Peter and Jane; Or, The Missing Heir

'The facts in this case,' replied Purvis, 'are quite exceptional; you will allow this, I think, when you know them, and you will then appreciate the fact that it was necessary to get the whole of the evidence quite clearly established before making the final results known to you.'

'We have hardly time to argue the subject,' said Peter, 'seeing that your pony is at the door. The solicitor in Buenos Ayres, whom Sir John Falconer recommended to me, will meet you here any day you like to name, and we can go into the matter thoroughly with you together.'

'That would be the most satisfactory plan,' said Purvis, raising his weak eyes to Peter. 'Meanwhile,' he said, 'my expenses in this matter have been considerable; perhaps you would kindly look at my account before starting?'

'No,' said Peter shortly, 'I could not. I am not in the habit of looking over my accounts by moonlight in the garden.'

'A hundred pounds on account,' said Purvis, 'would enable me to bring this important matter to a conclusion. Without that, I fear, I am powerless.'

It ended in Toffy and Peter putting their available cash together and giving Purvis seventy pounds, and the clerkly man of ink produced a stamp and a stylographic pen from his pocket, and made out the receipt on the little dining-room table and handed it to Peter.

'Thank you,' said Peter, relenting a little. He was annoyed with himself for the irritation which Purvis produced in him. After all, he had asked him for his assistance, and he was giving it to the best of his ability. He went as far as the door with him, and said, 'If the claim is established, remember I should like to see Edward Ogilvie as soon as possible. Wire to me all particulars, and be so good as to convey to him that we are anxious to do the right thing by him. I should not like him to feel, for instance, that the fact of his existence was any cause of resentment with any of us.'

'It is he, perhaps, who will feel resentment,' said Purvis.

'Perhaps,' said Peter, resisting an inclination to speed Purvis's departure.

CHAPTER XIV

Toffy was hovering about the dining-room waiting for him as he turned and went into the house again, and said, 'All this is a bit rough on you, Peter.' And Peter assented with a nod.

The two men went into the little drawing-room to collect pillows for the long chairs in the corridor where they were going to sleep, and Peter went to a side table to turn low a lamp which was adding to the heat of the room. 'I say,' he said, 'didn't you mean these letters to go?'

'Haven't my letters gone?' said Toffy. 'How on earth were they forgotten?'

'Toffy,' said Peter, 'when I meet you acting as a sandwich-man in Piccadilly, without a rag to your back or a shilling to your name, I shall say nothing more encouraging to you than, "It was just what I expected!"'

'But Ross always told me to leave my letters here when I wanted them posted!' said Toffy, scratching his head.

'It's an extraordinary thing,' said Peter, 'that you ever have a pillow to lay your head on; and you don't get that unless I heave it at you and prevent other fellows grabbing it! Who 's got your motorcar at home now? Some one, I suppose, you 've lent it to, and from whom you won't a bit like to ask it back. Are you getting any rent at all for Hulworth?' he went on, his wrath increasing as he spoke, 'or are you letting it slide for a bit because your tenants are hard up? Would you have a picture, or a bit of cracked china, or a bottle of wine left, if they had not been all tied up by some cunning ancestor and looked after by his executors? What has become of your horses, and why are you always put to sleep in the billiard-room of an hotel, or in the pantry, when other fellows get a decent bed provided for them? Why do they give you a room over the stables when country houses are full, where the coachman's wife asks you if you would like a little hot water in the morning, and regrets that the chimney doesn't draw very well? You were born that way, I suppose,' finished Peter hopelessly. 'I don't believe you were ever allowed a cradle if your nurse wanted it for any one else!'

'I rub along all right!' said Toffy apologetically.

'Look here,' said Peter, 'I 'll ride with these letters after Purvis, and ask him to post them; he 'll get down to Taco in time to catch the mail, and I can easily overtake him on the bayo.'

The Englishmen had learned to call their horses after their different shades of colour, in the usual Argentine way; the one Peter spoke of was a dun-coloured brute, three-parts English-bred.

Toffy protested, but Peter was obstinate. He had been worried and unsettled all day, and he believed that it would be a good thing to let off steam by a ride over the camp; besides which, Toffy's letters had taken a good two hours to write, and Peter guessed they were important. He could easily overtake Purvis with them before he should reach La Dorada.

'I 'll sit up and trim the lamp like a faithful wife, until you return,' said Toffy.

'You 'll go to bed, you ass!' shouted Peter. He was outside the house fastening the girths of the bayo as he spoke, and now he swung himself into the saddle and sent his horse forward with the characteristic quick movement of a hunting man.

