The Dust of Conflict

“If you had said that with a purpose I wouldn’t have been in the least sorry for you,” she said. “It would have been cheap, but that’s just why I know you didn’t. Still, are you quite sure there is nothing you long for over there? I mean, of course, in England.”

Appleby was on the roof in Santa Marta in body, and noticed that Miss Harding made a very effective picture in her long white dress as she glanced at him with the little smile, but he was at the same time dually sensible of the crimson flush on the English beech woods and the meadows streaked with wisps of mist, while once more the alluring vision he had fought against glided into the scene. It was a girl with gray eyes and ruddy hair, graver, deeper of thought and emotion, and more imperious than Nettie Harding.

“Nothing that I am ever likely to get,” he said.

Nettie laughed, but there was a faint ring in her voice, and long afterwards Appleby remembered her words, which then appeared prophetic.

“Well,” she said, “do you know that if I could I would get it you, and there is very little an American girl can’t get when she sets her heart on it? Now that sounds bombastic, but I’m not sure that it is. Anyway, I’m going to England presently.”

Appleby looked up sharply. “To England!”

“Yes; you heard me. You will be sorry, but, of course, I’m coming back again.”

“I know I can tell you that I certainly shall without its appearing presumption,” said Appleby.

The girl nodded. “We haven’t any use for that word in our country. In fact, we have rather a liking for a presumptuous man so long as he is sensible,” she said. “Then there is nothing I can do for you there?”

“No,” said Appleby.

Nettie leaned a little nearer him, and though she smiled a faint flush crept into her cheek. “If there were, you would tell me? I can’t help remembering what you did for me.”

“I think I would. Still, you see there is nothing.”

“Well, I’m not quite sure, and one never knows who they may meet in England. It’s quite a small place, anyway.”

Then there was a ringing of steel on stone, and she looked round with a little impatient gesture as she said, “Here is that odious Morales again!”

The banker rose, and brought a chair as the colonel came forward, but the little pressure of the girl’s hand on his arm warned Appleby that she desired him to remain, and for an hour they discussed the campaign. Then Appleby decided to relate what had happened at the hacienda a few nights earlier, though he said very little about the papers and nothing concerning the hidden receptacle. Morales, he fancied, listened with eagerness, and once his dark eyes flashed.

“You were wrong when you let him go,” he said. “If it happens again I should suggest the pistol. One gains nothing by showing those gentlemen toleration.”

Then he shrugged his shoulders, and turned to the banker’s wife with a smile; but Appleby had noticed the vindictiveness in his tone, and as he surmised it was not accounted for by the fact that the man had broken into Harding’s office, wondered whether it was because he had failed to accomplish his purpose. He, however, felt that Nettie Harding desired him to outstay the colonel, and was content with the little grateful glance she cast at him when Morales went away. Ten minutes later Appleby also rose, but the banker detained him a minute or two.

“You have a consignment of sugar to be shipped,” he said “Some one will go down to the port. Yourself, I think?”

“Yes,” said Appleby.

“Then it would be a kindness if you would hand this letter to the captain to post in America,” he said. “It is of some importance to the Señor Harding and others.”

“With pleasure, but why not post it here?”

The banker laid his hand on Appleby’s shoulder, and shook his head significantly. “One does not trust anything of importance to the post just now,” he said. “This is an affair in which the greatest discretion is necessary. When one puts anything he does not wish the administration to know in a letter he burns the blotting paper.”

Appleby was not altogether astonished, but he took the packet the banker handed him; and when they shook hands the latter once more glanced at him warningly.

“The discretion!” he said. “You will remember – the discretion.”

XIII – THE SECOND ATTEMPT

IT was at a brisk walk Appleby left the banker’s house, but he stopped a few minutes later where several streets branched off from a little plaza. He had some trifling business with a tobacco merchant who lived in one of them, but he decided after a moment’s reflection that it was scarcely likely he would find the man, who probably spent the evenings at a café, at home just then. Appleby had, however, stopped somewhat suddenly, and noticed that the footsteps he had heard behind him also ceased a second or two later. This, he surmised, had in all probability no special significance; but he raised his hand to an inner pocket where the letter the banker had given him lay. It was evidently of some importance, and he remembered that it was not money the man he had surprised at the hacienda was in search of.

