Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/134

 pursuit, there was nothing to follow them unless the Tiede, a tinpot ferryboat, the American training brig and the two fruit schooners. They were beyond pursuit and they had the gold.

Down below in the cabin a little later, James, who had quite recovered himself, gave her details of the tragedy.

“Only for you,” said James, “things might have panned out a lot different. You put me wise about that chap and I was on my guard. I wasn't on my guard just at first,” said James, “but directly the thing occurred I knew and was able to drag Dicky away and do a bunk.

“We started all right, went part of the way by tram and then hoofed the rest; climbing all the time till we got to this fonda place he'd spoken of. He'd sent round the day before and they had a cold chicken ready for us and rolls and butter and salad and olives all done up in a basket and two bottles of white wine and glasses and corkscrew and all; then we hiked on, carrying the provisions with us, climbing zigzag to an orange grove that grows on a shelf a couple of miles from the fonda.

“Bompard said he'd spread the table while we explored round. We climbed the goat tracks to the mouth of a cave we saw, and which wasn't worth the trouble.

“When we got back there was Bompard with the feast spread. He'd opened the bottles of wine and while he was messing about hunting for something he'd dropped, I took up one of the bottles to examine the label and put it down again, but I didn't put it down in exactly the same place I'd taken it from and that must have confused him.”

“How?” asked Sheila.

“Wait till I've finished and you'll see. When luncheon was over and we were lighting up, old man Bompard began to look about him uneasily. He looked at me and Dicky and then he says: 'How do you feel?'

“'I feel all right,' says I. He says nothing for a moment, lights his cigar and then drops it, clapping his hands to his—front.

“He was doubled up with pain and then he began crying out that he was poisoned—that the wine was poisoned and shouting for a doctor and a priest.

“I tumbled to the business at once. He'd poisoned one of the bottles to do us in, and owing to my shifting them he'd taken the dose instead of us. He kept shouting to us to run to the fonda and tell them to fetch a doctor and a priest, and we ran.

“I explained the position to Dicky as we were tumbling down cliffs and chasing along goat paths. I had enough Spanish to tell the people of the fonda what he'd said. I told them we'd send more help from Santa Cruz, and then we kept on running, took the wrong path and got lost, but got down at last and made for the harbor.

“We didn't know where to find priests and doctors, so I ran into that chemist man in the Callé What's-his-name, and told him a gentleman was ill and gave him the directions. That's all. Only for you putting me wise we'd have stuck to that chap and maybe have been knifed by his confederates, for I liked him and never would have believed, off my own bat, that he was up to mischief.”

“Good heavens,” said Sheila, “you left him!”

“Of course we left him.”

“But are you sure”

“What?”

“I don't know” Her mind was upset. The joyous figure of Bompard arose before her. She had liked him at first sight; suspicion had cast its odious shadow upon him, but the first liking had clung, obscured by the shadow, but now peeping vaguely forth again.

The question she was asking herself was frankly this: “Could that fool of a James have

“Are you sure it was poison? Might it only have been illness?”

“Sure,” replied James. “Why he said it himself—confessed it.”

“Might it only have been his fancy?”

“Goodness, no,” said Dicky. “The chap was poisoned right enough—if you'd only seen him.”

Sheila brooded. Well, there was no use worrying. But to run off and leave a man like that! And, still, if Bompard was what she had fancied, what better could they have done? They had told the fonda people, and the chemist

“Anyhow,” said she, “you did everything for the best and there's no use bothering now. Let's have supper.”

All around here between the Canary Islands, and between them and Madeira, the sea is of an extraordinary depth and a blueness almost Caribbean in its wonder and brilliancy, maybe because the bottom