The long ride in the moonlight did him good. The intensity of the clear light had something strange and wonderful in it, touched with unearthliness. Night with its thousand secrets whispered about him, and he felt very small and insignificant riding alone under the great silvery dome of heaven, hushed with a sense of the far-away and with the mystery of its innumerable stars. Now and then he came across a herd of cattle standing feeding in the short grass of the camp, their shadows showing black beside them, or a frightened tropillo of horses would start at the sound of the bayo's hoofs. He took a short-cut through the mimosa woods, where the ground was uneven. His horse picked its way unfalteringly as it cantered forward, though Peter had to stoop very often to save his head from touching the low branches of the trees. Overhead some parakeets, disturbed in their slumbers, flew from bough to bough, their green wings and tiny red heads turning to strange colours in the moonlight. He got away through one of the rough gates of the estancia out into the open camp again, where the earth was full of a vast stillness about him, and the stars pulsated overhead to the unspeakable music of the night.

And now he began to expect every minute to overtake Purvis, and he strained his eyes eagerly for the solitary figure of the horseman. He knew he was riding a much better horse than the one Purvis was on, and still he failed to come up with him. The track on which he rode was clear enough, and his horse knew the way to La Dorada as well as any peon on the place. Peter took out his watch and looked at it in the moonlight. It was not a quarter to twelve, and he was already at the little settlement, close by the river, where some Italians and Spaniards lived. He recognized one of the ill-built small huts as the place where Juan Lara dwelt, and he drew up to ask whether Purvis was ahead of him or not, and whether his boy had started with his mail-bag for the train yet. A Spaniard with a dark face answered his knock, and told him that no one had passed that way to-night, also that his boy had left much earlier in the afternoon with the mail. He suggested that the traveller should come inside and wait until his friend should overtake him; and as there was plenty of time Peter resolved to rest his horse, and then to push on to La Dorada if Purvis should not turn up. Lara's wife came to beg him to enter. She was an old woman before her time, and had reared a large family in the tiny confines of this little hut. Peter took off his soft felt hat and, stooping below the little doorway, came inside. The use of the Spanish language was inherited from his mother, and he congratulated Lara's wife on her skill in washing shirts, and made some conversation with her.

The place which he had entered was poor enough; it was built on a mud floor, and was entirely devoid of furniture save for a ramshackle bedstead with spotless linen upon it, and a couple of chairs. There was a tiny shrine with an image of the Virgin in the corner of the room; before it burned a halfpenny night-light, and round it were ranged in a row a number of paper match-boxes with little coloured pictures upon them. They were French match-boxes, which opened with a spring formed of elastic, and underneath the pictures were jokes of a doubtful description. Neither Lara nor his wife knew anything of the French language; the empty paper match-boxes, with the horrible jokes upon them, were offered faithfully before Our Lady. They were the best they had to give, and they were the only decorations in the room.

The-woman dusted a chair for Peter, and set the other for her husband, and she herself sat down upon the edge of the bed. They were both glad of visitors at whatever hour they arrived, and in the solitary life of the camp a belated horseman may often ride up after dusk.

Peter explained that it was Señor Purvis, who owned the big estancia down at La Dorada, whom he was riding to overtake.

'He had better not ride about too much alone,' said the Spaniard. 'There are some long knives about, and the señor is a short man.'

'What is the trouble on the estate?' said Peter. But he could get no information from Lara. 'He had better take care,' the man said. 'Señor Purvis would be safer if he were to sail away in his steamer, and be gone for a month or two.'

'He has a mixed lot of men on his estancia, has he not?' Peter asked.

'Yes,' said the man; 'but they are mostly Spanish, and the señor, for all his Spanish tongue, has not got a heart that understands the people.'

'You don't think anything can have happened to him?' Peter asked.

He reflected that the road was an open one all the way, and that he must have seen if there had been anything like a disturbance; but in the end a certain apprehension for the safety of the man made him think that he had better push on and hear if there were any news of him at La Dorada. There might be some path or track to the river-side of which he knew nothing; and if that bypath existed Purvis would certainly take it, however circuitous it might be. There seemed to be some curious obliquity about him which made for crooked ways, and in any case Peter did not want to miss the mail with Toffy's letters. He said good night, and, hearing no news of the traveller at the quay, he rode on until he reached the small unfenced railway station at Taco, set down apparently promiscuously on the grey arid plain. There Lara's boy was waiting with his mail-bag, and after a time the sleepy station-master began to bestir himself, and a cart came in with five horses harnessed abreast carrying some freight. Still there was no sign of Purvis, and Peter had to give his letters to the guard when at last, with a shrill whistle, the train came into the station.

