by Frank Norris
“BARKENTINE your eye!”
“No doubt as to which is the captain now,” whispered Condy so soon as the other had removed from him a glance of withering scorn.
They could hardly restrain their gayety; but their gravity promptly returned when Blix kicked Condy’s foot under the table and murmured: “He’s looking at his watch, the captain is. K. D. B. isn’t here yet, and the red-headed man, the coincidence, is. We MUST get rid of him. Condy, can’t you think of something?”
“Well, he won’t go till he’s through his supper, you can depend upon that. If he’s here when K. D. B. arrives, it will spoil everything. She wouldn’t stay a moment. She wouldn’t even come in.”
“Isn’t it disappointing? And I had so counted upon bringing these two together! And Captain Jack is a nice man!”
“You can see that with one hand tied behind you,” whispered Condy. “The other chap’s tough.”
“Looks just like the kind of man to get into jail sooner or later.”
“Maybe he’s into some mischief now; you never can tell. And the Mexican quarter of San Francisco is just the place for ‘affairs.’ I’ll warrant he’s got PALS.”
“Well, here he is — that’s the main point — just keeping those people apart, spoiling a whole romance. Maybe ruining their lives. It’s QUITE possible; really it is. Just stop and think. This is a positive crisis we’re looking at now.”
“Can’t we get rid of him SOMEHOW?”
“O-oh!” whispered Blix, all at once, in a quiver of excitement. “There is a way, if we’d ever have the courage to do it. It might work; and if it didn’t, he’d never know the difference, never would suspect us. Oh! but we wouldn’t dare.”
“What? what? In Heaven’s name what is it, Blix?”
“We wouldn’t dare — we couldn’t. Oh! but it would be such—”
“K. D. B. may come in that door at any second.”
“I’m half afraid, but all the same — Condy, let me have a pencil.” She dashed off a couple of lines on the back of the bill of fare, and her hand trembled like a leaf as she handed him what she had written.
“Send him — the red-headed man — that telegram. There’s an office just two doors below here, next the drug-store. I saw it as we came by. You know his initials: remember, you saw them in his hat. W. J. A., Luna’s restaurant. That’s all you want.”
“Lord,” muttered Condy, as he gazed upon what Blix had written.
“Do you dare?” she whispered, with a little hysterical shudder.
“If it failed we’ve nothing to lose.”
“And K. D. B. is coming nearer every instant!”
“But would he go — that is, at once?”
“We can only try. You won’t be gone a hundred seconds. You can leave me here that length of time. Quick, Condy; decide one way or the other. It’s getting desperate.”
Condy reached for his hat.
“Give me some money, then,” he said. “You won all of mine.”
A few moments later he was back again and the two sat, pretending to eat their chili peppers, their hearts in their throats, hardly daring to raise their eyes from their plates. Condy was actually sick with excitement, and all but tipped the seltzer bottle to the floor when a messenger boy appeared in the outer room. The boy and the proprietor held a conference over the counter. Then Richard appeared between the portieres of Nottingham lace, the telegram in his hand and the boy at his heels.
Evidently Richard knew the red-headed man, for he crossed over to him at once with the words:
“I guess this is for you, Mr. Atkins?”
He handed him the despatch and retired. The red-headed man signed the receipt; the boy departed. Blix and Condy heard the sound of torn paper as the red-headed man opened the telegram.
Ten seconds passed, then fifteen, then twenty. There was a silence. Condy dared to steal a glance at the red-headed man’s reflection in the mirror. He was studying the despatch, frowning horribly. He put it away in his pocket, took it out again with a fierce movement of impatience, and consulted it a second time. His “supper Mexican” remained untasted before him; Condy and Blix heard him breathing loud through his nose. That he was profoundly agitated, they could not doubt for a single moment. All at once a little panic terror seemed to take possession of him. He rose, seized his hat, jammed it over his ears, slapped a half-dollar upon the table, and strode from the restaurant.
