His Unknown Wife, Louis Tracy [best black authors .TXT] 📗

please, forgive me! I cannot help myself. I am—more than sorry for you. I shall pray for you—and think of you—always!”

And it was in that instant, while breathlessly catching each syllable of a broken plea for sympathy and gage of lasting remembrance, that Maseden’s bemused faculties saw a means of saving his life.

Though a forlorn hope, at the best, with a hundred chances of failure against one of success, he would seize that hundredth chance. What matter if he were shot at quarter to eight instead of at eight o’clock! Steel before, he was unemotional as marble now, a man of stone with a brain of diamond clarity.

If events followed their normal and reasonable course, he would be free of these accursed walls within a few minutes. Come what might, he would strike a lusty blow for freedom. If he failed, and sank into eternal night, one or more of the half-caste hirelings now so ready to fulfill the murderous schemes of President Suarez and his henchman Steinbaum would escort an American’s spirit to the realm beyond the shadows.

He did not stop to think that an unknown woman’s strange whim should have made possible that which, without her presence in his prison-house, was absolutely impossible; still less did he trouble as to the future, immediate or remote. His mind’s eye was fixed on a sunbeam creeping stealthily towards a crack in the masonry of that detestable cell.

He meant to cheat that sunbeam, one way or the other!

TIME VERSUS ETERNITY

Henceforth Maseden concentrated all his faculties on the successful performance of the trick which might win him clear of the castle of San Juan. Nothing in the wide world mattered less to him than that the newly-made bride should stoop to sign the register after he had done so, or that by turning to address Steinbaum he was deliberately throwing away the opportunity thus afforded of learning her surname.

When an avowed enemy first broached the subject of this extraordinary marriage, he had made a bitter jest on the use in real life of a well-worn histrionic situation. And now, perforce, he had become an actor of rare merit. Each look, each word must lead up to the grand climax. The penalty of failure was not the boredom of an audience, but death; such a “curtain” would sharpen the dullest wits, and Maseden, if wholly innocent of stage experience hitherto, was not dull.

He scored his first point while the bride was signing her name. Beaming on Steinbaum, he said cheerfully:

“I bargained for money, Shylock. You’ve had your pound of flesh. Where are my ducats?”

Steinbaum produced a ten-dollar bill. He even forced a smile. Seemingly he was anxious to keep the prisoner in this devil-may-care mood.

“Not half enough!” cried Maseden, and he broke into Spanish.

“Hi, my gallant caballeros, isn’t there another squad in the patio?”

Si, señor!” cried several voices.

Even these crude, half-caste soldiers revealed the Latin sense of the dramatic and picturesque. They appreciated the American’s cavalier air. That morning’s doings would lose naught in the telling when the story spread through the cafes of Cartagena.

And what a story they would have to tell! Little could they guess its scope, its sensations yet to come.

“Very well, then! At least another ten-spot, Steinbaum…. But, mind you, sergeant, not a drop till the volley is fired! You might miss, you know!”

The man whom he addressed as sergeant eyed the two notes with an amiable grin.

“You will feel nothing, señor—we promise you that,” he said wondering, perhaps, why the prisoner did not bestow the largesse at once.

“Excellent! Lead on, friend! I want my last few minutes to myself.”

“There are some documents to complete,” put in Steinbaum hastily, with a quick hand flourish to the notary.

Senior Porilla spread two legal-looking parchments on the table.

“These are conveyances of your property to your wife,” he explained. “I am instructed to see that everything is done in accordance with the laws of the Republic. By these deeds you—”

“Hand over everything to the lady. Is that it? I understand. Where do I sign? Here? Thank you. And here? Nothing else… Mrs. Maseden, I have given you my name and all my worldly goods. Pray make good use of both endowments…. Now, I demand to be left alone.”

Without so much as a farewell glance at his wife, who, to keep herself from falling, was leaning on the table, he strode off in the direction of the corridor into which his cell opened. It was a vital part of his scheme that he should enter first.

The jailer would have left the door open. Maseden was determined that it should be closed.

Captain Gomez’s tight boots pinched his toes cruelly as he walked, but he recked little of that minor inconvenience at the moment. In four or five rapid paces he reached the doorway and passed through it. There he turned with his right hand on the door itself, and his left hand, carrying the helmet, raised in a parting salute. He smiled most affably, and, of set purpose, spoke in Spanish.

“Good-by, señora!” he said. “Farewell, gentlemen! I shall remember this pleasant gathering as long as I live!”

The half-caste was at his prisoner’s side, and enjoying the episode thoroughly. He would swill his share of the wine, of course, and the hour of the siesta should find him comfortably drunk.

Maseden flourished his left hand again, and the plumed helmet temporarily obscured the jailer’s vision. The door swung on its hinges. The lock clashed. In the same instant the American’s clenched right fist landed on the half-caste’s jaw, finding with scientific accuracy the cluster of nerves which the world of pugilism terms “the point.”

