CHAPTER XXIII
WARNED
Blue as the deepest gleam within the sapphire's depth were the heavens; bright as molten gold were the sun's rays the next morning when the storm was past-leaving, however, in its track some marks of its passage. For the flowers in the gardens round the house were beaten down now with the weight of water that had fallen on them; beneath the oleanders and the flamboyants, the allamandas and ixoras, the blossoms strewed the pampas grass in masses; while many crabs-which wander up from the seacoast in search of succulent plants whereon to feed-lay dead near the roots of the bushes and shrubs.
Yet a day's scorching sun, to be followed perhaps by an entire absence of further rain for a month, would soon cause fresh masses of bloom to take the place of those which were destroyed, especially as now they had received the moisture so necessary to their existence. And Julian, standing on his balcony and wondering who that strange nocturnal visitor was who had fled on to this very balcony a few hours before, thought that during his stay in this mysterious place he had never seen its surroundings look so fair.
Whether it was that he had received considerable benefit from the quinine which he had taken overnight, or whether it was from the total change of clothing which he had now assumed in place of the garments he had worn up to now, or perhaps from his not having lain through the night upon the bed which, particularly of late, had seemed so malodorous, he felt very much better this morning. His brain no longer appeared numbed nor his mind hazy, nor had he any headache.
"Which," he said to himself, "is a mighty good thing. For now I want all my wits about me. This affair has got to be brought to a conclusion somehow, and Julian Ritherdon is the man to do it. Only," he said, with now a smile on his face-"only, no more of the simple trusting individual you have been, my friend-if you ever have been such! Instead of suspecting Master Sebastian of being in the wrong box you have got to prove him so, and instead of suspecting him to be a-well! say a gentleman who hasn't got much regard for you, you have got to get to windward of him. Now go full speed ahead, my son."
Whereon, to commence the process of getting to windward of Sebastian and also of carrying out the movement known in his profession as going "full speed ahead," he informed the nigger who brought him his shaving-water that he felt very poorly indeed, and would, with Sebastian's permission, remain in his room that day.
"Because," he said to himself, "I think it would be as well if I kept a kind of watch upon this tastefully furnished apartment. Like all the rest of this house, it is becoming what the conjurers call 'a home of mystery,' and is consequently getting more and more interesting. And there are only the 'four clear days' left wherein the mystery can be solved-if ever."
A few moments after he had made these reflections he heard a tap at his bedroom door, and on bidding the person who was outside to come in, Sebastian made his appearance, there being on his face a look of regret at the information which he said the negro had just conveyed to him.
"I say, old fellow, this is bad news. It won't do at all. Not at all. What is the matter with you?" he exclaimed in his usual bluff, hearty way.
"A touch of fever, I'm afraid," Julian replied. "Not much, I fancy, but still worth being careful about. I'll keep my room to-day if you don't mind."
"Mind!" Sebastian exclaimed. "Mind; why, my dear Julian, that's the very best thing you can do, the very thing you ought to do. And I'll send you something appetizing by Zara. Let me see. They have brought in this morning some of that mountain mullet you liked so much; that will do first-rate for breakfast with some Guava jelly. How will that suit?"
"Nothing could be better. Those mountain mullet are superb. You are very good."
"Oh! that's nothing. And, look here, I have brought you a little phial of our physic-nut oil, which the natives say will cure anything, and almost bring a dead man back to life. Take three or four drops of that, my boy, in your coffee, and you'll feel a new man," whereon he drew a little phial from his pocket and stood it on the table. Then, after a few more sympathetic remarks he prepared to depart, saying he would have the breakfast prepared and sent up by Zara at once.
"I was glad," Julian said casually, as Sebastian approached the door, "to hear you wishing Madame Carmaux good-night, last night. I didn't know she was well enough to get downstairs yet."
"Oh! yes," the other replied in a more or less careless tone, "she came down to supper last night and sat up late with me. I was glad of her company, you know. So you heard us, eh? Did you hear us singing, too? We got quite inspirited over her return to health. If you'd only been down, my boy, we would have had a rollicking time of it."
"Never mind," said Julian, "better luck next time. You wait till I do come down and we'll have a regular chorus. When I give you some of my wardroom songs, you'll be surprised."
