Title: Cabbages and Kings
Author: Henry, O., 1862-1910
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Cabbages and Kings" ***


and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.



Editorial note:

      This volume is the only work of O. Henry which approaches
      being a novel. The stories are related and should be read
      in the sequence in which they occur in the text.


CABBAGES AND KINGS

by

O. HENRY

Author of "The Four Million," "The Voice of the City,"
"The Trimmed Lamp," "Strictly Business," "Whirligigs," Etc.



[ILLUSTRATION: "A little saint with a color more lightful
than orange" (frontispiece)]



"The time has come," the Walrus said,
   "To talk of many things;
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax,
   And cabbages and kings."

      THE WALRUS AND THE CARPENTER



CONTENTS

          THE PROEM: BY THE CARPENTER
       I. "FOX-IN-THE-MORNING"
      II. THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE
     III. SMITH
      IV. CAUGHT
       V. CUPID'S EXILE NUMBER TWO
      VI. THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT
     VII. MONEY MAZE
    VIII. THE ADMIRAL
      IX. THE FLAG PARAMOUNT
       X. THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM
      XI. THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE
     XII. SHOES
    XIII. SHIPS
     XIV. MASTERS OF ARTS
      XV. DICKY
     XVI. ROUGE ET NOIR
    XVII. TWO RECALLS
   XVIII. THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE



THE PROEM

BY THE CARPENTER


They will tell you in Anchuria, that President Miraflores, of that
volatile republic, died by his own hand in the coast town of Coralio;
that he had reached thus far in flight from the inconveniences of
an imminent revolution; and that one hundred thousand dollars,
government funds, which he carried with him in an American leather
valise as a souvenir of his tempestuous administration, was never
afterward recovered.

For a _real_, a boy will show you his grave. It is back of the town
near a little bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of
wood stands at its head. Some one has burned upon the headstone with
a hot iron this inscription:


    RAMON ANGEL DE LAS CRUZES

          Y MIRAFLORES

   PRESIDENTE DE LA REPUBLICA

           DE ANCHURIA

      QUE SEA SU JUEZ DIOS


It is characteristic of this buoyant people that they pursue no man
beyond the grave. "Let God be his judge!"--Even with the hundred
thousand unfound, though greatly coveted, the hue and cry went no
further than that.

To the stranger or the guest the people of Coralio will relate the
story of the tragic end of their former president; how he strove to
escape from the country with the public funds and also with Doña
Isabel Guilbert, the young American opera singer; and how, being
apprehended by members of the opposing political party in Coralio,
he shot himself through the head rather than give up the funds, and,
in consequence, the Señorita Guilbert. They will relate further
that Doña Isabel, her adventurous bark of fortune shoaled by the
simultaneous loss of her distinguished admirer and the souvenir
hundred thousand, dropped anchor on this stagnant coast, awaiting a
rising tide.

They say, in Coralio, that she found a prompt and prosperous tide
in the form of Frank Goodwin, an American resident of the town, an
investor who had grown wealthy by dealing in the products of the
country--a banana king, a rubber prince, a sarsaparilla, indigo, and
mahogany baron. The Señorita Guilbert, you will be told, married
Señor Goodwin one month after the president's death, thus, in the
very moment when Fortune had ceased to smile, wresting from her a
gift greater than the prize withdrawn.

Of the American, Don Frank Goodwin, and of his wife the natives have
nothing but good to say. Don Frank has lived among them for years,
and has compelled their respect. His lady is easily queen of what
social life the sober coast affords. The wife of the governor of the
district, herself, who was of the proud Castilian family of Monteleon
y Dolorosa de los Santos y Mendez, feels honoured to unfold her
napkin with olive-hued, ringed hands at the table of Señora Goodwin.
Were you to refer (with your northern prejudices) to the vivacious
past of Mrs. Goodwin when her audacious and gleeful abandon in light
opera captured the mature president's fancy, or to her share in that
statesman's downfall and malfeasance, the Latin shrug of the shoulder
would be your only answer and rebuttal. What prejudices there were
in Coralio concerning Señora Goodwin seemed now to be in her favour,
whatever they had been in the past.

It would seem that the story is ended, instead of begun; that the
close of tragedy and the climax of a romance have covered the ground
of interest; but, to the more curious reader it shall be some slight
instruction to trace the close threads that underlie the ingenuous
web of circumstances.

The headpiece bearing the name of President Miraflores is daily
scrubbed with soap-bark and sand. An old half-breed Indian tends the
grave with fidelity and the dawdling minuteness of inherited sloth.
He chops down the weeds and ever-springing grass with his machete, he
plucks ants and scorpions and beetles from it with his horny fingers,
and sprinkles its turf with water from the plaza fountain. There is
no grave anywhere so well kept and ordered.

Only by following out the underlying threads will it be made clear
why the old Indian, Galvez, is secretly paid to keep green the
grave of President Miraflores by one who never saw that unfortunate
statesman in life or in death, and why that one was wont to walk in
the twilight, casting from a distance looks of gentle sadness upon
that unhonoured mound.

Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career
of Isabel Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled
French and Spanish creole nature that tinctured her life with such
turbulence and warmth. She had little education, but a knowledge of
men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the
common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for
the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for
the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb;
she was Eve after the fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt.
She wore life as a rose in her bosom.

Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that but
one was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President Miraflores,
the brilliant but unstable ruler of Anchuria, she yielded the key to
her resolute heart. How, then, do we find her (as the Coralians would
have told you) the wife of Frank Goodwin, and happily living a life
of dull and dreamy inaction?

The underlying threads reach far, stretching across the sea.
Following them out it will be made plain why "Shorty" O'Day, of the
Columbia Detective Agency, resigned his position. And, for a lighter
pastime, it shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus
beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now to
cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowning crags
where formerly rang the cries of pirates' victims; to lay aside pike
and cutlass and attack with quip and jollity; to draw one saving
titter of mirth from the rusty casque of Romance--this were pleasant
to do in the shade of the lemon-trees on that coast that is curved
like lips set for smiling.

For there are yet tales of the Spanish Main. That segment of
continent washed by the tempestuous Caribbean, and presenting to the
sea a formidable border of tropical jungle topped by the overweening
Cordilleras, is still begirt by mystery and romance. In past times
buccaneers and revolutionists roused the echoes of its cliffs, and
the condor wheeled perpetually above where, in the green groves,
they made food for him with their matchlocks and toledos. Taken and
retaken by sea rovers, by adverse powers and by sudden uprising of
rebellious factions, the historic 300 miles of adventurous coast has
scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master.
Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could
to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other
eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it in the name of
Abaddon.

The game still goes on. The guns of the rovers are silenced; but the
tintype man, the enlarged photograph brigand, the kodaking tourist
and the scouts of the gentle brigade of fakirs have found it out, and
carry on the work. The hucksters of Germany, France, and Sicily now
bag its small change across their counters. Gentleman adventurers
throng the waiting-rooms of its rulers with proposals for railways
and concessions. The little _opéra-bouffe_ nations play at government
and intrigue until some day a big, silent gunboat glides into the
offing and warns them not to break their toys. And with these changes
comes also the small adventurer, with empty pockets to fill, light of
heart, busy-brained--the modern fairy prince, bearing an alarm clock
with which, more surely than by the sentimental kiss, to awaken the
beautiful tropics from their centuries' sleep. Generally he wears a
shamrock, which he matches pridefully against the extravagant palms;
and it is he who has driven Melpomene to the wings, and set Comedy to
dancing before the footlights of the Southern Cross.

So, there is a little tale to tell of many things. Perhaps to the
promiscuous ear of the Walrus it shall come with most avail; for in
it there are indeed shoes and ships and sealing-wax and cabbage-palms
and presidents instead of kings.

Add to these a little love and counterplotting, and scatter
everywhere throughout the maze a trail of tropical dollars--dollars
warmed no more by the torrid sun than by the hot palms of the scouts
of Fortune--and, after all, here seems to be Life, itself, with talk
enough to weary the most garrulous of Walruses.



I

"FOX-IN-THE-MORNING"


Coralio reclined, in the mid-day heat, like some vacuous beauty
lounging in a guarded harem. The town lay at the sea's edge on a
strip of alluvial coast. It was set like a little pearl in an emerald
band. Behind it, and seeming almost to topple, imminent, above it,
rose the sea-following range of the Cordilleras. In front the sea
was spread, a smiling jailer, but even more incorruptible than the
frowning mountains. The waves swished along the smooth beach; the
parrots screamed in the orange and ceiba-trees; the palms waved their
limber fronds foolishly like an awkward chorus at the prima donna's
cue to enter.

Suddenly the town was full of excitement. A native boy dashed down a
grass-grown street, shrieking: "_Busca el Señor Goodwin. Ha venido un
telégrafo por el!_"

The word passed quickly. Telegrams do not often come to anyone in
Coralio. The cry for Señor Goodwin was taken up by a dozen officious
voices. The main street running parallel to the beach became
populated with those who desired to expedite the delivery of the
despatch. Knots of women with complexions varying from palest olive
to deepest brown gathered at street corners and plaintively carolled:
"_Un telégrafo por Señor Goodwin!_" The _comandante_, Don Señor el
Coronel Encarnación Rios, who was loyal to the Ins and suspected
Goodwin's devotion to the Outs, hissed: "Aha!" and wrote in his
secret memorandum book the accusive fact that Señor Goodwin had on
that momentous date received a telegram.

In the midst of the hullabaloo a man stepped to the door of a small
wooden building and looked out. Above the door was a sign that read
"Keogh and Clancy"--a nomenclature that seemed not to be indigenous
to that tropical soil. The man in the door was Billy Keogh, scout
of fortune and progress and latter-day rover of the Spanish Main.
Tintypes and photographs were the weapons with which Keogh and Clancy
were at that time assailing the hopeless shores. Outside the shop
were set two large frames filled with specimens of their art and
skill.

Keogh leaned in the doorway, his bold and humorous countenance
wearing a look of interest at the unusual influx of life and sound
into the street. When the meaning of the disturbance became clear to
him he placed a hand beside his mouth and shouted: "Hey! Frank!" in
such a robustious voice that the feeble clamour of the natives was
drowned and silenced.

Fifty yards away, on the seaward side of the street, stood the abode
of the consul for the United States. Out from the door of this
building tumbled Goodwin at the call. He had been smoking with
Willard Geddie, the consul, on the back porch of the consulate, which
was conceded to be the coolest spot in Coralio.

"Hurry up," shouted Keogh. "There's a riot in town on account of a
telegram that's come for you. You want to be careful about these
things, my boy. It won't do to trifle with the feelings of the
public this way. You'll be getting a pink note some day with violet
scent on it; and then the country'll be steeped in the throes of a
revolution."

Goodwin had strolled up the street and met the boy with the message.
The ox-eyed women gazed at him with shy admiration, for his type drew
them. He was big, blonde, and jauntily dressed in white linen, with
buckskin _zapatos_. His manner was courtly, with a sort of kindly
truculence in it, tempered by a merciful eye. When the telegram had
been delivered, and the bearer of it dismissed with a gratuity, the
relieved populace returned to the contiguities of shade from which
curiosity had drawn it--the women to their baking in the mud ovens
under the orange-trees, or to the interminable combing of their
long, straight hair; the men to their cigarettes and gossip in the
cantinas.

Goodwin sat on Keogh's doorstep, and read his telegram. It was from
Bob Englehart, an American, who lived in San Mateo, the capital city
of Anchuria, eighty miles in the interior. Englehart was a gold
miner, an ardent revolutionist and "good people." That he was a man
of resource and imagination was proven by the telegram he had sent.
It had been his task to send a confidential message to his friend in
Coralio. This could not have been accomplished in either Spanish or
English, for the eye politic in Anchuria was an active one. The Ins
and the Outs were perpetually on their guard. But Englehart was a
diplomatist. There existed but one code upon which he might make
requisition with promise of safety--the great and potent code of
Slang. So, here is the message that slipped, unconstrued, through
the fingers of curious officials, and came to the eye of Goodwin:


   His Nibs skedaddled yesterday per jack-rabbit line with all
   the coin in the kitty and the bundle of muslin he's spoony
   about. The boodle is six figures short. Our crowd in good
   shape, but we need the spondulicks. You collar it. The main
   guy and the dry goods are headed for the briny. You know
   what to do.

   BOB.


This screed, remarkable as it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He
was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative
Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that
enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight
and deduction. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of
business. He was acute enough to wield a certain influence among
the leading schemers, and he was prosperous enough to be able to
purchase the respect of the petty office-holders. There was always
a revolutionary party; and to it he had always allied himself; for
the adherents of a new administration received the rewards of their
labours. There was now a Liberal party seeking to overturn President
Miraflores. If the wheel successfully revolved, Goodwin stood to
win a concession to 30,000 manzanas of the finest coffee lands in
the interior. Certain incidents in the recent career of President
Miraflores had excited a shrewd suspicion in Goodwin's mind that the
government was near a dissolution from another cause than that of a
revolution, and now Englehart's telegram had come as a corroboration
of his wisdom.

The telegram, which had remained unintelligible to the Anchurian
linguists who had applied to it in vain their knowledge of Spanish
and elemental English, conveyed a stimulating piece of news to
Goodwin's understanding. It informed him that the president of the
republic had decamped from the capital city with the contents of the
treasury. Furthermore, that he was accompanied in his flight by that
winning adventuress Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer, whose troupe
of performers had been entertained by the president at San Mateo
during the past month on a scale less modest than that with which
royal visitors are often content. The reference to the "jack-rabbit
line" could mean nothing else than the mule-back system of transport
that prevailed between Coralio and the capital. The hint that the
"boodle" was "six figures short" made the condition of the national
treasury lamentably clear. Also it was convincingly true that the
ingoing party--its way now made a pacific one--would need the
"spondulicks." Unless its pledges should be fulfilled, and the spoils
held for the delectation of the victors, precarious indeed, would
be the position of the new government. Therefore it was exceeding
necessary to "collar the main guy," and recapture the sinews of war
and government.

Goodwin handed the message to Keogh.

"Read that, Billy," he said. "It's from Bob Englehart. Can you manage
the cipher?"

Keogh sat in the other half of the doorway, and carefully perused the
telegram.

"'Tis not a cipher," he said, finally. "'Tis what they call
literature, and that's a system of language put in the mouths
of people that they've never been introduced to by writers of
imagination. The magazines invented it, but I never knew before that
President Norvin Green had stamped it with the seal of his approval.
'Tis now no longer literature, but language. The dictionaries tried,
but they couldn't make it go for anything but dialect. Sure, now that
the Western Union indorses it, it won't be long till a race of people
will spring up that speaks it."

"You're running too much to philology, Billy," said Goodwin. "Do you
make out the meaning of it?"

"Sure," replied the philosopher of Fortune. "All languages come easy
to the man who must know 'em. I've even failed to misunderstand an
order to evacuate in classical Chinese when it was backed up by the
muzzle of a breech-loader. This little literary essay I hold in my
hands means a game of Fox-in-the-Morning. Ever play that, Frank, when
you was a kid?"

"I think so," said Goodwin, laughing. "You join hands all 'round,
and--"

"You do not," interrupted Keogh. "You've got a fine sporting game
mixed up in your head with 'All Around the Rosebush.' The spirit of
'Fox-in-the-Morning' is opposed to the holding of hands. I'll tell
you how it's played. This president man and his companion in play,
they stand up over in San Mateo, ready for the run, and shout:
'Fox-in-the-Morning!' Me and you, standing here, we say: 'Goose and
the Gander!' They say: 'How many miles is it to London town?' We say:
'Only a few, if your legs are long enough. How many comes out?' They
say: 'More than you're able to catch.' And then the game commences."

"I catch the idea," said Goodwin. "It won't do to let the goose
and gander slip through our fingers, Billy; their feathers are too
valuable. Our crowd is prepared and able to step into the shoes of
the government at once; but with the treasury empty we'd stay in
power about as long as a tenderfoot would stick on an untamed bronco.
We must play the fox on every foot of the coast to prevent their
getting out of the country."

"By the mule-back schedule," said Keogh, "it's five days down from
San Mateo. We've got plenty of time to set our outposts. There's only
three places on the coast where they can hope to sail from--here and
Solitas and Alazan. They're the only points we'll have to guard. It's
as easy as a chess problem--fox to play, and mate in three moves. Oh,
goosey, goosey, gander, whither do you wander? By the blessing of the
literary telegraph the boodle of this benighted fatherland shall be
preserved to the honest political party that is seeking to overthrow
it."

The situation had been justly outlined by Keogh. The down trail
from the capital was at all times a weary road to travel. A
jiggety-joggety journey it was; ice-cold and hot, wet and dry. The
trail climbed appalling mountains, wound like a rotten string about
the brows of breathless precipices, plunged through chilling snow-fed
streams, and wriggled like a snake through sunless forests teeming
with menacing insect and animal life. After descending to the
foothills it turned to a trident, the central prong ending at Alazan.
Another branched off to Coralio; the third penetrated to Solitas.
Between the sea and the foothills stretched the five miles breadth of
alluvial coast. Here was the flora of the tropics in its rankest and
most prodigal growth. Spaces here and there had been wrested from the
jungle and planted with bananas and cane and orange groves. The rest
was a riot of wild vegetation, the home of monkeys, tapirs, jaguars,
alligators and prodigious reptiles and insects. Where no road was cut
a serpent could scarcely make its way through the tangle of vines and
creepers. Across the treacherous mangrove swamps few things without
wings could safely pass. Therefore the fugitives could hope to reach
the coast only by one of the routes named.

"Keep the matter quiet, Billy," advised Goodwin. "We don't want
the Ins to know that the president is in flight. I suppose Bob's
information is something of a scoop in the capital as yet. Otherwise
he would not have tried to make his message a confidential one; and
besides, everybody would have heard the news. I'm going around now to
see Dr. Zavalla, and start a man up the trail to cut the telegraph
wire."

As Goodwin rose, Keogh threw his hat upon the grass by the door and
expelled a tremendous sigh.

"What's the trouble, Billy?" asked Goodwin, pausing. "That's the
first time I ever heard you sigh."

"'Tis the last," said Keogh. "With that sorrowful puff of wind I
resign myself to a life of praiseworthy but harassing honesty. What
are tintypes, if you please, to the opportunities of the great
and hilarious class of ganders and geese? Not that I would be a
president, Frank--and the boodle he's got is too big for me to
handle--but in some ways I feel my conscience hurting me for
addicting myself to photographing a nation instead of running away
with it. Frank, did you ever see the 'bundle of muslin' that His
Excellency has wrapped up and carried off?"

"Isabel Guilbert?" said Goodwin, laughing. "No, I never did. From
what I've heard of her, though, I imagine that she wouldn't stick at
anything to carry her point. Don't get romantic, Billy. Sometimes I
begin to fear that there's Irish blood in your ancestry."

"I never saw her either," went on Keogh; "but they say she's got all
the ladies of mythology, sculpture, and fiction reduced to chromos.
They say she can look at a man once, and he'll turn monkey and climb
trees to pick cocoanuts for her. Think of that president man with
Lord knows how many hundreds of thousands of dollars in one hand, and
this muslin siren in the other, galloping down hill on a sympathetic
mule amid songbirds and flowers! And here is Billy Keogh, because he
is virtuous, condemned to the unprofitable swindle of slandering the
faces of missing links on tin for an honest living! 'Tis an injustice
of nature."

"Cheer up," said Goodwin. "You are a pretty poor fox to be envying a
gander. Maybe the enchanting Guilbert will take a fancy to you and
your tintypes after we impoverish her royal escort."

"She could do worse," reflected Keogh; "but she won't. 'Tis not a
tintype gallery, but the gallery of the gods that she's fitted to
adorn. She's a very wicked lady, and the president man is in luck.
But I hear Clancy swearing in the back room for having to do all the
work." And Keogh plunged for the rear of the "gallery," whistling
gaily in a spontaneous way that belied his recent sigh over the
questionable good luck of the flying president.

Goodwin turned from the main street into a much narrower one that
intersected it at a right angle.

These side streets were covered by a growth of thick, rank grass,
which was kept to a navigable shortness by the machetes of the
police. Stone sidewalks, little more than a ledge in width, ran along
the base of the mean and monotonous adobe houses. At the outskirts
of the village these streets dwindled to nothing; and here were set
the palm-thatched huts of the Caribs and the poorer natives, and the
shabby cabins of negroes from Jamaica and the West India islands. A
few structures raised their heads above the red-tiled roofs of the
one-story houses--the bell tower of the _Calaboza_, the Hotel de los
Estranjeros, the residence of the Vesuvius Fruit Company's agent,
the store and residence of Bernard Brannigan, a ruined cathedral in
which Columbus had once set foot, and, most imposing of all, the
Casa Morena--the summer "White House" of the President of Anchuria.
On the principal street running along the beach--the Broadway
of Coralio--were the larger stores, the government _bodega_ and
post-office, the _cuartel_, the rum-shops and the market place.

On his way Goodwin passed the house of Bernard Brannigan. It was a
modern wooden building, two stories in height. The ground floor was
occupied by Brannigan's store, the upper one contained the living
apartments. A wide cool porch ran around the house half way up its
outer walls. A handsome, vivacious girl neatly dressed in flowing
white leaned over the railing and smiled down upon Goodwin. She was
no darker than many an Andalusian of high descent; and she sparkled
and glowed like a tropical moonlight.

"Good evening, Miss Paula," said Goodwin, taking off his hat, with
his ready smile. There was little difference in his manner whether
he addressed women or men. Everybody in Coralio liked to receive the
salutation of the big American.

"Is there any news, Mr. Goodwin? Please don't say no. Isn't it
warm? I feel just like Mariana in her moated grange--or was it a
range?--it's hot enough."

"No, there's no news to tell, I believe," said Goodwin, with a
mischievous look in his eye, "except that old Geddie is getting
grumpier and crosser every day. If something doesn't happen to
relieve his mind I'll have to quit smoking on his back porch--and
there's no other place available that is cool enough."

"He isn't grumpy," said Paula Brannigan, impulsively, "when he--"

But she ceased suddenly, and drew back with a deepening colour; for
her mother had been a _mestizo_ lady, and the Spanish blood had
brought to Paula a certain shyness that was an adornment to the other
half of her demonstrative nature.



II

THE LOTUS AND THE BOTTLE


Willard Geddie, consul for the United States in Coralio, was working
leisurely on his yearly report. Goodwin, who had strolled in as he
did daily for a smoke on the much coveted porch, had found him so
absorbed in his work that he departed after roundly abusing the
consul for his lack of hospitality.

"I shall complain to the civil service department," said
Goodwin;--"or is it a department?--perhaps it's only a theory. One
gets neither civility nor service from you. You won't talk; and
you won't set out anything to drink. What kind of a way is that of
representing your government?"

Goodwin strolled out and across to the hotel to see if he could bully
the quarantine doctor into a game on Coralio's solitary billiard
table. His plans were completed for the interception of the fugitives
from the capital; and now it was but a waiting game that he had to
play.

The consul was interested in his report. He was only twenty-four; and
he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in
the heat of the tropics--a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer
and Capricorn.

So many thousand bunches of bananas, so many thousand oranges and
cocoanuts, so many ounces of gold dust, pounds of rubber, coffee,
indigo and sarsaparilla--actually, exports were twenty per cent.
greater than for the previous year!

A little thrill of satisfaction ran through the consul. Perhaps, he
thought, the State Department, upon reading his introduction, would
notice--and then he leaned back in his chair and laughed. He was
getting as bad as the others. For the moment he had forgotten that
Coralio was an insignificant town in an insignificant republic lying
along the by-ways of a second-rate sea. He thought of Gregg, the
quarantine doctor, who subscribed for the London _Lancet_, expecting
to find it quoting his reports to the home Board of Health concerning
the yellow fever germ. The consul knew that not one in fifty of his
acquaintances in the States had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that
two men, at any rate, would have to read his report--some underling
in the State Department and a compositor in the Public Printing
Office. Perhaps the typesticker would note the increase of commerce
in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese and beer, to a friend.

He had just written: "Most unaccountable is the supineness of the
large exporters in the United States in permitting the French and
German houses to practically control the trade interests of this
rich and productive country"--when he heard the hoarse notes of a
steamer's siren.

Geddie laid down his pen and gathered his Panama hat and umbrella. By
the sound he knew it to be the _Valhalla_, one of the line of fruit
vessels plying for the Vesuvius Company. Down to _niños_ of five
years, everyone in Coralio could name you each incoming steamer by
the note of her siren.

The consul sauntered by a roundabout, shaded way to the beach. By
reason of long practice he gauged his stroll so accurately that
by the time he arrived on the sandy shore the boat of the customs
officials was rowing back from the steamer, which had been boarded
and inspected according to the laws of Anchuria.

There is no harbour at Coralio. Vessels of the draught of the
_Valhalla_ must ride at anchor a mile from shore. When they take on
fruit it is conveyed on lighters and freighter sloops. At Solitas,
where there was a fine harbour, ships of many kinds were to be seen,
but in the roadstead off Coralio scarcely any save the fruiters
paused. Now and then a tramp coaster, or a mysterious brig from
Spain, or a saucy French barque would hang innocently for a few
days in the offing. Then the custom-house crew would become doubly
vigilant and wary. At night a sloop or two would be making strange
trips in and out along the shore; and in the morning the stock of
Three-Star Hennessey, wines and drygoods in Coralio would be found
vastly increased. It has also been said that the customs officials
jingled more silver in the pockets of their red-striped trousers, and
that the record books showed no increase in import duties received.

The customs boat and the _Valhalla_ gig reached the shore at the same
time. When they grounded in the shallow water there was still five
yards of rolling surf between them and dry sand. Then half-clothed
Caribs dashed into the water, and brought in on their backs the
_Valhalla's_ purser and the little native officials in their cotton
undershirts, blue trousers with red stripes, and flapping straw hats.

At college Geddie had been a treasure as a first-baseman. He now
closed his umbrella, stuck it upright in the sand, and stooped,
with his hands resting upon his knees. The purser, burlesquing
the pitcher's contortions, hurled at the consul the heavy roll of
newspapers, tied with a string, that the steamer always brought for
him. Geddie leaped high and caught the roll with a sounding "thwack."
The loungers on the beach--about a third of the population of the
town--laughed and applauded delightedly. Every week they expected to
see that roll of papers delivered and received in that same manner,
and they were never disappointed. Innovations did not flourish in
Coralio.

The consul re-hoisted his umbrella and walked back to the consulate.

This home of a great nation's representative was a wooden structure
of two rooms, with a native-built gallery of poles, bamboo and
nipa palm running on three sides of it. One room was the official
apartment, furnished chastely with a flat-top desk, a hammock, and
three uncomfortable cane-seated chairs. Engravings of the first and
latest president of the country represented hung against the wall.
The other room was the consul's living apartment.

It was eleven o'clock when he returned from the beach, and therefore
breakfast time. Chanca, the Carib woman who cooked for him, was just
serving the meal on the side of the gallery facing the sea--a spot
famous as the coolest in Coralio. The breakfast consisted of shark's
fin soup, stew of land crabs, breadfruit, a boiled iguana steak,
aguacates, a freshly cut pineapple, claret and coffee.

Geddie took his seat, and unrolled with luxurious laziness his bundle
of newspapers. Here in Coralio for two days or longer he would read
of goings-on in the world very much as we of the world read those
whimsical contributions to inexact science that assume to portray the
doings of the Martians. After he had finished with the papers they
would be sent on the rounds of the other English-speaking residents
of the town.

The paper that came first to his hand was one of those bulky
mattresses of printed stuff upon which the readers of certain New
York journals are supposed to take their Sabbath literary nap.
Opening this the consul rested it upon the table, supporting its
weight with the aid of the back of a chair. Then he partook of his
meal deliberately, turning the leaves from time to time and glancing
half idly at the contents.

Presently he was struck by something familiar to him in a picture--a
half-page, badly printed reproduction of a photograph of a vessel.
Languidly interested, he leaned for a nearer scrutiny and a view of
the florid headlines of the column next to the picture.

Yes; he was not mistaken. The engraving was of the eight-hundred-ton
yacht _Idalia_, belonging to "that prince of good fellows, Midas
of the money market, and society's pink of perfection, J. Ward
Tolliver."

Slowly sipping his black coffee, Geddie read the column of print.
Following a listed statement of Mr. Tolliver's real estate and bonds,
came a description of the yacht's furnishings, and then the grain of
news no bigger than a mustard seed. Mr. Tolliver, with a party of
favoured guests, would sail the next day on a six weeks' cruise along
the Central American and South American coasts and among the Bahama
Islands. Among the guests were Mrs. Cumberland Payne and Miss Ida
Payne, of Norfolk.

The writer, with the fatuous presumption that was demanded of him
by his readers, had concocted a romance suited to their palates.
He bracketed the names of Miss Payne and Mr. Tolliver until he had
well-nigh read the marriage ceremony over them. He played coyly and
insinuatingly upon the strings of "_on dit_" and "Madame Rumour"
and "a little bird" and "no one would be surprised," and ended with
congratulations.

Geddie, having finished his breakfast, took his papers to the edge of
the gallery, and sat there in his favourite steamer chair with his
feet on the bamboo railing. He lighted a cigar, and looked out upon
the sea. He felt a glow of satisfaction at finding he was so little
disturbed by what he had read. He told himself that he had conquered
the distress that had sent him, a voluntary exile, to this far
land of the lotus. He could never forget Ida, of course; but there
was no longer any pain in thinking about her. When they had had
that misunderstanding and quarrel he had impulsively sought this
consulship, with the desire to retaliate upon her by detaching
himself from her world and presence. He had succeeded thoroughly in
that. During the twelve months of his life in Coralio no word had
passed between them, though he had sometimes heard of her through the
dilatory correspondence with the few friends to whom he still wrote.
Still he could not repress a little thrill of satisfaction at knowing
that she had not yet married Tolliver or anyone else. But evidently
Tolliver had not yet abandoned hope.

Well, it made no difference to him now. He had eaten of the lotus. He
was happy and content in this land of perpetual afternoon. Those old
days of life in the States seemed like an irritating dream. He hoped
Ida would be as happy as he was. The climate as balmy as that of
distant Avalon; the fetterless, idyllic round of enchanted days;
the life among this indolent, romantic people--a life full of music,
flowers, and low laughter; the influence of the imminent sea and
mountains, and the many shapes of love and magic and beauty that
bloomed in the white tropic nights--with all he was more than
content. Also, there was Paula Brannigan.

Geddie intended to marry Paula--if, of course, she would consent;
but he felt rather sure that she would do that. Somehow, he kept
postponing his proposal. Several times he had been quite near to it;
but a mysterious something always held him back. Perhaps it was only
the unconscious, instinctive conviction that the act would sever the
last tie that bound him to his old world.

He could be very happy with Paula. Few of the native girls could be
compared with her. She had attended a convent school in New Orleans
for two years; and when she chose to display her accomplishments no
one could detect any difference between her and the girls of Norfolk
and Manhattan. But it was delicious to see her at home dressed, as
she sometimes was, in the native costume, with bare shoulders and
flowing sleeves.

Bernard Brannigan was the great merchant of Coralio. Besides his
store, he maintained a train of pack mules, and carried on a lively
trade with the interior towns and villages. He had married a native
lady of high Castilian descent, but with a tinge of Indian brown
showing through her olive cheek. The union of the Irish and the
Spanish had produced, as it so often has, an offshoot of rare beauty
and variety. They were very excellent people indeed, and the upper
story of their house was ready to be placed at the service of Geddie
and Paula as soon as he should make up his mind to speak about it.

By the time two hours were whiled away the consul tired of reading.
The papers lay scattered about him on the gallery. Reclining there,
he gazed dreamily out upon an Eden. A clump of banana plants
interposed their broad shields between him and the sun. The gentle
slope from the consulate to the sea was covered with the dark-green
foliage of lemon-trees and orange-trees just bursting into bloom. A
lagoon pierced the land like a dark, jagged crystal, and above it a
pale ceiba-tree rose almost to the clouds. The waving cocoanut palms
on the beach flared their decorative green leaves against the slate
of an almost quiescent sea. His senses were cognizant of brilliant
scarlet and ochres amid the vert of the coppice, of odours of
fruit and bloom and the smoke from Chanca's clay oven under the
calabash-tree; of the treble laughter of the native women in their
huts, the song of the robin, the salt taste of the breeze, the
diminuendo of the faint surf running along the shore--and, gradually,
of a white speck, growing to a blur, that intruded itself upon the
drab prospect of the sea.

Lazily interested, he watched this blur increase until it became
the _Idalia_ steaming at full speed, coming down the coast. Without
changing his position he kept his eyes upon the beautiful white yacht
as she drew swiftly near, and came opposite to Coralio. Then, sitting
upright, he saw her float steadily past and on. Scarcely a mile of
sea had separated her from the shore. He had seen the frequent flash
of her polished brass work and the stripes of her deck-awnings--so
much, and no more. Like a ship on a magic lantern slide the _Idalia_
had crossed the illuminated circle of the consul's little world, and
was gone. Save for the tiny cloud of smoke that was left hanging
over the brim of the sea, she might have been an immaterial thing, a
chimera of his idle brain.

Geddie went into his office and sat down to dawdle over his report.
If the reading of the article in the paper had left him unshaken,
this silent passing of the _Idalia_ had done for him still more.
It had brought the calm and peace of a situation from which all
uncertainty had been erased. He knew that men sometimes hope without
being aware of it. Now, since she had come two thousand miles and had
passed without a sign, not even his unconscious self need cling to
the past any longer.

After dinner, when the sun was low behind the mountains, Geddie
walked on the little strip of beach under the cocoanuts. The wind was
blowing mildly landward, and the surface of the sea was rippled by
tiny wavelets.

A miniature breaker, spreading with a soft "swish" upon the sand
brought with it something round and shiny that rolled back again as
the wave receded. The next influx beached it clear, and Geddie picked
it up. The thing was a long-necked wine bottle of colourless glass.
The cork had been driven in tightly to the level of the mouth, and
the end covered with dark-red sealing-wax. The bottle contained only
what seemed to be a sheet of paper, much curled from the manipulation
it had undergone while being inserted. In the sealing-wax was the
impression of a seal--probably of a signet-ring, bearing the initials
of a monogram; but the impression had been hastily made, and the
letters were past anything more certain than a shrewd conjecture. Ida
Payne had always worn a signet-ring in preference to any other finger
decoration. Geddie thought he could make out the familiar "I P"; and
a queer sensation of disquietude went over him. More personal and
intimate was this reminder of her than had been the sight of the
vessel she was doubtless on. He walked back to his house, and set the
bottle on his desk.

Throwing off his hat and coat, and lighting a lamp--for the night had
crowded precipitately upon the brief twilight--he began to examine
his piece of sea salvage.

By holding the bottle near the light and turning it judiciously, he
made out that it contained a double sheet of note-paper filled with
close writing; further, that the paper was of the same size and shade
as that always used by Ida; and that, to the best of his belief, the
handwriting was hers. The imperfect glass of the bottle so distorted
the rays of light that he could read no word of the writing; but
certain capital letters, of which he caught comprehensive glimpses,
were Ida's, he felt sure.

There was a little smile both of perplexity and amusement in Geddie's
eyes as he set the bottle down, and laid three cigars side by side
on his desk. He fetched his steamer chair from the gallery, and
stretched himself comfortably. He would smoke those three cigars
while considering the problem.

For it amounted to a problem. He almost wished that he had not found
the bottle; but the bottle was there. Why should it have drifted in
from the sea, whence come so many disquieting things, to disturb his
peace?

In this dreamy land, where time seemed so redundant, he had fallen
into the habit of bestowing much thought upon even trifling matters.

He began to speculate upon many fanciful theories concerning the
story of the bottle, rejecting each in turn.

Ships in danger of wreck or disablement sometimes cast forth such
precarious messengers calling for aid. But he had seen the _Idalia_
not three hours before, safe and speeding. Suppose the crew had
mutinied and imprisoned the passengers below, and the message was
one begging for succour! But, premising such an improbable outrage,
would the agitated captives have taken the pains to fill four pages
of note-paper with carefully penned arguments to their rescue.

Thus by elimination he soon rid the matter of the more unlikely
theories, and was reduced--though aversely--to the less assailable
one that the bottle contained a message to himself. Ida knew he was
in Coralio; she must have launched the bottle while the yacht was
passing and the wind blowing fairly toward the shore.

As soon as Geddie reached this conclusion a wrinkle came between his
brows and a stubborn look settled around his mouth. He sat looking
out through the doorway at the gigantic fire-flies traversing the
quiet streets.

If this was a message to him from Ida, what could it mean save an
overture toward a reconciliation? And if that, why had she not used
the same methods of the post instead of this uncertain and even
flippant means of communication? A note in an empty bottle, cast into
the sea! There was something light and frivolous about it, if not
actually contemptuous.

The thought stirred his pride and subdued whatever emotions had been
resurrected by the finding of the bottle.

Geddie put on his coat and hat and walked out. He followed a street
that led him along the border of the little plaza where a band was
playing and people were rambling, care-free and indolent. Some
timorous _señoritas_ scurrying past with fire-flies tangled in the
jetty braids of their hair glanced at him with shy, flattering eyes.
The air was languorous with the scent of jasmin and orange-blossoms.

The consul stayed his steps at the house of Bernard Brannigan. Paula
was swinging in a hammock on the gallery. She rose from it like a
bird from its nest. The colour came to her cheek at the sound of
Geddie's voice.

He was charmed at the sight of her costume--a flounced muslin dress,
with a little jacket of white flannel, all made with neatness and
style. He suggested a stroll, and they walked out to the old Indian
well on the hill road. They sat on the curb, and there Geddie made
the expected but long-deferred speech. Certain though he had been
that she would not say him nay, he was thrilled with joy at the
completeness and sweetness of her surrender. Here was surely a heart
made for love and steadfastness. Here was no caprice or questionings
or captious standards of convention.

