Money to Burn/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
A SHADOW AT A DOOR
FROM San Lorenzo's water front, Dan paced slowly inland, the broad man in white shielding his retreat, one hand agrip of the veiled girl beside him. They skirted half the town.
“To the right now!”
His smiling dark face bent forward and over the shorter Dan. He popped a cigar into the American's wonderingly opened mouth and plumped his flamboyant Panama on the American's head, which was two sizes too small for it.
“So!” he said in a rich tone of self-congratulation at his foresight. “You must not attract too much attention, but I may be a gentleman taking hatless the early air.”
They turned into a street lined by tamarind trees. Barefoot mulattoes made way for them with the inherent courtesy that the Domingan always exhibits on a thoroughfare. In the middle distance two soldiers in ragged blue lounged toward them.
“Stop!”
The stranger paused before a providential public surrey, drawn by two humble horses. The negro driver glowed and saluted with his whip. Then he looked inquiry.
“To Sanchez,” Stone's protector directed the jehu, “and double pay for double speed once we've turned the corner of the Corniche.” He lifted the girl into the front seat and overshadowed Dan in the rear. “To the coffeehouse of José Logrono in the Street of the Pink Turtledoves. And thereafter—forget!”
The driver appeared used to such instructions. Without parley, he lashed his beasts, and Dan sank against the moth-eaten cushions, too weak and too grateful to he inquisitive.
He saw the town recede on either hand. They turned, beyond it, into the shore road, between the open water and a natural hedge of prickly pear and red cedar. The horses were lashed to a gallop, the crazy surrey canopy swayed like a boat in a land swell. Dan saw the girl tossed this way and that; she did not cry out, but she clutched the seat back with delicate fingers, the knuckles straining through their satin skin.
The lady” he began. He had turned to find his benefactor's brilliant eyes steadily contemplating him.
“She will not be hurt. My niece understands our Domingan conveyances, as she understands other matters Domingan. Speak rather of yourself. I wish to hear more of your medical education.”
He used the calm of one accustomed to obedience. Talk of any sort was more of a physical feat than an intellectual amusement in that rattling carriage, and Dan was never a man to consider himself an interesting topic. Nevertheless, the stranger's questions were pointed, and Stone managed to answer them. That his replies were satisfactory was evidenced by the inquisitor's frequent nods of approval, and the long cross-examination was still in progress when they entered what Dan concluded must be the city of Sanchez.
“Slower here!” the big man ordered.
Speed would now have been, indeed, impossible. The streets were narrow and crooked; they were ill paved and full of rotting refuse and of a human rabble equally decayed. Gray palaces of the early sixteenth century were elbowed by modern huts in staring yellow or impertinent pink. On the ruined wall of a stately dwelling that must once have housed some Spanish hidalgo there blazed the green-and-red poster of a music hall. Gambling hells and low saloons pressed upon squalid shops; haphazard electric wires drooped dangerously from fragile poles bending under the weight of lolling loafers.
“Here,” said the planter with the manner of an apologetic host, “you see the worst of the Republica Dominicana. It is the mixture of blood that affects this.” He drew himself up until his head nearly touched the carriage top. “I, for my part, am pure Castilian.”
Whether from a lurch of the surrey or interest in her uncle's tone, Dan saw that the head of the girl turned slightly and, against the farther edge of the black mantilla, he caught a glimpse of her pale, cameolike profile. His new employer must also have noted the shift in her position. He added hastily:
“Oh, all of our family, to be sure, are of the Spanish blood only! My sainted wife—God rest her soul!—and her deceased brother—the saints preserve him!—who was my dear niece's father, their ancestors were among the first to come to this island from old Spain and establish the plantation to which we now go.”
For any evidence in her expression, his niece might not have heard him. Dan was watching it when he recalled that her uncle had said that she did not understand English. Resides, as Villeta finished his brief genealogical statement, she again faced the horses.
They were passing the neglected remains of a once splendid church. Dan's glance caressed it; his theoretical knowledge could date it almost to the day of its consecration. But his guide had evidently concluded that the time was come to repay some of Stone's personal information in kind.
“My name,” said he in his silken voice, “is Ramon Diego Villeta y Cortez. Unlike most persons of my caste in this country, I raise some herds of cattle, but as I intimated to you, señor, I possess a large sugar plantation.” Again there was a movement from the seat forward, but this time the planter plainly ignored it. “To that has come an order very big and very pressing. Well then, at such a moment, my only engineer—he is taken ill. He has spasms—convulsions. He says that he has suffered thus before. He says that it is what you doctors call uræmic poisoning. Is this”—Don Ramon smiled ingratiatingly—“is this urgent?”
Dan tore his eyes from the church. “Urgent? If he diagnoses his own case correctly, it's all that and then some.”
Villeta explained symptoms.
“He may be cured at once,” said Dan, “or he may be dead before we arrive.”
The Domingan shrugged. “It is far into the interior that we must go.”
They were drawing toward the squalid outskirts of Sanchez. Don Ramon waved the driver to a series of inconspicuous streets and bade him reduce the pace and proceed more slowly still.
“You observe,” he pursued to his guest, “that I take you on faith. I have told my name. What is yours?”
“Dan Stone.” The American gulped as he pronounced it. “Daniel Gurney Stone.”
