The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 25
A limousine was speeding over the Long Island roads in the direction of Hedgewood in a manner that would have delighted the heart of Officer Joseph Delaney if he had been there to witness the sight. For then he could have twisted the gasoline control in the handles of his motorcycle until his speedometer registered sixty miles an hour and could have overhauled the flyer and in a grand manner presented him with a ticket entitling him to an interview at Hedgewood courthouse. Perhaps the two gentlemen in the car would have replied politely that they were bound for Hedgewood courthouse anyway to the trial of Dudley Drake. Whereupon Delaney could have told them that the trial was over and the defendant acquitted. And thus saved them some time and worry.
Both of the men were well dressed, distinguished looking personages well past middle age, but while the man on the right, who seemed to own the car, had iron-gray hair, his companion, evidently by continual applications of dye, had kept his hair and Van Dyke beard a glossy black.
Entering the village of Hedgewood, the limousine slowed down somewhat and came to a smooth stop in front of the courthouse. The gray-haired man embarked with surprising agility and entered the building. In ten minutes he came out again. His face wore a puzzled, incredulous expression, but it was wreathed in smiles. Something had evidently just been told him which he was finding difficult to comprehend.
"Ask somebody where Carmelita Drake's cottage is and then drive there," he instructed the chauffeur. The chauffeur questioned a lounger upon the low concrete wall enclosing the lawn in front of the courthouse, and five other loungers came forth eagerly to answer his question. The cottage of Carmelita Drake had become a show-place over night.
"By Jove, it's wonderful," the gray-haired man was telling his companion as the machine started again. "The trial is over and he has been acquitted. I don't understand it, but they tell me Carmelita confessed at the last minute that she was guilty of the shooting. Entirely justified, of course,—the Hindu branded her upon the back, a fearful sight they tell me. She showed the brand to the jury, and the whole courtroom went mad. A miracle."
"Carmelita—guilty?" the other man was repeating. He seemed unwilling to believe it. But he had been hearing so many things about Carmelita lately. "You were right then, Drake, when you said there was more to the case than your nephew was telling. Perhaps if I had been in town the first time you called, I could, as you suggested, have talked with her and avoided all this painful trouble. But, on the other hand, perhaps the most dramatic way was the best. The appeal of a beautiful woman insulted and in distress, you know—it is very powerful in any country."
They drove into the grounds of Carmelita's house in an entirely different mood from the anxious one in which they had been breaking the law in the effort to reach the courthouse before the trial was over. They had failed in their effort—and miraculously succeeded. The butler at the door explained that Mr. and Mrs. Drake were seeing no one.
"If you will tell Mr. Drake that his uncle, Sanford Drake, is calling, perhaps he will change his mind."
Mr. Drake did change his mind. Moreover, he came out personally to the piazza to greet his uncle and have his hand nearly shaken out of its socket.
"I suspected you all the time—you poor, chivalric, heroic fool," Sanford Drake was joyously chiding him. The other man was looking at Dudley with appraising curiosity, but the elder Drake made no effort to introduce them. In his enthusiasm, Dudley judged, his uncle had forgotten his manners.
"Carmelita will be delighted to see you," invited Dudley and held the door open for them. Carmelita stood in the center of the living-room wondering what was keeping her husband talking out there, for she had not heard the butler's message to Dudley. She had been putting Rao-Singh's necklace into a suitable box for mailing.
At the sight of one of the two visitors she uttered a delighted, incredulous, quite Spanish squeal of welcome that set her husband's nerves to tingling anew. Rushing past Sanford Drake, she hurled her arms and her slim, vibrant body upon the man to whom Sanford Drake had neglected to introduce his nephew, as if to demolish him with the ferocity of her greeting. And the recipient of her bearlike caresses seemed just as ferocious and Spanish in response.
Then Dudley heard her cry, "Father!" and he understood. When at last she released him, Don Caesar de Cordoba was a little embarrassed. His cravat was awry for one thing. And he was not used to giving way to such unseemly demonstrations of affection. Carmelita had become quite American in her attitude toward him. Where was the revered respect in which she had once held him? But, there, he didn't mean that. He was joking.
At last, when he had begun to despair of it, Dudley was introduced to his father-in-law, and he offered chairs to everybody, Carmelita and he resuming their place very close together upon the divan.
"You are here, father, and how you miraculously got here is unimportant, perhaps. But I am curious," hinted Carmelita. "I have always thought one day we should meet again, and love each other again. But your last letter gave me no hope."
Don Caesar was a little ashamed. "Our pride, Carmelita, will carry us far in the wrong direction. It was your husband's uncle who made me see the light."
"And I'm afraid I was thinking of Dudley rather than you, Carmelita," Sanford Drake confessed. "From the first day Kendall and I talked with him I suspected that he wasn't telling us everything; that he was protecting somebody, probably you. I saw that he was deliberately railroading himself to prison for a long term—and I couldn't see my nephew and my partner wrecked. He had forbidden us to ask you questions. I had heard your father was in New York through my connections in the Street. I knew you and he were estranged but I took a chance and called at his hotel. He was out of town and remained out of town until the first day of Dudley's trial. I reached him at the Ritz at midnight, last night, when he arrived from the Chicago train, and I have stayed with him until now, pleading, persuading, and, I'm afraid doing some threatening and bulldozing. I wanted him to come to Carmelita and get the truth out of her. He was the only one who could do it, I felt—that is, the only one near her that Dudley hadn't forbidden to talk to her.
"At first he wouldn't listen to me—and you have no idea how very cold and haughty your father can be when he wants to, Carmelita. I talked with him at the Ritz; I took him to my club and talked until morning. And finally he yielded."
"Perhaps I was not so hard to persuade as I pretended to be," Don Caesar said quietly. Carmelita had captured him and placed him on the other side of her on the divan and was stroking his hand affectionately. "I was ashamed of myself the instant I wrote that last letter to you, Carmelita. I knew then that I should yield sometime. It was a terrible blow to me, you can understand, that curt cable from Paris announcing the destruction of all my plans for you. However, I have seen your husband, and Don Pablo has died, and perhaps everything has worked out for the best."
Having satisfactorily settled the past and the present, they came by easy stages to discussing the future, and here developed that the two older men had a plan.
"Señor de Cordoba has agreed to transfer his American representation from Hodge and Story to our concern, Dudley," Sanford Drake announced in his usual pompous business manner. "We shall need a responsible person to go to Buenos Aires and make the final detailed arrangements on the spot. If you and Carmelita should find it possible to make the trip, it would give all the unpleasant notoriety connected with your late trouble time to blow over, and upon your return, say six months from now, you could both start out afresh."
"I shall, of course, insist that you both be my guests while you are in South America," Don Caesar added.
Thus miraculously was the future, which had already been disturbing Dudley and Carmelita, solved.