When Geddie kissed Paula at her door that night he was happier than
he had ever been before. "Here in this hollow lotus land, ever to
live and lie reclined" seemed to him, as it has seemed to many
mariners, the best as well as the easiest. His future would be an
ideal one. He had attained a Paradise without a serpent. His Eve
would be indeed a part of him, unbeguiled, and therefore more
beguiling. He had made his decision to-night, and his heart was full
of serene, assured content.

Geddie went back to his house whistling that finest and saddest love
song, "La Golondrina." At the door his tame monkey leaped down from
his shelf, chattering briskly. The consul turned to his desk to get
him some nuts he usually kept there. Reaching in the half-darkness,
his hand struck against the bottle. He started as if he had touched
the cold rotundity of a serpent.

He had forgotten that the bottle was there.

He lighted the lamp and fed the monkey. Then, very deliberately, he
lighted a cigar, and took the bottle in his hand, and walked down the
path to the beach.

There was a moon, and the sea was glorious. The breeze had shifted,
as it did each evening, and was now rushing steadily seaward.

Stepping to the water's edge, Geddie hurled the unopened bottle far
out into the sea. It disappeared for a moment, and then shot upward
twice its length. Geddie stood still, watching it. The moonlight was
so bright that he could see it bobbing up and down with the little
waves. Slowly it receded from the shore, flashing and turning as it
went. The wind was carrying it out to sea. Soon it became a mere
speck, doubtfully discerned at irregular intervals; and then the
mystery of it was swallowed up by the greater mystery of the ocean.
Geddie stood still upon the beach, smoking and looking out upon the
water.



"Simon!--Oh, Simon!--wake up there, Simon!" bawled a sonorous voice
at the edge of the water.

Old Simon Cruz was a half-breed fisherman and smuggler who lived in a
hut on the beach. Out of his earliest nap Simon was thus awakened.

He slipped on his shoes and went outside. Just landing from one of
the _Valhalla's_ boats was the third mate of that vessel, who was an
acquaintance of Simon's, and three sailors from the fruiter.

"Go up, Simon," called the mate, "and find Dr. Gregg or Mr. Goodwin
or anybody that's a friend to Mr. Geddie, and bring 'em here at
once."

"Saints of the skies!" said Simon, sleepily, "nothing has happened to
Mr. Geddie?"

"He's under that tarpauling," said the mate, pointing to the boat,
"and he's rather more than half drownded. We seen him from the
steamer nearly a mile out from shore, swimmin' like mad after a
bottle that was floatin' in the water, outward bound. We lowered the
gig and started for him. He nearly had his hand on the bottle, when
he gave out and went under. We pulled him out in time to save him,
maybe; but the doctor is the one to decide that."

"A bottle?" said the old man, rubbing his eyes. He was not yet fully
awake. "Where is the bottle?"

"Driftin' along out there some'eres," said the mate, jerking his
thumb toward the sea. "Get on with you, Simon."



III

SMITH


Goodwin and the ardent patriot, Zavalla, took all the precautions
that their foresight could contrive to prevent the escape of
President Miraflores and his companion. They sent trusted messengers
up the coast to Solitas and Alazan to warn the local leaders of the
flight, and to instruct them to patrol the water line and arrest
the fugitives at all hazards should they reveal themselves in that
territory. After this was done there remained only to cover the
district about Coralio and await the coming of the quarry. The nets
were well spread. The roads were so few, the opportunities for
embarkation so limited, and the two or three probable points of exit
so well guarded that it would be strange indeed if there should slip
through the meshes so much of the country's dignity, romance, and
collateral. The president would, without doubt, move as secretly
as possible, and endeavour to board a vessel by stealth from some
secluded point along the shore.

On the fourth day after the receipt of Englehart's telegram the
_Karlsefin_, a Norwegian steamer chartered by the New Orleans fruit
trade, anchored off Coralio with three hoarse toots of her siren. The
_Karlsefin_ was not one of the line operated by the Vesuvius Fruit
Company. She was something of a dilettante, doing odd jobs for a
company that was scarcely important enough to figure as a rival to
the Vesuvius. The movements of the _Karlsefin_ were dependent upon
the state of the market. Sometimes she would ply steadily between the
Spanish Main and New Orleans in the regular transport of fruit; next
she would be making erratic trips to Mobile or Charleston, or even
as far north as New York, according to the distribution of the fruit
supply.

Goodwin lounged upon the beach with the usual crowd of idlers that
had gathered to view the steamer. Now that President Miraflores might
be expected to reach the borders of his abjured country at any time,
the orders were to keep a strict and unrelenting watch. Every vessel
that approached the shores might now be considered a possible means
of escape for the fugitives; and an eye was kept even on the sloops
and dories that belonged to the sea-going contingent of Coralio.
Goodwin and Zavalla moved everywhere, but without ostentation,
watching the loopholes of escape.

The customs officials crowded importantly into their boat and rowed
out to the _Karlsefin_. A boat from the steamer landed her purser
with his papers, and took out the quarantine doctor with his green
umbrella and clinical thermometer. Next a swarm of Caribs began to
load upon lighters the thousands of bunches of bananas heaped upon
the shore and row them out to the steamer. The _Karlsefin_ had
no passenger list, and was soon done with the attention of the
authorities. The purser declared that the steamer would remain at
anchor until morning, taking on her fruit during the night. The
_Karlsefin_ had come, he said, from New York, to which port her
latest load of oranges and cocoanuts had been conveyed. Two or three
of the freighter sloops were engaged to assist in the work, for the
captain was anxious to make a quick return in order to reap the
advantage offered by a certain dearth of fruit in the States.

About four o'clock in the afternoon another of those marine monsters,
not very familiar in those waters, hove in sight, following the
fateful _Idalia_--a graceful steam yacht, painted a light buff,
clean-cut as a steel engraving. The beautiful vessel hovered off
shore, see-sawing the waves as lightly as a duck in a rain barrel.
A swift boat manned by a crew in uniform came ashore, and a
stocky-built man leaped to the sands.

The new-comer seemed to turn a disapproving eye upon the rather
motley congregation of native Anchurians, and made his way at once
toward Goodwin, who was the most conspicuously Anglo-Saxon figure
present. Goodwin greeted him with courtesy.

Conversation developed that the newly landed one was named Smith,
and that he had come in a yacht. A meagre biography, truly; for the
yacht was most apparent; and the "Smith" not beyond a reasonable
guess before the revelation. Yet to the eye of Goodwin, who had seen
several things, there was a discrepancy between Smith and his yacht.
A bullet-headed man Smith was, with an oblique, dead eye and the
moustache of a cocktail-mixer. And unless he had shifted costumes
before putting off for shore he had affronted the deck of his correct
vessel clad in a pearl-gray derby, a gay plaid suit and vaudeville
neckwear. Men owning pleasure yachts generally harmonize better with
them.

Smith looked business, but he was no advertiser. He commented upon
the scenery, remarking upon its fidelity to the pictures in the
geography; and then inquired for the United States consul. Goodwin
pointed out the starred-and-striped bunting hanging above the little
consulate, which was concealed behind the orange-trees.

"Mr. Geddie, the consul, will be sure to be there," said Goodwin. "He
was very nearly drowned a few days ago while taking a swim in the
sea, and the doctor has ordered him to remain indoors for some time."

Smith plowed his way through the sand to the consulate, his
haberdashery creating violent discord against the smooth tropical
blues and greens.

Geddie was lounging in his hammock, somewhat pale of face and languid
in pose. On that night when the _Valhalla's_ boat had brought him
ashore apparently drenched to death by the sea, Doctor Gregg and his
other friends had toiled for hours to preserve the little spark of
life that remained to him. The bottle, with its impotent message, was
gone out to sea, and the problem that it had provoked was reduced
to a simple sum in addition--one and one make two, by the rule of
arithmetic; one by the rule of romance.

There is a quaint old theory that man may have two souls--a
peripheral one which serves ordinarily, and a central one which is
stirred only at certain times, but then with activity and vigour.
While under the domination of the former a man will shave, vote, pay
taxes, give money to his family, buy subscription books and comport
himself on the average plan. But let the central soul suddenly become
dominant, and he may, in the twinkling of an eye, turn upon the
partner of his joys with furious execration; he may change his
politics while you could snap your fingers; he may deal out deadly
insult to his dearest friend; he may get him, instanter, to a
monastery or a dance hall; he may elope, or hang himself--or he may
write a song or poem, or kiss his wife unasked, or give his funds to
the search of a microbe. Then the peripheral soul will return; and we
have our safe, sane citizen again. It is but the revolt of the Ego
against Order; and its effect is to shake up the atoms only that they
may settle where they belong.

Geddie's revulsion had been a mild one--no more than a swim in a
summer sea after so inglorious an object as a drifting bottle. And
now he was himself again. Upon his desk, ready for the post, was a
letter to his government tendering his resignation as consul, to be
effective as soon as another could be appointed in his place. For
Bernard Brannigan, who never did things in a half-way manner, was to
take Geddie at once for a partner in his very profitable and various
enterprises; and Paula was happily engaged in plans for refurnishing
and decorating the upper story of the Brannigan house.

The consul rose from his hammock when he saw the conspicuous stranger
in his door.

"Keep your seat, old man," said the visitor, with an airy wave of his
large hand. "My name's Smith; and I've come in a yacht. You are the
consul--is that right? A big, cool guy on the beach directed me here.
Thought I'd pay my respects to the flag."

"Sit down," said Geddie. "I've been admiring your craft ever since it
came in sight. Looks like a fast sailer. What's her tonnage?"

"Search me!" said Smith. "I don't know what she weighs in at. But
she's got a tidy gait. The _Rambler_--that's her name--don't take the
dust of anything afloat. This is my first trip on her. I'm taking a
squint along this coast just to get an idea of the countries where
the rubber and red pepper and revolutions come from. I had no idea
there was so much scenery down here. Why, Central Park ain't in it
with this neck of the woods. I'm from New York. They get monkeys, and
cocoanuts, and parrots down here--is that right?"

"We have them all," said Geddie. "I'm quite sure that our fauna and
flora would take a prize over Central Park."

"Maybe they would," admitted Smith, cheerfully. "I haven't seen them
yet. But I guess you've got us skinned on the animal and vegetation
question. You don't have much travel here, do you?"

"Travel?" queried the consul. "I suppose you mean passengers on the
steamers. No; very few people land in Coralio. An investor now and
then--tourists and sight-seers generally go further down the coast to
one of the larger towns where there is a harbour."

"I see a ship out there loading up with bananas," said Smith. "Any
passengers come on her?"

"That's the _Karlsefin_," said the consul. "She's a tramp
fruiter--made her last trip to New York, I believe. No; she brought
no passengers. I saw her boat come ashore, and there was no one.
About the only exciting recreation we have here is watching steamers
when they arrive; and a passenger on one of them generally causes
the whole town to turn out. If you are going to remain in Coralio
a while, Mr. Smith, I'll be glad to take you around to meet some
people. There are four or five American chaps that are good to know,
besides the native high-fliers."

"Thanks," said the yachtsman, "but I wouldn't put you to the trouble.
I'd like to meet the guys you speak of, but I won't be here long
enough to do much knocking around. That cool gent on the beach spoke
of a doctor; can you tell me where I could find him? The _Rambler_
ain't quite as steady on her feet as a Broadway hotel; and a fellow
gets a touch of seasickness now and then. Thought I'd strike the
croaker for a handful of the little sugar pills, in case I need 'em."

"You will be apt to find Dr. Gregg at the hotel," said the consul.
"You can see it from the door--it's that two-story building with the
balcony, where the orange-trees are."

The Hotel de los Estranjeros was a dreary hostelry, in great disuse
both by strangers and friends. It stood at a corner of the Street of
the Holy Sepulchre. A grove of small orange-trees crowded against one
side of it, enclosed by a low, rock wall over which a tall man might
easily step. The house was of plastered adobe, stained a hundred
shades of colour by the salt breeze and the sun. Upon its upper
balcony opened a central door and two windows containing broad
jalousies instead of sashes.

The lower floor communicated by two doorways with the narrow,
rock-paved sidewalk. The _pulperia_--or drinking shop--of the
proprietress, Madama Timotea Ortiz, occupied the ground floor. On the
bottles of brandy, _anisada_, Scotch "smoke" and inexpensive wines
behind the little counter the dust lay thick save where the fingers
of infrequent customers had left irregular prints. The upper story
contained four or five guest-rooms which were rarely put to their
destined use. Sometimes a fruit-grower, riding in from his plantation
to confer with his agent, would pass a melancholy night in the dismal
upper story; sometimes a minor native official on some trifling
government quest would have his pomp and majesty awed by Madama's
sepulchral hospitality. But Madama sat behind her bar content, not
desiring to quarrel with Fate. If anyone required meat, drink or
lodging at the Hotel de los Estranjeros they had but to come, and be
served. _Está bueno._ If they came not, why, then, they came not.
_Está bueno._

As the exceptional yachtsman was making his way down the precarious
sidewalk of the Street of the Holy Sepulchre, the solitary permanent
guest of that decaying hotel sat at its door, enjoying the breeze
from the sea.

Dr. Gregg, the quarantine physician, was a man of fifty or sixty,
with a florid face and the longest beard between Topeka and Terra
del Fuego. He held his position by virtue of an appointment by the
Board of Health of a seaport city in one of the Southern states.
That city feared the ancient enemy of every Southern seaport--the
yellow fever--and it was the duty of Dr. Gregg to examine crew and
passengers of every vessel leaving Coralio for preliminary symptoms.
The duties were light, and the salary, for one who lived in Coralio,
ample. Surplus time there was in plenty; and the good doctor added
to his gains by a large private practice among the residents of the
coast. The fact that he did not know ten words of Spanish was no
obstacle; a pulse could be felt and a fee collected without one being
a linguist. Add to the description the facts that the doctor had
a story to tell concerning the operation of trepanning which no
listener had ever allowed him to conclude, and that he believed
in brandy as a prophylactic; and the special points of interest
possessed by Dr. Gregg will have become exhausted.

The doctor had dragged a chair to the sidewalk. He was coatless, and
he leaned back against the wall and smoked, while he stroked his
beard. Surprise came into his pale blue eyes when he caught sight of
Smith in his unusual and prismatic clothes.

"You're Dr. Gregg--is that right?" said Smith, feeling the dog's head
pin in his tie. "The constable--I mean the consul, told me you hung
out at this caravansary. My name's Smith; and I came in a yacht.
Taking a cruise around, looking at the monkeys and pineapple-trees.
Come inside and have a drink, Doc. This café looks on the blink, but
I guess it can set out something wet."

"I will join you, sir, in just a taste of brandy," said Dr. Gregg,
rising quickly. "I find that as a prophylactic a little brandy is
almost a necessity in this climate."

As they turned to enter the _pulperia_ a native man, barefoot,
glided noiselessly up and addressed the doctor in Spanish. He was
yellowish-brown, like an over-ripe lemon; he wore a cotton shirt and
ragged linen trousers girded by a leather belt. His face was like an
animal's, live and wary, but without promise of much intelligence.
This man jabbered with animation and so much seriousness that it
seemed a pity that his words were to be wasted.

Dr. Gregg felt his pulse.

"You sick?" he inquired.

"_Mi mujer está enferma en la casa_," said the man, thus endeavouring
to convey the news, in the only language open to him, that his wife
lay ill in her palm-thatched hut.

The doctor drew a handful of capsules filled with a white powder from
his trousers pocket. He counted out ten of them into the native's
hand, and held up his forefinger impressively.

"Take one," said the doctor, "every two hours." He then held up two
fingers, shaking them emphatically before the native's face. Next he
pulled out his watch and ran his finger round its dial twice. Again
the two fingers confronted the patient's nose. "Two--two--two hours,"
repeated the doctor.

"_Si, Señor_," said the native, sadly.

He pulled a cheap silver watch from his own pocket and laid it in
the doctor's hand. "Me bring," said he, struggling painfully with
his scant English, "other watchy to-morrow." Then he departed
downheartedly with his capsules.

"A very ignorant race of people, sir," said the doctor, as he slipped
the watch into his pocket. "He seems to have mistaken my directions
for taking the physic for the fee. However, it is all right. He owes
me an account, anyway. The chances are that he won't bring the other
watch. You can't depend on anything they promise you. About that
drink, now? How did you come to Coralio, Mr. Smith? I was not aware
that any boats except the _Karlsefin_ had arrived for some days."

The two leaned against the deserted bar; and Madama set out a bottle
without waiting for the doctor's order. There was no dust on it.

After they had drank twice Smith said:

"You say there were no passengers on the _Karlsefin_, Doc? Are you
sure about that? It seems to me I heard somebody down on the beach
say that there was one or two aboard."

"They were mistaken, sir. I myself went out and put all hands through
a medical examination, as usual. The _Karlsefin_ sails as soon as she
gets her bananas loaded, which will be about daylight in the morning,
and she got everything ready this afternoon. No, sir, there was no
passenger list. Like that Three-Star? A French schooner landed two
slooploads of it a month ago. If any customs duties on it went to the
distinguished republic of Anchuria you may have my hat. If you won't
have another, come out and let's sit in the cool a while. It isn't
often we exiles get a chance to talk with somebody from the outside
world."

The doctor brought out another chair to the sidewalk for his new
acquaintance. The two seated themselves.

"You are a man of the world," said Dr. Gregg; "a man of travel and
experience. Your decision in a matter of ethics and, no doubt, on
the points of equity, ability and professional probity should be of
value. I would be glad if you will listen to the history of a case
that I think stands unique in medical annals.

"About nine years ago, while I was engaged in the practice of
medicine in my native city, I was called to treat a case of contusion
of the skull. I made the diagnosis that a splinter of bone was
pressing upon the brain, and that the surgical operation known as
trepanning was required. However, as the patient was a gentleman of
wealth and position, I called in for consultation Dr.--"

Smith rose from his chair, and laid a hand, soft with apology, upon
the doctor's shirt sleeve.

"Say, Doc," he said, solemnly, "I want to hear that story. You've got
me interested; and I don't want to miss the rest of it. I know it's a
loola by the way it begins; and I want to tell it at the next meeting
of the Barney O'Flynn Association, if you don't mind. But I've got
one or two matters to attend to first. If I get 'em attended to
in time I'll come right back and hear you spiel the rest before
bedtime--is that right?"

"By all means," said the doctor, "get your business attended to,
and then return. I shall wait up for you. You see, one of the most
prominent physicians at the consultation diagnosed the trouble as a
blood clot; another said it was an abscess, but I--"

"Don't tell me now, Doc. Don't spoil the story. Wait till I come
back. I want to hear it as it runs off the reel--is that right?"

The mountains reached up their bulky shoulders to receive the level
gallop of Apollo's homing steeds, the day died in the lagoons and
in the shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, where the
great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for their nightly
ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. Then the brief
twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came and went; the
Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above a row of palms,
and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the approach of
soft-footed night.

In the offing the _Karlsefin_ swayed at anchor, her lights seeming
to penetrate the water to countless fathoms with their shimmering,
lanceolate reflections. The Caribs were busy loading her by means of
the great lighters heaped full from the piles of fruit ranged upon
the shore.

On the sandy beach, with his back against a cocoanut-tree and the
stubs of many cigars lying around him, Smith sat waiting, never
relaxing his sharp gaze in the direction of the steamer.

The incongruous yachtsman had concentrated his interest upon the
innocent fruiter. Twice had he been assured that no passengers had
come to Coralio on board of her. And yet, with a persistence not to
be attributed to an idling voyager, he had appealed the case to the
higher court of his own eyesight. Surprisingly like some gay-coated
lizard, he crouched at the foot of the cocoanut palm, and with the
beady, shifting eyes of the selfsame reptile, sustained his espionage
on the _Karlsefin_.

On the white sands a whiter gig belonging to the yacht was drawn up,
guarded by one of the white-ducked crew. Not far away in a _pulperia_
on the shore-following Calle Grande three other sailors swaggered
with their cues around Coralio's solitary billiard-table. The boat
lay there as if under orders to be ready for use at any moment. There
was in the atmosphere a hint of expectation, of waiting for something
to occur, which was foreign to the air of Coralio.

Like some passing bird of brilliant plumage, Smith alights on this
palmy shore but to preen his wings for an instant and then to fly
away upon silent pinions. When morning dawned there was no Smith, no
waiting gig, no yacht in the offing. Smith left no intimation of his
mission there, no footprints to show where he had followed the trail
of his mystery on the sands of Coralio that night. He came; he spake
his strange jargon of the asphalt and the cafés; he sat under the
cocoanut-tree, and vanished. The next morning Coralio, Smithless,
ate its fried plantain and said: "The man of pictured clothing went
himself away." With the _siesta_ the incident passed, yawning, into
history.

So, for a time, must Smith pass behind the scenes of the play. He
comes no more to Coralio nor to Doctor Gregg, who sits in vain,
wagging his redundant beard, waiting to enrich his derelict audience
with his moving tale of trepanning and jealousy.

But prosperously to the lucidity of these loose pages, Smith shall
flutter among them again. In the nick of time he shall come to tell
us why he strewed so many anxious cigar stumps around the cocoanut
palm that night. This he must do; for, when he sailed away before
the dawn in his yacht _Rambler_, he carried with him the answer to a
riddle so big and preposterous that few in Anchuria had ventured even
to propound it.



IV

CAUGHT


The plans for the detention of the flying President Miraflores
and his companion at the coast line seemed hardly likely to fail.
Dr. Zavalla himself had gone to the port of Alazan to establish a
guard at that point. At Solitas the Liberal patriot Varras could be
depended upon to keep close watch. Goodwin held himself responsible
for the district about Coralio.

The news of the president's flight had been disclosed to no one in
the coast towns save trusted members of the ambitious political party
that was desirous of succeeding to power. The telegraph wire running
from San Mateo to the coast had been cut far up on the mountain trail
by an emissary of Zavalla's. Long before this could be repaired and
word received along it from the capital the fugitives would have
reached the coast and the question of escape or capture been solved.

Goodwin had stationed armed sentinels at frequent intervals along the
shore for a mile in each direction from Coralio. They were instructed
to keep a vigilant lookout during the night to prevent Miraflores
from attempting to embark stealthily by means of some boat or sloop
found by chance at the water's edge. A dozen patrols walked the
streets of Coralio unsuspected, ready to intercept the truant
official should he show himself there.

Goodwin was very well convinced that no precautions had been
overlooked. He strolled about the streets that bore such
high-sounding names and were but narrow, grass-covered lanes, lending
his own aid to the vigil that had been intrusted to him by Bob
Englehart.

The town had begun the tepid round of its nightly diversions. A few
leisurely dandies, clad in white duck, with flowing neckties, and
swinging slim bamboo canes, threaded the grassy by-ways toward the
houses of their favoured señoritas. Those who wooed the art of music
dragged tirelessly at whining concertinas, or fingered lugubrious
guitars at doors and windows. An occasional soldier from the
_cuartel_, with flapping straw hat, without coat or shoes, hurried
by, balancing his long gun like a lance in one hand. From every
density of the foliage the giant tree frogs sounded their loud and
irritating clatter. Further out, where the by-ways perished at the
brink of the jungle, the guttural cries of marauding baboons and the
coughing of the alligators in the black estuaries fractured the vain
silence of the wood.

By ten o'clock the streets were deserted. The oil lamps that had
burned, a sickly yellow, at random corners, had been extinguished
by some economical civic agent. Coralio lay sleeping calmly between
toppling mountains and encroaching sea like a stolen babe in the arms
of its abductors. Somewhere over in that tropical darkness--perhaps
already threading the profundities of the alluvial lowlands--the high
adventurer and his mate were moving toward land's end. The game of
Fox-in-the-Morning should be coming soon to its close.

Goodwin, at his deliberate gait, passed the long, low _cuartel_ where
Coralio's contingent of Anchuria's military force slumbered, with its
bare toes pointed heavenward. There was a law that no civilian might
come so near the headquarters of that citadel of war after nine
o'clock, but Goodwin was always forgetting the minor statutes.

"_Quién vive?_" shrieked the sentinel, wrestling prodigiously with
his lengthy musket.

"_Americano_," growled Goodwin, without turning his head, and passed
on, unhalted.

To the right he turned, and to the left up the street that ultimately
reached the Plaza Nacional. When within the toss of a cigar stump
from the intersecting Street of the Holy Sepulchre, he stopped
suddenly in the pathway.

He saw the form of a tall man, clothed in black and carrying a large
valise, hurry down the cross-street in the direction of the beach.
And Goodwin's second glance made him aware of a woman at the man's
elbow on the farther side, who seemed to urge forward, if not even to
assist, her companion in their swift but silent progress. They were
no Coralians, those two.

Goodwin followed at increased speed, but without any of the artful
tactics that are so dear to the heart of the sleuth. The American was
too broad to feel the instinct of the detective. He stood as an agent
for the people of Anchuria, and but for political reasons he would
have demanded then and there the money. It was the design of his
party to secure the imperilled fund, to restore it to the treasury
of the country, and to declare itself in power without bloodshed or
resistance.

The couple halted at the door of the Hotel de los Estranjeros, and
the man struck upon the wood with the impatience of one unused to his
entry being stayed. Madama was long in response; but after a time her
light showed, the door was opened, and the guests housed.

Goodwin stood in the quiet street, lighting another cigar. In
two minutes a faint gleam began to show between the slats of the
jalousies in the upper story of the hotel. "They have engaged rooms,"
said Goodwin to himself. "So, then, their arrangements for sailing
have yet to be made."

At that moment there came along one Estebán Delgado, a barber, an
enemy to existing government, a jovial plotter against stagnation
in any form. This barber was one of Coralio's saddest dogs, often
remaining out of doors as late as eleven, post meridian. He was a
partisan Liberal; and he greeted Goodwin with flatulent importance as
a brother in the cause. But he had something important to tell.

"What think you, Don Frank!" he cried, in the universal tone of the
conspirator. "I have to-night shaved _la barba_--what you call the
'weeskers' of the _Presidente_ himself, of this countree! Consider!
He sent for me to come. In the poor _casita_ of an old woman he
awaited me--in a verree leetle house in a dark place. _Carramba!_--el
Señor Presidente to make himself thus secret and obscured! I think he
desired not to be known--but, _carajo!_ can you shave a man and not
see his face? This gold piece he gave me, and said it was to be all
quite still. I think, Don Frank, there is what you call a chip over
the bug."

"Have you ever seen President Miraflores before?" asked Goodwin.

"But once," answered Estebán. "He is tall; and he had weeskers,
verree black and sufficient."

"Was anyone else present when you shaved him?"

"An old Indian woman, Señor, that belonged with the _casa_, and one
señorita--a ladee of so much beautee!--_ah, Dios!_"

"All right, Estebán," said Goodwin. "It's very lucky that
you happened along with your tonsorial information. The new
administration will be likely to remember you for this."

Then in a few words he made the barber acquainted with the crisis
into which the affairs of the nation had culminated, and instructed
him to remain outside, keeping watch upon the two sides of the hotel
that looked upon the street, and observing whether anyone should
attempt to leave the house by any door or window. Goodwin himself
went to the door through which the guests had entered, opened it and
stepped inside.

Madama had returned downstairs from her journey above to see after
the comfort of her lodgers. Her candle stood upon the bar. She was
about to take a thimbleful of rum as a solace for having her rest
disturbed. She looked up without surprise or alarm as her third
caller entered.

"Ah! it is the Señor Goodwin. Not often does he honour my poor house
by his presence."

"I must come oftener," said Goodwin, with the Goodwin smile. "I hear
that your cognac is the best between Belize to the north and Rio to
the south. Set out the bottle, Madama, and let us have the proof in
_un vasito_ for each of us."

"My _aguardiente_," said Madama, with pride, "is the best. It grows,
in beautiful bottles, in the dark places among the banana-trees. _Si,
Señor._ Only at midnight can they be picked by sailor-men who bring
them, before daylight comes, to your back door. Good _aguardiente_ is
a verree difficult fruit to handle, Señor Goodwin."

Smuggling, in Coralio, was much nearer than competition to being the
life of trade. One spoke of it slyly, yet with a certain conceit,
when it had been well accomplished.

"You have guests in the house to-night," said Goodwin, laying a
silver dollar upon the counter.

"Why not?" said Madama, counting the change. "Two; but the smallest
while finished to arrive. One señor, not quite old, and one señorita
of sufficient handsomeness. To their rooms they have ascended, not
desiring the to-eat nor the to-drink. Two rooms--_Numero_ 9 and
_Numero_ 10."

"I was expecting that gentleman and that lady," said Goodwin. "I have
important _negocios_ that must be transacted. Will you allow me to
see them?"

"Why not?" sighed Madama, placidly. "Why should not Señor Goodwin
ascend and speak to his friends? _Está bueno._ Room _Numero_ 9 and
room _Numero_ 10."

Goodwin loosened in his coat pocket the American revolver that he
carried, and ascended the steep, dark stairway.

In the hallway above, the saffron light from a hanging lamp allowed
him to select the gaudy numbers on the doors. He turned the knob of
Number 9, entered and closed the door behind him.

If that was Isabel Guilbert seated by the table in that poorly
furnished room, report had failed to do her charms justice. She
rested her head upon one hand. Extreme fatigue was signified in every
line of her figure; and upon her countenance a deep perplexity was
written. Her eyes were gray-irised, and of that mould that seems to
have belonged to the orbs of all the famous queens of hearts. Their
whites were singularly clear and brilliant, concealed above the
irises by heavy horizontal lids, and showing a snowy line below them.
Such eyes denote great nobility, vigour, and, if you can conceive of
it, a most generous selfishness. She looked up when the American
entered with an expression of surprised inquiry, but without alarm.

Goodwin took off his hat and seated himself, with his characteristic
deliberate ease, upon a corner of the table. He held a lighted cigar
between his fingers. He took this familiar course because he was sure
that preliminaries would be wasted upon Miss Guilbert. He knew her
history, and the small part that the conventions had played in it.

"Good evening," he said. "Now, madame, let us come to business at
once. You will observe that I mention no names, but I know who is in
the next room, and what he carries in that valise. That is the point
which brings me here. I have come to dictate terms of surrender."

The lady neither moved nor replied, but steadily regarded the cigar
in Goodwin's hand.

"We," continued the dictator, thoughtfully regarding the neat
buckskin shoe on his gently swinging foot--"I speak for a
considerable majority of the people--demand the return of the stolen
funds belonging to them. Our terms go very little further than that.
They are very simple. As an accredited spokesman, I promise that our
interference will cease if they are accepted. Give up the money, and
you and your companion will be permitted to proceed wherever you
will. In fact, assistance will be given you in the matter of securing
a passage by any outgoing vessel you may choose. It is on my personal
responsibility that I add congratulations to the gentleman in Number
10 upon his taste in feminine charms."

Returning his cigar to his mouth, Goodwin observed her, and saw that
her eyes followed it and rested upon it with icy and significant
concentration. Apparently she had not heard a word he had said. He
understood, tossed the cigar out the window, and, with an amused
laugh, slid from the table to his feet.

"That is better," said the lady. "It makes it possible for me to
listen to you. For a second lesson in good manners, you might now
tell me by whom I am being insulted."

"I am sorry," said Goodwin, leaning one hand on the table, "that my
time is too brief for devoting much of it to a course of etiquette.
Come, now; I appeal to your good sense. You have shown yourself,
in more than one instance, to be well aware of what is to your
advantage. This is an occasion that demands the exercise of your
undoubted intelligence. There is no mystery here. I am Frank Goodwin;
and I have come for the money. I entered this room at a venture. Had
I entered the other I would have had it before now. Do you want it in
words? The gentleman in Number 10 has betrayed a great trust. He has
robbed his people of a large sum, and it is I who will prevent their
losing it. I do not say who that gentleman is; but if I should be
forced to see him and he should prove to be a certain high official
of the republic, it will be my duty to arrest him. The house is
guarded. I am offering you liberal terms. It is not absolutely
necessary that I confer personally with the gentleman in the next
room. Bring me the valise containing the money, and we will call the
affair ended."

The lady arose from her chair and stood for a moment, thinking
deeply.

"Do you live here, Mr. Goodwin?" she asked, presently.

"Yes."

"What is your authority for this intrusion?"

"I am an instrument of the republic. I was advised by wire of the
movements of the--gentleman in Number 10."

"May I ask you two or three questions? I believe you to be a man more
apt to be truthful than--timid. What sort of a town is this--Coralio,
I think they call it?"

"Not much of a town," said Goodwin, smiling. "A banana town, as they
run. Grass huts, 'dobes, five or six two-story houses, accommodations
limited, population half-breed Spanish and Indian, Caribs and
blackamoors. No sidewalks to speak of, no amusements. Rather unmoral.
That's an offhand sketch, of course."

"Are there any inducements, say in a social or in a business way, for
people to reside here?"

"Oh, yes," answered Goodwin, smiling broadly. "There are no afternoon
teas, no hand-organs, no department stores--and there is no
extradition treaty."

"He told me," went on the lady, speaking as if to herself, and with
a slight frown, "that there were towns on this coast of beauty and
importance; that there was a pleasing social order--especially an
American colony of cultured residents."

"There is an American colony," said Goodwin, gazing at her in some
wonder. "Some of the members are all right. Some are fugitives
from justice from the States. I recall two exiled bank presidents,
one army paymaster under a cloud, a couple of manslayers, and a
widow--arsenic, I believe, was the suspicion in her case. I myself
complete the colony, but, as yet, I have not distinguished myself by
any particular crime."

"Do not lose hope," said the lady, dryly; "I see nothing in your
actions to-night to guarantee you further obscurity. Some mistake
has been made; I do not know just where. But _him_ you shall not
disturb to-night. The journey has fatigued him so that he has fallen
asleep, I think, in his clothes. You talk of stolen money! I do not
understand you. Some mistake has been made. I will convince you.
Remain where you are and I will bring you the valise that you seem to
covet so, and show it to you."

She moved toward the closed door that connected the two rooms, but
stopped, and half turned and bestowed upon Goodwin a grave, searching
look that ended in a quizzical smile.

"You force my door," she said, "and you follow your ruffianly
behaviour with the basest accusations; and yet"--she hesitated, as if
to reconsider what she was about to say--"and yet--it is a puzzling
thing--I am sure there has been some mistake."

She took a step toward the door, but Goodwin stayed her by a light
touch upon her arm. I have said before that women turned to look at
him in the streets. He was the viking sort of man, big, good-looking,
and with an air of kindly truculence. She was dark and proud, glowing
or pale as her mood moved her. I do not know if Eve were light or
dark, but if such a woman had stood in the garden I know that the
apple would have been eaten. This woman was to be Goodwin's fate,
and he did not know it; but he must have felt the first throes of
destiny, for, as he faced her, the knowledge of what report named her
turned bitter in his throat.

"If there has been any mistake," he said, hotly, "it was yours. I do
not blame the man who has lost his country, his honour, and is about
to lose the poor consolation of his stolen riches as much as I blame
you, for, by Heaven! I can very well see how he was brought to it.
I can understand, and pity him. It is such women as you that strew
this degraded coast with wretched exiles, that make men forget their
trusts, that drag--"

The lady interrupted him with a weary gesture.

"There is no need to continue your insults," she said, coldly.
"I do not understand what you are saying, nor do I know what mad
blunder you are making; but if the inspection of the contents of
a gentleman's portmanteau will rid me of you, let us delay it no
longer."

She passed quickly and noiselessly into the other room, and returned
with the heavy leather valise, which she handed to the American with
an air of patient contempt.

Goodwin set the valise quickly upon the table and began to unfasten
the straps. The lady stood by, with an expression of infinite scorn
and weariness upon her face.

The valise opened wide to a powerful, sidelong wrench. Goodwin
dragged out two or three articles of clothing, exposing the bulk of
its contents--package after package of tightly packed United States
bank and treasury notes of large denomination. Reckoning from the
high figures written upon the paper bands that bound them, the total
must have come closely upon the hundred thousand mark.

Goodwin glanced swiftly at the woman, and saw, with surprise and a
thrill of pleasure that he wondered at, that she had experienced
an unmistakable shock. Her eyes grew wide, she gasped, and leaned
heavily against the table. She had been ignorant, then, he inferred,
that her companion had looted the government treasury. But why, he
angrily asked himself, should he be so well pleased to think this
wandering and unscrupulous singer not so black as report had painted
her?

A noise in the other room startled them both. The door swung open,
and a tall, elderly, dark complexioned man, recently shaven, hurried
into the room.

All the pictures of President Miraflores represent him as the
possessor of a luxuriant supply of dark and carefully tended
whiskers; but the story of the barber, Estebán, had prepared Goodwin
for the change.

The man stumbled in from the dark room, his eyes blinking at the
lamplight, and heavy from sleep.

"What does this mean?" he demanded in excellent English, with a keen
and perturbed look at the American--"robbery?"

"Very near it," answered Goodwin. "But I rather think I'm in time to
prevent it. I represent the people to whom this money belongs, and
I have come to convey it back to them." He thrust his hand into a
pocket of his loose, linen coat.

The other man's hand went quickly behind him.

"Don't draw," called Goodwin, sharply; "I've got you covered from my
pocket."

The lady stepped forward, and laid one hand upon the shoulder of
her hesitating companion. She pointed to the table. "Tell me the
truth--the truth," she said, in a low voice. "Whose money is that?"

The man did not answer. He gave a deep, long-drawn sigh, leaned and
kissed her on the forehead, stepped back into the other room and
closed the door.

Goodwin foresaw his purpose, and jumped for the door, but the report
of the pistol echoed as his hand touched the knob. A heavy fall
followed, and some one swept him aside and struggled into the room of
the fallen man.

