“Señors,” he said, “I am sorry—vair sorry.” He looked from one face to the other, seeking some indication of official forgiveness. There was none. The Rangers stared at him and through him. Rasaplo quailed somewhat.
“Now lissen,” Stuart said, his voice steely. “The capitan here brought a woman with him—la mujer Americana. Ella desvaneca— disappeared. Sabe what that means?”
Rasaplo’s eyes widened in surprise. His whole person registered consternation. Great actors, those fellows. Rasaplo lifted his hands in horror.
“Imposible!” he managed. “Never in La Estrellita. Never! La Estrellita ees—”
“Yeh,” Stuart cut in; “I know that speech backwards! La Estrellita is a little nursery where mommas leave their children.” He clucked heatedly. “Nix on that patriotism stuff, Rasaplo! Your dump ain’t no different from any of the others along this creek. Now get this— the woman disappeared in here tonight—and she’s got to be found. Tell me something before I—”
“But,” Rasaplo wheezed, “I am in the back room when a gun go boom! and the place get dark. I know no more.”
Stuart looked at Frost and nodded. “Well, in that case,” he began, his meaning clear, “I guess we’ll—”
Rasaplo said quickly, “Mebbe Pete know. Pete always know.” He went briskly to the bar and engaged a bartender in conversation. He was the one Frost had seen moving down the rail before the lights went out. From the way the patrons eyed the scene the Rangers could tell they still were annoyed at having their evening interrupted. They were content, however, merely to stare.
But the bartender was mystified, too. There was no misinterpreting his gestures. He didn’t know how the fight started, and he didn’t remember any woman. All he knew was that after the lights went on again several natives were carried out, semi-conscious.
Rasaplo darted a swift look around, leaned over the bar a little farther, and something changed hands. Stuart and Frost both saw it at the same time. They went forward.
“Gimme that!” Stuart commanded.
Rasaplo grinned abashed, and handed over a letter. “They give it to the boy to mail,” he said. “I do not know anything.”
The letter was addressed to Captain Jerry Frost, Gentry, Texas, and there was a two-cent U.S. stamp in the corner. Frost ripped it open. A note on the back of a menu. It said:
“Thanks, Captain, for the woman. “
It was written in that peculiar, flamboyant foreign style. Frost fingered it blankly and held it up for Stuart to see. Stuart said to Rasaplo: “Where’s the waiter who got this?”
Rasaplo summoned a sleek servitor, who eyed Stuart and Frost with an expression that can only be called baleful.
“Who gave you this?” Frost held up the letter.
The waiter shrugged his shoulders to say he couldn’t remember all the patrons; but made no answer.
“Who gave you this?” Frost repeated.
“I no remember,” he said. “A man—” as if that would help.
Rasaplo inserted his broad bulk into the scene to give his employee whatever protection he could muster. “He know nothing,” he said. “He get the letter and boom! the place go dark. Mebbe we get miedo—and no mail letter. But—” His voice, colorless, trailed off.
Stuart gestured disgustedly to Frost. For the time being they knew they were against a blank wall. Trying to elicit criminal information from some Mexicans can be—in some instances, is— nothing short of impossible. Indeed, some of them are so clumsy in trying to remain innocent they incriminate themselves.
The Rangers knew they could do no more; and, too, they were chancing further trouble by remaining in La Estrellita.
“Come on, let’s go see the cops.” On the way out Stuart went on: “But don’t expect too much of the law here. It’s quite probably the rottenest force in the world. Maybe, though—”
They went around the corner to the police station, and Frost soon learned that Stuart had properly classified the Algadon police. They said they hadn’t the faintest idea what happened to the woman; moreover, they gave the impression, and it was true, that they weren’t in the least interested. They were without the slightest degree of enthusiasm, and raised their brows superciliously to convey the thought that if the Rangers couldn’t look out for their own women they shouldn’t expect anyone else to.
Stuart said to Frost: “I’d like to sock this gang in the jaw.”
Frost nodded abstractedly. He wasn’t particularly concerned with that. It was the woman. His last hope, for the present, had fled. She had been his responsibility, his personal charge, and to return to Gentry without her likely would cause complications. She could be one of a thousand places. He rephrased Stuart’s words: he had been a damn fool.
And the Old Man. He’d raise hell. Well, what the hell? He’d just have to raise it, that was all. There wasn’t anything they could do about it now. Anyway, it was partly his fault. He’d never brought her over if the Old Man hadn’t written that letter. “Let her have a look at Algadon by night,” he had said. The exact words. Let her have a look by night…. Well, she’d had one.
Frost damned his thoughts and turned to Stuart. “Should I have kept her there and taken a chance?” he asked. “Didn’t I do the right thing when I told her to get out?”
“Sure,” said Stuart broadly, consolingly. Under his breath he rasped: “I’d like to sock this gang in the nose!”
Back at the boundary the Customs officers said no woman had passed since Frost and Stuart were last there, and the Rangers swore roundly and stamped across the bridge. There were headed for the police department in Gentry.
Fifteen minutes later the telegraph wires of the Border country were humming a message, soon to be broadcast over the nation:
KIDNAPED IN ALGADON, MEXICO, ON THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY ELEVENTH: WOMAN ANSWERING TO NAME OF HELEN STEVENS, REPRESENTATIVE OF MANHATTAN NEWSPAPER SYNDICATE OF NEW YORK CITY. ABOUT FIVE FEET FIVE INCHES, HUNDRED TEN POUNDS, LIGHT BROWN HAIR, BLUE EYES, TEETH UNMARKED, WEARING BROWN COAT AND SKIRT, FLAT-HEELED TWO-TONE SHOES. NOTIFY TEXAS AIR RANGERS, CAPTAIN JERRY FROST GENTRY, TEXAS.
Stuart and Frost then went to the barracks of Hell’s Stepsons and dived into bed. George Stuart, again exhibiting remarkable mental control, went immediately to sleep.
Not so Frost. He rolled, pitched, tossed and fretted at his impotence.
Within seventy-two hours the Manhattan Syndicate, Inc., of New York City, had taken official cognizance of the disappearance of one of its representatives by bringing the matter to the attention of the ranking officer of the sovereign State of Texas. Powerfully allied, as are all important syndicates, it lost no time in applying all the pressure at its command.
Messages were exchanged and the austere Mexican government moved, as a gesture of courtesy, a detachment of rurales into Algadon. Nobody, of course, expected them to achieve results.
Helen Stevens had disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed her.
Yet the law, tank-like in its motion, rumbled on.
The spotlight was fixed on Hell’s Stepsons, and its glare was not favorable. The spectacular work done in the past was forgotten.
On the fourth day after her disappearance there was a conference within the great, gilt-domed state capitol at Austin, in the inner office of the governor’s suite. There were three men there: the Great Man himself, the Adjutant-General and Captain Frost.
“It is unfortunate,” the Governor was saying; “most unfortunate.” He was tapping his glasses against his chin: a dignified patriarch, product of the expansive state he represented—rugged, sincere and honest.