The Unspeakable Perk Part 9

In one of the side caverns off the main dining-room of the Hotel Kast, the yacht's owner, breakfasting with the yacht's tutelary G.o.ddess and the G.o.ddess's determined pursuer, discussed the blockade. Though Miss Polly Brewster kept up her end of the conversation, her thoughts were far upon a breeze-swept mountain-side. How, she wondered, had that dry and strange hermit of the wilds known the news before the city learned it? With her wonder came annoyance over her lost wager. The beetle man, she judged, would be coolly superior about it. So she delivered herself of sundry stinging criticisms regarding the conduct of the Caracunan Administration in having stupidly involved itself in a blockade. She even spoke of going to see the President and apprising him of her views.

"I'd like to tell him how to run this foolish little island," said she, puckering a quaintly severe brow.

"Now is the appointed time for you to plunge in and change the course of empire," her father suggested to her. "There's an official morning reception at ten o'clock. We're invited."

"Then I shan't go. I wouldn't give the old goose the satisfaction of going to his fiesta."

"Meaning the n.o.ble and patriotic President?" said Carroll. "Treason most foul! The cuartels are full of chained prisoners who have said less."

"Father can go with Mr. Sherwen. I shall do some important shopping,"

announced Miss Brewster. "And I don't want any one along."

Thus apprised of her intentions, Carroll wrapped himself in gloom, and retired to write a letter.

Miss Polly's shopping, being conducted mainly through the medium of the sign language, presently palled upon her sensibilities, and about twelve o'clock she decided upon a drive. Accordingly she stepped into one of the pretty little toy victorias with which the city swarms.

"Para donde?" inquired the driver.

His fare made an expansive gesture, signifying "Anywhere." Being an astute person in his own opinion, the Jehu studied the pretty foreigner's attire with an appraising eye, profoundly estimated that so much style and elegance could be designed for only one function of the day, whirled her swiftly along the two-mile drive of the Calvario Road, and landed her at the President's palace, half an hour after the reception was over. Supposing from the coachman's signs that she was expected to go in and view some public garden, she paid him, walked far enough to be stopped by the apologetic and appreciative guard, and returned to the highway, to find no carriage in sight. Never mind, she reflected; she needed the exercise. Accordingly, she set out to walk.

But the noonday sun of Caracuia has a bite to it. For a time, Miss Brewster followed the car tracks which were her sure guide from the palace to the Kast; briskly enough, at first. But, after three cars had pa.s.sed her, she began to think longingly of the fourth. When it stopped at her signal, it was well filled. The most promising ingress appeared to be across the blockade of a robust and much-begilded young man, who was occupying the familiar position of an "end-seat hog," and displaying the full glories of the Hochwaldian dress uniform.

Herr von Plaanden was both sleepy and cross, for, having lingered after the reception to have a word and several drinks with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, he had come forth to find neither coach nor automobile in attendance. There had been nothing for it but the plebeian trolley.

Accordingly, when he heard a foreign voice of feminine timbre and felt a light pressure against his knee, he only snorted. What he next felt against his knee was the impact of a half-shove, half-blow, brisk enough to slue him around. The intruder pa.s.sed by to the vacant seat, while the now thoroughly awakened and annoyed Hochwaldian whirled, to find himself looking into a pair of expressionless brown goggles.

With a snort of fury, the diplomat struck backward. The gla.s.ses and the solemn face behind them dodged smartly. The next moment, Herr von Plaanden felt his neck encircled by a clasp none the less warm for being not precisely affectionate. He was pinned. Twisting, he worked one arm loose.

"Be careful!" warned the cool voice of Polly Brewster, addressing her defender. "He's trying to draw his sword."

The gogglesome one's grip slid a little lower. The car had now stopped, and the conductor came forward, brandishing what was apparently the wand of authority, designed to be symbolic rather than utile, since at no point was it thicker than a man's finger. From a safe distance on the running-board, he flourished this, whooping the while in a shrill and dissuasive manner. Somewhere down the street was heard a responsive yell, and a small, jerky, olive-green policia pranced into view.

