The Recipe for Diamonds Part 18

She laughed. "I'm afraid I belong to the anti-monkish s.e.x. True, they might offer me house-room--I do not say they wouldn't--but I do not care for putting myself in the way of being refused."

"Then," said I, "I don't think a convent is very much in my way just at present. I will push on for Pollensa too."

And so thither we went together, covering the short distance to Alcudia on the afternoon of next day.

But at Alcudia there was a rude awakening, and, thanks to a woman's wit, a narrow escape awaiting me. It turned out that Cospatric and Haigh had added brains to their own council in the form of a scoundrelly anarchist, and were hot-foot upon the trail. Mrs. Cromwell heard my name mentioned as she came back into the _cafe_ from some small errand in the town, and instead of returning to the sitting-room upstairs, ordered coffee and sat down near three strangers who were talking in English. She was soon in conversation with them, and from one and the other cleverly elicited the whole tale of their adventure.

They seemed overjoyed, poor fools, to discover in her tastes for pottery, music, and tattooing, and waxed garrulous without the smallest suspicion. Much was incomprehensible to her, but she sat on there far into the night, thinking that what she could learn might be of service to me.

Made anxious by her absence, I had descended the narrow stairs to inquire after her, and nearly burst in upon their conclave. A recognition of their voices made me pull up with my fingers on the latch, and then return with a cat's tread to the place whence I had come.

A week ago my first impulse would have been to evacuate the spot there and then, so that even if I were followed, my start would be a good one. But the last few days had changed me much. From being absolutely self-reliant, I had grown to be curiously dependent again. I shrank from taking a flight alone. And, moreover, there was another thing that held me back: I could not bear to rush away so suddenly from my companion. It seemed to me that if I deserted her then, I should never see that woman more; and rather than that should befall, I was prepared to brave anything. So I waited in that bare, whitewashed sitting-room, and waited and waited till she came, fearing desperately for the safety of my great treasure, yet determined to expose it to any risk rather than beat retreat alone.

It was a torturing vigil.

The clocks had long struck midnight, and the _sereno_ had several times raised his dirge-like chaunt in the street outside, before my companion came to me. She wasted no time in preliminaries. I think she could see by my outward expression that I knew how danger threatened, and so she told in as few words as possible what she had learnt. "I hope you can understand it," she said at the conclusion. "I confess the most is gibberish to me, but it seemed to concern you, and so I thought would be interesting."

"I am deeply grateful. But let me explain."

"Don't think it an obligation, Mr. Pether. There seems to be some little mystery about the matter, and I do not want to pry into your affairs."

"I wish you would."

"Why?"

"Because then I could feel that you took an interest in me."

"Believe me, I do--a deep interest."

I groped and found her hand. It pressed mine with a slight tremble.

"You pity me because I am blind."

"I am deeply grieved for your misfortune."

"Ah"--I dropped the hand, and sighed regretfully--"only pity. But, then, what else could I expect?"

"What would you have?" she asked softly.

"I had hoped for love. I had prayed that I might be loved, as I love."

And then? Why, honestly, I do not know how it came about, but in a minute or so each knew concerning the other all there was to tell.

"I should not even mind resigning the Recipe now that I have got you,"

I told her.

"Ah, but," she said, with a little laugh, "if we are going into partnership, you and I, the interests of the firm must be looked after.

There is no packet leaving the island for two days, so you must wire Sadi in Palma to hire a steamer and have it ready for us. The train leaves La Puebla at 7.55. We will go down to meet it by that."

"But Cospatric and his friends will most certainly go by the same train."

She put her lips to my ear and whispered, and then we laughed, and I took paper and pen and wrote a long letter.

She read over my shoulder.

"Admirable. Monsieur l'Aveugle, your friends will either stay here and rave, or else start on a wild-goose chase across the mountains to Soller. And we, you and I, Nat, we will go far away, away to----"

She did not finish the sentence. She stooped and kissed me instead.

[_Michael Cospatric again resumes speech._]

CHAPTER XVII.

VENTRE a TERRE.

"Now," said Haigh, as the anarchist reappeared dressed, and tore away down the stairs, "it seems to me a reasonable supposition that there's movement in front of us to-day, and so it's as well to prepare for it.

I'm not a breakfast eater myself, and coffee and cognac will be all I can manage; but I'd advise you, as you are talented in that direction, to stow away as much solid food as you can lay your hands upon. The Lord knows what wild paper-chase that frock-coated idiot will try to lead us on when he turns up again. That is always supposing he does turn up, for, to tell the truth, I shouldn't be surprised if he made a bolt of it at this stage of the proceedings, and just played on for his own hand. And to let you into a secret, dear boy, I shouldn't be very savage if he did sell us in that way. We've got some good plunder as it is, and there'd be a devil of a lot of bother with one thing and another if we set about to collar the rest."

"I can't say," I observed, "that I should object to being a billionaire myself. I've never tried the sensation, and I dare say there are drawbacks to it; but still, after a man's been beastly hard up all his days, he doesn't mind going to a little trouble to make a big haul."

"You're energetic, old man; I'm not, and that's the difference between us. When I've specie in my pocket, I've never been in the habit of exerting myself to grab more till that's spent. I adopt the principle which obtains hereabouts, and shrug my shoulders, and say, '_Manana_.' However, if you're still on the gathering tack, I'm on for helping you to the limit of my small ability. Only, as I say, I'm not wonderfully keen on it from my own point of view."

We breakfasted at leisure, the one sketchily, the other with emphasis, according to our appet.i.tes, and had just lit tobacco when the swing-doors of the _cafe_ clashed and the anarchist rushed in.

"I have ordered a carriage," he exclaimed. "Come at once; we must meet it at the stable. There is no time to drive round here. We shall barely catch them as it is."

"Ho, ho!" said Haigh placidly; "so you've hit off the trail, have you?

Pollensa and Soller, is it?"

"No, senor; your guess was a true one. They drove off to catch the Palma train at La Puebla. But come at once, or I must go alone."

So we went off with him to the _establo_, climbed into a sacking-floored shandrydan, and rattled boisterously through the narrow streets of Alcudia. Once on the broad level road beyond the walls, the driver, who had already received his orders, made the cattle stretch out into a canter, and the pace was pretty smart. But it did not equal Taltavull's impatience, and every minute or so out went his head and beard bidding the driver to hasten and hasten; and the driver, crouched there in his little penthouse, rumbled out fierce _arr-e-ees_, and prodding forth a blue-sleeved arm beneath his blanket, lashed the scraggy mules into a gallop.

"Good for any one with a torpid liver this," said Haigh.

"Senor," exclaimed the anarchist, "how can you have the face to speak of trivialities at such a moment? Is it nothing to you what we have at stake?"

"On the contrary, it is decidedly something. But I don't let that confounded Recipe worry me unduly, as you appear to do. Cospatric, give me a match--there's a good fellow."

The old man glowered on him sourly, and turned to urge the driver for increased speed.

We flew past the brown vine-stumps, and the mule-gins above the wells, and the many ducts and gutters which drain the marshes, our animals steaming as they strained at the traces, and the driver jerking about like some frenzied jumping-jack as he forced them on. The pace was almost racing pace, and to be in a race always warms one's blood. I began to share Taltavull's excitement. He was looking at his watch ever and anon, at each time crying that we should have scarcely time to meet the train. And yet it was evident that the mules could go no faster.

I cast about me for some means of increasing the pace, and I was not long in hitting off an idea. It was not very brilliant, but I thought it worth sharing, and so spoke,--