Part 34

“Gi' me a call there on the bugle,” said Haight rapidly to the cornetist. “Anything to make 'em keep quiet a moment.”

The cornetist sounded a couple of notes, and the cotillon paused in the very act of the break. The shuffling of feet grew still, and the conversation ceased. A diamond brooch had been found, no doubt, or some supper announcement was to be made. But Jerry Haight, with a great sweep of his arm, the forgotten cigarette between his fingers, shouted out breathlessly:

“Ross Wilbur is out in the office of the hotel!”

There was an instant's silence, and then a great shout. Wilbur found! Ross Wilbur come back from the dead! Ross Wilbur, hunted for and bootlessly traced from Buenos Ayres in the south to the Aleutian Islands in the north. Ross Wilbur, the puzzle of every detective bureau on the coast; the subject of a thousand theories; whose name had figured in the scareheads of every newspaper west of the Mississippi. Ross Wilbur, seen at a fashionable tea and his club of an afternoon, then suddenly blotted out from the world of men; swallowed up and engulfed by the unknown, with not so much as a button left behind. Ross Wilbur the suicide; Ross Wilbur, the murdered; Ross Wilbur, victim of a band of kidnappers, the hero of some dreadful story that was never to be told, the mystery, the legend--behold he was there! Back from the unknown, dropped from the clouds, spewed up again from the bowels of the earth--a veritable god from the machine who in a single instant was to disentangle all the unexplained complications of those past winter months.

“Here he comes!” shouted Jerry, his eyes caught by a group of men in full dress and gold lace who came tramping down the hall to the ballroom, bearing a nondescript figure on their shoulders. “Here he comes--the boys are bringing him in here! Oh!” he cried, turning to the musicians, “can't you play something?--any-thing! Hit it up for all you're worth! Ridgeway--Nat, look here! Ross was Yale, y' know--Yale '95; ain't we enough Yale men here to give him the yell?”

Out of all time and tune, but with a vigor that made up for both, the musicians banged into a patriotic air. Jerry, standing on a chair that itself was standing on the platform, led half a dozen frantic men in the long thunder of the “Brek-kek-kek-kek, co-ex, co-ex.”

Around the edges of the hall excited girls, and chaperons themselves no less agitated, were standing up on chairs and benches, splitting their gloves and breaking their fans in their enthusiasm; while every male dancer on the floor--ensigns in their gold-faced uniforms and “rovers” in starched and immaculate shirt-bosoms--cheered and cheered and struggled with one another to shake hands with a man whom two of their number old Yale grads, with memories of athletic triumphs yet in their minds--carried into that ball-room, borne high upon their shoulders.

And the hero of the occasion, the centre of all this enthusiasm--thus carried as if in triumph into this assembly in evening dress, in white tulle and whiter kid, odorous of delicate sachets and scarce-perceptible perfumes--was a figure unhandsome and unkempt beyond description. His hair was long, and hanging over his eyes. A thick, uncared-for beard concealed the mouth and chin. He was dressed in a Chinaman's blouse and jeans--the latter thrust into slashed and tattered boots. The tan and weatherbeatings of nearly half a year of the tropics were spread over his face; a partly healed scar disfigured one temple and cheek-bone; the hands, to the very finger-nails, were gray with grime; the jeans and blouse and boots were fouled with grease, with oil, with pitch, and all manner of the dirt of an uncared-for ship. And as the dancers of the cotillon pressed about, and a hundred kid-gloved hands stretched toward his own palms, there fell from Wilbur's belt upon the waxed floor of the ballroom the knife he had so grimly used in the fight upon the beach, the ugly stains still blackening on the haft.

There was no more cotillon that night. They put him down at last; and in half a dozen sentences Wilbur told them of how he had been shanghaied--told them of Magdalena Bay, his fortune in the ambergris, and the fight with the beach-combers.

“You people are going down there for target-practice, aren't you?” he said, turning to one of the “Monterey's” officers in the crowd about him. “Yes? Well, you'll find the coolies there, on the beach, waiting for you. All but one,” he added, grimly.

“We marooned six of them, but the seventh didn't need to be marooned. They tried to plunder us of our boat, but, by -----, we made it interesting for 'em!”

“I say, steady, old man!” exclaimed Nat Ridgeway, glancing nervously toward the girls in the surrounding group. “This isn't Magdalena Bay, you know.”

And for the first time Wilbur felt a genuine pang of disappointment and regret as he realized that it was not.

Half an hour later, Ridgeway drew him aside. “I say, Ross, let's get out of here. You can't stand here talking all night. Jerry and you and I will go up to my rooms, and we can talk there in peace. I'll order up three quarts of fizz, and--”

“Oh, rot your fizz!” declared Wilbur. “If you love me, give me Christian tobacco.”

As they were going out of the ballroom, Wilbur caught sight of Josie Herrick, and, breaking away from the others, ran over to her.

“Oh!” she cried, breathless. “To think and to think of your coming back after all! No, I don't realize it--I can't. It will take me until morning to find out that you've really come back. I just know now that I'm happier than I ever was in my life before. Oh!” she cried, “do I need to tell you how glad I am? It's just too splendid for words. Do you know, I was thought to be the last person you had ever spoken to while alive, and the reporters and all--oh, but we must have such a talk when all is quiet again! And our dance--we've never had our dance. I've got your card yet. Remember the one you wrote for me at the tea--a facsimile of it was published in all the papers. You are going to be a hero when you get back to San Francisco. Oh, Ross! Ross!” she cried, the tears starting to her eyes, “you've really come back, and you are just as glad as I am, aren't you--glad that you've come back--come back to me?”

Later on, in Ridgeway's room, Wilbur told his story again more in detail to Ridgeway and Jerry. All but one portion of it. He could not make up his mind to speak to them--these society fellows, clubmen and city bred--of Moran. How he was going to order his life henceforward--his life, that he felt to be void of interest without her--he did not know. That was a question for later consideration.

“We'll give another cotillon!” exclaimed Ridgeway, “up in the city--give it for you, Ross, and you'll lead. It'll be the event of the season!”

Wilbur uttered an exclamation of contempt. “I've done with that sort of foolery,” he answered.

“Nonsense; why, think, we'll have it in your honor. Every smart girl in town will come, and you'll be the lion of--”

“You don't seem to understand!” cried Wilbur impatiently. “Do you think there's any fun in that for me now? Why, man, I've fought--fought with a naked dirk, fought with a coolie who snapped at me like an ape--and you talk to me of dancing and functions and german favors! It wouldn't do some of you people a bit of harm if you were shanghaied yourselves. That sort of life, if it don't do anything else, knocks a big bit of seriousness into you. You fellows make me sick,” he went on vehemently. “As though there wasn't anything else to do but lead cotillons and get up new figures!”

“Well, what do you propose to do?” asked Nat Ridgeway. “Where are you going now--back to Magdalena Bay?”

“No.”

“Where, then?”

Wilbur smote the table with his fist.

“Cuba!” he cried. “I've got a crack little schooner out in the bay here, and I've got a hundred thousand dollars' worth of loot aboard of her. I've tried beach-combing for a while, and now I'll try filibustering. It may be a crazy idea, but it's better than dancing. I'd rather lead an expedition than a german, and you can chew on that, Nathaniel Ridgeway.”

Jerry looked at him as he stood there before them in the filthy, reeking blouse and jeans, the ragged boots, and the mane of hair and tangled beard, and remembered the Wilbur he used to know--the Wilbur of the carefully creased trousers, the satin scarfs and fancy waistcoats.