Book + 

I + 

The Gran Seco + 

I + 

The open windows, protected by wire blinds as fine-meshed as gauze, allowed the cool airs from the sea to slip in from the dusk. The big restaurant was in a pleasant gloom broken by patches of candlelight from the few occupied tables. The Hotel de la Constitución stands on a little promontory above the harbour of Olifa, so the noise of the streets comes to it only like the echo of waves from a breakwater. Archie Roylance, looking into the great square of velvet sky now beginning to be patterned by stars, felt as if he were still at sea. + 

The Vice-Consul interpreted his thoughts. + 

“You are surprised at the quiet,” he said. “That is only because we dine early. In a little there will be many lights and a jigging band and young people dancing. Yet we have good taste in Olifa and are not garish. If you will be my guest on another occasion, I will take you to a club as well equipped as any in Pall Mall, or to a theatre where you will see better acting than in London, and I will give you a supper afterwards which Voisin’s could not better. We have civilisation, you see⁠—for what it is worth.” + 

The Vice-Consul, whose name was Alejandro Gedd, was a small man with a neat, dark, clean-shaven face, and high cheekbones from which his critics deduced Indian blood. As a matter of fact they came from another ancestry. His grandfather, Alexander Geddes, had come out in his youth from Dundee as a clerk in a merchant’s house, had prospered, married a pretty Olifera, begotten a son, and founded a bank which rose in the silver boom to fortune. That son had married a lady of pure Castilian descent, whose beauty was not equal to her lineage, so the grandson of old Geddes had missed both the vigour of the Scot and the suave comeliness of the Olifera. Don Alejandro was an insignificant little man, and he was growing fat. The father had sold his interest in the bank at a high figure, and had thereafter dabbled in politics and horse-breeding; the son, at his death, had promptly got rid of the stud and left the government of his country to get on without him. He had been sent to an English school, and later to the Sorbonne, and had emerged from his education a dilettante and a cosmopolitan. He professed a stout Olifa patriotism, but his private sentiment was for England, and in confidential moments he would speak of his life as exile. Already he had asked Archie a dozen questions about common friends, and had dwelt like an epicure on the recollections of his last visit⁠—the Park on a May morning, an English garden in midsummer, the Solent in August, the October colouring of Scottish hills. His dinner-jacket had been made in the vicinity of Hanover Square, and he hoped that his black stock and his black-ribboned eyeglass were, if not English, at any rate European. + 

Archie was looking at the windows. “Out there is the Pacific,” he said, “nothing nearer you than China. What is it like the other way?” + 

“The coastal plain for a hundred miles. Then the foothills and the valleys where the wine is made. A very pretty light claret, I assure you. Then, for many hundreds of miles, the great mountains.” + 

“Have you travelled there much?” + 

Don Alejandro shook his head. “I do not travel in this land. What is there to see? In the mountains there are nothing but Indians and wild animals and bleak forests and snow. I am content with this city, where, as I have said, there is civilisation.” + 

“A man I met on the boat told me about a place called the Gran Seco. He said it was bound to be soon the greatest copper area in the world.” + 

Don Alejandro laughed. “That ill-favoured spot becomes famous. Five years ago it was scarcely known. Today many strangers ask me about it. The name is Indian-Spanish. You must understand that a hundred miles north of this city the coastal plain ends, and the Cordilleras swing round so that there is no room between them and the ocean. But at the curve the mountains, though high, are not the great peaks. These are far to the east, and you have for a big space a kind of tableland. That is what we call the Gran Seco⁠—the Great Thirst⁠—for it is mostly waterless and desert. But it is very rich in minerals. For long we have known that, and before the War there were many companies at work there. Now there is one great company, in which our Government has a share, and from which Olifa derives much of its wealth. The capital employed is mostly foreign⁠—no, not American⁠—European, but of what country I do not know. The labourers are the people of the hills, and the managers are Europeans of many nationalities. They pass through this city going and coming⁠—through this hotel often⁠—perhaps we may see some of them tonight. They are strange folk who do not mix freely with us of Olifa. I am told they are growing as wealthy as Rockefeller. There are no English among them, I think⁠—Slavs mostly, with some Italians and now and then a German, so I do not come across them in the way of business, and it would appear that they have no time for pleasure.⁠ ⁠… May I ask, Sir Archibald, for what purpose especially you honour us with a visit? I want to know how best I can serve you.” + 

Archie wrinkled his brow. “You are very kind, Don Alejandro. The fact is we’re here mainly for the fun of it. This is a sort of belated honeymoon trip. Also, I’d like to know something about the politics of Olifa and South America generally. You see, I’m a Member of Parliament, and I’ve an idea that this part of the globe may soon become rather important. I have brought several introductions.” + 

Don Alejandro waved his hand deprecatingly. + 

“That will be readily arranged. Your Minister is on leave, and the Embassy has left you in my hands. Without doubt you will be received by our President. I myself will take you to our Minister for External Affairs, who is my second cousin. Our Minister of Finance will expound to you our extravagant prosperity. But of politics in the old sense you will find little. We are too rich and too busy. When we were poor we talked government all the day. And we had revolutions⁠—dictatorships tempered by revolutions. My father more than once saved his neck by the good blood of his racing stable. But now we are very tame and virtuous. Our Government is rich enough to be enlightened, and our people, being also rich, do not trouble their heads about theories. Even the peons on the estancias and the vaqueros in the hills are content. Olifa is⁠—how do you say?⁠—a plutocratic democracy⁠—a liberal plutocracy. Once it was a battered little packet-boat, now it is a great liner careless of weather and tides. It has no problems, this fortunate country.” + 

“Jolly place for a holiday,” said Archie. “Well, we mean to have a good look round. What do you advise?” + 

Don Alejandro became lyrical. “You can go south for eight hundred miles in an ever-widening plain. There you will see such orange groves as the world cannot match, and nearer the mountains the savannahs which are the richest pasture on earth. I will write to my cousin at Veiro, and he will entertain you at the stud farm which was once my father’s. It will not be like an English Sunday afternoon in the country, where a fat stud groom with a bunch of carrots takes the guests round the stables. It is a wild place between the knees of the hills, but there is some pretty horseflesh there.” + 

“Can I get up into the mountains?” Archie put in, but Don Alejandro was not to be interrupted. + 

“You must visit our great cities, for Olifa, though the capital, is not the largest. Cardanio has now four to five hundred thousand souls. That is the port from which our fruits and hides and frozen beef are shipped. And there is Alcorta in the hinterland, which is our little Birmingham. But madame will weary of these commercial glories. She will be happier, I think, among the horses at Veiro, or in some pretty hacienda.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Janet Roylance had paid little heed to the conversation, being engaged in studying the slowly increasing number of diners. + 

“I would like to go into the mountains,” she said. “I saw them from far out at sea, and they looked like the battlements of Paradise.” + 

