Part 10 (1/2)

”You think then that, as you suggested the other evening, we shall probably find an interest in common?” he said.

”Undoubtedly. Several of them, perhaps.”

He bent nearer. ”Including b.u.t.terflies?” he suggested.

She showed her white and even teeth. ”Including b.u.t.terflies,” she repeated.

”But first,” he said impetuously, ”do allay the curiosity which, I a.s.sure you, would otherwise continue to come between me and any business matters we might discuss.”

She looked at him with an inquiry which held a sort of prescient reserve.

He could see that if not actually on guard, she held herself in readiness to be so.

”What do you mean?”

”You,” he said daringly. ”I have sat here watching and waiting to catch you tripping in that faultless accent of yours. It must be real. I have lived too much in Southern countries to be deceived.”

She looked gratified, her pleasure showing itself in a deepening color.

”It was adopted for business purposes, now it has become second nature.

I, too, have lived much in Southern countries. The Romany strain, my mother was a Gipsy. You are a brother, Mr. Hayden, if not in blood, in kind. That kind that is so much more than kin. You are here to-day, there to-morrow. The doom of the wanderer is on you, and the blessing. Take it on the word of a fortune-teller.” She spread out her hands smiling her wide, gay smile with a touch of irony, of feminine experience, the serpent-bought wisdom of Eve in it. ”You know what it means to hear the red G.o.ds calling, calling; to know that no matter what binds you, whether white arms or ropes of gold, you have to go.”

”You show yourself a true daughter of the road, senorita, and a student of Kipling. We brothers of the wild are usually not much given to books.”

”That is true,” she a.s.sented. ”I have heard them say: 'We know cities and deserts, men and women of every race. What can books give us?' But I tell them: 'Everything can pay us toll if we ask it. A star in the sky, the tiniest grain of sand on the beach. We can demand their secrets and they will not withhold them.'” She mused a moment. ”One must learn from all sources, knock upon every door. When I weary of gaining wisdom from the ant or considering a serpent on the rock, or the way of a man with a maid, why, I turn to books. They are my solace, my narcotics, my friends, and my teachers. I take a few, a very few with me on any rough journey I may be making; but when I am here or in London or Paris, any place where I may be living for months at a time, I have my books about me.”

”But why do you tell fortunes?” asked Hayden involuntarily, and immediately flushed to the roots of his hair. There was the vaguest something in her smiling gaze, the merest flicker of an eyelash, which convicted him of impertinence. ”Forgive me. I--I beg your pardon,” he stammered.

She ignored his apologies. ”Some day I will tell you,” she whispered, going through a pantomime of looking about her cautiously as if it were a state secret of the most tremendous importance. ”But we have talked enough about myself now, senor; the topic for discussion to-day is b.u.t.terflies.”

”An interesting subject might be The Veiled Mariposa,” he said.

”Just so. Why beat about the bush?” He felt that she disdained subterfuges, although when necessary for her purposes, he was a.s.sured that she could use diplomacy, as a master of fence might his foils. ”You, Mr. Hayden, have been lucky enough to find the lost Mariposa, the lost Veiled Mariposa. Is it not so? But you are in a peculiarly tantalizing position. You can not convert gold into gold. Strange. It sounds so simple. But your hands are tied.”

”Perfectly true,” Hayden a.s.sented.

”Then to put the matter in a nutsh.e.l.l and to descend from metaphor to plain business facts, you can not organize a company and begin to operate the mine or rather group of mines, for the reason that you can not secure a clear t.i.tle, and what is worse, you have not, so far, succeeded in finding any trace of the present owners.”

”You seem to know a lot about the matter,” said Hayden pleasantly, ”but do you know, I think that you are wrong on one point. I think, indeed I am quite sure, that I have found the owners, at least one of them.”

”Yes?” Her tone still questioned. ”And what then?”

”Well,” he went slowly now, ”there are some questions I would like to ask them. They may regard it as an awful impertinence; but it would be a lot of satisfaction to me.”

”What would be the nature of those questions?”

”Among other things”--he still spoke slowly, seeming to consider his words--”I should like to ask them why, for years now, they should have let a valuable property remain idle. Even if they have the wealth of Midas it is still a puzzle. No one is ever quite rich enough, you know, and down there is Tom Tiddler's ground to their hand.”

”Well, what do you make of it--this puzzle?” She was looking steadily at a ring she was turning about on her finger.

”This!” He leaned forward. For the life of him he could not keep a faint ring of triumph out of his tone. ”This, senorita. There is only one reasonable, credible solution--” He paused cruelly.