A desolation, thought Goodwin, greater than that derived from
the loss of cavalier and gold must have been in the heart of the
enchantress to have wrung from her, in that moment, the cry of one
turning to the all-forgiving, all-comforting earthly consoler--to
have made her call out from that bloody and dishonoured room--"Oh,
mother, mother, mother!"

But there was an alarm outside. The barber, Estebán, at the sound
of the shot, had raised his voice; and the shot itself had aroused
half the town. A pattering of feet came up the street, and official
orders rang out on the still air. Goodwin had a duty to perform.
Circumstances had made him the custodian of his adopted country's
treasure. Swiftly cramming the money into the valise, he closed it,
leaned far out of the window and dropped it into a thick orange-tree
in the little inclosure below.



They will tell you in Coralio, as they delight in telling the
stranger, of the conclusion of that tragic flight. They will tell
you how the upholders of the law came apace when the alarm was
sounded--the _Comandante_ in red slippers and a jacket like a head
waiter's and girded sword, the soldiers with their interminable guns,
followed by outnumbering officers struggling into their gold lace and
epaulettes; the barefooted policemen (the only capables in the lot),
and ruffled citizens of every hue and description.

They say that the countenance of the dead man was marred sadly by the
effects of the shot; but he was identified as the fallen president
by both Goodwin and the barber Estebán. On the next morning messages
began to come over the mended telegraph wire; and the story of the
flight from the capital was given out to the public. In San Mateo the
revolutionary party had seized the sceptre of government, without
opposition, and the _vivas_ of the mercurial populace quickly effaced
the interest belonging to the unfortunate Miraflores.

They will relate to you how the new government sifted the towns and
raked the roads to find the valise containing Anchuria's surplus
capital, which the president was known to have carried with him, but
all in vain. In Coralio Señor Goodwin himself led the searching party
which combed that town as carefully as a woman combs her hair; but
the money was not found.

So they buried the dead man, without honours, back of the town near
the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a _real_ a
boy will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose hut
the barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his head,
and burned the inscription upon it with a hot iron.

You will hear also that Señor Goodwin, like a tower of strength,
shielded Doña Isabel Guilbert through those subsequent distressful
days; and that his scruples as to her past career (if he had any)
vanished; and her adventuresome waywardness (if she had any) left
her, and they were wedded and were happy.

The American built a home on a little foothill near the town. It is a
conglomerate structure of native woods that, exported, would be worth
a fortune, and of brick, palm, glass, bamboo and adobe. There is a
paradise of nature about it; and something of the same sort within.
The natives speak of its interior with hands uplifted in admiration.
There are floors polished like mirrors and covered with hand-woven
Indian rugs of silk fibre, tall ornaments and pictures, musical
instruments and papered walls--"figure-it-to-yourself!" they exclaim.

But they cannot tell you in Coralio (as you shall learn) what became
of the money that Frank Goodwin dropped into the orange-tree. But
that shall come later; for the palms are fluttering in the breeze,
bidding us to sport and gaiety.



V

CUPID'S EXILE NUMBER TWO


The United States of America, after looking over its stock of
consular timber, selected Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood, of
Dalesburg, Alabama, for a successor to Willard Geddie, resigned.

Without prejudice to Mr. Atwood, it will have to be acknowledged
that, in this instance, it was the man who sought the office. As with
the self-banished Geddie, it was nothing less than the artful smiles
of lovely woman that had driven Johnny Atwood to the desperate
expedient of accepting office under a despised Federal Government so
that he might go far, far away and never see again the false, fair
face that had wrecked his young life. The consulship at Coralio
seemed to offer a retreat sufficiently removed and romantic enough
to inject the necessary drama into the pastoral scenes of Dalesburg
life.

It was while playing the part of Cupid's exile that Johnny added his
handiwork to the long list of casualties along the Spanish Main by
his famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat
of elevating the most despised and useless weed in his own country
from obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.

The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with a
romance. In Dalesburg there was a man named Elijah Hemstetter, who
kept a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called
Rosine, a name that atoned much for "Hemstetter." This young woman
was possessed of plentiful attractions, so that the young men of the
community were agitated in their bosoms. Among the more agitated
was Johnny, the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the big colonial
mansion on the edge of Dalesburg.

It would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to
return the affection of an Atwood, a name honoured all over the state
long before and since the war. It does seem that she should have
gladly consented to have been led into that stately but rather empty
colonial mansion. But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a
threatening, cumulus cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young
farmer in the neighbourhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival
to the high-born Atwood.

One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered
of much importance by the young of the human species. The accessories
were all there--moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, the mock-bird's
song. Whether or no the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, the prosperous
young farmer, came between them on that occasion is not known; but
Rosine's answer was unfavourable. Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood
bowed till his hat touched the lawn grass, and went away with his
head high, but with a sore wound in his pedigree and heart. A
Hemstetter refuse an Atwood! Zounds!

Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic president. Judge
Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny persuaded him to set the
wheels moving for some foreign appointment. He would go away--away.
Perhaps in years to come Rosine would think how true, how faithful
his love had been, and would drop a tear--maybe in the cream she
would be skimming for Pink Dawson's breakfast.

The wheels of politics revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to
Coralio. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter's to say
good-bye. There was a queer, pinkish look about Rosine's eyes; and
had the two been alone, the United States might have had to cast
about for another consul. But Pink Dawson was there, of course,
talking about his 400-acre orchard, and the three-mile alfalfa tract,
and the 200-acre pasture. So Johnny shook hands with Rosine as coolly
as if he were only going to run up to Montgomery for a couple of
days. They had the royal manner when they chose, those Atwoods.

"If you happen to strike anything in the way of a good investment
down there, Johnny," said Pink Dawson, "just let me know, will you? I
reckon I could lay my hands on a few extra thousands 'most any time
for a profitable deal."

"Certainly, Pink," said Johnny, pleasantly. "If I strike anything of
the sort I'll let you in with pleasure."

So Johnny went down to Mobile and took a fruit steamer for the coast
of Anchuria.

When the new consul arrived in Coralio the strangeness of the scenes
diverted him much. He was only twenty-two; and the grief of youth is
not worn like a garment as it is by older men. It has its seasons
when it reigns; and then it is unseated for a time by the assertion
of the keen senses.

Billy Keogh and Johnny seemed to conceive a mutual friendship at
once. Keogh took the new consul about town and presented him to the
handful of Americans and the smaller number of French and Germans
who made up the "foreign" contingent. And then, of course, he had to
be more formally introduced to the native officials, and have his
credentials transmitted through an interpreter.

There was something about the young Southerner that the sophisticated
Keogh liked. His manner was simple almost to boyishness; but he
possessed the cool carelessness of a man of far greater age and
experience. Neither uniforms nor titles, red tape nor foreign
languages, mountains nor sea weighed upon his spirits. He was heir
to all the ages, an Atwood, of Dalesburg; and you might know every
thought conceived in his bosom.

Geddie came down to the consulate to explain the duties and workings
of the office. He and Keogh tried to interest the new consul in their
description of the work that his government expected him to perform.

"It's all right," said Johnny from the hammock that he had set up as
the official reclining place. "If anything turns up that has to be
done I'll let you fellows do it. You can't expect a Democrat to work
during his first term of holding office."

"You might look over these headings," suggested Geddie, "of the
different lines of exports you will have to keep account of. The
fruit is classified; and there are the valuable woods, coffee,
rubber--"

"That last account sounds all right," interrupted Mr. Atwood. "Sounds
as if it could be stretched. I want to buy a new flag, a monkey, a
guitar and a barrel of pineapples. Will that rubber account stretch
over 'em?"

"That's merely statistics," said Geddie, smiling. "The expense
account is what you want. It is supposed to have a slight elasticity.
The 'stationery' items are sometimes carelessly audited by the State
Department."

"We're wasting our time," said Keogh. "This man was born to hold
office. He penetrates to the root of the art at one step of his eagle
eye. The true genius of government shows its hand in every word of
his speech."

"I didn't take this job with any intention of working," explained
Johnny, lazily. "I wanted to go somewhere in the world where they
didn't talk about farms. There are none here, are there?"

"Not the kind you are acquainted with," answered the ex-consul.
"There is no such art here as agriculture. There never was a plow or
a reaper within the boundaries of Anchuria."

"This is the country for me," murmured the consul, and immediately he
fell asleep.

The cheerful tintypist pursued his intimacy with Johnny in spite
of open charges that he did so to obtain a preëmption on a seat in
that coveted spot, the rear gallery of the consulate. But whether
his designs were selfish or purely friendly, Keogh achieved that
desirable privilege. Few were the nights on which the two could not
be found reposing there in the sea breeze, with their heels on the
railing, and the cigars and brandy conveniently near.

One evening they sat thus, mainly silent, for their talk had dwindled
before the stilling influence of an unusual night.

There was a great, full moon; and the sea was mother-of-pearl. Almost
every sound was hushed, for the air was but faintly stirring; and
the town lay panting, waiting for the night to cool. Offshore lay
the fruit steamer _Andador_, of the Vesuvius line, full-laden and
scheduled to sail at six in the morning. There were no loiterers on
the beach. So bright was the moonlight that the two men could see the
small pebbles shining on the beach where the gentle surf wetted them.

Then down the coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little
sloop, white-winged like some snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within
twenty points of the wind's eye; so it veered in and out again in
long, slow strokes like the movements of a graceful skater.

Again the tactics of its crew brought it close in shore, this time
nearly opposite the consulate; and then there blew from the sloop
clear and surprising notes as if from a horn of elfland. A fairy
bugle it might have been, sweet and silvery and unexpected, playing
with spirit the familiar air of "Home, Sweet Home."

It was a scene set for the land of the lotus. The authority of the
sea and the tropics, the mystery that attends unknown sails, and the
prestige of drifting music on moonlit waters gave it an anodynous
charm. Johnny Atwood felt it, and thought of Dalesburg; but as soon
as Keogh's mind had arrived at a theory concerning the peripatetic
solo he sprang to the railing, and his ear-rending yawp fractured the
silence of Coralio like a cannon shot.

"Mel-lin-ger a-hoy!"

The sloop was now on its outward tack; but from it came a clear,
answering hail:

"Good-bye, Billy . . . go-ing home--bye!"

The _Andador_ was the sloop's destination. No doubt some passenger
with a sailing permit from some up-the-coast point had come down in
this sloop to catch the regular fruit steamer on its return trip.
Like a coquettish pigeon the little boat tacked on its eccentric way
until at last its white sail was lost to sight against the larger
bulk of the fruiter's side.

"That's old H. P. Mellinger," explained Keogh, dropping back into his
chair. "He's going back to New York. He was private secretary of the
late hot-foot president of this grocery and fruit stand that they
call a country. His job's over now; and I guess old Mellinger is
glad."

"Why does he disappear to music, like Zo-zo, the magic queen?" asked
Johnny. "Just to show 'em that he doesn't care?"

"That noise you heard is a phonograph," said Keogh. "I sold him that.
Mellinger had a graft in this country that was the only thing of its
kind in the world. The tooting machine saved it for him once, and he
always carried it around with him afterward."

"Tell me about it," demanded Johnny, betraying interest.

"I'm no disseminator of narratives," said Keogh. "I can use language
for purposes of speech; but when I attempt a discourse the words
come out as they will, and they may make sense when they strike the
atmosphere, or they may not."

"I want to hear about that graft," persisted Johnny. "You've got
no right to refuse. I've told you all about every man, woman and
hitching post in Dalesburg."

"You shall hear it," said Keogh. "I said my instincts of narrative
were perplexed. Don't you believe it. It's an art I've acquired along
with many other of the graces and sciences."



VI

THE PHONOGRAPH AND THE GRAFT


"What was this graft?" asked Johnny, with the impatience of the great
public to whom tales are told.

"'Tis contrary to art and philosophy to give you the information,"
said Keogh, calmly. "The art of narrative consists in concealing from
your audience everything it wants to know until after you expose your
favourite opinions on topics foreign to the subject. A good story is
like a bitter pill with the sugar coating inside of it. I will begin,
if you please, with a horoscope located in the Cherokee Nation; and
end with a moral tune on the phonograph.

"Me and Henry Horsecollar brought the first phonograph to this
country. Henry was a quarter-breed, quarter-back Cherokee, educated
East in the idioms of football, and West in contraband whisky, and
a gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in his
ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement. Yes,
he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven. He was
what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness. Henry had
quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times--the last-named
institution on account of introducing and selling whisky in the
territories. Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores come up and
stand behind him. He didn't belong to that tribe of Indians.

"Henry and me met at Texarkana, and figured out this phonograph
scheme. He had $360 which came to him out of a land allotment in
the reservation. I had run down from Little Rock on account of a
distressful scene I had witnessed on the street there. A man stood on
a box and passed around some gold watches, screw case, stem-winders,
Elgin movement, very elegant. Twenty bucks they cost you over the
counter. At three dollars the crowd fought for the tickers. The man
happened to find a valise full of them handy, and he passed them out
like putting hot biscuits on a plate. The backs were hard to unscrew,
but the crowd put its ear to the case, and they ticked mollifying and
agreeable. Three of these watches were genuine tickers; the rest were
only kickers. Hey? Why, empty cases with one of them horny black bugs
that fly around electric lights in 'em. Them bugs kick off minutes
and seconds industrious and beautiful. So, this man I was speaking
of cleaned up $288; and then he went away, because he knew that when
it came time to wind watches in Little Rock an entomologist would be
needed, and he wasn't one.

"So, as I say, Henry had $360, and I had $288. The idea of
introducing the phonograph to South America was Henry's; but I took
to it freely, being fond of machinery of all kinds.

"'The Latin races,' says Henry, explaining easy in the idioms he
learned at college, 'are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the
phonograph. They have the artistic temperament. They yearn for music
and color and gaiety. They give wampum to the hand-organ man and the
four-legged chicken in the tent when they're months behind with the
grocery and the bread-fruit tree.'

"'Then,' says I, 'we'll export canned music to the Latins; but I'm
mindful of Mr. Julius Cæsar's account of 'em where he says: "_Omnia
Gallia in tres partes divisa est_;" which is the same as to say, "We
will need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties."'

"I hated to make a show of education; but I was disinclined to be
overdone in syntax by a mere Indian, a member of a race to which we
owe nothing except the land on which the United States is situated.

"We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana--one of the best make--and
half a trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the T. and
P. for New Orleans. From that celebrated centre of molasses and
disfranchised coon songs we took a steamer for South America.

"We landed at Solitas, forty miles up the coast from here. 'Twas a
palatable enough place to look at. The houses were clean and white;
and to look at 'em stuck around among the scenery they reminded
you of hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of
skyscraper mountains in the suburbs; and they kept pretty quiet, like
they had crept up there and were watching the town. And the sea was
remarking 'Sh-sh-sh' on the beach; and now and then a ripe cocoanut
would drop kerblip in the sand; and that was all there was doing.
Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I judge that
after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, with
Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gully, Arkansas,
hanging onto the rear step, this town of Solitas will wake up and ask
if anybody spoke.

"The captain went ashore with us, and offered to conduct what he
seemed to like to call the obsequies. He introduced Henry and me to
the United States Consul, and a roan man, the head of the Department
of Mercenary and Licentious Dispositions, the way it read upon his
sign.

"'I touch here again a week from to-day,' says the captain.

"'By that time,' we told him, 'we'll be amassing wealth in the
interior towns with our galvanized prima donna and correct imitations
of Sousa's band excavating a march from a tin mine.'

"'Ye'll not,' says the captain. 'Ye'll be hypnotized. Any gentleman
in the audience who kindly steps upon the stage and looks this
country in the eye will be converted to the hypothesis that he's but
a fly in the Elgin creamery. Ye'll be standing knee deep in the surf
waiting for me, and your machine for making Hamburger steak out of
the hitherto respected art of music will be playing "There's no place
like home."'

"Henry skinned a twenty off his roll, and received from the Bureau
of Mercenary Dispositions a paper bearing a red seal and a dialect
story, and no change.

"Then we got the consul full of red wine, and struck him for a
horoscope. He was a thin, youngish kind of man, I should say past
fifty, sort of French-Irish in his affections, and puffed up with
disconsolation. Yes, he was a flattened kind of a man, in whom drink
lay stagnant, inclined to corpulence and misery. Yes, I think he was
a kind of Dutchman, being very sad and genial in his ways.

"'The marvelous invention,' he says, 'entitled the phonograph, has
never invaded these shores. The people have never heard it. They
would not believe it if they should. Simple-hearted children of
nature, progress has never condemned them to accept the work of a
can-opener as an overture, and rag-time might incite them to a bloody
revolution. But you can try the experiment. The best chance you have
is that the populace may not wake up when you play. There's two
ways,' says the consul, 'they may take it. They may become inebriated
with attention, like an Atlanta colonel listening to "Marching
Through Georgia," or they will get excited and transpose the key of
the music with an axe and yourselves into a dungeon. In the latter
case,' says the consul, 'I'll do my duty by cabling to the State
Department, and I'll wrap the Stars and Stripes around you when you
come to be shot, and threaten them with the vengeance of the greatest
gold export and financial reserve nation on earth. The flag is
full of bullet holes now,' says the consul, 'made in that way.
Twice before,' says the consul, 'I have cabled our government for a
couple of gunboats to protect American citizens. The first time the
Department sent me a pair of gum boots. The other time was when a man
named Pease was going to be executed here. They referred that appeal
to the Secretary of Agriculture. Let us now disturb the señor behind
the bar for a subsequence of the red wine.'

"Thus soliloquized the consul of Solitas to me and Henry Horsecollar.

"But, notwithstanding, we hired a room that afternoon in the Calle de
los Angeles, the main street that runs along the shore, and put our
trunks there. 'Twas a good-sized room, dark and cheerful, but small.
'Twas on a various street, diversified by houses and conservatory
plants. The peasantry of the city passed to and fro on the fine
pasturage between the sidewalks. 'Twas, for the world, like an opera
chorus when the Royal Kafoozlum is about to enter.

"We were rubbing the dust off the machine and getting fixed to
start business the next day, when a big, fine-looking white man in
white clothes stopped at the door and looked in. We extended the
invitations, and he walked inside and sized us up. He was chewing a
long cigar, and wrinkling his eyes, meditative, like a girl trying to
decide which dress to wear to the party.

"'New York?' he says to me finally.

"'Originally, and from time to time,' I says. 'Hasn't it rubbed off
yet?'

"'It's simple,' says he, 'when you know how. It's the fit of the
vest. They don't cut vests right anywhere else. Coats, maybe, but not
vests.'

"The white man looks at Henry Horsecollar and hesitates.

"'Injun,' says Henry; 'tame Injun.'

"'Mellinger,' says the man--'Homer P. Mellinger. Boys, you're
confiscated. You're babes in the wood without a chaperon or referee,
and it's my duty to start you going. I'll knock out the props and
launch you proper in the pellucid waters of this tropical mud puddle.
You'll have to be christened, and if you'll come with me I'll break a
bottle of wine across your bows, according to Hoyle.'

"Well, for two days Homer P. Mellinger did the honors. That man cut
ice in Anchuria. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and
Henry was babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the
topmost bough. Him and me and Henry Horsecollar locked arms, and
toted that phonograph around, and had wassail and diversions.
Everywhere we found doors open we went inside and set the machine
going, and Mellinger called upon the people to observe the artful
music and his two lifelong friends, the Señors Americanos. The opera
chorus was agitated with esteem, and followed us from house to house.
There was a different kind of drink to be had with every tune. The
natives had acquirements of a pleasant thing in the way of a drink
that gums itself to the recollection. They chop off the end of a
green cocoanut, and pour in on the juice of it French brandy and
other adjuvants. We had them and other things.

"Mine and Henry's money was counterfeit. Everything was on Homer P.
Mellinger. That man could find rolls of bills concealed in places
on his person where Hermann the Wizard couldn't have conjured out a
rabbit or an omelette. He could have founded universities, and made
orchid collections, and then had enough left to purchase the colored
vote of his country. Henry and me wondered what his graft was. One
evening he told us.

"'Boys,' said he, 'I've deceived you. You think I'm a painted
butterfly; but in fact I'm the hardest worked man in this country.
Ten years ago I landed on its shores; and two years ago on the point
of its jaw. Yes, I guess I can get the decision over this ginger cake
commonwealth at the end of any round I choose. I'll confide in you
because you are my countrymen and guests, even if you have assaulted
my adopted shores with the worst system of noises ever set to music.

"'My job is private secretary to the president of this republic; and
my duties are running it. I'm not headlined in the bills, but I'm the
mustard in the salad dressing just the same. There isn't a law goes
before Congress, there isn't a concession granted, there isn't an
import duty levied but what H. P. Mellinger he cooks and seasons
it. In the front office I fill the president's inkstand and search
visiting statesmen for dirks and dynamite; but in the back room I
dictate the policy of the government. You'd never guess in the world
how I got my pull. It's the only graft of its kind on earth. I'll put
you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book--"Honesty
is the Best Policy"? That's it. I'm working honesty for a graft. I'm
the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the
people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it.
I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he
gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I
run a monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If
Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have
my address inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but
it's a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.'

"Thus Homer P. Mellinger made oration to me and Henry Horsecollar.
And, later, he divested himself of this remark:

"'Boys, I'm to hold a _soirée_ this evening with a gang of leading
citizens, and I want your assistance. You bring the musical corn
sheller and give the affair the outside appearance of a function.
There's important business on hand, but it mustn't show. I can talk
to you people. I've been pained for years on account of not having
anybody to blow off and brag to. I get homesick sometimes, and I'd
swap the entire perquisites of office for just one hour to have a
stein and a caviare sandwich somewhere on Thirty-fourth Street, and
stand and watch the street cars go by, and smell the peanut roaster
at old Giuseppe's fruit stand.'

"'Yes,' said I, 'there's fine caviare at Billy Renfrew's café, corner
of Thirty-fourth and--'

"'God knows it,' interrupts Mellinger, 'and if you'd told me you knew
Billy Renfrew I'd have invented tons of ways of making you happy.
Billy was my side-kicker in New York. There is a man who never knew
what crooked was. Here I am working Honesty for a graft, but that man
loses money on it. Carrambos! I get sick at times of this country.
Everything's rotten. From the executive down to the coffee pickers,
they're plotting to down each other and skin their friends. If a mule
driver takes off his hat to an official, that man figures it out that
he's a popular idol, and sets his pegs to stir up a revolution and
upset the administration. It's one of my little chores as private
secretary to smell out these revolutions and affix the kibosh before
they break out and scratch the paint off the government property.
That's why I'm down here now in this mildewed coast town. The
governor of the district and his crew are plotting to uprise. I've
got every one of their names, and they're invited to listen to the
phonograph to-night, compliments of H. P. M. That's the way I'll get
them in a bunch, and things are on the programme to happen to them.'

"We three were sitting at table in the cantina of the Purified
Saints. Mellinger poured out wine, and was looking some worried; I
was thinking.

"'They're a sharp crowd,' he says, kind of fretful. 'They're
capitalized by a foreign syndicate after rubber, and they're loaded
to the muzzle for bribing. I'm sick,' goes on Mellinger, 'of comic
opera. I want to smell East River and wear suspenders again. At times
I feel like throwing up my job, but I'm d----n fool enough to be sort
of proud of it. "There's Mellinger," they say here. "_Por Dios!_ you
can't touch him with a million." I'd like to take that record back
and show it to Billy Renfrow some day; and that tightens my grip
whenever I see a fat thing that I could corral just by winking one
eye--and losing my graft. By ----, they can't monkey with me. They
know it. What money I get I make honest and spend it. Some day I'll
make a pile and go back and eat caviare with Billy. To-night I'll
show you how to handle a bunch of corruptionists. I'll show them what
Mellinger, private secretary, means when you spell it with the cotton
and tissue paper off.'

"Mellinger appears shaky, and breaks his glass against the neck of
the bottle.

"I says to myself, 'White man, if I'm not mistaken there's been a
bait laid out where the tail of your eye could see it.'

"That night, according to arrangements, me and Henry took the
phonograph to a room in a 'dobe house in a dirty side street, where
the grass was knee high. 'Twas a long room, lit with smoky oil lamps.
There was plenty of chairs, and a table at the back end. We set the
phonograph on the table. Mellinger was there, walking up and down,
disturbed in his predicaments. He chewed cigars and spat 'em out, and
he bit the thumb nail of his left hand.

"By and by the invitations to the musicale came sliding in by pairs
and threes and spade flushes. Their colour was of a diversity,
running from a three-days' smoked meerschaum to a patent-leather
polish. They were as polite as wax, being devastated with enjoyments
to give Señor Mellinger the good evenings. I understood their Spanish
talk--I ran a pumping engine two years in a Mexican silver mine, and
had it pat--but I never let on.

"Maybe fifty of 'em had come, and was seated, when in slid the king
bee, the governor of the district. Mellinger met him at the door, and
escorted him to the grand stand. When I saw that Latin man I knew
that Mellinger, private secretary, had all the dances on his card
taken. That was a big, squashy man, the colour of a rubber overshoe,
and he had an eye like a head waiter's.

"Mellinger explained, fluent, in the Castilian idioms, that his soul
was disconcerted with joy at introducing to his respected friends
America's greatest invention, the wonder of the age. Henry got the
cue and run on an elegant brass-band record and the festivities
became initiated. The governor man had a bit of English under his
hat, and when the music was choked off he says:

"'Ver-r-ree fine. _Gr-r-r-r-racias_, the American gentleemen, the so
esplendeed moosic as to playee.'

"The table was a long one, and Henry and me sat at the end of it next
the wall. The governor sat at the other end. Homer P. Mellinger stood
at the side of it. I was just wondering how Mellinger was going to
handle his crowd, when the home talent suddenly opened the services.

"That governor man was suitable for uprisings and policies. I judge
he was a ready kind of man, who took his own time. Yes, he was full
of attention and immediateness. He leaned his hands on the table and
imposed his face toward the secretary man.

"'Do the American señors understand Spanish?' he asks in his native
accents.

"'They do not,' says Mellinger.

"'Then listen,' goes on the Latin man, prompt. 'The musics are
of sufficient prettiness, but not of necessity. Let us speak
of business. I well know why we are here, since I observe my
compatriots. You had a whisper yesterday, Señor Mellinger, of our
proposals. To-night we will speak out. We know that you stand in
the president's favour, and we know your influence. The government
will be changed. We know the worth of your services. We esteem your
friendship and aid so much that'--Mellinger raises his hand, but the
governor man bottles him up. 'Do not speak until I have done.'

"The governor man then draws a package wrapped in paper from his
pocket, and lays it on the table by Mellinger's hand.

"'In that you will find fifty thousand dollars in money of your
country. You can do nothing against us, but you can be worth that for
us. Go back to the capital and obey our instructions. Take that money
now. We trust you. You will find with it a paper giving in detail the
work you will be expected to do for us. Do not have the unwiseness to
refuse.'

"The governor man paused, with his eyes fixed on Mellinger, full of
expressions and observances. I looked at Mellinger, and was glad
Billy Renfrew couldn't see him then. The sweat was popping out on his
forehead, and he stood dumb, tapping the little package with the ends
of his fingers. The colorado-maduro gang was after his graft. He had
only to change his politics, and stuff five fingers in his inside
pocket.

"Henry whispers to me and wants the pause in the programme
interpreted. I whisper back: 'H. P. is up against a bribe, senator's
size, and the coons have got him going.' I saw Mellinger's hand
moving closer to the package. 'He's weakening,' I whispered to
Henry. 'We'll remind him,' says Henry, 'of the peanut-roaster on
Thirty-fourth Street, New York.'

"Henry stooped down and got a record from the basketful we'd brought,
slid it in the phonograph, and started her off. It was a cornet solo,
very neat and beautiful, and the name of it was 'Home, Sweet Home.'
Not one of them fifty odd men in the room moved while it was playing,
and the governor man kept his eyes steady on Mellinger. I saw
Mellinger's head go up little by little, and his hand came creeping
away from the package. Not until the last note sounded did anybody
stir. And then Homer P. Mellinger takes up the bundle of boodle and
slams it in the governor man's face.

"'That's my answer,' says Mellinger, private secretary, 'and there'll
be another in the morning. I have proofs of conspiracy against every
man of you. The show is over, gentlemen.'

"'There's one more act,' puts in the governor man. 'You are a
servant, I believe, employed by the president to copy letters and
answer raps at the door. I am governor here. _Señores_, I call upon
you in the name of the cause to seize this man.'

"That brindled gang of conspirators shoved back their chairs and
advanced in force. I could see where Mellinger had made a mistake in
massing his enemy so as to make a grand-stand play. I think he made
another one, too; but we can pass that, Mellinger's idea of a graft
and mine being different, according to estimations and points of
view.

"There was only one window and door in that room, and they were in
the front end. Here was fifty odd Latin men coming in a bunch to
obstruct the legislation of Mellinger. You may say there were three
of us, for me and Henry, simultaneous, declared New York City and the
Cherokee Nation in sympathy with the weaker party.

"Then it was that Henry Horsecollar rose to a point of disorder
and intervened, showing, admirable, the advantages of education
as applied to the American Indian's natural intellect and native
refinement. He stood up and smoothed back his hair on each side with
his hands as you have seen little girls do when they play.

"'Get behind me, both of you,' says Henry.

"'What's it to be, chief?' I asked.

"'I'm going to buck centre,' says Henry, in his football idioms.
'There isn't a tackle in the lot of them. Follow me close, and rush
the game.'

"Then that cultured Red Man exhaled an arrangement of sounds with
his mouth that made the Latin aggregation pause, with thoughtfulness
and hesitations. The matter of his proclamation seemed to be a
co-operation of the Carlisle war-whoop with the Cherokee college
yell. He went at the chocolate team like a bean out of a little boy's
nigger shooter. His right elbow laid out the governor man on the
gridiron, and he made a lane the length of the crowd so wide that a
woman could have carried a step-ladder through it without striking
against anything. All Mellinger and me had to do was to follow.

"It took us just three minutes to get out of that street around to
military headquarters, where Mellinger had things his own way. A
colonel and a battalion of bare-toed infantry turned out and went
back to the scene of the musicale with us, but the conspirator gang
was gone. But we recaptured the phonograph with honours of war, and
marched back to the _cuartel_ with it playing 'All Coons Look Alike
to Me.'

"The next day Mellinger takes me and Henry to one side, and begins to
shed tens and twenties.

"'I want to buy that phonograph,' says he. 'I liked that last tune it
played at the _soirée_.'

"'This is more money than the machine is worth,' says I.

"''Tis government expense money,' says Mellinger. 'The government
pays for it, and it's getting the tune-grinder cheap.'

"Me and Henry knew that pretty well. We knew that it had saved Homer
P. Mellinger's graft when he was on the point of losing it; but we
never let him know we knew it.

"'Now you boys better slide off further down the coast for a while,'
says Mellinger, 'till I get the screws put on these fellows here. If
you don't they'll give you trouble. And if you ever happen to see
Billy Renfrew again before I do, tell him I'm coming back to New York
as soon as I can make a stake--honest.'

"Me and Henry laid low until the day the steamer came back. When we
saw the captain's boat on the beach we went down and stood in the
edge of the water. The captain grinned when he saw us.

"'I told you you'd be waiting,' he says. 'Where's the Hamburger
machine?'

"'It stays behind,' I says, 'to play "Home, Sweet Home."'

"'I told you so,' says the captain again. 'Climb in the boat.'

"And that," said Keogh, "is the way me and Henry Horsecollar
introduced the phonograph into this country. Henry went back to the
States, but I've been rummaging around in the tropics ever since.
They say Mellinger never travelled a mile after that without his
phonograph. I guess it kept him reminded about his graft whenever he
saw the siren voice of the boodler tip him the wink with a bribe in
its hand."

"I suppose he's taking it home with him as a souvenir," remarked the
consul.

"Not as a souvenir," said Keogh. "He'll need two of 'em in New York,
running day and night."



VII

MONEY MAZE


The new administration of Anchuria entered upon its duties and
privileges with enthusiasm. Its first act was to send an agent to
Coralio with imperative orders to recover, if possible, the sum of
money ravished from the treasury by the ill-fated Miraflores.

Colonel Emilio Falcon, the private secretary of Losada, the new
president, was despatched from the capital upon this important
mission.

The position of private secretary to a tropical president is a
responsible one. He must be a diplomat, a spy, a ruler of men, a
body-guard to his chief, and a smeller-out of plots and nascent
revolutions. Often he is the power behind the throne, the dictator of
policy; and a president chooses him with a dozen times the care with
which he selects a matrimonial mate.

Colonel Falcon, a handsome and urbane gentleman of Castilian courtesy
and débonnaire manners, came to Coralio with the task before him of
striking upon the cold trail of the lost money. There he conferred
with the military authorities, who had received instructions to
co-operate with him in the search.

Colonel Falcon established his headquarters in one of the rooms of
the Casa Morena. Here for a week he held informal sittings--much as
if he were a kind of unified grand jury--and summoned before him all
those whose testimony might illumine the financial tragedy that had
accompanied the less momentous one of the late president's death.

Two or three who were thus examined, among whom was the barber
Estebán, declared that they had identified the body of the president
before its burial.

"Of a truth," testified Estebán before the mighty secretary, "it was
he, the president. Consider!--how could I shave a man and not see his
face? He sent for me to shave him in a small house. He had a beard
very black and thick. Had I ever seen the president before? Why not?
I saw him once ride forth in a carriage from the _vapor_ in Solitas.
When I shaved him he gave me a gold piece, and said there was to be
no talk. But I am a Liberal--I am devoted to my country--and I spake
of these things to Señor Goodwin."

"It is known," said Colonel Falcon, smoothly, "that the late
President took with him an American leather valise, containing a
large amount of money. Did you see that?"

"_De veras_--no," Estebán answered. "The light in the little house
was but a small lamp by which I could scarcely see to shave the
President. Such a thing there may have been, but I did not see
it. No. Also in the room was a young lady--a señorita of much
beauty--that I could see even in so small a light. But the money,
señor, or the thing in which it was carried--that I did not see."

The _comandante_ and other officers gave testimony that they had been
awakened and alarmed by the noise of a pistol-shot in the Hotel de
los Estranjeros. Hurrying thither to protect the peace and dignity of
the republic, they found a man lying dead, with a pistol clutched in
his hand. Beside him was a young woman, weeping sorely. Señor Goodwin
was also in the room when they entered it. But of the valise of money
they saw nothing.

Madame Timotea Ortiz, the proprietress of the hotel in which the game
of Fox-in-the-Morning had been played out, told of the coming of the
two guests to her house.

"To my house they came," said she--"one _señor_, not quite old, and
one _señorita_ of sufficient handsomeness. They desired not to eat or
to drink--not even of my _aguardiente_, which is the best. To their
rooms they ascended--_Numero Nueve_ and _Numero Diez_. Later came
Señor Goodwin, who ascended to speak with them. Then I heard a
great noise like that of a _canon_, and they said that the _pobre
Presidente_ had shot himself. _Está bueno._ I saw nothing of money or
of the thing you call _veliz_ that you say he carried it in."

Colonel Falcon soon came to the reasonable conclusion that if anyone
in Coralio could furnish a clue to the vanished money, Frank Goodwin
must be the man. But the wise secretary pursued a different course in
seeking information from the American. Goodwin was a powerful friend
to the new administration, and one who was not to be carelessly
dealt with in respect to either his honesty or his courage. Even the
private secretary of His Excellency hesitated to have this rubber
prince and mahogany baron haled before him as a common citizen of
Anchuria. So he sent Goodwin a flowery epistle, each word-petal
dripping with honey, requesting the favour of an interview. Goodwin
replied with an invitation to dinner at his own house.

Before the hour named the American walked over to the Casa Morena,
and greeted his guest frankly and friendly. Then the two strolled, in
the cool of the afternoon, to Goodwin's home in the environs.

The American left Colonel Falcon in a big, cool, shadowed room with a
floor of inlaid and polished woods that any millionaire in the States
would have envied, excusing himself for a few minutes. He crossed a
_patio_, shaded with deftly arranged awnings and plants, and entered
a long room looking upon the sea in the opposite wing of the house.
The broad jalousies were opened wide, and the ocean breeze flowed
in through the room, an invisible current of coolness and health.
Goodwin's wife sat near one of the windows, making a water-color
sketch of the afternoon seascape.

Here was a woman who looked to be happy. And more--she looked to be
content. Had a poet been inspired to pen just similes concerning
her favour, he would have likened her full, clear eyes, with their
white-encircled, gray irises, to moonflowers. With none of the
goddesses whose traditional charms have become coldly classic
would the discerning rhymester have compared her. She was purely
Paradisaic, not Olympian. If you can imagine Eve, after the eviction,
beguiling the flaming warriors and serenely re-entering the Garden,
you will have her. Just so human, and still so harmonious with Eden
seemed Mrs. Goodwin.

When her husband entered she looked up, and her lips curved and
parted; her eyelids fluttered twice or thrice--a movement remindful
(Poesy forgive us!) of the tail-wagging of a faithful dog--and a
little ripple went through her like the commotion set up in a weeping
willow by a puff of wind. Thus she ever acknowledged his coming, were
it twenty times a day. If they who sometimes sat over their wine
in Coralio, reshaping old, diverting stories of the madcap career
of Isabel Guilbert, could have seen the wife of Frank Goodwin that
afternoon in the estimable aura of her happy wifehood, they might
have disbelieved, or have agreed to forget, those graphic annals of
the life of the one for whom their president gave up his country and
his honour.

"I have brought a guest to dinner," said Goodwin. "One Colonel
Falcon, from San Mateo. He is come on government business. I do not
think you will care to see him, so I prescribe for you one of those
convenient and indisputable feminine headaches."

"He has come to inquire about the lost money, has he not?" asked Mrs.
Goodwin, going on with her sketch.

"A good guess!" acknowledged Goodwin. "He has been holding an
inquisition among the natives for three days. I am next on his list
of witnesses, but as he feels shy about dragging one of Uncle Sam's
subjects before him, he consents to give it the outward appearance
of a social function. He will apply the torture over my own wine and
provender."

