The Web of the Golden Spider

Both men were quick to understand the situation and both realized that it meant danger. But Stubbs was the first to shake himself free. He recognized the crew at the head of the motley army. It roused his ire as nothing else could. Instantly he felt himself again their master. They were still only so many mutinous sailors. He turned upon them with the same fierceness which once had sent them cowering into the hold.

“Ye yaller dogs,” he roared. “Get back! Get back!”

They obeyed–even though they stood at the head of a thousand men, they obeyed. Once these fellows admitted a man their master, he remained so for all time. They shrank before his fists and dodged the muzzle of his revolver as though they were once again within the confines of a ship. In a minute he had cleared a circle.

“Now,” shouted Stubbs, “tell ’em we’re through with their two-cent revolution. Tell ’em we’re ’Mericans–jus’ plain ’Mericans. Tell ’em thet and thet I’ll put a bullet through the first man that lays a hand on one of us. Splinter, ye blackguard,–tell ’em that! Tell ’em that!”

Through a Carlinian lieutenant who understood English, Splinter made the leaders understand something of what Stubbs had said. They demurred and growled and shouted their protests. But Splinter added a few words of his own and they became quieter.

“Huh?” exploded Stubbs, impatiently; “perhaps some of ’em ’members me. Tell ’em we’re goin’ home, an’ tell ’em thet when a ’Merican is bound fer home it don’t pay fer ter try ter stop him. Tell ’em we ain’t goneter wait–we’re goin’ now.”

He turned to Wilson.

“Come on,” he commanded. Throwing up his arms he pressed back the men before him as a policeman brushes aside so many small boys. Whether it was the sheer assurance of the man, whether it was his evident control over their allies, or whether it was all over before they had time to think, they retreated and left a clear path for him.

“You boys guard our rear,” he shouted back to Splinter, “and when we’re outer sight ye can go ter hell.”

Obedient to the command, the small band of mercenaries took their place behind the three retreating figures. The latter made their way across the street without hurrying and without sign of fear. They turned a corner and so disappeared from sight. The army paused a moment. Then someone raised a new cry and it moved on, in three minutes forgetting the episode.

Stubbs at the corner found himself in the arms of an excited man, who, revolver in hand, had run back to meet him.

“Lord!” exclaimed Danbury, “I was afraid I was too late.”

Without further parley he hurried the girl into the closed carriage and with a yell over his shoulder for the two men to follow, clambered back upon the box.

“The boat’s at the dock,” he shouted. “Steam all up. Get on behind!”

The two men had their hands full to keep pace on foot with those wild horses, but the distance was short. In less than an hour the group was all on board the yacht which had her nose pointed straight for the open sea.

CHAPTER XXIX

The Open Door Closes

It was an excited but happy group of people who sat down that night in the cozy cabin of the yacht after a good day’s rest. Each of them had more than he could tell, for no one would allow the other to omit any details of these last adventurous weeks. Each had been held in the clutch of a widely differing set of circumstances and each had been forced to make something of a lone fight of it. Here in the calm and luxury of this cabin their lives, by the grace of God, had come to a focus. First Danbury, as the host, was forced to begin from the time he was lost at the gate to the palace.

He told of how he awoke in a certain house and found himself under the care of the best nurse in the world. But that didn’t last long, for the next thing he knew he was on board his yacht and fifty miles out at sea with a mutinous captain–a captain who refused to put back to port when ordered to do so at once. Instead of that, the fellow ran him into a strange port, took on board a surgeon (shanghaied him, in fact) and refused to obey orders until three weeks later Danbury was himself again plus a limp. Then he had come back to Bogova only to be refused permission to anchor in the harbor. He had come ashore one night in a dory, been arrested and carried before Otaballo who refused to recognize him and gave him the alternative of going to jail or leaving the coast at once. It had all been an incomprehensible mystery to him; the only explanation he could think of being that the Queen was seized by the General who had usurped the throne. He tried once more to land and this time learned of the movement afoot by the Republican party. He had made a dash for the palace, forced his way through the guards, and reached the Queen. Now he’d like an explanation from her Majesty of the unfair advantage she had taken of a wounded prisoner.

Her Majesty with an excited, happy laugh said that if boys would get excited and act foolishly, the only thing to do was to keep them out of trouble by force. It was true that she had conspired to have him transported and kept safe aboard his ship, because she knew that if he came back, he would resent a great many things she was forced to bear as a matter of diplomacy, and would end by getting stabbed in the back. She thought it was better to have a live lover, even though he were a hundred miles away, than a dead soldier. He scowled in disgust, but she reached his hand under the table. She had given orders to Otaballo and then she had lain awake all night crying because he had carried them out. Her plan had been to get the kingdom all straightened out and at peace, and then to abdicate. But things had gone wrong and she told them a story of plots and counterplots, of strange men arrested at her very door with knives in their hands, of a bomb found in the palace, that held them breathless. Danbury fairly boiled over with excitement.

“And you had me tied up while those things were going on? Trix–I’ll never forgive you. I might have been a regular story-book hero.”

“Not in Carlina; you’d have been killed before night.”

“Rot! Don’t you think I’m old enough to take care of myself?”

“No,” she answered. “And that’s why I’ve come with you.”

“I’d have cleared up that trouble in a week,” he exploded. “And as for those beggars of mine–do you know I risked my life to get their pay to them through an agent? And then they turned against us.”

“Still for pay,” she said.

