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Cabbages and Kings

by O. Henry · English · Gutenberg #2777 · 377,842 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Cabbages and Kings

Author: O. Henry


        
Release date: August 1, 2001 [eBook #2777]
                Most recently updated: February 2, 2022

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2777

Credits: Earle C. Beach and Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CABBAGES AND KINGS ***

[Illustration]

[Illustration]
“A little saint with a color more lightful than orange”




CABBAGES AND KINGS

by O. HENRY


_Author of “The Four Million,” “The Voice of the
City,” “The Trimmed Lamp,” “Strictly Business,”
“Whirligigs,” Etc._




    “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 Renfrew 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 loath 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 disreputa

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