"Has he found anyone who saw the valise of money?"

"Not a soul. Even Madama Ortiz, whose eyes are so sharp for the sight
of a revenue official, does not remember that there was any baggage."

Mrs. Goodwin laid down her brush and sighed.

"I am so sorry, Frank," she said, "that they are giving you so much
trouble about the money. But we can't let them know about it, can
we?"

"Not without doing our intelligence a great injustice," said Goodwin,
with a smile and a shrug that he had picked up from the natives.
"_Americano_, though I am, they would have me in the _calaboza_ in
half an hour if they knew we had appropriated that valise. No; we
must appear as ignorant about the money as the other ignoramuses in
Coralio."

"Do you think that this man they have sent suspects you?" she asked,
with a little pucker of her brows.

"He'd better not," said the American, carelessly. "It's lucky that no
one caught a sight of the valise except myself. As I was in the rooms
when the shot was fired, it is not surprising that they should want
to investigate my part in the affair rather closely. But there's no
cause for alarm. This colonel is down on the list of events for a
good dinner, with a dessert of American 'bluff' that will end the
matter, I think."

Mrs. Goodwin rose and walked to the window. Goodwin followed and
stood by her side. She leaned to him, and rested in the protection of
his strength, as she had always rested since that dark night on which
he had first made himself her tower of refuge. Thus they stood for a
little while.

Straight through the lavish growth of tropical branch and leaf
and vine that confronted them had been cunningly trimmed a vista,
that ended at the cleared environs of Coralio, on the banks of the
mangrove swamp. At the other end of the aerial tunnel they could see
the grave and wooden headpiece that bore the name of the unhappy
President Miraflores. From this window when the rains forbade the
open, and from the green and shady slopes of Goodwin's fruitful
lands when the skies were smiling, his wife was wont to look upon
that grave with a gentle sadness that was now scarcely a mar to her
happiness.

"I loved him so, Frank!" she said, "even after that terrible flight
and its awful ending. And you have been so good to me, and have made
me so happy. It has all grown into such a strange puzzle. If they
were to find out that we got the money do you think they would force
you to make the amount good to the government?"

"They would undoubtedly try," answered Goodwin. "You are right about
its being a puzzle. And it must remain a puzzle to Falcon and all
his countrymen until it solves itself. You and I, who know more than
anyone else, only know half of the solution. We must not let even a
hint about this money get abroad. Let them come to the theory that
the president concealed it in the mountains during his journey, or
that he found means to ship it out of the country before he reached
Coralio. I don't think that Falcon suspects me. He is making a close
investigation, according to his orders, but he will find out
nothing."

Thus they spake together. Had anyone overheard or overseen them as
they discussed the lost funds of Anchuria there would have been a
second puzzle presented. For upon the faces and in the bearing of
each of them was visible (if countenances are to be believed) Saxon
honesty and pride and honourable thoughts. In Goodwin's steady eye
and firm lineaments, moulded into material shape by the inward
spirit of kindness and generosity and courage, there was nothing
reconcilable with his words.

As for his wife, physiognomy championed her even in the face of their
accusive talk. Nobility was in her guise; purity was in her glance.
The devotion that she manifested had not even the appearance of that
feeling that now and then inspires a woman to share the guilt of her
partner out of the pathetic greatness of her love. No, there was a
discrepancy here between what the eye would have seen and the ear
have heard.

Dinner was served to Goodwin and his guest in the _patio_, under cool
foliage and flowers. The American begged the illustrious secretary to
excuse the absence of Mrs. Goodwin, who was suffering, he said, from
a headache brought on by a slight _calentura_.

After the meal they lingered, according to the custom, over their
coffee and cigars. Colonel Falcon, with true Castilian delicacy,
waited for his host to open the question that they had met to
discuss. He had not long to wait. As soon as the cigars were lighted,
the American cleared the way by inquiring whether the secretary's
investigations in the town had furnished him with any clue to the
lost funds.

"I have found no one yet," admitted Colonel Falcon, "who even had
sight of the valise or the money. Yet I have persisted. It has been
proven in the capital that President Miraflores set out from San
Mateo with one hundred thousand dollars belonging to the government,
accompanied by _Señorita_ Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer. The
Government, officially and personally, is loathe to believe,"
concluded Colonel Falcon, with a smile, "that our late President's
tastes would have permitted him to abandon on the route, as excess
baggage, either of the desirable articles with which his flight was
burdened."

"I suppose you would like to hear what I have to say about the
affair," said Goodwin, coming directly to the point. "It will not
require many words.

"On that night, with others of our friends here, I was keeping a
lookout for the president, having been notified of his flight by a
telegram in our national cipher from Englehart, one of our leaders
in the capital. About ten o'clock that night I saw a man and a
woman hurrying along the streets. They went to the Hotel de los
Estranjeros, and engaged rooms. I followed them upstairs, leaving
Estebán, who had come up, to watch outside. The barber had told me
that he had shaved the beard from the president's face that night;
therefore I was prepared, when I entered the rooms, to find him with
a smooth face. When I apprehended him in the name of the people he
drew a pistol and shot himself instantly. In a few minutes many
officers and citizens were on the spot. I suppose you have been
informed of the subsequent facts."

Goodwin paused. Losada's agent maintained an attitude of waiting, as
if he expected a continuance.

"And now," went on the American, looking steadily into the eyes of
the other man, and giving each word a deliberate emphasis, "you will
oblige me by attending carefully to what I have to add. I saw no
valise or receptacle of any kind, or any money belonging to the
Republic of Anchuria. If President Miraflores decamped with any funds
belonging to the treasury of this country, or to himself, or to
anyone else, I saw no trace of it in the house or elsewhere, at that
time or at any other. Does that statement cover the ground of the
inquiry you wished to make of me?"

Colonel Falcon bowed, and described a fluent curve with his cigar.
His duty was performed. Goodwin was not to be disputed. He was a
loyal supporter of the government, and enjoyed the full confidence
of the new president. His rectitude had been the capital that had
brought him fortune in Anchuria, just as it had formed the lucrative
"graft" of Mellinger, the secretary of Miraflores.

"I thank you, _Señor_ Goodwin," said Falcon, "for speaking plainly.
Your word will be sufficient for the president. But, _Señor_ Goodwin,
I am instructed to pursue every clue that presents itself in this
matter. There is one that I have not yet touched upon. Our friends
in France, _señor_, have a saying, '_Cherchez la femme_,' when there
is a mystery without a clue. But here we do not have to search. The
woman who accompanied the late President in his flight must surely--"

"I must interrupt you there," interposed Goodwin. "It is true that
when I entered the hotel for the purpose of intercepting President
Miraflores I found a lady there. I must beg of you to remember that
that lady is now my wife. I speak for her as I do for myself. She
knows nothing of the fate of the valise or of the money that you
are seeking. You will say to his excellency that I guarantee her
innocence. I do not need to add to you, Colonel Falcon, that I do not
care to have her questioned or disturbed."

Colonel Falcon bowed again.

"_Por supuesto_, no!" he cried. And to indicate that the inquiry was
ended he added: "And now, _señor_, let me beg of you to show me that
sea view from your _galeria_ of which you spoke. I am a lover of the
sea."

In the early evening Goodwin walked back to the town with his guest,
leaving him at the corner of the Calle Grande. As he was returning
homeward one "Beelzebub" Blythe, with the air of a courtier and the
outward aspect of a scarecrow, pounced upon him hopefully from the
door of a _pulperia_.

Blythe had been re-christened "Beelzebub" as an acknowledgment of the
greatness of his fall. Once in some distant Paradise Lost, he had
foregathered with the angels of the earth. But Fate had hurled him
headlong down to the tropics, where flamed in his bosom a fire that
was seldom quenched. In Coralio they called him a beachcomber; but he
was, in reality, a categorical idealist who strove to anamorphosize
the dull verities of life by the means of brandy and rum. As
Beelzebub, himself, might have held in his clutch with unwitting
tenacity his harp or crown during his tremendous fall, so his
namesake had clung to his gold-rimmed eyeglasses as the only souvenir
of his lost estate. These he wore with impressiveness and distinction
while he combed beaches and extracted toll from his friends. By some
mysterious means he kept his drink-reddened face always smoothly
shaven. For the rest he sponged gracefully upon whomsoever he could
for enough to keep him pretty drunk, and sheltered from the rains and
night dews.

"Hallo, Goodwin!" called the derelict, airily. "I was hoping I'd
strike you. I wanted to see you particularly. Suppose we go where we
can talk. Of course you know there's a chap down here looking up the
money old Miraflores lost."

"Yes," said Goodwin, "I've been talking with him. Let's go into
Espada's place. I can spare you ten minutes."

They went into the _pulperia_ and sat at a little table upon stools
with rawhide tops.

"Have a drink?" said Goodwin.

"They can't bring it too quickly," said Blythe. "I've been in a
drought ever since morning. Hi--_muchacho!--el aguardiente por acá_."

"Now, what do you want to see me about?" asked Goodwin, when the
drinks were before them.

"Confound it, old man," drawled Blythe, "why do you spoil a golden
moment like this with business? I wanted to see you--well, this has
the preference." He gulped down his brandy, and gazed longingly into
the empty glass.

"Have another?" suggested Goodwin.

"Between gentlemen," said the fallen angel, "I don't quite like your
use of that word 'another.' It isn't quite delicate. But the concrete
idea that the word represents is not displeasing."

The glasses were refilled. Blythe sipped blissfully from his, as he
began to enter the state of a true idealist.

"I must trot along in a minute or two," hinted Goodwin. "Was there
anything in particular?"

Blythe did not reply at once.

"Old Losada would make it a hot country," he remarked at length,
"for the man who swiped that gripsack of treasury boodle, don't you
think?"

"Undoubtedly, he would," agreed Goodwin calmly, as he rose leisurely
to his feet. "I'll be running over to the house now, old man. Mrs.
Goodwin is alone. There was nothing important you had to say, was
there?"

"That's all," said Blythe. "Unless you wouldn't mind sending in
another drink from the bar as you go out. Old Espada has closed my
account to profit and loss. And pay for the lot, will you, like a
good fellow?"

"All right," said Goodwin. "_Buenas noches._"

"Beelzebub" Blythe lingered over his cups, polishing his eyeglasses
with a disreputable handkerchief.

"I thought I could do it, but I couldn't," he muttered to himself
after a time. "A gentleman can't blackmail the man that he drinks
with."



VIII

THE ADMIRAL


Spilled milk draws few tears from an Anchurian administration. Many
are its lacteal sources; and the clocks' hands point forever to
milking time. Even the rich cream skimmed from the treasury by the
bewitched Miraflores did not cause the newly-installed patriots to
waste time in unprofitable regrets. The government philosophically
set about supplying the deficiency by increasing the import duties
and by "suggesting" to wealthy private citizens that contributions
according to their means would be considered patriotic and in
order. Prosperity was expected to attend the reign of Losada, the
new president. The ousted office-holders and military favourites
organized a new "Liberal" party, and began to lay their plans for
a re-succession. Thus the game of Anchurian politics began, like a
Chinese comedy, to unwind slowly its serial length. Here and there
Mirth peeps for an instant from the wings and illumines the florid
lines.

A dozen quarts of champagne in conjunction with an informal sitting
of the president and his cabinet led to the establishment of the navy
and the appointment of Felipe Carrera as its admiral.

Next to the champagne the credit of the appointment belongs to Don
Sabas Placido, the newly confirmed Minister of War.

The president had requested a convention of his cabinet for the
discussion of questions politic and for the transaction of certain
routine matters of state. The session had been signally tedious; the
business and the wine prodigiously dry. A sudden, prankish humour of
Don Sabas, impelling him to the deed, spiced the grave affairs of
state with a whiff of agreeable playfulness.

In the dilatory order of business had come a bulletin from the
coast department of Orilla del Mar reporting the seizure by the
custom-house officers at the town of Coralio of the sloop _Estrella
del Noche_ and her cargo of drygoods, patent medicines, granulated
sugar and three-star brandy. Also six Martini rifles and a barrel of
American whisky. Caught in the act of smuggling, the sloop with its
cargo was now, according to law, the property of the republic.

The Collector of Customs, in making his report, departed from the
conventional forms so far as to suggest that the confiscated vessel
be converted to the use of the government. The prize was the first
capture to the credit of the department in ten years. The collector
took opportunity to pat his department on the back.

It often happened that government officers required transportation
from point to point along the coast, and means were usually lacking.
Furthermore, the sloop could be manned by a loyal crew and employed
as a coast guard to discourage the pernicious art of smuggling. The
collector also ventured to nominate one to whom the charge of the
boat could be safely intrusted--a young man of Coralio, Felipe
Carrera--not, be it understood, one of extreme wisdom, but loyal and
the best sailor along the coast.

It was upon this hint that the Minister of War acted, executing a
rare piece of drollery that so enlivened the tedium of executive
session.

In the constitution of this small, maritime banana republic was a
forgotten section that provided for the maintenance of a navy. This
provision--with many other wiser ones--had lain inert since the
establishment of the republic. Anchuria had no navy and had no use
for one. It was characteristic of Don Sabas--a man at once merry,
learned, whimsical and audacious--that he should have disturbed the
dust of this musty and sleeping statute to increase the humour of the
world by so much as a smile from his indulgent colleagues.

With delightful mock seriousness the Minister of War proposed the
creation of a navy. He argued its need and the glories it might
achieve with such gay and witty zeal that the travesty overcame with
its humour even the swart dignity of President Losada himself.

The champagne was bubbling trickily in the veins of the mercurial
statesmen. It was not the custom of the grave governors of Anchuria
to enliven their sessions with a beverage so apt to cast a veil of
disparagement over sober affairs. The wine had been a thoughtful
compliment tendered by the agent of the Vesuvius Fruit Company as a
token of amicable relations--and certain consummated deals--between
that company and the republic of Anchuria.

The jest was carried to its end. A formidable, official document was
prepared, encrusted with chromatic seals and jaunty with fluttering
ribbons, bearing the florid signatures of state. This commission
conferred upon el Señor Don Felipe Carrera the title of Flag Admiral
of the Republic of Anchuria. Thus within the space of a few minutes
and the dominion of a dozen "extra dry," the country took its place
among the naval powers of the world, and Felipe Carrera became
entitled to a salute of nineteen guns whenever he might enter port.

The southern races are lacking in that particular kind of humour
that finds entertainment in the defects and misfortunes bestowed by
Nature. Owing to this defect in their constitution they are not moved
to laughter (as are their northern brothers) by the spectacle of the
deformed, the feeble-minded or the insane.

Felipe Carrera was sent upon earth with but half his wits. Therefore,
the people of Coralio called him "_El pobrecito loco_"--"the poor
little crazed one"--saying that God had sent but half of him to
earth, retaining the other half.

A sombre youth, glowering, and speaking only at the rarest times,
Felipe was but negatively "loco." On shore he generally refused all
conversation. He seemed to know that he was badly handicapped on
land, where so many kinds of understanding are needed; but on the
water his one talent set him equal with most men. Few sailors whom
God had carefully and completely made could handle a sailboat as
well. Five points nearer the wind than even the best of them he
could sail his sloop. When the elements raged and set other men to
cowering, the deficiencies of Felipe seemed of little importance.
He was a perfect sailor, if an imperfect man. He owned no boat, but
worked among the crews of the schooners and sloops that skimmed the
coast, trading and freighting fruit out to the steamers where there
was no harbour. It was through his famous skill and boldness on the
sea, as well as for the pity felt for his mental imperfections, that
he was recommended by the collector as a suitable custodian of the
captured sloop.

When the outcome of Don Sabas' little pleasantry arrived in the form
of the imposing and preposterous commission, the collector smiled.
He had not expected such prompt and overwhelming response to his
recommendation. He despatched a _muchacho_ at once to fetch the
future admiral.

The collector waited in his official quarters. His office was in the
Calle Grande, and the sea breezes hummed through its windows all day.
The collector, in white linen and canvas shoes, philandered with
papers on an antique desk. A parrot, perched on a pen rack, seasoned
the official tedium with a fire of choice Castilian imprecations. Two
rooms opened into the collector's. In one the clerical force of young
men of variegated complexions transacted with glitter and parade
their several duties. Through the open door of the other room could
be seen a bronze babe, guiltless of clothing, that rollicked upon the
floor. In a grass hammock a thin woman, tinted a pale lemon, played
a guitar and swung contentedly in the breeze. Thus surrounded by
the routine of his high duties and the visible tokens of agreeable
domesticity, the collector's heart was further made happy by the
power placed in his hands to brighten the fortunes of the "innocent"
Felipe.

Felipe came and stood before the collector. He was a lad of twenty,
not ill-favoured in looks, but with an expression of distant and
pondering vacuity. He wore white cotton trousers, down the seams
of which he had sewed red stripes with some vague aim at military
decoration. A flimsy blue shirt fell open at his throat; his feet
were bare; he held in his hand the cheapest of straw hats from the
States.

"Señor Carrera," said the collector, gravely, producing the showy
commission, "I have sent for you at the president's bidding. This
document that I present to you confers upon you the title of Admiral
of this great republic, and gives you absolute command of the naval
forces and fleet of our country. You may think, friend Felipe, that
we have no navy--but yes! The sloop the _Estrella del Noche_, that my
brave men captured from the coast smugglers, is to be placed under
your command. The boat is to be devoted to the services of your
country. You will be ready at all times to convey officials of the
government to points along the coast where they may be obliged to
visit. You will also act as a coast-guard to prevent, as far as you
may be able, the crime of smuggling. You will uphold the honour and
prestige of your country at sea, and endeavour to place Anchuria
among the proudest naval powers of the world. These are your
instructions as the Minister of War desires me to convey them to you.
_Por Dios!_ I do not know how all this is to be accomplished, for
not one word did his letter contain in respect to a crew or to the
expenses of this navy. Perhaps you are to provide a crew yourself,
Señor Admiral--I do not know--but it is a very high honour that has
descended upon you. I now hand you your commission. When you are
ready for the boat I will give orders that she shall be made over
into your charge. That is as far as my instructions go."

Felipe took the commission that the collector handed to him. He gazed
through the open window at the sea for a moment, with his customary
expression of deep but vain pondering. Then he turned without having
spoken a word, and walked swiftly away through the hot sand of the
street.

"_Pobrecito loco!_" sighed the collector; and the parrot on the pen
racks screeched "Loco!--loco!--loco!"

The next morning a strange procession filed through the streets to
the collector's office. At its head was the admiral of the navy.
Somewhere Felipe had raked together a pitiful semblance of a military
uniform--a pair of red trousers, a dingy blue short jacket heavily
ornamented with gold braid, and an old fatigue cap that must have
been cast away by one of the British soldiers in Belize and brought
away by Felipe on one of his coasting voyages. Buckled around his
waist was an ancient ship's cutlass contributed to his equipment by
Pedro Lafitte, the baker, who proudly asserted its inheritance from
his ancestor, the illustrious buccaneer. At the admiral's heels
tagged his newly-shipped crew--three grinning, glossy, black Caribs,
bare to the waist, the sand spurting in showers from the spring of
their naked feet.

Briefly and with dignity Felipe demanded his vessel of the collector.
And now a fresh honour awaited him. The collector's wife, who played
the guitar and read novels in the hammock all day, had more than a
little romance in her placid, yellow bosom. She had found in an old
book an engraving of a flag that purported to be the naval flag of
Anchuria. Perhaps it had so been designed by the founders of the
nation; but, as no navy had ever been established, oblivion had
claimed the flag. Laboriously with her own hands she had made a flag
after the pattern--a red cross upon a blue-and-white ground. She
presented it to Felipe with these words: "Brave sailor, this flag is
of your country. Be true, and defend it with your life. Go you with
God."

For the first time since his appointment the admiral showed a flicker
of emotion. He took the silken emblem, and passed his hand reverently
over its surface. "I am the admiral," he said to the collector's
lady. Being on land he could bring himself to no more exuberant
expression of sentiment. At sea with the flag at the masthead of his
navy, some more eloquent exposition of feelings might be forthcoming.

Abruptly the admiral departed with his crew. For the next three days
they were busy giving the _Estrella del Noche_ a new coat of white
paint trimmed with blue. And then Felipe further adorned himself by
fastening a handful of brilliant parrot's plumes in his cap. Again he
tramped with his faithful crew to the collector's office and formally
notified him that the sloop's name had been changed to _El Nacional_.

During the next few months the navy had its troubles. Even an admiral
is perplexed to know what to do without any orders. But none came.
Neither did any salaries. _El Nacional_ swung idly at anchor.

When Felipe's little store of money was exhausted he went to the
collector and raised the question of finances.

"Salaries!" exclaimed the collector, with hands raised; "_Valgame
Dios!_ not one _centavo_ of my own pay have I received for the last
seven months. The pay of an admiral, do you ask? _Quién sabe?_ Should
it be less than three thousand _pesos_? _Mira!_ you will see a
revolution in this country very soon. A good sign of it is when the
government calls all the time for _pesos_, _pesos_, _pesos_, and pays
none out."

Felipe left the collector's office with a look almost of content
on his sombre face. A revolution would mean fighting, and then the
government would need his services. It was rather humiliating to be
an admiral without anything to do, and have a hungry crew at your
heels begging for _reales_ to buy plantains and tobacco with.

When he returned to where his happy-go-lucky Caribs were waiting they
sprang up and saluted, as he had drilled them to do.

"Come, _muchachos_," said the admiral; "it seems that the government
is poor. It has no money to give us. We will earn what we need to
live upon. Thus will we serve our country. Soon"--his heavy eyes
almost lighted up--"it may gladly call upon us for help."

Thereafter _El Nacional_ turned out with the other coast craft and
became a wage-earner. She worked with the lighters freighting bananas
and oranges out to the fruit steamers that could not approach nearer
than a mile from the shore. Surely a self-supporting navy deserves
red letters in the budget of any nation.

After earning enough at freighting to keep himself and his crew in
provisions for a week Felipe would anchor the navy and hang about
the little telegraph office, looking like one of the chorus of an
insolvent comic opera troupe besieging the manager's den. A hope for
orders from the capital was always in his heart. That his services as
admiral had never been called into requirement hurt his pride and
patriotism. At every call he would inquire, gravely and expectantly,
for despatches. The operator would pretend to make a search, and then
reply:

"Not yet, it seems, _Señor el Almirante--poco tiempo!_"

Outside in the shade of the lime-trees the crew chewed sugar cane or
slumbered, well content to serve a country that was contented with so
little service.

One day in the early summer the revolution predicted by the collector
flamed out suddenly. It had long been smouldering. At the first note
of alarm the admiral of the navy force and fleet made all sail for a
larger port on the coast of a neighbouring republic, where he traded
a hastily collected cargo of fruit for its value in cartridges for
the five Martini rifles, the only guns that the navy could boast.
Then to the telegraph office sped the admiral. Sprawling in his
favourite corner, in his fast-decaying uniform, with his prodigious
sabre distributed between his red legs, he waited for the
long-delayed, but now soon expected, orders.

"Not yet, _Señor el Almirante_," the telegraph clerk would call to
him--"_poco tiempo!_"

At the answer the admiral would plump himself down with a great
rattling of scabbard to await the infrequent tick of the little
instrument on the table.

"They will come," would be his unshaken reply; "I am the admiral."



IX

THE FLAG PARAMOUNT


At the head of the insurgent party appeared that Hector and learned
Theban of the southern republics, Don Sabas Placido. A traveller,
a soldier, a poet, a scientist, a statesman and a connoisseur--the
wonder was that he could content himself with the petty, remote life
of his native country.

"It is a whim of Placido's," said a friend who knew him well, "to
take up political intrigue. It is not otherwise than as if he had
come upon a new _tempo_ in music, a new bacillus in the air, a new
scent, or rhyme, or explosive. He will squeeze this revolution dry of
sensations, and a week afterward will forget it, skimming the seas
of the world in his brigantine to add to his already world-famous
collections. Collections of what? _Por Dios!_ of everything from
postage stamps to prehistoric stone idols."

But, for a mere dilettante, the æsthetic Placido seemed to be
creating a lively row. The people admired him; they were fascinated
by his brilliancy and flattered by his taking an interest in so
small a thing as his native country. They rallied to the call of his
lieutenants in the capital, where (somewhat contrary to arrangements)
the army remained faithful to the government. There was also lively
skirmishing in the coast towns. It was rumoured that the revolution
was aided by the Vesuvius Fruit Company, the power that forever
stood with chiding smile and uplifted finger to keep Anchuria in the
class of good children. Two of its steamers, the _Traveler_ and the
_Salvador_, were known to have conveyed insurgent troops from point
to point along the coast.

As yet there had been no actual uprising in Coralio. Military law
prevailed, and the ferment was bottled for the time. And then came
the word that everywhere the revolutionists were encountering defeat.
In the capital the president's forces triumphed; and there was a
rumour that the leaders of the revolt had been forced to fly, hotly
pursued.

In the little telegraph office at Coralio there was always a
gathering of officials and loyal citizens, awaiting news from the
seat of government. One morning the telegraph key began clicking,
and presently the operator called, loudly: "One telegram for _el
Almirante_, Don Señor Felipe Carrera!"

There was a shuffling sound, a great rattling of tin scabbard, and
the admiral, prompt at his spot of waiting, leaped across the room to
receive it.

The message was handed to him. Slowly spelling it out, he found it to
be his first official order--thus running:


   Proceed immediately with your vessel to mouth of Rio Ruiz;
   transport beef and provisions to barracks at Alforan.

   Martinez, General.


Small glory, to be sure, in this, his country's first call. But it
had called, and joy surged in the admiral's breast. He drew his
cutlass belt to another buckle hole, roused his dozing crew, and in a
quarter of an hour _El Nacional_ was tacking swiftly down coast in a
stiff landward breeze.

The Rio Ruiz is a small river, emptying into the sea ten miles below
Coralio. That portion of the coast is wild and solitary. Through a
gorge in the Cordilleras rushes the Rio Ruiz, cold and bubbling, to
glide, at last, with breadth and leisure, through an alluvial morass
into the sea.

In two hours _El Nacional_ entered the river's mouth. The banks
were crowded with a disposition of formidable trees. The sumptuous
undergrowth of the tropics overflowed the land, and drowned itself in
the fallow waters. Silently the sloop entered there, and met a deeper
silence. Brilliant with greens and ochres and floral scarlets, the
umbrageous mouth of the Rio Ruiz furnished no sound or movement save
of the sea-going water as it purled against the prow of the vessel.
Small chance there seemed of wresting beef or provisions from that
empty solitude.

The admiral decided to cast anchor, and, at the chain's rattle, the
forest was stimulated to instant and resounding uproar. The mouth of
the Rio Ruiz had only been taking a morning nap. Parrots and baboons
screeched and barked in the trees; a whirring and a hissing and a
booming marked the awakening of animal life; a dark blue bulk was
visible for an instant, as a startled tapir fought his way through
the vines.

The navy, under orders, hung in the mouth of the little river for
hours. The crew served the dinner of shark's fin soup, plantains,
crab gumbo and sour wine. The admiral, with a three-foot telescope,
closely scanned the impervious foliage fifty yards away.

It was nearly sunset when a reverberating "hal-lo-o-o!" came from the
forest to their left. It was answered; and three men, mounted upon
mules, crashed through the tropic tangle to within a dozen yards of
the river's bank. There they dismounted; and one, unbuckling his
belt, struck each mule a violent blow with his sword scabbard, so
that they, with a fling of heels, dashed back again into the forest.

Those were strange-looking men to be conveying beef and provisions.
One was a large and exceedingly active man, of striking presence. He
was of the purest Spanish type, with curling, gray-besprinkled, dark
hair, blue, sparkling eyes, and the pronounced air of a _caballero
grande_. The other two were small, brown-faced men, wearing white
military uniforms, high riding boots and swords. The clothes of all
were drenched, bespattered and rent by the thicket. Some stress of
circumstance must have driven them, _diable à quatre_, through flood,
mire and jungle.

"_O-hé! Señor Almirante_," called the large man. "Send to us your
boat."

The dory was lowered, and Felipe, with one of the Caribs, rowed
toward the left bank.

The large man stood near the water's brink, waist deep in the curling
vines. As he gazed upon the scarecrow figure in the stern of the dory
a sprightly interest beamed upon his mobile face.

Months of wageless and thankless service had dimmed the admiral's
splendour. His red trousers were patched and ragged. Most of the
bright buttons and yellow braid were gone from his jacket. The visor
of his cap was torn, and depended almost to his eyes. The admiral's
feet were bare.

"Dear admiral," cried the large man, and his voice was like a blast
from a horn, "I kiss your hands. I knew we could build upon your
fidelity. You had our despatch--from General Martinez. A little
nearer with your boat, dear Admiral. Upon these devils of shifting
vines we stand with the smallest security."

Felipe regarded him with a stolid face.

"Provisions and beef for the barracks at Alforan," he quoted.

"No fault of the butchers, _Almirante mio_, that the beef awaits you
not. But you are come in time to save the cattle. Get us aboard your
vessel, señor, at once. You first, _caballeros--á priesa!_ Come back
for me. The boat is too small."

The dory conveyed the two officers to the sloop, and returned for the
large man.

"Have you so gross a thing as food, good admiral?" he cried, when
aboard. "And, perhaps, coffee? Beef and provisions! _Nombre de Dios!_
a little longer and we could have eaten one of those mules that you,
Colonel Rafael, saluted so feelingly with your sword scabbard at
parting. Let us have food; and then we will sail--for the barracks at
Alforan--no?"

The Caribs prepared a meal, to which the three passengers of _El
Nacional_ set themselves with famished delight. About sunset, as was
its custom, the breeze veered and swept back from the mountains, cool
and steady, bringing a taste of the stagnant lagoons and mangrove
swamps that guttered the lowlands. The mainsail of the sloop was
hoisted and swelled to it, and at that moment they heard shouts and a
waxing clamour from the bosky profundities of the shore.

"The butchers, my dear admiral," said the large man, smiling, "too
late for the slaughter."

Further than his orders to his crew, the admiral was saying nothing.
The topsail and jib were spread, and the sloop glided out of the
estuary. The large man and his companions had bestowed themselves
with what comfort they could about the bare deck. Belike, the thing
big in their minds had been their departure from that critical shore;
and now that the hazard was so far reduced their thoughts were loosed
to the consideration of further deliverance. But when they saw the
sloop turn and fly up coast again they relaxed, satisfied with the
course the admiral had taken.

The large man sat at ease, his spirited blue eye engaged in the
contemplation of the navy's commander. He was trying to estimate this
sombre and fantastic lad, whose impenetrable stolidity puzzled him.
Himself a fugitive, his life sought, and chafing under the smart
of defeat and failure, it was characteristic of him to transfer
instantly his interest to the study of a thing new to him. It
was like him, too, to have conceived and risked all upon this
last desperate and madcap scheme--this message to a poor, crazed
_fanatico_ cruising about with his grotesque uniform and his farcical
title. But his companions had been at their wits' end; escape had
seemed incredible; and now he was pleased with the success of the
plan they had called crack-brained and precarious.

The brief, tropic twilight seemed to slide swiftly into the pearly
splendour of a moonlit night. And now the lights of Coralio appeared,
distributed against the darkening shore to their right. The admiral
stood, silent, at the tiller; the Caribs, like black panthers, held
the sheets, leaping noiselessly at his short commands. The three
passengers were watching intently the sea before them, and when at
length they came in sight of the bulk of a steamer lying a mile out
from the town, with her lights radiating deep into the water, they
held a sudden voluble and close-headed converse. The sloop was
speeding as if to strike midway between ship and shore.

The large man suddenly separated from his companions and approached
the scarecrow at the helm.

"My dear admiral," he said, "the government has been exceedingly
remiss. I feel all the shame for it that only its ignorance of your
devoted service has prevented it from sustaining. An inexcusable
oversight has been made. A vessel, a uniform and a crew worthy of
your fidelity shall be furnished you. But just now, dear admiral,
there is business of moment afoot. The steamer lying there is the
_Salvador_. I and my friends desire to be conveyed to her, where we
are sent on the government's business. Do us the favour to shape your
course accordingly."

Without replying, the admiral gave a sharp command, and put the
tiller hard to port. _El Nacional_ swerved, and headed straight as an
arrow's course for the shore.

"Do me the favour," said the large man, a trifle restively, "to
acknowledge, at least, that you catch the sound of my words." It
was possible that the fellow might be lacking in senses as well as
intellect.

The admiral emitted a croaking, harsh laugh, and spake.

"They will stand you," he said, "with your face to a wall and shoot
you dead. That is the way they kill traitors. I knew you when you
stepped into my boat. I have seen your picture in a book. You are
Sabas Placido, traitor to your country. With your face to a wall. So,
you will die. I am the admiral, and I will take you to them. With
your face to a wall. Yes."

Don Sabas half turned and waved his hand, with a ringing laugh,
toward his fellow fugitives. "To you, _caballeros_, I have related
the history of that session when we issued that O! so ridiculous
commission. Of a truth our jest has been turned against us. Behold
the Frankenstein's monster we have created!"

Don Sabas glanced toward the shore. The lights of Coralio were
drawing near. He could see the beach, the warehouse of the _Bodega
Nacional_, the long, low _cuartel_ occupied by the soldiers, and,
behind that, gleaming in the moonlight, a stretch of high adobe wall.
He had seen men stood with their faces to that wall and shot dead.

Again he addressed the extravagant figure at the helm.

"It is true," he said, "that I am fleeing the country. But, receive
the assurance that I care very little for that. Courts and camps
everywhere are open to Sabas Placido. _Vaya!_ what is this molehill
of a republic--this pig's head of a country--to a man like me? I am a
_paisano_ of everywhere. In Rome, in London, in Paris, in Vienna, you
will hear them say: 'Welcome back, Don Sabas.' Come!--_tonto_--baboon
of a boy--admiral, whatever you call yourself, turn your boat. Put us
on board the _Salvador_, and here is your pay--five hundred _pesos_
in money of the _Estados Unidos_--more than your lying government
will pay you in twenty years."

Don Sabas pressed a plump purse against the youth's hand. The admiral
gave no heed to the words or the movement. Braced against the helm,
he was holding the sloop dead on her shoreward course. His dull face
was lit almost to intelligence by some inward conceit that seemed to
afford him joy, and found utterance in another parrot-like cackle.

"That is why they do it," he said--"so that you will not see the
guns. They fire--oom!--and you fall dead. With your face to the wall.
Yes."

The admiral called a sudden order to his crew. The lithe, silent
Caribs made fast the sheets they held, and slipped down the hatchway
into the hold of the sloop. When the last one had disappeared, Don
Sabas, like a big, brown leopard, leaped forward, closed and fastened
the hatch and stood, smiling.

"No rifles, if you please, dear admiral," he said. "It was a whimsey
of mine once to compile a dictionary of the Carib _lengua_. So, I
understood your order. Perhaps now you will--"

He cut short his words, for he heard the dull "swish" of iron
scraping along tin. The admiral had drawn the cutlass of Pedro
Lafitte, and was darting upon him. The blade descended, and it was
only by a display of surprising agility that the large man escaped,
with only a bruised shoulder, the glancing weapon. He was drawing his
pistol as he sprang, and the next instant he shot the admiral down.

Don Sabas stooped over him, and rose again.

"In the heart," he said briefly. "_Señores_, the navy is abolished."

Colonel Rafael sprang to the helm, and the other officer hastened to
loose the mainsail sheets. The boom swung round; _El Nacional_ veered
and began to tack industriously for the _Salvador_.

"Strike that flag, señor," called Colonel Rafael. "Our friends on the
steamer will wonder why we are sailing under it."

"Well said," cried Don Sabas. Advancing to the mast he lowered the
flag to the deck, where lay its too loyal supporter. Thus ended the
Minister of War's little piece of after-dinner drollery, and by the
same hand that began it.

Suddenly Don Sabas gave a great cry of joy, and ran down the slanting
deck to the side of Colonel Rafael. Across his arm he carried the
flag of the extinguished navy.

"_Mire! mire! señor._ Ah, _Dios!_ Already can I hear that great bear
of an _Oestreicher_ shout, _'Du hast mein herz gebrochen!' Mire!_
Of my friend, Herr Grunitz, of Vienna, you have heard me relate.
That man has travelled to Ceylon for an orchid--to Patagonia for a
headdress--to Benares for a slipper--to Mozambique for a spearhead
to add to his famous collections. Thou knowest, also, _amigo_ Rafael,
that I have been a gatherer of curios. My collection of battle flags
of the world's navies was the most complete in existence until last
year. Then Herr Grunitz secured two, O! such rare specimens. One of a
Barbary state, and one of the Makarooroos, a tribe on the west coast
of Africa. I have not those, but they can be procured. But this flag,
señor--do you know what it is? Name of God! do you know? See that
red cross upon the blue and white ground! You never saw it before?
_Seguramente no._ It is the naval flag of your country. _Mire!_
This rotten tub we stand upon is its navy--that dead cockatoo lying
there was its commander--that stroke of cutlass and single pistol
shot a sea battle. All a piece of absurd foolery, I grant you--but
authentic. There has never been another flag like this, and there
never will be another. No. It is unique in the whole world. Yes.
Think of what that means to a collector of flags! Do you know,
_Coronel mio_, how many golden crowns Herr Grunitz would give for
this flag? Ten thousand, likely. Well, a hundred thousand would not
buy it. Beautiful flag! Only flag! Little devil of a most heaven-born
flag! _O-hé!_ old grumbler beyond the ocean. Wait till Don Sabas
comes again to the Königin Strasse. He will let you kneel and touch
the folds of it with one finger. _O-hé!_ old spectacled ransacker of
the world!"

