Part 79

Before I knew what he meant to do, he was out of the alcove, and out of sight in the room beyond. Again I tried my strength, and would have followed, but before I could do more than struggle up from the bed, the door had been unlocked, and locked again.

“He must keep the key in his pocket,” I thought.

I did not believe a word of the plausible explanations. The continued mental effort I had been making had cleared, rather than tired my brain; and I was out of that black sea of horror in which I had been drowning.

I had not been mad, and I could not have been in this house for many weeks, since the man in the capucha talked of Corpus Christi as still in the future.

I remembered Colonel O’Donnel’s telegram, and his mention of a man in Granada whom Carmona valued above many doctors. It seemed not impossible that this person and my “good friend” were one and the same; but if—weak as I was now—I hoped to get out of his house alive, perhaps I had better change my tactics, and keep my suspicions to myself, until I should recover strength. If the man believed that he had convinced me of his innocence and kindly intentions, he would perhaps think it easier to let me live than to put me violently out of the way.

I made up my mind to cultivate a more reasonable spirit, until my body might help me defend other convictions. And one thing gave me courage to keep the resolution. The fact that my host was not willing yet to discharge me as cured, argued that there was still a strong motive for detaining me behind locked doors. The time of which Carmona had spoken in my dream had not come. He was not married yet, and I said to myself that he never would be, if it depended on Monica’s consent to be his wife.

Since that hour in the cathedral of Seville nothing would make her believe me disloyal, I thought; therefore nothing could make her disloyal to me.

Knowing little of illness, I trusted that, after all, I had not been put away here for long. Maybe a few days of fever and delirium would waste the hands and bleach out the brown stain of sunburn. At the moment, though I was young, and had been strong, I would have no chance against even an old man; but if I ate, and could crawl up to take a little exercise, a day or two ought to make a vast difference.

I was still of this mind when the capucha came back. So softly did he unlock the door that I did not hear him, but he was not as stealthy about locking it again. He had brought me a glass of milk; and when I had drunk it he asked me to get up, and let him judge of my strength.

Weak as I was, I felt that I could have risen, but I determined to fight him with his own weapons. Making a faint effort, I fell back on the pillows, and closed my eyes.

“It will take many more glasses of milk before you need again ask ‘But when do I leave you?’ ” said the voice through the capucha.

I agreed, and pleased myself with my strategy after the man had gone out, until to my alarm I was overcome with sleep.

He had put something into the milk.

XXXVIII

THE FOUNTAIN

The delicate fretwork of the walls was blurred in twilight when I waked from heavy, irresistible sleep.

I felt dull, but could trace no other bad effect from the drug. Indeed, I fancied that I was stronger; and very slowly, with occasional rests, I got upon my feet and began to crawl about the room.

There was very little furniture, but what there was, was good, and of a graceful Moorish design which suited the wall decoration, and the horseshoe shape of the window. This had an elaborate lattice of wood, which let in plenty of air, as there was no glass; but outside were six stout bars of iron, and the lattice was securely fastened. I stared through the pattern of wood into a very small but charming patio, paved with brick and tiles, and having in the centre a fountain, with a shallow basin. Feathery plumes of water played over a few low palms in great blue and white pots of Triana ware, but as I looked the plumes shrank almost to nothing, then ceased to wave. The fountain was asleep for the night.

Supporting myself with a hand on the wall, I got to the room of the marble bath. There, the window was but a foot square, and was set high in the wall. On a low, carved bench, lay the clothing I had worn on the night of my visit to the gypsy’s cave. I sat down, and explored the pockets. What money I had had—six or seven hundred pesetas, so far as I could remember—was gone; so was my gold watch, and the revolver I had so gaily carried as a sure means of self-protection.

“Gypsy perquisites,” I said to myself, but the sight of the clothes brought back the past so vividly that I could see myself bidding good-bye to Dick at the railway station. Loyal, resourceful old Dick! Why had he not found his friend in all this time, while my hands were growing white and thin?

Surely there must have been some hue or cry, when I did not appear either at the villa or the hotel? A man cannot vanish off the face of the earth, I told myself, and leave no trace. I longed for the man with the capucha to come back, so that I could ask him more questions, even though I could put no faith in his answers; but he did not appear again that night. I slept after a time, a sleep of exhaustion; and when I waked in broad daylight, I found a glass of milk on a small Moorish stand by the bed.

I could not bear to drink it, lest the same drug should make me sleep as before. But how regain strength without food? And evidently I was to have this or none.

For a time I waited, hoping that my “good friend” would come, and that, if I told him I disliked milk, he would give me something else, not so easy to mix with a drug. At last, however, I grew faint. Perhaps, I thought, the milk was innocent this time. I drank, and the same heaviness overcame me. So, through most of the day I slept, and raged against myself when I awoke.

Again, a full glass stood by the bedside, but I would not drink. Many hours of dozing had left me wakeful; and my eyes were wide open when, an hour or two after dawn, the door in the outer room was softly unlocked.

He had not forgotten his capucha, though he must have expected to find me asleep. In his hand was a glass of milk, but when he had seen that I lay awake, he saw also that the other glass had not been touched.

I was neither hungry no thirsty, I said in excuse. And I could not rest because I was not comfortable. It had got upon my nerves, I explained, to feel my hair long on my neck and my face unshaven. Would my host get in a barber?

The man reflected for a moment, and then said that he would do his best as a barber. At present, and until his vow had been accomplished, he did not go out, except after nightfall, and therefore could not ask anyone to come to the house.

The instant he had turned his back, I slipped off the bed, so that I might be ready to stagger as well as I could from my alcove, and pounce upon him when he had the door open; for I believed that I was strong enough now to have some chance. But his hearing must have been keen, for he turned, and told me not to exert myself. What—I was only getting up so as to be ready when he came back with shears and razor? I need not trouble. He would do all while I was in bed; and he would wait until he had seen me return there.