“A very savage Paradise you would find it, Lady Roylance. None of your green Swiss valleys with snow-peaks rising from meadows. It is all dusty and bare and cruel. Take my advice and be content with our sunny estancias⁠—” + 

“Look at these chaps, Janet,” said Archie suddenly. “There’s a queer class of lad for you!” + 

Don Alejandro fixed his eyeglass and regarded four men who had taken their seats at a table a little way off. It was a curious quartet. There was a tall man with hair so pale that at first sight he looked like an albino; he had a bony face and skin like old parchment, but from his bearing it was clear that he was still young. Two were small and dark and Jewish, and the fourth was a short burly fellow, with the prognathous jaw of a negro but the luminous eyes of a Latin. All were dressed in well-cut evening clothes, and each wore in his buttonhole a yellow flower⁠—to Archie it looked like a carnation. The notable things about them were their extreme pallor and their quiet. They sat almost motionless, speaking very little and showing that they were alive by only the tiniest gestures. A waiter brought them caviar, and poured champagne into their glasses, and as they moved their arms to eat and drink they had an odd suggestion of automata. + 

Don Alejandro dropped his eyeglass. “From the Gran Seco,” he said. “That is the ‘type Gran Seco.’ European, I think⁠—the tall man might be a Swede⁠—going from or returning to their place of work. No. I do not know anyone of them. Olifa is full of these birds of passage, who linger only for a day. They do not mix with our society. They are civil and inoffensive, but they keep to themselves. Observe the chic of their clothes, and the yellow buttonholes. That is the fashion of the copper magnates.” + 

“They look to me like pretty sick men,” said Archie. + 

“That, too, is their fashion. Those who go to that uncouth place speedily lose their complexions. It may be the copper fumes or some fever of the hills.” + 

“I should rather like to go there,” said Archie. + 

Don Alejandro laughed. + 

“Ah, you are intrigued. That is like an Englishman. He must be forever hunting romance. No doubt a visit to the Gran Seco can be accomplished, but it must first be arranged. The railway beyond Santa Ana is not for the public. It is owned by the company, and their permission is necessary to travel on it. Also there must be a permit from the Gobernador of the province, who is also the Company’s president, for the workers in the mines are a brutal race and the rule of the Gran Seco must be like the rule of a country in wartime.⁠ ⁠… If you wish, I will put the matter in train. But I do not think it is quite the place for a lady. Such cheeks as madame’s are not for the withering airs of the hills.” + 

“I will follow the Olifero custom,” said Janet. “Your ladies, Don Alejandro, are very fond of pearl powder.” + 

The restaurant was filling up. It appeared that many Oliferos were dining, for large lustrous women’s eyes looked out of dead-white faces. At the far end of the room, close to the band, a noisy party took their seats at a table. They were all young, and, since they had not troubled to change, their clothes made a startling blotch of colour among the sober black and white of the other guests. All looked as if they had just left a golf-course, the men in knickerbockers of white flannel and both sexes in outrageous jumpers. + 

“Behold our protectors!” said Don Alejandro with a touch of acid in his tone. “Behold the flower of Yanqui youth! No. I do not know them⁠—for that you must ask my colleague, Señor Wilbur. But I know where they come from. They are from the big Yanqui yacht now in the harbour. It is called the Corinna.” + 

“Good lord! That was Mike Burminster’s boat. I didn’t know he had sold it.” Archie regarded the party with disfavour. + 

“I do not know who is the present owner, except that he is a Yanqui. The guests I should judge from their appearance to have sprung from Hollywood.” + 

“They were lunching here today,” said Janet. “I saw them when Archie was inquiring about his lost kit-bag.⁠ ⁠… There was a girl among them that I thought I must have seen before.⁠ ⁠… I don’t see her here tonight.⁠ ⁠… I rather like the look of them, Don Alejandro. They are fresh, and jolly, and young.” + 

“Believe me, they will not repay further acquaintance, Lady Roylance.” Don Alejandro was unconsciously imitating his Castilian mother. “They come here in opulent yachts and behave as if Olifa were one of their vulgar joy-cities. That is what they call ‘having a good time.’ Yanqui youth, as I have observed it, is chronically alcoholic and amorous, and its manners are a brilliant copy of the parrot-house.” + 

The three had their coffee in the spacious arcade which adjoined the restaurant. It was Don Alejandro’s turn to ask questions, and he became for a little the English exile, seeking eagerly for news⁠—who had married whom, what was thought in London of this and that⁠—till Olifa dropped from him like a mantle and he felt himself once more a European. Presently their retreat was invaded by other diners, the band moved thither from the restaurant, and dancing began in a cleared space. The young Americans had not lingered over their meal, and had soon annexed the dancing-floor. Fragments of shrill badinage and endearments were heard in the pauses of the music. + 

Don Alejandro advised against liqueurs, and commended what he called the Olifa Tokay, which proved to be a light sweet wine of the colour of sloe-gin. Holding his glass to the corona of light in the centre of the patio, he passed from reminiscence to philosophy. + 

“You are unfortunate pilgrims,” he said. “You come seeking romance and I can only offer the prosaic. No doubt, Sir Archibald, you have been led to believe that we Latin Americans are all desperadoes, and our countries a volcanic territory sputtering with little fires of revolution. You find instead the typical bourgeois republic, as bourgeois as the United States. We do not worry about liberty, for we have learned that wealth is a better and less troublesome thing. In the old days we were always quarrelling with our neighbours, and because we conscripted our youth for our armies there was discontent and presently revolution. Now we are secure, and do not give occasion for discontent.” + 

“Someone told me that you had a pretty effective army.” + 

“We have a very effective police. As for our army, it is good, no doubt, but it is small. For what should we use our army? We have no ambition of conquest, and no enemy against whom we need defence.” + 

“Still, you can’t count on perpetual peace, you know. You are rich, and wealth means rivals.” + 

“Have we not the League of Nations?” Don Alejandro cried merrily. “Is not Olifa even now a member of the Council? And is there not the Monroe Doctrine, invented by the great-grandfathers of those depraved children who are dancing yonder?” + 

“Oh, well, if you like to put it that way⁠—” + 

“I do not like to put it that way. I do not believe in the League of Nations, and I do not love the United States, and I regard the Monroe Doctrine as an insult to my race. But what would you have, my dear Sir Archibald? We have chosen prosperity, and the price we pay for it is our pride. Olifa is a well-nourished body without a soul. Life and property are as safe here as in England, and what more can the heart of man desire? We have a stable Government because our people have lost interest in being governed. Therefore I say, do not propose to study our politics, for there is nothing to study. To you in England, with a bankrupt Europe at your door and the poison of Communism trickling into your poverty, politics are life and death. To us, in our sheltered Hesperides, they are only a bad dream of the past. There is no mystery left in Olifa.⁠ ⁠…” + 

