Money to Burn/Chapter 14

OUNTERFEITING—that must be Don Ramon's secret and the secret of his murderous hunchback lieutenant.

Gingerly Dan stepped across the dead peon and crowded himself within the box. Here everything was methodical. It might have been the legal store-room of a miniature mint. To the top hill of each stack of money was pinned a slip of paper—a memorandum stating the amount piled below.

He began a sum in addition. Roughly, he figured that this was the likeness of a million, six hundred thousand dollars. Even a bit more.

He remembered what had passed in his hearing between Villeta and Fernando, the hunchback declaring that they had enough, that more would be dangerous, that printing should cease, and that, when it had ceased, Tucker must die. Dan remembered how Don Ramon stood out for a round two millions. Stone recalled a score of hints and judged himself severely for not having joined them one to another and footed up the inevitable conclusion long ago.

And Tucker? Tucker, who was to die? What, in all this, was Josiah Tucker's rôle?

Dan thought of the weak, none-too-honest face that had looked up from the pillows in the sick room. He thought of the delicately modeled but discolored fingers. An American, too! Why, of course, the fellow had somehow been seduced from honorable but, in Tucker's mind, underpaid government employ; he was the expert necessary, whenever any technical slip occurred, to the actual making of these notes. There was just one place from which he could have come—from the manufacture of real money to the manufacture of bogus. The rogues had doubtless persuaded him with the promise of lifelong wealth, and he, at long last, lying sick in his bed at the top of the palacio, had come to realize that they did not mean to fulfill their promise, that they had decided to rid themselves of him when his work was done and so have one less to share the spoils.

A few bits of bank-note paper lay on the floor. Where were the necessary rolls of it? Oh, it was easy enough to piece the facts together now! The conspirators had just used the last of their old stock; it was a new supply that Ramon rode today to meet. How he was to procure the quality and texture requisite, Dan did not then inquire, but it was clear that, when he came back, the printing

Dan stopped short. If he was caught in this chapel by Villeta, if he was caught by Fernando, his life would not be worth a button.

He ran to the door. Peña had locked it. It was heavy and firm and not to be budged by any one man's muscular strength. Dan surveyed the even sides of the chapel. The only possible exit was by the way he had come, yet there was no slightest projection whereby he could raise himself, and, jump as he might, his fingers could not grasp the bottommost opening in the rail of the balcony.

He thought of shoving something over and climbing on it, but there was nothing movable that was of sufficient height. He searched in a desperation that impaired his ingenuity; he pushed, while great beads of sweat blinded him, at all the extraneous and other objects in the desecrated chancel, the high altar, the confessional box, the machinery itself. Suddenly he saw the lariat. When the peon had failed with it, he had released it entirely. It shot clear over the rail and there, unseen while Dan looked upward, it lay at his very feet on the chapel floor.

He picked it up and tried to throw it across the rail of the gallery, but he was unskilled and nervous. Once—twice—three times it flew far of the mark. Only on his fourth attempt, which he made with more calculation, did he succeed. The rope circled the rail and was so looped that the farther end hung low enough for his straining fingers to catch it. He knotted the two ends together, tested it for his weight, made it fast to the stone altar rail, and clumsily clambered up, hand over hand.

He was not light, and the lariat was old and worn. He had just grasped a balcony post well above his head when, with a snap, the rope broke. His feet dangled for a moment; then he had them braced against the wall of the chapel and, with a great swing, pulled himself up to safety.

He staggered into the main hallway. His head reeling, his feet unsteady, he turned down that passage. As he did so, the second door, which had so caught his attention not many minutes since, opened quickly and somebody stepped out.

“You!” he gasped.

It was the Señorita Gertruda. She was dressed in a long and clinging gown of some soft white stuff, typically Spanish; but no mantilla masked her now. Her delicately carven face, dusky with the blood of Spain, was flooded by crimson; her lips shone as red as the hibiscus flower that drooped in her blue-black hair; her dark eyes glowed.

Dan's surprise at the sight of her overcame every other sensation. “It was you who called to me?” he persisted.

The answer was not in words. Her fingers closed on his shoulders. She drew him across the threshold and shut the door behind their entrance.

