One month later I was climbing out of a lumbering hack before the
Tivoli hotel, which rises square and white and imposing on the low
green height above the old Spanish city of Panama. In spite of the
melting tropical heat there was a chill fear at my heart, the fear
that Aunt Jane and her band of treasure-seekers had already
departed on their quest. In that case I foresaw that whatever
narrow margin of faith my fellow-voyagers on the _City of Quito_
had had in me would shrink to nothingness. I had been obliged to
be so queer and clam-like about the whole extraordinary
rendezvous--for how could I expose Aunt Jane's madness to the
multitude?--that I felt it would take the actual bodily presence of
my aunt to convince them that she was not a myth, or at least of
the wrong sex for aunts. To have traveled so far in the desperate
hope of heading off Aunt Jane, only to be frustrated and to lose my
character besides! It would be a stroke too much from fate, I told
myself rebelliously, as I crossed the broad gallery and plunged
into the cool dimness of the lobby in the wake of the bellboys who,
discerning a helpless prey, had swooped en masse upon my bags.
"Miss Jane Harding?" repeated the clerk, and at the cool negation
of his tone my heart gave a sickening downward swoop. "Miss Jane
Harding and party have left the hotel!"
"For--for the island?" I gasped.
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