This is what the read-headed man had read in the despatch; this is what Blix had written:
“ALL IS DISCOVERED. FLY AT ONCE.”
And never in all their subsequent rambles about the city did Blix or Condy set eyes upon the red-headed man again, nor did Luna’s restaurant, where he seemed to have been a habitue, ever afterward know his presence. He disappeared; he was swallowed up. He had left the restaurant, true. Had he also left that neighborhood? Had he fled the city, the State, the country even? What skeleton in the red-headed man’s closet had those six words called to life and the light of day. Had they frightened him forth to spend the rest of his days fleeing from an unnamed, unknown avenger — a veritable wandering Jew? What mystery had they touched upon there in the bald, bare back room of the Quarter’s restaurant? What dark door had they opened, what red-headed phantom had they evoked? Had they broken up a plot, thwarted a conspiracy, prevented a crime? They never knew. One thing only was certain. The red-headed man had had a past.
Meanwhile the minutes were passing, and K. D. B. still failed to appear. Captain Jack was visibly growing impatient, anxious. By now he had come to the fiery liqueur called mescal. He was nearly through his supper. At every moment he consulted his watch and fixed the outside door with a scowl. It was already twenty minutes after seven.
“I know the red-headed man spoiled it, after all,” murmured Blix. “K. D. B. saw the two of them in here and was frightened.”
“We could send Captain Jack a telegram from her,” suggested Condy. “I’m ready for anything now.”
“What could you say?”
“Oh, that she couldn’t come. Make another appointment.”
“He’d be offended with her. He’d never make another appointment. Sea captains are always so punctilious, y’ know.”
Richard brought them their coffee and kirsch, and Condy showed Blix how to burn a lump of sugar and sweeten the coffee with syrup. But they were disappointed. Captain Jack was getting ready to leave. K. D. B. had evidently broken the appointment.
Then all at once she appeared.
They knew it upon the instant by a brisk opening and shutting of the street door, and by a sudden alertness on the part of Captain Jack, which he immediately followed by a quite inexplicable move. The street door in the outside room had hardly closed before his hand shot to his coat lapel and tore out the two marguerites.
The action was instinctive; Blix knew it for such immediately. The retired captain had not premeditated it. He had not seen the face of the newcomer. She had not time to come into the back room, or even to close the street door. But the instant that the captain had recognized a bunch of white marguerites in her belt he had, without knowing why, been moved to conceal his identity.
“He’s afraid,” whispered Blix. “Positively, I believe he’s afraid. How absolutely stupid men are!”
But meanwhile, K. D. B., the looked-for, the planned-for and intrigued-for; the object of so much diplomacy, such delicate manoeuvring; the pivot upon which all plans were to turn, the storm-centre round which so many conflicting currents revolved, and for whose benefit the peace of mind of the red-headed man had been forever broken up — had entered the room.
“Why, she’s PRETTY!” was Blix’s first smothered exclamation, as if she had expected a harridan.
K. D. B. looked like a servant-girl of the better sort, and was really very neatly dressed. She was small, little even. She had snappy black eyes, a resolute mouth, and a general air of being very quiet, very matter-of-fact and complacent. She would be disturbed at nothing, excited at nothing;
Blix was sure of that. She was placid, but it was the placidity not of the absence of emotion, but of emotion disdained. Not the placidity of the mollusk, but that of a mature and contemplative cat.
Quietly she sat down at a corner table, quietly she removed her veil and gloves, and quietly she took in the room and its three occupants.
Condy and Blix glued their eyes upon their coffee cups like guilty conspirators; but a crash of falling crockery called their attention to the captain’s table.
Captain Jack was in a tremor. Hitherto he had acted the role of a sane and sensible gentleman of middle age, master of himself and of the situation. The entrance of K. D. B. had evidently reduced him to a semi-idiotic condition. He enlarged himself; he eased his neck in his collar with a rotary movement of head and shoulders. He frowned terribly at trifling objects in corners of the room. He cleared his throat till the glassware jingled. He pulled at his mustache. He perspired, fumed, fretted, and was suddenly seized with an insane desire to laugh. Once only he caught the eye of K. D. B., calmly sitting in her corner, picking daintily at her fish, whereupon he immediately overturned the vinegar and pepper casters upon the floor. Just so might have behaved an overgrown puppy in the presence of a sleepy, unperturbed chessy-cat, dozing by the fire.