"Right," said Sebastian, with a laugh; "the sooner the better," whereon he took himself off.
"I didn't hear the silvery tones of Madame Carmaux, all the same," Julian thought to himself after the other was gone, "neither do I remember that I heard her return his 'good-night.' However, Sebastian's own tones are somewhat stentorian when he lets himself go, or as our Irish doctor used to say of the bo'sun's, 'enough to split a pitcher,' so I suppose that isn't very strange."
He took down his jacket now, and indeed the whole of his white drill suit which he had discarded for an exactly similar one that he had in his large Gladstone bag, and began to roll it up preparatory to packing it away. Though, as he did so, he again perceived the horrible fœtid odour which it had emitted overnight-the same odour that had also been so perceptible when he had laid his head upon the pillow. The revolting smell that had driven him from the bed to seek repose on that sofa.
"Faugh!" he exclaimed, "it is loathsome. Even now, with the room full of the fresh morning air, I feel as if I were getting giddy and bemused again." Whereon, and while uttering some remarks that were by no means complimentary to Honduras and some of its perfumes, he began rolling the clothes up as quickly as he could. Yet while he did so, being now engaged with the jacket, his eye was attracted by the lapel of the collar, the white surface of which was discoloured-though only in the faintest degree discoloured-a yellowish, grey colour. Each lapel, down to where the topmost button was! Then, after a close inspection of the jacket all over, he perceived that nowhere else was it similarly stained.
His curiosity becoming excited by this, since in no way could he account for such a thing (he distinctly remembered that there had been no stain, however faint, on the lapel before), he regarded the waistcoat next; and there, on the small lapel of that-both left and right-were the same marks.
"Strange," he muttered, "strange. Very strange. One might say that the washerwoman had spilt something on coat and waistcoat-purposely. Something, too, that smells uncommonly nasty."
For, by inspection, or rather test with his nostrils, he was easily able to perceive that no other part of his discarded clothing emitted any such disagreeable odour. While, too, as he applied his nose again and again to the faint stains, he also perceived that in his brain there came once more the giddiness and haziness from which he had suffered so much last night-as well as the feeling of stupid density amounting almost to dreaminess or delirium.
"If that stuff was under my nose all day long yesterday, and perhaps for a week or so before," he reflected, "I don't wonder that at last I became almost wandering in my mind, as well as stupefied." Then, a thought striking him, he went over to the pillow on the bed and gazed down on it. And there, upon it, on either side, was the same stain-faint, yellow, and emitting the same acrid, loathsome odour.
"So, so," he said to himself, "I begin to understand. I begin to understand very well, and to comprehend Sebastian's chemical experiments. The woman who washed my jacket and waistcoat in England is not the same woman who washed that pillow-case in British Honduras. Yet the same stain and the same odour are on both. All right! A good deal may happen in the next four days."
Then, as he thus meditated, he opened the little phial of physic-nut oil, which Sebastian had thoughtfully brought him and left behind with injunctions that he should take three or four drops of it in his coffee, and smelt it. After which he said, "Certainly, I won't fail to do so. All right, Sebastian, it's full speed ahead now!"
A little later, Zara arrived bearing in her hands a large tray on which were all the necessaries for a breakfast that would have satisfied a hungry man, let alone an "invalid." There were, of course, innumerable other servants about this vast house, but Zara always seemed to perform the principal duties of waiting upon those who constituted the superiors, and in many cases to issue orders to the others, in much such a way as a butler in England issues orders to his underlings.
Now, having deposited the tray upon the table, which she cleared for the purpose, she uncovered the largest dish and submitted to Julian's gaze a good-sized trout reposing in it and looking extremely appetizing.
"But," said Julian, as he regarded the fish, "that isn't what Sebastian promised me. He said he would send one of those delicious mountain mullet we had the other night."
For a moment the half-caste girl's lustrous eyes dwelt almost meditatively, as it seemed, on him; then she said, "There are none. The men have not caught any for a long time."
"But Mr. Ritherdon said there were. That the men-"
"He was wrong," she interrupted, her eyes roaming all round the room, while it seemed almost to Julian as though, particularly, they sought the spot where the pillow was. "He was wrong. You eat that," looking at the dish. "That will do you no-will do you good."