“Well, their life will be a short one and a merry in that crowd. Once the darned republic is running again, they will be got rid of.”

If Danbury squirmed at having missed the excitement at Bogova, he fairly writhed with envy of Stubbs and Wilson. As he listened he hitched back and forth in his chair, leaned over the table until he threatened to sprawl among the glasses, and groaned jealously at every crisis. Wilson told his story as simply as possible from its beginning; the scenes at the house, his finding the map, his adventures in Bogova, the long trip to the cave, his danger there, and their dash back with the treasure, omitting, however, the story of the Priest’s relation to the girl as of too personal a nature. At this point the black coffee was brought on, the steward dismissed, and as a climax to the narrative the contents of the twenty bags of jewels poured out upon the table. They made a living, sparkling heap that held everyone of them in silent wonder. Beneath the electric lights, they took on their brightest hues, darting rays in all directions, a dazzling collection which in value and beauty was greater than any which has ever been gathered at one time. To-day they are scattered all over the world. There is not a collection in Europe which is not the richer for one or more of them. They flash upon the fingers of royalty, they sparkle upon the bosom of our own richest, they are locked tight in the heavy safes of London Jews, and at least four of them the Rajah of Lamar ranks among the choicest of what is called the most magnificent collection in the world. But the two finest of them all, neither the money of Jews nor the influence of royalty was powerful enough to secure; one came as a wedding gift to Mrs. Danbury, and the other was a gift from Stubbs to Jo.

For a few minutes they lay there together, as for so long they had lain in the cave–a coruscating fortune of many millions.

“Well,” gasped Danbury, “you fellows certainly got all the fun and a good share of the profit out of this trip. But–did you say you left a pile behind?”

“In gold. Twenty times what these are worth,” said Wilson.

“And you could locate it again?”

“It’s buried under a mountain now, but you’re welcome to the map if you wish to dig for it. I don’t want any more of it. I found what I was after.”

He looked at Jo who had become as silent as ever the wife of Flores was. She had learned the same trick of the eyes–a sort of sheep-like content.

“But, Stubbs,” broke out Danbury, “will you go back with me? We’ll take dynamite and men enough to blow out the whole mountain. Say, it will be bully and–”

He felt warm fingers close over his own. It sent a thrill the length of him, but also it told him that things were different now–that he must not plan for himself alone.

“Well,” he added slowly, “perhaps some day we can go–say ten years from now. Are you with me, Stubbs?”

“It’s good enough to stow erway ter dream about,” smiled Stubbs, catching a warning glance from Beatrice, “but as fer me, I h’ain’t gut th’ taste of rope outer my mouth yet.”

They swept back the jewels into the bags and locked them up in Danbury’s safe. The latter agreed to take them to New York and see that they were properly appraised so that a fair division could be made. Stubbs protested that it wasn’t worth while.

“Jus’ give me one bag of ’em an’ I guess thet will last me out.”

But Wilson insisted on the literal carrying out of their bargain, share and share alike.

The remainder of the trip was a sort of extra honeymoon for Danbury and Wilson, while Stubbs was content to act as chaperone and bask in the reflected happiness about him. The climax came with the double wedding held on board the ship in Boston Harbor just as soon as they could get a parson on board. The little cabin was a bower of flowers and what the two girls lacked in gowns (both Danbury and Wilson insisting that to prepare a trousseau was a wholly unnecessary waste of time) they made up in jewels. The dinner which followed was worthy of the Astoria, for Togo, the Japanese steward, was given carte blanche.

Stubbs was to go on to New York with Danbury, but as to where he should go from there, he was mysterious.

“There’s a widder at Lisbon–” he hinted to Wilson.

“If you don’t find her, come back to us.”

“Maybe so; maybe so. It’s God bless ye both, anyhow, an’ perhaps we’ll meet in the end at the Home port.”

From the dark of their unlighted room in the hotel Wilson and his wife stood side by side staring down at the interminable procession of shuffling feet in which, so short a time ago, they had been two units. It had been just such a dusk time as this when she had first got a glimpse of this man by her side. The world had seemed very big and formidable to her then and yet she had felt something of the tingling romance of it. Now as she gazed down through the misting rain at the glazed streets and the shadows moving through the paths of yellow lights from the windows, she felt a yearning to be a part of them once more.

Once again she felt the gypsy call of things beyond; once again she vibrated attune to the mystic song of the dark. She felt stifled in here with her love. For the moment she was even rebellious. After the sweep of sky-piercing summits, after the unmeasured miles of the sea, there was not room here for a heart so big as hers. Somehow this room seemed to shut out the sky. She wanted to go down into the crowd for a little and brush shoulders with these restless people. It would seem a little less as though she had been imprisoned.

It seemed to her as though she would then be more completely alone with him–alone as they were those first few hours when they had felt the press of the world against them. For this night of nights, she craved the isolation which had once been thrust upon them. They were such guarded creatures here. An hundred servants hedged them about,–hedged them in as zealously as jailers. The law–that old enemy–patroled the streets now to keep them safe where once it had thrust them out into the larger universe. Outside still lay the broad avenues of dark where one heard strange passings; where one was in touch with the ungoverned. The rain sifted gently from the uncharted regions above. It was there lovers should be–there where one could swing the shoulders and breathe deeply.

The girl snuggled uneasily closer to his side. The two pressed to the window as though to get as far away as possible from all the man-made furnishings about them.