As it happened he carried another letter, which he meant to ask somebody at the “Four Nations” to post. It was of very little consequence, and contained only a list of American tools and machinery which Harding dealt in, and Appleby smiled as he slipped it into the lower pocket of his jacket. Then he took out his cigar-case and slowly lighted a cigar, so that anybody who might be watching him should find a motive for his delay. He looked about him cautiously as he did so.

The plaza was small and dark, though a thin crescent moon was just rising over the clustering roofs. Its faint light silvered the higher portions of the two square church towers that rose blackly against the velvety indigo with one great star between them, but the rest of the building, which was the one Nettie Harding had found shelter in, was blurred and shadowy. Beyond it a few lights blinked in the calle he had just passed through, but they only intensified the darkness of the narrow gap between the flat-roofed houses, and – for it was getting late – the street seemed utterly silent. Yet Appleby had certainly heard footsteps, and no closing of a door to account for their cessation. The houses were large in that vicinity, and built, for the most part, round a patio, the outer door of which not infrequently consisted of a heavy iron grille which could scarcely be closed noiselessly. In front of him two streets branched off, one broad and well paved, the other narrow and very dark. The latter, however, led straight to the “Four Nations,” past the carniceria, or butchery, and two or three of the little wine-shops of shady repute which are usually to be found close to the principal church in a Spanish town. Here and there a blink of light streamed out from the open lattice of one of them.

Appleby stood still a moment, and then, reflecting that anybody who might be following him would expect him to take the broader way, slipped into the narrow street. A day or two earlier he would have laughed at the notion, but the footsteps which had stopped so abruptly troubled him. He had passed one wine-shop when he heard them again, and, though it seemed at least possible that they were those of some citizen going home, there was an unpleasant suggestiveness in them, and when the light of the second wine-shop fell across the street he decided to enter it. If the man behind him also stopped, his motive would be apparent.

Two or three men sat in the wine-shop with little glasses of caña before them, and Appleby was reassured when he glanced at them. They were evidently of the humbler orders, men who earned a meagre two or three pesetas a day; but their garments of cotton and coarse unstarched linen were, as usual, spotlessly clean, and he surmised from their shade of complexion that they had emigrated to Cuba from the Canaries. They saluted him courteously when he took off his hat on entering, and one laid down the torn and wine-stained journal he was reading.

“The war is making sugar dearer, señor,” he said.

Appleby was not altogether pleased at being recognized, as the observation implied, but the man seemed civil, and he smiled.

“It also puts up the cost of making it,” he said, turning to the landlord, as an excuse for remaining a little occurred to him. “You have Vermouth in an open bottle?”

“No, señor,” said the other, as Appleby had expected. “Since the war makes pesetas scarce one drinks the thin red wine and caña here. Still, I have a few bottles with the seal on.”

Appleby laughed. “Well,” he said, “as it has been observed, sugar is dear, and Vermouth is a wine I have a liking for. It is conceivable that these gentlemen would taste it with me.”

The men appeared quite willing, and one of them brought out a handful of coarse maize-husk cigarettes when the host laid down the bottle with the white Savoy cross upon it and a few little glasses.

“It is not the tobacco the senor usually smokes, but his cigar has gone out, and one offers what he has with the good will,” he said.

The man was clearly a peon, a day laborer, but Appleby fancied his manner could not have been improved upon, for it was free alike from undue deference or any assertion of equality. He took one of the cigarettes, and when he had handed round the little glasses sat with his face towards the door. The light from it, as he was pleased to notice, fell right across the narrow street, and he sat with his back to it. He had also not long to wait, for a patter of footsteps flung back by the white walls grew louder, and Appleby noticed that while they had rung sharp and decided they appeared to slacken as the man approached the wine-shop. This appeared significant, since it suggested that the man did not wish to cross the stream of light.

