Part 22

"Yes ... if you fail," and she cast an apprehensive glance toward the door to the promenade deck.

"If I fail," and Warren was dumbfounded, even after the unreal scenes which had prologued this situation. "If I fail. What do you mean? Wait a minute--let me get my bearings: things are coming too fast and furious for my poor intelligence.... I--you--the Duke--how do I fit in?"

The girl tried to regain her composure.

"You mustn't ask now: take things for granted until we can explain them together, alone. He may come in any minute. I can tell you before we get to the castle."

Warren lost his patience.

"I think I should know about this castle nonsense now. I admit you saved me from the police last night--although undoubtedly they may be on board the ship now, for we have not passed the three-mile limit yet. Can't you be frank with me, in spite of that ridiculous oath of allegiance which I took?"

"It was not ridiculous, Mr. Jarvis. It was in life-and-death earnestness. I would not have felt that I could truly trust you unless you had gone through that. Remember, I am a product of a different civilization from your own: I am still superstitious, if you please to term it so, in the Old-World sense. I speak your language, and indeed think in it with you. But back in the inner shrine of my being I am a Spanish woman, true to my heredity. You are essentially an American--droll, well-balanced, cynical--and oblivious to any other national psychology than your own."

The girl's earnestness was droll.

"I am a bit hard and unsympathetic," agreed Warren softly. "I did not mean to be so. You and I came into each other's lives in a wild unreal way which an outsider would hardly believe possible. The truest thing in real life is its melodramatic, unbelievable unrealism. That's where the novelists, the poets, and the play-makers have a terrific handicap against them. Things which happen every day would be ridiculed in print. The great rule of actual existence is: 'It can't be possible, but it is!' But, while we have time, tell me my cues, for I share your opinion of the Duke of Alva. I would never nominate him for President!"

The girl wrung her hands nervously--the first signs he had seen of a spiritual weakening.

"I am completely in the dark," added Jarvis; "I'm just a plain man, not a mindreader. Let's get down to brass tacks!"

She did not understand the local idiom. But she realized that at last she had found a sympathetic confessor.

"I hardly know where to begin. It seems absurd--in this pleasant day-lit stateroom--to talk of ghosts. But the fact is that my family castle is haunted."

Jarvis was lighting another cigarette from the battered silver case; he burned his fingers, as he studied her, in surprise. Then he laughed provokingly. "So I gathered from your amiable cousin. What kind of specters? Of the Hamlet variety or the old maid brand?"

She answered very seriously.

"Call it anything you like. But my castle is haunted, just the same. This is absolutely a case of facts, which mean so much to me that I would not exaggerate now! My grandfather was one of the wealthiest nobles in Spain. When he died my father went to take possession of the family estates in Seguro. The little town--as you count populations in America--was buzzing with weird stories of uncanny things and supernatural happenings in the old castle on the hill. It was deserted, after centuries of loyal occupancy. All the retainers had deserted their posts and fled. All told of a weird, horrible thing in armor which stalked the ancestral halls at night--of agonized groans, clanking chains, infernal fumes of sulphur--you know how ghost stories run?"

"I know the ghost stories, and most of the people who tell them run because of their own yellow streaks!" retorted Warren. "But, go on, your Highness. It's fascinating--I haven't heard a good 'hant' yarn since old Mammy Chloe died, back at Meadow Green."

She pouted, for his cynicism struck home. Yet was she earnest, and again she endeavored to impress him.

"Laugh, sir, as much as you please. My father laughed the same way. He called them silly, ignorant peasant tales. He said he would show them that it was now the twentieth century, and teach them how foolish were their fears."

She hesitated. Her dark eyes burned as she continued slowly: "He went there, Mr. Jarvis. He went there! He was never seen again!"

The Kentuckian leaned forward, engrossed.

"What happened?"

"No one knows. He disappeared--vanished utterly, without the slightest clew. Grandfather's treasure was never found!"

"Oh, what treasure?" Jarvis was almost rude in his impatient interest.

"The fortune he left. You know, grandfather converted all his wealth into Spanish gold to finance a Spanish colonization scheme in the West Indies. It amounted to about a million dollars in your American money."

Warren whistled, and twisted his intertwined fingers about an elevated knee--whose ache had been forgotten.

"That's a ripping good yarn. When did all this happen?"

"Fifteen years ago. Since then, two other men disappeared in the same horrible manner as my father did. Not a trace of their leaving: it is so horrible that it makes my heart creep to tell it. And yet you scoff!"