Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/76



each end a stairway, set against the wall, goes from the sidewalk to the balcony. These stairways are about four feet wide, and are set sloping towards each other. Nearer each other at the top, I mean, than they are at the bottom. Convergent. One word would have told what two sentences didn't. The ground floor is cut up into eight or ten retail shops, each one the width of an ordinary house-lot here in San Francisco, and forty or forty-five feet deep. The second story has as many suites of rooms as there are shops below. There are three rooms in each suite; the front one lighted from the balcony, the second and third by windows in the roof. These rooms communicate with the balcony only, each suite being isolated from its neighbor, and the only way to reach them from the street is by the outside Stairways and the veranda. Just remember how this is, so that you can understand what I tell you.

We walked slowly along and stopped on our way at the English club house to get some brandy and cigars. We hadn't felt like either drinking or smoking before during the evening, but the mental and physical fatigue of the day began to tell. We talked with the manager, Whip, (I wonder whether he's still in existence, what he did in the bombardment, and whether he'll remember me when he sees this) lighted our cigars at one of the tiny braseros of burning charcoal that stood on the bar, came out into the moonlight and walked on towards the plaza.

We came into the plaza in such a direction that the house where Don Ricardo had lived was directly before us. To reach either of the stairways leading to the balcony it was necessary to make a detour either to the right or left. The moonlight fell squarely on the face of the building, but just as we entered the open space a cloud dimmed and almost quenched it. The stairs on the left were a little nearer to us than the others,

(we had come down on the left-hand side of the street from Cochrane) so turning that way, Caldwell leading, we traversed one side of the triangle and began to go up the stairway. Caldwell first, I next, and Page last.

Henry's head was just above the level of the floor of the balcony, when he stopped and looked intently forward. I was two or three stairs below him and stopped when he did. He looked ahead, put his left hand back with a gesture of warning, and then said, without turning round, speaking in a hoarse whisper, "or heaven's sake, doctor, look!"

I passed up by his side. Page followed. We three stood together on the same step of the stairway.

The moon shone out with renewed brilliancy, and there, leaning against a stanchion of the veranda rail not a dozen yards from us, and looking down into the plaza, dressed in his old-time wear, standing in his old familiar attitude, was Don Ricardo! Dead—buried fathom deep in red clay—and here!

As we stood the figure turned. The moonlight fell across its face, showing it white and ghastly and still. Then with slow and noiseless steps it entered the open door of Don Ricardo's quarters.

The little plaza was silent. From a distance came the sound of the foot-fall of some vigilante walking his beat, the bark of vagrant dogs, the deadened roar of the surf on the beach of the bay.

We looked at each other, turned, went down the stairs, then took counsel.

Regarding the right of a man, alive or dead, to enter his lodgings, there can be no doubt. The question is one of ability merely. To the best of our knowledge in the case of the Don, this ability had no existence.

Caldwell went along the sidewalk to the right hand stairway. Page took up a position in the road that enabled him to command a view of the veranda from end to end, and I began to re-ascend the stairs on the left. Henry and I reached