“He ought to be shaken,” murmured Blix at the end of her patience. “Does he think SHE is going to make the first move?”
“Ha, ah’m!” thundered the captain, clearing his throat for the twentieth time, twirling his mustache, and burying his scarlet face in an enormous pocket handkerchief.
Five minutes passed and he was still in his place. From time to time K. D. B. fixed him with a quiet, deliberate look, and resumed her delicate picking.
“Do you think she knows it’s he, now that he’s taken off his marguerites?” whispered Condy.
“Know it? — of course she does! Do you think women are absolutely BLIND, or so imbecile as men are? And, then, if she didn’t think it was he, she’d go away. And she’s so really pretty, too. He ought to thank his stars alive. Think what a fright she might have been! She doesn’t LOOK thirty-one.”
“Huh!” returned Condy. “As long as she SAID she was thirty-one, you can bet everything you have that she is; that’s as true as revealed religion.”
“Well, it’s something to have seen the kind of people who write the personals,” said Blix. “I had always imagined that they were kind of tough.”
“You see they are not,” he answered. “I told you they were not. Maybe, however, we have been exceptionally fortunate. At any rate, these are respectable enough.”
“Not the least doubt about that. But why don’t he do something, that captain?” mourned Blix. “Why WILL he act like such a ninny?”
“He’s waiting for us to go,” said Condy; “I’m sure of it. They’ll never meet so long as we’re here. Let’s go and give ’em a chance. If you leave the two alone here, one or the other will HAVE to speak. The suspense would become too terrible. It would be as though they were on a desert island.”
“But I wanted to SEE them meet,” she protested.
“You wouldn’t hear what they said.”
“But we’d never know if they did meet, and oh — and WHO spoke first?”
“She’ll speak first,” declared Condy.
“Never!” returned Blix, in an indignant whisper.
“I tell you what. We could go and then come back in five minutes. I’ll forget my stick here. Savvy?”
“You would probably do it anyhow,” she told him.
They decided this would be the better course. They got together their things, and Condy neglected his stick, hanging upon a hook on the wall.
At the counter in the outside room, Blix, to the stupefaction of Richard, the waiter, paid the bill. But as she was moving toward the door, Condy called her back.
“Remember the waiter,” he said severely, while Richard grinned and bobbed. “Fifty cents is the very least you could tip him.” Richard actually protested, but Condy was firm, and insisted upon a half-dollar tip.
“Noblesse oblige,” he declared with vast solemnity.
They walked as far as the cathedral, listened for a moment to the bell striking the hour of eight; then as they remembered that the restaurant closed at that time, hurried back and entered the outside room in feigned perturbation.
“Did I, could I have possibly left my stick here?” exclaimed Condy to Richard, who was untying his apron behind the counter. But Richard had not noticed.
“I think I must have left it back here where we were sitting.”
Condy stepped into the back room, Blix following. They got his stick and returned to the outside room.
“Yes, yes, I did leave it,” he said, as he showed it to Richard. “I’m always leaving that stick wherever I go.”
“Come again,” said Richard, as he bowed them out of the door.
On the curb outside Condy and Blix shook hands and congratulated each other on the success of all their labors. In the back room, seated at the same table, a bunch of wilting marguerites between them, they had seen their “matrimonial objects” conferring earnestly together, absorbed in the business of getting acquainted.
Blix heaved a great sigh of relief and satisfaction, exclaiming:
“At last K. D. B. and Captain Jack have met!”
Chapter VIII
“But,” she added, as they started to walk, “we will never know which one spoke first.”
But Condy was already worrying.
