The Key to Yesterday Part 12

La Punta is hardly a port. The s.h.i.+pping for this section of the east coast goes to Puerto Frio, and Saxon had not come out of his cabin the next morning when Rodman left. The creaking of crane chains disturbed his sleep, but he detected nothing prophetic in the sound.

To have done so, he must have understood that the customs officer at this ocean flag station was up to his neck in a revolutionary plot which was soon to burst; that the steams.h.i.+p line, because of interests of its own which a change of government would advance, had agreed to regard the rifles in the hold as agricultural implements, and that Mr.

Rodman was among the most expert of traveling salesmen for revolutions and organizers of _juntas_. To all that knowledge, he must then have added the quality of prophecy. It is certain, however, that, had he noted the other's interest in himself and coupled with that interest the coincidence that the initials of the furtive gentleman's name on the purser's list were "H. S. R.," he would have slept still more brokenly.

If he had not looked Mr. Rodman up on the list, Mr. Rodman had not been equally delinquent. The name Robert A. Saxon had by no means escaped his attention.

CHAPTER IX

Puerto Frio sits back of its harbor, a medley of corrugated iron roofs, adobe walls and square-towered churches. Along the water front is a fringe of ragged palms. At one end of the semicircle that breaks the straight coast line, a few steamers come to anchorage; at the other rise jugged groups of water-eaten rocks, where the surf runs with a cannonading of breakers, and tosses back a perpetual lather of infuriated spray. From the mole, Saxon had his first near view of the city. He drew a long inhalation of the hot air, and looked anxiously about him.

He had been asking himself during the length of his journey whether a reminder would be borne in on his senses, and awaken them to a throb of familiarity. He had climbed the slippery landing stairs with the oppressing consciousness that he might step at their top into a new world--or an old and forgotten world. Now, he drew to one side, and swept his eyes questioningly about.

Before him stretched a broad open s.p.a.ce, through which the dust swirled hot and indolent. Beyond lay the Plaza of Santo Domingo, and on the twin towers of its church two crosses leaned dismally askew. A few barefooted natives slouched across the sun-refracting square, their shadows blue against the yellow heat. Saxon's gaze swung steadily about the radius of sight, but his brain, like a paralyzed nerve, touched with the testing-electrode, gave no reflex--no response.

There was a leap at his heart which became hope as his cab jolted on to the Hotel Frances y Ingles over streets that awoke no convicting memories. He set out almost cheerfully for the American Legation to present the letters of introduction he had brought from New York and to tell his story. Thus supplied with credentials and facts, the official might be prepared to a.s.sist him.

His second step--the test upon which he mainly depended--involved a search for a yellow cathedral wall, surrounded with red flowers and facing an open area. There, Saxon wanted to stand, for a moment, against the masonry, with the sounds of the street in his ears and the rank fragrance of the vine in his nostrils. There he would ask his memory, under the influence of these reminders, the question the water-front had failed to answer.

That wandering, however, should be reserved for the less conspicuous time of night. He would spend the greater part of the day, since his status was so dubious, in the protection of his room at the hotel.

If night did not answer the question, he would go again at sunrise, and await the early glare on the wall, since that would exactly duplicate former conditions. The night influences would be softer, less cruel--and less exact, but he would go first by darkness and reconnoiter the ground--unless his riddle were solved before.

The American Legation, he was informed, stood as did his hostelry, on the main Plaza, only a few doors distant and directly opposite the palace of the President.

He was met by Mr. Partridge, the secretary of legation. The minister was spending several days at Miravista, but was expected back that evening, or to-morrow morning at the latest. In the meantime, if the secretary could be of service to a countryman, he would be glad. The secretary was a likable young fellow with frank American eyes. He fancied Saxon's face, and was accordingly cordial.

"There is quite a decent club here for Anglo-Saxon exiles," announced Mr. Partridge. "Possibly, you'd like to look in? I'm occupied for the day, but I'll drop around for you this evening, and make you out a card."

Saxon left his letters with the secretary to be given to the chief on arrival, and returned to the "Frances y Ingles."

