CHAPTER XXV
HAVE YOU COME AT LAST
“Yesterday this day’s madness did prepare.”
—OMAR KHAYYAM.
At ten o’clock Barron returned to the Garcia house. His search for Mariposa in such accustomed haunts as the Mercantile Library, the shops on Kearney Street, and Mrs. Willers’, had been fruitless. Mrs. Willers was again at The Trumpet office, where another and more important portion of the Woman’s Page was going to press, but Edna was at home, and told Barron that neither she nor her mother had seen Mariposa since the lesson of the day before.
In returning to the house he had hopes of finding her there. From the first his anxiety had been keen. Now, as he put his key in the lock, it clutched his heart with a suffocating force. The house was silent as he entered, and then the sound of his step in the hall called the head of young Mrs. Garcia to the opened door of the kitchen. The first glimpse of her face told him Mariposa had not returned.
“Have you got her?” cried the young woman eagerly.
“No,” he answered, his voice sounding colorless and flat. “I thought she might be back here.”
Mrs. Garcia shook her head and withdrew it. He followed her into the kitchen, where she and the señora were sitting by the stove. A large fire was burning, the room was warm and bright—the trim, finically neat kitchen of a clean Chinaman. To the señora’s quick phrase of inquiry, the younger woman answered with a sentence in Spanish. For a moment the silence of sick anxiety held the trio.
“Did you go to Mrs. Willers’?” said young Mrs. Garcia, trying to speak with some lightness of tone.
“Yes; she’s not been there since yesterday. I’ve been everywhere I could think of where it was likely she would be. I couldn’t find a trace of her.”
“Then’s she’s gone to Europe, or is going to-morrow, as she told Pierpont. She took her money. We looked after you’d gone, and it wasn’t there.”
“It’ll be too late to find out to-night if she’s gone. The ticket offices are closed. I can’t think she’s done that—without a word to any one. It’s not like her.”
The señora here asked what they said. Barron, who spoke Spanish indifferently, signaled to the young woman to answer for him. She did so, the señora listening intently. At the end of her daughter-in-law’s speech she shook her head.
“No, she has not gone,” she said slowly in Spanish. “She could not take that journey. She was not able—she was sick.”
“Sick, and out on such a night with all that money!” moaned her daughter-in-law.
Barron got up with a smothered ejaculation. He knew more than either of the women. The attempt at robbery the night before had failed. To-night the girl herself had disappeared. What might it all mean? He was afraid to think.
“I’m going out again,” he said. “I’ll be in probably in four or five hours to see if, by any chance, she’s come back. You have everything ready—fires and warm clothes and things to eat in case I bring her with me. The rain’s worse than ever. Ching says she had no umbrella.”
Without more conversation he left, the two women bestirring themselves to make ready the supper he had ordered. At three o’clock he returned again to find the señora sitting alone, by the ruddy stove, Mrs. Garcia, the younger, being asleep on a sofa in the boys’ room. The old lady persuaded him to drink a cup of coffee she had kept warm, and, as she gave it him, looked with silent compassion into his haggard face.
When day broke he had not again appeared. By this time the household was in a ferment of open alarm. The boys were retained from school, as it was felt they might be needed for messages. Pierpont undertook to visit all Mariposa’s pupils, in the dim hope of finding through them some clue to her movements, though it was well known she was on intimate terms with none of them. Soon after breakfast Mrs. Willers appeared, uneasy, and by the time the now weeping Mrs. Garcia had told her all, pale and deeply disturbed.
She repaired to The Trumpet office without loss of time, and there acquainted her chief with the story of Miss Moreau’s disappearance, not neglecting to mention the burglary of the night before, which even to the women, having no knowledge of its real import, seemed to indicate a sinister connection with subsequent events. Winslow did not disappoint Mrs. Willers by pooh-poohing the matter, as she had half imagined he would; a young lady’s disappearance for twelve hours not being a subject for such tragic consternation. He seemed extremely worried—in fact, showed an anxiety that struck the head of the Woman’s Page as almost odd. He assured her that if Miss Moreau was not heard from that day by midday he would offer secretly to the police department the largest reward ever given in San Francisco, for any trace or tidings of her.