It was, however, evident that he must either stop or pass through it, and in another moment Appleby saw him. There was nothing especially noticeable about him except that the broad felt hat was pulled down a trifle lower than seemed necessary, and Appleby wondered if his suspicions were causeless, until the man turned his head a trifle. The movement was almost imperceptible, but Appleby felt that the dark eyes had rested on him a moment. Then as the stranger passed on he saw one of the men in the wine-shop glance at his companion, who made a little gesture of comprehension. It was, however a few moments later, and there was once more silence in the shadowy street when he turned to Appleby.

“It is getting late, señor,” he said significantly. “You sleep at the ‘Four Nations’?”

“No,” said Appleby, who wondered if this was intended as a hint. “Still, I am going there.”

The peon, he fancied, glanced at the landlord. “Then it would perhaps be better to go round by the calle Obispo.”

Appleby reflected a moment, for he fancied there was a meaning in this, but he knew the calle Obispo would be almost deserted at that hour; while by going through the carniceria he would shorten the distance, and, at least, have the man he suspected in front of him.

“I think I will go straight on,” he said.

“Then you will find it convenient to walk in the middle of the road,” said the peon.

Appleby glanced sharply at the man. He had seen sufficient of Spanish towns to know that there were reasons quite unconnected with the safety of foot passengers or their property which warranted the warning; but the olive face was expressionless, and with a punctilious salutation he left the wine-shop. Glancing over his shoulder a moment or two later, he saw the men silhouetted black against the light as they stood in the doorway, and swung into faster stride. He felt he had nothing to fear from them, but their hints had been unpleasantly suggestive.

In two or three minutes he reached the dark slaughterhouses, which were faced by a wall with one or two unlighted windows high up in it, and as, treading softly, he strained his ears he once more caught a faint patter behind him. This was somewhat astonishing, as it was evident that if the man who passed the wine-shop still desired to keep him in view he must have made a considerable round. Appleby stopped suddenly, and made up his mind when the footsteps ceased too. The spot was lonely, and shut in by the slaughter-houses and high blank walls; while the feeling that somebody was creeping up behind him through the darkness was singularly unpleasant, so much so, in fact, that it changed the concern he was sensible of into anger. He had also distinct objections to being stabbed in the back, and decided that if an affray was inevitable he would, at least, force the assailant’s hand, and to do that cover of some kind was necessary. Sooner or later he would find a doorway he could slip into, and he went on again softly and hastily.

He had made another fifty yards, and the footsteps were plainer still behind, when a pillar partly bedded in it broke the bare line of wall, and pulling out the little pistol from his hip pocket he turned sharply and flung himself into the gloom behind it. Then he realized his blunder, and that he had two men to deal with instead of one, for a strip of heavy fabric was flung about his head, and hard fingers fastened on his throat. Appleby gasped, and drew the trigger convulsively, while there was a crash as the pistol exploded. Then he felt it slip from his fingers, for the strength seemed to go out of him, and he was only sensible that he was fighting hard for breath. How long the tense effort lasted he did not know, but his faculties had almost deserted him when a cry he could scarcely hear rose from the street, and was followed by a sound of running feet.

Then he was flung against the pillar, and there was a crash as a shadowy object leapt into the doorway. A man reeled out of it in a blundering fashion, another sped down the street, and Appleby, staggering out, leaned, gasping, against the wall. It was some moments before he could make anything out, and then he saw two men standing close in front of him. One held something in his hand, and by their voices he fancied they were the peons he had met in the wine-shop. Looking round him as his scattered senses came slowly back, he saw another man apparently crawling out of the gutter. Then there was a rapid tramp of feet further up the street, and one of the men seemed to look at his companion, who made a sign of agreement.

“The civiles!” he said.

Then they fell upon the man in the gutter, dragged him to his feet, drove him before them with kicks, and stood still again while he reeled away in an unsteady fashion which suggested that he was at least half dazed. In the meanwhile the rapid tramp behind them had been growing louder, and the shuffling steps had scarcely ceased when a light was flashed into Appleby’s face, and he saw a man with a lantern in trim white uniform standing a few paces away, and another who carried a pistol behind him. Then the light was turned aside, and revealed the two peons from the wine-shop waiting quietly to be questioned.

Appleby recognized the men in uniform as civil guards, and knew that almost every man in that body had won distinction in the military service.

