nowise disconcerted, she consented to sing them a farewell.
"Pregúntale à las estrellas,
Si no de noche me venllovar,
Pregúntale si no busco,
Para adorarte la soledad..."
she sang,
"O ask of the stars above you
If I did not weep all the night,
O ask if I do not love you,
Who of you dreamt till the dawn-light..."
Sabers flashed in the moonlight, blades beat upon the table. "Juanita! Juanita!" they cried fervently. "We love you, Juanita!"
"And I love you—all of you—señores amados," she called gaily back. "Each one of you I love so much I could not bear to give my heart to him for fear of hurting all the others. So"—her throaty, velvet voice was like a caress—"here is what I promise." Her tone sank to a soft ingratiating pizzacato and her words were delicately spaced, so that they shone like minted silver as she spoke them. "I shall belong to the last one of you. Surely one of you will outlive all the rest, and to him I shall give my heart, myself, all of me. I swear it!" She put both tiny hands against her lips and blew them a collective kiss.
And so, because they all were very young, and very much in love, and also slightly drunk, they formed the Last Man Qub, and every year upon the anniversary of that night they met, talked over old times, drank a little more than was good for them, and dispersed to meet again next year.
The years slipped by unnoticed as the current of a placid river. And time was good to them. Some of them made names for themselves in finance, the court rooms echoed to the oratory of others; the first World Wax brought rank and glory to jome; more than one nationally advertised product bore the name of one of their number. But time took his fee, also. Each time there were more vacant chairs about the table when they met, and those who remained showed gray at the temples, thickening at the waist, or shining patches of bald scalp. Last year there had been only three of them: Mycroft, Rice and Hardy. Two months ago he and Hardy had acted as pallbearers for Rice, now Hardy was gone.
He hardly knew what made him decide to consult Toussaint. The day before he'd met Dick Prior at luncheon at the India House and somehow talk had turned on mediums and spiritism. "I think they're all a lot of fakes," Mycroft had said, but Prior shook his head in disagreement.
"Some of 'em—most, probably—are, but there are some things hard to explain, Roger. Take this Negro, Toussaint. He may be a faker, but—"
"What about him?"
"Well, it seems he's a Haitian; there's a legend he's descended from Christophe, the Black Emperor. I wouldn't know about that, or whether what they say about his having been a papaloi—a voodoo priest, you know—has any basis. He's highly educated, graduate of Lima and the Sorbonne and all that—"
"What's he done?" Mycroft demanded testily. "You say he's done remarkable things—"
"He has. Remember Old Man Meson, Noble Meson, and the way his first wife made a monkey out of her successor?"
Mycroft shook his head. "Not very well. I recall there was a will contest—"
"I'll say there was. Old Meson got bit by the love-bug sometime after sixty. Huh, love-bug me eye, it was that little gold digger Suzanne Langdon. The way she took him away from his wife was nothing less than petty larceny. He didn't last long after he divorced Dorothy and married Suzanne. Old men who marry young wives seldom do. When he finally pegged out everybody thought he was intestate, and that meant Mrs. Meson number two would take the jackpot, but just as she was all set to rake in the chips Dorothy came up with a last