As Don Alejandro spoke, the four men from the Gran Seco were moving through the arcade. They held themselves stiffly, but walked as lightly as cats, deftly steering their way among the tables and at the same time keeping close together. They looked neither to right nor left, but, as they passed, Janet and Archie had a good view of their waxen faces. The eyes of all⁠—the pale eyes of the tall man, the beady eyes of the Jews, and the fine eyes of the Latin⁠—had the same look of unnatural composure, as if the exterior world did not exist for them and they were all the time looking inward in a profound absorption. They had something of the eery detachment of sleepwalkers. + 

Don Alejandro was talking again. + 

“Be content, my friends, with what we can offer⁠—our beauty and our civilisation. Think of us as a little enclave of colour between the glooms of the great sea and the clouds of the great mountains. Here man has made a paradise for himself, where during his short day of life he can live happily without questioning.” + 

Archie had been looking at Janet. + 

“I think we both want to go to the Gran Seco,” he said. + 

II + 

Archie left Janet writing letters and started out next morning to explore the city. The first taste of a foreign town was always to him an intoxication, and, in the hot aromatic sunshine of that month which for Olifa is the sweet of the year, the place seemed a riot of coloured and exultant life. He descended the broad terraced road which by easy gradients led from the hotel to the twisted streets of the old city. Some of the calles were only narrow ravines of shade, where between high windowless walls country mule-carts struggled towards the marketplace. Others were unhappily provided with screeching electric tramways, so that the passerby on foot or on a horse had to mount high on the ill-paved sidewalk to avoid destruction. Presently he came into a hot marketplace, where around an old Spanish fountain were massed stalls laden with glowing flowers and fruit, and strange unwholesome fishes, and coarse pottery, and garish fabrics, and country-woven straw hats. Through this medley Archie limped happily, testing his Spanish on the vendors, or trying with most inadequate knowledge to disentangle the racial mixture. The town Oliferos were a small race, in which he thought there must be considerable negro blood, but the countryfolk were well-made and upstanding, often with a classic and melancholy dignity in their faces. There were lean, wild-looking people, too, whose speech was not any kind of Spanish, with an odd angle to their foreheads and the shyness of an animal in their small anxious eyes, who squatted in their dark ponchos beside their mules and spoke only to each other. An Indian breed, thought Archie⁠—perhaps from the foothills. + 

A maze of calles took him to the main Plaza, where a great baroque cathedral raised its sculptured front above a medley of beggars and vendors of holy medals. The square was shamefully paved, the façades of the old Spanish houses were often in disrepair, but the crumbling plaster and the blotched paint blended into something beautiful and haunting. Here it was very quiet, as if the city hushed itself in the environs of the house of God. To Archie it seemed that he was looking upon that ancient Olifa, before the hustling modern world was born, Olifa as it had appeared to the eyes of Captain Cook’s sailors when they landed, a city which kept the manners and faith of sixteenth-century Spain. He entered the church, and found a vast, cavernous darkness like the inside of a mountain, candles twinkling like distant glowworms, echoes of muttered prayers and the heavy sweetness of incense. After it the Plaza seemed as bright as a mountaintop. + 

Another labyrinth brought him into a different world. The great Avenida de la Paz is a creation of the last twenty years, and runs straight as a ruler from the villas of the most fashionable suburb to the old harbour of the city. In its making it has swallowed up much ancient derelict architecture, and many nests of squalid huts, but, since it was built with a clear purpose by a good architect, it is in itself a splendid thing, in which Olifa takes a fitting pride. Where Archie struck it, it was still residential, the home of the rank and fashion of the city, with the white mass of the Government buildings and the copper dome of the Parliament House rising beyond it. But as he walked westward it gradually changed. Soon it was all huge blocks of flats and shops, with here and there the arrogant palace of a bank or shipping company. + 

One of these caught Archie’s attention. It was an immense square edifice built of the local marble, with a flight of steps running up to doors like those of the Baptistry in Florence. Two sentries with fixed bayonets were on guard, and at first he thought it a Government office. Then his eye caught a modest inscription above the entrance⁠—Administración de Gran Seco. The name had stuck in his memory from last night’s talk⁠—linked with the sight of the four copper magnates and Don Alejandro’s aloofness. The Gran Seco was a strange and comfortless place, and it was perched far up in the mountains. This gorgeous building was at variance with the atmosphere with which the name was invested for him, and he stared with lively curiosity at its magnificence. + 

Suddenly the great doors opened and a man came out, escorted by two bowing porters. The sentries saluted, a big limousine drew up, and he was borne away. Archie had a glimpse of a tall figure in dark grey clothes, and, what seemed out of keeping with the weather, a bowler hat. The face was middle-aged and bearded⁠—a trim black beard like a naval officer’s. As he passed, the man had glanced at him, and, even in that short second of time, there was something in those eyes which startled him. They seemed so furiously alive. There was nothing inquisitive in them, but they were searching, all-embracing. Archie felt that this was one who missed nothing and forgot nothing; he had had an impression of supreme competence which was as vivid as an electric shock. No wonder the Gran Seco was a success, he thought, if it had men of that quality in its management. + 

The broad pavements, the double line of trams, the shopwindows as soberly rich as those of the Rue de la Paix, the high white buildings narrowing in the distance to enfold a blue gleam of the sea, made an impressive picture of wealth and enlightenment. There was a curious absence of colour, for the people he passed seemed all to be wearing dark clothes; they were a quiet people, too, who spoke without the southern vehemence. Emancipation had come to the ladies of Olifa, for there were many abroad, walking delicately on the pavement, or showing their powdered prettiness in motorcars. Here was none of the riotous life of the old quarter, and Archie had an impression of the city as elaborately civilised and of its richer inhabitants as decorous to the point of inanity. There were no peasants to be seen, nor a single beggar; the Avenida de la Paz seemed to be kept as a promenade for big business and cultivated leisure. Archie grinned when he remembered the picture he had formed of Olifa, as a decadent blend of ancient Spain and second-rate modern Europe, with a vast wild hinterland pressing in upon its streets. The reality was as polished and secure as Paris⁠—a reticent Paris, with a dash of Wall Street. + 

One splash of colour caught his eye. It came from a big touring car, which had drawn up at the pavement’s edge and had disgorged its occupants. The driver was a young man strangely clad in starched linen knickerbockers, a golf-jumper designed in a willow-plate pattern of blue and white, pale blue stockings, and a wide-brimmed straw hat. He sat negligently at the wheel, and as Archie stared at him he tilted his hat over his brow. Presently there emerged from the shop two girls and a second youth⁠—the youth in snowy white flannels with a scarlet sash, and the girls in clothes the like of which Archie had never seen, but which in his own mind he classed as the kind of thing for a tropical garden-party. He noticed, since the extreme shortness of their skirts made their legs their most notable feature, that they had black patent-leather shoes with silver buckles, and wonderful shot-silver stockings. + 