The street was now very silent again, and it was evident that the peons did not consider it advisable to put the civiles on the track of the fugitive just yet. The one who held the lantern looked at them, standing erect, with knee bent a trifle and a big pistol projecting from the holster at his belt.

“There was a shot, and by and by a shout,” he said. “An explanation is desired. You are warned to be precise.”

“It is simple,” said one of the peons. “Comes this señor the American, into the wine-shop of Cananos where we are sitting. There he takes a glass of Vermouth and goes away. Then comes a man slipping by where it is darkest, and we go to warn the señor taking the caña bottle. It appears there is another man waiting in this doorway, there is a struggle, and Vincente strikes down one of the prowlers with the bottle. He gets to his feet again, and they go in haste when they hear you coming. Then we find the señor faint and short of breath.”

The civile stretched out his hand for the caña bottle, which was apparently corked, and balanced it. “It would serve – a man might be killed with it,” he said. “But you had a knife!”

“With excuses,” said the peon. “We respect the law. The knife is forbidden.”

There was a little grim twinkle in the civile’s eyes, but he fixed them on Appleby. “I will not ask you to shake your sleeve, or question your comrade, because his tale would be the same,” he said. “That is what happened, señor?”

“Yes,” said Appleby, “so far as I can remember. I was going from the banker’s to the ‘Four Nations’ when I became aware that there was a man following me. To avoid him I slipped into this doorway, where another man was waiting. It was my pistol you heard, but the other man, whom I had not expected, had his fingers on my throat, and I was helpless when these others appeared.”

The civile made a little gesture of comprehension, and then, tilting up his chin, laid his fingers on his throat. “The head drawn back – and the thumb so! With the knee in the back at the same time it was as sure as the knife. The señor is to be felicitated on his escape. But the motive? Even in Santa Marta men do not fall upon a stranger without a purpose.”

Appleby, who was on his guard at once, felt his pockets, and was sensible of a vast relief when he found the letter the banker had given him was still in his possession. The other in his outer pocket had, however, as he expected, disappeared.

“I think their purpose was evident. It is for money one usually goes to a banker’s,” he said. “It is also known that I have dealings with the Señor Suarez. Still, thanks to the promptness of the gentlemen here, nothing of importance has been taken from me.”

The civile with the lantern glanced at his comrade, who nodded.

“It would be wiser to go there in the daylight another time,” said the latter as he held out Appleby’s pistol, which he had unobtrusively looked for and picked up. “One cartridge burned – it confirms the story! You would not recognize the men who attacked you?”

“No,” said Appleby, and the peon whom the civile turned to shook his head emphatically.

“It was very dark,” he said.

The civiles asked a few more questions, and then one of them insisted on escorting Appleby, who apparently failed to make the peons understand that he desired a word with them, to the “Four Nations.” The man, however, left him outside the hotel, and Appleby had spent a few minutes there waiting for his mule when one of the peons came quietly up to him in the patio.

“The señor lost this letter not long ago?” he said.

“I did,” said Appleby, taking the envelope. “Where did you find it?”

The peon smiled in a curious fashion. “It seems you know our country. I took it from the man Vincente felled, but it did not seem wise to mention it before the civiles. They have sharp eyes, those gentlemen.”

“I am indebted,” said Appleby. “It is, however, of no importance.”

The peon smiled again. “And yet you knew you had lost it, and said nothing. Why would one run a risk to seize a letter?”

“I don’t know,” said Appleby. “Nor am I sure why you and your companion should take so much trouble to guard a stranger. I would not, of course, offend you by suggesting that you did it to repay me for a glass of Vermouth.”

“For the charity then?” said the peon, smiling.

“I do not think so,” said Appleby, who looked at him steadily.

The man laughed. “Well,” he said reflectively, “there may have been another reason. It is known to a few that Don Bernardino is a friend of liberty.”

Appleby was a trifle astonished, but not sufficiently to show it, since he had already had vague suspicions.

“It is,” he said, “a thing one does not admit in Santa Marta, but if one might reward a kindness with money I have a few dollars.”

“It is not permissible, señor – not from a comrade,” and the man straightened himself a trifle. “Still, one might be grateful for a little bottle.”

