The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [6159]
As he himself put it that night in the cabin, over a bottle of wine, he "didn't know but what the senora had decided to take the Andes home for a mantel ornament, and was engaged in the little matter of transportation."
But when I informed him that "the senora" was no more, his face grew sober with genuine regret and sorrow. He had many good things to say of her then; it appeared that she had really touched his salty old heart.
"She was a gentle lady," said the worthy captain; and I smiled to think how Desiree herself would have smiled at such a characterization of the great Le Mire.
We at once made for San Francisco. There, at a loss, I disposed of the remainder of the term of the lease on the yacht, and we took the first train for the East.
Four days later we were in New York, after a journey saddened by thoughts of the one who had left us to return alone.
It was, in fact, many months before the shadow of Desiree ceased to hover about the dark old mansion on lower Fifth Avenue, incongruous enough among the ancient halls and portraits of Lamars dead and gone in a day when La Marana herself had darted like a meteor into the hearts of their contemporaries.
That is, I suppose, properly the end of the story; but I cannot refrain from the opportunity to record a curious incident that has just befallen me. Some twenty minutes ago, as I was writing the last paragraph--I am seated in the library before a massive mahogany table, close to a window through which the September sun sends its golden rays--twenty minutes ago, as I say, Harry sauntered into the room and threw himself lazily into a large armchair on the other side of the table.
I looked up with a nod of greeting, while he sat and eyed me impatiently for some seconds.
"Aren't you coming with me down to Southampton?" he asked finally.
"What time do you leave?" I inquired, without looking up.
"Eleven-thirty."
"What's on?"
"Freddie Marston's Crocodiles and the Blues. It's going to be some polo."
I considered a moment. "Why, I guess I'll run down with you. I'm about through here."
"Good enough!" Harry arose to his feet and began idly fingering some of the sheets on the table before me. "What is all this silly rot, anyway?"
"My dear boy," I smiled, "you'll be sorry you called it silly rot when I tell you that it is a plain and honest tale of our own experiences."
"Must be deuced interesting," he observed. "More silly rot than ever."
"Others may not think so," I retorted, a little exasperated by his manner. "It surely will be sufficiently exciting to read of how we were buried with Desiree Le Mire under the Andes, and our encounters with the Incas, and our final escape, and--"
"Desiree what?" Harry interrupted.
"Desiree Le Mire," I replied very distinctly. "The great French dancer."
"Never heard of her," said Harry, looking at me as if he doubted my sanity.
"Never heard of Desiree, the woman you loved?" I almost shouted at him.
"The woman I--piffle! I say I never heard of her."
I gazed at him, trembling with high indignation. "I suppose," I observed with infinite sarcasm, "that you will tell me next that you have never been in Peru?"
"Guilty," said Harry. "I never have."
"And that you never climbed Pike's Peak to see the sunrise?"
"Rahway, New Jersey, is my farthest west."
"And that you never dived with me from the top of a column one hundred feet high?"
"Not I. I retain a smattering of common sense."
"And that you did not avenge the death of Desiree by causing that of the Inca king?"
"So far as that Desiree woman is concerned," said Harry, and his tone began to show impatience, "I can only repeat that I have never heard of the creature. And"--he continued--"if you're trying to bamboozle a gullible world by concocting a tale as silly