The Stolen War Secret/Chapter 6

UR second visit, that night, to the Mexican cabaret was more cordial than the first. As yet none of them suspected anything, and it seemed that we had made a good impression before and now found that we had established ourselves on a footing at least of intimacy.

Thus it came about that we had no difficulty in being seated at the table where we knew was to be the party which later would adjourn to a private dining-room upstairs. We even felt emboldened to do a little visiting on our own account from table to table, praising Señora Ruiz for her dancing, exchanging light banter with Mrs. Hawley, and even chatting for a few moments with Sanchez who, however, seemed to be morose and moody.

It was not difficult to imagine the cause, and even if it had been, Mrs. Hawley would have supplied the reason.

Sanchez sat silent for the most part, and once Mrs. Hawley leaned over and remarked—

“He has been like that ever since he learned of the death of Valcour.”

Señora Ruiz danced with a fire which surpassed even that of the night before, but it had no effect on Sanchez. He seemed to be engrossed in something else, far away. Ruiz was careful not to intrude on his thoughts, but I fancied that there was a sort of elation in his face. I am sure that Hattie Hawley felt no extraordinary sorrow over the news. The fact was, as nearly as I could make it out, that Valcour had been a trouble-maker for both of them. She had, evidently, had all the men at her beck and call, and the others were not sorry, at least, to have a formidable rival removed, although when ever her name was mentioned there were general expressions of concern and sympathy.

The cabaret was going as if nothing had happened, but one could not help observing that the group of friends were quite sobered by the quick succession of deaths of frequenters of the place. We listened intently to the conversation, but no one, at least openly, claimed to have been intimate with either Valcour or Neumeyer, although the mystery surrounding their deaths could not but have its dampening effect.

I looked about from time to time expecting that Sinclair might drop in, as long as he was in town, but evidently he was avoiding the place.

“Neumeyer must have been a very interesting man,” ventured Craig in a lull in the conversation when it had drifted around to the situation outside the capital of Mexico.

“He was,” chimed in Mrs. Hawley. “Most of us, though, had more interest in modern Mexico than in the past—except Colonel Sinclair. By the way, I wonder why he isn’t here tonight? He is in town.”

“Indeed?” remarked Kennedy innocently. “I wish he would drop in. I have heard so much about him lately that I would like to know him better.”

Sanchez for the first time seemed to show some interest in the conversation, as he caught the name of Sinclair, but he said nothing.

“I’m just as well satisfied,” put in Señora Ruiz with a slight shrug of her pretty shoulders. “I like Colonel Sinclair—but he is all business—business—railroads, mines and mines and railroads. There are other things in life besides business.”

I could not help comparing the two women. Hattie Hawley was of the type that admired a man for the very things that did not interest Ruiz. Yet I must say that Ruiz interested me.

As the evening advanced, the life of the cabaret became more and more lively. Everywhere now I could overhear references to the two causes célèbres of the day, but they were of a different character, inspired mostly by curiosity, and some of them even morbid.

Ruiz had repeated her dances of the night before with her accustomed success, and after being generously applauded and welcomed by the various groups had disappeared upstairs. One by one several others followed, including Sanchez. Mrs. Hawley, who had been talking to some friends near the door, disappeared up the steps too.

WE HAD passed a not unenjoyable evening, but we had really learned nothing, and I was about to remark the same to Craig who, I imagined, was scheming how he could get upstairs without exciting suspicion, when our waiter, who by this time felt that he had a sort of proprietorship in us, approached and bent over us.

“They are asking upstairs whether you would care to join them?” he inquired deferentially.

“Delighted,” responded Craig with a quick glance at me.

We rose and followed the waiter out of the door. As we mounted the steps and reached the upper hall, I noticed a little sort of office in an alcove, and behind a small desk a dozen or so pigeonholes for letters. Evidently the cabaret conformed to the law, outwardly at least, and had a hotel license.

Down the hall the waiter paused, and as we came up with him threw open a door into a fair-sized dining-room, beautifully furnished. Señora Ruiz received us politely and we were ushered in. Several persons were seated either about the table or in easy chairs.

One, to whom we were introduced as Señor Alvarez, had been playing on the piano as we entered—a curious rhythmic, monotonous melody. There was also a Señorita Guerrero whom we had not met, a soft dark-eyed beauty of a more refined type than Ruiz. Sanchez was there, of course, and Mrs. Hawley.

“Usually we have a large party here,” remarked the latter, “after the cabaret closes, for we can stay here as late as we please without interference from the police. But tonight we are rather few, unfortunately.”

Kennedy responded with some courtly remark which quite won the smiles of the ladies, for the Latin-American loves those little touches that round off the edges of social intercourse.

“That was a most curious piece of music I heard as we came in,” he added. “Might I inquire what it was?”

“It is a song of the Kiowa Indians of New Mexico,” responded Señora Ruiz. “Señor Alvarez was with the Federals when they were driven across the border, and one day before he came up to New York I believe he heard it. He has endeavored to set it to music so that it can be played on the piano. That monotonous beat that you hear in it is supposed to represent the tom-toms of the Indians during their mescal rites.” She paused, then added, turning to me, as I happened to be nearest, “Will you try a little mescal?”