Her present bedroom, this; but plainly not one that had long served that purpose. No Spanish lady's bower, no pretty hangings, no feminine trifles, Here were only a bare table with a cracked mirror above it, a sixteenth-century armario, a narrow black iron cot, and a window strongly barred.

She let go of him and stepped back. One slim hand was tight against her breast that rose and fell.

Now speech—broken, but all clear enough—poured from her panting mouth.

“I heard a strange step in the corridor—guessed it to be yours. Earlier, I had seen my uncle ride away. The lock was old. I broke it when I saw him go. The good God gave me a strength that they thought impossible. But when I peeped out, I was not sure that it was you—and I was afraid. Then I saw what followed you and became certain. So I called.”

He realized that she was astonishingly making use of his native language. There was a Spanish accent; there might be unusual construction, but the speech was his own.

“You do speak English!” he cried.

“Yes—yes! Did you kill him—did you kill that man?”

“Don Ramon said”

“That I didn't speak it? I know, but he lied—he always lies!—but I dared not deny his words to his face. He ordered in San Lorenzo that I have no communication with any stranger; he dreaded what I might tell of his wrongs against me. When, here, he suspected that I might disobey him in secret; when he feared that you might chance to find me, he locked me in this room near the chapel, where he said he had forbidden you to go. Tell me, did you kill that man?”

“No. Rut he won't bother us.”

She clasped her hands. “And I may trust you? I feel sure that I may trust you!”

Dan smiled a little. “In spite of what you heard me say of myself to your uncle, I guess you can trust me.”

“I know it. Why did I ask? I know it! That was my reason for opening the door. It was my chance—the chance I had been waiting for ever since he recaptured me in San Lorenzo. When I first saw you, I said: 'This man looks honorable; he looks kind.' You are an American. While my parents lived, before my uncle made me a prisoner on this hacienda for their money's sake, I went to school in your country.” She had come to the climax of her appeal. She tottered toward him. “You must rescue me!”

He had wanted nothing so much as the opportunity to take her away, yet now he remembered the armed guards below stairs. Danger to himself—to Tucker—might be cheerfully defied. But danger to her?

“I must think of a plan,” he said.

She seized him again. “Don't think—act! Oh, you must rescue me! I am quite, quite alone in the world. Don Ramon is my only relative, and he has robbed me of this, which was my parents' estate. He calls himself a guardian, but he squanders his trust for his own pleasures. There remains no one to whom I have the blood right to appeal.” She raised her lovely face close to his. “Señor Stone, for the love of the Mother of God, get me out of this prison house!”

She was penniless, she was friendless, she was beautiful. Would she, should he succeed, be any better off, alone in Santo Domingo City, alone in New York, alone anywhere, than here? He was ignorant of the jungle trails; the police sought him; at this hacienda, he was one man against a score, himself a prisoner. Nevertheless, he took both her little hands.

“I'll do it!” said he.

She laughed. There, in the desperation of her plight, she laughed as if their escape were already accomplished. The completeness of her faith in him increased his doubts of his own ability.

“I'll have to reconnoiter”

“Then go!” she cried, pressing him backward. “Go now! There must be some opportunity as long as Don Ramon is absent. There must be. Luis likes me—get Luis. He will find us a way to leave the house. I should have gone after him myself had you refused. Hurry—hurry! I cannot remain here one instant more than is necessary.” She was pushing him from the apartment as eagerly as she had drawn him into it. “Go!”

The door closed on him. He was alone in the hall. He could almost believe that her appearance there had been some dream that invaded his brain made dizzy by the fight on the balcony and the discoveries in the chapel. Resolutely, however, he pulled himself together and headed for the room in which he had left the broken-nosed Carib.

He ran—and he ran, some twenty yards away, directly into, and well nigh over, Fernando.

The hunchback's eyes were wild. As, just in time to save himself from a trampling, he sprang aside, Peña swore a crackling oath. “Where you been?”

Dan drew up short. He must stop. It would not do to excite suspicion now, but he was not going to be tyrannized over any longer.

“None of your business where I've been,” he said. “Am I a convict here? And are you the warden?”

Those questions missed Fernando. He had something else to think of, and he thought of it with malicious triumph. “I been look for you 'most everywhere. Señor Medico, you are not the wise doctor. You don' know all things. You make mistake about that Tucker get along all right now. He take spasm just this minute. You follow me immediate!”