She passed by Heyst as if she had indeed been blinded by some secret, lurid, and consuming glare into which she was about to enter. The curtain of the bedroom door fell behind her into rigid folds. Ricardo's vacant gaze seemed to be watching the dancing flight of a fly in mid air.
'Extra dark outside, ain't it?' he muttered.
'Not so dark but that I could see that man of yours prowling about there,' said Heyst in measured tones.
'What—Pedro? He's scarcely a man you know; or else I wouldn't be so fond of him as I am.'
'Very well. Let's call him your worthy associate.'
'Ay! Worthy enough for what we want of him. A great standby is Peter in a scrimmage. A growl and a bite—oh, my! And you don't want him about?'
'I don't.'
'You want him out of the way?' insisted Ricardo with an affectation of incredulity which Heyst accepted calmly, though the air in the room seemed to grow more oppressive with every word spoken.
'That's it. I do want him out of the way.' He forced himself to speak equably.
'Lor'! That's no great matter. Pedro's not much use here. The business my governor's after can be settled by ten minutes' rational talk with—with another gentleman. Quiet talk!'
He looked up suddenly with hard, phosphorescent eyes. Heyst didn't move a muscle. Ricardo congratulated himself on having left his revolver behind. He was so exasperated that he didn't know what he might have done. He said at last:
'You want poor, harmless Peter out of the way before you let me take you to see the governor—is that it?'
'Yes, that is it.'
'H'm! One can see,' Ricardo said with hidden venom, 'that you are a gentleman; but all that gentlemanly fancifulness is apt to turn sour on a plain man's stomach. However—you'll have to pardon me.'
He put his fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle which seemed to drive a thin, sharp shaft of air solidly against one's nearest ear-drum. Though he greatly enjoyed Heyst's involuntary grimace, he sat perfectly stolid waiting for the effect of the call.
It brought Pedro in with an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval impetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure it disclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds; but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly. His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of his bowed trunk as he walked. Ricardo looked on truculently.
'You go to the boat—understand? Go now!'
The little red eyes of the tame monster blinked with painful attention in the mass of hair.
'Well? Why don't you get? Forgot human speech, eh? Don't you know any longer what a boat is?'
'Si—boat,' the creature stammered out doubtfully.
'Well, go there—the boat at the jetty. March off to it and sit there, lie down there, do anything but go to sleep there—till you hear my call, and then fly here. Them's your orders. March! Get, vamos! No, not that way—out through the front door. No sulks!'
Pedro obeyed with uncouth alacrity. When he had gone, the gleam of pitiless savagery went out of Ricardo's yellow eyes, and his physiognomy took on, for the first time that evening, the expression of a domestic cat which is being noticed.
'You can watch him right into the bushes, if you like. Too dark, eh? Why not go with him to the very spot, then?'
Heyst made a gesture of vague protest.
'There's nothing to assure me that he will stay there. I have no doubt of his going, but it's an act without guarantee.'
'There you are!' Ricardo shrugged his shoulders philosophically. 'Can't be helped. Short of shooting our Pedro, nobody can make absolutely sure of his staying in the same place longer than he has a mind to; but I tell you, he lives in holy terror of my temper. That's why I put on my sudden-death air when I talk to him. And yet I wouldn't shoot him—not I, unless in such a fit of rage as would make a man shoot his favourite dog. Look here, sir! This deal is on the square. I didn't tip him a wink to do anything else. He won't budge from the jetty. Are you coming along now, sir?'
A short-silence ensued. Ricardo's jaws were working ominously under his skin. His eyes glided: voluptuously here and there, cruel and dreamy, Heyst checked a sudden movement, reflected for a while, then said:
'You must wait a little.'
'Wait a little! Wait a little! What does he think a fellow is—a graven image?' grumbled Ricardo half audibly.
Heyst went into the bedroom, and shut the door after him with a bang. Coming from the light, he could not see a thing in there at first; yet he received the impression of the girl getting up from the floor. On the less opaque darkness of the shutter-hole, her head detached itself suddenly, very faint, a mere hint of a round, dark shape without a face.
'I am going, Lena. I am going to confront these scoundrels.' He was surprised to feel two arms falling on his shoulders. 'I thought that you—' he began.
'Yes, yes!' the girl whispered hastily.
She neither clung to him, nor yet did she try to draw him to her. Her hands grasped his shoulders, and she seemed to him to be staring into his face in the dark. And now he could see something of her face, too—an oval without features—and faintly distinguish her person, in the blackness, a form without definite lines.
