The City in the Clouds
Page 1
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THE CITY IN THE CLOUDS
BY C. RANGER GULL
Author of "The Air Pirate"
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. BY THE QUINN & BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J.
TO
SIR GRIFFITH BOYNTON, Bt.
MY DEAR BOYNTON,
We have had some strange adventures together, though not as strange andexciting as the ones treated of in this story. At any rate, accept it asa souvenir of those gay days before the War, which now seem an age away.Recall a Christmas dinner in the Villa Sanglier by the Belgian Sea, acertain moonlit midnight in the Grand' Place of an ancient, famous city,and above all, the stir and ardors of the Masked Ball at VieuxBruges.--Haec olim meminisse juvabit!
YOURS, C. R. G.
NOTE
BY SIR THOMAS KIRBY, BT.
The details of this prologue to the astounding occurrences which it ismy privilege to chronicle, were supplied to me when my work was justcompleted.
It forms the starting point of the story, which travels straightonwards.
THE CITY IN THE CLOUDS
PROLOGUE
Under a gay awning of red and white which covered a portion of thefamous roof-garden of the Palacete Mendoza at Rio, reclined GideonMendoza Morse, the richest man in Brazil, and--it was said--the thirdrichest man in the world.
He lay in a silken hammock, smoking those little Brazilian cigaretteswhich are made of fragrant black tobacco and wrapped in maize leaf.
It was afternoon, the hour of the siesta. From where he lay themillionaire could look down upon his marvelous gardens, which surroundedthe white palace he had built for himself, peerless in the whole ofSouth America.
The trunks of great trees were draped with lianas bearingbrilliantly-colored flowers of every hue. There were lawns edged withmyrtle, mimosa, covered with the golden rain of their blossoms, immensepalms, lazily waving their fans in the breeze of the afternoon, and setin the lawns were marble pools of clear water from the center of whichfountains sprang. There was a continual murmur of insects and flashesof rainbow-colored light as the tiny, brilliant humming birds whirredamong the flowers. Great butterflies of blue, silver, and vermilion,butterflies as large as bats, flapped languidly over the ivory ferns,and the air was spicy and scented with vanilla.
Beyond the gardens was the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, the most beautiful bayin all the world, dominated by the great sugar-loaf mountain, the Pao deAzucar, and studded with green islands.
Gideon Morse took a pair of high-powered field-glasses from a table byhis side and focused them upon the harbor.
A large white yacht, lying off Governador, swam into the circle, afive-thousand-ton boat driven by turbines and oil fuel, the fastest andlargest private yacht in existence.
Gideon Morse gave a little quiet, patient sigh, as if of relief.
He was a man of sixty odd, with a thick thatch of white hair which camedown upon his wrinkled forehead in a peak. His face was tanned to thecolor of an old saddle, his nose beaked like a hawk, and his mouth was amere lipless cut which might have been made by a knife. A strong jawcompleted an impression of abnormal quiet, and long enduring strength.Indeed the whole face was a mask of immobility. Beneath heavy blackbrows were eyes as dark as night, clear, but without expression. No onelooking at them could ever tell what were the thoughts behind. For therest, he was a man of medium height, thick-set, wiry, and agile.
A brief sketch of Gideon Mendoza Morse's career must be given here. Hismother was a Spanish lady of good family, resident in Brazil; his fatheran American gentleman of Old Virginia, who had settled there after thewar between North and South. Morse was born a native of Brazil. Hisparents left him a moderate fortune which he proceeded to expand withextraordinary rapidity and success. When the last Emperor, Dom PedroII., was deposed in 1889, Gideon Mendoza Morse was indeed a rich man,and a prominent politician.
He took a great part in establishing the Republic, though in his earlieryears he had leaned towards the Monarchy, and he shared in the immenseprosperity which followed the change.
His was not a paper fortune. The fluctuations of stocks and shares couldhardly influence it. He owned immense coffee plantations in Para, andwas practically the monopolist of the sugar regions of Maranhao, but hisgreatest revenues came from his immense holdings in gold, manganese, anddiamond mines. He had married a Spanish lady early in his career and wasnow a widower with one daughter.
She came up upon the roof-garden now, a tall slip of a girl with animmense quantity of lustrous, dead-black hair, and a voice as clear asan evening bell.
"Father," she said in English--she had been at school at Eastbourne, andhad no trace of Spanish accent--"what is the exact hour that we sail?"
Morse slipped out of the hammock and took her arm in his.
"At ten to-night, Juanita," he replied, patting her hand. "Are you glad,then?"
"Glad! I cannot tell you how much."
