Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John
where there are human beings. I want to be with the honest silly little Moplahs. I want something more peaceful… “
“I should have thought that the Gran Seco was more peaceful than the Moplahs.”
“No, it isn’t, for there is death here, and death is unsettling.”
“Well, we’ll go off to-morrow, if you wish it. We’re not likely to want for peace in the next few weeks. The thing is how to avoid boredom… By the way, oughtn’t we to go downstairs and say good-bye to the Americans? They’re friendly souls.”
But Janet was in a strange mood. “You go. I don’t think I’ll come.” She still sat with her hands in her lap, looking straight before her.
But the Americans were already packed into the station omnibus, and Archie could only shout to them from the doorway, and receive in return blown kisses from the ladies and hand-waves from the men. They seemed to be waiting for a member of their party, and as Archie turned into the hall he met the laggard charging through the crowd of waiters and porters. It was the one who had not yet shown himself, and Archie realised that it must be the driver of the car in the Avenida de la Paz, the youth in the linen knickerbockers. What his present clothes were could not be guessed, since he wore a tweed ulster, but he had the same preposterous, broad-brimmed hat on his head.
To his surprise the young man, whom he had never met, made straight for him, and gave him his hand. Something passed from it, and Archie’s fist held a crumpled paper.
The next second he was gone, but not before Archie had had another shock. For this was not the youth of the Avenida de la Paz. It was Don Luis de Marzaniga, and in their moment of contact his eyes had looked into his and they had commanded silence.
Deeply mystified, Archie went upstairs with the paper held tight in his fingers. When his door closed behind him, opened it. The scrap contained a scrawl in pencil in a large, irregular hand. It read: “Please be both in your sitting-room at eleven o’clock.”
He showed it to Janet.
“I said there was no mystery in the Gran Seco, but it seems I spoke too soon. I’m hanged if I can make it out. It was Luis that gave me this paper, but it was Luis pretending to be that American lad in the linen knickerbockers. You remember he was the one of the Moplahs we never saw.”
“We never saw the tall girl either. I am positive that she was Miss Dasent.” Janet looked at her wrist-watch. “Eleven, the note said. A quarter of an hour to wait.”
That quarter of an hour was spent by Janet in the same contemplative immobility, while Archie tried to read, smoked two cigarettes feverishly, and occupied a few minutes in washing his hands. The bedroom opened from the sitting-room, and beyond it was the bathroom which he used as a dressing-room. He was just about to begin a third cigarette when he saw that the hands of the sham ormolu clock on the mantelpiece pointed to eleven. After that he kept his eyes on the door which led to the corridor.
But that door did not open. It was an exclamation from Janet that made him turn his head.
A waiter had appeared suddenly, entering from the bedroom. He carried a tray with three cups of mate, which he placed on the table at Janet’s elbow.
“Look here, you’ve made a mistake,” Archie said in his halting Spanish. “We gave no orders.”
The man replied in English. “Didn’t you? All the same, you’d be the better for cup. I’m going to have one myself. You might lock the door, Archie, and give me a cigarette.”
While Archie stared thunderstruck, Janet laughed—a laugh which began as a low gurgle and ended in riotous merriment. She rose from her chair and stood before the waiter, her shoulders shaking, while she dabbed her small handkerchief on her eyes. Then, suddenly, she became grave. “You have been having a rough time. Sandy,” she said, and she laid a hand on his shoulder. He winced, and drew back.
“So—so,” he said. “That arm is still tender… What malign fate brought the pair of you here?”
The waiter was to all appearance an ordinary mestizo, sallow-skinned, with shaggy dark hair, handsome after a fashion because of his pleasant eyes. He wore ill-fitting dress trousers, a shirt not too clean, a short alpaca jacket and slippers rather down at heel. He smiled on Janet as he poured out the mate, and then from Archie’s case took a cigarette.
“Yes. I want to know just how you managed it,” continued. “Wilbur did his best to prevent you, and Luis told me he thought he had dissuaded you, and in spite of everything you bubble up. You’re an incorrigible pair!”
“But why shouldn’t we come here if we want?” Janet asked.
“Because it’s deadly danger—for yourselves and for others. You go to lunch with the Administration, and the Vice-President hears of it just in time to have a touch of jaundice. You blunder into this hotel, and I can only save myself by making this assignation. You two innocents have been complicating my life.”
Enlightenment broke in on Archie. “You were the bounder in the linen bags—the fellow that drove the car.”
“I was. You were within an ace of recognising me, if I hadn’t tilted my hat.”
“Then what was Luis doing, got up in your rig?”
“He took my passport. This is a country of passports, you know, much more efficient than anything we had in the war zone in France. He came into the Gran Seco by a back door, and so didn’t require one. But it was essential that mine should be used and that I should be believed to be out of the place. It was equally essential that I should remain here.”
“How did you manage your present camouflage?”
The waiter looked down with pride at his spotty shirt.
“Rather successful, isn’t it? I have a bit of a graft in this line. My weeks in the Cafe de l’Enfer were not altogether wasted.”
He finished his mate and lit a cigarette. He looked at the two before him, Janet with her girlish wind-blown grace, Archie with his puzzled honesty, and he suddenly ceased to be a waiter. His brows bent, and his voice from friendly banter became the voice of authority.
“You must clear out at once,” he said. “Tomorrow morning. Do you know that you are walking gaily on a road which is mined in every yard?”
“I knew it,” said Janet. “I felt in my bones that this place was accursed.”
“You don’t know it. You cannot know just how accursed it is, and I have no time to explain. What I have to tell you is that you must go down to Olifa to-morrow morning. You will be encouraged to stay longer, but you must refuse.”
“But look here, Sandy “—it was Archie who spoke—”they have nothing against us. Janet and I can’t be in my danger.”
“No, but you are a source of danger to others. Myself, for example, and the Vice-President, Senor Rosas.”
“Rosas—I never heard of him.”
“A very pleasant Mexican gentleman. You once knew him as Mr Blenkiron.”
“Good Lord! But he’s dead!”
“He is officially dead. That is why it won’t do for him to meet old friends.”
“Sandy dear,” said Janet, “you mustn’t treat us like this. We’re not babies. We’ll do what you tell us, but we deserve more confidence.”
The waiter compared his Ingersoll watch with the sham ormolu clock.
“Indeed, you do, but the story would take hours, and I have only three minutes left. But I will tell you one thing. Do you remember my showing you at Laverlaw the passage in the chronicle about the Old Man of the Mountain, the King of the Assassins, who lived in the Lebanon, and doped his followers with hashish and sent them about the world to do his errands? Well, that story has a counterpart to-day.”
“Mr Castor!”