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Show Under Pressure By George Agnew Chamberlain - - TrMm CllAITKK XII-Continued 14 "You sre to proceed alone, e-nor." e-nor." announced their leader. "It is not well we should be seen, yet be assured we will be watching and our horses are much faster than yours. You have only to follow the barranca to reach your goal." The sun was almost setting when he came into full view of the hacienda. haci-enda. He could have made a shortcut short-cut across a stubble field, but he chose to stick close to the barranca until he should come upon the rope bridge. There was no need to pause to examine it since he had often crossed the same sort of thing before. be-fore. Swerving he rode straight for the eastern gate, confident his bedraggled be-draggled appearance together with that of his scarecrow of a horse would protect him better than subterfuge. sub-terfuge. He was right and a few minutes later was being admitted by Van Suttart and Arnaldo since Joyce, recognising his stocky figure while it was still afar, had decided ""to H'ceive him p'er leisure trtid against her-vn brround. "You're Mr. Blacdder, aren't you?" said Dirk. "Yes," said Blackajder, dismounting dis-mounting heavily. "How did you know?" "I'm from the Americr.n embassy," embas-sy," said Dirk. "My name is Van Suttart and this is Adan Arnaldo who happened to witness yur capture. cap-ture. I congratulate you oq your escape." "Huh?" grunted Blackaddcr. "Oh, yes. What about Joyce Sew-ell? Sew-ell? She's here, isn't she?" "I'll take you to her," said Dirk, "but she thought you'd be glad of a chance for a shave and a wash first." "I haven't a razor," grumbled Blackadder, "and nothing to change into." "I can lend you a razor," said Dirk; "as for linen, you're too big for me, but we can fLx that too if you'll put up with stuff from the hacienda store. Come along." He led him to a room near his own. showeiiiim the bath, provided him with shaving equipment and promised to send up an assortment of shirts and underwear from the store. Scarcity of windows insures any Spanish habitation against curiosity curi-osity cn the part of the outer world but knocks the props from under individual in-dividual privacy. Since every apartment apart-ment depends for light and ventilation venti-lation on high doors opening on a central patio the price of seclusion is apt to be darkness and suffocation. suffoca-tion. On the way to do his errand Dirk saw Joyce standing expectantly expectant-ly in her boudoir-office-sitting room and pretended not to see her the sort of thing he had been doing for two long days and longer nights. On his way back she intercepted him. "rv cme-ki here,- please." "What for?" he asked blankly, then remembered he was supposed to be a diplomat "Forgive me. Of course I'll come in." "Quit being polite!" said Joyce sharply. "I hate it. It isn't you and you've been doing it for two days. It's spoiled our rides. It's made me unhappy. For a while you were Dirk Van Suttart, a lovable lov-able human being. But now what are you? A shell, varnish, floor wax, veneer! I dislike you." "That goes for me too," said Dirk hotly. "I dislike actresses who change their leading men but always al-ways use the same old stage set." "So that's it," said Joyce, "that's really it! I couldn't believe it Half my mind told me that was the mat-mt mat-mt y.er but the other half called the I first half a fool. Why shouldn't 1 Inave taken Adan to the roof? Why? Vvhat conceivable reason?" 'You're asking me what business it was of mine," said Dirk dully, "and I'll answer you. None none at all. What it did, though was to wake me up. I felt miserable. miser-able. I thought it would pass by morning, but it didn't." He looked up at her. "I I hate feeling miserable." mis-erable." "Oh, Dirk poor Dirk! If you could only know what happened! He covered his nose and mouth with a silk handkerchief." "Why?" demanded Dirk, bewildered. bewil-dered. "What for?" "On account of the night air." They looked at each other and their eyes began to dance. Another second and they would have burst into laughter, but unfortunately Dirk's thoughts veered into another channel. There was something he had been wanting to do for his own personal satisfaction for what already al-ready seemed a long time and while her attention was still diverted he took her chin in his left hand and studied the tip of her nose as if it had a smudge. Her startled and puzzled eyes should have warned him but somehow her half parted lips seemed more important. He leaned over quickly but kissed them slowly. Joyce had not imagined she would mind being kissed by Dirk, yet the light in her eyes dimmed and went out. Instead of warming the turned cold so cold he released her and stood back. A sense of loss oppressed her. What had happened? Suddenly she knew. He had been selilsh, casual. It wasn't only that she had been taken for granted; It went deeper so much deeper. He had destroyed something they both should have guarded. "Dirk," she said, "some day you'll grow up and learn how foolish fool-ish it is to cheapen another person. I believe