And it appeared to Julian, now thoroughly on the qui vive as to everything that went on around him as well as to every word that was uttered, as though she emphasized the word "that."
"I'm glad to hear Madame Carmaux is so much better," he said, conversationally, as she finished arranging the breakfast before him and poured out his coffee. "They were pretty gay below last night."
"Below last night," she repeated, her eyes full on him. "Below last night. Were they? Did you hear her below last night?"
"Didn't you?"
"I was not there," she answered; "I was nursing a sick woman in the plantation."
"Oh! You didn't pass your evening on the balcony, then, as you have sometimes done?"
"No," she said, and still her eyes gazed so intently into his that he wondered what was going on in her mind.
"No." Then, suddenly, she asked, "When are you going away?"
"That is not polite, Zara. One never asks a guest-"
"Why," she interrupted, speaking almost savagely and showing her small white teeth, as though with an access of sudden temper-"why do you turn everything into a-a-chanza-a joke. Are you a fo-a madman?"
"Really, Zara!" Then, seeing that the girl was contending with some inward turbulence of spirit which seemed almost likely to end in an outbreak, Julian said quietly, seriously, "No, Zara, I am neither a fool nor a madman. Look here, I believe you are a good, honest, straightforward girl. Therefore, I will be plain with you. I have told Mr. Ritherdon that I am going on Monday. In four days-"
"Go at once!" she interrupted again. "At once. Get news from Belize, somehow, that calls you away. Leave Desolada. Begone!" she continued in her quaint, stilted English, which she spoke well enough except when obliged to use either a Spanish or Carib word. "Begone!" And as she said this it seemed almost to Julian that, with those dark gleaming eyes of hers, she was endeavouring to convey some intelligence to him which she would not put into words.
"That," he said, referring to her last sentence, "is what I am thinking about doing. Only, even then, I shall not have done with Desolada and its inhabitants. There is more for me to do yet, Zara."
CHAPTER XXIV
JULIAN'S EYES ARE OPENED
Julian's slumbers of the past night having been more or less disturbed by the various incidents of, first, his drowsy delirium, then of those figures of the watcher and the watched, as well as by the storm and the sight of the departing form of the latter individual, he decided that, during the course of the present day, he would endeavour to obtain some sleep. Especially he determined thus because, now, he knew that there must be no more sleeping at night for him.
Whether he remained in Desolada for the next four nights as he had consented to do, or whether he decided to follow Zara's suggestion and find some excuse for departing at once, he understood plainly that to sleep again when night was over all the house might be fraught with deadly risk to him. What that risk was, what the tangible shape which it would be likely later on to assume, he was not yet able to conclude-but that it existed he had no doubt. Bright and insouciant as he was, with also in his composition a total absence of fear, he was still sufficiently cool, as well as sufficiently intelligent to understand that here, in Desolada, he was not only regarded as an inconvenient interloper, but one who must be got rid of somehow.
"Which proves, if it proves anything," he thought, "that Sebastian knows all about why I am in this country; and also that, secure as his position seems, there is some flaw in it which, if brought to light, will destroy that position. I know it, too, now, am certain that George Ritherdon's story is true-and, somehow, I am going to prove it so. I have muddled the time away too long; now I am going to be a man of action. When I get back to Belize that action begins. Mr. Spranger said I ought to confide in a lawyer, and in a lawyer I will confide. Henceforth, we'll thresh this thing out thoroughly."
Zara had come in again and removed the remnants of the breakfast, and as he had told her that he meant to sleep as long as ever it was possible, she had promised him that he should not be disturbed. Wherefore, he now proceeded to darken the room in every way that he could, without thoroughly excluding the air; namely, by letting down the curtains of the windows as well as by closing the persianas.
"I suppose," he thought to himself, "there is no likelihood of my visitor coming in, in the broad daylight, yet, all the same, I will endeavour to make sure." Upon which he proceeded to put in practise an old trick which in his gunroom days he had often played upon his brother middies (and had had played upon himself); while remembering, as he did so, the merry shouts which had run along the gangway of the lower deck on dark nights over its successful accomplishment. He took a piece of stout cord and tied it across from one side of the window to the other at about a foot and a half from the floor.
