His Unknown Wife

“Now, listen while I talk,” said Maseden, tearing open the tight-fitting blue coat. “I can put faith in you, I suppose?”

“Señor – ”

“Yes, I take it for granted. Besides, if you stick to me you may come out on top yourself. Valdez is dead. He was murdered last night, and Enrico Suarez stepped into his shoes… Oh, I know Enrico’s real name, but I haven’t a second to spare. I was sentenced to death early this morning, and married about an hour ago, just before being taken out to be shot… Well, I got away; how – is of no concern to you. In fact, it is better that you shouldn’t know.

“A lady will come into possession here. She will call herself the Señora Maseden. Señor Porilla will introduce her. She and the lawyer are playing some game to suit Suarez and Steinbaum, the German consul at Cartagena. My escape may bother them a bit, but I cannot guess just how things will work out. What orders did Enrico’s lieutenant give you?”

The foreman’s wits were rather mixed by his master’s extraordinary budget of news, but he answered readily.

“He told me, señor, if I valued my life, to see that nothing was disturbed in the estancia till the president came or sent a representative.”

“I thought so. That gives me a sporting chance.”

Maseden had changed rapidly into his own clothes, an ordinary riding costume suitable to a tropical climate. He opened the safe, stuffed some papers into his pockets, also a quantity of gold, silver, and notes.

Then he wrote a letter, and filled in a check. Having addressed and stamped the envelope, he handed it to his assistant.

“In five minutes or less, you will be riding at a steady gallop towards Cartagena,” he said. “If possible, deliver that letter yourself to Señor Peguero, the American consul. By ‘possible’ I mean if you are not held up by soldiers or police on the way. Otherwise, keep it concealed, and post it when the opportunity serves.”

Lopez knew the pleasant methods of his fellow-republicans.

“They may search me, señor,” he said.

“Not if you do as I tell you. Curse me fluently enough, and they’ll look on you as their best friend.”

“Señor!” protested the old man.

“Yes. I mean it. Call me all the names you can lay tongue to. When I leave this room I’ll follow you, revolver in hand. Be careful to scowl and act unwillingly. I want some food and a couple of bottles of wine, also a leather bottle full of water and a tin cup. Saddle the Cid, and see that three or four good measures of corn are put in the saddle-bags with the other things.

“When I vanish rush to the stables, pick out a good mustang, and be in Cartagena within the hour. If not interfered with, take the letter to Señor Peguero. Don’t wait for an answer, but hurry at top speed to the Castle, where you must tell some one that I came back to the ranch and ordered you about at the muzzle of a revolver.

“Lead the soldiers straight here. If Captain Gomez is in command, assure him that you rescued his uniform, and he’ll be your friend forever. Should you meet them on the way, turn back with them. You understand? You’re for the president and against me.”

Lopez smiled till his face was a mass of wrinkles. He was beginning to see through the scheme, and was Spaniard enough to appreciate the leaven of intrigue.

“But when and where shall I find you, señor, if you are taking a long journey?” he said, still grinning.

“Not a mile away, if all goes well. Soon after dusk come to the Grove of the Doves at sunset. I’ll turn up. If you are delayed, and it is dark, hoot like an owl, and I’ll answer. If you don’t come at all I’ll know it’s too dangerous, and will be there again at dawn, at noon, and at sunset to-morrow. Pick up some news in Cartagena. You will be told, of course, that I have shot Suarez. Be careful to show your horrified surprise, and ask if the dear man is really dead. If he is, try and find out who is in power. Of course there’s a bare chance that Porilla may be made president, in which case I might be given a fair trial when an American man-of-war is anchored in the roads… Oh, by the way, you might find out who the lady is I married this morning.”

“Señor!” gasped Lopez, in sheer bewilderment.

“I haven’t the remotest notion who she is, or even what she looks like,” laughed Maseden. “Now, there’s no more time for talk,” and he raised his voice. “Obey me at once, you lazy old hound, or I’ll blow your brains out! Send a peon for the Cid. Fail me in one single thing, and I’ll put a bullet through your head!.. Margarita! Some bread and meat, quick! I’ll soon show you who is master in this house. Suarez may give orders in Cartagena, but I give them here!”

