Money to Burn/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
FOOTSTEPS
DAN'S face, as he finally raised it, was impassive, but he had been enabled to paint impassivity there only because of the danger that dangled, he now felt sure, everywhere about him. The hacienda was haunted, but most of its ghosts were alive, and the worst of them all was some evil purpose. Of that one, the patient upstairs lay in desperate fear; it terrorized the lower servants. The hunchback was driven to ungovernable actions on its account; even Don Ramon scrawled his knowledge of it across the walls of his daily life. What—for she could not be guilty of a part in it—what was it doing to the vanished girl?
Dan meant to act, but before he acted he would put one question to the planter. Meanwhile, and before interruption was possible, Don Ramon, elaborately jocular and smilingly mendacious, pretended to translate the hunchback's remarks.
“Fernando is so sensitive,” Villeta apologized. “He has an intricate and delicate soul—oh, in spite of his poor distorted shape!—and though he wishes, as he says, to oblige the Señor Medico, he so appreciated the honor of his position as guardian angel to our poor patient that you have much hurt his feelings!”
Peña, with a glare at this translation, the gist of which he plainly understood, left the room. He sent Luis, the broken-nosed Indian, back in his stead.
“But,” continued Don Ramon, thumping his chest and marking the transfer of servants merely with a lowering of his eyelids, “I—I alone am master in my hacienda. My orders shall he obeyed. Anything for the good of my workingmen. That is my motto!”
His broad white teeth showed in a radiant smile. Dan wanted to hit him, but all he said was:
“I see. And, by the way, where do you grow your sugar cane, sir?”
Ramon regarded him through quickly narrowed lids. “Ah,” said he, “you know sugar cane? And you have already, so early, been exploring my estate?”
Dan ignored the first question. “No, he answered. “I haven't been exploring your estate, but I happened to look out of my window this morning, and I couldn't see any cane. It's your main product; I wondered where you kept it.”
Don Ramon's parrot seemed to catch and hold Stone's eye. It stared unblinkingly at the American, with a glassy vindictiveness that could not be doubted. Dan wondered if, by some obscure sympathy, the bird reflected his master's feelings. There appeared to be an odd understanding between the pair; almost, there was a threat in Pedro's beady gaze. With a slight tremor, Stone looked from the brilliantly feathered creature to its master.
Villeta's head bent above his parrot now as he stroked its plumage. The voice in which he replied to his vis-à-vis was suave and unsuspicious. “You would hardly be able to see the cane from your window, my friend. We grow it on an outlying farm.”
“Rut your work”—Dan wavered between doubt and belief; he was determined to pin the man down—“that is here, isn't it, Don Ramon? The mechanical part of it?”
“How so, my friend?”
The young doctor raised a puzzled face. “Well,” said he, “last night I was sure I heard machinery.”
Villeta leaned forward over the table, pushing a bowl of goldfish from between him and Dan.
“I must sooner or later explain a small matter,” said he in his honeyed and most confidential tone. “My business is a little—well, secret.”
Dan said to himself: “Now we are getting down to cases.”
“To speak frankly,” the planter softly elaborated, “the Santo Domingan government places an exorbitant export duty on my product, so that I find it expedient to minimize, for my reports to them, its quantity. Add to this the import duty in the United States, and without some petty subterfuge I simply could not compete. I should be a ruined man.” He spread out his fat hands as if in helplessness. Pedro sympathetically cocked his head and blinked into space. “Bootlegging is perhaps of the same general nature, though what your countrymen call low grade—quite low grade. I must confess it is more profitable and, like all laws made by the powerful few, morally illegal. Personally, I am above such practice, however, just as I should not risk my excellent digestion with your famous 'home brew.' Legitimate business is another matter. The United States has no power to keep me from earning a reasonable living.” He smiled sardonically, and his thick eyebrows lifted. “So, truly, but between ourselves, I may say that I am practicing a little deception—innocent in my mind, I assure you!—on the government. As you North Americans would so picturesquely put it, you—get me?”
