Читать «Cup of Gold (Золотая чаша)» онлайн - страница 87

And Captain Morgan, wearily: "Have you found the Red Saint?"

"We have not found her, sir, but we are seeking and inquiring over the whole city. Perhaps in the daylight, sir-"

"Where is Coeur de Gris?"

"I think he is drunk, sir, but-" He looked away from Henry Morgan.

"But what? What do you mean?" the captain cried.

"Nothing; I mean nothing at all, sir. It is almost certain that he is drunk. Only it takes such gallons of wine to make him drunk, and perhaps he has found a friend in the meantime."

"Did you see him with any one?"

"Yes, sir, I saw him with a woman, and she was drunk. I could swear that Coeur de Gris was drunk, too."

"Did you think the woman might have been La Santa Roja?"

"Oh, no, sir; I am sure it was not she. Only one of the women of the town, sir."

There was a clash of golden service thrown on the pile.

A yellow dawn crept out of the little painted hills of Panama and grew bolder as it edged across the plain.

The sun flashed up from behind a peak, and its golden rays sought for their city. But Panama had died, had felt the quick decay of fire in one red night. But then, as the sun is a fickle sphere, the seeking beams found joy in the new thing. They lighted on the poor ruins, peered into upturned dead faces, raced along the cluttered streets, fell headlong into broken patios. They came to the white Palace of the Governor, leaped through the windows of the audience chamber, and fingered the golden heap on the floor.

Henry Morgan was asleep in the serpent chair. His purple coat was draggled with the mud of the plain.

The gray-clad rapier lay on the floor beside him. He was alone in this room, for all the men who had helped to pick the city's bones during the night had gone away to drink and to sleep.

It was a high, long room, walled with panels of polished cedar. The beams of the ceiling were as black and heavy as old iron. It had been a court of justice, a place of wedding feasts, the hall where ambassadors were toasted or murdered. One door opened on the street; the other, a broad, arched opening, let into a lovely garden about which the Palace lay curled. In the middle of the garden a little marble whale spouted its steady stream into a pool. There were giant plants in red glazed pots, plants with purple leaves and flowers whose petals bore arrow heads or hearts or squares in cardinal. There were shrubs, lined with harsh tracery in the mad colors of the jungle. A monkey no larger than a rabbit picked over the gravel of the path, looking for seeds.

On one of the stone seats of the garden a woman was sitting. She pulled a yellow flower to bits while she sang fragments of a tender, silly song-"I would pluck the flower of the day for you, my love, where it grows in the dawning." Her eyes were black, but opaque. They were the rich, sheening, shallow black of a dead fly's wings, and under the lids there were sharp little lines. She could draw up the under lids of her eyes so that they shone with laughter, though her mouth remained harsh and placid. Her skin was very pale, her hair straight and black as obsidian.