"Now," he said, "If any one tries to come in here to-day-well! if they don't break their legs they'll make such a din as will lead to their falling into my hands."
It was almost midday when he laid himself down on the sofa to obtain his much needed rest-midday, and with the sun streaming down vertically and making the apartment, in spite of its being darkened, more like the engine room of a steamer than anything else; yet, soon, he was in a deep refreshing sleep in spite of this disadvantage. A slumber so calm and refreshing that he slept on and on, until, at last, the room grew cool; partly by aid of a gentle breeze which was now blowing down from the summits of the Cockscomb Mountains and partly by the coming of the swift tropical darkness.
Then he awoke, not knowing where he was nor being able to recall that fact even for a moment or so after he was awake, nor to understand why he lay there in the dark. Yet, as gradually he returned to his every-day senses, he became aware that he did not alone owe his awakening to the fact that he had exhausted his desire for slumber, but also to a sound which fell upon his ears. The sound of a slight tapping on his bedroom door.
Astonished at the darkness, which now enveloped the room, more than at anything else-for the tapping he attributed to Zara having brought him his evening meal-he went to the door and turned the key, he having been careful to lock the former securely before going to sleep.
Then, to his surprise, when he had opened the door and peered into the passage, which was also now enveloped in the shadow of night, he saw a figure standing there which was not that of Zara, but, instead, of the half-caste Paz.
"What is it?" he asked, staring at the man and wondering what he wanted. "What! Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing very much," the half-caste answered, his eyes having a strange glitter in them as they rested on Julian's face. "Only, think you like to see funny sight. You like see Señor Sebastian look very funny. You come with me. Quietly."
"What do you mean, Paz?" Julian asked, wondering if this was some ruse whereby to beguile him into danger. "What is it?"
"I show you Massa Sebastian very funny. He very strange. Don't think he find mountain mullet very good for him; don't think he like drink very much with physic-nut oil in it," and he gave that little bleating laugh which Julian had heard before and marvelled at.
Mountain mullet! Physic-nut oil! The very things that Sebastian had suggested to Julian that morning, yet of which Julian had not partaken. The mullet, although Zara had said the men had not caught any for a long time. The phial which he had brought to the room, but the oil of which he had not touched!
"There was no mountain mullet caught-" he began, but Paz interrupted him with that bleating laugh once more, though subdued as befitted the circumstances.
"Ho!" he said. "Nice mountain mullet in Desolada this morning. He order it cook for you. Only-Zara good girl. She love Sebastian, so she give it him and give you trout. Very good girl. But-it make him funny. So, too, physic-nut oil. But that wrong name. Physic-nut oil very much. Not good if mixed with drop of Amancay."
Amancay! Where had Julian heard that name before! Then, swift as lightning, he remembered. He recalled a conversation he had had with Mr. Spranger one evening over the various plants and herbs of the colony, and also how he had listened to stories of the deadly powers of many of them-of the Manzanillo, or Manchineel, of the Florispondio and the Cojon del gato-above all, of the Amancay, a plant whose juice caused first delirium; then, if taken continually, raving madness, and then-death. A plant, too, whose juice could work its deadly destruction not only by being taken inwardly, but by being inhaled.
"The Indians," Mr. Spranger had said, "content themselves with that. If they can only get the opportunity of sprinkling it on the earth where their enemy lies, or of smearing his tent canvas with it, or his clothes, the trick is done. And that enemy's only chance is that he, too, should know of its properties. Then he is safe. For the odour it emits is such that none who have ever smelt it once can fail to recognise its presence. But on those who are unacquainted with those properties-well! God help them!"
He wondered as he recalled those words if he had turned white, so white that, even in the dusk of the corridor, the man standing by his side could perceive it; he wondered, too, if his features had assumed a stern, set expression in keeping with the determination that now was dominant in his mind. The determination to descend to where Sebastian Ritherdon was, to stand face to face with him, to ask him whether it was he who had sprinkled his jacket and his waistcoat, as well as the pillow on which he nightly slept, with the accursed, infernal juice of the deadly Amancay. Ask! Bah! what use to ask, only to receive a lie in return! What need at all to ask? He knew!
