by Talbot Mundy
But Wahl came before he had thought of the right one — Wahl with the mean grin, and the cavernous rapacious look in his eyes, evidently anticipating good news.
“Well? You had word with her?”
“No.”
“Good God! Did you try? What happened?”
Dad began improvising — lying right and left at random.
“You’re on the wrong scent, Wahl. It’s a mare’s nest. I got close to the stage, and saw her for a moment with the mask off. It came unfastened. She wears that mask to hide a long scar on her right cheek. She’s nothing like the Lanier girl’s pictures.”
Wahl looked very keenly at him. “What’s that on your knees?” he asked him. “Rust?”
Dad had forgotten that the fire-escape was rusty. He stooped, and brushed the stuff off.
“Wonder where I got that,” he remarked.
“There’s some on your sleeve, too,” Wahl assured him. Dad removed his overcoat and slapped it vigorously.
“Did it look like a new scar or an old one?” Wahl asked, eying him keenly.
“Old. It might be a birth-mark.”
“How close were you?”
“Oh, a few feet from the stage.”
“Ridiculous! You couldn’t possibly have seen. It may have been grease- paint — or anything.”
“I’m perfectly sure,” Dad answered.
But Wahl felt perfectly sure Dad was lying, and he made no effort to conceal the fact. He favored Dad with one long searching glance, and turned away without another word, walking off as if he knew exactly where he was going, and what he would do next.
“He’s got a joker up his sleeve,” thought Dad. “I wonder what next. Something damnable, and under the belt, I’ll bet! Well: that girl has one chance — Sherry! Here goes!”
With his head down, and hands deep in his pockets, Dad walked slowly toward the Tribune Building.
CHAPTER 28.
“Does she remind you of any one?”
Dad missed Sherry that night. He found a note on his desk instead.
“Here’s the program of the concert. For God’s sake write it for me. Cox of the Star said three, nine and eleven were rotten, but the rest got by. House two-thirds full. The mayor and his wife were in a box — nobody else of importance. Two sticks plenty. Explanations later. Sherry.”
Sherry had intended to search hospitals, but he was too gloomy and discouraged to feel really set on any course, or nothing less than violence would have changed his purpose. It was John Miro who talked him out of it. They met in the foyer of the Auditorium, where Miro had a lone seat for the evening. Sherry had just obtained his program, and was on his way out in a hurry.
“Is it going to be as rotten as all that?” asked Miro, with one of his discerning smiles.
“I’ll find out from you, when it’s over!” said Sherry.
“Where are you going?”
Sherry told him.
“My dear boy; you’ll be simply wasting time. They account for people in hospitals day by day — you know that surely? And Sister Michaela has been to every one in the city.”
“Dammit, I must look somewhere!” Sherry exploded. “I can’t sit still!”
“Let me give you some advice,” Miro answered, studying him thoughtfully. “You’re giving discouragement the upper hand. That won’t do, you know. It isn’t fair to her or anybody. You’ll be useless when the time comes for action.”
“If it ever comes!”
“It will. It will certainly. My men are on a hot scent. I’m expecting news of her at any time. Do you play chess? Checkers? Come home with me and play checkers for an hour or two. Let’s make a bargain first, though: not one word about Jacqueline! We must both think of something else.”
“Are you trying to stall me, so your men will find her first?” asked Sherry rudely.
Miro took him by the arm. “Come along,” he said, “I knew you needed to play at something for a while!”
He almost threw Sherry into a great limousine, and whisked him away to a mansion that was furnished with the loot of Europe. There with suits of armor grinning at them from either side of an enormous fireplace, they played checkers; Miro regaling Sherry at intervals with tales of life as he had lived it — fascinating tales — until the concert-hour was nearly over and it was time to hurry back in search of a reporter who had had sufficient sense of duty to sit through it.
“When you’ve turned in your notes, come back and spend the night with me,” said Miro. “Then if any of my men bring news of her, you’ll know it as soon as I do.”