Lopez hurried out, wringing his hands. Maseden followed, brandishing the revolver. Some timid servants, who had gathered in the patio at the news of their employer’s return, made as though they would run, but he stopped them with a fierce threat, and, while munching the food brought by an aged housekeeper, behaved and spoke so outrageously that they thought he was mad.

Poor creatures! They had served him well in the past. Now he was trying to save their lives by giving them something to say against him when questioned by the president’s henchmen.

Meanwhile, he had a sharp ear for the hoof-beats of a galloping horse. Pedro, knowing nothing of the scene in the estancia, was still on guard at the bend in the avenue, and might be trusted to give warning of the enemy’s approach. But Maseden was allowed to eat his fill.

A very terrified Lopez brought a hardy-looking mustang to the gateway, and his master saw a repeating rifle slung to the saddle. That was a thoughtful thing. Such a weapon might be exceedingly useful.

“Where are the cartridges?” he thundered.

“Here, most excellent one,” stammered the other, producing a bandolier.

The American swung into the saddle, swore at his co-conspirator heartily, and was off.

So Lopez had a fine tale to tell when his mustang loped up to the entrance of the Castle of San Juan. He had a fine tale to hear, too, as he rode back to the ranch with a body of horse led by the fastidious and color-loving Ferdinando Gomez.

The servants, of course, bore out the superintendent’s story of Maseden’s extraordinary behavior. Obviously, no one at the estancia was to blame for this daring prisoner’s second escape. The officer who had arrested him at daybreak should have left a guard in charge, but the plain truth was that the Cartagena men had been so anxious to take part in the stirring doings anticipated at the capital that no heed was given to this flaw in the procedure.

That night, however, when Maseden met Lopez at the rendezvous, the Spaniard’s account of events was not reassuring.

Suarez was living, and not very badly hurt, it was true; but every man’s hand seemed to be against the foreigner who had tried to kill him. Maseden was puzzled, at first, by this excess of patriotism on the part of the citizens of Cartagena and San Juan generally.

“What do they think has become of me?” he inquired.

“They argue, señor, that you have ridden into the interior, and telegrams have been sent to all the inland towns ordering your instant arrest. If you resist you are to be shot dead, and a reward of one thousand dollars will be paid when you are identified.”

“Do they pay for me dead only?”

“They offer two thousand for you alive, señor.”

“Just to have the pleasure of potting me as per schedule… Any fear that you have been followed to-night, old friend?”

“None, señor. The soldiers at the estancia believe you are many miles away. Moreover, I have put good wine on the table.”

“Who is in charge there? Captain Gomez?”

“No, señor, a stranger. El capitan went back to Cartagena. He nearly wept when he saw his boots. You had split them.”

“You gave the consul my letter?”

“I dropped it in his box, señor. I thought that was wiser.”

“So it was. I should have remembered that. What of the lady?”

“The lady you married, señor?”

“Of course. You wouldn’t have me interested in some other lady on my wedding day, you old reprobate?”

The half-breed laughed softly.

“Even that wouldn’t be so strange a thing as what has really happened, señor. No one knows who the lady is. One man, a distant cousin of mine, told me he heard she landed from a ship only late last night.”

“Great Scott!” muttered Maseden in English, “what a Sphinx-like person! She must be descended from the Man in the Iron Mask.” Then he went on:

“Didn’t your cousin know where she was staying in Cartagena? Surely there must have been a good deal of public curiosity about her. Twenty people were present at the marriage. It was no secret.”

“I understand that she had gone to Señor Steinbaum’s house. She fainted after the ceremony, my cousin said, and had to be carried into an automobile, but he knew nothing more.”

The veiled Madeleine had felt the strain, then! Somehow the knowledge of her collapse touched a chord of sentiment in Maseden’s heart, but his own desperate plight effectually banished all other considerations at the moment.

True, he was safe for the night, and for many days to come, if the foreman’s fidelity remained unshaken. The ranch was called Los Andes because it contained a chain of little hills all covered with valuable timber, among which he could hide without real difficulty.

But of what avail this precarious lurking on his own estate? He must take speedy and effectual steps to get clear of San Juan altogether until such time as he could secure adequate protection, and have his case thrashed out by a tribunal to whose decision even Enrico Suarez, the president of the Republic, must bow.