Appleby laughed, though he was not quite at ease, and entering the hotel came back with two bottles of somewhat costly wine, which he thrust upon the man.

“If I can be of service I think you know where I am to be found,” he said.

Again the curious little smile showed in the man’s face, but he took off his hat and turned away; while ten minutes later Appleby rode out of Santa Marta somewhat troubled in mind. It was tolerably plain to him that Harding’s affairs were being watched with interest by the Administration or somebody who desired to gain a hold on him, and that his own connection with the Sin Verguenza was at least suspected by the peons who had befriended him. That being so, it appeared likely that others were aware of it too.

XIV – APPLEBY PROVES OBDURATE

THE hot day was over, and the light failing rapidly when Appleby, who had just finished comida, sat by a window of the hacienda San Cristoval with an English newspaper upon his knee. The room behind him, where Harper lay in a cane chair, was already shadowy, but outside the saffron sunset still flamed beyond the cane, and here and there a palm tuft cut against it hard and sharp in ebony tracery. Inside the air was hot, and heavy with the smell of garlic-tainted oil; but a faint cool draught flowed in between the open lattices, and Appleby, who had been busy since sunrise that day, sighed contentedly as he breathed it in. Beneath him the long white sheds still glimmered faintly, and a troop of men were plodding home along the little tram-line that wound through the cane; while in the direction they came from the smoke of the crushing-mill floated, a long, dingy smear, athwart the soft blueness, out of which here and there a pale star was peeping.

Appleby was dressed in spotless duck, with a gray alpaca jacket over it, and the thin garments showed his somewhat spare symmetry as he lay relaxed in mind and body in his chair. He felt the peaceful stillness of the evening after the strain of the day, for Harding had left him in sole charge for some months now, and the handling of the men who worked for him had taxed all his nerve and skill. By good-humored patience and uncompromising grimness, when that appeared the more advisable, he had convinced his swarthy subordinates that they would gain little by trifling with him, though he had wondered once or twice when an open dispute appeared imminent why it was that certain peons had so staunchly supported him against their discontented comrades. It was not, however, his difficulties with the workmen which caused him most concern, but the task of keeping on good terms with an administration that regarded aliens, and especially Americans, with a jealous eye, and appeasing the rapacity of officials whose exactions would, if unduly yielded to, have absorbed most of Harding’s profits. To hit the happy medium was a delicate business, but hitherto Appleby had accomplished it successfully.

The cigar he held had gone out, but he had not noticed it for the paper on his knee had awakened memories of the life he had left behind him. He could look back upon it without regret, for its trammels had galled him, and the wider scope of the new one appealed to him. In it the qualities of foresight, quick decision, daring, and the power of command were essential, and he had been conscious without vanity that he possessed them. Also, though that counted for less, his salary and bonus on the results of the crushing was liberal.

Still, he was thinking of England, for a paragraph in the paper had seized his attention. There was nothing to show who had sent it him, though two or three had reached him already, and he knew that Nettie Harding was in England. He could scarcely see, but he held up the journal to the fading light, and with difficulty once more deciphered the lines: —

“The electrical manufacturing company have been very busy since the consummation of their agreement with Mr. Anthony Palliser. Already their factory at Dane Cop is in course of construction, and they have an army of workmen laying the new tramway and excavating the dam. It is also rumored that negotiations are in progress for the establishment of subsidiary industries, and it is evident that Northrop will make a stride towards prosperity under the enterprising gentleman who has recently succeeded to the estate.”

Appleby smiled curiously as he laid the paper down. Tony, it was evident, would no longer be hampered by financial embarrassments, and Appleby did not envy him the prosperity he had not hitherto been accustomed to. Still, he wondered vaguely why Tony had never written to the address in Texas, from which letters would have reached him, especially since it appeared that Godfrey Palliser was dead. He was also curious as to whether Tony was married yet, and would have liked to have heard that he was. That, he felt, would have snapped the last tie that bound him to the post, and made it easier to overcome the longing he was sensible of when he remembered Violet Wayne. It would, he fancied, be less difficult if he could think of her as Tony’s wife. Then he brushed away the fancies as Harper noisily moved his chair.