He did not again emerge from his room until evening, and, as he left the _patio_ of the hotel for his journey to the old cathedral, the moon was s.h.i.+ning brightly between the shadows of the adobe walls and the balconies that hung above the pavements. As he went out through the street-door, Mr. Howard Stanley Rodman glanced furtively up from a corner table, and tossed away a half-smoked cigarette.

The old cathedral takes up a square. In the niches of its outer wall stand the stone effigies of many saints. Before its triple, iron-studded doors stretches a tiled terrace. At its right runs a side-street, and, attracted by a patch of clambering vine on the time-stained walls, where the moon fell full upon them, Saxon turned into the byway. At the far end, the facade rose blankly, fronting a bare drill-ground, and there he halted. The painter had not counted on the moon. Now, as he took his place against the wall, it bathed him in an almost effulgent whiteness. The shadows of the abutments were inky in contrast, and the disused and ancient cannon, planted at the curb for a corner post, stood out boldly in relief. But the street was silent and, except for himself, absolutely deserted.

For a time, he stood looking outward. From somewhere at his back, in the vaultlike recesses of the building, drifted the heavy pungency of incense burning at a shrine.

His ears were alert for the sounds that might, in their drifting inconsequence, mean everything. Then, as no reminder came, he closed his eyes, and wracked his imagination in concentrated thought as a monitor to memory. He groped after some detail of the other time, if the other time had been an actual fragment of his life. He strove to recall the features of the officer who commanded the death squad, some face that had stood there before him on that morning; the style of uniforms they wore. He kept his eyes closed, not only for seconds, but for minutes, and, when in answer to his focused self-hypnotism and prodding suggestion no answer came, there came in its stead a torrent of joyous relief.

Then, he heard something like a subdued e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, and opened his eyes upon a startling spectacle.

Leaning out from the shadow of an abutment stood a thin man, whose face in the moon showed a strange mingling of savagery and terror. It was a face Saxon did not remember to have seen before. The eyes glittered, and the teeth showed as the thin lips were drawn back over them in a snarling sort of smile. But the most startling phase of the tableau, to the man who opened his eyes upon it without warning, was the circ.u.mstance of the unknown's pressing an automatic pistol against his breast. Saxon's first impression was that he had fallen prey to a robber, but he knew instinctively that this expression was not that of a man bent on mere thievery. It had more depth and evil satisfaction. It was the look of a man who turns a trick in an important game.

As the painter gazed at the face and figure bending forward from the abutment's sooty shadow like some chimera or gargoyle fas.h.i.+oned in the wall, his first sentiment was less one of immediate peril than of argument with himself. Surely, so startling a denouement should serve to revive his memory, if he had faced other muzzles there!

When the man with the pistol spoke, it was in words that were illuminating. The voice was tremulous with emotion, probably nervous terror, yet the tone was intended to convey irony, and was partly successful.

"I presume," it said icily, "you wished to enjoy the sensation of standing at that point--this time with the certainty of walking away alive. It must be a pleasant reminiscence, but one never can tell."

The thin man paused, and then began afresh, his voice charged with a bravado that somehow seemed to lack genuineness.

"Last time, you expected to be carried away dead--and went away living. This time, you expected to walk away in safety, and, instead, you've got to die. Your execution was only delayed." He gave a short, nervous laugh, then his voice came near breaking as he went on almost wildly: "I've got to kill you, Carter. G.o.d knows I don't want to do it, but I must have security! This knowledge that you are watching me to drop on me like a hawk on a rat, will drive me mad. They've told me up and down both these G.o.d-forsaken coasts, from Ancon to Buenos Ayres, from La Boca to Concepcion, that you would get me, and now it's sheer self-defense with me. I know you never forgave a wrong--and G.o.d knows that I never did you the wrong you are trying to revenge. G.o.d knows I am innocent."

Rodman halted breathless, and stood with his flat chest rising and falling almost hysterically. He was in the state when men are most irresponsible and dangerous.

Meanwhile, a pistol held in an unsteady hand, its trigger under an uncertain finger, emphasized a situation that called for electrical thinking. To a.s.sert a mistake in ident.i.ty would be ludicrous. Saxon was not in a position to claim that. The other man seemed to have knowledge that he himself lacked. Moreover, that knowledge was the information which Saxon, as self-prosecutor, must have. The only course was to meet the other's bravado with a counter show of bravado, and keep him talking. Perhaps, some one would pa.s.s in the empty street.

