The Pursuit Part 35

"Eh?" he questioned.

"Your mistress has accepted an invitation to dine with the governor,"

said Muhammed. "You are to return for her at ten o'clock."

The man got up and shook himself lazily as he strolled towards the launch.

"Nice hospitable old c.o.c.k--what?" he hazarded. "Didn't send me down a small bottle of beer and a sandwich, now did he?"

Muhammed shook his head. The man grunted pessimistically, gave a surly little nod, and sat down behind the launch's steering wheel. A moment later he was grooving a white trail of foam out into the bay.

Muhammed sighed--a sigh which expressed relief, content, and the expansion of a hitherto unleashed excitement. He turned and ran rapidly back along the sh.o.r.e. A second visit to the hovels below the blockhouse resulted in a conference with another of their deplorably clad inhabitants. A taciturn fellow this, of apparently Spanish extraction.

But the fact that he wore the remains of an extremely dissolute _haik_ over a pair of remarkably tattered frieze trousers hinted at a cosmopolitanism which was b.u.t.tressed by his speech. He used the _lingua franca_ and moved amid an almost palpable reek of garlic.

After the exchange of a few rapid sentences, he relapsed into silence but not into inactivity. He paced solemnly down the sand and motioned the Moor to help in the launching of a boat. In it they pulled round the sweep of the bay into the inner port and moored themselves in the berthing which the motor launch had vacated.

The dusk had now become darkness. Lights shone in the booths; the distressing clangor of a gramophone sounded from one _albergar_, the thrumming of a mandolin from another. There was a clink of spurs as half a score of artillerymen clattered down the citadel ramp, eager for the squalid debaucheries of the port. A _guardia civile_ sauntered along the quayside edge and looked down into the waiting boat.

"Profitable evil-doing is surely at a low ebb when I find El Avispa trying to make an honest penny," he meditated.

Muhammed's companion turned.

"Why do you term me The Wasp, Senor?" he asked with a grin of complacence. "Have I been known to sting?"

The _guardia_ made a jerky motion of his thumb in the direction of the great convict establishment upon the hill.

"I don't know, _amigo_. Your exploits are scheduled up there; have a care that I do not need to refer to them. Whom do you await?"

"The Senor and the Senora who landed from the yacht," said the boatmen.

"They visit the Senor Intendente."

The _guardia_ looked doubtful.

"They landed from a boat, a motor boat," he objected.

"Precisely," agreed the other. "It appears that something affected the engine of this, some leak of the jacketing which I do not understand, but which I am informed cools the cylinders. The engineer returned while he could, enlisting my services to await and explain matters to his employer."

"Humph!" grunted the uniformed man. "His choice showed little discretion. See to it that you do not disgrace your opportunity. That seat is bespattered with fish-oil and scales. Wipe it!" He made a commanding gesture towards the offending stain, and walked majestically away.

At the far end of the Plaza he was seen to halt and observe two newcomers, who appeared leisurely descending the citadel ramp. A gold-braided official was in attendance on them, and his gestures were rapid and deferential. The _guardia civile_ saluted and spoke. Muhammed, watching keenly, gave another sigh. Fate was on his side. The very guardians of law and order were unconsciously b.u.t.tressing his plan. This officious _guardia civile_ was already explaining the situation to Miss Van Arlen and her companion. The onus of explanation--and possible suspicion--was thus being lifted from shoulders possibly less capable of bearing it. He muttered his satisfaction in a hurried undertone.

The girl and Aylmer advanced towards the quayside, the gesticulating official still in attendance. The latter eyed the waiting boat disdainfully.

"Let me demonstrate, Senora," he cried, "that our port can supply something less deplorable in the way of sh.o.r.e boats. Let me summon a pinnace and crew from the naval a.r.s.enal."

Muhammed's heart stood still. But fate smiled on him yet.

Miss Van Arlen protested that the boat would do well enough, that it was hardly fair to have kept this man waiting by the instructions of her own engineer, as it appeared, and then refuse to engage him. With a smile and bow of farewell she took her seat in the stern, while the _guardia civile_ muttered stern instructions to the rowers anent their duty. They received them in stolid silence. Aylmer took the yoke lines, and amid a renewed demonstration of respect from the men of gold braid, the boat shot out into the darkness.

A slight mist hung over the water, but the riding lights of the yacht were plain enough and Aylmer headed directly for them. He leaned forward and asked a question of the man who pulled stroke oar.

"The Senor who came ash.o.r.e with us?" he queried. "Did you mark him? Did he return in the motor boat?"

The man shrugged his shoulders.

"I did not see it," he said laconically. "Have the goodness to steer well to the right. Your present course will foul a line of net buoys."

Aylmer pulled the line and swerved as directed. And then Claire spoke, with a hint of something in her voice which was nearly akin to suspicion without exactly attaining it.

"Mr. Miller frankly puzzles me," she said.

Aylmer gave a little nod in the darkness.

"Yes," he agreed. "There is a sense of--of estrangement about him. He is good company, a _mondain_, intelligent, but not--human. One feels that at every turn."

The girl made a gesture towards the sh.o.r.e.

"What can he have to do in that--that ash heap?" she asked. "A man who poses as a _flaneur_, a _dilettante_."

"Pottery?" suggested Aylmer. "He collects; I have seen his collections.

They are sound and in good taste, without being remarkable."

"That is what I think," she acquiesced. "For the life-work of a man they are petty. It is mysterious; he is mysterious! Why did he not rejoin us this evening at the governor's office as he promised?"

Aylmer smiled.

"The ardors of the chase," he hazarded. "He is probably sitting in the sanctum of some Jew huckster, chaffering for the least worn of a collection of Rabat rugs or old Mequinez steel-work. He will come on board to-morrow to explain and bid us farewell, and we shall hear all about it."

"About what?" asked the girl enigmatically.

Aylmer smiled again.

"About--what he chooses to tell us," he answered, and jerked the yoke-line energetically, as a couple of oval dark objects loomed up on the surface just ahead.

There was a swish and a dragging sound, and the dark objects disclosed themselves alongside as net buoys. They hung below the gunwale persistently; the boat was obviously brought to a standstill.

"In spite of my warning the Senor has fouled the fishing nets," growled the boatman.

"On the contrary," retorted Aylmer, "your directions carried us straight into them. A direct course would have avoided this."

The man shipped his oar and stood up.

"The Senor will permit me to pa.s.s him?" he said. "The rudder itself must be unshipped to clear us."

Aylmer shifted his seat to one side as the man leaned over him. The next instant he had cried out--a choking cry, smothered under the folds of the sail which the man had heaped bodily upon his head. His hands were grasped and drawn together in the loop of a rope. Lashings were knitted about his limbs with almost miraculous rapidity. Stark and inert, he felt himself rolled into the bottom of the boat, his rage and horror almost suffocating him as he heard the quickly stifled cry which told him that his companion was suffering like treatment. And then, for half a minute, the rapid rumble of the rowlocks was evidence that the boat was being furiously rowed--whither he could not guess.

There was a shock of wood meeting wood. They had run alongside another vessel, or possibly the piles of a landing place. Whispered voices joined those of their captors.

He felt himself lifted, borne staggeringly forward a few paces and then lowered into arms which gripped him from below. There was the creak of reluctant hinges. He was placed not ungently upon a floor of planking.