“You all right, honey?” one of them addressed the driver. + 

“Fine. Got the candy you want?” + 

Then an argument arose between the two girls and the other youth, an argument conducted in a dialect unintelligible to Archie, and in voices which forcibly reminded him of the converse of a basket of kittens. The four in that discreet monochrome place were indecently conspicuous, but they were without modesty, and among the stares and whispers of the crowded pavement conducted their private dispute with the freedom of children. The driver at last grew bored. + 

“Aw, come on, Baby,” he cried. “Get off the sidewalk and come aboard. We got to hustle.” + 

They obeyed him, and the car presently slid into the traffic, the driver’s hat still tilted over his brows. Archie believed that he recognised one of the young women as a member of the party from the American yacht who had been dining in the hotel restaurant the night before. He rather resented their presence in Olifa. These half-witted children of pleasure were out of the picture which he had made for himself; they even conflicted with Olifa’s conception of herself. “The United States,” he told himself, “won’t be too popular in Latin America if it unlooses on it much goods of that type.” + 

At last the Avenida passed from shops and offices into a broad belt of garden, flanked on one side by the Customs House and on the other by the building which housed the Port authorities. Beyond them lay the green waters of the old harbour, and the very spot where the first Conquistadors had landed. The new harbour, where the copper from the Gran Seco was shipped, lay farther south, close to the railway-stations; the old one was now almost unused except for fishing-boats, and as a landing-place for the yachts which berthed in the outer basin behind the great breakwater. To the north was a little plaza which was all that remained of the first port of Olifa. It was a picturesque half-moon of crumbling stone, and seemed to be mainly composed of cafés and cinema houses. + 

Archie sniffed the salt breeze from the west, and limped cheerfully along the waterfront, for he loved to be near the sea. In the outer basin he saw the funnels and top-gear of the yacht Corinna, on which he had aforetime enjoyed the Duke of Burminster’s hospitality. It annoyed him that his friend should have sold or chartered it to the kind of people he had seen in the motorcar. + 

A launch from the yacht was even then approaching the landing-stage. Archie could read the name on a sailor’s jersey. Two men were landed, one who looked like a steward, and the other a thickset fellow in an engineer’s overalls. They separated at once, and the second of the two walked in Archie’s direction. Archie had a bad memory for faces, but there was something in this figure which woke recollection. As they came abreast and their eyes met, both came half unconsciously to a halt. The man seemed to stiffen and his right hand to rise in a salute which he promptly checked. He had a rugged face which might have been hewn out of mahogany, and honest, sullen, blue eyes. + 

“Hullo,” said Archie, “I’ve seen you before. Now, where on earth⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

The man gave him no assistance, but stood regarding him in a sulky embarrassment. He sniffed, and in lieu of a handkerchief drew his hand across his nose, and the movement stirred some chord in Archie’s memory. + 

“I’ve got it. You were with General Hannay. I remember you in that black time before Amiens. Hamilton’s your name, isn’t it? Corporal Hamilton?” + 

Like an automaton the figure stiffened. “Sirr, that’s my name.” Then it relaxed. It was as if Archie’s words had recalled it for a moment to a military discipline which it hastened to repudiate. + 

“Do you remember me?” + 

“Ay. Ye’re Captain Sir Erchibald Roylance.” There was no “sirr” this time. + 

“Well, this is a queer place to foregather. I think the occasion demands a drink. Let’s try one of these cafés.” + 

The man seemed unwilling. “I’m a wee bit pressed for time.” + 

“Nonsense, Hamilton, you can spare five minutes. I want to hear how you’ve been getting on and what landed you here. Hang it, you and I and the General went through some pretty stiff times together. We can’t part on this foreign strand with a how-d’ye-do.” + 

Archie led the way to a café in the crescent of old houses which looked a little cleaner than the rest. + 

“What’ll you have, Hamilton?” he asked when they had found a table. “You probably don’t fancy the native wine. Bottled beer? Or rum? Or can you face aguardiente, which is the local whisky?” + 

“I’m a teetotaller. I’ll hae a glass o’ syrup.” + 

“Well, I’m dashed.⁠ ⁠… Certainly⁠—I never drink myself in the morning. Now, about yourself? You’re a Glasgow man, aren’t you? Pretty warm place, Glasgow. Are you and the other soldier-lads keeping the Bolshies in order?” + 

Hamilton’s mahogany face moved convulsively, and his blue eyes wandered embarrassedly to the door. + 

“My opinions has underwent a change. I’m thinkin’ of anither kind of war nowadays. I’m for the prolytawriat.” + 

“The devil you are!” Archie gasped. “So am I, but my opinions are still the same. What exactly do you mean?” + 

The man’s embarrassment increased. “I’m for the proly⁠—prolytawriat. Us worrkers maun stick thegither and brek our chains. I’ve been fechtin’ for the rights o’ man.” + 

“Fighting with what?” + 

“Wi’ the pollis. That’s the reason I’m out here. I made Govan a wee thing ower het for me.” + 

Archie regarded him with a mystified face, which slowly broke into a smile. + 

“I’m sorry to say that you’re a liar, Hamilton.” + 

“I’m tellin’ ye God’s truth,” was the reply without heat. Embarrassment had gone, and the man seemed to be speaking a part which he had already rehearsed. + 

“No. You’re lying. Very likely you had trouble with the police, but I bet it wasn’t over politics. More likely a public-house scrap, or a girl. Why on earth you should want to make yourself out a Bolshie⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

“My opinions has underwent a change,” the man chanted. + 

“Oh, drat your opinions! You got into some kind of row and cleared out. That’s intelligible enough, though I’m sorry to hear it. What’s your present job? Are you in the Corinna?” + 

“Ay, I cam out in her. I’m in the engine-room.” + 

“But you know nothing about ships?” + 

“I ken something aboot ship’s engines. Afore the war I wrocht at Clydebank.⁠ ⁠… And now, if ye’ll excuse me, I maun be off, for I’ve a heap o’ jobs ashore. Thank ye for your kindness.” + 

“I call this a perfectly rotten affair,” said Archie. “You won’t stay, you won’t drink, and you keep on talking like a parrot about the proletariat. What am I to say to General Hannay when I meet him? That you have become a blithering foreign communist?” + 

“Na, na. Ye maunna say that.” The man’s sullenness had gone, and there was humour in his eye. “Say that Geordie Hamilton is still obeyin’ orders, and daein’ his duty up to his lights.” + 

“Whose orders?” Archie asked, but the corporal was already making for the door. + 

