Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “For the rest, I will immediately take steps to prevent a recurrence of such unsolicited attentions to Jacqueline and their consequent annoyance to yourself. I will write to you again, in confidence, about this at the proper time.

  “May I suggest to you, meanwhile, if that may be done without presumption, that nothing would be lost by permitting Jacqueline to forget the incident, since I can well believe she has already suffered as much as if she were really guilty of grave indiscretion. I feel quite sure of her innocence.

  “With renewed expression of my confidence—”

  When he had sealed that letter he wrote a telegram — short, definite and urgent — then rang the bell and unlocked the door.

  “Send Consuelo!”

  No suggestion of conspiracy — no hint to Consuelo of a secret held between them — not a question concerning how or when that letter from Jack Calhoun had reached the convent.

  “Take the limousine, Consuelo, and deliver this letter into the Sister Superior’s hand. On your way send this telegram.”

  She understood. Her eyes shone. Don Andres already knew then — knew her part in it — and she was being trusted!

  But she had to cross the patio to reach the servants’ quarters and give orders for the limousine; and as the Holy Virgin was her witness, she was not invisible! She could not make herself unseen by Donna Isabella, although she would have sunk into the ground for choice.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry, Consuelo? What did Don Andres want with you?”

  Well — Mother of God have pity on her! — she had lied a hundred times to save Miss Jacqueline, and had always done the penances imposed by Father Doutreleau, exacting though he was! She could lie again — and pay for it again —

  “To the drug-store, Donna Isabella.”

  “Why?”

  “For medicine.”

  “Where is the prescriptions”

  It is loyalty that is the mother of invention.

  “Doctor Beal promised he would leave it at the drugstore.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Don Andres that I have given you other tasks? Go about your own business, I will send one of the footmen.”

  But a library window overlooked the patio, and Don Andres appeared in the doorway to the rescue, saying nothing, merely observant, shutting the door with a slam behind him to call attention to himself.

  “Andres, why do you send Consuelo on an errand! She’s forever finding some excuse for laziness. I’ll send one of the footmen for your medicine.”

  “The footmen have bad memories,” he answered.

  “Nonsense! Write it down for him.”

  “I have — given — Consuelo — my instructions — Isabella!”

  Brother and sister faced each other, and Consuelo fled; it was none of her business to witness a family quarrel. Don Andres smiled faintly as he watched her go, assured that he was right, she could be trusted.

  “Your illness is no excuse, Andres, for putting me to gross indignity before a servant!”

  “No,” he said, “no illness could excuse that, could it!”

  From her window, fifteen minutes later, she could see the limousine away in the distance, driving in the opposite direction to the village where the drug-store was that Andres usually patronized. It was headed straight for the convent.

  So! That settled that! The news was out, and Consuelo must have turned the trick against her! What an idiot she had been to trust that woman — to endure her in the house!

  It was too much already to have had to endure Jacqueline. Perhaps Andres thought that by insisting on keeping Jacqueline he could irritate her into leaving his roof and taking up quarters elsewhere. If so, he fooled himself! She had her rights — the legal right, not only to an income out of the estate, but to reside in the Miro mansion. No more than any Miro would she ever relinquish one privilege!

  Well — so it was war, was it, between Andres and herself? She might as well look the fact in the face.

  The bone of contention was Jacqueline. The only ally whom she could think of for the moment was Jack Calhoun. What had the young fool gone to Cuba for? Why couldn’t he have waited?

  Andres knew now about Calhoun’s attentions to Jacqueline; that much was obvious. Give him enough scandal, and he would force Jacqueline into a marriage with Jack Calhoun or any other man!

  Why in the name of ninety saints had the young fool gone away to Cuba?

  Well — he could come back, couldn’t he? He looked impetuous enough for anything!

  Donna Isabella sat down at her escritoire and wrote to Jack Calhoun one of those guarded communications that stir the recipient’s imagination by suggestion of what they leave unsaid.

  “ — Don Andres Miro has heard of your attentions to Miss Lanier and is taking steps to prevent a recurrence.

