The White Mice Part 7

When the gla.s.ses were filled the young Venezuelan turned to those standing about him on the gra.s.s and commanded silence. He now spoke in excellent English, but Roddy noted that those of the older men who could not understand regarded him with uneasiness.

"I ask you, my friends," cried the Venezuelan, "to drink to the name of Forrester. How much," he exclaimed, "does not that name mean to my unhappy country. I--myself--that _my_ life should be taken--it is nothing; but that it should be saved for my country by one of that name is for us an omen--a lucky omen. It means," he cried, the soft, liquid eyes flas.h.i.+ng, "it means success. It means--" As though suddenly conscious of the warning frowns of his friends, he paused abruptly, and with a graceful bow, and waving his gla.s.s toward Roddy, said quietly, "Let us drink to the son of a good friend of Venezuela--to Mr. Forrester."

Not until the landau was well on its way to Willemstad did Roddy deem it wise to make a certain inquiry.

"What," he asked of the driver, "is the name of the gentleman that the other gentleman tried to shoot?"

The driver turned completely in his seat. His eyes were opened wide in amazement.

"You don't know that gentleman!" he exclaimed. "I think everybody know _that_ gentleman. He be very brave Venezuela gentleman; he be Colonel Vega."

As though sure of the effect of that name, the driver paused dramatically, but, except that the two Americans looked inquiringly at each other, they made no sign.

"Mebbe I better call that gentleman--Pino?" the driver suggested.

"Everybody call him Pino, just like he be everybody's brother." The man showed his teeth broadly, in a delighted grin. "The market womens, the sailor mens, the police mens, the black peoples, and the white gentlemens, everybodys--call him Pino. Pino he be exiled. If he go to his country that President Alvarez he say he shoot him. So Pino go over that way," with his whip he pointed to the east. "They say he go live in Paris. But yesterday he come in that steamer, and all the peoples be waiting at that wharf. Everybody be glad to see Pino."

"Everybody but that man with that gun," suggested Roddy.

The driver rolled his eyes darkly and pursed his lips. "That be bad man," he said.

"Did President Alvarez," inquired Roddy pleasantly, "send that bad man over here to shoot the too popular Pino?"

Peter uttered a sudden growl of indignation.

"Look where you are driving!" he ordered.

When the negro had turned to his horses Peter stared at Roddy long and steadily.

"What that parrot said of you," he declared grimly, "was true."

Those Venezuelans who at once had set forth on their ponies to overtake the would-be a.s.sa.s.sin already had brought word of the attempt upon Colonel Vega to Willemstad, and the repose of the peaceful burgh was greatly ruffled. The arrival of the young men increased the excitement, and, though they fled to their rooms, from their balcony overlooking the wharf they could hear their driver, enthroned upon his box seat, describing the event to an intent and eager audience.

As Peter was changing into dry clothes he held his watch so that Roddy could note the hour.

"How long would you have said we have been living on this island?" he asked.

"Oh, at least a week!" exclaimed Roddy. "I have had more excitement than I could get in New York in a year, and we haven't been here twelve hours!"

"But it is all over now," Peter announced. "We can't stay here. We're getting too chummy with this Venezuelan crowd, thanks to you."

"What have I done now?" complained Roddy.

"You can't help being who you are," admitted Peter, "but you can see that this town is a red-hot incubator for revolutions. Every one in it thinks of nothing else, and every one thinks you are in deep with your father against Alvarez, and if we linger here Alvarez will think so, too. We've got to get back to Porto Cabello where we have a clean bill of health."

Roddy had stretched himself upon his cot, in preparation for his afternoon siesta, but he sat upright, his face filled with dismay.

"And not see the Rojas family?" he cried.

Peter growled indignantly.

"See them! How can you see them?" he demanded. "We only drove past their house, along a public road, and already everybody in town has a flashlight picture of us doing it."

"But," objected Roddy, "we haven't got our credentials."

"We'll have to do without them," declared Peter. "I tell you, if you get mixed up with Brother Pino when you get back to Porto Cabello you'll go to jail. And what chance will we have then of saving General Rojas? He will stay in prison and die there. As White Mice," announced Peter firmly, "we have our work to do, and we must not be turned aside by anybody's revolution, your father's, or Pino Vega's, or anybody's.

We're White Mice, first, last and all the time. Our duty isn't to take life but to save it." As though suddenly surprised by a new idea Peter halted abruptly.

"I suppose," he demanded scornfully, "you think you prevented a murder this morning, and you will be claiming the White Mice medal for saving life?"

"I certainly will," declared Roddy cheerfully, "and you will have to certify I earned it, because you saw me earn it."

"But I didn't," declared Peter. "I was under the table."

Roddy closed his eyes and again fell back upon the cot. For so long a time was he silent that Peter, who had gone out upon the balcony, supposed him asleep, when Roddy suddenly raised himself on his elbow.

"Anyway," he began abruptly, "we can't leave here until the boat takes us away, three days from now. I'll bet in three days I'll get all the credentials we want."

Roddy had been awake since sunrise, the heat was soporific, the events of the morning exhausting, and in two minutes, unmindful of revolutions, indifferent to spies, to plots and counter-plots, he was sleeping happily. But as he slumbered, in two lands, at great distances apart, he and his affairs were being earnestly considered.

On the twenty-seventh floor of the Forrester Building his father, with perplexed and frowning brows, studied a cablegram; in the Casa Blanca, Senora Rojas and her daughters listened in amazement to a marvelous tale. Had it not been their faithful friend and jealous guardian, the American Consul, who was speaking, they could not have credited it.

At the Forrester Building the cablegram had been just translated from the secret code of the company and placed upon the desk of Mr.

Forrester. It was signed by Von Amberg, and read: "To-day at meeting your party, unknown man fired three shots Vega; Young Forrester overpowered man; Vega unhurt; man escaped. Understand young Forrester not in our confidence. Please instruct."

Three times Mr. Forrester read the cablegram, and then, laying it upon his knee, sat staring out of the open window.

Before his physical eyes were deep canons of office buildings like his own, towering crag above crag, white curling columns of smoke from busy tugboats, and the great loom of the Brooklyn Bridge with its shuttles of clattering cable-cars. But what he saw was his son, alone in a strange land, struggling with an unknown man, a man intent on murder. With a hand that moved unsteadily the Light-house King lifted the desk telephone and summoned the third vice-president, and when Mr.

Sam Caldwell had entered, silently gave him the cablegram.

Sam Caldwell read it and exclaimed with annoyance:

"Looks to me," he commented briskly, "as though they know why Pino came back. Looks as though they had sent this fellow to do him up, before we can----"

In a strange, thin voice, Mr. Forrester stopped him sharply.

"If the boy'd been hurt--they'd have said so, wouldn't they?" he demanded.

Sam Caldwell recognized his error. Carefully he reread the cablegram.

"Why, of course," he a.s.sented heartily. "It says here he overpowered the other fellow: says 'Vega unhurt.'"

In the same unfamiliar, strained tone Mr. Forrester interrupted. "It doesn't say Roddy is unhurt," he objected.

The young man laughed rea.s.suringly.

"But the very fact they don't say so shows--why, they'd know that's what you most want to hear. I wouldn't worry about Roddy. Not for a minute."

Embarra.s.sed by his own feeling, annoyed that Sam Caldwell should have discovered it, Mr. Forrester answered, "_You_ wouldn't. He isn't _your_ son."

He reached for a cable form, and wrote rapidly: