The Key to Yesterday Part 15

As the _City of Rio_ wound up her rusty anchor chains that afternoon, Saxon was jubilantly smoking his pipe by the rail.

In the launch just putting off from the steamer's side stood the Hon.

Mr. Pendleton, waving his hat, and Jimmy Partridge wildly shouting, "Give my regards to Broadway!" The minister's flag, which had floated over the steamer while the great personage was on board, was just dipping, and Saxon's hand was still cramped under the homesick pressure of the farewell grips.

Suddenly, the traveler had a feeling of a presence at his elbow, and, turning, was profoundly astonished to behold again the complacent visage of Mr. Rodman.

"You see, I still appear to be among those present," announced the filibuster, with some breeziness of manner. "It's true that I stand before you, 'my sweet young face still haggard with the anguish it has worn,' but I'm here, which is, after all, the salient feature of the situation. Say, what did you do to them?"

"I?" questioned Saxon. "I did nothing. The minister came and took me out of their Bastile."

"Well, say, he must have thrown an awful scare into them." Mr. Rodman thoughtfully stroked his chin with a thin forefinger. "He must have intimidated them unmercifully and brutally. They stampeded into my wing of the Palace, and set me free as though they were afraid I had the yellow-fever. 'Wide they flung the ma.s.sive portals'--all that sort of thing. Now, what puzzles me is, why did they do it? They had the goods on me--almost. However, I'm entirely pleased." Rodman laughed as he lighted a cigar, and waved his hand with mock sentiment toward the sh.o.r.e. "And I had put the rifles through, too," he declared, jubilantly. "I'd turned them over to the _insurrecto_ gentleman in good order. Did they clamor for your blood about the $200,000?"

"Rodman," said Saxon slowly, "I hardly expect you to believe it, but that was a case of mistaken ident.i.ty. I'm not the man you think. I was never in Puerto Frio before."

Rodman let the cigar drop from his astonished lips, and caught wildly after it as it fell overboard.

"What?" he demanded, at last. "How's that?"

"It was a man who looked like me," elucidated Saxon.

"You are d.a.m.ned right--he looked like you!" Rodman halted, amazed into silence. At last, he said: "Well, you have got the clear nerve! What's the idea, anyhow. Don't you trust me?"

The artist laughed.

"I hardly thought you would credit it," he said. "After all, that doesn't make much difference. The point is, my dear boy, _I_ know it."

But Rodman's debonair smile soon returned. He held up his hand with a gesture of acceptance.

"What difference does it make? A gentleman likes to change his linen--why not his personality? I dare say it's a very decent impulse."

For a moment, Saxon looked up with an instinctive resentment for the politely phrased skepticism of the other. Then, his displeasure changed to a smile. He had, for a moment, felt the same doubt when Mr.

Pendleton brought his verdict. Rodman had none of the facts, and a glance at the satirical features showed that it would be impossible for this unimaginative adventurer to construe premises to a seemingly impossible conclusion. He was the materialist, and dealt in palpable appearances. After all, what did it matter? He had made his effort, and would, as he had promised Duska, vex his Sphinx with no more questioning. He would go on as Robert Saxon, feeling that he had done his best with conscientious thoroughness. It was, after all, only cutting the Gordian knot in his life. After a moment, he looked up.

"Which way do you go?" he inquired.

The other man shrugged his shoulders.

"I go back to Puerto Frio--after the blow-off."

"After the blow-off?" Saxon repeated, in interrogation.

"Sure!" Rodman stretched his thin hand sh.o.r.eward, and dropped his voice. "Take a good look at yon fair city," he laughed, "for, before you happen back here again, it may have fallen under fire and sword."

The soldier of fortune spoke with some of the pride that comes to the man who feels he is playing a large game, whether it be a game of construction or destruction, or whether, as is oftener the case, it be both destruction and construction.

The painter obediently looked back at the adobe walls and cross-tipped towers.

"Puerto Frio has been very good to me," he said, in an enigmatical voice.

But Rodman was thinking too much of his own plans to notice the comment.

"Do you see the mountain at the back of the city?" he suddenly demanded. "That's San Francisco. Do you see anything queer about it?"

The artist looked at the peak rearing its summit against the hot blue overhead, and saw only a sleeping tropical background for the indolent tropical panorama stretching at its base.

"Well--" Rodman dropped his voice yet lower--"if you had a pair of field gla.s.ses and studied the heights, you could see a few black specks that are just now disused guns. By day after to-morrow, or, at the latest, one day more, each of those specks will be a crater, and the town will be under a shower of solid shot. There's some cla.s.s to work that can turn as mild a mannered hill as that into a volcano--no?"