Thereupon a strange thing happened. The rescuing knight relaxed his grip, leaped the back of his seat, dropped off the car, and darted like a hunted hare across a compound, around a wall, and so into the unknown, deserting his lady fair, if not precisely in the hour of greatest need, at least in a situation fraught with untoward possibilities. Indeed, it seemed as if these possibilities might promptly become actualities, for the diplomat turned his stimulated wrath upon the girl, and was addressing her in tones too emphatic to be mistaken when a large angular form interposed itself, landing with a flying leap on the seat between them.

"Move!" the newly arrived one briefly bade Herr von Plaanden.

Herr von Plaanden, feeling the pressure of a shoulder formed upon the generous lines of a gorilla's, and noting the approach of the policia on the other side, was fain to obey.

"Don't you be scared, miss," said Cluff, turning to the girl. "It's all over."

"I'm not frightened," she said, with a catch in her voice.

"Of course you ain't," he agreed rea.s.suringly. "You just sit quiet--"

"But I--I--I'm MAD, clean through."

"You gotta right. You gotta perfect right. Now, if this was New York, I'd spread that gold-laced guy's face--"

"I'm not angry at him. Not particularly, I mean."

"No?" queried her friend in need. "What got your goat, then?"

Miss Brewster shot a quick and scornful glance over her shoulder.

"Oh, HIM!" interpreted the athlete. "Well, he made his get-away like a man with some reason for being elsewhere."

"Reason enough. He was afraid."

"Maybe. Being afraid's a queer thing," remarked her escort academically.

"Now, me, I'm afraid of a fuzzy caterpillar. But I ain't exactly timid about other things."

"You certainly aren't. And I don't know how to thank you."

"Aw, that's awright, miss. What else could I do? Our departed friend, Professor Goggle-Eye, when he made his jump, landed right in my shirt front. 'Take my place,' he says; 'I've got an engagement.' Well, I was just moving forward, anyway, so it was no trouble at all, I a.s.sure you,"

a.s.serted the doughty Cluff, achieving a truly elegant conclusion.

"Most fortunate for me," said the girl sweetly. "Mr. Perkins scuttled away like one of his own little wretched beetles. When I see him again--"

"Again? Oh, well, if he's a friend of yours, accourse he'd awtuv stood by--"

"He isn't!" she declared, with unnecessary vehemence.

"Don't you be too hard on him, miss," argued her escort. "Seems to me he did a pretty good job for you, and stuck to it until he found some one else to take it up."

"Then why didn't he stand by you?"

"Oh, I don't carry any 'Help-wanted' signs on me. You know, miss, you can't size up a man in this country like he was at home. Now, me, I'd have natcherly hammered that Von Plaanden gink all to heh--heh--hash.

But did I do it? I did not. You see, I got a little mining concession out here in the mountains, and if I was to get into any diplomatic mix-up and bring in the police, it'd be bad for my business, besides maybe getting me a couple of tons of bracelets around my pretty little ankles. Like as not your friend, Professor Lamps, has got an equally good reason for keeping the peace."

"Do you mean that this man will make trouble for you over this?"

"Not as things stand. So long as nothing was done--no arrests or anything like that--he'll be glad to forget it, when he sobers up. I'll forget it, too, and maybe, miss, it wouldn't be any harm to anybody if you did a turn at forgetting, yourself."

But neither by the venturesome Miss Polly nor by her athlete servitor was the episode to be so readily dismissed. Late that afternoon, when the Brewster party were sitting about iced fruit drinks amid the dingy and soiled elegance of the Kast's one private parlor, Mr. Sherwen's card arrived, followed shortly by Mr. Sherwen's immaculate self, creaseless except for one furrow of the brow.

"How you are going to get out of here I really don't know," he said.

"Why should we hurry?" inquired Miss Brewster. "I don't find Caracuna so uninteresting."

"Never since I came here has it been so charming," said the legation representative, with a smiling bow. "But, much as your party adds to the landscape, I'm not at all sure that this city is the most healthful spot for you at present."

"You mean the plague?" asked Mr. Brewster.

"Not quite so loud, please. 'Healthful,' as I used it, was, in part, a figure of speech. Something is brewing hereabout."

"Not a revolution?" cried Miss Polly, with eyes alight. "Oh, do brew a revolution for me! I should so adore to see one!"

"Possibly you may, though I hardly think it. Some readjustment of foreign relations, at most. The Dutch blockade is, perhaps, only a beginning. However, it's sufficient to keep you bottled up, though if we could get word to them, I dare say they would let a yacht go out."