  “I am quite ignorant of his plans. He has not consulted me. I have no actual proof that he has in mind some other individual of his own choosing, who perhaps he thinks will make a better husband for Miss Lanier—”

  Donna Isabella smiled over that sentence. If anything could bring Jack Calhoun hurrying back from Cuba, that would. She sealed up the letter and took exquisite delight in dropping it into the mail-bag in her brother’s presence and watching him turn the key, insuring trouble for himself. It made her sunny-tempered for an hour.

  However, at the end of the hour she was on the horns of anxiety again; for it was she in person who received over the telephone a telegram from New Orleans. Curtis Radcliffe would arrive in time for dinner.

  What was Andres up to now? Curtis Radcliffe had the reputation of being the cleverest lawyer in Louisiana, and that was synonymous in Donna Isabella’s mind with treachery and underhanded cunning.

  Andres might be thinking of changing his will, but he would hardly send for such an expensive man as Radcliffe in a hurry about that, because the estates and investments were practically all included in the Miro trust deed, and there was not a great deal else that Andres had to bequeath. Was he proposing to try to change the trust deed? Then she need not worry! He had tried that once before. Radcliffe had advised him it would need his sister’s signature as well as that of the cousin who manufactured gum shoes. Andres would be too proud even to approach the gum shoe-maker, and as for herself, wild horses should not make her sign anything!

  Summoning all her self-control she went to the library and announced the telegram.

  “Curtis Radcliffe is on his way.”

  “I supposed so. I have just written notes to Doutreleau and Beal, inviting them to dinner too, to meet him.”

  “Really, Andres! Do you call that fair to me? How can I arrange a dinner for three guests at a moment’s notice? Couldn’t you have spoken sooner?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I do not like to speak before I have decided, Isabella.”

  How could anybody be affectionate to such a man! It was all she could do to avoid precipitating an open quarrel — more than she could do to retire without firing a Parthian shot.

  “I’m evidently nothing more than your housekeeper!”

  “Not evidently, Isabella!”

  Now what in the name of all the martyrs did he mean by that? Something sly undoubtedly. She slammed the door, and made up her mind that the dinner- party should not go down in the Miro annals as a joy to be recalled and lingered over.

  Nevertheless, not even her sardonic humor spoiled the feast, for Andres was at his best and gave his own instructions to the butler about wine. And Curtis Radcliffe was a man whose conversation flourished on Chateau Margeaux ‘84 — who knew good jokes about the priesthood that made François Doutreleau chuckle and hold his sides — who was far too discerning to annoy Beal with equally good digs at the doctors — and whose stories about lawyers were as merciless as they were funny.

  “You appear to glory in the baseness of your own profession!” snorted Donna Isabella.

  “As the good sun glories in the darkness it dispels!”
said Doutreleau.

  “As courtesy delights in opportunity — or a surgeon likes — what is it that a surgeon aspires to, Beal?” asked Andres.

  “Partnership, with Radcliffe and myself!” said Doutreleau. Beal never had an answer ready.

  It was an old-fashioned house, with the old time-honored ways unchanged. The men sat over the nuts and wine when the hostess had withdrawn, and Donna Isabella wandered about the patio moodily, listening to laughter that annoyed her all the more because she knew it masked seriousness. They would not talk business in the dining room, she knew that; Andres was a man who did everything at the appointed time and in the proper place. Whatever secret scheme had brought these four together would be discussed in the library and probably behind a locked door.

  But the night was warm, and three of the library windows faced the lawn. Donna Isabella had a perfect right to enjoy the flowers and the moonlight shimmering on undulating landscape — perfect right to summon a footman and have a chair set for herself beneath an open window. She had a perfect right to sit still and nearly choke herself with a handkerchief trying to suppress a cough (for the night was a trifle chilly after all) when she heard the four men enter the library and felt, rather than saw the lights turned on.

