Complete works of talbot.., p.307
Complete Works of Talbot Mundy, page 307
“ — and it’s a case of saving Sherry—”
“He’d be pap for her! She knows his dad’s a rich man. She’ll play him the way she did Calhoun in Louisiana — and marry his dad under the boy’s nose if she’d half a chance!” Wahl said grinning. “She’s a stunner to look at — dances like the devil — and the mask adds the attractive mystery. She’ll vamp young Sherry to a fare-you-well, and he’s the kind of youngster who takes it seriously.”
“Yes — I guess we’ll have to interfere,” Dad answered gloomily.
“Tell you what, then.” Wahl laid a finger on the middle button of Dad’s waistcoat. “I’ve scared ’em. They’ll be on the watch for me. Suppose you go there tomorrow night and see if you can’t get next to her. Worm your way in, and strip that mask off her. Get her story. Force a confession. I’ll meet you outside afterward.”
They agreed on that, but Dad did not like it. He did not like Wahl for one thing, and for another — he was useless as a muckraker — altogether too soft-hearted, and too inclined to help the under-dog.
However, he was no more willing than was Mansfield senior to see Sherry caught in the net of a designing female, so he fell in with Wahl’s plan.
He tossed on his bed that night in the room in a boarding-house that he had occupied for fifteen years, wondering just why he felt miserable at the prospect of the task in front of him. He decided at last it was Wahl. He had utterly no use for Wahl — detested him.
“That devil can’t do right — can’t be on the right side of anything!” he muttered.
Strangely enough, he felt better when he came to that decision. He was glad that he, and not Wahl, had the task of cornering La Conchita and disillusioning Sherry.
Dad was not due at the office normally until three o’clock but he was there the next afternoon at two, laid the photographs of Jacqueline on Sherry’s desk, and sat down at his own to smoke cigarettes and wait. Sherry came in ten minutes ahead of time and sauntered over with rather discouraged air, leaning against his desk and waiting until Dad should choose to say what the afternoon assignments were. It was several minutes before he noticed the photographs; but he showed then the kind of timber he was made of. His heart went to his mouth; he could not help giving a start of surprise; but he covered it. He turned his back toward Dad. Then, when he was sure of himself, he picked up the photos, examined them, dropped them casually on the desk and looked out of the window.
“Wahl sent for those from New Orleans,” said Dad. “He thought you’d like to look them over.”
“Why?” asked Sherry, without betraying the slightest interest.
“Wahl believes that girl’s in San Francisco.”
But Sherry was surprise-proof. He had good reason to believe that too. He knew the whole office, his father included, suspected him of having met Jacqueline Lanier, and he was not fool enough to doubt that those photos were laid on his desk for a trap. So Dad Lawrence was also league against him! He understood now why his father had turned him over to Dad to do this idiotic social stuff. All right. He was all the more glad he had not taken Dad into his confidence, as he had once thought of doing.
“Where do we go from hear?” he demanded with a bored air. “What dummy gets gilded this afternoon?”
“We’ll keep together until dinner-time,” Dad answered. “After that well have to divide forces. There’s a concert you’ll have to cover at the Auditorium while I do the El Toro.”
Sherry looked relieved, but said nothing. He could cover the concert by asking for a program at the door; a fool could write up a concert without sitting through it, and that would give him several hours to hunt for Jacqueline. He had a notion this time of searching through the hospital wards for her, and after that, if there was any time left, of questioning the matron at the Y.W.C.A., although he would have to do that carefully for fear of starting others on the trail.
He did not quite deceive Dad Lawrence. Dad noticed the look of relief on his face when he learned he was to be alone that evening; and Dad had covered far too many concerts in the same way not to guess what Sherry intended. He was not quite sure that when Sherry first saw the photos he had not checked a movement of surprise; and he was more than ever, if as vaguely as ever, sure, that some sort of love-affair was at the bottom of his young friend’s discontent.
“You seem to have no ambition left. What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“I hate the Tribune, that’s all!” Sherry exploded. “I’m sick of the whole damned business!”