"Come," he said to Paz, even as he went back into the room for his revolver. "Come, take me to where this fellow is. Yet," he said pausing, "you say I shall see a funny sight. What is it? Is he mad-or dying?"
"He funny. He eat mountain mullet, he drink physic-nut oil in wine. Zara love him dearly, he-"
"Come," Julian again said, speaking sternly. "Come."
Then they both went along the corridor and down the great staircase.
"Let us go out garden, to veranda," Paz whispered. "Then we look in over veranda through open window. See funny things. Hear funny words." Whereupon accompanied by Julian, he went out by a side door of the long hall, and so came around into the garden in front of the great saloon in which Sebastian always sat in the evening.
Sheltering themselves behind a vast bush of flamboyants which grew close up to where the veranda ran, they were both able to see into the room, when in truth the sight of Sebastian was enough to make the beholders deem him mad.
His coat was off, flung across the back of the chair, but in his hand he had a large white pocket handkerchief with which he incessantly wiped his face, down which the perspiration was pouring. Yet, even as he did so, it was plain to observe that he was seeking eagerly for something which he could not find. A large campeachy-wood cabinet stood up against the wall exactly facing the spot where the window was, and the doors of this were now set open, showing all the drawers dragged out of their places and the contents turned out pell-mell. While the man, lurching unsteadily all the time and with a stumbling, heavy motion in his feet which seemed familiar enough to Julian (since only last night he had stumbled and lurched in the same way), was seizing little bottles and phials and holding them up to the light, and wrenching the corks out of them to sniff at the contents, and then hurling them away from him with an action of despair and rage.
"He look for counter-poison," Paz said, using the Spanish expression, which Julian understood well enough. "Maybe, he not find it. Then he die," and the bleating laugh sounded now very much like a gloating chuckle. "Then he die," he repeated.
"Is there, then, an antidote?" Julian asked.
"Yes. Yes," Paz whispered. "Yes, antidoty, if he find it. If he has not taken too much."
"How can he have taken too much? Why take any?"
For answer Paz said nothing, but instead, looked at Julian. And, in the light that now streamed out across the veranda to where they stood, dimmed and shaded as it might be by the thick foliage and flower of the flamboyant bush, the latter could see that the half-caste's eyes glittered demoniacally and that his fingers were twitching, and judged that it was only by great constraint that the latter suppressed the laugh he indulged in so often.
Then, while no word was spoken between them, Julian felt the long slim fingers of Paz touch his and push something into his hand, something that he at once recognised to be the phial of physic-nut oil; or, rather, the phial that had once contained the physic-nut oil, diluted with the juice of the murderous Amancay.
"All love Sebastian here," the semi-savage hissed, his remaining white teeth shining horribly in the flickering gleam through the flamboyant. "Love him, oh! so dear."
"He find it. He find it," he muttered excitedly an instant afterwards. "Look! Look! Look!"
And Julian did look; fascinated by Sebastian's manner.
For the other held now a small bottle in his hand which he had unearthed from some drawer in the interior of the great cabinet, and was holding it between his eyes and the globe of the lamp, gazing as steadily as he could at the mixture which it doubtless contained. As steadily as he could, because he still swayed about a good deal while he stood there; perhaps because, too, his hands trembled. Then, with a look of exultation on his features and in his bloodshot eyes, plainly to be observed from where the two men stood outside, he tore the stopper out with his teeth, smelt the contents, and instantly seizing a tumbler emptied them into that, drenched it with water, and drank the draught down.
Yet, a moment later, Sebastian performed another action equally extraordinary-he seeming to remember-as they judged by the look of dawning recollection on his face-something he had forgotten! He came, still lurching, a little nearer to the open window, and then in a loud voice-a voice that was evidently intended to be heard at some distance-said:
"Well, good-night, Miriam. Good-night, I am so thankful to think that you are better! Good night."
And as he uttered those words, Julian understood.
"I see his ruse, his trick," he muttered. "He thinks that I am still upstairs, that he is deceiving me, making me believe she is down here. But, though I am not up there, she is! And perhaps in my room again. Quick, Paz! Come. Follow me!"