Meantime Barron, having assured himself by visits to all the ticket offices that she had not left the city on any train, had finally taken his case to the police. It had been in their hands only an hour or two, when young Shackleton’s offer of what, in even those extravagant days seemed an enormous reward, was communicated to the department. It put life into the somewhat dormant energies of the officers detailed on the case. Mariposa had not been missing twenty-four hours when the search for her was spreading over the face of the city, where she had been so insignificant a unit, in a thorough and secret network of investigation.
The day wore away with maddening slowness to the women in the house, whose duty it was to sit and wait. To Barron, whose anxiety had been intensified by the torture of his deeper knowledge of the girl’s strange circumstances, existence seemed only bearable as it was directed to finding her. He did not dare now to pause or think. Without stopping to eat or rest he continued his search, now with the detectives, now alone. Several times in the course of the day he reappeared at the Garcia house, drawn thither by the hope that she might have returned. The señora, with the curious tranquillity of the very old which seems not to need the repairing processes of sleep or food, was always to be found sitting by the kitchen stove, upon which some dish or drink simmered for him. He rarely stopped to take either. But returning in the early dusk, he was grateful to find that she had a dry overcoat hanging before the fire for him. The rain still fell in torrents, and the long day spent at its mercy had soaked him.
It was between ten and eleven at night that the old lady and her daughter-in-law, sitting before the stove as they had done the evening before, again heard his step and his key. This time there was no pretense at expectation on either side. His first glance inside the room showed him the heavy dejection of the two faces turned toward him. They, on their part, saw him pale and drawn, as by a month’s illness. They had heard nothing. No investigation of which they were aware had brought in a crumb of comfort. He had heard worse than nothing. There had been talk at the police station that evening of the finding of George Harney, suffering from concussion of the brain, and the sudden departure of Barry Essex, believed to be his assailant.
This information added the last straw to Barron’s agony of apprehension. It seemed as if a plot had culminated in those two days, a plot dark and inexplicable, in which the woman he loved was in some mysterious way involved.
He was standing by the stove responding to the somber queries of the women, when the sound of feet on the porch steps suddenly transfixed them all. Young Mrs. Garcia screamed, while the old lady sat with head bent sidewise listening. Before Barron could get to the door a soft ring at the bell had drawn another scream from the younger woman, who, nevertheless, followed him and stood peeping into the hall, clinging to the door-post.
The opened door sent a flood of light over three figures huddled in the glass porch—two men, a detective and policeman, Barron already knew, and a third, a stranger to him, whose face against the shadowy background looked fresh and boyish.
“Ah, Mr. Barron, we’re lucky to strike you this way at the first shot,” said the detective. “We think we’ve found the lady.”
“Found her? Where? Have you got her there?”
“No; we’re not certain yet if it’s the right one.”
The man, as he spoke, entered the hall, the policeman and the stranger following him. Under the flare of the two gas-jets they looked big, ungainly figures in their smoking rubber capes that ran rillets of water on the floor. The third, revealed in the full light, was a boy of some fourteen or fifteen years, well dressed and with the air of a gentleman.
“This gentleman came to the station a half-hour ago,” said the policeman, indicating the stranger, “with a story of finding a lady on his own grounds, and we thought from his description it was the one you’re looking for.”
Barron directed on the youth a glance that would have pried open the lips of the Sphinx.
“What does she look like? Where is she?”
“She’s in our garden,” said the boy, “under some trees. She looks tall and has on black clothes, and has dark red hair and a very white face.”
Mrs. Garcia gave a loud cry from the background.
“It’s Mariposa sure,” she screamed. “Is she alive?”
“Alive!” echoed the youth. “Oh, yes, she’s quite alive, but I don’t know whether she’s exactly in her right mind. She’s sort of queer.”
Barron had brushed past him into the streaming night.
“Come on,” he shouted back. “Good Lord, come quick!”
At the foot of the zigzag stairs he saw the two gleaming lights of a hack. With the other men clattering at his heels, he dashed down the steps, and was in it, chafing and swearing, while they were fumbling for the latch of the gate.
As the boy, after giving the coachman an address, scrambled in beside him, he said peremptorily:
“When did you find her? Tell me everything.”
