The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
THE MEXICAN CABARET
WE EASILY found the Mexican-American cabaret and tea-room which McBride had mentioned. McBride himself refused to accompany us because it was likely that some of Valcour’s visitors, if they happened to be there, might recognize him. Kennedy was better pleased to have it that way also, for McBride, whatever his other merits, had detective stamped over him from his hat on the back of his head down to his square-toed shoes.
The house was an old-fashioned, high-stooped structure, just around the corner from the Vanderveer, in the neighborhood where business was rapidly replacing residences.
Apparently the entrance was through what had once been a basement, but which had been remodeled.
We entered the low door. There did not seem to be anybody dining downstairs. But now and then sounds indicated that up stairs there were many people, and that they were thoroughly enjoying the entertainment the cabaret afforded.
Passing by a dark-skinned individual who seemed to serve as both waiter and look-out for the room downstairs, we mounted the steps, and on the parlor-floor found a full-fledged cabaret in operation.
With a hasty, all-inclusive glance about, Craig selected a seat down near a little platform where there were several performers and a small dancing-floor fringed with little tables and chairs.
Fortunately it was such a place as New Yorkers in search of the picturesque often drop in upon, especially with friends from out of town, and our entrance did not, therefore, excite any comment whatever.
A waiter promptly appeared beside us, and Kennedy leisurely scanned a bill of fare which enumerated all sorts of tortillas, chilli con carnes, tamals and frijoles. We ordered and began to look about us.
It was as strange and interesting a gathering as one could have found anywhere in the city. As nearly as I could make out there were refugees from Mexico, of every class and condition and nationality, who seemed to be in the habit of meeting there nightly. There were soldiers of fortune preparing to go down there if they got the chance. Here was a man who had fled from Vera Cruz on a transport, there was another aching to get away and break into the country as soon as there were any signs of the lifting of the embargo.
There were Mexicans, Americans, English, French, Germans—all who were interested in the unhappy republic south of us, all talking in animated tones, except now and then when a mutual confidence was exchanged between some of them, all seeming to know each other, if not to be on friendly terms with one another. What was seething under the surface an outsider could not judge. But of one thing I felt certain. If Valcour had been of this group, certainly none of them showed any knowledge of the tragedy, or if they did they were consummate actors and actresses.
THE music, furnished by a piano, mandolins and guitars on the platform, started up.
Across from us was a party of men and women talking to a woman, dark-eyed and olive-skinned, the type of Spanish dancing-girl. As the music started the girl rose.
“Who is that?” asked Craig of the waiter who had brought us our order.
“Señora Ruiz,” he replied briefly, “one of our best dancers.”
We watched her intently. There was something fascinating about the woman. From the snap of her black eyes to the vibrating grace of her shapely ankle there was something that stamped her as unique. She seemed to realize the power nature had given her over the passions of men, to have the keen wit to play them off, and the joy of living to appreciate the dramas which were enacted.
She began with the danza de sombrero. A sombrero was placed on the floor and she danced about it, in and out, now drawing near and now gliding away without touching it. There was something fascinating, not so much about the dance as about the dancer, for the dance itself was interminable, monotonous.
Several times I saw that Kennedy had caught her eye, and when at last the dance ended she contrived to finish close to our table, so close that it was but a turn, an exchange of looks, a word or two, and, as cabaret dancers will, she was sitting at our table a moment later and Kennedy was ordering something.
The Señora spoke very good English and French, and the conversation glided along like a dance from one subject to another, for she had danced her way into almost every quarter of the gay world of America and Europe.
It was not long before Kennedy and she were discussing Mexican dances and some how or other those of the south of Mexico were mentioned. The orchestra, meanwhile, had burst forth into a tango, followed by a maxixe, and many of the habitues of the cabaret were now themselves dancing.
“The Zapotecs,” remarked Kennedy, “have a number of strange dances. There is one called the Devil Dance that I have often wished to see.”
“The Devil Dance?” she repeated. “That usually takes place on feast-days of the saints. I have seen it often. On those occasions some of the dancers have their bodies painted to represent skeletons, and they also wear strange, feathered head-dresses.”
The waiter responded with our order.
“The Zapotec ballroom,” she continued reminiscently, “is an open space near a village, and there the dance goes on by the light of a blazing fire. The dancers, men and women, are dressed in all kinds of fantastic costumes.”