  She could hear Radcliffe making the circuit of the bookshelves. Doutreleau, she knew was already in an armchair. She heard Beal clear his throat, and heard his chair creak as he turned it toward Andres. Then her brother’s calm voice; she could imagine him, with his back to the fireplace, smiling;

  “Now, Beal, out with it! How long am I likely to live?”

  Ten thousand devils take the man! Beal never answered promptly — hummed and ha-a-ed like a nincompoop, as if afraid of his own voice. And Donna Isabella — whether she was startled or felt chilled because she had not brought her shawl — coughed, and smothered a second cough into a handkerchief.

  A moment later she heard Andres stride to the window. He closed it and pulled the shade down without deigning to glance out to see who might be sitting underneath it. He could guess too easily — preferred too magnificently not to know.

  CHAPTER 7.

  “Some one’s going to suffer, Sherry Mansfield, but I’ll make it!”

  Affairs in Cuba might be — usually are — and were, in point of fact, precarious. Not even a Calverly-Calhoun may mortgage an estate however rich, pay ten percent interest, endure one hurricane, one drought, and one year’s blight, entrust the management of the estate to an alien — and not face consequences. However, one can sometimes postpone settlement, especially if one happens to be twenty-seven, with a letter in one’s pocket that has stirred the very lees of urgency and therewith, too, the poison of inborn recklessness.

  So bankers in Havana locked new notes away, and Jack Calhoun paced the deck of a New Orleans-bound steamer, wishing whip and spurs might take the place of coal. It was a slow boat — just his luck! — crawling along with the hose on a hot main-bearing and a screen of seaweed like a petticoat. But the smoking-room was good enough — capable steward and plenty to drink — with a scattering of passengers less impatient than himself, whose conversation served at intervals to help pass time.

  Clinton Wahl, for instance, special correspondent of the New Orleans Star, on his way back from covering political events in Cuba; quite a personage in a way, and not unconscious of it, but not so bad to talk to, if only he would not think in head-lines and pretend to see ambitious motive at the back of every event. A cad, of course, but amusing.

  And young Sherwood Mansfield, not a cad by any means, but son of the owner of the San Francisco Tribune, and likely to inherit millions — meanwhile, worshipful of Clinton Wahl because a star reporter looks like Betelgeuse to a newspaper man whose career is yet to make.

  It was rather good fun to watch the by-play between those two — Wahl obviously cultivating the friendship of the younger man for opportunist reasons, and Sherry Mansfield thrilled by intimacy with some one who signed his own special articles, and whose photograph appeared at the head of every syndicated column that he wrote. Between spells of furious deck-pacing Jack Calhoun struck up acquaintance with the pair.

  There were those, especially later on, and Clinton Wahl among them, who assessed young Jack Calhoun as a mere profligate who never took thought and who always acted on the impulse of the moment. But that is the point of view induced by ribbon headlines. There were wheels within wheels — phases — moods — alternating passions — shrewdness beside impulse — swift discernment in addition to overbearing recklessness — and an element of kindness and good humor in his composition. He would not have been a Calverly-Calhoun if he had not had wit, and an instinct for making himself agreeable.

  When Clinton Wahl grew weary of Sherry Mansfield’s hero-worship and took a turn on deck, Jack Calhoun, vastly and intuitively preferring the younger man, entered the smoking-room and took a seat beside him. Mansfield was a companionable young chap, sturdy, frank and full of enthusiasm, with earnest gray eyes that could light up when he laughed; and his laugh was contagious.

  He had puzzled Jack Calhoun, who had the notorious Calhoun gift for appraising people swiftly, and who only did not profit by it (as all his forebears had done) because he was too lazy. They sat at the same dining table, and he had found Sherry Mansfield even more interesting than the three girls opposite, who obviously preferred young Mansfield to himself — an unusual enough experience in Jack Calhoun’s life to intrigue him thoroughly. There was a peculiar, half-wistful, wholly determined look about Sherry Mansfield’s mouth that increased his attractiveness. When he was not smiling he looked as if his own courage and his own good timber had enabled him to survive it, without obliterating the memory.