“About two hours ago. My dog found her. I live, I and my mother, on the slope of Russian Hill. It’s quite a big place with a lot of trees. I went down to get Jack (that’s my dog) at the vet’s, where he’s been for a week, and I was bringing him home. When we got to the top of the steps he began sniffing round and barking, and then he ran to a place where there’s a little sort of bunch of fir-trees and barked and jumped round, and went in among the trees. I followed him to see what was up, and all of a sudden I heard some one say from under the trees: ‘Oh, it’s only a dog.’ I was scared and ran into the house and got a lamp, and when I came out with my mother, and we went in among the trees, there was a woman in there, who was lying on the ground. When she saw us she sort of sat up, as if she’d been asleep, and said: ‘Is it Sunday yet?’ We saw her distinctly; she was staring right at us. She didn’t look as if she was crazy, but we both thought she was. She was terribly white. We knew she couldn’t be drunk, because she was like a lady—she spoke that way.”
“And then—and then,” said Barron, “what did she do?”
“She said again, ‘It isn’t Sunday yet?’ and mother said, ‘No, not yet,’ and we went away. I ran to the police office, but we left one of the Chinamen to watch so she wouldn’t get away, ’cause we didn’t know what was the matter with her. We’ll be there in a minute now. It isn’t far.”
The hack, which had been rattling round corners at top speed, now began to ascend. Barron could see the gaunt flank of Russian Hill looming above them, with here and there a house hanging to a ridge or balanced on a slope. The lights of the town dropped away on their right in a series of sparkling terraces.
“Do you guess it’s the lady you’re hunting?” said the policeman politely.
“I’m almost certain it is,” answered Barron. “Can’t you make this man go faster?”
“The hill’s pretty steep here,” said the guardian of the city’s peace. “I don’t seem to think he could do it.”
“We’re almost there,” said the boy; “it’s just that house where the aloe is—there on the top of that high wall.”
Barron looked in the direction, and saw high above them, on the top of a wall like the rampart of a fortress, the faint outline of a house and the black masses of trees etched against the only slightly paler sky.
“I don’t see any aloe,” he growled; “is that the house you mean?”
“That’s it,” said the boy. “I guess it’s too dark for the aloe to-night.”
With a scrambling and jolting the horses began what appeared an even steeper climb than that of the block before. The beasts seemed to dig their hoofs into the crevices between the cobbles and to clamber perilously up. With an oath Barron kicked open the door and sprang out.
“Come on, boy,” he shouted. “I can’t stand this snail of a carriage any longer.” And he set out running up the hill.
The boy, who was light of foot and young, kept up with him, but the two heavier men, who had followed, were left behind, puffing and blowing in the darkness.
Suddenly the great wall, at the base of which they ran, was crossed by a flight of stairs that made two oblique stripes across its face.
“Up the stairs,” said the boy.
And Barron, without reply, turned and began the ascent at the same breakneck speed.
“You may as well let me go first,” gasped his conductor from behind him. “You don’t know the way, and you might scare the Chinaman. He said he had a gun.”
Barron stood aside for him to pass and then followed the nimble figure as it darted up the second flight. The boy was evidently nearing the top, when he sang out:
“Ah, there, Lee! It’s me coming back.”
There was an unmistakable Chinese guttural from somewhere, and then Barron himself rose above the stair-top. A black mass of garden lay before him, with the bulk of a large house a short distance back. Many windows were lit, and in one he saw a woman standing. Their light fell out over the garden, barring it with long rectangular stripes of brilliance. The wild bark of the dog rose from the house and on the unseen walk the Chinaman’s footsteps could be heard crunching the pebbles.
“Is she there yet, Lee?” said the boy in a hissing whisper.
The Chinaman’s affirmative grunt rose from the darkness of massed trees, into which his footsteps continued to retreat.
“This way,” said his conductor to Barron. “But hang it all, it’s so dark we can’t see.”
“Where is she?” said Barron. “Never mind the light. Show me where she is. Mariposa!” he said suddenly, in a voice which, though low, had a quality so thrilling it might have penetrated the ear of death.
