Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John
a madness I’ve got to have a hand in. You promised to let me in, Sandy. I’ll do anything I’m told… “
“I gave you a promise. But now you know what we propose, do you still hold me to it? What do you say, Janet? I can’t put the odds better than three to one. We may all be blotted out. Worse still, we may end in a fiasco with our reputation gone for good. This is not your quarrel. I’ve no business to implicate you, and if you both slip down to Olifa and take the next steamer home, I admit I’ll be happier in my mind.”
“You want us to go home?” Janet asked. Her slight figure in the firelight had stiffened like a soldier on parade.
“I should be easier if you went.”
Miss Dasent rose and came out of the shadows.
“You say it is not Sir Archibald’s quarrel,” she said. The clear sweet pallor of her skin was coloured by the glow from the hearth, and her dark eyes had the depth of a tragic muse. “But is it your quarrel, Lord Clanroyden? Why are you doing this? Only out of friendship for my uncle? If you say that, I cannot believe you. I could understand you taking any risk to get my uncle out of the Gran Seco—that would be your loyalty—but this is more than that. It cannot be for America’s sake, for I have heard you say harsh things about my country. What is your reason? You can’t expect Lady Roylance to answer till she has heard it.”
Sandy flushed under the gaze of the dark eyes.
“I don’t know. I never analyse my motives. But I think I think I would go on with this affair, even if your uncle were out of it. You see, down at the bottom of my heart I hate the things that Castor stands for. I hate cruelty. I hate using human beings as pawns in a game of egotism. I hate all rotten, machine-made, scientific creeds. I loathe and detest all that superman cant, which is worse nonsense than the stuff it tries to replace. I really believe in liberty, though it’s out of fashion… And because America in her queer way is on the same side, I’m for America.”
“Thank you,” the girl said quietly.
Janet held out her hand.
“We shan’t stay out, Sandy. I wouldn’t let Archie go home if he wanted to. We’re both too young to miss this party. It’s what I used to dream about as a child at Glenraden… Is there anything to drink? We ought to have a toast.”
“I said I would be happier if you went home,” said Sandy, “but I lied.”
Luis jumped to his feet. A whistle had blown faintly out-of-doors, and a second later there was another low whistle in the corridor.
“Quick,” he said to Sandy. “That is Jose. The outer pickets have seen something, and passed the word back.”
The two men slipped through the curtained window into the darkness. Don Mario rang a bell and bade a servant bring mate and other drinks, and no more than five glasses. Earlier in the evening the company had numbered six. Then Luis re-entered by the window, drew the curtains, and dropped into an armchair with a cigarette.
Presently there was the sound of a motor-car on the hard earth of the courtyard, and the bustle of arrival in the hall.
The door of Don Mario’s room was thrown open, and the butler ushered in three men in the uniform of the Olifa police. Two were junior officers, but the third was no less than Colonel Lindburg, the commissioner of the province in which Veiro lay.
The Colonel was a tall Swede, with a quick blue eye, close-cropped hair, and a small jaw like a terrier’s. He greeted Don Mario heartily, announcing that he was on his way to Bonaventura, and had called to beg an additional tin of petrol. Luis he already knew, and he was introduced to the others—Sir Archie who limped about to get him a chair, Janet who was turning over an American picture paper, Miss Dasent who was busy with a small piece of needle-work. The group made a pleasant picture of a family party, just about to retire to bed. The Colonel noted the five glasses, and when the servants brought mint juleps the three officers toasted Don Mario and the ladies. The newcomers talked of horses, of the visit of the Gobernador on the previous day, of the cool air of Veiro as compared with the Olifa heats. “You were not here yesterday, Senor de Marzaniga,” the Colonel said, and Luis explained that he had only arrived from his ranch that afternoon.
They stayed for twenty minutes, finished their juleps and, at a nod from the Colonel, rose to go. Don Mario and Luis accompanied them to the door. One of the peons made himself useful in filling the tank of the car, and was rewarded with a twenty-peseta piece.
When the sound of the car had died away, the two men returned to the ladies. Luis was laughing. “They are clumsy fellows, the police. There were four of them, not three. The fourth was young Azar. He asked permission to wash his hands, and, since he knows the house, for has been to see the yearlings, he took the opportunity inspecting all the bedrooms. Pedro heard him tramping about upstairs. Also that story of too little petrol was stupidly contrived. They had four full tins.”
The curtains opened and the peon entered, he who had been so useful with the car. He held up the twenty-peso piece.
“I have got my stake,” he said. “Janet, you shall keep it. This little coin against Castor’s millions.”
With his rough clothes and dark skin he seemed to have shrunken to the leanest of lean scarecrows. He swayed a little, and caught Janet’s shoulder.
“Sandy, you are worn out,” she cried in alarm.
“I’m rather done up. Luis, you must put me in a place where I can sleep for a round of the clock. I must say good-bye, for it won’t do for us to be together… Luis will look after you.”
He took the whisky-and-soda which Don Mario brought him, and, in the toast he gave, Janet heard for the first time a name which was to haunt her dreams..
“I drink,” he said, “to our meeting in the Courts of the Morning.”
X
Mr Sylvester Perry in his Seeing Eyes asked a question which has often been asked by travellers, why the Gran Seco had no other route to the sea except by the three-hundred-mile journey south to the port of Olifa. Its city is not more than a hundred miles as the crow flies from the Pacific. The answer which Mr Perry gives is that which he had from one of the transient managers of the struggling copper companies, that on the western side of the plateau the mountains simply cascade into the sea. Archie, who had asked himself the question, reached the same conclusion from a study of a map prepared long ago by the British Admiralty. The close lines of the hatching, though they must have been largely a matter of guesswork, showed that the sailors who had surveyed the coast had no doubt about its precipitous character, and up in the northern apex, where the great peak of Choharua overhung the ocean, the contours made the drop as sheer as the side of a house.
Oddly enough, about this time the same question occurred to the Gobernador. That northern angle had been left alone in his careful organisation of his province, for up there was neither wealth to be got nor men to get it. He called for the reports of those who had penetrated its recesses and all spoke with the same voice. The plateau rose in sharp tiers to meet the curve of the mountains, and these tiers were waterless desert. Higher up there were forests, which might some day be used for mine timber, and it might be possible to divert the streams from the snows, which now flowed seaward in sheer ravines, to the Gran Seco watershed. These things, however, were for the future. The Gobernador closed the reports and rolled up the maps, with a mental note that some day soon he must undertake a complete scientific survey of his province.
It had become necessary for him to pay one of his hurried visits to Europe. The Gobernador led a life as arduous as Napoleon’s during the early years of his Consulate. Like Napoleon, he had made himself the master of every detail in every department, and, like Napoleon, he had instituted a zealous inquest for capacity, and, having found it, used it to the full. But, unlike the First Consul, he did not need to keep a close eye on his