So from dancing the conversation drifted along to one topic after another, Kennedy showing a marvelous knowledge of things Mexican, mostly, I suspected, second-hand, for he had a sort of skill in such a situation of confining the subjects, if he chose, to those on which he was already somewhat acquainted.
“Señora,” called a voice from the other table at which she had been sitting.
She turned with a gay smile. Evidently the party of friends were eager to have her back.
Some words passed, and in a few moments we found ourselves at the other table with the rest of Señora Ruiz’s friends. No one seemed to think it strange in this Bohemian atmosphere that two newcomers should be added to the party. In fact, I rather suspected that they welcomed us as possibly lightening the load of paying the checks which the waiters brought for various things ordered, none of which were exactly reasonable in price.
AMONG others whom we met was an American, a Western mining-woman whom all seemed to know as Hattie Hawley. She was of the breezy type that the West has produced, interested in Mexican affairs through having purchased an interest in some mines in the southern part of the country, and seemed to be thoroughly acquainted with the methods of Wall Street in exploiting mines.
It was a rapid-fire conversation that they carried on, and I kept silent for the most part, fearing that I might say the wrong thing, and following Kennedy’s lead as much as possible.
Mrs. Hawley happened to be sitting next to Kennedy, and as the talk turned on the situation in the country in which all seemed to be interested in some way, Kennedy ventured to her—
“Do you know Colonel Sinclair?”
“I should say I do,” she replied frankly. “Why, it was only a few days ago that he came in here and we were all sitting at this very table discussing the situation down in Oaxaca. You know, I’m interested in some mines near Colonel Sinclair’s, and in the same railroad through the region which he controls.”
“He isn’t here tonight, then?” pursued Kennedy.
“No,” she answered. “I suppose he is out on Long Island at his place at Westport. A fine boy, the Colonel. We all like him.”
There was no mistaking the tone in which she made the remark. Even if it sounded a little unconventional, it was merely her way of testifying that she had a high regard for the gentleman.
“I have known the Colonel fairly well for a number of years,” prevaricated Kennedy, and the conversation drifted on to other topics.
Kennedy managed to lead it about again so that in a perfectly inconsequential way, after the mention of Sinclair’s name, he could say—
“I have heard him mention the name of a Madame Val—” he hesitated, as if the name were not familiar, “a Madame Valoour, I think it is. Is she here? Does she come around to the cabaret?”
“Oh yes,” replied Hattie Hawley. “She comes around here quite often. I haven’t seen her tonight though. She has been away for a few days—down on Long Island, I believe. Perhaps she is there yet.”
I caught her looking significantly at Kennedy, and wondered what was coming next.
She leaned over and whispered—
“Between you and me, I think the Colonel is stuck on her, only I wouldn’t say that aloud here.”
She flashed a glance at one of the men who had been sitting in the shadow, talking with Señora Ruiz.
“He could tell you more about her than I could,” she remarked under her breath. “I never saw any one so crazy over a woman as he is over Valcour.”
“And does she care for him?” asked Kennedy.
Hattie Hawley considered for a moment.
“I don’t believe she cares for anybody,” she answered.
At least there was no hint that the tragedy was known yet here.
I glanced more closely at the man who was talking to Ruiz. He was dark-faced, tall, military in bearing, straight as an arrow, with a little black imperial and a distinguished shock of bushy dark hair.
“It’s evident that she is an ardent admirer of him,” remarked Kennedy following my eye, “whatever he may think of her.” Then, louder, he asked of Mrs. Hawley, “What is his name? I don’t believe I caught it when we were introduced—that is, if we were, in this very informal meeting.”
She laughed. Evidently she liked it.
“His name is Sanchez,” she replied.
A snatch of conversation from a side table floated over to us.
“Whoever can learn how to get at the key and decipher those hieroglyphics will not only add a chapter to archeology, but he’ll be rich—in my opinion—enormously rich. Why, my dear sir, there is more treasure in Mexico today that has never”
The voice was drowned in the din of the orchestra starting up a new dance.
Kennedy turned. At another table were two men talking earnestly. One was the very type of the German savant, including the whiskers and the near-sighted glasses. The other looked very much as if he were an American college professor.
The savant, at least, seemed to be at home in the Bohemian atmosphere, but the other man looked for all the world as if he momentarily expected to be discovered by some of his students and have his reputation ruined forever.
“Who is that?” asked Kennedy of Mrs. Hawley. “Do you know them?”