Sherry did that; but he offered Dad no explanations the following afternoon; said nothing at all, in fact, until Dad broached the subject of the evening’s assignment.
“We’ll go together tonight,” said Dad. “There’s a place called the El Toro that’s been advertising heavily and made something of a stir.”
“Why together? Can’t you do it?” Sherry objected.
“It’s your turn to write something!” Dad answered, smiling. “I wrote your concert stuff last night.”
“Say, Dad, I’ve got something else to do tonight. It’s important. I’ll explain it some day. I’m not bulling you, it’s urgent. Can’t you go alone tonight, and let me—”
“Nothing doing!” Dad answered blandly. “You and I dine together at the place I said. That’s orders; and as long as I’m your boss—”
Sherry turned away from him with a gesture of impatience, and sulked over by the window, watching the sidewalk opposite as if he hoped to recognize a lost acquaintance in every passer-by.
And inside the “old man’s” private office Wahl held forth on the carpet in front of the desk. His eyes were glinting, and his long arms were moving in nervous jerks.
“But I’ve known Dad for thirty years,” said Mansfield. “He’s a duffer in a lot of ways, but there’s no man in San Francisco I’d sooner trust. I don’t believe he would give us a bum steer. Why should he?”
Wahl grinned cynically. “I believe he interviewed that girl,” he answered. “I’m dead sure he was lying to me. I believe she put it all over him, the same way she probably put it over Sherry down in Louisiana. Dad’s soft, and she simply vamped him — played on his pity, I guess. I’m willing to bet you we’ve got her to rights! We’ll know tonight anyway. It’s all O.K. with the Prohibition Chief. I told him they’re selling liquor at the El Toro, and if he doesn’t raid the place tonight we’ll roast him good and plenty in tomorrow’s paper. He gave orders, and they’re going to make a real spectacular raid of it. I make my entrance with the bulls. There’ll be a panic when they pull the place, and that’ll give me the chance I want to corner the Conchita. I’ll have that mask off, if I have to fight her for it. Then we’ll know for sure, and I’ve got the story already written. You’ll have to see the circulation manager. She’ll boom!”
“All right. Have it your own way,” said Mansfield. “Will they arrest the girl?”
“Yes, if they can find the least excuse for it. If there’s rum behind the stage, for instance — or if her dress is cut too low — or if she makes a bolt — or anything like that. Gee! If they only pinch her, that’ll make it perfect!”
“Be sure you’re on hand when they pull the raid,” said Mansfield. “We don’t want any guess-work.”
“You bet! I’ll wait there at the station, and leave with the raiding squad.”
It was a desultory afternoon in the office — one of those days when nothing of importance “broke” and the men who were normally most active played rummy or did rewrite stuff — the sort of day on which anything gets into the papers — a day beloved of press-agents, propagandists, et hoc genus omne. Wahl spent the afternoon touching up his story in advance, adding high-lights here and there, improving on the head-lines, and telephoning once or twice to the police as a precaution. Dad and Sherry covered a poultry show, and by the time evening came Sherry was about as amiable as a stung bear. He walked into the El Toro behind Dad, and stood surveying the n
ewly, cheaply gilded restaurant with an air of unmitigated disgust.
“Those lousy hens were more exciting than this!” he grumbled. “I suppose now we’ll eat the birds that didn’t win prizes.”
The place was nearly full already, but Dad contrived to get a table at a corner of the dancing floor, and Papa Pantopoulos recognized him.
“Aha! So you took my advice! I told you! She dances one dance on the floor tonight — just one! A ‘Conchita’ in her honor, sir? Two? Certainly.”
Sherry tossed off the cocktail, tasted his soup and answered Dad’s efforts at conversation in monosyllables. His eyes were all the while roving about the room, and glancing up at every fresh arrival.
“Did you see that poster as we came in?” Dad asked.
“Ye-e-e-s.”
“What did you think of it?”
“Pretty rotten.”
Dad smiled patiently. It was true, the poster was not art, but he had hoped it might suggest a memory.