"Well," demanded Rodman between gasping breaths, "why in h.e.l.l don't you say something?"

Saxon began to feel the mastery of the stronger man over the weaker, despite the fact that the weaker supplemented his inferiority with a weapon.

"It appears to me," came the answer, and it was the first time Rodman had heard the voice, now almost velvety, "it appears to me that there isn't very much for me to say. You seem to be in the best position to do the talking."

"Yes, d.a.m.n you!" accused the other, excitedly. "You are always the same--always making the big pyrotechnic display! You have grandstanded and posed as the debonair adventurer, until it's come to be second nature. That won't help now!" The thin man's braggadocio changed suddenly to something like a whine.

"You know I'm frightened, and you're throwing a bluff. You're a fool not to realize that it's because I'm so frightened that I am capable of killing you. I've craned my neck around every corner, and jumped at every shadow since that day--always watching for you. Now, I'm going to end it. I see your plan as if it were printed on a gla.s.s pane.

You've discovered my doings, and, if you left here alive, you'd inform the government."

Here, at least, Saxon could speak, and speak truthfully.

"I don't know anything, or care anything, about your plans," he retorted, curtly.

"That's a d.a.m.ned lie!" almost shrieked the other man. "It's just your style. It's just your infernal chicanery. I wrote you that letter in good faith, and you tracked me. You found out where I was and what I was doing. How you learned it, G.o.d knows, but I suppose it's still easy for you to get into the confidence of the _juntas_. The moment I saw you on the boat, the whole thing flashed on me. It was your fine Italian brand of work to come down on the very steamer that carried my guns--to come ash.o.r.e just at the psychological moment, and turn me over to the authorities on the exact verge of my success! Your brand of humor saw irony in that--in giving me the same sort of death you escaped. But it's too late. Vegas has the guns in spite of you!

There'll be a new president in the palace within three days." The man's voice became almost triumphant. He was breathing more normally once again, as his courage gained its second wind.

Saxon was fencing for time. Incidentally, he was learning profusely about the revolution of to-morrow, but nothing of the revolution of yesterday.

"I neither know, nor want to know, anything about your dirty work," he said, shortly. "Moreover, if you think I'm bent on vengeance, you are a d.a.m.ned fool to tell me."

Rodman laughed satirically.

"Oh, I'm not so easy as you give me credit for being. You are trying to 'kiss your way out,' as the thieves put it. You're trying to talk me out of killing you, but do you know why I'm willing to tell you all this?" He halted, then went on tempestuously. "I'll tell you why. In the first place, you know it already, and, in the second place, you'll never repeat any information after to-night. It's idiotic perhaps, but my reason for not killing you right at the start is that I've got a fancy for telling you the true facts, whether you choose to believe them or not. It will ease my conscience afterward."

Saxon stood waiting for the next move, bracing himself for an opportunity that might present itself, the pistol muzzle still pointed at his chest.

"I'm not timid," went on the other. "You know me. Howard Rodman, speakin' in general, takes his chances. But I am afraid of you, more afraid than I am of the devil in h.e.l.l. I know I can't bluff you. I saw you stand against this wall with the soldiers out there in front, and, since you can't be frightened off, you must be killed." The man's voice gathered vehemence as he talked, and his face showed growing agitation. "And the horrible part is that it's all a mistake, that I'd rather be friends with you, if you'd let me. I never was informant against you."

He paused, exhausted by his panic and his flow of words. Saxon, with a strong effort, collected his staggered senses.

"Why do you think I come for vengeance?" he asked.

"Why do I think it?" The thin man laughed bitterly. "Why, indeed? What except necessity or implacable vengeance could drive a man to this G.o.d-forsaken strip of coast? And you--you with money enough to live richly in G.o.d's country, you whose very face in these boundaries invites imprisonment or death! What else could bring you? But I knew you'd come--and, so help me G.o.d, I'm innocent."

A sudden idea struck Saxon. This might be the cue to draw on the frightened talker without self-revelation.

"What do you want me to believe were the real facts?" he demanded, with an a.s.sumption of the cold incredulity that seemed expected of him.