Forgotten was the impotent revolution, the danger, the loss, the
gall of defeat. Possessed solely by the inordinate and unparalleled
passion of the collector, he strode up and down the little deck,
clasping to his breast with one hand the paragon of a flag. He
snapped his fingers triumphantly toward the east. He shouted the
paean to his prize in trumpet tones, as though he would make old
Grunitz hear in his musty den beyond the sea.

They were waiting, on the _Salvador_, to welcome them. The sloop came
close alongside the steamer where her sides were sliced almost to the
lower deck for the loading of fruit. The sailors of the _Salvador_
grappled and held her there.

Captain McLeod leaned over the side.

"Well, señor, the jig is up, I'm told."

"The jig is up?" Don Sabas looked perplexed for a moment. "That
revolution--ah, yes!" With a shrug of his shoulders he dismissed the
matter.

The captain learned of the escape and the imprisoned crew.

"Caribs?" he said; "no harm in them." He slipped down into the sloop
and kicked loose the hasp of the hatch. The black fellows came
tumbling up, sweating but grinning.

"Hey! black boys!" said the captain, in a dialect of his own; "you
sabe, catchy boat and vamos back same place quick."

They saw him point to themselves, the sloop and Coralio. "Yas, yas!"
they cried, with broader grins and many nods.

The four--Don Sabas, the two officers and the captain--moved to quit
the sloop. Don Sabas lagged a little behind, looking at the still
form of the late admiral, sprawled in his paltry trappings.

"_Pobrecito loco_," he said softly.

He was a brilliant cosmopolite and a _cognoscente_ of high rank; but,
after all, he was of the same race and blood and instinct as this
people. Even as the simple _paisanos_ of Coralio had said it, so said
Don Sabas. Without a smile, he looked, and said, "The poor little
crazed one!"

Stooping he raised the limp shoulders, drew the priceless and
induplicable flag under them and over the breast, pinning it there
with the diamond star of the Order of San Carlos that he took from
the collar of his own coat.

He followed after the others, and stood with them upon the deck of
the _Salvador_. The sailors that steadied _El Nacional_ shoved her
off. The jabbering Caribs hauled away at the rigging; the sloop
headed for the shore.

And Herr Grunitz's collection of naval flags was still the finest in
the world.



X

THE SHAMROCK AND THE PALM


One night when there was no breeze, and Coralio seemed closer than
ever to the gratings of Avernus, five men were grouped about the door
of the photograph establishment of Keogh and Clancy. Thus, in all the
scorched and exotic places of the earth, Caucasians meet when the
day's work is done to preserve the fulness of their heritage by the
aspersion of alien things.

Johnny Atwood lay stretched upon the grass in the undress uniform
of a Carib, and prated feebly of cool water to be had in the
cucumber-wood pumps of Dalesburg. Dr. Gregg, through the prestige of
his whiskers and as a bribe against the relation of his imminent
professional tales, was conceded the hammock that was swung between
the door jamb and a calabash-tree. Keogh had moved out upon the grass
a little table that held the instrument for burnishing completed
photographs. He was the only busy one of the group. Industriously
from between the cylinders of the burnisher rolled the finished
depictments of Coralio's citizens. Blanchard, the French mining
engineer, in his cool linen viewed the smoke of his cigarette through
his calm glasses, impervious to the heat. Clancy sat on the steps,
smoking his short pipe. His mood was the gossip's; the others were
reduced, by the humidity, to the state of disability desirable in an
audience.

Clancy was an American with an Irish diathesis and cosmopolitan
proclivities. Many businesses had claimed him, but not for long.
The roadster's blood was in his veins. The voice of the tintype was
but one of the many callings that had wooed him upon so many roads.
Sometimes he could be persuaded to oral construction of his voyages
into the informal and egregious. To-night there were symptoms of
divulgement in him.

"'Tis elegant weather for filibusterin'," he volunteered. "It reminds
me of the time I struggled to liberate a nation from the poisonous
breath of a tyrant's clutch. 'Twas hard work. 'Tis strainin' to the
back and makes corns on the hands."

"I didn't know you had ever lent your sword to an oppressed people,"
murmured Atwood, from the grass.

"I did," said Clancy; "and they turned it into a ploughshare."

"What country was so fortunate as to secure your aid?" airily
inquired Blanchard.

"Where's Kamchatka?" asked Clancy, with seeming irrelevance.

"Why, off Siberia somewhere in the Arctic regions," somebody
answered, doubtfully.

"I thought that was the cold one," said Clancy, with a satisfied nod.
"I'm always gettin' the two names mixed. 'Twas Guatemala, then--the
hot one--I've been filibusterin' with. Ye'll find that country on the
map. 'Tis in the district known as the tropics. By the foresight of
Providence, it lies on the coast so the geography man could run the
names of the towns off into the water. They're an inch long, small
type, composed of Spanish dialects, and, 'tis my opinion, of the same
system of syntax that blew up the _Maine_. Yes, 'twas that country I
sailed against, single-handed, and endeavoured to liberate it from
a tyrannical government with a single-barreled pickaxe, unloaded
at that. Ye don't understand, of course. 'Tis a statement demandin'
elucidation and apologies.

"'Twas in New Orleans one morning about the first of June; I was
standin' down on the wharf, lookin' about at the ships in the river.
There was a little steamer moored right opposite me that seemed about
ready to sail. The funnels of it were throwin' out smoke, and a gang
of roustabouts were carryin' aboard a pile of boxes that was stacked
up on the wharf. The boxes were about two feet square, and somethin'
like four feet long, and they seemed to be pretty heavy.

"I walked over, careless, to the stack of boxes. I saw one of them
had been broken in handlin'. 'Twas curiosity made me pull up the
loose top and look inside. The box was packed full of Winchester
rifles. 'So, so,' says I to myself; 'somebody's gettin' a twist on
the neutrality laws. Somebody's aidin' with munitions of war. I
wonder where the popguns are goin'?'

"I heard somebody cough, and I turned around. There stood a
little, round, fat man with a brown face and white clothes, a
first-class-looking little man, with a four-karat diamond on his
finger and his eye full of interrogations and respects. I judged
he was a kind of foreigner--may be from Russia or Japan or the
archipelagoes.

"'Hist!' says the round man, full of concealments and confidences.
'Will the señor respect the discoveryments he has made, that the mans
on the ship shall not be acquaint? The señor will be a gentleman that
shall not expose one thing that by accident occur.'

"'Monseer,' says I--for I judged him to be a kind of
Frenchman--'receive my most exasperated assurances that your secret
is safe with James Clancy. Furthermore, I will go so far as to
remark, Veev la Liberty--veev it good and strong. Whenever you hear
of a Clancy obstructin' the abolishment of existin' governments you
may notify me by return mail.'

"'The señor is good,' says the dark, fat man, smilin' under his
black mustache. 'Wish you to come aboard my ship and drink of wine a
glass.'

"Bein' a Clancy, in two minutes me and the foreigner man were seated
at a table in the cabin of the steamer, with a bottle between us. I
could hear the heavy boxes bein' dumped into the hold. I judged that
cargo must consist of at least 2,000 Winchesters. Me and the brown
man drank the bottle of stuff, and he called the steward to bring
another. When you amalgamate a Clancy with the contents of a bottle
you practically instigate secession. I had heard a good deal about
these revolutions in them tropical localities, and I begun to want a
hand in it.

"'You goin' to stir things up in your country, ain't you, monseer?'
says I, with a wink to let him know I was on.

"'Yes, yes,' said the little man, pounding his fist on the table.
'A change of the greatest will occur. Too long have the people been
oppressed with the promises and the never-to-happen things to become.
The great work it shall be carry on. Yes. Our forces shall in the
capital city strike of the soonest. _Carrambos!_'

"'_Carrambos_ is the word,' says I, beginning to invest myself with
enthusiasm and more wine, 'likewise veeva, as I said before. May the
shamrock of old--I mean the banana-vine or the pie-plant, or whatever
the imperial emblem may be of your down-trodden country, wave
forever.'

"'A thousand thank-yous,' says the round man, 'for your emission of
amicable utterances. What our cause needs of the very most is mans
who will the work do, to lift it along. Oh, for one thousands strong,
good mans to aid the General De Vega that he shall to his country
bring those success and glory! It is hard--oh, so hard to find good
mans to help in the work.'

"'Monseer,' says I, leanin' over the table and graspin' his hand,
'I don't know where your country is, but me heart bleeds for it. The
heart of a Clancy was never deaf to the sight of an oppressed people.
The family is filibusterers by birth, and foreigners by trade. If you
can use James Clancy's arms and his blood in denudin' your shores of
the tyrant's yoke they're yours to command.'

"General De Vega was overcome with joy to confiscate my condolence of
his conspiracies and predicaments. He tried to embrace me across the
table, but his fatness, and the wine that had been in the bottles,
prevented. Thus was I welcomed into the ranks of filibustery. Then
the general man told me his country had the name of Guatemala, and
was the greatest nation laved by any ocean whatever anywhere. He
looked at me with tears in his eyes, and from time to time he would
emit the remark, 'Ah! big, strong, brave mans! That is what my
country need.'

"General De Vega, as was the name by which he denounced himself,
brought out a document for me to sign, which I did, makin' a fine
flourish and curlycue with the tail of the 'y.'

"'Your passage-money,' says the general, business-like, 'shall from
your pay be deduct.'

"'Twill not,' says I, haughty. 'I'll pay my own passage.' A hundred
and eighty dollars I had in my inside pocket, and 'twas no common
filibuster I was goin' to be, filibusterin' for me board and clothes.

"The steamer was to sail in two hours, and I went ashore to get some
things together I'd need. When I came aboard I showed the general
with pride the outfit. 'Twas a fine Chinchilla overcoat, Arctic
overshoes, fur cap and earmuffs, with elegant fleece-lined gloves and
woolen muffler.

"'_Carrambos!_' says the little general. 'What clothes are these that
shall go to the tropic?' And then the little spalpeen laughs, and he
calls the captain, and the captain calls the purser, and they pipe up
the chief engineer, and the whole gang leans against the cabin and
laughs at Clancy's wardrobe for Guatemala.

"I reflects a bit, serious, and asks the general again to denominate
the terms by which his country is called. He tells me, and I see then
that 'twas the t'other one, Kamchatka, I had in mind. Since then I've
had difficulty in separatin' the two nations in name, climate and
geographic disposition.

"I paid my passage--twenty-four dollars, first cabin--and ate at
table with the officer crowd. Down on the lower deck was a gang of
second-class passengers, about forty of them, seemin' to be Dagoes
and the like. I wondered what so many of them were goin' along for.

"Well, then, in three days we sailed alongside that Guatemala. 'Twas
a blue country, and not yellow as 'tis miscolored on the map. We
landed at a town on the coast, where a train of cars was waitin' for
us on a dinky little railroad. The boxes on the steamer were brought
ashore and loaded on the cars. The gang of Dagoes got aboard, too,
the general and me in the front car. Yes, me and General De Vega
headed the revolution, as it pulled out of the seaport town. That
train travelled about as fast as a policeman goin' to a riot. It
penetrated the most conspicuous lot of fuzzy scenery ever seen
outside a geography. We run some forty miles in seven hours, and the
train stopped. There was no more railroad. 'Twas a sort of camp in a
damp gorge full of wildness and melancholies. They was gradin' and
choppin' out the forests ahead to continue the road. 'Here,' says I
to myself, 'is the romantic haunt of the revolutionists. Here will
Clancy, by the virtue that is in a superior race and the inculcation
of Fenian tactics, strike a tremendous blow for liberty.'

"They unloaded the boxes from the train and begun to knock the tops
off. From the first one that was open I saw General De Vega take the
Winchester rifles and pass them around to a squad of morbid soldiery.
The other boxes was opened next, and, believe me or not, divil
another gun was to be seen. Every other box in the load was full of
pickaxes and spades.

"And then--sorrow be upon them tropics--the proud Clancy and the
dishonoured Dagoes, each one of them, had to shoulder a pick or a
spade, and march away to work on that dirty little railroad. Yes;
'twas that the Dagoes shipped for, and 'twas that the filibusterin'
Clancy signed for, though unbeknownst to himself at the time. In
after days I found out about it. It seems 'twas hard to get hands
to work on that road. The intelligent natives of the country was
too lazy to work. Indeed, the saints know, 'twas unnecessary. By
stretchin' out one hand, they could seize the most delicate and
costly fruits of the earth, and, by stretchin' out the other, they
could sleep for days at a time without hearin' a seven-o'clock
whistle or the footsteps of the rent man upon the stairs. So,
regular, the steamers travelled to the United States to seduce
labour. Usually the imported spade-slingers died in two or three
months from eatin' the over-ripe water and breathin' the violent
tropical scenery. Wherefore they made them sign contracts for a year,
when they hired them, and put an armed guard over the poor divils to
keep them from runnin' away.

"'Twas thus I was double-crossed by the tropics through a family
failin' of goin' out of the way to hunt disturbances.

"They gave me a pick, and I took it, meditatin' an insurrection on
the spot; but there was the guards handlin' the Winchesters careless,
and I come to the conclusion that discretion was the best part of
filibusterin'. There was about a hundred of us in the gang startin'
out to work, and the word was given to move. I steps out of the ranks
and goes up to that General De Vega man, who was smokin' a cigar and
gazin' upon the scene with satisfactions and glory. He smiles at me
polite and devilish. 'Plenty work,' says he, 'for big, strong mans in
Guatemala. Yes. T'irty dollars in the month. Good pay. Ah, yes. You
strong, brave man. Bimeby we push those railroad in the capital very
quick. They want you go work now. _Adios_, strong mans.'

"'Monseer,' says I, lingerin', 'will you tell a poor little Irishman
this: When I set foot on your cockroachy steamer, and breathed
liberal and revolutionary sentiments into your sour wine, did you
think I was conspirin' to sling a pick on your contemptuous little
railroad? And when you answered me with patriotic recitations,
humping up the star-spangled cause of liberty, did you have
meditations of reducin' me to the ranks of the stump-grubbin' Dagoes
in the chain-gangs of your vile and grovelin' country?'

"The general man expanded his rotundity and laughed considerable.
Yes, he laughed very long and loud, and I, Clancy, stood and waited.

"'Comical mans!' he shouts, at last. 'So you will kill me from the
laughing. Yes; it is hard to find the brave, strong mans to aid my
country. Revolutions? Did I speak of r-r-revolutions? Not one word.
I say, big, strong mans is need in Guatemala. So. The mistake is of
you. You have looked in those one box containing those gun for the
guard. You think all boxes is contain gun? No.

"'There is not war in Guatemala. But work? Yes. Good. T'irty dollar
in the month. You shall shoulder one pickaxe, señor, and dig for the
liberty and prosperity of Guatemala. Off to your work. The guard
waits for you.'

"'Little, fat, poodle dog of a brown man,' says I, quiet, but full of
indignations and discomforts, 'things shall happen to you. Maybe not
right away, but as soon as J. Clancy can formulate somethin' in the
way of repartee.'

"The boss of the gang orders us to work. I tramps off with the
Dagoes, and I hears the distinguished patriot and kidnapper laughin'
hearty as we go.

"'Tis a sorrowful fact, for eight weeks I built railroads for that
misbehavin' country. I filibustered twelve hours a day with a heavy
pick and a spade, choppin' away the luxurious landscape that grew
upon the right of way. We worked in swamps that smelled like there
was a leak in the gas mains, trampin' down a fine assortment of the
most expensive hothouse plants and vegetables. The scene was tropical
beyond the wildest imagination of the geography man. The trees was
all sky-scrapers; the underbrush was full of needles and pins;
there was monkeys jumpin' around and crocodiles and pink-tailed
mockin'-birds, and ye stood knee-deep in the rotten water and
grabbled roots for the liberation of Guatemala. Of nights we would
build smudges in camp to discourage the mosquitoes, and sit in the
smoke, with the guards pacin' all around us. There was two hundred
men workin' on the road--mostly Dagoes, nigger-men, Spanish-men and
Swedes. Three or four were Irish.

"One old man named Halloran--a man of Hibernian entitlements and
discretions, explained it to me. He had been workin' on the road a
year. Most of them died in less than six months. He was dried up to
gristle and bone, and shook with chills every third night.

"'When you first come,' says he, 'ye think ye'll leave right away.
But they hold out your first month's pay for your passage over, and
by that time the tropics has its grip on ye. Ye're surrounded by a
ragin' forest full of disreputable beasts--lions and baboons and
anacondas--waitin' to devour ye. The sun strikes ye hard, and melts
the marrow in your bones. Ye get similar to the lettuce-eaters the
poetry-book speaks about. Ye forget the elevated sintiments of life,
such as patriotism, revenge, disturbances of the peace and the dacint
love of a clane shirt. Ye do your work, and ye swallow the kerosene
ile and rubber pipestems dished up to ye by the Dago cook for food.
Ye light your pipeful, and say to yoursilf, "Nixt week I'll break
away," and ye go to sleep and call yersilf a liar, for ye know ye'll
never do it.'

"'Who is this general man,' asks I, 'that calls himself De Vega?'

"''Tis the man,' says Halloran, 'who is tryin' to complete
the finishin' of the railroad. 'Twas the project of a private
corporation, but it busted, and then the government took it up. De
Vegy is a big politician, and wants to be prisident. The people want
the railroad completed, as they're taxed mighty on account of it. The
De Vegy man is pushin' it along as a campaign move.'

"''Tis not my way,' says I, 'to make threats against any man, but
there's an account to be settled between the railroad man and James
O'Dowd Clancy.'

"''Twas that way I thought, mesilf, at first,' Halloran says, with a
big sigh, 'until I got to be a lettuce-eater. The fault's wid these
tropics. They rejuices a man's system. 'Tis a land, as the poet says,
"Where it always seems to be after dinner." I does me work and smokes
me pipe and sleeps. There's little else in life, anyway. Ye'll get
that way yersilf, mighty soon. Don't be harbourin' any sintiments at
all, Clancy.'

"'I can't help it,' says I; 'I'm full of 'em. I enlisted in the
revolutionary army of this dark country in good faith to fight for
its liberty, honours and silver candlesticks; instead of which I
am set to amputatin' its scenery and grubbin' its roots. 'Tis the
general man will have to pay for it.'

"Two months I worked on that railroad before I found a chance to get
away. One day a gang of us was sent back to the end of the completed
line to fetch some picks that had been sent down to Port Barrios to
be sharpened. They were brought on a hand-car, and I noticed, when I
started away, that the car was left there on the track.

"That night, about twelve, I woke up Halloran and told him my scheme.

"'Run away?' says Halloran. 'Good Lord, Clancy, do ye mean it? Why, I
ain't got the nerve. It's too chilly, and I ain't slept enough. Run
away? I told you, Clancy, I've eat the lettuce. I've lost my grip.
'Tis the tropics that's done it. 'Tis like the poet says: "Forgotten
are our friends that we have left behind; in the hollow lettuce-land
we will live and lay reclined." You better go on, Clancy. I'll stay,
I guess. It's too early and cold, and I'm sleepy.'

"So I had to leave Halloran. I dressed quiet, and slipped out of the
tent we were in. When the guard came along I knocked him over, like
a ninepin, with a green cocoanut I had, and made for the railroad.
I got on that hand-car and made it fly. 'Twas yet a while before
daybreak when I saw the lights of Port Barrios about a mile away. I
stopped the hand-car there and walked to the town. I stepped inside
the corporations of that town with care and hesitations. I was not
afraid of the army of Guatemala, but me soul quaked at the prospect
of a hand-to-hand struggle with its employment bureau. 'Tis a country
that hires its help easy and keeps 'em long. Sure I can fancy Missis
America and Missis Guatemala passin' a bit of gossip some fine, still
night across the mountains. 'Oh, dear,' says Missis America, 'and
it's a lot of trouble I'm havin' ag'in with the help, señora, ma'am.'
'Laws, now!' says Missis Guatemala, 'you don't say so, ma'am! Now,
mine never think of leavin' me--te-he! ma'am,' snickers Missis
Guatemala.

"I was wonderin' how I was goin' to move away from them tropics
without bein' hired again. Dark as it was, I could see a steamer
ridin' in the harbour, with smoke emergin' from her stacks. I turned
down a little grass street that run down to the water. On the beach I
found a little brown nigger-man just about to shove off in a skiff.

"'Hold on, Sambo,' says I, 'savve English?'

"'Heap plenty, yes,' says he, with a pleasant grin.

"'What steamer is that?' I asks him, 'and where is it going? And
what's the news, and the good word and the time of day?'

"'That steamer the _Conchita_,' said the brown man, affable and easy,
rollin' a cigarette. 'Him come from New Orleans for load banana. Him
got load last night. I think him sail in one, two hour. Verree nice
day we shall be goin' have. You hear some talkee 'bout big battle,
maybe so? You think catchee General De Vega, señor? Yes? No?'

"'How's that, Sambo?' says I. 'Big battle? What battle? Who wants
catchee General De Vega? I've been up at my old gold mines in the
interior for a couple of months, and haven't heard any news.'

"'Oh,' says the nigger-man, proud to speak the English, 'verree great
revolution in Guatemala one week ago. General De Vega, him try be
president. Him raise armee--one--five--ten thousand mans for fight
at the government. Those one government send five--forty--hundred
thousand soldier to suppress revolution. They fight big battle
yesterday at Lomagrande--that about nineteen or fifty mile in the
mountain. That government soldier wheep General De Vega--oh, most
bad. Five hundred--nine hundred--two thousand of his mans is kill.
That revolution is smash suppress--bust--very quick. General De Vega,
him r-r-run away fast on one big mule. Yes, _carrambos!_ The general,
him r-r-run away, and his armee is kill. That government soldier,
they try find General De Vega verree much. They want catchee him for
shoot. You think they catchee that general, señor?'

"'Saints grant it!' says I. ''Twould be the judgment of Providence
for settin' the warlike talent of a Clancy to gradin' the tropics
with a pick and shovel. But 'tis not so much a question of
insurrections now, me little man, as 'tis of the hired-man problem.
'Tis anxious I am to resign a situation of responsibility and trust
with the white wings department of your great and degraded country.
Row me in your little boat out to that steamer, and I'll give ye five
dollars--sinker pacers--sinker pacers,' says I, reducin' the offer to
the language and denomination of the tropic dialects.

"'_Cinco pesos_,' repeats the little man. 'Five dollee, you give?'

"'Twas not such a bad little man. He had hesitations at first, sayin'
that passengers leavin' the country had to have papers and passports,
but at last he took me out alongside the steamer.

"Day was just breakin' as we struck her, and there wasn't a soul to
be seen on board. The water was very still, and the nigger-man gave
me a lift from the boat, and I climbed onto the steamer where her
side was sliced to the deck for loadin' fruit. The hatches was open,
and I looked down and saw the cargo of bananas that filled the hold
to within six feet of the top. I thinks to myself, 'Clancy, you
better go as a stowaway. It's safer. The steamer men might hand you
back to the employment bureau. The tropic'll get you, Clancy, if you
don't watch out.'

"So I jumps down easy among the bananas, and digs out a hole to hide
in among the bunches. In an hour or so I could hear the engines
goin', and feel the steamer rockin', and I knew we were off to sea.
They left the hatches open for ventilation, and pretty soon it
was light enough in the hold to see fairly well. I got to feelin'
a bit hungry, and thought I'd have a light fruit lunch, by way
of refreshment. I creeped out of the hole I'd made and stood up
straight. Just then I saw another man crawl up about ten feet away
and reach out and skin a banana and stuff it into his mouth. 'Twas
a dirty man, black-faced and ragged and disgraceful of aspect. Yes,
the man was a ringer for the pictures of the fat Weary Willie in the
funny papers. I looked again, and saw it was my general man--De Vega,
the great revolutionist, mule-rider and pickaxe importer. When he saw
me the general hesitated with his mouth filled with banana and his
eyes the size of cocoanuts.

"'Hist!' I says. 'Not a word, or they'll put us off and make us walk.
"Veev la Liberty!"' I adds, copperin' the sentiment by shovin' a
banana into the source of it. I was certain the general wouldn't
recognize me. The nefarious work of the tropics had left me lookin'
different. There was half an inch of roan whiskers coverin' me face,
and me costume was a pair of blue overalls and a red shirt.

"'How you come in the ship, señor?' asked the general as soon as he
could speak.

"'By the back door--whist!' says I. ''Twas a glorious blow for
liberty we struck,' I continues; 'but we was overpowered by numbers.
Let us accept our defeat like brave men and eat another banana.'

"'Were you in the cause of liberty fightin', señor?' says the
general, sheddin' tears on the cargo.

"'To the last,' says I. ''Twas I led the last desperate charge
against the minions of the tyrant. But it made them mad, and we was
forced to retreat. 'Twas I, general, procured the mule upon which
you escaped. Could you give that ripe bunch a little boost this way,
general? It's a bit out of my reach. Thanks.'

"'Say you so, brave patriot?' said the general, again weepin'. 'Ah,
_Dios!_ And I have not the means to reward your devotion. Barely did
I my life bring away. _Carrambos!_ what a devil's animal was that
mule, señor! Like ships in one storm was I dashed about. The skin
on myself was ripped away with the thorns and vines. Upon the bark
of a hundred trees did that beast of the infernal bump, and cause
outrage to the legs of mine. In the night to Port Barrios I came. I
dispossess myself of that mountain of mule and hasten along the water
shore. I find a little boat to be tied. I launch myself and row to
the steamer. I cannot see any mans on board, so I climbed one rope
which hang at the side. I then myself hide in the bananas. Surely, I
say, if the ship captains view me, they shall throw me again to those
Guatemala. Those things are not good. Guatemala will shoot General
De Vega. Therefore, I am hide and remain silent. Life itself is
glorious. Liberty, it is pretty good; but so good as life I do not
think.'

"Three days, as I said, was the trip to New Orleans. The general man
and me got to be cronies of the deepest dye. Bananas we ate until
they were distasteful to the sight and an eyesore to the palate, but
to bananas alone was the bill of fare reduced. At night I crawls out,
careful, on the lower deck, and gets a bucket of fresh water.

"That General De Vega was a man inhabited by an engorgement of words
and sentences. He added to the monotony of the voyage by divestin'
himself of conversation. He believed I was a revolutionist of his own
party, there bein', as he told me, a good many Americans and other
foreigners in its ranks. 'Twas a braggart and a conceited little
gabbler it was, though he considered himself a hero. 'Twas on himself
he wasted all his regrets at the failin' of his plot. Not a word did
the little balloon have to say about the other misbehavin' idiots
that had been shot, or run themselves to death in his revolution.

"The second day out he was feelin' pretty braggy and uppish for a
stowed-away conspirator that owed his existence to a mule and stolen
bananas. He was tellin' me about the great railroad he had been
buildin', and he relates what he calls a comic incident about a fool
Irishman he inveigled from New Orleans to sling a pick on his little
morgue of a narrow-gauge line. 'Twas sorrowful to hear the little,
dirty general tell the opprobrious story of how he put salt upon the
tail of that reckless and silly bird, Clancy. Laugh, he did, hearty
and long. He shook with laughin', the black-faced rebel and outcast,
standin' neck-deep in bananas, without friends or country.

"'Ah, señor,' he snickers, 'to the death you would have laughed at
that drollest Irish. I say to him: "Strong, big mans is need very
much in Guatemala." "I will blows strike for your down-pressed
country," he say. "That shall you do," I tell him. Ah! it was an
Irish so comic. He sees one box break upon the wharf that contain for
the guard a few gun. He think there is gun in all the box. But that
is all pickaxe. Yes. Ah! señor, could you the face of that Irish have
seen when they set him to the work!'

"'Twas thus the ex-boss of the employment bureau contributed to the
tedium of the trip with merry jests and anecdote. But now and then he
would weep upon the bananas and make oration about the lost cause of
liberty and the mule.

"'Twas a pleasant sound when the steamer bumped against the pier in
New Orleans. Pretty soon we heard the pat-a-pat of hundreds of bare
feet, and the Dago gang that unloads the fruit jumped on the deck and
down into the hold. Me and the general worked a while at passin' up
the bunches, and they thought we were part of the gang. After about
an hour we managed to slip off the steamer onto the wharf.

"'Twas a great honour on the hands of an obscure Clancy, havin' the
entertainment of the representative of a great foreign filibusterin'
power. I first bought for the general and myself many long drinks
and things to eat that were not bananas. The general man trotted
along at my side, leavin' all the arrangements to me. I led him
up to Lafayette Square and set him on a bench in the little park.
Cigarettes I had bought for him, and he humped himself down on the
seat like a little, fat, contented hobo. I look him over as he sets
there, and what I see pleases me. Brown by nature and instinct, he
is now brindled with dirt and dust. Praise to the mule, his clothes
is mostly strings and flaps. Yes, the looks of the general man is
agreeable to Clancy.

"I ask him, delicate, if, by any chance, he brought away anybody's
money with him from Guatemala. He sighs and bumps his shoulders
against the bench. Not a cent. All right. Maybe, he tells me, some
of his friends in the tropic outfit will send him funds later. The
general was as clear a case of no visible means as I ever saw.

"I told him not to move from the bench, and then I went up to the
corner of Poydras and Carondelet. Along there is O'Hara's beat. In
five minutes along comes O'Hara, a big, fine man, red-faced, with
shinin' buttons, swingin' his club. 'Twould be a fine thing for
Guatemala to move into O'Hara's precinct. 'Twould be a fine bit of
recreation for Danny to suppress revolutions and uprisin's once or
twice a week with his club.

"'Is 5046 workin' yet, Danny?' says I, walkin' up to him.

"'Overtime,' says O'Hara, lookin' over me suspicious. 'Want some of
it?'

"Fifty-forty-six is the celebrated city ordinance authorizin' arrest,
conviction and imprisonment of persons that succeed in concealin'
their crimes from the police.

"'Don't ye know Jimmy Clancy?' says I. 'Ye pink-gilled monster.' So,
when O'Hara recognized me beneath the scandalous exterior bestowed
upon me by the tropics, I backed him into a doorway and told him what
I wanted, and why I wanted it. 'All right, Jimmy,' says O'Hara. 'Go
back and hold the bench. I'll be along in ten minutes.'

"In that time O'Hara strolled through Lafayette Square and spied two
Weary Willies disgracin' one of the benches. In ten minutes more J.
Clancy and General De Vega, late candidate for the presidency of
Guatemala, was in the station house. The general is badly frightened,
and calls upon me to proclaim his distinguishments and rank.

"'The man,' says I to the police, 'used to be a railroad man. He's on
the bum now. 'Tis a little bughouse he is, on account of losin' his
job.'

"'_Carrambos!_' says the general, fizzin' like a little soda-water
fountain, 'you fought, señor, with my forces in my native country.
Why do you say the lies? You shall say I am the General De Vega, one
soldier, one _caballero_--'

"'Railroader,' says I again. 'On the hog. No good. Been livin' for
three days on stolen bananas. Look at him. Ain't that enough?'

"Twenty-five dollars or sixty days, was what the recorder gave the
general. He didn't have a cent, so he took the time. They let me go,
as I knew they would, for I had money to show, and O'Hara spoke for
me. Yes; sixty days he got. 'Twas just so long that I slung a pick
for the great country of Kam--Guatemala."

Clancy paused. The bright starlight showed a reminiscent look of
happy content on his seasoned features. Keogh leaned in his chair and
gave his partner a slap on his thinly-clad back that sounded like the
crack of the surf on the sands.

"Tell 'em, ye divil," he chuckled, "how you got even with the
tropical general in the way of agricultural manoeuvrings."

"Havin' no money," concluded Clancy, with unction, "they set him
to work his fine out with a gang from the parish prison clearing
Ursulines Street. Around the corner was a saloon decorated genially
with electric fans and cool merchandise. I made that me headquarters,
and every fifteen minutes I'd walk around and take a look at the
little man filibusterin' with a rake and shovel. 'Twas just such
a hot broth of a day as this has been. And I'd call at him 'Hey,
monseer!' and he'd look at me black, with the damp showin' through
his shirt in places.

"'Fat, strong mans,' says I to General De Vega, 'is needed in New
Orleans. Yes. To carry on the good work. Carrambos! Erin go bragh!'"



XI

THE REMNANTS OF THE CODE


Breakfast in Coralio was at eleven. Therefore the people did not go
to market early. The little wooden market-house stood on a patch of
short-trimmed grass, under the vivid green foliage of a bread-fruit
tree.

Thither one morning the venders leisurely convened, bringing their
wares with them. A porch or platform six feet wide encircled the
building, shaded from the mid-morning sun by the projecting,
grass-thatched roof. Upon this platform the venders were wont to
display their goods--newly-killed beef, fish, crabs, fruit of the
country, cassava, eggs, _dulces_ and high, tottering stacks of native
tortillas as large around as the sombrero of a Spanish grandee.

But on this morning they whose stations lay on the seaward side of
the market-house, instead of spreading their merchandise formed
themselves into a softly jabbering and gesticulating group. For
there upon their space of the platform was sprawled, asleep, the
unbeautiful figure of "Beelzebub" Blythe. He lay upon a ragged strip
of cocoa matting, more than ever a fallen angel in appearance. His
suit of coarse flax, soiled, bursting at the seams, crumpled into
a thousand diversified wrinkles and creases, inclosed him absurdly,
like the garb of some effigy that had been stuffed in sport and
thrown there after indignity had been wrought upon it. But firmly
upon the high bridge of his nose reposed his gold-rimmed glasses, the
surviving badge of his ancient glory.

The sun's rays, reflecting quiveringly from the rippling sea upon his
face, and the voices of the market-men woke "Beelzebub" Blythe. He
sat up, blinking, and leaned his back against the wall of the market.
Drawing a blighted silk handkerchief from his pocket, he assiduously
rubbed and burnished his glasses. And while doing this he became
aware that his bedroom had been invaded, and that polite brown and
yellow men were beseeching him to vacate in favour of their market
stuff.

If the señor would have the goodness--a thousand pardons for bringing
to him molestation--but soon would come the _compradores_ for the
day's provisions--surely they had ten thousand regrets at disturbing
him!

In this manner they expanded to him the intimation that he must clear
out and cease to clog the wheels of trade.

Blythe stepped from the platform with the air of a prince leaving
his canopied couch. He never quite lost that air, even at the lowest
point of his fall. It is clear that the college of good breeding does
not necessarily maintain a chair of morals within its walls.

Blythe shook out his wry clothing, and moved slowly up the Calle
Grande through the hot sand. He moved without a destination in his
mind. The little town was languidly stirring to its daily life.
Golden-skinned babies tumbled over one another in the grass. The sea
breeze brought him appetite, but nothing to satisfy it. Throughout
Coralio were its morning odors--those from the heavily fragrant
tropical flowers and from the bread baking in the outdoor ovens of
clay and the pervading smoke of their fires. Where the smoke cleared,
the crystal air, with some of the efficacy of faith, seemed to remove
the mountains almost to the sea, bringing them so near that one might
count the scarred glades on their wooded sides. The light-footed
Caribs were swiftly gliding to their tasks at the waterside. Already
along the bosky trails from the banana groves files of horses were
slowly moving, concealed, except for their nodding heads and plodding
legs, by the bunches of green-golden fruit heaped upon their backs.
On doorsills sat women combing their long, black hair and calling,
one to another, across the narrow thoroughfares. Peace reigned in
Coralio--arid and bald peace; but still peace.

On that bright morning when Nature seemed to be offering the lotus on
the Dawn's golden platter "Beelzebub" Blythe had reached rock bottom.
Further descent seemed impossible. That last night's slumber in
a public place had done for him. As long as he had had a roof to
cover him there had remained, unbridged, the space that separates a
gentleman from the beasts of the jungle and the fowls of the air. But
now he was little more than a whimpering oyster led to be devoured on
the sands of a Southern sea by the artful walrus, Circumstance, and
the implacable carpenter, Fate.

To Blythe money was now but a memory. He had drained his friends of
all that their good-fellowship had to offer; then he had squeezed
them to the last drop of their generosity; and at the last,
Aaron-like, he had smitten the rock of their hardening bosoms for the
scattering, ignoble drops of Charity itself.

He had exhausted his credit to the last _real_. With the minute
keenness of the shameless sponger he was aware of every source in
Coralio from which a glass of rum, a meal or a piece of silver could
be wheedled. Marshalling each such source in his mind, he considered
it with all the thoroughness and penetration that hunger and thirst
lent him for the task. All his optimism failed to thresh a grain of
hope from the chaff of his postulations. He had played out the game.
That one night in the open had shaken his nerves. Until then there
had been left to him at least a few grounds upon which he could base
his unblushing demands upon his neighbours' stores. Now he must beg
instead of borrowing. The most brazen sophistry could not dignify by
the name of "loan" the coin contemptuously flung to a beachcomber who
slept on the bare boards of the public market.

But on this morning no beggar would have more thankfully received
a charitable coin, for the demon thirst had him by the throat--the
drunkard's matutinal thirst that requires to be slaked at each
morning station on the road to Tophet.

Blythe walked slowly up the street, keeping a watchful eye for any
miracle that might drop manna upon him in his wilderness. As he
passed the popular eating house of Madama Vasquez, Madama's boarders
were just sitting down to freshly-baked bread, _aguacates_, pines and
delicious coffee that sent forth odorous guarantee of its quality
upon the breeze. Madama was serving; she turned her shy, stolid,
melancholy gaze for a moment out the window; she saw Blythe, and her
expression turned more shy and embarrassed. "Beelzebub" owed her
twenty _pesos_. He bowed as he had once bowed to less embarrassed
dames to whom he owed nothing, and passed on.

Merchants and their clerks were throwing open the solid wooden doors
of their shops. Polite but cool were the glances they cast upon
Blythe as he lounged tentatively by with the remains of his old
jaunty air; for they were his creditors almost without exception.

At the little fountain in the _plaza_ he made an apology for a toilet
with his wetted handkerchief. Across the open square filed the
dolorous line of friends of the prisoners in the _calaboza_, bearing
the morning meal of the immured. The food in their hands aroused
small longing in Blythe. It was drink that his soul craved, or money
to buy it.