That answer settled it, as far as Dad was concerned. Of all conceivable disasters, the worst would be for Sherry to fail to follow in his father’s footsteps! It would break old Mansfield’s heart a second time; and the result of that would be nothing that a man could calculate, except that it would be hell with the lid shut down! The Tribune would cease to be a newspaper; it would become a slaughterhouse! The “old man” would turn on Sherry and cast him off. Thereafter he would relapse into the condition he was in for a year after Mrs. Mansfield left him — almost a maniac, with his bitterest resentment turned on his truest friends, and obsessed by one purpose: to destroy whatever woman’s reputation he could get his claws on.
Rather than that, Dad would probe any woman’s anonymity, and help, if necessary, to hound her out of San Francisco!
The afternoon hardened Dad’s resolution. Whether or not her name was Jacqueline Lanier — whether or not she and La Conchita were the same — some woman was having a disastrous effect on Sherry. It could not be anything else than a woman. The boy was not drinking. He was not a gambler. He had no low companions. He was simply moping; taking no interest in his work; brown-studying all the time, and looking almost sick with worry. The least that Dad felt he could do was to investigate this dancer in a mask and either expose her identity or otherwise eliminate her from the list of possibilities. Something had to be done, and done soon, or Sherry would go all to pieces.
So by the time Dad reached the El Toro restaurant he was as nearly in an iron mood as he ever had been in his life. He chose a table under the balcony, midway down the room, from which he could watch the stage without attracting attention to himself, and ordered dinner. News of La Conchita had already spread among the folk who dine in cabarets; some of the morning papers had carried short paragraphs about her; there were owners of other cabarets there, as well as a much better-dressed crowd than the El Toro had ever entertained before; the place was full, and it was not going to be easy to “pull” anything without attracting notice. Papa Pantopoulos was hurrying to and fro with illegal drinks under his jacket, doing a roaring business, sudden prosperity going to his head, as his “Conchita cocktails” were going to the heads of some of the guests.
There were seven in the orchestra tonight, instead of five. Flowers on the tables. Four new waiters. Even the balcony was crowded. The space that had been cleared for dancing in the middle of the floor was as small as Papa had dared to make it, to allow for extra tables, which were jammed so close together that the guests could hardly sit without nudging one another’s elbows.
Dad caught Pantopoulos by the coat-tails as he hurried by, and the Greek jumped swiftly at conclusions. “Cocktail, sir?” he whispered behind his hand. “La Conchita cocktail — very good! Have to serve it in a coffee cup and charge for ‘service,’ but—”
Dad nodded. “Tell me, will La Conchita come off stage?”
“Not tonight, sir. Can’t persuade her. Between you and me, she’s a mystery. I’ve heard it whispered she’s a member of the Russian royal family, escaped from Siberia! I’ll swear she’s not used to dancing in public — though she’s wonderful — wonderful! She’s not so nervous as she was. Perhaps tomorrow night — my advice is, come again tomorrow night, sir! Meanwhile—”
He hurried away with a sidewise grin, to chivvy waiters and mix cocktails in a closet between dining-room and kitchen; and he was hardly gone before a gong rang and the curtain rose. For the next five minutes, Dad sat spell- bound.
He had seen more finished dancing — any amount of it; although none much more so than Ramon’s. It was something indefinable about La Conchita’s movements that made him oblivious to the dinner growing cold in front of him. He could not explain to himself just what it was. The black mask made her look mischievous; yet experience had taught Dad a lot about reading faces, and he could not force himself to believe that the lips below the mask were hard or calculating. They were kissable; and if there was anything else remarkable about them, they possibly suggested sadness.
Her whole appearance struck Dad as incongruous in that second-rate restaurant. It seemed to him that, while she was not at all too skillful to be dancing there, showing only great natural gift and a little stage training, she was none the less out of her element. Her dancing looked pathetic; what seemed to the rest of the crowd to be diablerie struck him as deliberate courage, although he could not analyze the impression. She was wild at moments; but it seemed to him that in those moments she had thrown her very heart away and was dancing to kill her own thoughts. When the curtain came down — and rose half a dozen times — Dad felt almost positive that she took no pleasure in the storm of applause; she stood stone-still, and looked defiant.