The young man walked back to the hotel in a reflective mood, and at luncheon gave Janet a summary of the events of the morning. He had been storing up his impressions of Olifa for her, and had meant to descant upon the old city and the market and the Cathedral Square, but he found these pictures obscured by his later experiences. “Most extraordinary thing. I ran up against a fellow who used to be Dick Hannay’s batman⁠—regular chunky Scots Fusilier and brave as a badger⁠—Hamilton they call him. Well, he had the cheek to tell me that he had changed his views and become a Bolshie and had consequently had to clear out of Glasgow. I swear the chap was lying⁠—could see it in his face⁠—but I’m puzzled why he should want to lie to me.⁠ ⁠… He says he has some kind of engineer’s job on the Corinna.⁠ ⁠… More by token, I saw a selection of the Corinna party in a motorcar in the Avenida. Dressed up like nothing on earth, and chattering like jays!” + 

“We had them here this morning,” said Janet. “Pretty little savages with heads like mops. I’ve christened them the Moplahs.” + 

“Was there a fellow in starched linen bags? He was the prize donkey.” + 

Janet shook her head. “There was only one man with them and he wore white flannels. I can’t quite make them out. They behave like demented trippers, and are always pawing and ragging each other, but I came on the young man suddenly when I went to the bureau to ask about postage, and when the clerk couldn’t tell me he answered my question. His whole voice and manner seemed to change, and he became startlingly well-bred.⁠ ⁠… I want to explore the Moplahs. And I would rather like to see again the tall girl I had a glimpse of yesterday. I can’t get it out of my head that I’ve seen her before.” + 

III + 

On the following evening Janet and Archie dined as Don Alejandro’s guests at the Club de Residentes Extranjeros. The club, situated in one of the squares to the north of the Avenida, was a proof of Olifa’s wealth and her cosmopolitanism. In the broad cool patio a fountain tinkled, and between it and the adjoining arcades tropical plants in green tubs made the air fragrant. The building was for the most part a copy of an old Spanish town house, but the billiard-room was panelled in oak with a Tudor ceiling, the cardroom was Flemish, and the big dining-room Italian Renaissance. The night was freshly warm, with light airs stirring the oleanders, and, from the table which Don Alejandro had selected, the patio was a velvet dusk shot with gold and silver gleams like tiny searchlights. + 

The only other guest was the American Consul. Mr. Roderick Wilbur was a heavy man, with the smooth pale face of eupeptic but sedentary middle-age. His years in Olifa had not mellowed his dry, high-pitched New England voice, or endowed him with a single Latin grace. He looked upon the other diners with the disapproving air of a Scots elder of the kirk surveying a travelling theatrical company, and the humour which now and then entered his eye was like the frosty twinkle of a very distant star. + 

Don Alejandro was in a vivacious mood. He was the showman of his beloved city, but he was no less a representative of his beloved Europe; he wished the strangers to praise Olifa but to recognise him as a cosmopolitan. Archie and Janet satisfied his patriotism, for, having hired a car that afternoon and driven round the city, they overflowed in admiration. + 

“You were right,” Janet told him. “There is no mystery in Olifa. It is all as smooth and polished as a cabochon emerald, and, like a cabochon, you can’t see far inside it. Your people have the satisfied look of London suburbanites on a Sunday up the river.” + 

“Your police are too good,” said Archie. “One doesn’t see a single ragamuffin in the main streets. Janet and I prefer the old quarter. Some day, Don Alejandro, we want you to take us round it and tell us who the people are. They look like samples of every South American brand since the Aztecs.” + 

“The Aztecs lived in Mexico,” Janet corrected. + 

“Well, I mean the chaps that were downed by the Conquistadors.” + 

Don Alejandro laughed. “Our old quarter is only a tourist spectacle, like the native city in Tangier. For the true country life you must go to the estancias and the savannahs. I have arranged by telegraph for your visit to my cousin at Veiro.” + 

“And the Gran Seco?” + 

“That also is in train. But it is more difficult and will take time.” + 

“I said there was no mystery in Olifa,” Janet observed, “but I rather think I was wrong. There is the Gran Seco. It seems to be as difficult to get into it as into a munition factory. Have you been there, Mr. Wilbur?” + 

The American Consul had been devoting serious attention to his food, stopping now and then to regard Janet with benevolent attention. + 

“Why, yes, Lady Roylance,” he said. “I’ve been up to the Gran Seco just the once since it blossomed out. I’ve no great call to go there, for Americans don’t frequent it to any considerable extent.” + 

“Wilbur hates the place,” said Don Alejandro. “He thinks that every commercial undertaking on the globe should belong to his countrymen, and it vexes him that the Gran Seco capital should be European.” + 

“Don’t you pay any attention to Mr. Gedd,” said the big man placidly. “He’s always picking on my poor little country. But I can’t say I care for that salubrious plateau. I don’t like being shepherded at every turn as if I was a crook, and I reckon the Montana sagebrush is more picturesque. Also they haven’t much notion up there of laying out a township. They’d be the better of some honest-to-God Americans to look after the plumbing.” + 

“See! He is all for standardising life. What a dull world the United States would make of it!” + 

“That’s so. We prefer dullness to microbes. All the same, there’s things about the Gran Seco which you can see with half an eye aren’t right. I didn’t like the look of the miners. You never in your days saw such a hangdog, miserable bunch, just like some of our old Indian reservations, where big chief Wet Blanket and his wives used to drink themselves silly on cheap bourbon. And how in thunder does Castor get his labour? He’s got a mighty graft somewhere, but when I first came here the Gran Seco Indians were a difficult folk to drive. I’ve heard that in old times the Olifa Government had trouble with them over the conscription.” + 

“They were savages,” said Don Alejandro, “and they are savages still. Castor has doubtless the art of dealing with them, for he himself is on the grand scale a savage.” + 

Archie pricked up his ears. + 

“Castor? Who is he?” + 

“The Gobernador of the province. Also the President of the company.” + 

“I saw a fellow coming out of the Gran Seco head office⁠—a fellow with a black beard, who didn’t look as if he missed much.” + 

“That was Señor Castor. You are fortunate, Sir Archibald, for you, a new arrival, have already seen Olifa’s great man, and that is a privilege but rarely granted to us Oliferos. He descends upon us and vanishes as suddenly as a river mist.” + 

“Tell me about him,” said Janet. “Where does he come from? What is his nationality?” + 

Don Alejandro shook his head. “I do not know. Mr. Wilbur, who is a man of hasty judgments, will say that he is a Jew. He is certainly a European, but not a Spaniard, though he speaks our tongue. I can only say that he emerged out of nothing five years ago, and became at once a prince. He rules the Gran Seco, and its officials are altogether his creation. And since he rules the Gran Seco he rules Olifa. He has, as Mr. Wilbur would say, this country of mine by the short hairs.” + 

“He don’t meddle with politics,” said the American, and Janet noticed that as he spoke he cast a quick glance around him, as if he did not wish to be overheard. Don Alejandro, too, had lowered his voice. + 