“Did you notice the name on it?”
“No.”
“You haven’t a reporter’s nose. You’re no hound!” Dad assured him.
“I’m sick of being a reporter. It’s a dirty business,” Sherry answered. “If it weren’t for—”
The orchestra struck up before he finished the sentence, and he turned to face the stage with an air of relief, as if any kind of conversation was a bore. Dad watched him keenly as the gong rang, and the curtain rose on a newly decorated stage; for Papa Pantopoulos had scraped up the wherewithal and plunged on repainted scenery.
La Conchita waltzed on from one wing, Ramon from the other and they met mid-stage, posing for a moment in the spot-light. But there was no recognition in Sherry’s face — not a tremor — not a quiver of the eyelids, though Dad was watching him keenly and would have detected the slightest start.
“Does she remind you of any one?” he asked.
Sherry stuck a fork into something on his plate, and went on eating.
“No,” he answered. “Does she you?”
“Something vaguely reminiscent. Can’t say who,” Dad answered.
Sherry looked back at the stage, and Dad thought he caught just a flash of a change of expression, as if some movement of the dancer had touched a chord of memory. But in a moment it was gone again. Sherry’s memory was of a blue-eyed girl with untidy hair, in a dress all creased from being wet. The mask made La Conchita’s eyes look dark and mischievous, not tender. The stage made her look taller. The dress made her look like a Spaniard and the dance deprived her of all resemblance to the Conchita he had known.
Besides, in his own mind he had taken to calling her Jacqueline since his talk with John Miro. The real name had displaced the other almost totally, as real things have a way of doing. He had imagined her poverty-stricken, crouching away somewhere in hiding, shrinking from publicity; and this girl, who looked years older than Jacqueline, dancing in the limelight with a male companion, conjured up no recognition. She almost fooled Dad Lawrence, she looked so different on the stage, and her mood had altered since the previous night. For her hope had risen since Dad found her. She was no longer rebellious (which was one reason why Papa had been able to persuade her to do one turn tonight between the dining-tables). She had a friend now whom she believed in; and she could not help feeling glad that Sherry was worried about her, even though she was more determined than ever not to let him find her. So she danced with an altogether different élan, using more art, and less sheer recklessness. On the whole, the audience was not so well pleased.
“I don’t think so much of her,” said Sherry when the curtain came down. He began at once to pay attention to his dinner, and did not notice the expression of comic patience on Dad’s face.
During the interlude, while most of the guests left their seats to surge back and forth in a mob on the dancing floor, Sherry munched away steadily, only offering one observation in response to Dad’s efforts to beguile the time.
“If you can make a story out of this joint, you’re a genius!” he remarked. “The grub’s bad. The service is worse. The dancing’s nothing special, and the orchestra is—”
“As good as the concert you covered last night?” Dad suggested with a grin. “Where were you? You promised explanations.”
But Sherry did not answer. He had become an expert in silence. He said nothing until the curtain rose again and Papa Pantopoulos jerked aside a low screen that concealed newly-placed steps leading down from stage to floor.
“Oh, darn this cabaret stuff!” Sherry grumbled then. “Don’t you hate to have ’em shaking rouge all over you? Why can’t they stay on the stage where they belong? They don’t look so cheap at a distance.”
He would not even look up when the dancers came tripping down steps, amid applause led by Papa Pantopoulos and the waiters. Papa was playing his big stake, and proposed it should go over with a flourish, and the crowd — like most crowds — behaved obediently. There was applause enough to have gratified the Russian Ballet, and for the first time Jacqueline felt fired by it. Ideas are strange intoxicating stuff. Perhaps because the unexpected friend had come to her the night before, like an angel in a rough tweed suit, she began to feel as if the room were full of friends, and to try hard to please them instead of to triumph over them.