people can make beauty for themselves, not out of whole cloth perhaps, but when they have a fair start. Friends are what you make them. Love is what you nuike it. Just now I think you yourself are too small to know what I'm talking talk-ing about." He threw up his head rebelliously and made an impulsive forward movement, but something in her steady eyes stopped him in time. He turned and walked blindly toward to-ward his room. CHAPTER XIII Blackadder recoiled from his first glance in a mirror in five days. He felt grateful to that young Van Suttart Sut-tart for saving him from showing himself to Joyce looking like a tramp. Being a stickler for daily shaving he hadn't seen his beard in years and was shocked to find it splotched with gray. He took Joy in getting rid of it, in steaming in a I mm "I Sort of Don't Seem to Give a Tinker's Dam About My Post." hot bath and in slipping into underwear under-wear and shirt, coarse but clean, supplied from the hacienda store. In spite of his wrinkled suit he felt in better humor than at any moment since his departure from Elsinboro. Joyce was a fool, he reflected complacently. com-placently. What a chance she had missed by giving him this opportunity opportu-nity for recuperation! In his mind he credited her with tactical error number one. But the moment he was shown into her presence he wondered if and where he had gone wrong. Already Al-ready dressed in one of her flowered frocks, she turned in the chair at her desk but did not rise. She looked unbelievably cool cool inside in-side and out as she passed slow eyes over his face and figure. Here was a man out of her past, accurately ac-curately remembered, and he had not changed; yet he was distant, divided from her by a world. As for Blackadder, he beheld a person he did not know, a person he felt he might never know. He had been thinking of her as a young girl headstrong, violent in her reactions, but young, unformed and consequently conse-quently malleable. Now he stared at something as fixed as a portrait; alive yet baffling, impenetrable. In stantly his own plan of attack went into reverse with an almost audible stripping of mental gears and as an added humiliation he discovered he would have to speak first or not at all. "Hardly what you'd call a warm welcome, Joyce." "No," she admitted; then continued contin-ued in an even tone, "Why have you come and what do you want?" He was at a loss for an answer. That a whipper-snapper should outface out-face him roused his always unmanageable unman-ageable temper and abandoning the sensible course he had just determined deter-mined upon he foolishly reverted to a. prepared speech prepared and rehearsed for days. "You know why I'm here. You're a willful and ungrateful girL You bit the hand that fed you fed you for years. Your escapade has cost me time and money and caused real anguish to Irma, as fine a woman as ever drew breath. But now it's a lot more serious. You're like a child playing with matches around a keg of powder and thinking it's funny! Get this, Joyce: if you don't go back with me at once you may find yourself your-self responsible, silly as it may sound, for thousands of deaths. For tunately you're still a minor. Do you heur? A minor." "Yes, yes," said Joyce quietly, "you don't have to shout. I heard you a minor. Well, what of it?" "Your stepmother has appointed me your guardian and by the laws of the state of New York " He stopped, halted by a clear laugh. "Excuse me," said Joyce, controlling control-ling herself, "but that sounded so funny. The state of New York, Elsinboro, El-sinboro, you. my stepmother it's all thousands of miles and a hundred hun-dred years away. There you were Mr. Blackadder, weren't you? Mr. Helm Blackadder, and a power in a small way. Well, here you're nothing. noth-ing. Unless you find some work to do around the place you haven't the right to eat, breathe, sleep or live." "You talk to me like that," exploded ex-ploded Blackadder, "a man twice your age who " "Please don't shout," Interrupted Joyce. "Try to realize It's only because be-cause I hate bloodshed that you weren't shot. That's easy enough to understand, but what about this? If you had been it wouldn't have affected af-fected the course of my present life in the slightest it wouldn't even have rated an added inconvenience." inconven-ience." "Are you crazy?" gasped Black-adder. Black-adder. "Perhaps," said Joyce, "but that isn't what matters, is It? What stands for a whole lot more than you seem able to comprehend is that I'm mistress of La Barranca." "Anything I can do to help, Joyce?" asked Dirk, sauntering in from the balcony. "Oh, Dirk; I'm glad you came. Do you mind showing Mr. Black-adder Black-adder around for a while? I'm going to be busy until dinner time." Blackadder, though annoyed at the interruption, promptly saw the value of a chance to sound out Van Suttart. Whose ally would he turn out to be? What was he doing here anyway? How had he got here and when? He accompanied him with alacrity, glad of a chance besides to reassemble his shaken wits, and to all his questions except the first and most important