It was very odd, he reflected; and he began to wonder whether Purvis was in danger, and to be vaguely disturbed by what the people in the hut had said to him. Ross had told him many tales of how Englishmen had been murdered out here. There was the case of poor Wentworth, whose Spanish wife had held him down when he had tried to escape, and whose own major-domo had shot him at the door. Nobody knew anything of the matter, of course. The Spaniards keep their secrets well. Nobody was ever brought to justice; and the affair, which would have made a sensation at home, only horrified a few English neighbours near the estancia. But the feeling against Purvis seemed to be something much deeper than personal jealousy or mere greed for gold dollars. There was a storm brewing about him, and no one knew when it would burst.

'Purvis will have to look out,' reflected Peter; and he wondered where on earth the man had got to to-night. He wished he could give him some sort of warning; but he reflected that Purvis knew far more about the state of affairs than he, Peter, did. No one could tell Purvis much about Argentine that he did not know already. His vague feeling of suspicion against the man deepened, and he began to wonder what game Purvis was playing. Had the other man in Rosario paid him well to do his work for him, or was Purvis withholding information until a certain price was stipulated? Bowshott was worth a ransom, and Purvis might be playing a double game. Between the two men he might feather his nest very well.

The dawn was breaking as Peter rode slowly homewards, and a pale pink light was in the sky. His horse ambled gently along, never mistaking his way or making a false step on the rough, uneven ground, but swinging at an easy canter, and getting over an immense distance without much distress to himself. The moon, in a sort of hushed silence, was climbing down the arc of heaven as the sun rose to eastward. The pale light touched the surface of a tajamar as he rode past it, and the trees beside it threw still, sad, faint shadows into its quiet depth. Above the western monte a lordly eagle with hushed wings rose majestically overhead, and some viscashos popped in a noiseless way in and out of their holes. The air was cool and fresh now, and a tree or two began to rise up unexpectedly out of the ground in the grey light.

He began to get sleepy with the easy motion of the horse; the endless line of plain around him was wearying to the eye as the sun rose upon it. Well, he would get into camp before it became very hot; that idiot Toffy would probably be sitting up for him.

He laughed softly to himself as he saw a flicker of light in the window that looked towards the track, when at last he drew near the little estancia house. It was like Toffy to remember to put a lamp where he could see it! It was worth while taking a midnight ride for such a good fellow, although he had had a very fair notion of what was in one of the letters, and entirely disapproved its contents. The last mail had brought news that Horace Avory was ill, and Peter knew quite well that Toffy had written to Mrs. Avory. Of course she was not the wife for him; she was very delicate and no longer very young, and she had a plain little daughter who was ten years old. Still, Peter supposed that the marriage might turn out pretty well in spite of obvious drawbacks; and Heaven knew that Mrs. Avory, in her own sad, tearful way, had fought very bravely against poverty and loneliness and unhappiness, and that she loved Toffy with her whole heart. But why, now that things seemed to be arranging themselves in a satisfactory manner, should Toffy be in the blues, and lie awake during the greater part of the hot nights?

He drew up at the door of the house when the sun was becoming hot, and Toffy appeared in his pyjamas and prepared a cup of coffee on a stove of patent construction for which he claimed admiration every time it was used.

'Thanks, Peter!' he said briefly. 'I was writing to Mrs. Avory by this mail, and she would have been disappointed if she had not heard from me. Did you overtake Purvis?'

'No, I didn't,' said Peter; 'and what's more, he didn't go by the mail train to Buenos Ayres!'

'What a queer chap he is!' said Toffy. 'You never know where to have him! That can't be he coming back now?' he said, looking from the small window at two riders who came cantering up to the door.

'Is it? Yes! No, it isn't,' said Peter, going over to the window. 'But I 'll tell you who it is, though! It's Dunbar, and he 's got a commissario of police with him! Now, what in the name of wonder do they want here?'

The two riders dismounted at the gate and came up the little path through the garden to the door. They walked stiffly, as though they had ridden for a long time, and their horses, tethered by the gate, looked used up and tired.

Dunbar hardly paused to shake hands. 'Look here,' he said, 'E. W. Smith is here, and he 's wanted!'

CHAPTER XV

'First of all,' said Peter, 'who is E. W. Smith, and why the dickens should you imagine he is here?'

Dunbar gave him a quick look. 'Is any one here?' he asked.

'No one but Ross and Christopherson and myself,' said Peter. 'Purvis was here, but he started for Buenos Ayres last night, and I have no idea where he is now. I saw the train start from the station at Taco, but he was not in it.'

'Purvis is in a tight place,' said Dunbar dryly.