One thing was quite certain – never again could he settle down in unmolested possession of his property. Though the shooting of Suarez was an unfortunate necessity, its effect would be enduring and disastrous.

He had thought out every phase of the problem during the long, hot hours beneath the trees, and the half-breed’s account of the trend of public feeling decided his adoption of the boldest course of all. He would go to Cartagena, where he was hardly known, save to a few merchants and shopkeepers, a banker and one or two members of the Consular community, and board some outward-bound vessel.

Fortunately, he had plenty of money, and, glory be, could speak both Spanish and the San Juan patois like a native. If his luck held, he would cheat Suarez yet.

“Lopez,” he said, after a long pause, “I must leave the ranch for many a day, probably forever. If I stay here I’ll only plunge you into trouble and get myself captured. Now, do me one last service. Have you any clothes belonging to that vaquero nephew of yours who broke his neck in a race last Easter?”

“I have his overalls, a fiesta jacket, some shirts and a sombrero, señor.”

“Bring them, and speedily. I’ll give you a good price.”

“They are yours for nothing, señor.”

“I don’t deal on those terms, Lopez. Off with you. I’ll wait here.”

“Anything else, señor?”

“Yes. I was nearly forgetting. Bring his saddle, too. My own saddle might be recognized. I have a long ride before me, so hurry.”

Within half an hour the good-hearted old foreman was richer by five hundred dollars, while Maseden, a dashing cowboy, though unkempt as to face and hands, was riding across country by starlight.

He did not tell Lopez his real objective. There was no need. The old fellow occasionally indulged in a burst of dissipation, and if his tongue wagged then he might blurt out some boastful phrase which would bring down on him the merciless wrath of the authorities.

At dawn the fugitive received another slice of real luck. He had just entered a main road leading from San Luis, a town thirty miles from Cartagena, when he came upon a cowherd sitting by the roadside and bemoaning his misfortunes. The man was commissioned to drive some cattle to a sale-ring in the city, and had scratched an ankle rather badly while whacking one of the steers out of a bed of thorns.

Such an incident was common enough in his life, but on this occasion either the thorn was poisonous or some foreign matter had lodged in the wound, because the limb had swollen greatly and was so painful that he could hardly walk.

Maseden played the Good Samaritan. He ascertained the drover’s name, his master’s, and the address of the salesman; the rest was easy. Helping the sufferer into a wayside hovel, he promised to send back a messenger later with an official receipt, took charge of the animals himself, and reached Cartagena as Ramon Aliones, the accredited representative of a San Luis rancher.

The sale-ring was near the harbor, and he mounted a man on his own broncho to deliver the drover’s voucher for the safe arrival of the herd at its destination. He asked for, and obtained, a duplicate, which he kept. This same emissary readily disposed of the horse and saddle at a ruinous price when told that the newcomer was not only thirsty, but meant to see the sights of the capital.

A cheap restaurant, some wineshops, and a vile billiard saloon provided shelter for the rest of the day. Before night fell, Maseden had ascertained three things: He was supposed to be riding hard into the interior; the lady he had married was really a stranger and was Steinbaum’s guest, and a large steamer, the Southern Cross, flying the Stars and Stripes, was due to leave port at midnight.

She should have sailed some hours earlier, but the drastic changes in the marine department entailed by the day’s happenings had delayed certain formalities connected with her manifests.

“For a time, señor,” explained the ship’s chandler who gave him this latter information, “no one would sign anything. You see, a name on a paper would prove conclusively which president you favored. You understand?”

Maseden understood perfectly.

“It is well that you and I, señor, have no truck with these presidents, or we might be in trouble,” he laughed. “As it is, another bottle, and to the devil with all politicians!”

Under cover of the darkness the American slipped away from his boon companions, now comfortably drunk at his expense. Having no luggage, he bought a second-hand leather trunk and some cheap underclothing, such as a muleteer might reasonably possess. He also secured the repeating rifle and cartridges which he had left in a restaurant, and, thus reinforced, made for the Plaza, where Cartagenians of both sexes and all ages were gathered to enjoy the cool breeze that comes from the Pacific with sunset.