"To leave all this"--he waved his hand at what was probably the mostperfect prospect earth has to offer--"to leave all this for the fogs andgloom of London?"
"I don't mind the fogs, which, by the way, are tremendously exaggerated.Of course I love Rio, father, but I long to be in London, the heart ofthe world, where all the nicest people are and where a girl has freedomsuch as she never has here."
"Freedom!" he said. "Ah!"--and was about to continue when a nativeIndian servant in a uniform of white linen with gold shoulder knots,advanced towards them with a salver upon which were two calling cards.
Morse took the cards. A slight gleam came into his eyes and passed,leaving his face as impassive as before.
"You must run away, darling," he said to Juanita. "I have to see somegentlemen. Are all your preparations made?"
"Everything. All the luggage has gone down to the harbor except just acouple of hand-bags which my maid has."
"Very well then, we will have an early meal and leave at dusk."
The girl flitted away. Morse gave some directions to the servant, and,shortly after, the rattle of a lift was heard from a little cupola inone corner of the roof.
Two men stepped out and came among the palms and flowers to themillionaire.
One was a thin, dried-up, elderly man with a white mustache--the Marquisda Silva; his companion, powerful, black-bearded and yellow-faced,obviously with a touch of the half-caste in him--Don Zorilla y Toro.
"Pray be seated," said Morse, with a low bow, though he did not offer toshake hands with either of them. "May I ask to what I owe the pleasureof this visit?"
"It is very simple, senor," said the marquis, "and you must haveexpected a visit sooner or later."
The old man, speaking in the pure Spanish of Castille, trembled a littleas he sat at a round table of red lima-wood encrusted withmother-of-pearl.
"We are, in short," said the burly Zorilla, "ambassadors."
They were now all seated round the table, under the shade of a palmwhose great fans clicked against each other in the evening breeze whichbegan to blow from the cool heights of the sugar-loaf mountain. The faceof Gideon Morse was inscrutable as ever. It might have been a mask ofleather; but the old Spanish nobleman was obviously ill at ease, and thebulging eyes of the well-dressed half-caste, with his diamond cuff linksand ring, spoke of suppressed and furious passion.
In a moment tragedy had come into this paradise.
"A grand and full-sounding word," said Gideon Morse. "I may be permittedto ask--from whom?"
Quick as lightning Don Zorilla held out his hand over the table, openedit, and closed it again. There was a little glint of light from his palmas he did so.
Morse leant back in his chair and smiled. Then he lit one of his pungentcigarettes.
"So! Are you playing with those toys still, gentlemen?"
The marquis flushed. "Mendoza," he said, "this is idle trifling. Youmust know very well--"
"I know nothing, I want to know nothing."
The marquis said two words in a low voice, and then the heads of thethree men drew very close together. For two or three minutes there was awhispering like the rustle of the dry grasses of the Brazilian campos,and then Morse drew back his chair with a harsh noise.
"Enough!" he said. "You are madmen, dreamers! You come to me after allthese years, to ask me to be a party in destroying the peace andprosperity our great country enjoys and has enjoyed for more than thirtyyears. You ask me, twice President of the Republic which I helped tomake--"
Zorilla lifted his hand and the great Brazilian diamonds in his ringsshot out baleful fires.
"Enough, senor," he said in a thick voice. "That is your unalterabledecision?"
Morse laughed contemptuously. "While Azucar stands," he said, "I standwhere I am, and nothing will change me."
"You stand where you are, Mendoza," said the marquis with a new gravityand dignity in his voice, "but I assure you it will not be for long. Youhave two years to run, that's true. But at the end of them be sure, oh,be very sure, that the end will come, and swiftly."
Morse rose.
"I will endeavor to put the remaining two years to good use," he said,with grim and almost contemptuous mockery.
"Do so, senor," said Zorilla, "but remember that in our forests thetraveler may press onward for days and weeks, and all the time in thetree-tops, the silent jaguar is following, following, waiting--"
"I have traveled a good deal in our forests in my youth, Don Zorilla. Ihave even slain many jaguars."
The three men looked at each other steadily and long, then the twovisitors bowed and turned to go. But, just as they were moving offtowards the lift dome, Zorilla turned back and held out a card to DonMendoza. It was an ordinary visiting card with a name engraved upon it.
Morse took it, looked at the name, and then stood still and frozen inhis tracks.
He did not move until the whirr of the bell and the clang of the gatetold him the roof-garden was his own again.
Then he staggered to the table like a drunken man, sank into a chair andbowed his head upon the gleaming pearl and crimson.