“What nonsense!” said the latter. “He is money, and money is our politics today. Once we Latins of America were a great race. We were Europeans, with minds enlarged and spirits braced by a new continent. You are a soldier, Sir Archibald, and will remember that the bloodiest battles of last century were fought in La Plata and on the Uruguay. Our plains were the nursery of the liberties of Italy. But now we have but the one goddess. We are rich and nothing more. Soon we shall be richer, and then, my dear Wilbur, we shall be the devotees of your great country, which is the high-priest of riches.” + 

“I can’t say that you’re showing any special devotion just at present,” said the other dryly. “My nationals⁠—thank God there aren’t many⁠—are about the most unpopular in this State. But quit talking about politics. We’re out to give you a good time, Lady Roylance, and we want to know just how you’d like us to set about it.” + 

Janet was of a patient and philosophical temper, but Archie liked to take his sensations in gulps. So far Olifa, he admitted to himself, had been a little boring. The place, for all its beauty, had a deadly commonplaceness⁠—it was the typical bourgeois State, as Don Alejandro had declared the first night. And yet he was conscious that this judgment did not exhaust the matter. There were moments when he felt that Olifa was a strange woman in a mask of cheap silk, a volcano overspread with suburban gardens. Behind even the decorousness of the Avenida he savoured a mystery. Into the pleasant monotony of the days had come wafts of air from some other sphere⁠—a peasant’s face in the market, the bearded Gobernador, the pallid men in the hotel, even the preposterous figure of Dick Hannay’s former batman. These things had stirred in him an irrational interest.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps if he went into the hinterland he would find the glamour of Olifa, of whose existence he was convinced, but which had hitherto contrived to evade him. + 

The club dining-room was full, and when they left it for coffee on the terrace beside the patio they had difficulty in finding chairs. It was apparently the practice to dine elsewhere and come to the club to dance, for a band was pounding out ragtime, and a dozen couples were on the floor. + 

“The Moplahs,” Janet sighed happily. + 

It was beyond doubt the American party from the yacht, and in that place they were as exotic as a tuberose in a bed of wallflowers. They had conformed to convention in their dress, for the four men wore dinner-jackets, and the four girls bright, short-skirted, silk-taffeta gowns and long pearl necklaces. Among the powdered Olifero ladies and the sallow Olifero cavaliers their fresh skins made a startling contrast, and not less startling were their shrill, toneless voices. They chattered incessantly, crying badinage to each other and to the band, as they danced the half-savage dances with an abandon which now suggested wild children and now the lunatic waltzing of hares in an April moonlight. Janet laughed aloud, the picture was so crazily fantastic. A Spanish girl, in a frock with wide flounces and with blue-black hair dressed high and surmounted by a gold comb, was suddenly cannoned into by a fluffy-headed minx, who apologised in a voice like a vindictive kitten’s, and was rewarded by a stony stare. Just so, Janet remembered, she had seen a greyhound repel the impudence of a Skye terrier. + 

“I don’t see my tall girl,” she said. + 

“The fellow with the starched linen knickerbockers isn’t here,” said Archie. “I didn’t see his face, but I think I would know him again. Who are they, Mr. Wilbur?” + 

The American’s eyes were hard with disapproval. “I can’t tell you their names, but they’re off the Corinna. They’re in Burton Rawlinson’s party. Mr. Rawlinson isn’t on board himself, and there can’t be much of a restraining hand to shepherd the bunch. Some of them have been to my office, and I judge I’m going to hear of trouble with them before they quit these shores. They want this city to stop still and take notice of them.” + 

Archie inquired concerning Mr. Rawlinson. + 

“He’s a fine man and a big man, one of the biggest on the Pacific coast. I’ve nothing against Burton. He’s rich, and he’s public-spirited, and he’s gotten a mighty fine collection of pictures. I can’t say I take to his offspring and their friends. There’s more dollars than sense in that outfit.” + 

“I like the Moplahs,” said Janet. “I want to know them.” + 

Archie, who was a connoisseur of dancing, observed that the men danced better than the women, a thing he had noticed before with Americans. “Did a fellow with starched linen bags ever come to your office?” he asked the Consul. “Slightly built fellow, a little shorter than me?” + 

Mr. Wilbur shook his head. “Maybe, but I don’t remember him. All their garments struck me as curious. Heaven knows what’s going to become of our youth, Sir Archibald. They’ve quit behaving like ladies and gentlemen⁠—running wild like bronchos, and their parents can’t do the lassooing. They’re hard cases at seventeen.” + 

“There’s an appalling innocence about them,” said Janet and looked up smiling, for two of the dancers had left the floor and were approaching them. + 

The girl was small, and a little too plump, but very pretty, with a mop of golden curls like a medieval page’s. The young man was thin and beaky, and his longish hair was parted in the middle. + 

“Say, what about dancing?” he said. “Won’t you cut in?” He looked at Janet, while the girl smiled pleasantly on Archie. + 

“Most awfully sorry,” said Archie. “I’d love to, but I’ve got a game leg.” + 

“Pardon?” + 

“I mean I’m a bit lame.” + 

Janet rose smiling and took the young man’s arm. + 

“I don’t know your name,” said Mr. Wilbur, who was a stickler for the conventions, “but I reckon you’re with the Corinna party. This lady is Lady Roylance.” + 

The youth regarded him solemnly. “You’ve said it, Grandpa,” was his reply. “Come on, lady.” + 

The girl was still partnerless, and Don Alejandro offered himself for the breach. He sprang to his feet and bowed deeply from the waist. “If I may have the honour,” he said. Archie and the Consul were left alone to their cigars. + 

The dancing-place was soon crowded, and Janet and Don Alejandro seemed to have been completely absorbed into the whirl. Glimpses could be caught of Janet’s porcelain elegance, and of an unwontedly energetic Don Alejandro in the grip of various corybantic maidens. The two men in the lounge-chairs presently ceased to be spectators and fell into talk. + 

Mr. Wilbur, as if the absence of his colleague had unsealed his tongue, expanded and became almost confidential. He asked Archie for his impressions of Olifa, and when he was told “tidy and contented and opulent,” nodded an acquiescent head. + 

“You’re about right, sir. That’s Olifa first and last⁠—the Olifa of today. Better policed than New York, and just about as clean as Philadelphia. Manicured, you might say. But it wasn’t always like that. When I first came here Olifa was the ordinary South American republic, always on the edge of bankruptcy and revolution, and this city had one of the worst names on the coast. The waterfront was a perfect rat-hole for every criminal in the Pacific⁠—every brand of roughneck and dope-smuggler and crook⁠—dagos with knives and niggers with razors and the scum of the U‑nited States with guns. Today you could take your wife along it in perfect safety any hour of the night. The Treasury was empty, for politics were simply who could get their hands first and deepest into it. There was bad trouble upcountry, and there was always a war going on in the mountains, which the little underfed and never-paid soldiers couldn’t win. Now we’ve got a big balance in the budget and the peace of God over the land. It’s a kind of miracle. It’s almost against nature, Sir Archibald.” + 