From that point he knew he could see the Southern Cross lying at anchor in the roadstead. She was there, sure enough, nearly a mile out, and he was puzzling his wits for a pretext to hire a boat and board her without attracting notice when chance solved the problem for him.

Two men passed. They were talking English, and he heard one addressing the other by name.

“Tell you what, Sturgess,” the speaker was saying, “I’d be hull down on Cartagena to-night if the skipper would only bring up at Valparaiso. But his first port of call is Buenos Ayres, and I’ve got to make Valparaiso before I see good old New York again, so here I’m fixed till a coasting steamer comes along. Great Cæsar’s ghost, I wish I were going with you!”

The second man, Sturgess, was carrying a suitcase, and the two were evidently making for a short pier which supplied landing places for small craft at various stages of the tide.

Maseden quickened his pace, overtook them, and said in Spanish that he wished to book a passage to Buenos Ayres on the Southern Cross, and, if the Señor Americano would permit him to board the vessel in his boat, he (Maseden) would gladly carry the bag to the pier.

Sturgess evidently did not understand Spanish, and asked his companion to interpret. He laughed on hearing the queer offer.

“Guess I can handle the grip myself, and the gallant vaquero is pretty well loaded with his own outfit,” he said, “but he is welcome to a trip on my catamaran, if it’s of any service.”

Maseden, however, insisted on giving some return for the favor, and secured the suitcase. Now, if any sharp-eyed watcher on the pier saw him, he would pass as the traveler’s servant.

Within half an hour he was aboard the ship, and had bargained for a spare berth in the forecastle with the crew. He would be compelled to rough it, and remain as dirty and disheveled as possible until the ship reached Buenos Ayres. Obviously, no matter what his personal wrongs might be, he could not make the captain of the Southern Cross a party to the escape from Cartagena of the man who had nearly succeeded in ridding the republic of its president.

But the prospect of hard fare and worse accommodations did not trouble him at all. He had nearly ten thousand dollars in his pockets. If the note sent through Lopez to the American Consul was acted on promptly, a further sum of fifteen thousand dollars lying to his credit in a local bank was now in safe keeping.

Really, considering that he had been so near death that morning, he had a good deal to be thankful for if he never saw Cartagena or the Los Andes ranch again.

As for the marriage, what of it? A knot so easily tied could be untied with equal readiness. He hadn’t the least doubt but that an American court of law would declare the ceremony illegal.

At any rate, he could jump that fence when he reached it. At present, in sporting phrase, he was going strong with a lot in hand.

He kept well out of sight when a government launch came off, and a port official boarded the vessel.

He never knew what a narrow escape he had when the chief steward who acted as purser, was asked if any new addition had been made to the passenger list. The ship’s officer was not a good Spanish scholar. He thought the question applied to the cargo, and answered “no.”

Then, after a wait that seemed interminable, the snorting and growling of a steam winch and the unwilling rasp of the anchor chain chanted a symphonic chorus in Maseden’s ears. Those harsh sounds sang of freedom and life, of golden years on a most excellent earth instead of an eternity in the grave. He came on deck to watch the Castle of San Juan dwindle and vanish in the deep, blue glamour of a perfect tropical night.

He was standing on the open part of the main deck, close to the fore hold, when he heard English voices from the promenade deck high above his head.

A man’s somewhat querulous accents reached him first.

“Well, at this time two days ago, I little thought I’d be on a steamer going south to-night,” said the speaker.

There was no answer, though it was evident that the petulant philosopher was not addressing the silent air.

“I suppose you girls are still mooning about that fellow getting away from the Castle?” grumbled the same voice. “I tell you he has no earthly chance of winning clear. Steinbaum will see to that. His record is none too good, and a question in the American Senate would just about finish him, even in San Juan. So Mr. Philip Alexander Maseden might just as well have been shot yesterday morning as to-day or to-morrow. They’re hot on his track now, Steinbaum told me —

“Eh? Yes, I know he did me a good turn, but, damn it all, that was merely because he was going to die, not because he was a first-rate life for an insurance office. It was no business of mine that he and Suarez couldn’t agree… Oh, let’s go to our cabins! Tears always put my nerves on a raw edge! Anyone would think you had lost a real husband on your wedding day!”