“Mescal?” I repeated. “Oh yes, to be sure. It’s the Mexican brandy, isn’t it? I never tasted it or pulque either.”

“Oh,” she replied quickly, “the mescal that I mean is not that terrible drink. It is quite different—the peyote bean, perhaps you have heard it called. The drink is horrible stuff that sends the peon out of his senses and makes him violent. The mescal that I mean is not only a shrub—it is a—a religion.”

“Yes, it is almost that among the Indians,” remarked Sanchez who seemed to have regained something of his own manner. “The mescal cult, if you choose to call it that, has spread widely in Now Mexico and Arizona among the Indians, and even northward. I understand your Government has forbidden the importation of the plant and its sale to the Indians under severe penal ties. Still, the sale grows, they tell me. I don’t think it is any worse than some of the whisky they sell—not so bad, for the whisky is beastly. Will you try it?”

On the table now I noticed that there lay some round, brown disk-like buttons, about an inch in diameter and perhaps a quarter of an inch thick. They were exactly like those which Kennedy had found in the chatelaine of Valcour, and it was with the greatest effort that I managed to control my surprise. I watched Kennedy to see what he would do, but his face betrayed nothing.

Señora Ruiz took one of the little buttons out of the tray and carefully pared off the fuzzy tuft of hairs on the top. It looked to me very much like the tip of a peculiar cactus plant, which in fact it was. Then she rolled it up into a little pellet and placed it in her mouth, chewing it slowly.

The others followed her example and we did the same. Mentally I determined to follow Kennedy’s lead.

“The mescal shrub,” remarked Alvarez as he joined us, “grows precisely like these little buttons which you see here. It is a species of cactus which rises only half an inch or so from the ground. The stem is surrounded by a clump of blunt leaves which give it its button shape. On the top, still, if you look carefully, you can see the tuft of spines, like a cactus.”

“That’s very interesting,” commented Kennedy, examining one.

“It grows in the rocky soil in many places in the northern Mexican states,” continued Alvarez, “and the Indians, when they go out to gather it, simply lop off these little ends that peep above the earth. They dry them, keep what they wish for their own use and sell the rest for what to them is a fabulous sum.”

“It has to be smuggled across the border,” smiled Mrs. Hawley, “but we don’t mind that.”

I HAD scarcely swallowed the bitter, almost nauseous thing than I began to feel my heart action slowing up and my pulse beating fuller and stronger.

For the moment I was a little bit alarmed, thinking of the tragedies that had so recently taken place, but I reflected that Kennedy would not try anything that was dangerous. Still, I could see the pupils of his eyes dilate, as with a dose of belladonna, and I suppose mine must have done the same.

It was not long before I began to feel a sense of elation, of superiority—as if it were I, not Craig, who was engineering this case. I did nothing to carry my new idea either into word or action, and afterward I learned that that feeling was a common experience of mescal-users, that they sometimes actually did perform wonderful feats while they were under the influence of the drug.

But the feeling of physical energy and intellectual power soon wore off. I was glad to recline in an easy chair in silent indolence.

Then for an enchanted hour followed a display which I am totally unable to describe in language that can convey to an other the beauty and splendor of what I saw.

I closed my eyes. By a strange freak of fancy I thought I saw that hideous, grinning idol which had been standing on Neumeyer’s desk. All about it played long tongues of red and golden flame. I opened my eyes hastily. The vision was gone.

I picked up a book. It seemed that a pale blue-violet shadow floated across the page, leaving an after-image of pure color that was indescribable. It was a blue such as no worker in art-glass ever produced.

Still seeing that marvelous blue, I replaced the book and again closed my eyes. A confused riot of images and colors, like a kaleidoscope, crowded before me—golden and red and green jewels in a riot of color. I gazed—with closed eyes—and still I could see it. I seemed to bathe my hands in incomparable riches such as I had never dreamed of before.

It was most peculiar. All discomfort ceased. I had no desire to sleep, however. Instead I was supersensitive. And yet it was a real effort to open my eyes, to tear myself away from the fascinating visions of color.

I looked upward at the ceiling. It seemed that the gas jets of the chandelier, as they flickered, sent out waves, expanding and contracting, waves of color. The shadows in the corners, even, were highly-colored and constantly changing.

Alvarez began, lightly, to play the transposed Kiowa song, emphasizing the notes that represented the drum beats. Strange to tell, the music itself was actually translated by my brain into pure color!

The rhythmic beating seemed to aid in the transformation. I fell to wondering what the ignorant savages thought, as they sat in groups about their flickering camp-fires while others of the tribe beat the tom-toms and droned the strange, weird melody. What were the visions of the red man as he chewed his mescal button and the medicine men prayed to the cactus god, Hikori, to grant a “beautiful intoxication”?