“Well, of course, if she’s the Lanier girl she was nicely raised, and that accounts for some of it,” he told himself. “But if she’s a devil, she’s a brand-new type. What beats me is, why — with all that talent, and those good looks, and her newspaper notoriety, if she is the Lanier girl — and if she’s the devil Wahl says — why — in-the-name-of-Satan — does she dance in this joint, and hide her identity, instead of selling her soul for much fine money? Why doesn’t she court publicity? There’s something out of focus somewhere!”
He received the same impression during the second dance, only if anything more definitely. There was something in her dancing-partner’s attitude that was more than clever trouping; something in her attitude toward Ramon that was more than art. Ramon was nervous, it seemed to Dad; he hardly dared to lay his hands on her when they came together and swayed into a tango step, and more than once she whirled away from him when he seemed least to expect it. If the man had not been a skillful improviser the dance would have collapsed.
Probably Dad was the only individual in the room who was watching critically; the rest were swept away by La Conchita’s good looks, and by the novelty of seeing anything so beautiful in such a tawdry setting. It seemed to Dad that she was doing something she detested; that she was furious at being forced to do it; and that that fury was the secret of the plan with which the dance went over.
“Which makes it possible she may be the Lanier girl,” he admitted to himself.
She appeared four times, and in the intervals the guests milled in a helpless mob on the floor between the tables while the orchestra helped them to deceive themselves that they were dancing. At the end of La Conchita’s fourth turn Dad began to consider ways and means, and plucked at Papa’s jacket as he hurried by.
“What’s it worth to introduce me to La Conchita?” he asked.
“Aha! That’s what they all want!” said the Greek, and slipped away.
Dad considered the situation. It was no use trying to reach the stage by the door at the side, because everybody would be able to see him and the waiters would undoubtedly interfere. Wahl had alarmed them the night before, or so he said, and the Greek would be on the alert. There would be a back door leading from stage to street undoubtedly; in fact, Wahl had said there was; but that would almost certainly be locked. There would be a fire-escape, though — and neighboring roofs. Dad paid his bill, and went outside to see. He hesitated for a long time in the shadow of a doorway, and was at great pains to make sure there were no witnesses, before he made up his mind to try the fire-escape, which he had to reach by standing on an ash-can in order to jump and catch the lower rung.
CHAPTER 27.
“All the news the public wants.”
Jacqueline’s second evening was more distressing than the first. The novelty was gone. She had a feeling in her bones that the mask did not disguise her. Ramon and Papa Pantopoulos had both been bragging about the first night’s success, and Ramon had shown her clippings from the morning papers. She was nervous. Cervanez made her more so by over-friendliness, trying to caress her when the one thing in the world she wanted was to be let alone.
Then Ramon grew impossible. He had entered her room upstairs on some pretext and made such a scene that Consuelo finally drove him out with a hat- pin.
“Conchita, I adore you! I idolize you! Marry me, or I will kill you and myself!”
The threat brought ghastly reminiscences — not that Jacqueline, or Ramon himself, or any one believed a word of it. Not even his mother Cervanez was in the least alarmed about his killing himself. The fact was that he and Cervanez had laid their heads together and decided it must be now or never; he must marry her before offers of better engagements should begin pouring in. Jacqueline understood that perfectly; and Ramon had enough self-esteem to believe that no young woman could withstand his tempestuous ardor; enough imagination, too, to believe himself really in love for the moment.
“There is in me the blood of the Braganzas,” he assured her when she turned away from him. “That is royal blood, Senorita. I am not of no account! My ancestor was one of the first founders of Brazil. I am poor, it is true, but I have dignity and together we might grow rich!”
It would have been comic, if it had not been so mortifying. She must dance in public, with this man! She owed him money. And she suspected, just as she could see through his amorous protests to the avarice beneath, that he would betray her at the first profitable opportunity. It made her almost physically sick to think that her fate lay in the keeping of him and his mother.