The garden, rain-swept and rustling, grew quiet. The sound of the Chinaman’s footsteps ceased, even the panting breath of the boy was suddenly suspended.
In this moment of pause, when nature seemed to quell her riot to listen, a woman’s voice, sweet and soft, rose out of impenetrable darkness:
“Who called me?”
The sound broke the agony that had congealed Barron’s heart. With a shout he answered:
“It’s I, dearest. Where are you? Come to me.”
The voice rose again, faint, but with joy in it.
“Oh, have you come—have you come, at last!”
He made a rush forward into the blackness before him. At the same moment the two men rose, spent and breathless, from the stairs. The boy was behind Barron, and they behind the boy.
“Where are you? Where are you?” they heard him cry, as he crashed forward through shrubs and flower beds.
Then suddenly the policeman drew the small lantern he had carried from beneath his cape and shot the slide. A cube of clear, steady light cut through the inky wall in front of them. For a second they all stopped, the man sending the cylinder of radiance over the shrubs and trees in swift sweeps. In one of these it crossed a white face, quivered and rested on it. Barron gave a wild cry and rushed forward.
She was, as the boy described, crouched under a clump of small fir-trees, the lower limbs of which had been removed. The place was sheltered from observation from the house and the intrusion of the elements. As the light fell on her she was kneeling, evidently having been drawn to that posture by Barron’s voice. The light revealed her as hatless, with loosened hair, her face pinched, her eyes large and wild.
As she saw Barron she shrieked and tried to move forward, but was unable to and held out her arms. He was at her side in a moment, his arms about her, straining her to him, his lips, between frantic kisses, saying words only for him and for her.
The policeman, with a soft ejaculation, turned the lantern, and its cube of light fell into the heart of a bed of petunias; then the two men and the boy stood looking at it silently for a space.
Presently they heard Barron say: “Come, we must go. I must take you home at once. Turn the light this way, please.”
The light came back upon her. She was on her feet, holding to him.
“Is it Sunday yet?” she said, looking at them with an affrighted air.
“That’s what she keeps asking all the time,” said the boy in a whisper.
“No,” said Barron, “it’s Friday. What do you expect on Sunday?”
“Only Friday,” she said, hanging back. “I thought I’d hide here till Sunday was over.”
Without answering, he put his arm about her and drew her forward. At the steps she hesitated again, and he lifted her and carried her down, the policeman preceding with the lantern. The men helped him into the carriage, not saying much, while the boy stood with his now liberated dog at the top of the steps and shouted, “Good night.” Barron hardly spoke to any of them. A vague thought crossed his mind that he would go to see the boy some day and thank him.
She lay with her head on his shoulder, and as the carriage passed the first lamp of the route he leaned forward eagerly to scan her face. It was haggard, white and thin, as by a long illness. He could not speak for a moment, could only hold her in his arms as if thus to wind her round with the symbol of his love.
Presently she groaned, and he said:
“Are you suffering?”
“Yes,” she murmured; “always now. I am sick. I don’t breathe well any more. It hurts in my chest all the time.”
“Why did you hide under those trees?” he asked.
“I was too sick to go any farther. I wanted to hide somewhere, to get away from it all, and anyway, till Sunday was over. It was all to be published on Sunday, you know. Everything was ruined. My voice was gone, too. I saw those steps in the dark and climbed up and crept under the trees. I was terribly tired, and it was very quiet up there. I don’t remember much more.”
As the light of another lamp flashed through the window he could not bear to look at her, but tightened his arms about her and bowed his face on her wet head.
“Oh God, dearest,” he whispered, “there can’t be any hell worse than what I’ve been in for the last two days.”
She made no response, but lay passively against him. When the carriage stopped at the Garcia gate, and he told her they were home, she made no attempt to move, and he saw she was unconscious.
He lifted her out and carried her up the steps. The door opened as he ascended and revealed the Garcia family in the aperture.
“Is she dead?” screamed young Mrs. Garcia, as she saw the limp figure in his arms.
“No, but sick. You must get a doctor at once.”
“Oh, how awful she looks!” cried the young woman as she caught sight of the white face against his shoulder. “What are you going to do with her?”
“Take her upstairs now, and then get a doctor and get her cured, and when she’s well, marry her.”