“Why, it’s principally the Gran Seco,” he continued, in response to Archie’s request for an explanation. “That, as you know, is the richest copper proposition on the globe, and the Government has a big share in it. There’s money to burn for everybody nowadays. But there’s more than money. Olifa’s gotten a first-class brain to help her along.” + 

“The President?” + 

Wilbur laughed. + 

“The Excelentísimo is a worthy gentleman, and he has gotten some respectable folks to help him, but it isn’t the President of this republic that has made the desert blossom like the rose. There’s a bigger brain behind him.” + 

“You mean the Gran Seco fellow⁠—what’s his name?” + 

“I mean Mr. Castor. At least I reckon it must be Mr. Castor, for there isn’t anybody else. You see, I can size up the members of the Government, because I know them, so it must be the man I don’t know.” + 

“I see. Well, it’s clear that I must get alongside of this Castor if I’m to learn much about Olifa. What’s the best way to work it?” + 

“Through the President, I reckon. I’d like to help you, but I haven’t much of a pull in Olifa just at the moment. You see, the U‑nited States is going through one of its periodical fits of unpopularity. Olifa has waxed fat, like the man in the Bible, and she’s kicking, and when a South American nation kicks it’s generally against the U‑nited States. Don Alejandro will fix an interview with the President for you, and he’ll arrange your trip to the Gran Seco. He’s a good little man, though he don’t like my country.” + 

Thereafter Mr. Wilbur discoursed of his nation⁠—its strength and its weakness, its active intelligence, imperfect manners, and great heart. He was a critic, but he was also an enthusiast. To this man, grown old in foreign lands in his country’s service, America was still the America of his youth. Her recent developments he knew only from the newspapers, and he loyally strove to reconcile them with his old ideal. America only needed to be understood to be loved, but it was hard to get her true worth across the footlights. “You English,” he said, “have got a neat, hard-shell national character, with a high gloss on it. Foreigners may not like it, but they can’t mistake it. It hits them in the eye every time. But we’re young and growing and have a lot of loose edges, and it’s mighty hard to make people understand that often when we talk foolishness we mean wisdom, and that when we act high and mighty and rile our neighbours it’s because we’re that busy trying to get a deal through we haven’t time to think of susceptibilities. You’ve got to forget our untidy fringes.” + 

“Like the crowd from the yacht,” said Archie. “They don’t rile me a bit, I assure you.⁠ ⁠… Just look at the way that lad dances. He might be David capering before the Lord.” + 

“That’s because you’ve seen a lot of the world, Sir Archibald. I reckon you’ve met enough Americans to know the real thing.” + 

“No, I’ve met very few. You see, I’ve never crossed the Atlantic before. But I knew one American, and for his sake I’m ready to back your country against all comers. He was about the wisest and bravest and kindest old fellow I ever came across.” + 

Mr. Wilbur asked his name. + 

“He’s dead, poor chap. Died a few months ago. I daresay you’ve heard of him. His name was Blenkiron⁠—John S. Blenkiron.” + 

Archie had his eye on the Hebraic dancer or he might have noticed a sudden change in his companion’s face. When Mr. Wilbur spoke again⁠—and that was after a considerable pause⁠—it was in a voice from which all feeling had gone, the voice in which he conducted his consular duties. + 

“Yes. I’ve heard of Mr. Blenkiron. Mighty fine man, they tell me. Just how well did you know him, Sir Archibald?” + 

“I only saw him for a week or two in the Amiens business of March ’18. But they were pretty solemn weeks, and you get to know a man reasonably well if you’re fighting for your life beside him. He was with a great pal of mine, General Hannay, and the two of them put up a famous show at Gavrelle. I can see old Blenkiron’s face yet, getting cheerier the more things went to the devil, and fairly beaming when the ultimate hell was reached. I wouldn’t ask for a better partner in a scrap. I’m most awfully sorry he died. I always hoped to see him again.” + 

“Too bad,” said Mr. Wilbur, and he seemed to be absorbed in some calculation, for his brows were knitted. + 

A flushed Janet joined them, attended by two cavaliers who insisted on plundering the pot plants to give her flowers. Presently Don Alejandro also extricated himself from the dancers, with his black-corded eyeglass hanging over his left shoulder. + 

“These innocents are going to the Gran Seco,” Janet announced. “They seem to think it is a sort of country club, but if your account is true, Mr. Wilbur, they’ll be like hummingbirds in a dustbin.” + 

“They surely will,” said the Consul. “When do you expect your own permits, Lady Roylance?” + 

“They should be ready tomorrow,” said Don Alejandro. + 

Archie and Janet left their calèche at the hotel gates, and walked up the steep avenue to enjoy the coolness of the night wind. At the esplanade on the top they halted to marvel at the view. Below them lay the old town with the cathedral towers white in the moonlight⁠—a blur of shadows in which things like glowworms twinkled at rare intervals, and from which came confused echoes of some secret nocturnal life. Beyond lay the shining belt of the Avenida, and the Ciudad Nueva mounting its little hills in concentric circles of light. On the other side the old harbour was starred with the riding lights of ships, and the lamps of the waterfront made a double line, reflection and reality. To the south at the new harbour there was a glow of fires and the clamour of an industry which did not cease at sunset. To the west, beyond the great breakwater, sea and sky melted under the moon into a pale infinity. + 

Suddenly Archie’s spirits awoke. He seemed to see Olifa as what he had hoped⁠—not a decorous city of careerists, but a frontier post on the edge of mysteries. The unknown was there, crowding in upon the pert little pride of man. In the golden brume to the east were mountains⁠—he could almost see them⁠—running up to icefields and splintered pinnacles, and beyond them swamps and forests as little travelled as in the days of Cortes. Between the desert of the ocean and the desert of the hills lay this trivial slip of modernity, but a step would take him beyond it into an antique land. The whiff of a tropical blossom from the shrubberies and the faint odour of wood smoke unloosed a flood of memories⁠—hot days in the African bush, long marches in scented Kashmir glens, shivering camps on Himalayan spurs. The War had overlaid that first youth of his, when he had gone east to see the world, but the rapture and magic were now returning. He felt curiously expectant and happy. + 

“I’ve a notion that we’re going to have the time of our lives here,” he told his wife. + 

But Janet did not reply. For three days she had been busy chasing a clue through her memory and now she had grasped it. She had suddenly remembered who was the tall girl she had seen with the party from the Corinna on the day of their arrival. + 