Saxon stood gazing with fascination.

"Meanwhile," he heard the other comment, "shipboard is good enough for yours truly--because, as you know, shipboard is neutral ground for political offenders--and the next gentleman who occupies the Palace will be a friend who owes me something."

CHAPTER XI

Saxon denied himself the lure of the deck that evening. Though he would probably be close behind his messages in arriving, he was devoting himself to a full narration embodied in a love-letter.

He bent over the task in the closeness of the dining saloon, with such absorption that he did not rise to investigate even when, with a protracted shrieking of whistles, there came sudden cessation from the jarring throb of screw-shaft and engines. Then, the _City of Rio_ came to a full stop. He vaguely presumed that another important port had been reached, and did not suspect that the vessel lay out of sight of land, and that a second steamer, southbound, had halted on signal, and lay likewise motionless, her lights glittering just off the starboard bow.

When, almost two hours later, he had folded the last of many pages, and gone on deck for a breath before turning in, the engines were once more noisily throbbing, and he saw only the bulk and lights of another vessel pointed down-world under steam.

But, as usual, Rodman, gentleman of multifarious devices, was not letting facts escape him. Indeed, it was at Rodman's instance that two mail ships, the _City of Rio_ and the _Amazon_, had marked time for an hour and a half. In the brewing of affairs, Rodman was just now an important personage, and the commanders of these lines were under instructions from their offices to regard his requests as orders, and to obey them with due respect and profound secrecy. The shifting of administrations at Puerto Frio meant certain advantages in the way of concessions to gentlemen in Wall Street whose word, with these steamers, was something more than influential.

Mr. Rodman had been rowed across from the _Rio_ to the _Amazon_, and he had taken with him the hand-luggage that made his only impedimenta.

In Mr. Rodman's business, it was important to travel light. If he found Senor Miraflores among the pa.s.sengers of the _Amazon_, it was his intention to right-about-face, and return south again.

Senor Miraflores had been in the States as the secret and efficient head of that _junta_ which Rodman served. He had very capably directed the shipping of rifles and many _sub-rosa_ details that must be handled beyond the frontier, when it is intended to change governments without the knowledge or consent of armed and intrenched inc.u.mbents.

The home-coming of Senor Miraflores must of necessity be unostentatious, since his arrival would be the signal for the conversion of the quiet steeps of San Francisco into craters.

Rodman knew that, if the senor were on board the _Amazon_, his name would not be on the sailing-list, and his august personality would be cloaked in disguise. His point of debarkation would be some secluded coast village where fellow conspirators could hide him. His advent into the capital itself would not be made at all unless made at the head of an invading army, and, if so made, he would remain as minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet of General Vegas, to whom just now, as to himself, the city gates were closed.

But Senor Miraflores had selected a more cautious means of entry than the ship, which might bear travelers who knew him. Rodman spent an hour on the downward steamer. He managed to see the face of every pa.s.senger, and even investigated the swarthy visages in the steerage.

He asked of some tourists casual questions as to destination, and chatted artlessly, then went over the side again, and was rowed back across the intervening strip of sea. Immediately upon his departure overside, the _Amazon_ proceeded on her course, and five minutes later the _City of Rio_ was also under way.

The next morning, after a late breakfast, Saxon was lounging at the rail amidship. He had ceased looking backward, and all his gaze was for the front. Ahead of him, the white superstructure, the white-duck uniform of the officer pacing the bridge, the whiteness of the holystoned deck, all stood boldly out against the deep cobalt of the gently swelling sea. Saxon was satisfied with life, and, when he saw Rodman sauntering toward him, he looked up with a welcoming nod.

"h.e.l.lo, Carter--I mean Saxon." The gun-smuggler corrected his form of address with a laugh.

The breezy American was a changed and improved man. The wrinkled gray flannels had given way to natty white duck. His Panama hat was new and of such quality that it could be rolled and drawn through a ring as large as a half-dollar. He was shaven to an extreme pinkness of face.

As Saxon glanced up, his eyes wearing tell-tale recognition of the transformation, the thin man laughed afresh.

"Notice the difference, don't you?" he genially inquired, rolling a cigarette. "The gray grub is splendidly changed into the snow-white b.u.t.terfly. I'm a very flossy bug, eh, Saxon?"

The painter admitted the soft self-impeachment with a qualification.

"I begin to think you are a very destructive one."