“At the next table?” she answered looking around. “Why, that is Professor Neumeyer, Freidrich Neumeyer, the German archeologist. He has been all over Mexico—Yucatan, Mitla, the pyramids, wherever there are ruins. I never cared much about ruins—guess I’m too modern. But Colonel Sinclair does. He goes in for all that sort of thing—has collections of his own, and all that.
“I believe he and Neumeyer are great friends. I don’t know the other man, but he looks like one of the professors from the University.”
Kennedy continued to divide his attention between the party at our table and the archeologist. His companion, as I myself had observed, seemed entirely out of place outside a classroom or archeological museum, and I soon dismissed him from my thoughts.
But Neumeyer was different. There was a fascination about him, and in fact I felt that I would really like to know the old fellow well enough to have him tell me the tales of adventure combined with scholarship, with which I felt intuitively he must be bursting.
AS THE hour grew later more people arrived, and the groups were continually splitting up and new ones being formed. Thus it came about that Kennedy and myself, having been set down I suppose as mere sightseers, found ourselves at last alone at the table, while Señora Ruiz and another gay party were chatting in animated tones farther down the room.
I looked at Craig inquiringly, but he 6hook his head and said in a whisper:
“I hardly think we are well acquainted enough yet to do much circulating about the room. It would look too much like ‘butting in.’ If any one speaks to us we can play them along, but we had better not do much speaking ourselves—yet.”
It was a novel experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I did every new phase of life in cosmopolitan New York.
The hour was growing late, however, and I began to wonder whether anything else was going to happen, when I saw a waiter go down quietly and speak to Señora Ruiz. A moment later the party of which she was a member rose and one by one disappeared up what had been the stairs of the house when it was formerly a residence. Others rose and followed, perhaps ten or a dozen, all of whom I recognized as intimate friends.
It had no effect on the crowd below, further than to reduce it slightly and put an end to the dancing of Ruiz.
“Private dining-rooms upstairs?” inquired Kennedy nonchalantly of the waiter as he came around again for orders.
“Yes,” he replied. “There’s a little party on up there in one of them tonight.”
Our friend Neumeyer and his guest had left some time before, and now there seemed to be little reason why we should stay.
“We have gained an entrée, anyhow,” observed Kennedy, moving as if he were going.
He rose, walked over to the door and out into the hall. Down the staircase we could hear floating snatches of conversation from above. In fact it seemed as if in several of the dining-rooms there were parties of friends. One was particularly gay, and it was easy to conjecture that that was the party of which Señora Ruiz was the life.
Craig rejoined me at the table quickly, having looked about at practically all the private dining-rooms without exciting suspicion.
“It’s all very interesting,” he observed to me. “But although it has added to our list of acquaintances considerably, I can’t say this visit has given us much real information. Still you never can tell, and until I am ready to come out in what I call my ‘open investigation,’ these are acquaintances worth cultivating. I have no doubt that Valcour and Sinclair would have been welcomed by that Ruiz party, and certainly from their actions it can not be that it is generally known yet that Valcour is dead.”
“No,” I agreed.
I had been going over in my mind the names of those we had met and the names I had heard mentioned. Not once had any one said the name of Morelos.
“There has been no one of the name of Morelos here,” I suggested to Craig.
“No,” he answered with a covert glance around. “And I did not make any inquiries. You may have noticed that all these people here seem to be supporters of the Government. I was about to inquire about him once when it suddenly occurred to me that he might be connected with the rebels, the Constitutionalists. I thought it would be discretion to refrain from even mentioning his name before these Federals.”
“Then perhaps Sinclair is playing the game with both factions,” I conjectured hastily, adding, “and Valcour was doing the same—is that what you mean?”
“The dancing has begun again,” he hinted to me, changing the subject to one less dangerous.
I took the hint and for a few moments we watched the people in the sensuous mazes of some of the new steps. Intently as I looked, I could see not the slightest evidence that any one in the cabaret knew of the terrible tragedy that had overtaken one of the habitués.
As I watched I wondered whether there might have been a love triangle of some kind. It had all been very unconventional. Had the Bohemian Valcour come between some of these fiery lovers? I could not help thinking of the modern dances, especially as Valcour must have danced them. I could almost imagine the flash of those tango-slippers and her beautiful ankle, the swaying of her lithe body. What might she not do in arousing passions?
Speculate as I might, however, I always came back to the one question, “Who was the mysterious Señor Morelos?”
I could think of no answer and was glad when Kennedy suggested that perhaps we had seen enough for one night.