  Young Sherwood Mansfield liked to talk to men — with any man; but froze in the presence of women, not apparently nervous, but stone-cold suddenly, and colder yet as they made advances to him. Habitual lady-killer, Jack Calhoun drew exquisite amusement from the drama, thrice daily at meals, as those three young women opposite them at table tried to make themselves agreeable to Sherry Mansfield, and invariably were out their pains. He himself for excellent reasons was on his best behavior that voyage, indulging in no flirtations, minded for this once to lay a pure, if overbold heart at the feet of his adored; but he was deadly curious to know why this handsome young chap, with money, and so much life in him, should set him such a marvelous example.

  Sherwood Mansfield did not look, nor talk, like a man in love. There is intuitive freemasonry between men whose hearts are aflame with that divine passion, and Mansfield was the one on the boat with whom Jack Calhoun would have deigned to discuss his own idolatry, as one equal to another. But the few hints he had let drop fell on barren ground; Sherry Mansfield simply avoided the usually, all-absorbing subject of women and their lure, frowning slightly on occasion, but more often seeming to fall vaguely on guard — then smiling the moment the subject was changed.

  There was not another subject in the world that he was not apparently willing to talk about, and with intelligence. Because of his keenness to tread in his father’s footsteps, world news was at his finger-tips, and he took the same sort of delight in it that some fellows take in baseball scores. Sooner or later, whatever the subject, he worked it round to the newspaper angle, and it was then that almost all his wistfulness vanished, his smile was most contagious, and his eyes shone brightest.

  “Don’t you think Clinton Wahl’s a wonder?” he asked Calhoun.

  “Wonders never cease,” Jack answered, “but they vary, suh. I should say he has brains of a sort, but they’re no good without breeding. He’d have been a professional gambler or a fake-stock salesman if he hadn’t struck his gait at journalism.”

  “Wahl’s no journalist!” Sherry snorted. “He’s a newspaper man.”

  “Profound apology! But what’s the difference, may I ask?”

  Sherry ignored the question. One does not talk of one’s religion to outsiders.

  “As for gambling — Wahl did mor
e than any one to expose the Cuban lotteries and the New Orleans policy ring. Didn’t you read of it?”

  “Can’t say I did. How’s your dad these days? I suppose he owns San Francisco?”

  “Well, hardly! But he’s made the Tribune the biggest thing in the West. It’s all the life he cares for, and he lives it — doesn’t even play golf.”

  Wahl came sauntering in again and sat down with his arms on the table facing the other two. Calhoun knew that look in the cavernous eyes and race- track mouth. Young men of wealth soon learn to recognize it, or they cease from being rich. Studying the thin nose and the movement of the long lean neck, Calhoun knew exactly how far he would trust him.

  “There’s a woman in a deck-chair near the bulletin board,” Wahl said, smiling at Sherry. “I saw her in Santiago once or twice, but hadn’t time to get to know her. If you asked me — there’s a yen in her eye, and she’s lonely. If I were as young and good-looking as you are—”

  “Oh, to hell with her!” said Sherry Mansfield, and Jack Calhoun noticed the return of the peculiar wistful look that was so intriguing.

  “To hell with her certainly, by all means,” he agreed politely. Then, hazarding a shrewd guess: “but what’s wrong with the sex?”

  Sherry Mansfield frowned and rose from his seat.

  “I think I’ll take the air a while,” he announced; and at the thought of fresh air the momentary ill-humor left him. He was whistling by the time he reached the door.

  “Likable youngster,” said Wahl, “and the women seem crazy about him, but he’ll go far, for he mistrusts ’em!”

  Jack ordered drinks. “Old story, I suppose,” he answered. “I remember at his age I mistrusted the whole sex for a week, or maybe nine days. It was after the wife of a man in Key West turned virtuous and went back to her husband.”

  “Ungrateful female!” Wahl commented; and Jack Calhoun bridled a bit; he instinctively resented having Wahl in agreement with him on any point. However, it does not much matter with whom you talk on board ship; and just at that moment the steward brought the drinks.