It was that afternoon that Jacqueline first thought of suicide. The meanness — the utter drabness of the life — the confinement — hiding like a felon in shabby rooms above a third-rate restaurant, with the key kept by a Greek, and the meals sent up in secret, so that even the kitchen staff should not know for certain where she was staying — the thought of what the newspapers would print about her, if they should ever discover her identity, and the likelihood that they might discover it at any minute, all seemed to be heaped on her at once and made her so homesick and wretched that death looked infinitely preferable.
She wished a thousand times over that Calhoun had shot and killed her when he killed Desmio and himself. “Pray, dear — pray to the Blessed Virgin,” Consuelo urged, setting the example so often that it became monotonous to watch. But Jacqueline did not want to pray. She was rebellious against heaven. There was nothing to pray for. Desmio was dead. Sherry was dead as far as she was concerned. The devil, in the shape of Wahl, had painted her black, and she would never — never — disgrace Sherry by letting his name be associated with her in any way. She wished she had never met him — wished she had been drowned before he found her — anything! It was cruel to have met and loved him, for it made her heart ache so terribly whenever her thought dwelt on him for as much as a second — made it ache even more than when she thought of Desmio.
But you couldn’t commit suicide with Consuelo looking on. And she knew it would be wicked. But what did it matter if she were wicked? What had she ever done to merit all this misery? And could anything be worse? Some one had told her that suicides go wandering for ever and ever in empty space, with nowhere to go and nobody to love them and nothing to do; but would that be worse than this?
And then came supper-time — and time to dress — and then the summons to go down and dance; and she was still alive, and still regretted it! She could hardly endure the sight or touch of Ramon. He seemed common. Her whole nature was revolting against vulgarity and against the mean expedients of poverty — against manners laid on over corking avarice, and the thought of being beholden to such people. She could have screamed when Ramon put his arm around her as the curtain rose. But courage bred and born in her; the harder it was tried the more it seemed to rally in emergency and there were deeper depths to which she might sink; she knew that since the Chinaman had talked to her in the basement about “plittee girlee catchee lich man.” And so her dancing was even more full of energy and recklessness than on the preceding night. She flung herself into it. She would not fail. She would not let those people see her broken and frightened and sick at heart. She hated them all, and herself more than all of them together. But they should not know she was broken-hearted. And she would not yield to her own distress. She would be brave. Desmio had always said that bravery was the last true test of character.
The crowd was even noisier than on the previous night, but the applause meant nothing to her. The brightness in her eyes was not pleasure, nor even excitement, it was the stuff with which battles are fought; and after the fourth turn Ramon knew better than to accede to the Greek’s importunity and try to persuade her to dance a fifth time. Ramon went on alone and did creditably, keeping the crowd spending its money in the hope that Jacqueline would reappear. Consuelo sat at the foot of the stairs on guard against any one who might try to invade the stage, as Wahl had done the night before. Jacqueline went upstairs alone.
She felt there was only one thing in the world that could keep her from breaking down. She must see Pepita — wake the child if necessary. She must love some one who was not afraid. Some one who was not afraid must love her. There was fear behind her — fear in front — fear in the shadows at the corners of the stair — fear of Wahl! She could see Wahl’s face in the dark whichever way she looked — dreaded to see him step out from a corner — almost felt his cold hand on her wrist and behind Wahl, again was the Chinaman. “Plittee girlee—” Pepita was only afraid of bogies. Jacqueline could laugh at bogies, and that might help her to feel easy about Wahl. She must do something. Pepita was the only chance.
But when she entered the shabby bedroom at the end of a long dark passage Pepita was fast asleep, with the monkey curled up on the blankets beside her; and she had not the heart to wake either of them. She would have loved to pick up the monkey and hug it to her breast, but the little animal looked so like a child as it lay there, and so comfortable, that she could not bring herself to disturb it. She waited for several minutes, hoping Pepita would wake of her own accord; then looked about her, wondering what to do next. She knew she would grow hysterical if she went to her own room.
