His Unknown Wife. Tracy Louis
even be feared that the settled and respectable Argentine Republic would arrest him and endeavor to send him back to San Juan for trial.
Of course, the United States Consul in Buenos Ayres would have something to say about it, but there was a very real danger of consular efforts being overruled. No matter how distasteful the rôle, Philip Alexander Maseden must continue to masquerade as Ramon Aliones, vaquero, until he could leave the ship and assume another alias.
It was soon borne in on him how narrow was the margin which still separated him from disaster. He had gone to his berth, an unsavory hutch next to a larger cabin tenanted by deck-hands, when the door was thrust wide (he had left it half open while undressing, there being no electric switch within) and a lamp flashed in his eyes.
A short, stockily-built man, whom Maseden rightly took for the captain, stood there, accompanied by another man, seemingly a Spanish steward.
“Now, then,” came the gruff question, “what’s this I hear about your speaking English to yourself? Who are you? What’s your name?”
Luckily, Maseden was so surprised that he did not answer. The swarthy steward, a thin, lantern-jawed person, grinned. Maseden saw that the man was wearing canvas shoes with india-rubber soles, and guessed the truth instantly.
His nerve had been tested many times that day; nor did it fail him now. Gazing blankly at the captain, he said, in Spanish, that he did not understand.
“Tell him, Alfonso, that you heard him speaking English a few minutes since… Hi, you! Stop that! No smoking in your berth.”
Maseden was rolling a cigarette in true Spanish style. The captain was obviously suspicious, so the situation called for a touch of stage artistry.
Alfonso translated, pricking his ears for Maseden’s reply. But he hailed from the east coast, whereas Maseden used the patois of San Juan.
“You made a natural mistake, señor,” said the American easily. “I was talking to the stars, a habit of mine when alone on the pampas, and their names would sound somewhat like the words of a barbarous tongue.”
“And a foolish habit, too!” commented the captain when he heard the explanation. “Do you know any of ’em?” and he glanced up at the strip of sky visible from where he stood.
The smiling vaquero stepped out on to the open deck. Oh, yes, all the chief stars were old friends of his. He pointed to the “Sea-serpent,” the “Crow,” and the “Great Dog,” giving the Spanish equivalents.
The steward, of course, densely ignorant in such things, and already half convinced that he had blundered, was only anxious now to avoid being rated by the captain for having gone to him with a cock-and-bull story. Somehow, Maseden sensed this fact, and made smooth the path.
“They are strange names,” he said with a laugh, “but we of the plains often have to find the way on land as a sailor on the sea.”
“Has he any papers?” demanded the captain, apparently satisfied that the passenger was really acquainted with the chief star-groups.
Maseden produced that thrice-fortunate duplicate of the receipt for cattle brought from the San Luis ranch to Cartagena by Ramon Aliones that very day. The captain examined it, and turned wrathfully on the steward.
“Be off to the devil!” he growled. “Find some other job than bothering me with your fool’s tales!”
When Alfonso had vanished, he added, seemingly as an afterthought:
“If I was a vaquero with a dirty face, I wouldn’t worry about clean fingernails or wear silk underclothing, and I’d do my star-gazing in dumb show!”
With that he, too, strode away. Undoubtedly, the captain of the Southern Cross was no fool.
Five minutes later the silk vest and pants which Maseden had not troubled to change while donning the gay attire of old Lopez’s nephew, went into the Pacific through the small port-hole which redeemed the cabin’s otherwise stuffy atmosphere. Happily the bunk, though crude, was clean, and long enough to hold a tall man.
Maseden fancied he would lie awake for hours. In reality, he was dead tired, and slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion until wakened by a loud-voiced intimation that all crimson-hued Dagoes must rouse themselves if they didn’t want to be stirred up by a hose-pipe.
Now, if there was one thing more than another that Maseden liked when on board ship, it was a cold salt-water bath. But he dared neither take a bath nor wash his face. Personal cleanliness is not a marked characteristic of South American cowboys. That he should display close-cropped hair instead of an abundance of oiled and curly tresses was a fact singular enough in itself, without inviting attention by the use of soap and water.
Perforce, he remained filthy. The captain’s hint was very much to the point.
The Southern Cross was not a regular passenger boat. Primarily a trader, carrying nitrate or grain to home ports, and coal thence to various points on the southern or western seaboard of South America, she was equipped with a few cabins, about a dozen all told, on the upper deck.
The so-called second-class accommodation was several degrees worse than the steerage on a crack Atlantic liner. That is to say, the human freight ranked a long way after cargo. The food was plentiful, though rough. Even for saloon passengers there was neither stewardess nor doctor.
As a matter of course, a passenger list would be an absurdity. The chief steward acted as purser, and knew the names of all on board after five minutes’ study of his ledger. Passengers and ship’s officers soon became acquainted. Within twenty-four hours Maseden had ascertained that a Mr. James Gray, with his two daughters, occupied staterooms; but, for the life of him, he could not learn the ladies’ Christian names.
He cudgeled his brains to try and remember whether or not his “wife” had signed the register as Madeleine Gray; but the effort failed completely. He knew why, for the best of reasons; yet the knowledge did not render failure less tantalizing.
It is one thing to be dazzled by the prospect of escape from the seeming certainty of death within a few minutes, but quite another to be on the same ship as the lady you have married two days earlier, yet neither know her name nor be positive as to her identity.
This, however, was literally Maseden’s predicament when chance favored him with a long, steady look at the Misses Gray. He could not be mistaken, because there were no other ladies on board.
Thus when a very pretty girl, wearing a muslin dress and hat of Leghorn straw, appeared at the forward rail of the promenade deck and gazed wistfully out over the sea, Maseden’s heart fluttered more violently than he would have thought possible as the effect of a casual glance at any woman.
So, then, this fair, slim creature, whose unheeding eyes had dwelt on him for a fleeting second ere they sought the horizon, was his wife! It was an extraordinary notion; fantastic, yet not wholly unpleasing. It would be rather a joke, if opportunity offered, to flirt with her. He had never flirted with any girl, and hardly knew how to begin; but much reading had taught him that the lady herself might prove an admirable coach if so minded.
Of course, there was room for error in one respect. He might have married the sister, who, thus far, nearly midday, had not been visible during daylight. He calculated the pros and cons of the situation. If his “wife” was feeling the strain of that unnerving experience in the great hall of the Castle of San Juan, she might now be resting in her stateroom. But why should the sister, on whose shoulders, one would suppose, sat no such heavy load of care, come on deck alone and scan the blue Pacific with that dreamy air?
Yes, by Jove, this really must be his wife! Somehow, poetic justice demanded that she, and not her sister, should meet him thus unconsciously.
In covert fashion he began to study her. The deck on which she stood was fully twenty feet above him, and she was still further separated from him by some thirty feet of the fore hatch, but he noted that her eyes were of the Parma violet tint so frequently met with in the heroines of fiction, yet all too seldom seen in real life. Being a mere man, he was not aware that blue eyes in shadow assume that exact tint. At any rate, as