“On the ship where you met with your little—let us say 'accident'”—Villeta's broad shoulders shook the matter casually away—“you had signed in that complete manner?”
“No. Simply D. G. Stone.”
“I see. Well, now, a silly law makes it imperative that we register at the coffeehouse because we shall be delayed there for a couple of hours. I suggest to you, señor, that it might be the part of wisdom to forget the surname—temporarily. That would in no way be using a false name if the authorities should by the merest chance inquire—just forgetfulness. My advice is that you call yourself Daniel Gurney.”
Dan said nothing. He did not like subterfuge, but he cared still less for the gallows or the jail. He would call himself anything the planter suggested—he had called himself a fool throughout the past night—and yet, though Villeta seemed the soul of frankness, Stone had some feeling of mistrust for him. The planter was plausible, but too ready to accept a runaway. However, here and now was no place or time for self-communion of such sort, for hesitation of any sort whatever.
“Very good, sir,” said Dan.
They were climbing the narrowest and foulest of all the streets thus far encountered. The horses slipped on the slops, and the girl on the front seat pressed a lace handkerchief to her nose. Be hind the red jalousies of doorways was the glimpse of already tired inhabitants; dark children reached up brown hands for coppers. Don Ramon shooed them off with his jeweled fingers like so many flies.
“The tropics,” he smiled at Dan, “do not make for American hustle. Except for the engineer, my workmen are all natives. They also are tired—like this. They mean no harm, but the siesta is consolatory. So, when they feel like taking it, they have the slightly awkward habit of suspending labor by throwing a stone into the machinery. That is why Tucker's health is so important to me. Ah,” he exclaimed as the carriage stopped before a grimy-white building that was just sleepily opening for the day, “here is our present destination!”
He paid the driver—whose exultant “Gracias!” bore instant testimony to the size of the reward—and, again leading the veiled girl, pushed Dan before him into a small, dark compartment set with tables and high-backed benches. From among these, an aproned host-waiter appeared and bowed low in patent recognition.
“José,” said Don Ramon, “your parlor, at once!” He clapped his fat hands. “I shall have to leave this American señor there for a short time, and you will send coffee to him; coffee, two eggs à la coq, some of your wife's delicious rolls, butter, honey—yes, and a bit of fresh fish if you have it. He is very hungry.”
There was something superbly authoritative about the Domingan, something that, with radiant gesture, swept aside all the superfluous. He did not appear to miss the smallest details, even in ordering a breakfast, but it was plain that his was the sort of mind that prefers to deal in large things in a large way. Don Ramon looked to Dan, even in this moment when reflection were absurd, like the magnificent real-estate operator or contractor who, scorning the mere building of one house, erects, on an empty hillside, an entire suburb of a great city.
The American was indeed very hungry, and he was glad when the trio of them were obsequiously bowed to a moldy living room on the floor above. The girl, at last released by Don Ramon, seated herself in the darkest corner, her mantilla still concealing her face. Dan, at his employer's order, forced his mind strictly to business and wrote out prescriptions for such medicines as he thought might be needed by his distant patient.
Don Ramon watched him, biting his nails the while. When the orders were completed:
“I shall borrow your hat,” said he jovially, “and proceed on these errands.” He retook his Panama with a flourish. “I shall buy you another head covering, Doctor Gurney—oh, do not shudder at the appellation!—and I shall procure you ah alpaca coat that will more or less fit. Rest here until I come back. You are best not observed—is it not so?”
Was the question put out of pure kindness, or could there be just the hint of a warning in it vaguely connected with Don Ramon himself? Dan wondered. He was beginning to wonder about a good many things.
Involuntarily his eyes turned toward the shadowy figure of the girl. He recalled in time that he had said he did not know Spanish.
“If only the señorita spoke English,” he said, “the time would pass all too rapidly in the company of your very charming niece.”
He may have spoken with too obvious gallantry. At any rate, Don Ramon's hand went to his mustached mouth, and the planter frowned uneasily:
“The Señorita Gertruda requires a constitutional,” said he. “She will of course accompany me.”
He bowed low to his niece. She rose slowly and took his proffered arm. Her manner might well be slightly bewildered, but it was oddly obedient to her uncle. The planter, however, was all smiles. He led the girl from the room, humming blithely an old Domingan song:
“My mistress is a lady—a lady—his lady;
She smiles, her lord not looking, and throws a rose to me”
Well, he couldn't mean his niece by that! Dan tried to forget her, but over the edge of the departing mantilla, a pair of sloe-black eyes had given him a glance that was almost an appeal and yet at the same time rebuff. He walked toward the window and looked down through the half open shutter, held wide at its base by a stick to let in the morning air before the sun should rise so high as to demand its barricade.
Don Ramon was still audibly humming as he passed up the street with the girl on his arm, but the words of his song could no longer be distinguished. The Señorita Gertruda seemed in no hurry. Clearly the girl was unhappy about something. There were few other pedestrians in view, yet as the pair below proceeded, Dan suddenly saw a shadow detach itself from a doorway opposite the coffee house of the Street of the Pink Turtledoves and cautiously follow the Domingans.
There could be no doubt as to its identity. It was the solitary passenger of the Hawk, the American, Hoagland!