"Don't talk of that!"
"I must talk of it. At best it cannot be far off. Let us face the inevitable. Be ready to go as soon as possible. If I am alive when you set out, I will give you the necessary documents; if I die before you start, they are here," and as he spoke he touched lightly the desk at which he always wrote.
CHAPTER IV
AN ENCOUNTER
And now Julian Ritherdon was here, in British Honduras, within ten or fifteen miles of the estate known as Desolada-a name which had been given to the place by some original Spanish settlers years before his father and uncle had ever gone out to the colony. He was here, and that father and uncle were dead; here, and on the way to what was undoubtedly his own property; a property to which no one could dispute his right, since George Ritherdon, his uncle, had been the only other heir his father had ever had.
Yet, even as the animal which bore him continued to pace along amid all the rich tropical vegetation around them; even, too, as the yellow-headed parrots and the curassows chattered above his head and the monkeys leapt from branch to branch, he mused as to whether he was doing a wise thing in progressing towards Desolada-the place where he was born, as he reflected with a strange feeling of incredulity in his mind.
"For suppose," he thought to himself, "that when I get to it I find it shut up or in the occupation of some other settler-what am I to do then? How explain my appearance on the scene? I cannot very well ride up to the house on this animal and summon the garrison to surrender, like some knight-errant of old, and I can't stand parleying on the steps explaining who I am. I believe I have gone the wrong way to work after all! I ought to have gone and seen the Governor or the Chief Justice, or taken some advice, after stating who I was. Or Mr. Spranger! Confound it, why did I not present that letter of introduction to him before starting off here?"
The latter gentleman was a well-known planter and merchant living on the south side of Belize, to whom Julian had been furnished with a letter of introduction by a retired post-captain whom he had run against in London prior to his departure, and with whom he had dined at a Service Club. And this officer had given him so flattering an account of Mr. Spranger's hospitality, as well as the prominent position which that personage held in the little capital, that he now regretted considerably that he had not availed himself of the chance which had come in his way. More especially he regretted it, too, when there happened to come into his recollection the fact that the gallant sailor had stated with much enthusiasm-after dinner-that Beatrix Spranger, the planter's daughter, was without doubt the prettiest as well as the nicest girl in the whole colony.
However, he comforted himself with the reflection that the journey which he was now taking might easily serve as one of inspection simply, and that, as there was no particular hurry, he could return to Belize and then, before making any absolute claim upon his father's estate, take the advice of the most important people in the town.
"All of which," he said to himself, "I ought to have thought of before and decided upon. However, it doesn't matter! A week hence will do just as well as now, and, meanwhile, I shall have had a look at the place which must undoubtedly belong to me."
As he arrived at this conclusion, the mustang emerged from the forest-like copse they had been passing through, and ahead of him he saw, upon the flat plain, a little settlement or village.
"Which," thought Julian, "must be All Pines. Especially as over there are the queer-shaped mountains called the 'Cockscomb,' of which the negro told me."
Then he began to consider the advisability of finding accommodation at this place for a day or so while he made that inspection of the estate and residence of Desolada which he had on his ride decided upon.
All Pines, to which he now drew very near, presented but a bare and straggling appearance, and that not a particularly flourishing one either. A factory fallen quite into disuse was passed by Julian as he approached the village; while although his eyes were able to see that, on its outskirts, there was more than one large sugar estate, the place itself was a poor one. Yet there was here that which the traveller finds everywhere, no matter to what part of the world he directs his footsteps and no matter how small the place he arrives at may be-an inn. An inn, outside which there were standing four or five saddled mules and mustangs, and one fairly good-looking horse in excellent condition. A horse, however, that a person used to such animals might consider as showing rather more of the hinder white of its eye than was desirable, and which twitched its small, delicate ears in a manner equally suspicious.
There seemed very little sign of life about this inn in spite of these animals, however, as Julian made his way into it, after tying up his own mustang to a nail in a tree-since a dog asleep outside in the sun and a negro asleep inside in what might be, and probably was, termed the entrance hall, scarcely furnished such signs. All the same, he heard voices, and pretty loud ones too, in some room close at hand, as well as something else, also-a sound which seemed familiar enough to his ears; a sound that he-who had been all over the world more than once as a sailor-had heard in diverse places. In Port Said to wit, in Shanghai, San Francisco, Lisbon, and Monte Carlo. The hum of a wheel, the click and rattle of a ball against brass, and then a soft voice-surely it was a woman's! – murmuring a number, a colour, a chance!
"So, so!" said Julian to himself, "Madame la Roulette, and here, too. Ah! well, madame is everywhere; why shouldn't she favour this place as well as all others that she can force her way into?"
Then he pushed open a swing door to his right, a door covered with cocoanut matting nailed on to it, perhaps to keep the place cool, perhaps to deaden sound-the sound of Madame la Roulette's clicking jaws-though surely this was scarcely necessary in such an out-of-the-way spot, and entered the room whence the noise proceeded.
The place was darkened by matting and Persians; again, perhaps, to exclude the heat or deaden sound; and was, indeed, so dark that, until his eyes became accustomed to the dull gloom of the room-vast and sparsely furnished-he could scarcely discern what was in it. He was, however, able to perceive the forms of four or five men seated round a table, to see coins glittering on it; and a girl at the head of the table (so dark that, doubtless, she was of usual mixed Spanish and Indian blood common to the colony) who was acting as croupier-a girl in whose hair was an oleander flower that gleamed like a star in the general duskiness of her surroundings. While, as he gazed, she twirled the wheel, murmuring softly: "Plank it down before it is too late," as well as, "Make your game," and spun the ball; while, a moment later, she flung out pieces of gold and silver to right and left of her and raked in similar pieces, also from right and left of her.
But the sordid, dusty room, across which the motes glanced in the single ray of sunshine that stole in and streamed across the table, was not-it need scarcely be said-a prototype of the gilded palace that smiles over the blue waters of the Mediterranean, nor of the great gambling chambers in the ancient streets behind the Cathedral in Lisbon, nor of the white and airy saloons of San Francisco-instead, it was mean, dusty, and dirty, while over it there was the fœtid, sickly, tropical atmosphere that pervades places to which neither light nor constant air is often admitted.
Himself unseen for the moment-since, as he entered the room, a wrangle had suddenly sprung up among all at the table over the disputed ownership of a certain stake-he stared in amazement into the gloomy den. Yet that amazement was not occasioned by the place itself (he had seen worse, or at least as bad, in other lands), but by the face of a man who was seated behind the half-caste girl acting as croupier, evidently under his directions.
Where had he seen that face, or one like it, before? That was what he was asking himself now; that was what was causing his amazement!
Where? Where? For the features were known to him-the face was familiar, some trick or turn in it was not strange.
Where had he done so, and what did it mean?
Almost he was appalled, dismayed, at the sight of that face. The nose straight, the eyes full and clear, the chin clear cut; nothing in it unfamiliar to him except a certain cruel, determined look that he did not recognise.
The dispute waxed stronger between the gamblers; the half-caste girl laughed and