It was a perfect blow, clean and hard, delivered by an athlete. Out of the tail of his eye, Maseden had seen where to hit. He knew how to hit already, and put every ounce of his weight, each shred of his boxing knowledge, into that one punch.

It had to be a complete “knock-out,” or his plan miscarried. A cry, a struggle, a revolver shot, would have brought a score of assailants thundering on each door.

As it happened, however, the hapless Spaniard collapsed as though he were struck dead by heart-failure or apoplexy. Maseden caught the inert body before it reached the stone floor, and carried it swiftly into the cell. Improvising a gag out of his discarded pajamas, he bound the half-caste’s hands and feet together behind his back, utilizing the man’s own leather belt for the purpose.

These things were done swiftly but without nervous haste. The very essence of the plan was the conviction that no forward step should be taken without making sure that the prior moves were complete and thorough.

He had detached from the jailer’s belt a chain carrying a bunch of keys and the revolver in its leather holster. Before slipping this latter over the belt he was wearing, he examined it. Though somewhat old-fashioned, it seemed to be thoroughly serviceable, and held six cartridges with bull-nose bullets of heavy caliber.

Then he searched the unconscious man’s pockets for cigarettes and matches. Here he encountered an unforeseen delay. Every Spaniard carries either cigarettes or the materials for rolling them, but this fellow seemed to be an exception.

Now, a cigarette formed an almost indispensable item in Maseden’s scheme; but time was even more precious, and he was about to abandon the search when he noticed that one buttonhole of the jailer’s tunic was far more frayed than any other. He tore open the coat, and found both cigarettes and matches in an inside breast pocket.

Not one man in a million, in similar conditions, would have been cool-headed enough to observe such a trivial detail as a frayed buttonhole.

Next he examined the bunch of keys, and came to the conclusion, rightly as it transpired, that the same large key fitted the locks of both doors; which, however, were heavily barred by external draw-bolts.

Jamming on the helmet-like the glittering boots, it was a size too small—he lowered the chin-strap, lighted a cigarette, and limped quickly along the corridor towards the patio, which filled a square equal in size to the area of the great hall.

As he left the cell he heard the half-caste’s breathing become more regular. The man would soon recover his senses. Would the gag prove effective? Maseden dared not wait to make sure.

He could have induced a more lasting silence, but even life itself might be purchased too darly; he took the risk of a speedy uproar.

Unlocking the door, with a confident rattling of keys and chain, he shouted:

“Hi, guards! Draw the holts!”

The soldiers in the patio were ready for some such summons, though the hour was slightly in advance of the time fixed for the American’s execution, so the order was obeyed with alcrity. Maseden appeared in the doorway, taking care that the door did not swing far back. He blew a great cloud of smoke; growled over his shoulder: “I’ll return in five minutes,” pulled the door to, and swaggered past the waiting troops, not forgetting to salute as they shouldered their rifles.

A long time afterwards he learned that he actually owed his escape to Captain Ferdinando Gomez’s tight boots. One of the men was observant, and inclined to be skeptical.

“Who’s that!” he said. “Not el Captain Ferdinando, I’ll swear!”

“Idiot!” grinned another. “Look at his limp! He pinches his toes till he can hardly walk.”

At the gateway, or porch, leading to the patio, stood a sentry, who, luckily, was gazing seaward. Maseden conserved the cigarette for another volume of smoke, and pulled down the chin-strap determinedly.

He got beyond this dragon without any difficulty. Indeed, the man was taken by surprise, and only noticed him when he had gone by.

Maseden was now in a graveled square. Behind him, and to the left, stood the time-darkened walls of the old Spanish fortress. In front, broken only by a line of trees and the squat humps of six antiquated cannons, sparkled the blue expanse of the Pacific. To the right lay the port, the new town, and such measure of freedom as he might win.

He had yet to pass the main entrance to the castle, where, in addition to a sentry, would surely be stationed some sharp-eyed servants, each and all on the qui vive at that early hour, and stirred to unusual activity by the morning’s news, because Cartagena regarded a change of president by means of a revolution as a sort of movable holiday.

At this crisis, luck befriended him. In the shade of the trees opposite the main gate was an orderly holding a horse. The animal’s trappings showed that it did not belong to a private soldier, and the fact that the man stood to attention as Maseden approached seemed to indicate that which was actually the fact-the charger belonged to none other than the president’s aide-de-camp.

Fortune seldom bestows her favors in what the casino-jargon of Monte Carlo describes as “intermittent sequences,” or, in plain language, alternate coups of red and black, successive strokes of good and bad luck. The fickle goddess rather inclines to runs on a color. Having brought Maseden to the very brink of the grave, she had decided to help him now.

As it turned out, Gomez’s soldier servant had been injured during the overnight disturbance, and the deputy was a newcomer.

He saluted, held bridle and stirrup while Maseden mounted, and strolled casually across the square to inquire whether he ought to wait or go back to his quarters. He succeeded in puzzling the very sergeant who was mentally contriving the best means of securing