In the streets he met many with whom he had been friends and equals,
and whose patience and liberality he had gradually exhausted.
Willard Geddie and Paula cantered past him with the coolest of nods,
returning from their daily horseback ride along the old Indian road.
Keogh passed him at another corner, whistling cheerfully and bearing
a prize of newly-laid eggs for the breakfast of himself and Clancy.
The jovial scout of Fortune was one of Blythe's victims who had
plunged his hand oftenest into his pocket to aid him. But now it
seemed that Keogh, too, had fortified himself against further
invasions. His curt greeting and the ominous light in his full, grey
eye quickened the steps of "Beelzebub," whom desperation had almost
incited to attempt an additional "loan."

Three drinking shops the forlorn one next visited in succession. In
all of these his money, his credit and his welcome had long since
been spent; but Blythe felt that he would have fawned in the dust at
the feet of an enemy that morning for one draught of _aguardiente_.
In two of the _pulperias_ his courageous petition for drink was met
with a refusal so polite that it stung worse than abuse. The third
establishment had acquired something of American methods; and here he
was seized bodily and cast out upon his hands and knees.

This physical indignity caused a singular change in the man. As he
picked himself up and walked away, an expression of absolute relief
came upon his features. The specious and conciliatory smile that
had been graven there was succeeded by a look of calm and sinister
resolve. "Beelzebub" had been floundering in the sea of improbity,
holding by a slender life-line to the respectable world that had
cast him overboard. He must have felt that with this ultimate shock
the line had snapped, and have experienced the welcome ease of the
drowning swimmer who has ceased to struggle.

Blythe walked to the next corner and stood there while he brushed the
sand from his garments and re-polished his glasses.

"I've got to do it--oh, I've got to do it," he told himself, aloud.
"If I had a quart of rum I believe I could stave it off yet--for a
little while. But there's no more rum for--'Beelzebub,' as they call
me. By the flames of Tartarus! if I'm to sit at the right hand of
Satan somebody has got to pay the court expenses. You'll have to pony
up, Mr. Frank Goodwin. You're a good fellow; but a gentleman must
draw the line at being kicked into the gutter. Blackmail isn't a
pretty word, but it's the next station on the road I'm travelling."

With purpose in his steps Blythe now moved rapidly through the town
by way of its landward environs. He passed through the squalid
quarters of the improvident negroes and on beyond the picturesque
shacks of the poorer _mestizos_. From many points along his course he
could see, through the umbrageous glades, the house of Frank Goodwin
on its wooded hill. And as he crossed the little bridge over the
lagoon he saw the old Indian, Galvez, scrubbing at the wooden slab
that bore the name of Miraflores. Beyond the lagoon the lands of
Goodwin began to slope gently upward. A grassy road, shaded by a
munificent and diverse array of tropical flora wound from the edge of
an outlying banana grove to the dwelling. Blythe took this road with
long and purposeful strides.

Goodwin was seated on his coolest gallery, dictating letters to his
secretary, a sallow and capable native youth. The household adhered
to the American plan of breakfast; and that meal had been a thing of
the past for the better part of an hour.

The castaway walked to the steps, and flourished a hand.

"Good morning, Blythe," said Goodwin, looking up. "Come in and have a
chair. Anything I can do for you?"

"I want to speak to you in private."

Goodwin nodded at his secretary, who strolled out under a mango tree
and lit a cigarette. Blythe took the chair that he had left vacant.

"I want some money," he began, doggedly.

"I'm sorry," said Goodwin, with equal directness, "but you can't have
any. You're drinking yourself to death, Blythe. Your friends have
done all they could to help you to brace up. You won't help yourself.
There's no use furnishing you with money to ruin yourself with any
longer."

"Dear man," said Blythe, tilting back his chair, "it isn't a question
of social economy now. It's past that. I like you, Goodwin; and I've
come to stick a knife between your ribs. I was kicked out of Espada's
saloon this morning; and Society owes me reparation for my wounded
feelings."

"I didn't kick you out."

"No; but in a general way you represent Society; and in a particular
way you represent my last chance. I've had to come down to it, old
man--I tried to do it a month ago when Losada's man was here turning
things over; but I couldn't do it then. Now it's different. I want a
thousand dollars, Goodwin; and you'll have to give it to me."

"Only last week," said Goodwin, with a smile, "a silver dollar was
all you were asking for."

"An evidence," said Blythe, flippantly, "that I was still
virtuous--though under heavy pressure. The wages of sin should be
something higher than a _peso_ worth forty-eight cents. Let's talk
business. I am the villain in the third act; and I must have my
merited, if only temporary, triumph. I saw you collar the late
president's valiseful of boodle. Oh, I know it's blackmail; but I'm
liberal about the price. I know I'm a cheap villain--one of the
regular sawmill-drama kind--but you're one of my particular friends,
and I don't want to stick you hard."

"Suppose you go into the details," suggested Goodwin, calmly
arranging his letters on the table.

"All right," said "Beelzebub." "I like the way you take it. I despise
histrionics; so you will please prepare yourself for the facts
without any red fire, calcium or grace notes on the saxophone.

"On the night that His Fly-by-night Excellency arrived in town I
was very drunk. You will excuse the pride with which I state that
fact; but it was quite a feat for me to attain that desirable state.
Somebody had left a cot out under the orange trees in the yard of
Madama Ortiz's hotel. I stepped over the wall, laid down upon it, and
fell asleep. I was awakened by an orange that dropped from the tree
upon my nose; and I laid there for awhile cursing Sir Isaac Newton,
or whoever it was that invented gravitation, for not confining his
theory to apples.

"And then along came Mr. Miraflores and his true-love with the
treasury in a valise, and went into the hotel. Next you hove in
sight, and held a pow-wow with the tonsorial artist who insisted upon
talking shop after hours. I tried to slumber again; but once more my
rest was disturbed--this time by the noise of the popgun that went
off upstairs. Then that valise came crashing down into an orange
tree just above my head; and I arose from my couch, not knowing
when it might begin to rain Saratoga trunks. When the army and the
constabulary began to arrive, with their medals and decorations
hastily pinned to their pajamas, and their snickersnees drawn, I
crawled into the welcome shadow of a banana plant. I remained there
for an hour, by which time the excitement and the people had cleared
away. And then, my dear Goodwin--excuse me--I saw you sneak back and
pluck that ripe and juicy valise from the orange tree. I followed
you, and saw you take it to your own house. A hundred-thousand-dollar
crop from one orange tree in a season about breaks the record of the
fruit-growing industry.

"Being a gentleman at that time, of course, I never mentioned the
incident to anyone. But this morning I was kicked out of a saloon,
my code of honour is all out at the elbows, and I'd sell my mother's
prayer-book for three fingers of _aguardiente_. I'm not putting on
the screws hard. It ought to be worth a thousand to you for me to
have slept on that cot through the whole business without waking up
and seeing anything."

Goodwin opened two more letters, and made memoranda in pencil on
them. Then he called "Manuel!" to his secretary, who came, spryly.

"The _Ariel_--when does she sail?" asked Goodwin.

"Señor," answered the youth, "at three this afternoon. She drops
down-coast to Punta Soledad to complete her cargo of fruit. From
there she sails for New Orleans without delay."

"_Bueno!_" said Goodwin. "These letters may wait yet awhile."

The secretary returned to his cigarette under the mango tree.

"In round numbers," said Goodwin, facing Blythe squarely, "how much
money do you owe in this town, not including the sums you have
'borrowed' from me?"

"Five hundred--at a rough guess," answered Blythe, lightly.

"Go somewhere in the town and draw up a schedule of your debts," said
Goodwin. "Come back here in two hours, and I will send Manuel with
the money to pay them. I will also have a decent outfit of clothing
ready for you. You will sail on the _Ariel_ at three. Manuel will
accompany you as far as the deck of the steamer. There he will hand
you one thousand dollars in cash. I suppose that we needn't discuss
what you will be expected to do in return."

"Oh, I understand," piped Blythe, cheerily. "I was asleep all the
time on the cot under Madama Ortiz's orange trees; and I shake off
the dust of Coralio forever. I'll play fair. No more of the lotus
for me. Your proposition is O. K. You're a good fellow, Goodwin;
and I let you off light. I'll agree to everything. But in the
meantime--I've a devil of a thirst on, old man--"

"Not a _centavo_," said Goodwin, firmly, "until you are on board the
_Ariel_. You would be drunk in thirty minutes if you had money now."

But he noticed the blood-streaked eyeballs, the relaxed form and the
shaking hands of "Beelzebub;" and he stepped into the dining room
through the low window, and brought out a glass and a decanter of
brandy.

"Take a bracer, anyway, before you go," he proposed, even as a man to
the friend whom he entertains.

"Beelzebub" Blythe's eyes glistened at the sight of the solace for
which his soul burned. To-day for the first time his poisoned nerves
had been denied their steadying dose; and their retort was a mounting
torment. He grasped the decanter and rattled its crystal mouth
against the glass in his trembling hand. He flushed the glass, and
then stood erect, holding it aloft for an instant. For one fleeting
moment he held his head above the drowning waves of his abyss. He
nodded easily at Goodwin, raised his brimming glass and murmured a
"health" that men had used in his ancient Paradise Lost. And then so
suddenly that he spilled the brandy over his hand, he set down his
glass, untasted.

"In two hours," his dry lips muttered to Goodwin, as he marched down
the steps and turned his face toward the town.

In the edge of the cool banana grove "Beelzebub" halted, and snapped
the tongue of his belt buckle into another hole.

"I couldn't do it," he explained, feverishly, to the waving banana
fronds. "I wanted to, but I couldn't. A gentleman can't drink with
the man that he blackmails."



XII

SHOES


John De Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower.
The tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his
work, which was to try to forget Rosine.

Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a
sauce _au diable_ that goes with it; and the distillers are the chefs
who prepare it. And on Johnny's menu card it read "brandy." With a
bottle between them, he and Billy Keogh would sit on the porch of the
little consulate at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until
the natives, slipping hastily past, would shrug a shoulder and mutter
things to themselves about the "_Americanos diablos_."

One day Johnny's _mozo_ brought the mail and dumped it on the table.
Johnny leaned from his hammock, and fingered the four or five
letters dejectedly. Keogh was sitting on the edge of the table
chopping lazily with a paper knife at the legs of a centipede that
was crawling among the stationery. Johnny was in that phase of
lotus-eating when all the world tastes bitter in one's mouth.

"Same old thing!" he complained. "Fool people writing for information
about the country. They want to know all about raising fruit, and how
to make a fortune without work. Half of 'em don't even send stamps
for a reply. They think a consul hasn't anything to do but write
letters. Slit those envelopes for me, old man, and see what they
want. I'm feeling too rocky to move."

Keogh, acclimated beyond all possibility of ill-humour, drew
his chair to the table with smiling compliance on his rose-pink
countenance, and began to slit open the letters. Four of them were
from citizens in various parts of the United States who seemed to
regard the consul at Coralio as a cyclopædia of information. They
asked long lists of questions, numerically arranged, about the
climate, products, possibilities, laws, business chances, and
statistics of the country in which the consul had the honour of
representing his own government.

"Write 'em, please, Billy," said that inert official, "just a line,
referring them to the latest consular report. Tell 'em the State
Department will be delighted to furnish the literary gems. Sign my
name. Don't let your pen scratch, Billy; it'll keep me awake."

"Don't snore," said Keogh, amiably, "and I'll do your work for you.
You need a corps of assistants, anyhow. Don't see how you ever get
out a report. Wake up a minute!--here's one more letter--it's from
your own town, too--Dalesburg."

"That so?" murmured Johnny showing a mild and obligatory interest.
"What's it about?"

"Postmaster writes," explained Keogh. "Says a citizen of the town
wants some facts and advice from you. Says the citizen has an idea in
his head of coming down where you are and opening a shoe store. Wants
to know if you think the business would pay. Says he's heard of the
boom along this coast, and wants to get in on the ground floor."

In spite of the heat and his bad temper, Johnny's hammock swayed
with his laughter. Keogh laughed too; and the pet monkey on the top
shelf of the bookcase chattered in shrill sympathy with the ironical
reception of the letter from Dalesburg.

"Great bunions!" exclaimed the consul. "Shoe store! What'll they ask
about next, I wonder? Overcoat factory, I reckon. Say, Billy--of our
3,000 citizens, how many do you suppose ever had on a pair of shoes?"

Keogh reflected judicially.

"Let's see--there's you and me and--"

"Not me," said Johnny, promptly and incorrectly, holding up a foot
encased in a disreputable deerskin _zapato_. "I haven't been a victim
to shoes in months."

"But you've got 'em, though," went on Keogh. "And there's Goodwin
and Blanchard and Geddie and old Lutz and Doc Gregg and that Italian
that's agent for the banana company, and there's old Delgado--no;
he wears sandals. And, oh, yes; there's Madama Ortiz, 'what kapes
the hotel'--she had on a pair of red slippers at the _baile_ the
other night. And Miss Pasa, her daughter, that went to school in
the States--she brought back some civilized notions in the way of
footgear. And there's the _comandante's_ sister that dresses up her
feet on feast-days--and Mrs. Geddie, who wears a two with a Castilian
instep--and that's about all the ladies. Let's see--don't some of the
soldiers at the _cuartel_--no: that's so; they're allowed shoes only
when on the march. In barracks they turn their little toeses out to
grass."

"'Bout right," agreed the consul. "Not over twenty out of the three
thousand ever felt leather on their walking arrangements. Oh, yes;
Coralio is just the town for an enterprising shoe store--that doesn't
want to part with its goods. Wonder if old Patterson is trying to
jolly me! He always was full of things he called jokes. Write him a
letter, Billy. I'll dictate it. We'll jolly him back a few."

Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny's dictation. With many
pauses, filled in with smoke and sundry travellings of the bottle
and glasses, the following reply to the Dalesburg communication was
perpetrated:


   MR. OBADIAH PATTERSON,
   Dalesburg, Ala.

   _Dear Sir:_ In reply to your favour of July 2d, I have the
   honour to inform you that, according to my opinion, there
   is no place on the habitable globe that presents to the eye
   stronger evidence of the need of a first-class shoe store
   than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 inhabitants
   in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation
   speaks for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal
   of enterprising business men, but the shoe business is one
   that has been sadly overlooked or neglected. In fact, there
   are a considerable number of our citizens actually without
   shoes at present.

   Besides the want above mentioned, there is also a crying
   need for a brewery, a college of higher mathematics, a coal
   yard, and a clean and intellectual Punch and Judy show. I
   have the honour to be, sir,

   Your Obt. Servant,

   JOHN DE GRAFFENREID ATWOOD,
   U. S. Consul at Coralio.

   P.S.--Hello! Uncle Obadiah. How's the old burg racking
   along? What would the government do without you and me?
   Look out for a green-headed parrot and a bunch of bananas
   soon, from your old friend

   JOHNNY.


"I throw in that postscript," explained the consul, "so Uncle Obadiah
won't take offence at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy,
you get that correspondence fixed up, and send Pancho to the
post-office with it. The _Ariadne_ takes the mail out to-morrow if
they make up that load of fruit to-day."

The night programme in Coralio never varied. The recreations of the
people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and
aimless, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking
down on the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading maze
of brunette ghosts tangled with a procession of insane fireflies.
In some houses the thrumming of lugubrious guitars added to the
depression of the _triste_ night. Giant tree-frogs rattled in the
foliage as loudly as the end man's "bones" in a minstrel troupe. By
nine o'clock the streets were almost deserted.

Nor at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh would
come there nightly, for Coralio's one cool place was the little
seaward porch of that official residence.

The brandy would be kept moving; and before midnight sentiment would
begin to stir in the heart of the self-exiled consul. Then he would
relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh
would listen patiently to the tale, and be ready with untiring
sympathy.

"But don't you think for a minute"--thus Johnny would always conclude
his woeful narrative--"that I'm grieving about that girl, Billy. I've
forgotten her. She never enters my mind. If she were to enter that
door right now, my pulse wouldn't gain a beat. That's all over long
ago."

"Don't I know it?" Keogh would answer. "Of course you've forgotten
her. Proper thing to do. Wasn't quite O. K. of her to listen to the
knocks that--er--Dink Pawson kept giving you."

"Pink Dawson!"--a world of contempt would be in Johnny's tones--"Poor
white trash! That's what he was. Had five hundred acres of farming
land, though; and that counted. Maybe I'll have a chance to get back
at him some day. The Dawsons weren't anybody. Everybody in Alabama
knows the Atwoods. Say, Billy--did you know my mother was a De
Graffenreid?"

"Why, no," Keogh would say; "is that so?" He had heard it some three
hundred times.

"Fact. The De Graffenreids of Hancock County. But I never think of
that girl any more, do I, Billy?"

"Not for a minute, my boy," would be the last sounds heard by the
conqueror of Cupid.

At this point Johnny would fall into a gentle slumber, and Keogh
would saunter out to his own shack under the calabash tree at the
edge of the plaza.

In a day or two the letter from the Dalesburg postmaster and its
answer had been forgotten by the Coralio exiles. But on the 26th day
of July the fruit of the reply appeared upon the tree of events.

The _Andador_, a fruit steamer that visited Coralio regularly, drew
into the offing and anchored. The beach was lined with spectators
while the quarantine doctor and the custom-house crew rowed out to
attend to their duties.

An hour later Billy Keogh lounged into the consulate, clean and cool
in his linen clothes, and grinning like a pleased shark.

"Guess what?" he said to Johnny, lounging in his hammock.

"Too hot to guess," said Johnny, lazily.

"Your shoe-store man's come," said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on
his tongue, "with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent
as far down as Terra del Fuego. They're carting his cases over to
the custom-house now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have
paddled back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won't there
be regalements in the air when he gets onto the joke and has an
interview with Mr. Consul? It'll be worth nine years in the tropics
just to witness that one joyful moment."

Keogh loved to take his mirth easily. He selected a clean place
on the matting and lay upon the floor. The walls shook with his
enjoyment. Johnny turned half over and blinked.

"Don't tell me," he said, "that anybody was fool enough to take that
letter seriously."

"Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!" gasped Keogh, in ecstasy.
"Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn't he take a ship-load of
palm-leaf fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old
codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his
specs and squinted at the five hundred or so barefooted citizens
standing around."

"Are you telling the truth, Billy?" asked the consul, weakly.

"Am I? You ought to see the buncoed gentleman's daughter he brought
along. Looks! She makes the brick-dust señoritas here look like
tar-babies."

"Go on," said Johnny, "if you can stop that asinine giggling. I hate
to see a grown man make a laughing hyena of himself."

"Name is Hemstetter," went on Keogh. "He's a-- Hello! what's the
matter now?"

Johnny's moccasined feet struck the floor with a thud as he wriggled
out of his hammock.

"Get up, you idiot," he said, sternly, "or I'll brain you with this
inkstand. That's Rosine and her father. Gad! what a drivelling idiot
old Patterson is! Get up, here, Billy Keogh, and help me. What the
devil are we going to do? Has all the world gone crazy?"

Keogh rose and dusted himself. He managed to regain a decorous
demeanour.

"Situation has got to be met, Johnny," he said, with some success
at seriousness. "I didn't think about its being your girl until you
spoke. First thing to do is to get them comfortable quarters. You go
down and face the music, and I'll trot out to Goodwin's and see if
Mrs. Goodwin won't take them in. They've got the decentest house in
town."

"Bless you, Billy!" said the consul. "I knew you wouldn't desert me.
The world's bound to come to an end, but maybe we can stave it off
for a day or two."

Keogh hoisted his umbrella and set out for Goodwin's house. Johnny
put on his coat and hat. He picked up the brandy bottle, but set it
down again without drinking, and marched bravely down to the beach.

In the shade of the custom-house walls he found Mr. Hemstetter and
Rosine surrounded by a mass of gaping citizens. The customs officers
were ducking and scraping, while the captain of the _Andador_
interpreted the business of the new arrivals. Rosine looked healthy
and very much alive. She was gazing at the strange scenes around her
with amused interest. There was a faint blush upon her round cheek as
she greeted her old admirer. Mr. Hemstetter shook hands with Johnny
in a very friendly way. He was an oldish, impractical man--one
of that numerous class of erratic business men who are forever
dissatisfied, and seeking a change.

"I am very glad to see you, John--may I call you John?" he said. "Let
me thank you for your prompt answer to our postmaster's letter of
inquiry. He volunteered to write to you on my behalf. I was looking
about for something different in the way of a business in which the
profits would be greater. I had noticed in the papers that this coast
was receiving much attention from investors. I am extremely grateful
for your advice to come. I sold out everything that I possess, and
invested the proceeds in as fine a stock of shoes as could be bought
in the North. You have a picturesque town here, John. I hope business
will be as good as your letter justifies me in expecting."

Johnny's agony was abbreviated by the arrival of Keogh, who hurried
up with the news that Mrs. Goodwin would be much pleased to place
rooms at the disposal of Mr. Hemstetter and his daughter. So there
Mr. Hemstetter and Rosine were at once conducted and left to
recuperate from the fatigue of the voyage, while Johnny went down
to see that the cases of shoes were safely stored in the customs
warehouse pending their examination by the officials. Keogh, grinning
like a shark, skirmished about to find Goodwin, to instruct him not
to expose to Mr. Hemstetter the true state of Coralio as a shoe
market until Johnny had been given a chance to redeem the situation,
if such a thing were possible.

That night the consul and Keogh held a desperate consultation on the
breezy porch of the consulate.

"Send 'em back home," began Keogh, reading Johnny's thoughts.

"I would," said Johnny, after a little silence; "but I've been lying
to you, Billy."

"All right about that," said Keogh, affably.

"I've told you hundreds of times," said Johnny, slowly, "that I had
forgotten that girl, haven't I?"

"About three hundred and seventy-five," admitted the monument of
patience.

"I lied," repeated the consul, "every time. I never forgot her for
one minute. I was an obstinate ass for running away just because she
said 'No' once. And I was too proud a fool to go back. I talked with
Rosine a few minutes this evening up at Goodwin's. I found out one
thing. You remember that farmer fellow who was always after her?"

"Dink Pawson?" asked Keogh.

"Pink Dawson. Well, he wasn't a hill of beans to her. She says she
didn't believe a word of the things he told her about me. But I'm
sewed up now, Billy. That tomfool letter we sent ruined whatever
chance I had left. She'll despise me when she finds out that her old
father has been made the victim of a joke that a decent school boy
wouldn't have been guilty of. Shoes! Why he couldn't sell twenty
pairs of shoes in Coralio if he kept store here for twenty years. You
put a pair of shoes on one of these Caribs or Spanish brown boys and
what'd he do? Stand on his head and squeal until he'd kicked 'em off.
None of 'em ever wore shoes and they never will. If I send 'em back
home I'll have to tell the whole story, and what'll she think of
me? I want that girl worse than ever, Billy, and now when she's in
reach I've lost her forever because I tried to be funny when the
thermometer was at 102."

"Keep cheerful," said the optimistic Keogh. "And let 'em open the
store. I've been busy myself this afternoon. We can stir up a
temporary boom in foot-gear anyhow. I'll buy six pairs when the doors
open. I've been around and seen all the fellows and explained the
catastrophe. They'll all buy shoes like they was centipedes. Frank
Goodwin will take cases of 'em. The Geddies want about eleven pairs
between 'em. Clancy is going to invest the savings of weeks, and even
old Doc Gregg wants three pairs of alligator-hide slippers if they've
got any tens. Blanchard got a look at Miss Hemstetter; and as he's a
Frenchman, no less than a dozen pairs will do for him."

"A dozen customers," said Johnny, "for a $4,000 stock of shoes! It
won't work. There's a big problem here to figure out. You go home,
Billy, and leave me alone. I've got to work at it all by myself. Take
that bottle of Three-star along with you--no, sir; not another ounce
of booze for the United States consul. I'll sit here to-night and
pull out the think stop. If there's a soft place on this proposition
anywhere I'll land on it. If there isn't there'll be another wreck to
the credit of the gorgeous tropics."

Keogh left, feeling that he could be of no use. Johnny laid a handful
of cigars on a table and stretched himself in a steamer chair. When
the sudden daylight broke, silvering the harbour ripples, he was
still sitting there. Then he got up, whistling a little tune, and
took his bath.

At nine o'clock he walked down to the dingy little cable office and
hung for half an hour over a blank. The result of his application was
the following message, which he signed and had transmitted at a cost
of $33:


   TO PINKNEY DAWSON,
   Dalesburg, Ala.

   Draft for $100 comes to you next mail. Ship me immediately
   500 pounds stiff, dry cockleburrs. New use here in arts.
   Market price twenty cents pound. Further orders likely.
   Rush.



XIII

SHIPS


Within a week a suitable building had been secured in the Calle
Grande, and Mr. Hemstetter's stock of shoes arranged upon their
shelves. The rent of the store was moderate; and the stock made a
fine showing of neat white boxes, attractively displayed.

Johnny's friends stood by him loyally. On the first day Keogh
strolled into the store in a casual kind of way about once every
hour, and bought shoes. After he had purchased a pair each of
extension soles, congress gaiters, button kids, low-quartered calfs,
dancing pumps, rubber boots, tans of various hues, tennis shoes and
flowered slippers, he sought out Johnny to be prompted as to names
of other kinds that he might inquire for. The other English-speaking
residents also played their parts nobly by buying often and
liberally. Keogh was grand marshal, and made them distribute their
patronage, thus keeping up a fair run of custom for several days.

Mr. Hemstetter was gratified by the amount of business done thus far;
but expressed surprise that the natives were so backward with their
custom.

"Oh, they're awfully shy," explained Johnny, as he wiped his forehead
nervously. "They'll get the habit pretty soon. They'll come with a
rush when they do come."

One afternoon Keogh dropped into the consul's office, chewing an
unlighted cigar thoughtfully.

"Got anything up your sleeve?" he inquired of Johnny. "If you have
it's about time to show it. If you can borrow some gent's hat in the
audience, and make a lot of customers for an idle stock of shoes
come out of it, you'd better spiel. The boys have all laid in enough
footwear to last 'em ten years; and there's nothing doing in the shoe
store but dolcy far nienty. I just came by there. Your venerable
victim was standing in the door, gazing through his specs at the
bare toes passing by his emporium. The natives here have got the
true artistic temperament. Me and Clancy took eighteen tintypes this
morning in two hours. There's been but one pair of shoes sold all
day. Blanchard went in and bought a pair of fur-lined house-slippers
because he thought he saw Miss Hemstetter go into the store. I saw
him throw the slippers into the lagoon afterwards."

"There's a Mobile fruit steamer coming in to-morrow or next day,"
said Johnny. "We can't do anything until then."

"What are you going to do--try to create a demand?"

"Political economy isn't your strong point," said the consul,
impudently. "You can't create a demand. But you can create a
necessity for a demand. That's what I am going to do."

Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer brought
him a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny's
influence with the custom-house people was sufficiently strong for
him to get the goods turned over to him without the usual inspection.
He had the bale taken to the consulate and snugly stowed in the back
room.

That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handful of
the cockleburrs. He examined them with the care with which a warrior
examines his arms before he goes forth to battle for his lady-love
and life. The burrs were the ripe August product, as hard as
filberts, and bristling with spines as tough and sharp as needles.
Johnny whistled softly a little tune, and went out to find Billy
Keogh.

Later in the night, when Coralio was steeped in slumber, he and Billy
went forth into the deserted streets with their coats bulging like
balloons. All up and down the Calle Grande they went, sowing the
sharp burrs carefully in the sand, along the narrow sidewalks, in
every foot of grass between the silent houses. And then they took the
side streets and by-ways, missing none. No place where the foot of
man, woman or child might fall was slighted. Many trips they made to
and from the prickly hoard. And then, nearly at the dawn, they laid
themselves down to rest calmly, as great generals do after planning
a victory according to the revised tactics, and slept, knowing that
they had sowed with the accuracy of Satan sowing tares and the
perseverance of Paul planting.

With the rising sun came the purveyors of fruits and meats, and
arranged their wares in and around the little market-house. At one
end of the town near the seashore the market-house stood; and the
sowing of the burrs had not been carried that far. The dealers waited
long past the hour when their sales usually began. None came to buy.
"_Qué hay?_" they began to exclaim, one to another.

At their accustomed time, from every 'dobe and palm hut and
grass-thatched shack and dim _patio_ glided women--black women, brown
women, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and tawny. They
were the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava,
plantains, meat, fowls, and tortillas. Décolleté they were and
bare-armed and bare-footed, with a single skirt reaching below the
knee. Stolid and ox-eyed, they stepped from their doorways into the
narrow paths or upon the soft grass of the streets.

The first to emerge uttered ambiguous squeals, and raised one foot
quickly. Another step and they sat down, with shrill cries of alarm,
to pick at the new and painful insects that had stung them upon the
feet. "_Qué picadores diablos!_" they screeched to one another across
the narrow ways. Some tried the grass instead of the paths, but there
they were also stung and bitten by the strange little prickly balls.
They plumped down in the grass, and added their lamentations to those
of their sisters in the sandy paths. All through the town was heard
the plaint of the feminine jabber. The venders in the market still
wondered why no customers came.

Then men, lords of the earth, came forth. They, too, began to hop,
to dance, to limp, and to curse. They stood stranded and foolish, or
stooped to pluck at the scourge that attacked their feet and ankles.
Some loudly proclaimed the pest to be poisonous spiders of an unknown
species.

And then the children ran out for their morning romp. And now to
the uproar was added the howls of limping infants and cockleburred
childhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth fresh
victims.

Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her
honoured doorway, as was her daily custom, to procure fresh bread
from the _panaderia_ across the street. She was clad in a skirt of
flowered yellow satin, a chemise of ruffled linen, and wore a purple
mantilla from the looms of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, alas! were
bare. Her progress was majestic, for were not her ancestors hidalgos
of Aragon? Three steps she made across the velvety grass, and
set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny's burrs. Doña
Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even
as a wild-cat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and
crawled--ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her
honourable door-sill.

Don Señor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, _Juez de la Paz_, weighing
twenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the _pulperia_ at
the corner of the plaza in order to assuage his matutinal thirst.
The first plunge of his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a
concealed mine. Don Ildefonso fell like a crumpled cathedral, crying
out that he had been fatally bitten by a deadly scorpion. Everywhere
were the shoeless citizens hopping, stumbling, limping, and picking
from their feet the venomous insects that had come in a single night
to harass them.

The first to perceive the remedy was Estebán Delgado, the barber, a
man of travel and education. Sitting upon a stone, he plucked burrs
from his toes, and made oration:

"Behold, my friends, these bugs of the devil! I know them well. They
soar through the skies in swarms like pigeons. These are the dead
ones that fell during the night. In Yucatan I have seen them as large
as oranges. Yes! There they hiss like serpents, and have wings like
bats. It is the shoes--the shoes that one needs! _Zapatos--zapatos
para mi!_"

Estebán hobbled to Mr. Hemstetter's store, and bought shoes. Coming
out, he swaggered down the street with impunity, reviling loudly the
bugs of the devil. The suffering ones sat up or stood upon one foot
and beheld the immune barber. Men, women and children took up the
cry: "_Zapatos! zapatos!_"

The necessity for the demand had been created. The demand followed.
That day Mr. Hemstetter sold three hundred pairs of shoes.

"It is really surprising," he said to Johnny, who came up in the
evening to help him straighten out the stock, "how trade is picking
up. Yesterday I made but three sales."

"I told you they'd whoop things up when they got started," said the
consul.

"I think I shall order a dozen more cases of goods, to keep the stock
up," said Mr. Hemstetter, beaming through his spectacles.

"I wouldn't send in any orders yet," advised Johnny. "Wait till you
see how the trade holds up."

Each night Johnny and Keogh sowed the crop that grew dollars by day.
At the end of ten days two-thirds of the stock of shoes had been
sold; and the stock of cockleburrs was exhausted. Johnny cabled to
Pink Dawson for another 500 pounds, paying twenty cents per pound as
before. Mr. Hemstetter carefully made up an order for $1500 worth of
shoes from Northern firms. Johnny hung about the store until this
order was ready for the mail, and succeeded in destroying it before
it reached the postoffice.

That night he took Rosine under the mango tree by Goodwin's porch,
and confessed everything. She looked him in the eye, and said: "You
are a very wicked man. Father and I will go back home. You say it was
a joke? I think it is a very serious matter."

But at the end of half an hour's argument the conversation had
been turned upon a different subject. The two were considering the
respective merits of pale blue and pink wall paper with which the
old colonial mansion of the Atwoods in Dalesburg was to be decorated
after the wedding.

On the next morning Johnny confessed to Mr. Hemstetter. The shoe
merchant put on his spectacles, and said through them: "You strike me
as being a most extraordinary young scamp. If I had not managed this
enterprise with good business judgment my entire stock of goods might
have been a complete loss. Now, how do you propose to dispose of the
rest of it?"

When the second invoice of cockleburrs arrived Johnny loaded them and
the remainder of the shoes into a schooner, and sailed down the coast
to Alazan.

There, in the same dark and diabolical manner, he repeated his
success; and came back with a bag of money and not so much as a
shoestring.

And then he besought his great Uncle of the waving goatee and starred
vest to accept his resignation, for the lotus no longer lured him. He
hankered for the spinach and cress of Dalesburg.

The services of Mr. William Terence Keogh as acting consul, _pro
tem._, were suggested and accepted, and Johnny sailed with the
Hemstetters back to his native shores.

Keogh slipped into the sinecure of the American consulship with
the ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintype
establishment was soon to become a thing of the past, although its
deadly work along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was never
effaced. The restless partners were about to be off again, scouting
ahead of the slow ranks of Fortune. But now they would take different
ways. There were rumours of a promising uprising in Peru; and thither
the martial Clancy would turn his adventurous steps. As for Keogh, he
was figuring in his mind and on quires of Government letter-heads a
scheme that dwarfed the art of misrepresenting the human countenance
upon tin.

"What suits me," Keogh used to say, "in the way of a business
proposition is something diversified that looks like a longer shot
than it is--something in the way of a genteel graft that isn't worked
enough for the correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail. I
take the long end; but I like to have at least as good a chance to
win as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer, or running
for governor of Texas on the Republican ticket. And when I cash in my
winnings, I don't want to find any widows' and orphans' chips in my
stack."

The grass-grown globe was the green table on which Keogh gambled. The
games he played were of his own invention. He was no grubber after
the diffident dollar. Nor did he care to follow it with horn and
hounds. Rather he loved to coax it with egregious and brilliant flies
from its habitat in the waters of strange streams. Yet Keogh was a
business man; and his schemes, in spite of their singularity, were as
solidly set as the plans of a building contractor. In Arthur's time
Sir William Keogh would have been a Knight of the Round Table. In
these modern days he rides abroad, seeking the Graft instead of the
Grail.

Three days after Johnny's departure, two small schooners appeared
off Coralio. After some delay a boat put off from one of them, and
brought a sunburned young man ashore. This young man had a shrewd and
calculating eye; and he gazed with amazement at the strange things
that he saw. He found on the beach some one who directed him to the
consul's office; and thither he made his way at a nervous gait.

Keogh was sprawled in the official chair, drawing caricatures of
his Uncle's head on an official pad of paper. He looked up at his
visitor.

"Where's Johnny Atwood?" inquired the sunburned young man, in a
business tone.

"Gone," said Keogh, working carefully at Uncle Sam's necktie.

"That's just like him," remarked the nut-brown one, leaning against
the table. "He always was a fellow to gallivant around instead of
'tending to business. Will he be in soon?"

"Don't think so," said Keogh, after a fair amount of deliberation.

"I s'pose he's out at some of his tomfoolery," conjectured the
visitor, in a tone of virtuous conviction. "Johnny never would stick
to anything long enough to succeed. I wonder how he manages to run
his business here, and never be 'round to look after it."

"I'm looking after the business just now," admitted the _pro tem._
consul.

"Are you--then, say!--where's the factory?"

"What factory?" asked Keogh, with a mildly polite interest.

"Why, the factory where they use them cockleburrs. Lord knows what
they use 'em for, anyway! I've got the basements of both them ships
out there loaded with 'em. I'll give you a bargain in this lot. I've
had every man, woman and child around Dalesburg that wasn't busy
pickin' 'em for a month. I hired these ships to bring 'em over.
Everybody thought I was crazy. Now, you can have this lot for fifteen
cents a pound, delivered on land. And if you want more I guess old
Alabam' can come up to the demand. Johnny told me when he left home
that if he struck anything down here that there was any money in he'd
let me in on it. Shall I drive the ships in and hitch?"

A look of supreme, almost incredulous, delight dawned in Keogh's
ruddy countenance. He dropped his pencil. His eyes turned upon the
sunburned young man with joy in them mingled with fear lest his
ecstasy should prove a dream.

"For God's sake, tell me," said Keogh, earnestly, "are you Dink
Pawson?"

"My name is Pinkney Dawson," said the cornerer of the cockleburr
market.

Billy Keogh slid rapturously and gently from his chair to his
favourite strip of matting on the floor.

There were not many sounds in Coralio on that sultry afternoon.
Among those that were may be mentioned a noise of enraptured and
unrighteous laughter from a prostrate Irish-American, while a
sunburned young man, with a shrewd eye, looked on him with wonder and
amazement. Also the "tramp, tramp, tramp" of many well-shod feet in
the streets outside. Also the lonesome wash of the waves that beat
along the historic shores of the Spanish Main.



XIV

MASTERS OF ARTS


A two-inch stub of a blue pencil was the wand with which Keogh
performed the preliminary acts of his magic. So, with this he covered
paper with diagrams and figures while he waited for the United States
of America to send down to Coralio a successor to Atwood, resigned.