Dan thought he did.
“Good! Like a genuine host I place my innermost secrets in your hands. Now,” said he, as he deposited the golden remnant of fruit on his plate, dipped his fingers into a bowl of water, and proceeded to pick his teeth, “I wish to acknowledge with fitting generosity my appreciation of your services. There is no doubt in my mind. You are”—and he smiled—“saving Señor Tucker's life.”
The parrot gave a loud squawk of disbelief. The abstracted Don Ramon stroked it soothingly.
“That,” he declared, “is just now of paramount importance to me. If you can put him into working condition by the day after to-morrow—you seem to work miracles—there is no need for you to stay the month. I shall, indeed, pay you double the price I first mentioned in recognition of the cure. Meanwhile”—he beamed with his own lavishness—“I mean to pay you one thousand dollars right away.”
The man seemed determined to placate him. Sitting perfectly still at the breakfast table, Dan watched Don Ramon, with Pedro perched securely on a shoulder, hurry from the room; he listened to his footsteps along the empty corridors. Idly at first he counted, all the time resolved somehow to he loyal to his patient, though loyalty to the master was no longer to be considered. He would save Tucker not only from disease, but from death—aye, and murder, too, however long he might have to stay in this dangerous house. Yes, and because she also must somehow want saving and must certainly deserve it, lie would contrive to save that girl as well! His mind went back to her like steel to a magnet, but throughout all this process, he subconsciously continued to count the echoing steps of his host.
Subconsciously at first; then with a purposeful deliberation. The steps ascended a staircase to the left; there were then ten staccato footfalls and the sound of a door that opened on hinges hungry for oil.
Broken-nosed Luis was slowly removing the plates. Dan, desperately seeking an ally, smiled at him a little, but secured no response. The Indian was stolidly, but by no means swiftly, bent on his work.
Stone continued to listen, now with strained ears. Just then that unoiled door above was again opened and closed. Ten footsteps followed, the stairs were descended, the length of the corridor traversed. Don Ramon reëntered the dining room.
With a flourish he gave to Dan what he carried, ten brand-new hundred-dollar bills.
“Behold!” said he and struck an attitude of philanthropy. Pedro, always clinging to his shoulder, echoed it.
Dan took the money. It was, however, early in delivery, a bargained payment.
“Thanks.” He somehow could not put the proper gratitude into his tone, though his heart leaped with the thought of all that the money would buy.
But Villeta's quick eyes had shot to Luis, and they saw that the Carib, carrying a couple of plates, stopped in mid progress and stood staring. Don Ramon flushed. Before, however, he could speak, Luis, overcome with nervousness, tripped and dropped his burden. The china clattered to the tiled floor in a hundred fragments. Ramon's rage raised his huge strength.
His fist closed over the flesh at the back of the Indian's neck; his face was rough with knotted muscles as he lifted Luis, like a kitten, from the floor and, with the merest premonitory swing of his own body to gain momentum, threw him across the room. The peon's head bashed against the edge of a mahogany buffet; he fell in a heap and fainted.
Ramon laughed at the inert figure. Then, for Dan's benefit, he addressed Luis:
“No, you needn't apologize at all! Sèvres china or a stupid Indian—for me the china is the harder to replace. Pah!”
Quite readily his muscles relaxed, and he turned again, thoroughly amiable once more, to the white-lipped American. He smiled affably as he said, with a shrug of explanation that held not the slightest morsel of regret:
“The only way to keep order with these cattle is to use what you so gallantly call 'the strong arm!'”
During all that vast exertion, Pedro had marvelously remained with his claws secure in the cloth above his master's shoulder. Now Villeta plucked him delicately from his perch, kissed him, and, with a tender gesture of affectionate farewell, flung him fluttering into the air.
“Hasta la vista!” He waved to the bird. A firm, easy step carried him toward the outer door, but he gave a final reassuring smile to Dan: “Señor Medico.” He waved gayly. “Hasta la vista!”