At another end of the room was a duster of light-bulbs which added to the flood of golden effulgence which suffused the room and all things in it. I imagined for an instant that the cluster became the sun itself, and I actually had to turn my head away from it and close my eyes.

Even then, just as if I had been gazing at the sun, the image persisted. Suddenly it changed. I saw the golden sands of a beach blazing with a glory of gold and diamond-dust. I could see the waves of incomparable blue flecked with snowy white foam, rolling up on the sands. A vague perfume was wafted on the air. I was in an orgy of vision. Yet there was no stage of maudlin emotion. It was at least elevating.

Color after color, vision after vision succeeded, but in all there persisted that vision of gold. Whether it was something in the drug or whether it was some thought of gold subconsciously cropping up, it was nevertheless there.

Kennedy’s experiences, as he related them to me afterward, were similar. When the playing began, a beautiful panorama unfolded before him—the regular notes of the music enhancing the beauty and changes of the scenes which he described as a most wonderful kinetoscopic display.

As for myself, I longed for the power of a De Quincy, a Bayard Taylor, a Poe, to do justice to the thrilling effects of the drug. I can not tell half, for I defy any one even to dictate, much less recall, more than a fraction of the rapid succession of impressions under its influence. Indeed, in observing its action I almost forgot, for the time, the purpose of the visit, so fascinated was I.

Then suddenly I would see that hideous face of the Mixtec idol when I closed my eyes, would see its slimy frogs and snakes, twisting, squirming. Now it seemed to laugh, to mock, now to menace and threaten.

The music ceased, but not the visions. They merely changed.

Señora Ruiz advanced toward us. The spangles on her filmy net dress seemed to give her a fairy-like appearance. She seemed to float over the carpet, like a glowing fleecy white cloud on a rainbow-tinted sky.

Kennedy, however, had not for a moment forgotten the purpose of our visit which was to get more information. His attention recalled mine and I was surprised to see that when I made the effort I could talk and think, apparently, quite as rationally as ever. Still, the wildest pranks were going on in my mind and vision.

Some one had ordered a liqueur and the waiter was slow in responding. Kennedy rose and volunteered to go downstairs and get some action, and I followed.

AS WE passed down the hall, we came to the little alcove-office, with its letter boxes.

“Evidently the habitués are accustomed to receiving letters here,” he remarked, pausing.

We looked about. There was not a soul in sight. Quickly Kennedy stepped over to the letter-box. As he ran his eye over some of the letters, he picked out one postmarked two days before and addressed to Madame Valcour. Kennedy went hastily over the letters in the other compartments, now and then selecting one, and without more ado slipped them into his inside pocket. Then we went downstairs and found the waiter.

When we returned, Alvarez had started the music again and for the moment I yielded to it and became oblivious to all but the riot of color which the peyote bean had induced.

Every time Señora Ruiz moved about, she seemed to be clothed in a halo of light and color. Every fold of her dress radiated the most delicate tones.

Yet there was nothing voluptuous or sensual about it. It seemed to raise one above earthly things. Men and women were now brilliant creatures of whom I was one. It was sensuous, but it was not sensual.

I remember that I looked once at my own clothes. My every-day suit was, I thought, exquisite. My hands were covered by a glow as of red fire that made me feel that they must be the hands of a demi-god at least.

Señora Ruiz was offering some more of the mescal to the others when there floated into my vision another such hand. It laid itself on mine and a voice whispered in my ear—

“Walter, we have had enough. Come, let us go. This is not like any other drug—not even the famous hasheesh. I have found out all I want.”

We rose and Kennedy made our excuses amid general regrets.

As we left the cabaret the return to the world was quick. It was like coming out from the theater and seeing the crowds on the street. They, not the play, were unreal for the moment. But strange to say I felt no depression as a result of the mescal intoxication, although for a long time I could not shake off that sense of seeing blue and red and golden.

“What is it that produces such results?” I asked as Kennedy hurried along until we found a night-hawk cab.

“The alkaloids,” he answered, directing the cabman to the laboratory, late though it was. “Mescal was first brought to the attention of scientists, I believe, by explorers of our own Bureau of Ethnology. Dr. Weir Mitchell and Dr. Harvey Wiley and several German scientists, as well as Mr. Havelock Ellis, have investigated it since then. It is well known that it contains half a dozen alkaloids and resins of curious and little-known nature and properties.”

“You think it was the poison used?” I asked, my mind reverting to the cases of Valcour and Neumeyer.

“Hardly,” he replied. “Of course, I haven’t had time to investigate that, but I should say the poison in those cases was much more violent, off-hand.”

Our cab made excellent time in the deserted streets and we were rapidly being carried uptown to Craig’s laboratory at the University.

As the effect of the mescal began to wear off in the cool, fresh night-air, I found myself thinking more clearly, yet in a peculiar, questioning state of mind.

Nothing much had been said. If our new acquaintances had any guilty knowledge they were certainly keeping close-mouthed about it, even when off their guard among themselves.

What had we gained by our visit?

A packet of letters.