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."