obtained ready answers. At the end of half an hour he could murmur: "So that cable of mine is really all the authority you have for being away from your post?" "Why, yes, I guess so, yes," said Dirk, a little troubled by the tone of the statement. "I hadn't thought of it in exactly that way." "Now that you have and that I'm here," continued Blackadder. "it sort of does away with any reason for you to continue hanging around, doesn't it?" "Eh?" said Dirk, beginning to wake up; then he laughed. "Well, there's certainly an answer to that! The only method of departure at present happens to be ride or walk a hundred miles." "Not necessarily," said Blackadder. Blackad-der. "I have reason to think my driver may come to his senses and return; there's also the possibility he may have reported to the ambassador. am-bassador. Say I manage to get a car. Would you be inclined to help me persuade Miss Sewell to leave at once?" "I'm not sure," said Dirk, frowning frown-ing thoughtfully. "I'd have to talk to her about it first" "That's an extraordinary stand for you to take." "Why?" "If you can't see it," said Black-adderi Black-adderi "I won't try to show you. For your own good I might point out again that your justification for absence ab-sence from your post terminated with my arrival." "I can't blame you for being puzzled, puz-zled, Mr. Blackadder," said Dirk slowly, "since I'm a bit that way myself. I don't know quite how it's come about but somehow I sort of don't seem to give a tinker's dam about my post." Blackuddi-r snorted, stared at him, then turned away with a shrug. Here certainly was no ally and he dismissed him from mind. But not for long. At dinner, where Black-adder Black-adder sat in brooding silence. Dirk was the mainspring thut kept the ball of conversation rolling, lie egged Dog Jorge ond Arnaldo Into one of their perfervld political discussions, then bargained with the latter to alternate with him at playing a dance tunc, Adan to go first. The challenge accepted, Dirk fairly forced Joyce to dance, but when it came his turn it developed he scarcely knew one note from another. an-other. Joyce had been puzzled by his high spirits, In violent contrast to the gloom which had enshrouded him from the moment of the rebuke she had administered. It wasn't the kiss she had minded nor Its rough-and-ready manner, not even Its humiliating hu-miliating assumption. The truth was she had been hurt rather than angry and had spoken straight from the heart in protest against a blow struck at some vague beauty, still in the bud yet present to them both. But no sooner did he slip his arm around her to dance than his strategy strate-gy throughout dinner became evident. evi-dent. "This is the only way I could think of," he whispered, "to be alone with you. To tell you I'm sorry sorrier than I ever was about anything else in my life. You were quite right to say what you did. Please don't stay away from me. Please give me a chance. Please go for a ride tomorrow as though nothing had happened." "Will you promise on your word of honor your given word I believe be-lieve you called it never to do it again?" "No," he said after some deliberation, delib-eration, "I can't honestly promise any such thing. I'm through with giving my word. All I can say is I'll do my best my level best." It was all Joyce could do to keep from laughing and what stopped her, strangely enough, was his sincerity sin-cerity the very thing that made him comical. They rode the next morning; to Blackadder's disgust they were gone for hours. After their return came lunch and the inevitable in-evitable siesta. Even then Black-adder Black-adder got no chance for a further talk with Joyce, for she was busy with the myriad details tossed up as steadily as a playing fountain by a family of 500 souls. How long was this sort of thing to keep up? He could imagine himself hanging around for days without ever securing secur-ing five minutes free of interruption. interrup-tion. The dinner was an exact replica rep-lica of that of the night before except ex-cept that his surly abstraction was more profound so dense it gradually gradu-ally spread its wet blanket over everybody else. At last Joyce surrendered, sur-rendered, crushed into submission by a prolonged silence. "I'm afraid you're having a miserable mis-erable time, Mr. Blackadder. What can we do to cheer you up?" Helm raised somber eyes to her face. "You know the answer to that, Joyce," he said with overwhelming over-whelming simplicity. "All I ask from these gentlemen and yourself is an hour's uninterrupted talk with you." Joyce knew when she was fairly caught "I'm sure that can be arranged ar-ranged any time you like," she said, making the best of it. "Shall we say in my sitting room in half an hour?" "Splendid," said Blackadder, and promptly turned affable. To the amazement of everyone, though he had appeared deaf to such talk as there had been, he took up a discussion where Don Jorge and Arnaldo had left off, enumerated enu-merated the omissions made by each and arrived at an unanswerable unanswer-able conclusion astonishing to both. (TO BE CONTINUED) |