Ramon caught the inspiration. He was wonderful at that. As subtly as if he had thought it out for weeks before, he danced in harmony to her new mood, adapting himself to it, suggesting phrases, as it were, and then — catching the approval of the audience — sweeping her into a waltz-step that exaggerated the natural youthful grace of his partner’s motion. The crowd began to cheer again without any hint from Papa. Twice around the room they whirled in quickening cadences, the orchestra taking its cue from them, when suddenly in mid-room Ramon whispered to her and they parted company, flying like spinning Pierrot and Pierrette in opposite directions.
Jacqueline’s tangent brought her close to Sherry’s corner, and she paused there, hardly knowing what to do next. It was only accident that made her glance at Sherry’s table, as she turned her head quickly to take her cue from Ramon. Dad was watching Sherry as if he expected to see him leap from his place. Sherry had looked up at Jacqueline because he could hardly help it. And so their eyes met.
She knew him instantly. Her heart leapt so, it made her gasp; it sounded like a sob. The sea of faces all about her became a haze, with Sherry’s head and shoulders like a cameo set in the midst of it. He was staring at her. He would recognize her in a second! He would know her for the girl that Wahl had blackened! He would feel the shame of her dancing in a cabaret! He would —
She did not know whether he had started to his feet or not. Something happened. Something broke the spell of frozen fascination. Something — she did not know what — gave her presence of mind enough to glide into a waltz’ and spin away toward Ramon, who met her in mid-room; dancing toward her.
“What is it, Conchita?” he whispered. “Courage! Courage! Pep-zip-snap!”
“Toward the steps!” She would have screamed it at him if she had had to say it twice.
He recognized emergency and whirled her in the right direction, but she could not wait to do the dance-up steps that they had practiced all afternoon. She broke away, ran up to the stage, and disappeared into the wings, leaving Ramon to improvise alone.
“My God!” Cervanez almost screamed, trying to stop her in the wings as she fled toward the stairs. “What is wrong? You ruin us!”
But Jacqueline did not care who was ruined, provided it should not be Sherry. She knew he would follow if he recognized her; and he was so obstinate that he would probably claim her before all the world, in spite of everything — and be put to open shame, as she had been — and quarrel with his father — and lose his friends. She must run — run! And there was nowhere to run to but upstairs — up to her own room, and lock the door. She must tell Consuelo, and they must think of some way of escape at once! But the bedroom was empty. Consuelo, she remembered n
ow, was downstairs in the kitchen, having supper.
Jacqueline locked the door, and sat on the bed bewildered — nearly fainting.
Sherry, who had almost risen to his feet, sat down again and passed a hand over his eyes. He did not believe them. That could not be the girl he had met in Louisiana. Yet —
“Does she remind you now of somebody?” asked Dad, and Sherry stared at him.
“Say — are you — ?” Sherry rose from his chair, his eyes fixed on Dad’s and all his gloom gone. His chin came forward suddenly. “Wait here!” he said, and rushed away knocking his chair over.
Ramon was still dancing, with his back to the stage. Sherry ran past him and up the steps, straight into the wings, the way Jacqueline had gone. Cervanez screamed, and ran to intercept him, but he had seen the door leading upstairs that Jacqueline had not quite closed behind her, and ten of Cervanez could not have stopped him. Besides, Dad had followed. Cervanez found herself with two men on her hands; she turned in panic to look for Ramon, who was dancing like a marionette, oblivious of everything except that he must “hold” the audience and save a situation. The second that she wasted trying to catch Ramon’s eye was enough for Sherry; he was gone through the door and upstairs; the door slammed shut and Dad stood with his back against it.
“S-h-h!” Dad warned her. “We’re friends, not enemies! Don’t make a scene!”
Cervanez was half-hysterical. One moment she was threatening to scratch Dad’s eyes out, and the next she was wringing her hands and running to lower the curtain. But she could not pull the curtain down so long as Ramon was on the floor; and Ramon was remembering old acrobatic stunts, compelling the audience to keep their eyes on him. Papa Pantopoulos was at the far end of the restaurant, near the door, trying to organize applause as the best way out of the predicament. If he had run to the stage, about half the audience would very likely have followed him.