The new scheme that his mind had conceived, his stout heart indorsed,
and his blue pencil corroborated, was laid around the characteristics
and human frailties of the new president of Anchuria. These
characteristics, and the situation out of which Keogh hoped to wrest
a golden tribute, deserve chronicling contributive to the clear order
of events.

President Losada--many called him Dictator--was a man whose genius
would have made him conspicuous even among Anglo-Saxons, had not
that genius been intermixed with other traits that were petty and
subversive. He had some of the lofty patriotism of Washington (the
man he most admired), the force of Napoleon, and much of the wisdom
of the sages. These characteristics might have justified him in the
assumption of the title of "The Illustrious Liberator," had they not
been accompanied by a stupendous and amazing vanity that kept him in
the less worthy ranks of the dictators.

Yet he did his country great service. With a mighty grasp he shook it
nearly free from the shackles of ignorance and sloth and the vermin
that fed upon it, and all but made it a power in the council of
nations. He established schools and hospitals, built roads, bridges,
railroads and palaces, and bestowed generous subsidies upon the arts
and sciences. He was the absolute despot and the idol of his people.
The wealth of the country poured into his hands. Other presidents had
been rapacious without reason. Losada amassed enormous wealth, but
his people had their share of the benefits.

The joint in his armour was his insatiate passion for monuments and
tokens commemorating his glory. In every town he caused to be erected
statues of himself bearing legends in praise of his greatness. In
the walls of every public edifice, tablets were fixed reciting his
splendour and the gratitude of his subjects. His statuettes and
portraits were scattered throughout the land in every house and hut.
One of the sycophants in his court painted him as St. John, with a
halo and a train of attendants in full uniform. Losada saw nothing
incongruous in this picture, and had it hung in a church in the
capital. He ordered from a French sculptor a marble group including
himself with Napoleon, Alexander the Great, and one or two others
whom he deemed worthy of the honour.

He ransacked Europe for decorations, employing policy, money and
intrigue to cajole the orders he coveted from kings and rulers. On
state occasions his breast was covered from shoulder to shoulder with
crosses, stars, golden roses, medals and ribbons. It was said that
the man who could contrive for him a new decoration, or invent some
new method of extolling his greatness, might plunge a hand deep into
the treasury.

This was the man upon whom Billy Keogh had his eye. The gentle
buccaneer had observed the rain of favors that fell upon those who
ministered to the president's vanities, and he did not deem it his
duty to hoist his umbrella against the scattering drops of liquid
fortune.

In a few weeks the new consul arrived, releasing Keogh from his
temporary duties. He was a young man fresh from college, who lived
for botany alone. The consulate at Coralio gave him the opportunity
to study tropical flora. He wore smoked glasses, and carried a green
umbrella. He filled the cool, back porch of the consulate with plants
and specimens so that space for a bottle and chair was not to be
found. Keogh gazed on him sadly, but without rancour, and began to
pack his gripsack. For his new plot against stagnation along the
Spanish Main required of him a voyage overseas.

Soon came the _Karlsefin_ again--she of the trampish habits--gleaning
a cargo of cocoanuts for a speculative descent upon the New York
market. Keogh was booked for a passage on the return trip.

"Yes, I'm going to New York," he explained to the group of his
countrymen that had gathered on the beach to see him off. "But I'll
be back before you miss me. I've undertaken the art education of this
piebald country, and I'm not the man to desert it while it's in the
early throes of tintypes."

With this mysterious declaration of his intentions Keogh boarded the
_Karlsefin_.

Ten days later, shivering, with the collar of his thin coat turned
high, he burst into the studio of Carolus White at the top of a tall
building in Tenth Street, New York City.

Carolus White was smoking a cigarette and frying sausages over an oil
stove. He was only twenty-three, and had noble theories about art.

"Billy Keogh!" exclaimed White, extending the hand that was not busy
with the frying pan. "From what part of the uncivilized world, I
wonder!"

"Hello, Carry," said Keogh, dragging forward a stool, and holding his
fingers close to the stove. "I'm glad I found you so soon. I've been
looking for you all day in the directories and art galleries. The
free-lunch man on the corner told me where you were, quick. I was
sure you'd be painting pictures yet."

Keogh glanced about the studio with the shrewd eye of a connoisseur
in business.

"Yes, you can do it," he declared, with many gentle nods of his head.
"That big one in the corner with the angels and green clouds and
band-wagon is just the sort of thing we want. What would you call
that, Carry--scene from Coney Island, ain't it?"

"That," said White, "I had intended to call 'The Translation of
Elijah,' but you may be nearer right than I am."

"Name doesn't matter," said Keogh, largely; "it's the frame and the
varieties of paint that does the trick. Now, I can tell you in a
minute what I want. I've come on a little voyage of two thousand
miles to take you in with me on a scheme. I thought of you as soon as
the scheme showed itself to me. How would you like to go back with
me and paint a picture? Ninety days for the trip, and five thousand
dollars for the job."

"Cereal food or hair-tonic posters?" asked White.

"It isn't an ad."

"What kind of a picture is it to be?"

"It's a long story," said Keogh.

"Go ahead with it. If you don't mind, while you talk I'll just keep
my eye on these sausages. Let 'em get one shade deeper than a Vandyke
brown and you spoil 'em."

Keogh explained his project. They were to return to Coralio, where
White was to pose as a distinguished American portrait painter who
was touring in the tropics as a relaxation from his arduous and
remunerative professional labours. It was not an unreasonable hope,
even to those who had trod in the beaten paths of business, that an
artist with so much prestige might secure a commission to perpetuate
upon canvas the lineaments of the president, and secure a share of
the _pesos_ that were raining upon the caterers to his weaknesses.

Keogh had set his price at ten thousand dollars. Artists had been
paid more for portraits. He and White were to share the expenses of
the trip, and divide the possible profits. Thus he laid the scheme
before White, whom he had known in the West before one declared for
Art and the other became a Bedouin.

Before long the two machinators abandoned the rigour of the bare
studio for a snug corner of a café. There they sat far into the
night, with old envelopes and Keogh's stub of blue pencil between
them.

At twelve o'clock White doubled up in his chair, with his chin on his
fist, and shut his eyes at the unbeautiful wall-paper.

"I'll go you, Billy," he said, in the quiet tones of decision. "I've
got two or three hundred saved up for sausages and rent; and I'll
take the chance with you. Five thousand! It will give me two years in
Paris and one in Italy. I'll begin to pack to-morrow."

"You'll begin in ten minutes," said Keogh. "It's to-morrow now. The
_Karlsefin_ starts back at four P.M. Come on to your painting shop,
and I'll help you."

For five months in the year Coralio is the Newport of Anchuria.
Then only does the town possess life. From November to March it is
practically the seat of government. The president with his official
family sojourns there; and society follows him. The pleasure-loving
people make the season one long holiday of amusement and rejoicing.
_Fiestas_, balls, games, sea bathing, processions and small theatres
contribute to their enjoyment. The famous Swiss band from the
capital plays in the little plaza every evening, while the fourteen
carriages and vehicles in the town circle in funereal but complacent
procession. Indians from the interior mountains, looking like
prehistoric stone idols, come down to peddle their handiwork in the
streets. The people throng the narrow ways, a chattering, happy,
careless stream of buoyant humanity. Preposterous children rigged out
with the shortest of ballet skirts and gilt wings, howl, underfoot,
among the effervescent crowds. Especially is the arrival of the
presidential party, at the opening of the season, attended with pomp,
show and patriotic demonstrations of enthusiasm and delight.

When Keogh and White reached their destination, on the return trip
of the _Karlsefin_, the gay winter season was well begun. As they
stepped upon the beach they could hear the band playing in the plaza.
The village maidens, with fireflies already fixed in their dark
locks, were gliding, barefoot and coy-eyed, along the paths. Dandies
in white linen, swinging their canes, were beginning their seductive
strolls. The air was full of human essence, of artificial enticement,
of coquetry, indolence, pleasure--the man-made sense of existence.

The first two or three days after their arrival were spent in
preliminaries. Keogh escorted the artist about town, introducing
him to the little circle of English-speaking residents and pulling
whatever wires he could to effect the spreading of White's fame as a
painter. And then Keogh planned a more spectacular demonstration of
the idea he wished to keep before the public.

He and White engaged rooms in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. The
two were clad in new suits of immaculate duck, with American straw
hats, and carried canes of remarkable uniqueness and inutility. Few
caballeros in Coralio--even the gorgeously uniformed officers of
the Anchurian army--were as conspicuous for ease and elegance of
demeanour as Keogh and his friend, the great American painter, Señor
White.

White set up his easel on the beach and made striking sketches of the
mountain and sea views. The native population formed at his rear in a
vast, chattering semicircle to watch his work. Keogh, with his care
for details, had arranged for himself a pose which he carried out
with fidelity. His rôle was that of friend to the great artist, a
man of affairs and leisure. The visible emblem of his position was a
pocket camera.

"For branding the man who owns it," said he, "a genteel dilettante
with a bank account and an easy conscience, a steam-yacht ain't in it
with a camera. You see a man doing nothing but loafing around making
snap-shots, and you know right away he reads up well in 'Bradstreet.'
You notice these old millionaire boys--soon as they get through
taking everything else in sight they go to taking photographs.
People are more impressed by a kodak than they are by a title or
a four-carat scarf-pin." So Keogh strolled blandly about Coralio,
snapping the scenery and the shrinking señoritas, while White posed
conspicuously in the higher regions of art.

Two weeks after their arrival, the scheme began to bear fruit.
An aide-de-camp of the president drove to the hotel in a dashing
victoria. The president desired that Señor White come to the Casa
Morena for an informal interview.

Keogh gripped his pipe tightly between his teeth. "Not a cent less
than ten thousand," he said to the artist--"remember the price.
And in gold or its equivalent--don't let him stick you with this
bargain-counter stuff they call money here."

"Perhaps it isn't that he wants," said White.

"Get out!" said Keogh, with splendid confidence. "I know what he
wants. He wants his picture painted by the celebrated young American
painter and filibuster now sojourning in his down-trodden country.
Off you go."

The victoria sped away with the artist. Keogh walked up and down,
puffing great clouds of smoke from his pipe, and waited. In an hour
the victoria swept again to the door of the hotel, deposited White,
and vanished. The artist dashed up the stairs, three at a step. Keogh
stopped smoking, and became a silent interrogation point.

"Landed," exclaimed White, with his boyish face flushed with elation.
"Billy, you are a wonder. He wants a picture. I'll tell you all about
it. By Heavens! that dictator chap is a corker! He's a dictator clear
down to his finger-ends. He's a kind of combination of Julius Cæsar,
Lucifer and Chauncey Depew done in sepia. Polite and grim--that's his
way. The room I saw him in was about ten acres big, and looked like
a Mississippi steamboat with its gilding and mirrors and white paint.
He talks English better than I can ever hope to. The matter of the
price came up. I mentioned ten thousand. I expected him to call the
guard and have me taken out and shot. He didn't move an eyelash. He
just waved one of his chestnut hands in a careless way, and said,
'Whatever you say.' I am to go back to-morrow and discuss with him
the details of the picture."

Keogh hung his head. Self-abasement was easy to read in his downcast
countenance.

"I'm failing, Carry," he said, sorrowfully. "I'm not fit to handle
these man's-size schemes any longer. Peddling oranges in a push-cart
is about the suitable graft for me. When I said ten thousand, I
swear I thought I had sized up that brown man's limit to within
two cents. He'd have melted down for fifteen thousand just as easy.
Say--Carry--you'll see old man Keogh safe in some nice, quiet idiot
asylum, won't you, if he makes a break like that again?"

The Casa Morena, although only one story in height, was a building of
brown stone, luxurious as a palace in its interior. It stood on a low
hill in a walled garden of splendid tropical flora at the upper edge
of Coralio. The next day the president's carriage came again for the
artist. Keogh went out for a walk along the beach, where he and his
"picture box" were now familiar sights. When he returned to the hotel
White was sitting in a steamer-chair on the balcony.

"Well," said Keogh, "did you and His Nibs decide on the kind of a
chromo he wants?"

White got up and walked back and forth on the balcony a few times.
Then he stopped, and laughed strangely. His face was flushed, and his
eyes were bright with a kind of angry amusement.

"Look here, Billy," he said, somewhat roughly, "when you first came
to me in my studio and mentioned a picture, I thought you wanted a
Smashed Oats or a Hair Tonic poster painted on a range of mountains
or the side of a continent. Well, either of those jobs would have
been Art in its highest form compared to the one you've steered me
against. I can't paint that picture, Billy. You've got to let me
out. Let me try to tell you what that barbarian wants. He had it
all planned out and even a sketch made of his idea. The old boy
doesn't draw badly at all. But, ye goddesses of Art! listen to the
monstrosity he expects me to paint. He wants himself in the centre
of the canvas, of course. He is to be painted as Jupiter sitting
on Olympus, with the clouds at his feet. At one side of him stands
George Washington, in full regimentals, with his hand on the
president's shoulder. An angel with outstretched wings hovers
overhead, and is placing a laurel wreath on the president's head,
crowning him--Queen of the May, I suppose. In the background is to
be cannon, more angels and soldiers. The man who would paint that
picture would have to have the soul of a dog, and would deserve to go
down into oblivion without even a tin can tied to his tail to sound
his memory."

Little beads of moisture crept out all over Billy Keogh's brow. The
stub of his blue pencil had not figured out a contingency like this.
The machinery of his plan had run with flattering smoothness until
now. He dragged another chair upon the balcony, and got White back to
his seat. He lit his pipe with apparent calm.

"Now, sonny," he said, with gentle grimness, "you and me will have
an Art to Art talk. You've got your art and I've got mine. Yours is
the real Pierian stuff that turns up its nose at bock-beer signs and
oleographs of the Old Mill. Mine's the art of Business. This was my
scheme, and it worked out like two-and-two. Paint that president man
as Old King Cole, or Venus, or a landscape, or a fresco, or a bunch
of lilies, or anything he thinks he looks like. But get the paint on
the canvas and collect the spoils. You wouldn't throw me down, Carry,
at this stage of the game. Think of that ten thousand."

"I can't help thinking of it," said White, "and that's what hurts.
I'm tempted to throw every ideal I ever had down in the mire, and
steep my soul in infamy by painting that picture. That five thousand
meant three years of foreign study to me, and I'd almost sell my soul
for that."

"Now it ain't as bad as that," said Keogh, soothingly. "It's a
business proposition. It's so much paint and time against money. I
don't fall in with your idea that that picture would so everlastingly
jolt the art side of the question. George Washington was all right,
you know, and nobody could say a word against the angel. I don't
think so bad of that group. If you was to give Jupiter a pair of
epaulets and a sword, and kind of work the clouds around to look
like a blackberry patch, it wouldn't make such a bad battle scene.
Why, if we hadn't already settled on the price, he ought to pay an
extra thousand for Washington, and the angel ought to raise it five
hundred."

"You don't understand, Billy," said White, with an uneasy laugh.
"Some of us fellows who try to paint have big notions about Art. I
wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and
forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like
a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet. And I wanted
'em to go away and ask, 'What else has he done?' And I didn't want
'em to find a thing; not a portrait nor a magazine cover nor an
illustration nor a drawing of a girl--nothing but _the_ picture.
That's why I've lived on fried sausages, and tried to keep true
to myself. I persuaded myself to do this portrait for the chance
it might give me to study abroad. But this howling, screaming
caricature! Good Lord! can't you see how it is?"

"Sure," said Keogh, as tenderly as he would have spoken to a child,
and he laid a long forefinger on White's knee. "I see. It's bad to
have your art all slugged up like that. I know. You wanted to paint a
big thing like the panorama of the battle of Gettysburg. But let me
kalsomine you a little mental sketch to consider. Up to date we're
out $385.50 on this scheme. Our capital took every cent both of us
could raise. We've got about enough left to get back to New York on.
I need my share of that ten thousand. I want to work a copper deal
in Idaho, and make a hundred thousand. That's the business end of
the thing. Come down off your art perch, Carry, and let's land that
hatful of dollars."

"Billy," said White, with an effort, "I'll try. I won't say I'll do
it, but I'll try. I'll go at it, and put it through if I can."

"That's business," said Keogh heartily. "Good boy! Now, here's
another thing--rush that picture--crowd it through as quick as you
can. Get a couple of boys to help you mix the paint if necessary.
I've picked up some pointers around town. The people here are
beginning to get sick of Mr. President. They say he's been too free
with concessions; and they accuse him of trying to make a dicker with
England to sell out the country. We want that picture done and paid
for before there's any row."

In the great _patio_ of Casa Morena, the president caused to be
stretched a huge canvas. Under this White set up his temporary
studio. For two hours each day the great man sat to him.

White worked faithfully. But, as the work progressed, he had seasons
of bitter scorn, of infinite self-contempt, of sullen gloom and
sardonic gaiety. Keogh, with the patience of a great general,
soothed, coaxed, argued--kept him at the picture.

At the end of a month White announced that the picture was
completed--Jupiter, Washington, angels, clouds, cannon and all. His
face was pale and his mouth drawn straight when he told Keogh. He
said the president was much pleased with it. It was to be hung in
the National Gallery of Statesmen and Heroes. The artist had been
requested to return to Casa Morena on the following day to receive
payment. At the appointed time he left the hotel, silent under his
friend's joyful talk of their success.

An hour later he walked into the room where Keogh was waiting, threw
his hat on the floor, and sat upon the table.

"Billy," he said, in strained and labouring tones, "I've a little
money out West in a small business that my brother is running. It's
what I've been living on while I've been studying art. I'll draw out
my share and pay you back what you've lost on this scheme."

"Lost!" exclaimed Keogh, jumping up. "Didn't you get paid for the
picture?"

"Yes, I got paid," said White. "But just now there isn't any picture,
and there isn't any pay. If you care to hear about it, here are the
edifying details. The president and I were looking at the painting.
His secretary brought a bank draft on New York for ten thousand
dollars and handed it to me. The moment I touched it I went wild. I
tore it into little pieces and threw them on the floor. A workman
was repainting the pillars inside the _patio_. A bucket of his paint
happened to be convenient. I picked up his brush and slapped a quart
of blue paint all over that ten-thousand-dollar nightmare. I bowed,
and walked out. The president didn't move or speak. That was one time
he was taken by surprise. It's tough on you, Billy, but I couldn't
help it."

There seemed to be excitement in Coralio. Outside there was a
confused, rising murmur pierced by high-pitched cries. "_Bajo el
traidor--Muerte el traidor!_" were the words they seemed to form.

"Listen to that!" exclaimed White, bitterly: "I know that much
Spanish. They're shouting, 'Down with the traitor!' I heard them
before. I felt that they meant me. I was a traitor to Art. The
picture had to go."

"'Down with the blank fool' would have suited your case better," said
Keogh, with fiery emphasis. "You tear up ten thousand dollars like an
old rag because the way you've spread on five dollars' worth of paint
hurts your conscience. Next time I pick a side-partner in a scheme
the man has got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard
the word 'ideal' mentioned."

Keogh strode from the room, white-hot. White paid little attention
to his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing
beside the greater self-scorn he had escaped.

In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause
of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town of
a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his
government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed
his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not
only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public
debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the
custom-houses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring
people had determined to make their protest felt.

On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent.
Yelling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They
overthrew the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the
centre of the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore
from public buildings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory
of the "Illustrious Liberator." His pictures in the government
offices were demolished. The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena, but
were driven away by the military, which remained faithful to the
executive. All the night terror reigned.

The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the
next day order was restored, and he was still absolute. He issued
proclamations denying positively that any negotiations of any
kind had been entered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the
pink-cheeked Englishman, also declared in placards and in public
print that his presence there had no international significance. He
was a traveller without guile. In fact (so he stated), he had not
even spoken with the president or been in his presence since his
arrival.

During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voyage
in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About
noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of
speeding the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had
never departed from her perch on the red-tiled roofs.

About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel
with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little
room where he developed his pictures.

Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim,
predatory smile on his face.

"Do you know what that is?" he asked, holding up a 4 × 5 photograph
mounted on cardboard.

"Snap-shot of a señorita sitting in the sand--alliteration
unintentional," guessed White, lazily.

"Wrong," said Keogh with shining eyes. "It's a slung-shot. It's a can
of dynamite. It's a gold mine. It's a sight-draft on your president
man for twenty thousand dollars--yes, sir--twenty thousand this time,
and no spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You
with your smelly little tubes! I've got you skinned to death with a
kodak. Take a look at that."

White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long whistle.

"Jove!" he exclaimed, "but wouldn't that stir up a row in town if you
let it be seen. How in the world did you get it, Billy?"

"You know that high wall around the president man's back garden?
I was up there trying to get a bird's-eye of the town. I happened
to notice a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster
had slid out. Thinks I, I'll take a peep through to see how Mr.
President's cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and
this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away.
They had the table all spread over with documents, and they were
hobnobbing over them as thick as two pirates. 'Twas a nice corner
of the garden, all private and shady with palms and orange trees,
and they had a pail of champagne set by handy in the grass. I knew
then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art. So I raised the
machine up to the crack, and pressed the button. Just as I did so
them old boys shook hands on the deal--you see they took that way in
the picture."

Keogh put on his coat and hat.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked White.

"Me," said Keogh in a hurt tone, "why, I'm going to tie a pink ribbon
to it and hang it on the what-not, of course. I'm surprised at
you. But while I'm out you just try to figure out what ginger-cake
potentate would be most likely to want to buy this work of art for
his private collection--just to keep it out of circulation."

The sunset was reddening the tops of the cocoanut palms when
Billy Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist's
questioning gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back
of his head.

"I saw him. He paid the money like a little man. They didn't want to
let me in at first. I told 'em it was important. Yes, that president
man is on the plenty-able list. He's got a beautiful business system
about the way he uses his brains. All I had to do was to hold
up the photograph so he could see it, and name the price. He
just smiled, and walked over to a safe and got the cash. Twenty
one-thousand-dollar brand-new United States Treasury notes he laid
on the table, like I'd pay out a dollar and a quarter. Fine notes,
too--they crackled with a sound like burning the brush off a ten-acre
lot."

"Let's try the feel of one," said White, curiously. "I never saw a
thousand-dollar bill." Keogh did not immediately respond.

"Carry," he said, in an absent-minded way, "you think a heap of your
art, don't you?"

"More," said White, frankly, "than has been for the financial good of
myself and my friends."

"I thought you were a fool the other day," went on Keogh, quietly,
"and I'm not sure now that you wasn't. But if you was, so am I. I've
been in some funny deals, Carry, but I've always managed to scramble
fair, and match my brains and capital against the other fellow's. But
when it comes to--well, when you've got the other fellow cinched,
and the screws on him, and he's got to put up--why, it don't strike
me as being a man's game. They've got a name for it, you know;
it's--confound you, don't you understand? A fellow feels--it's
something like that blamed art of yours--he--well, I tore that
photograph up and laid the pieces on that stack of money and shoved
the whole business back across the table. 'Excuse me, Mr. Losada,'
I said, 'but I guess I've made a mistake in the price. You get the
photo for nothing.' Now, Carry, you get out the pencil, and we'll do
some more figuring. I'd like to save enough out of our capital for
you to have some fried sausages in your joint when you get back to
New York."



XV

DICKY


There is little consecutiveness along the Spanish Main. Things happen
there intermittently. Even Time seems to hang his scythe daily on the
branch of an orange tree while he takes a siesta and a cigarette.

After the ineffectual revolt against the administration of President
Losada, the country settled again into quiet toleration of the abuses
with which he had been charged. In Coralio old political enemies
went arm-in-arm, lightly eschewing for the time all differences of
opinion.

The failure of the art expedition did not stretch the cat-footed
Keogh upon his back. The ups and downs of Fortune made smooth
travelling for his nimble steps. His blue pencil stub was at work
again before the smoke of the steamer on which White sailed had
cleared away from the horizon. He had but to speak a word to Geddie
to find his credit negotiable for whatever goods he wanted from the
store of Brannigan & Company. On the same day on which White arrived
in New York Keogh, at the rear of a train of five pack mules loaded
with hardware and cutlery, set his face toward the grim, interior
mountains. There the Indian tribes wash gold dust from the auriferous
streams; and when a market is brought to them trading is brisk and
_muy bueno_ in the Cordilleras.

In Coralio Time folded his wings and paced wearily along his drowsy
path. They who had most cheered the torpid hours were gone. Clancy
had sailed on a Spanish barque for Colon, contemplating a cut across
the isthmus and then a further voyage to end at Calao, where the
fighting was said to be on. Geddie, whose quiet and genial nature had
once served to mitigate the frequent dull reaction of lotus eating,
was now a home-man, happy with his bright orchid, Paula, and never
even dreaming of or regretting the unsolved, sealed and monogramed
Bottle whose contents, now inconsiderable, were held safely in the
keeping of the sea.

Well may the Walrus, most discerning and eclectic of beasts, place
sealing-wax midway on his programme of topics that fall pertinent and
diverting upon the ear.

Atwood was gone--he of the hospitable back porch and ingenuous
cunning. Dr. Gregg, with his trepanning story smouldering within him,
was a whiskered volcano, always showing signs of imminent eruption,
and was not to be considered in the ranks of those who might
contribute to the amelioration of ennui. The new consul's note chimed
with the sad sea waves and the violent tropical greens--he had not a
bar of Scheherezade or of the Round Table in his lute. Goodwin was
employed with large projects: what time he was loosed from them found
him at his home, where he loved to be. Therefore it will be seen that
there was a dearth of fellowship and entertainment among the foreign
contingent of Coralio.

And then Dicky Maloney dropped down from the clouds upon the town,
and amused it.

Nobody knew where Dicky Maloney hailed from or how he reached
Coralio. He appeared there one day; and that was all. He afterward
said that he came on the fruit steamer _Thor_; but an inspection of
the _Thor's_ passenger list of that date was found to be Maloneyless.
Curiosity, however, soon perished; and Dicky took his place among the
odd fish cast up by the Caribbean.

He was an active, devil-may-care, rollicking fellow with an engaging
gray eye, the most irresistible grin, a rather dark or much sunburned
complexion, and a head of the fieriest red hair ever seen in that
country. Speaking the Spanish language as well as he spoke English,
and seeming always to have plenty of silver in his pockets, it was
not long before he was a welcome companion whithersoever he went. He
had an extreme fondness for _vino blanco_, and gained the reputation
of being able to drink more of it than any three men in town.
Everybody called him "Dicky"; everybody cheered up at the sight of
him--especially the natives, to whom his marvellous red hair and his
free-and-easy style were a constant delight and envy. Wherever you
went in the town you would soon see Dicky or hear his genial laugh,
and find around him a group of admirers who appreciated him both for
his good nature and the white wine he was always so ready to buy.

A considerable amount of speculation was had concerning the object of
his sojourn there, until one day he silenced this by opening a small
shop for the sale of tobacco, _dulces_ and the handiwork of the
interior Indians--fibre-and-silk-woven goods, deerskin _zapatos_ and
basketwork of _tule_ reeds. Even then he did not change his habits;
for he was drinking and playing cards half the day and night with the
_comandante_, the collector of customs, the _Jefe Politico_ and other
gay dogs among the native officials.

One day Dicky saw Pasa, the daughter of Madama Ortiz, sitting in the
side-door of the Hotel de los Estranjeros. He stopped in his tracks,
still, for the first time in Coralio; and then he sped, swift as a
deer, to find Vasquez, a gilded native youth, to present him.

The young men had named Pasa "_La Santita Naranjadita_."
_Naranjadita_ is a Spanish word for a certain colour that you must go
to more trouble to describe in English. By saying "The little saint,
tinted the most beautiful-delicate-slightly-orange-golden," you will
approximate the description of Madama Ortiz's daughter.

La Madama Ortiz sold rum in addition to other liquors. Now, you must
know that the rum expiates whatever opprobrium attends upon the other
commodities. For rum-making, mind you, is a government monopoly;
and to keep a government dispensary assures respectability if not
preëminence. Moreover, the saddest of precisians could find no fault
with the conduct of the shop. Customers drank there in the lowest of
spirits and fearsomely, as in the shadow of the dead; for Madama's
ancient and vaunted lineage counteracted even the rum's behest to be
merry. For, was she not of the Iglesias, who landed with Pizarro? And
had not her deceased husband been _comisionado de caminos y puentes_
for the district?

In the evenings Pasa sat by the window in the room next to the one
where they drank, and strummed dreamily upon her guitar. And then,
by twos and threes, would come visiting young caballeros and occupy
the prim line of chairs set against the wall of this room. They were
there to besiege the heart of "_La Santita_." Their method (which is
not proof against intelligent competition) consisted of expanding the
chest, looking valorous, and consuming a gross or two of cigarettes.
Even saints delicately oranged prefer to be wooed differently.

Doña Pasa would tide over the vast chasms of nicotinized silence
with music from her guitar, while she wondered if the romances she
had read about gallant and more--more contiguous cavaliers were all
lies. At somewhat regular intervals Madama would glide in from the
dispensary with a sort of drought-suggesting gleam in her eye, and
there would be a rustling of stiffly-starched white trousers as one
of the caballeros would propose an adjournment to the bar.

That Dicky Maloney would, sooner or later, explore this field was a
thing to be foreseen. There were few doors in Coralio into which his
red head had not been poked.

In an incredibly short space of time after his first sight of her
he was there, seated close beside her rocking chair. There were no
back-against-the-wall poses in Dicky's theory of wooing. His plan of
subjection was an attack at close range. To carry the fortress with
one concentrated, ardent, eloquent, irresistible _escalade_--that was
Dicky's way.

Pasa was descended from the proudest Spanish families in the country.
Moreover, she had had unusual advantages. Two years in a New Orleans
school had elevated her ambitions and fitted her for a fate above the
ordinary maidens of her native land. And yet here she succumbed to
the first red-haired scamp with a glib tongue and a charming smile
that came along and courted her properly.

Very soon Dicky took her to the little church on the corner of the
plaza, and "Mrs. Maloney" was added to her string of distinguished
names.

And it was her fate to sit, with her patient, saintly eyes and figure
like a bisque Psyche, behind the sequestered counter of the little
shop, while Dicky drank and philandered with his frivolous
acquaintances.

The women, with their naturally fine instinct, saw a chance for
vivisection, and delicately taunted her with his habits. She turned
upon them in a beautiful, steady blaze of sorrowful contempt.

"You meat-cows," she said, in her level, crystal-clear tones; "you
know nothing of a man. Your men are _maromeros_. They are fit only to
roll cigarettes in the shade until the sun strikes and shrivels them
up. They drone in your hammocks and you comb their hair and feed
them with fresh fruit. My man is of no such blood. Let him drink of
the wine. When he has taken sufficient of it to drown one of your
_flaccitos_ he will come home to me more of a man than one thousand
of your _pobrecitos_. _My_ hair he smooths and braids; to me he
sings; he himself removes my _zapatos_, and there, there, upon each
instep leaves a kiss. He holds-- Oh, you will never understand! Blind
ones who have never known a _man_."

Sometimes mysterious things happened at night about Dicky's shop.
While the front of it was dark, in the little room back of it Dicky
and a few of his friends would sit about a table carrying on some
kind of very quiet _negocios_ until quite late. Finally he would let
them out the front door very carefully, and go upstairs to his little
saint. These visitors were generally conspirator-like men with dark
clothes and hats. Of course, these dark doings were noticed after a
while, and talked about.

Dicky seemed to care nothing at all for the society of the alien
residents of the town. He avoided Goodwin, and his skilful escape
from the trepanning story of Dr. Gregg is still referred to, in
Coralio, as a masterpiece of lightning diplomacy.

Many letters arrived, addressed to "Mr. Dicky Maloney," or "Señor
Dickee Maloney," to the considerable pride of Pasa. That so many
people should desire to write to him only confirmed her own suspicion
that the light from his red head shone around the world. As to their
contents she never felt curiosity. There was a wife for you!

The one mistake Dicky made in Coralio was to run out of money at the
wrong time. Where his money came from was a puzzle, for the sales
of his shop were next to nothing, but that source failed, and at a
peculiarly unfortunate time. It was when the _comandante_, Don Señor
el Coronel Encarnacion Rios, looked upon the little saint seated in
the shop and felt his heart go pitapat.

The _comandante_, who was versed in all the intricate arts of
gallantry, first delicately hinted at his sentiments by donning his
dress uniform and strutting up and down fiercely before her window.
Pasa, glancing demurely with her saintly eyes, instantly perceived
his resemblance to her parrot, Chichi, and was diverted to the extent
of a smile. The _comandante_ saw the smile, which was not intended
for him. Convinced of an impression made, he entered the shop,
confidently, and advanced to open compliment. Pasa froze; he pranced;
she flamed royally; he was charmed to injudicious persistence; she
commanded him to leave the shop; he tried to capture her hand,--and
Dicky entered, smiling broadly, full of white wine and the devil.

He spent five minutes in punishing the _comandante_ scientifically
and carefully, so that the pain might be prolonged as far as
possible. At the end of that time he pitched the rash wooer out the
door upon the stones of the street, senseless.

A barefooted policeman who had been watching the affair from across
the street blew a whistle. A squad of four soldiers came running from
the _cuartel_ around the corner. When they saw that the offender
was Dicky, they stopped, and blew more whistles, which brought out
reënforcements of eight. Deeming the odds against them sufficiently
reduced, the military advanced upon the disturber.

Dicky, being thoroughly imbued with the martial spirit, stooped
and drew the _comandante's_ sword, which was girded about him, and
charged his foe. He chased the standing army four squares, playfully
prodding its squealing rear and hacking at its ginger-coloured heels.

But he was not so successful with the civic authorities. Six
muscular, nimble policemen overpowered him and conveyed him,
triumphantly but warily, to jail. "_El Diablo Colorado_" they dubbed
him, and derided the military for its defeat.

Dicky, with the rest of the prisoners, could look out through
the barred door at the grass of the little plaza, at a row of
orange trees and the red tile roofs and 'dobe walls of a line of
insignificant stores.

At sunset along a path across this plaza came a melancholy procession
of sad-faced women bearing plantains, cassaba, bread and fruit--each
coming with food to some wretch behind those bars to whom she still
clung and furnished the means of life. Twice a day--morning and
evening--they were permitted to come. Water was furnished to her
compulsory guests by the republic, but no food.

That evening Dicky's name was called by the sentry, and he stepped
before the bars of the door. There stood his little saint, a black
mantilla draped about her head and shoulders, her face like glorified
melancholy, her clear eyes gazing longingly at him as if they might
draw him between the bars to her. She brought a chicken, some
oranges, _dulces_ and a loaf of white bread. A soldier inspected the
food, and passed it in to Dicky. Pasa spoke calmly, as she always
did, briefly, in her thrilling, flute-like tones. "Angel of my life,"
she said, "let it not be long that thou art away from me. Thou
knowest that life is not a thing to be endured with thou not at
my side. Tell me if I can do aught in this matter. If not, I will
wait--a little while. I come again in the morning."

Dicky, with his shoes removed so as not to disturb his fellow
prisoners, tramped the floor of the jail half the night condemning
his lack of money and the cause of it--whatever that might have been.
He knew very well that money would have bought his release at once.

For two days succeeding Pasa came at the appointed times and brought
him food. He eagerly inquired each time if a letter or package had
come for him, and she mournfully shook her head.

On the morning of the third day she brought only a small loaf of
bread. There were dark circles under her eyes. She seemed as calm as
ever.

"By jingo," said Dicky, who seemed to speak in English or Spanish as
the whim seized him, "this is dry provender, _muchachita_. Is this
the best you can dig up for a fellow?"

Pasa looked at him as a mother looks at a beloved but capricious
babe.

"Think better of it," she said, in a low voice; "since for the next
meal there will be nothing. The last _centavo_ is spent." She pressed
closer against the grating.

"Sell the goods in the shop--take anything for them."

"Have I not tried? Did I not offer them for one-tenth their cost? Not
even one _peso_ would any one give. There is not one _real_ in this
town to assist Dickee Malonee."

Dick clenched his teeth grimly. "That's the _comandante_," he
growled. "He's responsible for that sentiment. Wait, oh, wait till
the cards are all out."

Pasa lowered her voice to almost a whisper. "And, listen, heart of my
heart," she said, "I have endeavoured to be brave, but I cannot live
without thee. Three days now--"

Dicky caught a faint gleam of steel from the folds of her mantilla.
For once she looked in his face and saw it without a smile, stern,
menacing and purposeful. Then he suddenly raised his hand and his
smile came back like a gleam of sunshine. The hoarse signal of an
incoming steamer's siren sounded in the harbour. Dicky called to the
sentry who was pacing before the door: "What steamer comes?"

"The _Catarina_."

"Of the Vesuvius line?"

"Without doubt, of that line."

"Go you, _picarilla_," said Dicky joyously to Pasa, "to the American
consul. Tell him I wish to speak with him. See that he comes at
once. And look you! let me see a different look in those eyes, for I
promise your head shall rest upon this arm to-night."

It was an hour before the consul came. He held his green umbrella
under his arm, and mopped his forehead impatiently.

"Now, see here, Maloney," he began, captiously, "you fellows seem to
think you can cut up any kind of row, and expect me to pull you out
of it. I'm neither the War Department nor a gold mine. This country
has its laws, you know, and there's one against pounding the senses
out of the regular army. You Irish are forever getting into trouble.
I don't see what I can do. Anything like tobacco, now, to make you
comfortable--or newspapers--"

"Son of Eli," interrupted Dicky, gravely, "you haven't changed an
iota. That is almost a duplicate of the speech you made when old
Koen's donkeys and geese got into the chapel loft, and the culprits
wanted to hide in your room."