There was a movement of shadowy forms. Maseden thought he could distinguish a woman’s white hand rest for an instant on the ship’s rail. Was that the hand he thought he would remember until the Day of Judgment? He could not say.

The one fact that lifted itself out of the welter of incoherent fancies whirling in his mind was an almost incontrovertible one. If his ears had not deceived him, he and his unknown but lawful wife were fellow-passengers on board the Southern Cross!

CHAPTER IV

“FIND THE LADY”

A slight mist hung over the sea – sure outcome of the tremendous range of the thermometer between noon and midnight in a tropical clime. The sky was cloudless, and the stars clustered in myriads.

Though the Southern Hemisphere falls far short of the glory of the north in constellations of the first magnitude, the extraordinary clearness of the upper air near the equator enhances the stellar display. It would almost seem that nature knows she may veil her ample splendors in the north, but must make the most of her scantier charms in the south.

Maseden, swinging on his heel in sheer bewilderment, suddenly found himself face to face with the Southern Cross, hanging low above the horizon. Had an impossible meteor flamed forth from the familiar cluster of stars and shot in awe-inspiring flight across the whole arc of the heavens northward to the line, it would not have surprised him more than the discovery that his “wife” was on board the ship.

That was a stupendous fact before which the whirl of adventure of the long day now drawing to a close subsided into calm remoteness.

“Madeleine,” the woman he had married, was his fellow-passenger! He would surely see her many times during the voyage to Buenos Ayres! He would hear her voice, which he could not fail to recognize.

She, on her part, would probably identify him at the first glance. How would she handle an extraordinary situation? Would she claim him as her husband, repudiate him scornfully, or utterly ignore him? He could not even guess.

There was no telling what a woman would do who had elected to marry a man whom she had never met, whose very name, in all likelihood, she had never heard, merely because he happened to be a prisoner condemned to speedy death.

Yet she could not be a particularly cold-blooded person. She had wept for him, had whispered her heartfelt grief; had promised to pray for and think of him always. Even the man with the high-pitched voice of a hypochondriac – presumably, from the manner of his address, her father – had hinted that her suffering had already passed the bounds set for one who, to serve her own ends, had gone through that amazing ceremony.

Maseden did not actually marshal his thoughts thus clearly. If compelled to bend his wits to the task, he might have spoken or written in such wise. But an active brain has its own haphazard methods of weighing a new and distracting problem; it will ask and answer a dozen startling questions simultaneously.

In the midst of Maseden’s strange and formless imaginings the ship’s course was changed a couple of points to the southward, and the Southern Cross was shut out of sight by the forecastle head. Then, and not until then, did the coincidence of the vessel’s name with that of the constellation occur to his bemused wits.

He laughed cheerfully.

“By gad!” he said, “all the signs of the zodiac must have clustered about my horoscope on this 15th of January. When I get ashore I must find an astrologer and ask him to expound.”

The sound of his own voice brought a belated warning to Maseden of the folly he had committed in speaking aloud.

There was no other occupant of the fore deck at the moment. A look-out man in the bows could not possibly have overheard, because of the whistling of the breeze created by the ship’s momentum and the plash of the curved waves set up by the cut-water, and it was highly improbable that words uttered in a conversational tone would have reached the bridge.

But behind him rose the three decks of the superstructure, and there might be eavesdroppers on the promenade deck or in one of the two dark gangways running aft.

He glanced over his shoulder to right and left. Apparently he had escaped this time. No matter what developments took place in the near future, he was by no means anxious as yet to reveal his nationality. Each hour brought home, more and more forcibly, the misfortune of the chance which left him no alternative but the shooting of Suarez that morning.

The act was absolutely essential to his own safety, but it put him clearly out of court. At any rate, the authorities of no South American state would listen to a recital of his earlier wrongs. If, as was highly probable, a sensational account of the attempted assassination of the new president had been tacked on to the telegrams announcing the coup d’état in San Juan, and he, Maseden, were painted as a desperado of mark, it might even be feared that the settled and respectable Argentine Republic would arrest him and endeavor to send him back to San Juan for trial.