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” he murmured anxiously. “Perhaps we’ve done an awful thing. Suppose they aren’t happy together after they’re married? I wish we hadn’t; I wish we hadn’t now. We’ve been playing a game of checkers with human souls. We’ve an awful responsibility. Suppose he kills her some time?”
“Fiddlesticks, Condy! And, besides, if we’ve done wrong with our matrimonial objects, we’ve offset it by doing well with our red-headed coincidence. How do you know, you may have ‘foiled a villain’ with that telegram — prevented a crime?”
Condy grinned at the recollection of the incident.
“‘Fly at once,’” he repeated. “I guess he’s flying yet. ‘All is discovered.’ I’d give a dollar and a half—”
“If you had it?”
“Oh, well, if I had it — to know just what it was we have discovered.”
Suddenly Blix caught his arm.
“Condy, here they come!”
“Who? Who?”
“Our objects, Captain Jack and K. D. B.”
“Of course, of course. They couldn’t stay. The restaurant shuts up at eight.”
Blix and Condy had been walking slowly in the direction of Pacific Street, and K. D. B. and her escort soon overtook them going in the same direction. As they passed, the captain was saying:
“ — jumped on my hatches, and says we’ll make it an international affair. That didn’t—”
A passing wagon drowned the sound of his voice.
“He was telling her of his adventures!” cried Blix. “Splendid! Othello and Desdemona. They’re getting on.”
“Let’s follow them!” exclaimed Condy.
“Should we? Wouldn’t it be indiscreet?”
“No. We are the arbiters of their fate; we MUST take an interest.”
They allowed their objects to get ahead some half a block and then fell in behind. There was little danger of their being detected. The captain and K. D. B. were absorbed in each other. She had even taken his arm.
“They make a fine-looking couple, really,” said Blix. “Where do you suppose they are going? To another restaurant?”
But this was not the case. Blix and Condy followed them as far as Washington Square, where the Geodetic Survey stone stands, and the enormous flagstaff; and there in front of a commonplace little house, two doors above the Russian church with its minarets like inverted balloons K. D. B. and the captain halted. For a few moments they conversed in low tones at the gate, then said good-night, K.
D. B. entering the house, the captain bowing with great deference, his hat in his hand. Then he turned about, glanced once or twice at the house, set his hat at an angle, and disappeared across the square, whistling a tune, his chin in the air.
“Very good, excellent, highly respectable,” approved Blix; and Condy himself fetched a sigh of relief.
“Yes, yes, it might have been worse.”
“We’ll never see them again, our ‘Matrimonial Objects,’” said Blix, “and they’ll never know about us; but we have brought them together. We’ve started a romance. Yes, I think we’ve done a good day’s work. And now, Condy, I think we had best be thinking of home ourselves. I’m just beginning to get most awfully sleepy. What a day we’ve had!”
A sea fog, or rather THE sea fog — San Francisco’s old and inseparable companion — had gathered by the time they reached the top of the Washington Street hill. Everything was wet with it. The asphalt was like varnished ebony. Indistinct masses and huge dim shadows stood for the houses on either side. From the eucalyptus trees and the palms the water dripped like rain. Far off oceanward, the fog-horn was lowing like a lost gigantic bull. The gray bulk of a policeman — the light from the street lamp reflected in his star — loomed up on the corner as they descended from the car.
Condy had intended to call his diver’s story “A Submarine Romance,” but Blix had disapproved.
“It’s too ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,’” she had said. “You want something much more dignified. There is that about you, Condy, you like to be too showy; you don’t know when to stop. But you have left off red-and-white scarfs, and I am very glad to see you wearing white shirt-fronts instead of pink ones.”
“Yes, yes, I thought it would be quieter,” he had answered, as though the idea had come from him. Blix allowed him to think so.
But “A Victory Over Death,” as the story was finally called, was a success. Condy was too much of a born story-teller not to know when he had done something distinctly good. When the story came back from the typewriter’s, with the additional strength that print lends to fiction, and he had read it over, he could not repress a sense of jubilation. The story rang true.