"Oh, heavens!" exclaimed the consul, hurriedly adjusting his
spectacles. "Are you a Yale man, too? Were you in that crowd? I don't
seem to remember any one with red--any one named Maloney. Such a lot
of college men seem to have misused their advantages. One of the best
mathematicians of the class of '91 is selling lottery tickets in
Belize. A Cornell man dropped off here last month. He was second
steward on a guano boat. I'll write to the department if you like,
Maloney. Or if there's any tobacco, or newspa--"

"There's nothing," interrupted Dicky, shortly, "but this. You go tell
the captain of the _Catarina_ that Dicky Maloney wants to see him as
soon as he can conveniently come. Tell him where I am. Hurry. That's
all."

The consul, glad to be let off so easily, hurried away. The captain
of the _Catarina_, a stout man, Sicilian born, soon appeared,
shoving, with little ceremony, through the guards to the jail door.
The Vesuvius Fruit Company had a habit of doing things that way in
Anchuria.

"I am exceedingly sorry--exceedingly sorry," said the captain, "to
see this occur. I place myself at your service, Mr. Maloney. What you
need shall be furnished. Whatever you say shall be done."

Dicky looked at him unsmilingly. His red hair could not detract from
his attitude of severe dignity as he stood, tall and calm, with his
now grim mouth forming a horizontal line.

"Captain De Lucco, I believe I still have funds in the hands of your
company--ample and personal funds. I ordered a remittance last week.
The money has not arrived. You know what is needed in this game.
Money and money and more money. Why has it not been sent?"

"By the _Cristobal_," replied De Lucco, gesticulating, "it was
despatched. Where is the _Cristobal_? Off Cape Antonio I spoke her
with a broken shaft. A tramp coaster was towing her back to New
Orleans. I brought money ashore thinking your need for it might not
withstand delay. In this envelope is one thousand dollars. There is
more if you need it, Mr. Maloney."

"For the present it will suffice," said Dicky, softening as he
crinkled the envelope and looked down at the half-inch thickness of
smooth, dingy bills.

"The long green!" he said, gently, with a new reverence in his gaze.
"Is there anything it will not buy, Captain?"

"I had three friends," replied De Lucco, who was a bit of a
philosopher, "who had money. One of them speculated in stocks and
made ten million; another is in heaven, and the third married a poor
girl whom he loved."

"The answer, then," said Dicky, "is held by the Almighty, Wall Street
and Cupid. So, the question remains."

"This," queried the captain, including Dicky's surroundings in
a significant gesture of his hand, "is it--it is not--it is not
connected with the business of your little shop? There is no failure
in your plans?"

"No, no," said Dicky. "This is merely the result of a little private
affair of mine, a digression from the regular line of business. They
say for a complete life a man must know poverty, love and war. But
they don't go well together, _capitán mio_. No; there is no failure
in my business. The little shop is doing very well."

When the captain had departed Dicky called the sergeant of the jail
squad and asked:

"Am I _preso_ by the military or by the civil authority?"

"Surely there is no martial law in effect now, señor."

"_Bueno_. Now go or send to the alcalde, the _Jues de la Paz_ and the
_Jefe de los Policios_. Tell them I am prepared at once to satisfy
the demands of justice." A folded bill of the "long green" slid into
the sergeant's hand.

Then Dicky's smile came back again, for he knew that the hours of his
captivity were numbered; and he hummed, in time with the sentry's
tread:


   "_They're hanging men and women now,
    For lacking of the green._"


So, that night Dicky sat by the window of the room over his shop
and his little saint sat close by, working at something silken and
dainty. Dicky was thoughtful and grave. His red hair was in an
unusual state of disorder. Pasa's fingers often ached to smooth and
arrange it, but Dicky would never allow it. He was poring, to-night,
over a great litter of maps and books and papers on his table until
that perpendicular line came between his brows that always distressed
Pasa. Presently she went and brought his hat, and stood with it until
he looked up, inquiringly.

"It is sad for you here," she explained. "Go out and drink _vino
blanco_. Come back when you get that smile you used to wear. That is
what I wish to see."

Dicky laughed and threw down his papers. "The _vino blanco_ stage
is past. It has served its turn. Perhaps, after all, there was less
entered my mouth and more my ears than people thought. But, there
will be no more maps or frowns to-night. I promise you that. Come."

They sat upon a reed _silleta_ at the window and watched the
quivering gleams from the lights of the _Catarina_ reflected in the
harbour.

Presently Pasa rippled out one of her infrequent chirrups of audible
laughter.

"I was thinking," she began, anticipating Dicky's question, "of the
foolish things girls have in their minds. Because I went to school
in the States I used to have ambitions. Nothing less than to be the
president's wife would satisfy me. And, look, thou red picaroon, to
what obscure fate thou hast stolen me!"

"Don't give up hope," said Dicky, smiling. "More than one Irishman
has been the ruler of a South American country. There was a dictator
of Chili named O'Higgins. Why not a President Maloney, of Anchuria?
Say the word, _santita mia_, and we'll make the race."

"No, no, no, thou red-haired, reckless one!" sighed Pasa; "I am
content"--she laid her head against his arm--"here."



XVI

ROUGE ET NOIR


It has been indicated that disaffection followed the elevation of
Losada to the presidency. This feeling continued to grow. Throughout
the entire republic there seemed to be a spirit of silent, sullen
discontent. Even the old Liberal party to which Goodwin, Zavalla and
other patriots had lent their aid was disappointed. Losada had failed
to become a popular idol. Fresh taxes, fresh import duties and, more
than all, his tolerance of the outrageous oppression of citizens by
the military had rendered him the most obnoxious president since
the despicable Alforan. The majority of his own cabinet were out
of sympathy with him. The army, which he had courted by giving it
license to tyrannize, had been his main, and thus far adequate
support.

But the most impolitic of the administration's moves had been when it
antagonized the Vesuvius Fruit Company, an organization plying twelve
steamers and with a cash capital somewhat larger than Anchuria's
surplus and debt combined.

Reasonably an established concern like the Vesuvius would become
irritated at having a small, retail republic with no rating at all
attempt to squeeze it. So when the government proxies applied for
a subsidy they encountered a polite refusal. The president at once
retaliated by clapping an export duty of one _real_ per bunch on
bananas--a thing unprecedented in fruit-growing countries. The
Vesuvius Company had invested large sums in wharves and plantations
along the Anchurian coast, their agents had erected fine homes in the
towns where they had their headquarters, and heretofore had worked
with the republic in good-will and with advantage to both. It would
lose an immense sum if compelled to move out. The selling price
of bananas from Vera Cruz to Trinidad was three _reals_ per bunch.
This new duty of one _real_ would have ruined the fruit growers in
Anchuria and have seriously discommoded the Vesuvius Company had it
declined to pay it. But for some reason, the Vesuvius continued to
buy Anchurian fruit, paying four _reals_ for it; and not suffering
the growers to bear the loss.

This apparent victory deceived His Excellency; and he began to hunger
for more of it. He sent an emissary to request a conference with a
representative of the fruit company. The Vesuvius sent Mr. Franzoni,
a little, stout, cheerful man, always cool, and whistling airs from
Verdi's operas. Señor Espirition, of the office of the Minister of
Finance, attempted the sandbagging in behalf of Anchuria. The meeting
took place in the cabin of the _Salvador_, of the Vesuvius line.

Señor Espirition opened negotiations by announcing that the
government contemplated the building of a railroad to skirt the
alluvial coast lands. After touching upon the benefits such a road
would confer upon the interests of the Vesuvius, he reached the
definite suggestion that a contribution to the road's expenses of,
say, fifty thousand _pesos_ would not be more than an equivalent to
benefits received.

Mr. Franzoni denied that his company would receive any benefits
from a contemplated road. As its representative he must decline
to contribute fifty thousand _pesos_. But he would assume the
responsibility of offering twenty-five.

Did Señor Espirition understand Señor Franzoni to mean twenty-five
thousand _pesos_?

By no means. Twenty-five _pesos_. And in silver; not in gold.

"Your offer insults my government," cried Señor Espirition, rising
with indignation.

"Then," said Mr. Franzoni, in warning tone, "_we will change it_."

The offer was never changed. Could Mr. Franzoni have meant the
government?

This was the state of affairs in Anchuria when the winter season
opened at Coralio at the end of the second year of Losada's
administration. So, when the government and society made its annual
exodus to the seashore it was evident that the presidential advent
would not be celebrated by unlimited rejoicing. The tenth of November
was the day set for the entrance into Coralio of the gay company
from the capital. A narrow-gauge railroad runs twenty miles into the
interior from Solitas. The government party travels by carriage from
San Mateo to this road's terminal point, and proceeds by train to
Solitas. From here they march in grand procession to Coralio where,
on the day of their coming, festivities and ceremonies abound. But
this season saw an ominous dawning of the tenth of November.

Although the rainy season was over, the day seemed to hark back to
reeking June. A fine drizzle of rain fell all during the forenoon.
The procession entered Coralio amid a strange silence.

President Losada was an elderly man, grizzly bearded, with a
considerable ratio of Indian blood revealed in his cinnamon
complexion. His carriage headed the procession, surrounded and
guarded by Captain Cruz and his famous troop of one hundred light
horse "_El Ciento Huilando_." Colonel Rocas followed, with a regiment
of the regular army.

The president's sharp, beady eyes glanced about him for the expected
demonstration of welcome; but he faced a stolid, indifferent array of
citizens. Sight-seers the Anchurians are by birth and habit, and they
turned out to their last able-bodied unit to witness the scene; but
they maintained an accusive silence. They crowded the streets to the
very wheel ruts; they covered the red tile roofs to the eaves, but
there was never a "_viva_" from them. No wreaths of palm and lemon
branches or gorgeous strings of paper roses hung from the windows and
balconies as was the custom. There was an apathy, a dull, dissenting
disapprobation, that was the more ominous because it puzzled. No
one feared an outburst, a revolt of the discontents, for they had
no leader. The president and those loyal to him had never even
heard whispered a name among them capable of crystallizing the
dissatisfaction into opposition. No, there could be no danger. The
people always procured a new idol before they destroyed an old one.

At length, after a prodigious galloping and curvetting of red-sashed
majors, gold-laced colonels and epauletted generals, the procession
formed for its annual progress down the Calle Grande to the Casa
Morena, where the ceremony of welcome to the visiting president
always took place.

The Swiss band led the line of march. After it pranced the local
_comandante_, mounted, and a detachment of his troops. Next came a
carriage with four members of the cabinet, conspicuous among them
the Minister of War, old General Pilar, with his white moustache and
his soldierly bearing. Then the president's vehicle, containing also
the Ministers of Finance and State; and surrounded by Captain Cruz's
light horse formed in a close double file of fours. Following them,
the rest of the officials of state, the judges and distinguished
military and social ornaments of public and private life.

As the band struck up, and the movement began, like a bird of
ill-omen the _Valhalla_, the swiftest steamship of the Vesuvius line,
glided into the harbour in plain view of the president and his train.
Of course, there was nothing menacing about its arrival--a business
firm does not go to war with a nation--but it reminded Señor
Espirition and others in those carriages that the Vesuvius Fruit
Company was undoubtedly carrying something up its sleeve for them.

By the time the van of the procession had reached the government
building, Captain Cronin, of the _Valhalla_, and Mr. Vincenti, member
of the Vesuvius Company, had landed and were pushing their way,
bluff, hearty and nonchalant, through the crowd on the narrow
sidewalk. Clad in white linen, big, debonair, with an air of
good-humoured authority, they made conspicuous figures among the
dark mass of unimposing Anchurians, as they penetrated to within a
few yards of the steps of the Casa Morena. Looking easily above the
heads of the crowd, they perceived another that towered above the
undersized natives. It was the fiery poll of Dicky Maloney against
the wall close by the lower step; and his broad, seductive grin
showed that he recognized their presence.

Dicky had attired himself becomingly for the festive occasion in a
well-fitting black suit. Pasa was close by his side, her head covered
with the ubiquitous black mantilla.

Mr. Vincenti looked at her attentively.

"Botticelli's Madonna," he remarked, gravely. "I wonder when she got
into the game. I don't like his getting tangled with the women. I
hoped he would keep away from them."

Captain Cronin's laugh almost drew attention from the parade.

"With that head of hair! Keep away from the women! And a Maloney!
Hasn't he got a license? But, nonsense aside, what do you think of
the prospects? It's a species of filibustering out of my line."

Vincenti glanced again at Dicky's head and smiled.

"_Rouge et noir_," he said. "There you have it. Make your play,
gentlemen. Our money is on the red."

"The lad's game," said Cronin, with a commending look at the tall,
easy figure by the steps. "But 'tis all like fly-by-night theatricals
to me. The talk's bigger than the stage; there's a smell of gasoline
in the air, and they're their own audience and scene-shifters."

They ceased talking, for General Pilar had descended from the first
carriage and had taken his stand upon the top step of Casa Morena. As
the oldest member of the cabinet, custom had decreed that he should
make the address of welcome, presenting the keys of the official
residence to the president at its close.

General Pilar was one of the most distinguished citizens of the
republic. Hero of three wars and innumerable revolutions, he was an
honoured guest at European courts and camps. An eloquent speaker
and a friend to the people, he represented the highest type of the
Anchurians.

Holding in his hand the gilt keys of Casa Morena, he began his
address in a historical form, touching upon each administration
and the advance of civilization and prosperity from the first dim
striving after liberty down to present times. Arriving at the
régime of President Losada, at which point, according to precedent,
he should have delivered a eulogy upon its wise conduct and the
happiness of the people, General Pilar paused. Then he silently held
up the bunch of keys high above his head, with his eyes closely
regarding it. The ribbon with which they were bound fluttered in the
breeze.

"It still blows," cried the speaker, exultantly. "Citizens of
Anchuria, give thanks to the saints this night that our air is still
free."

Thus disposing of Losada's administration, he abruptly reverted
to that of Olivarra, Anchuria's most popular ruler. Olivarra had
been assassinated nine years before while in the prime of life and
usefulness. A faction of the Liberal party led by Losada himself had
been accused of the deed. Whether guilty or not, it was eight years
before the ambitious and scheming Losada had gained his goal.

Upon this theme General Pilar's eloquence was loosed. He drew the
picture of the beneficent Olivarra with a loving hand. He reminded
the people of the peace, the security and the happiness they had
enjoyed during that period. He recalled in vivid detail and with
significant contrast the last winter sojourn of President Olivarra
in Coralio, when his appearance at their fiestas was the signal for
thundering _vivas_ of love and approbation.

The first public expression of sentiment from the people that day
followed. A low, sustained murmur went among them like the surf
rolling along the shore.

"Ten dollars to a dinner at the Saint Charles," remarked Mr.
Vincenti, "that _rouge_ wins."

"I never bet against my own interests," said Captain Cronin, lighting
a cigar. "Long-winded old boy, for his age. What's he talking about?"

"My Spanish," replied Vincenti, "runs about ten words to the minute;
his is something around two hundred. Whatever he's saying, he's
getting them warmed up."

"Friends and brothers," General Pilar was saying, "could I reach
out my hand this day across the lamentable silence of the grave to
Olivarra 'the Good,' to the ruler who was one of you, whose tears
fell when you sorrowed, and whose smile followed your joy--I would
bring him back to you, but--Olivarra is dead--dead at the hands of a
craven assassin!"

The speaker turned and gazed boldly into the carriage of the
president. His arm remained extended aloft as if to sustain his
peroration. The president was listening, aghast, at this remarkable
address of welcome. He was sunk back upon his seat, trembling with
rage and dumb surprise, his dark hands tightly gripping the carriage
cushions.

Half rising, he extended one arm toward the speaker, and shouted a
harsh command at Captain Cruz. The leader of the "Flying Hundred"
sat his horse, immovable, with folded arms, giving no sign of having
heard. Losada sank back again, his dark features distinctly paling.

"Who says that Olivarra is dead?" suddenly cried the speaker, his
voice, old as he was, sounding like a battle trumpet. "His body
lies in the grave, but to the people he loved he has bequeathed his
spirit--yes, more--his learning, his courage, his kindness--yes,
more--his youth, his image--people of Anchuria, have you forgotten
Ramon, the son of Olivarra?"

Cronin and Vincenti, watching closely, saw Dicky Maloney suddenly
raise his hat, tear off his shock of red hair, leap up the steps and
stand at the side of General Pilar. The Minister of War laid his
arm across the young man's shoulders. All who had known President
Olivarra saw again his same lion-like pose, the same frank, undaunted
expression, the same high forehead with the peculiar line of the
clustering, crisp black hair.

General Pilar was an experienced orator. He seized the moment of
breathless silence that preceded the storm.

"Citizens of Anchuria," he trumpeted, holding aloft the keys to Casa
Morena, "I am here to deliver these keys--the keys to your homes and
liberty--to your chosen president. Shall I deliver them to Enrico
Olivarra's assassin, or to his son?"

"Olivarra! Olivarra!" the crowd shrieked and howled. All vociferated
the magic name--men, women, children and the parrots.

And the enthusiasm was not confined to the blood of the plebs.
Colonel Rocas ascended the steps and laid his sword theatrically at
young Ramon Olivarra's feet. Four members of the cabinet embraced
him. Captain Cruz gave a command, and twenty of _El Ciento Huilando_
dismounted and arranged themselves in a cordon about the steps of
Casa Morena.

But Ramon Olivarra seized that moment to prove himself a born genius
and politician. He waved those soldiers aside, and descended the
steps to the street. There, without losing his dignity or the
distinguished elegance that the loss of his red hair brought him,
he took the proletariat to his bosom--the barefooted, the dirty,
Indians, Caribs, babies, beggars, old, young, saints, soldiers and
sinners--he missed none of them.

While this act of the drama was being presented, the scene shifters
had been busy at the duties that had been assigned to them. Two
of Cruz's dragoons had seized the bridle reins of Losada's horses;
others formed a close guard around the carriage; and they galloped
off with the tyrant and his two unpopular Ministers. No doubt a place
had been prepared for them. There are a number of well-barred stone
apartments in Coralio.

"_Rouge_ wins," said Mr. Vincenti, calmly lighting another cigar.

Captain Cronin had been intently watching the vicinity of the stone
steps for some time.

"Good boy!" he exclaimed suddenly, as if relieved. "I wondered if he
was going to forget his Kathleen Mavourneen."

Young Olivarra had reascended the steps and spoken a few words to
General Pilar. Then that distinguished veteran descended to the
ground and approached Pasa, who still stood, wonder-eyed, where Dicky
had left her. With his plumed hat in his hand, and his medals and
decorations shining on his breast, the general spoke to her and gave
her his arm, and they went up the stone steps of the Casa Morena
together. And then Ramon Olivarra stepped forward and took both her
hands before all the people.

And while the cheering was breaking out afresh everywhere, Captain
Cronin and Mr. Vincenti turned and walked back toward the shore where
the gig was waiting for them.

"There'll be another '_presidente proclamada_' in the morning,"
said Mr. Vincenti, musingly. "As a rule they are not as reliable as
the elected ones, but this youngster seems to have some good stuff
in him. He planned and manoeuvred the entire campaign. Olivarra's
widow, you know, was wealthy. After her husband was assassinated
she went to the States, and educated her son at Yale. The Vesuvius
Company hunted him up, and backed him in the little game."

"It's a glorious thing," said Cronin, half jestingly, "to be able to
discharge a government, and insert one of your own choosing, in these
days."

"Oh, it is only a matter of business," said Vincenti, stopping and
offering the stump of his cigar to a monkey that swung down from a
lime tree; "and that is what moves the world of to-day. That extra
_real_ on the price of bananas had to go. We took the shortest way of
removing it."



XVII

TWO RECALLS


There remains three duties to be performed before the curtain falls
upon the patched comedy. Two have been promised: the third is no less
obligatory.

It was set forth in the programme of this tropic vaudeville that
it would be made known why Shorty O'Day, of the Columbia Detective
Agency, lost his position. Also that Smith should come again to tell
us what mystery he followed that night on the shores of Anchuria when
he strewed so many cigar stumps around the cocoanut palm during his
lonely night vigil on the beach. These things were promised; but a
bigger thing yet remains to be accomplished--the clearing up of a
seeming wrong that has been done according to the array of chronicled
facts (truthfully set forth) that have been presented. And one voice,
speaking, shall do these three things.

Two men sat on a stringer of a North River pier in the City of New
York. A steamer from the tropics had begun to unload bananas and
oranges on the pier. Now and then a banana or two would fall from an
overripe bunch, and one of the two men would shamble forward, seize
the fruit and return to share it with his companion.

One of the men was in the ultimate stage of deterioration. As far as
rain and wind and sun could wreck the garments he wore, it had been
done. In his person the ravages of drink were as plainly visible. And
yet, upon his high-bridged, rubicund nose was jauntily perched a pair
of shining and flawless gold-rimmed glasses.

The other man was not so far gone upon the descending Highway of the
Incompetents. Truly, the flower of his manhood had gone to seed--seed
that, perhaps, no soil might sprout. But there were still cross-cuts
along where he travelled through which he might yet regain the
pathway of usefulness without disturbing the slumbering Miracles.
This man was short and compactly built. He had an oblique, dead eye,
like that of a sting-ray, and the moustache of a cocktail mixer. We
know the eye and the moustache; we know that Smith of the luxurious
yacht, the gorgeous raiment, the mysterious mission, the magic
disappearance, has come again, though shorn of the accessories of his
former state.

At his third banana, the man with the nose glasses spat it from him
with a shudder.

"Deuce take all fruit!" he remarked, in a patrician tone of disgust.
"I lived for two years where these things grow. The memory of their
taste lingers with you. The oranges are not so bad. Just see if you
can gather a couple of them, O'Day, when the next broken crate comes
up."

"Did you live down with the monkeys?" asked the other, made tepidly
garrulous by the sunshine and the alleviating meal of juicy fruit. "I
was down there, once myself. But only for a few hours. That was when
I was with the Columbia Detective Agency. The monkey people did me
up. I'd have my job yet if it hadn't been for them. I'll tell you
about it.

"One day the chief sent a note around to the office that read: 'Send
O'Day here at once for a big piece of business.' I was the crack
detective of the agency at that time. They always handed me the big
jobs. The address the chief wrote from was down in the Wall Street
district.

"When I got there I found him in a private office with a lot of
directors who were looking pretty fuzzy. They stated the case. The
president of the Republic Insurance Company had skipped with about
a tenth of a million dollars in cash. The directors wanted him back
pretty bad, but they wanted the money worse. They said they needed
it. They had traced the old gent's movements to where he boarded a
tramp fruit steamer bound for South America that same morning with
his daughter and a big gripsack--all the family he had.

"One of the directors had his steam yacht coaled and with steam up,
ready for the trip; and he turned her over to me, cart blongsh. In
four hours I was on board of her, and hot on the trail of the fruit
tub. I had a pretty good idea where old Wahrfield--that was his name,
J. Churchill Wahrfield--would head for. At that time we had a treaty
with about every foreign country except Belgium and that banana
republic, Anchuria. There wasn't a photo of old Wahrfield to be
had in New York--he had been foxy there--but I had his description.
And besides, the lady with him would be a dead-give-away anywhere.
She was one of the high-flyers in Society--not the kind that have
their pictures in the Sunday papers--but the real sort that open
chrysanthemum shows and christen battleships.

"Well, sir, we never got a sight of that fruit tub on the road. The
ocean is a pretty big place; and I guess we took different paths
across it. But we kept going toward this Anchuria, where the fruiter
was bound for.

"We struck the monkey coast one afternoon about four. There was a
ratty-looking steamer off shore taking on bananas. The monkeys were
loading her up with big barges. It might be the one the old man had
taken, and it might not. I went ashore to look around. The scenery
was pretty good. I never saw any finer on the New York stage. I
struck an American on shore, a big, cool chap, standing around with
the monkeys. He showed me the consul's office. The consul was a
nice young fellow. He said the fruiter was the _Karlsefin_, running
generally to New Orleans, but took her last cargo to New York. Then
I was sure my people were on board, although everybody told me that
no passengers had landed. I didn't think they would land until after
dark, for they might have been shy about it on account of seeing that
yacht of mine hanging around. So, all I had to do was to wait and nab
'em when they came ashore. I couldn't arrest old Wahrfield without
extradition papers, but my play was to get the cash. They generally
give up if you strike 'em when they're tired and rattled and short on
nerve.

"After dark I sat under a cocoanut tree on the beach for a while,
and then I walked around and investigated that town some, and it was
enough to give you the lions. If a man could stay in New York and
be honest, he'd better do it than to hit that monkey town with a
million.

"Dinky little mud houses; grass over your shoe tops in the streets;
ladies in low-neck-and-short-sleeves walking around smoking cigars;
tree frogs rattling like a hose cart going to a ten blow; big
mountains dropping gravel in the back yards, and the sea licking the
paint off in front--no, sir--a man had better be in God's country
living on free lunch than there.

"The main street ran along the beach, and I walked down it, and
then turned up a kind of lane where the houses were made of poles
and straw. I wanted to see what the monkeys did when they weren't
climbing cocoanut trees. The very first shack I looked in I saw
my people. They must have come ashore while I was promenading. A
man about fifty, smooth face, heavy eyebrows, dressed in black
broadcloth, looking like he was just about to say, 'Can any little
boy in the Sunday school answer that?' He was freezing on to a grip
that weighed like a dozen gold bricks, and a swell girl--a regular
peach, with a Fifth Avenue cut--was sitting on a wooden chair. An old
black woman was fixing some coffee and beans on a table. The light
they had come from a lantern hung on a nail. I went and stood in the
door, and they looked at me, and I said:

"'Mr. Wahrfield, you are my prisoner. I hope, for the lady's sake,
you will take the matter sensibly. You know why I want you.'

"'Who are you?' says the old gent.

"'O'Day,' says I, 'of the Columbia Detective Agency. And now, sir,
let me give you a piece of good advice. You go back and take your
medicine like a man. Hand 'em back the boodle; and maybe they'll let
you off light. Go back easy, and I'll put in a word for you. I'll
give you five minutes to decide.' I pulled out my watch and waited.

"Then the young lady chipped in. She was one of the genuine
high-steppers. You could tell by the way her clothes fit and the
style she had that Fifth Avenue was made for her.

"'Come inside,' she says. 'Don't stand in the door and disturb the
whole street with that suit of clothes. Now, what is it you want?'

"'Three minutes gone,' I said. 'I'll tell you again while the other
two tick off.

"'You'll admit being the president of the Republic, won't you?'

"'I am,' says he.

"'Well, then,' says I, 'it ought to be plain to you. Wanted, in New
York, J. Churchill Wahrfield, president of the Republic Insurance
Company.

"'Also the funds belonging to said company, now in that grip, in the
unlawful possession of said J. Churchill Wahrfield.'

"'Oh-h-h-h!' says the young lady, as if she was thinking, 'you want
to take us back to New York?'

"'To take Mr. Wahrfield. There's no charge against you, miss.
There'll be no objection, of course, to your returning with your
father.'

"Of a sudden the girl gave a tiny scream and grabbed the old boy
around the neck. 'Oh, father, father!' she says, kind of contralto,
'can this be true? Have you taken money that is not yours? Speak,
father!' It made you shiver to hear the tremolo stop she put on her
voice.

"The old boy looked pretty bughouse when she first grappled him, but
she went on, whispering in his ear and patting his off shoulder till
he stood still, but sweating a little.

"She got him to one side and they talked together a minute, and then
he put on some gold eyeglasses and walked up and handed me the grip.

"'Mr. Detective,' he says, talking a little broken, 'I conclude
to return with you. I have finished to discover that life on this
desolate and displeased coast would be worse than to die, itself. I
will go back and hurl myself upon the mercy of the Republic Company.
Have you brought a sheep?'

"'Sheep!' says I; 'I haven't a single--'

"'Ship,' cut in the young lady. 'Don't get funny. Father is of German
birth, and doesn't speak perfect English. How did you come?'

"The girl was all broke up. She had a handkerchief to her face, and
kept saying every little bit, 'Oh, father, father!' She walked up to
me and laid her lily-white hand on the clothes that had pained her at
first. I smelt a million violets. She was a lulu. I told her I came
in a private yacht.

"'Mr. O'Day,' she says. 'Oh, take us away from this horrid country at
once. Can you! Will you! Say you will.'

"'I'll try,' I said, concealing the fact that I was dying to get them
on salt water before they could change their mind.

"One thing they both kicked against was going through the town to the
boat landing. Said they dreaded publicity, and now that they were
going to return, they had a hope that the thing might yet be kept out
of the papers. They swore they wouldn't go unless I got them out to
the yacht without any one knowing it, so I agreed to humour them.

"The sailors who rowed me ashore were playing billiards in a bar-room
near the water, waiting for orders, and I proposed to have them take
the boat down the beach half a mile or so, and take us up there. How
to get them word was the question, for I couldn't leave the grip with
the prisoner, and I couldn't take it with me, not knowing but what
the monkeys might stick me up.

"The young lady says the old coloured woman would take them a note. I
sat down and wrote it, and gave it to the dame with plain directions
what to do, and she grins like a baboon and shakes her head.

"Then Mr. Wahrfield handed her a string of foreign dialect, and she
nods her head and says, 'See, señor,' maybe fifty times, and lights
out with the note.

"'Old Augusta only understands German,' said Miss Wahrfield, smiling
at me. 'We stopped in her house to ask where we could find lodging,
and she insisted upon our having coffee. She tells us she was raised
in a German family in San Domingo.'

"'Very likely,' I said. 'But you can search me for German words,
except _nix verstay_ and _noch einst_. I would have called that "See,
señor" French, though, on a gamble.'

"Well, we three made a sneak around the edge of town so as not to
be seen. We got tangled in vines and ferns and the banana bushes
and tropical scenery a good deal. The monkey suburbs was as wild as
places in Central Park. We came out on the beach a good half mile
below. A brown chap was lying asleep under a cocoanut tree, with
a ten-foot musket beside him. Mr. Wahrfield takes up the gun and
pitches it into the sea. 'The coast is guarded,' he says. 'Rebellion
and plots ripen like fruit.' He pointed to the sleeping man, who
never stirred. 'Thus,' he says, 'they perform trusts. Children!'

"I saw our boat coming, and I struck a match and lit a piece of
newspaper to show them where we were. In thirty minutes we were on
board the yacht.

"The first thing, Mr. Wahrfield and his daughter and I took the grip
into the owner's cabin, opened it up, and took an inventory. There
was one hundred and five thousand dollars, United States treasury
notes, in it, besides a lot of diamond jewelry and a couple of
hundred Havana cigars. I gave the old man the cigars and a receipt
for the rest of the lot, as agent for the company, and locked the
stuff up in my private quarters.

"I never had a pleasanter trip than that one. After we got to
sea the young lady turned out to be the jolliest ever. The very
first time we sat down to dinner, and the steward filled her glass
with champagne--that director's yacht was a regular floating
Waldorf-Astoria--she winks at me and says, 'What's the use to borrow
trouble, Mr. Fly Cop? Here's hoping you may live to eat the hen that
scratches on your grave.' There was a piano on board, and she sat
down to it and sung better than you give up two cases to hear plenty
times. She knew about nine operas clear through. She was sure enough
_bon ton_ and swell. She wasn't one of the 'among others present'
kind; she belonged on the special mention list!

"The old man, too, perked up amazingly on the way. He passed the
cigars, and says to me once, quite chipper, out of a cloud of smoke,
'Mr. O'Day, somehow I think the Republic Company will not give me the
much trouble. Guard well the gripvalise of the money, Mr. O'Day, for
that it must be returned to them that it belongs when we finish to
arrive.'

"When we landed in New York I 'phoned to the chief to meet us in that
director's office. We got in a cab and went there. I carried the
grip, and we walked in, and I was pleased to see that the chief had
got together that same old crowd of moneybugs with pink faces and
white vests to see us march in. I set the grip on the table. 'There's
the money,' I said.

"'And your prisoner?' said the chief.

"I pointed to Mr. Wahrfield, and he stepped forward and says:

"'The honour of a word with you, sir, to explain.'

"He and the chief went into another room and stayed ten minutes. When
they came back the chief looked as black as a ton of coal.

"'Did this gentleman,' he says to me, 'have this valise in his
possession when you first saw him?'

"'He did,' said I.

"The chief took up the grip and handed it to the prisoner with a
bow, and says to the director crowd: 'Do any of you recognize this
gentleman?'

"They all shook their pink faces.

"'Allow me to present,' he goes on, Señor Miraflores, president of
the republic of Anchuria. The señor has generously consented to
overlook this outrageous blunder, on condition that we undertake
to secure him against the annoyance of public comment. It is a
concession on his part to overlook an insult for which he might claim
international redress. I think we can gratefully promise him secrecy
in the matter.'

"They gave him a pink nod all round.

"'O'Day,' he says to me. 'As a private detective you're wasted.
In a war, where kidnapping governments is in the rules, you'd be
invaluable. Come down to the office at eleven.'

"I knew what that meant.

"'So that's the president of the monkeys,' says I. 'Well, why
couldn't he have said so?'

"Wouldn't it jar you?"



XVIII

THE VITAGRAPHOSCOPE


Vaudeville is intrinsically episodic and discontinuous. Its audiences
do not demand dénoûements. Sufficient unto each "turn" is the evil
thereof. No one cares how many romances the singing comédienne may
have had if she can capably sustain the limelight and a high note or
two. The audiences reck not if the performing dogs get to the pound
the moment they have jumped through their last hoop. They do not
desire bulletins about the possible injuries received by the comic
bicyclist who retires head-first from the stage in a crash of
(property) china-ware. Neither do they consider that their seat
coupons entitle them to be instructed whether or no there is a
sentiment between the lady solo banjoist and the Irish monologist.

Therefore let us have no lifting of the curtain upon a tableau of the
united lovers, backgrounded by defeated villainy and derogated by the
comic, osculating maid and butler, thrown in as a sop to the Cerberi
of the fifty-cent seats.

But our programme ends with a brief "turn" or two; and then to the
exits. Whoever sits the show out may find, if he will, the slender
thread that binds together, though ever so slightly, the story that,
perhaps, only the Walrus will understand.


_Extracts from a letter from the first vice-president of the Republic
Insurance Company, of New York City, to Frank Goodwin, of Coralio,
Republic of Anchuria._


   My Dear Mr. Goodwin:--Your communication per Messrs.
   Howland and Fourchet, of New Orleans, has reached us. Also
   their draft on N. Y. for $100,000, the amount abstracted
   from the funds of this company by the late J. Churchill
   Wahrfield, its former president. . . . The officers
   and directors unite in requesting me to express to you
   their sincere esteem and thanks for your prompt and much
   appreciated return of the entire missing sum within two
   weeks from the time of its disappearance. . . . Can assure
   you that the matter will not be allowed to receive the
   least publicity. . . . Regret exceedingly the distressing
   death of Mr. Wahrfield by his own hand, but . . .
   Congratulations on your marriage to Miss Wahrfield . . .
   many charms, winning manners, noble and womanly nature and
   envied position in the best metropolitan society. . . .

   Cordially yours,

   LUCIUS E. APPLEGATE,
   First Vice-President the Republic Insurance Company.



The Vitagraphoscope
(Moving Pictures)

The Last Sausage

SCENE--_An Artist's Studio._ The artist, a young man of prepossessing
appearance, sits in a dejected attitude, amid a litter of sketches,
with his head resting upon his hand. An oil stove stands on a pine
box in the centre of the studio. The artist rises, tightens his waist
belt to another hole, and lights the stove. He goes to a tin bread
box, half-hidden by a screen, takes out a solitary link of sausage,
turns the box upside-down to show that there is no more, and chucks
the sausage into a frying-pan, which he sets upon the stove. The
flame of the stove goes out, showing that there is no more oil. The
artist, in evident despair, seizes the sausage, in a sudden access of
rage, and hurls it violently from him. At the same time a door opens,
and a man who enters receives the sausage forcibly against his nose.
He seems to cry out; and is observed to make a dance step or two,
vigorously. The newcomer is a ruddy-faced, active, keen-looking
man, apparently of Irish ancestry. Next he is observed to laugh
immoderately; he kicks over the stove; he claps the artist (who is
vainly striving to grasp his hand) vehemently upon the back. Then
he goes through a pantomime which to the sufficiently intelligent
spectator reveals that he has acquired large sums of money by trading
pot-metal hatchets and razors to the Indians of the Cordillera
Mountains for gold dust. He draws a roll of money as large as a small
loaf of bread from his pocket, and waves it above his head, while at
the same time he makes pantomime of drinking from a glass. The artist
hurriedly secures his hat, and the two leave the studio together.


The Writing on the Sands

SCENE--_The Beach at Nice._ A woman, beautiful, still young,
exquisitely clothed, complacent, poised, reclines near the water,
idly scrawling letters in the sand with the staff of her silken
parasol. The beauty of her face is audacious; her languid pose is one
that you feel to be impermanent--you wait, expectant, for her to
spring or glide or crawl, like a panther that has unaccountably
become stock-still. She idly scrawls in the sand; and the word that
she always writes is "Isabel." A man sits a few yards away. You can
see that they are companions, even if no longer comrades. His face is
dark and smooth, and almost inscrutable--but not quite. The two speak
little together. The man also scratches on the sand with his cane.
And the word that he writes is "Anchuria." And then he looks out
where the Mediterranean and the sky intermingle, with death in his
gaze.


The Wilderness and Thou

SCENE--_The Borders of a Gentleman's Estate in a Tropical Land._ An
old Indian, with a mahogany-coloured face, is trimming the grass on a
grave by a mangrove swamp. Presently he rises to his feet and walks
slowly toward a grove that is shaded by the gathering, brief
twilight. In the edge of the grove stand a man who is stalwart, with
a kind and courteous air, and a woman of a serene and clear-cut
loveliness. When the old Indian comes up to them the man drops money
in his hand. The grave-tender, with the stolid pride of his race,
takes it as his due, and goes his way. The two in the edge of the
grove turn back along the dim pathway, and walk close, close--for,
after all, what is the world at its best but a little round field of
the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

CURTAIN





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Cabbages and Kings" ***

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