All night Archie dreamed of the Gran Seco. As he saw it, it was a desolate plateau culminating in a volcano. The volcano was erupting, and amid the smoke and fire a colossal human figure sat at its ease. Then the dream became a nightmare⁠—for the figure revealed itself as having the face and beard of the man he had seen leaving the office in the Avenida, but the starched white linen knickerbockers of the preposterous young American. + 

IV + 

Archie set out on his exploration of Olifa with his nose in the air, like a dog looking for game. The spell of a new country had fallen on him, as had happened fifteen years before when he left school. The burden of the War and all it had brought, the cares of politics, the preoccupations of home had slipped from his shoulders, and he felt himself again an adventurer, as when he had first studied maps and listened hungrily to travellers’ tales. But now he had one supreme advantage⁠—he had a companion; and Janet, who had never before been out of Europe, was as eager as he was to squeeze the last drop out of new experience. + 

He left over his more important letters for the moment and used those introductions which had been given him by the friends he had made during his time at the Madrid Embassy. The result was that the pair were taken to the heart of a pleasant, rigid little society⁠—as remote from interest in the Government of Olifa as an unreconstructed Southern planter is from a Republican White House, or a Royalist Breton from the Élysée. Archie was made a member of the Polo Club and played with agreeable young men, who had their clothes and saddlery from London and their manners from the eighteenth century. A ball was given in their honour, where the most popular dance, to Janet’s amazement, was a form of Lancers. They met composed maidens who were still in bondage to their duennas: and young married women, languishing and voluble, or discreet and domesticated, among whose emphatic complexions Janet’s delicate colouring was like a wood-anemone among gardenias: and witty grandmothers running terribly to fat: and ancient hidalgos with beaks like birds of prey. It was a comfortable society, with the secure good manners of a tiny aristocracy, but it knew of no world beyond its pale, and was profoundly uninterested in its neighbours. + 

They went a little, too, into business circles, both Olifero and alien, the representatives of shipping and trading companies and the big foreign banks. This, too, was a pleasant world, good-tempered and prosperous. Here they heard much of politics, but it was business politics. The existing Government was spoken of with respect, but not with intimate knowledge; it functioned well, kept the country solvent, and left trade in peace. Politicians were a class by themselves, a dubious class, though it was believed that the present lot were honest. But they met none of the Copper people. These seemed to form an oligarchy apart, and were mentioned respectfully but distantly. When Archie asked about the Gran Seco he was only given statistics of output and an encomium on its efficiency. Of its President the commercial world of Olifa spoke as an ordinary automobile-manufacturer might speak of Henry Ford, as one who was a law to himself, an object to admire, but not to emulate. + 

“This is a queer place,” Archie told Janet. “It seems to have two Governors⁠—the Castor fellow and the President⁠—and the ordinary man don’t seem to know or care much about either. It’s about time we started out for the Gran Seco.” + 

But when Don Alejandro was approached on the matter he had to explain with many apologies that their permits had not arrived. There was some inconceivably foolish hitch, which he had not yet tracked down. + 

“But the American troupe got through straight away,” Archie complained. “They left a week ago.” + 

“I know. That is a way Americans have. Perhaps in your case the difficulty is Mr. Wilbur. Officiously and quite unnecessarily he interested himself in getting your passes, so he said⁠—and he may have exhausted his purchase in franking his countrymen through and raised a prejudice. As I have told you, his nation is not loved by our Government.” + 

Don Alejandro went on to explain that the delay could only be a matter of days. “Meantime, why not visit my cousin at Veiro? There you must go some time, and this hiatus gives you the chance.” + 

So to Veiro they went⁠—fifty miles by train and twenty by motorcar along a superb concrete highway, which suddenly gave out four miles from the house, so that the journey was completed by a sandy track over primeval prairie. They arrived just at sunset, when the place swam in a clear coppery gold. The house was low and white and seemed to cover acres, with its adobe outbuildings, its great corrals for the cattle, and its trim red-roofed stables built on the English model. The palms of the coast had been left behind, and at this elevation the tropics had faded from the landscape. The garden was ablaze with coverts of hibiscus and plots of scarlet zinnias among the rough lawns, and the windbreaks which flanked it were of acacias and walnuts. A big irrigation dam to the right caught the last rays of the sun, and beyond it the tender green of the alfalfa fields seemed a continuation of its waters. Far to the east, above the lifting savannahs, was a saw-like edge of tenuous white mountains which seemed to hang in the central heavens. There was a succession of thin spires now picked out with gold and rose. Archie asked their name. + 

“Los Doce Apóstolas⁠—the Twelve Apostles,” said the driver, and rattled off a list of uncouth syllables. + 

Don Mario Sanfuentes, the cousin of Don Alejandro, was small, spare, and blue-jowled, with the figure of a groom and the profound solemnity of the man who lives with horses. His wife was dead and his ranch and stables were to him both family and profession. He greeted his visitors with the grave courtesy of manner which needs no words to emphasise it. Their rooms were wide chambers with scrubbed wooden floors and windows looking across a broad verandah to a hundred miles of space, as bare and fresh as a convent dormitory. They had their meals in a dining-room which contained the remnants of the Sanfuentes heirlooms⁠—cabinets of lacquer and tortoiseshell, a Murillo which had been an altarpiece in one of the forgotten churches of the Conquistadors, fantastic tapestries now faded into a mellow confusion, an Italian triptych of carved ivory, and a great galleon of tarnished silver. But they sat mostly in Don Mario’s own room, where in the evenings a wood fire was lit in the wide fireplace⁠—a room where every table was littered with books and papers and cigar-boxes and quirts and crops and spurs, and from the walls looked down the delicate heads of those descendants of the Darley Arab, the Byerley Turk, and the Godolphin Barb whose fame has gone abroad wherever men love horses. + 

By day Archie and Janet rode with their host about his estate, examined his young stock, and tried out promising colts on the gallops, where by assiduous care a better turf had been got than in the ordinary savannah. At every meal the talk was of horses, but at night, when the fire was lit, Don Mario from the depths of his well-rubbed armchair would speak at large of the land. In modern Olifa he had little interest, but he told of the diversions of his youth⁠—his pack of foxhounds which had to be so constantly renewed from England that he gave up the game in despair, tiger hunting in the forest country, punitive expeditions against Indian horse-thieves from the hills. The time passed in a delicious calm: a combination, said Janet, of Newmarket and Scotland. And then on the last day of their stay came another visitor. + 

“I cannot tell you about this country,” Don Mario said, “for I am an old horse-breeder who lives apart. But I have bidden young Luis de Marzaniga to sleep the night. His mother was cousin to the husband of my great-aunt’s niece. Luis has travelled abroad and seen the world, but especially he has travelled in Olifa. No. He is no politician, nor is he engaged in business. He is like me⁠—what you call a country gentleman. But he has youth and inquisitiveness, both of which I have long since lost.” + 

So, when the Roylances, having bathed and changed after a long ride in the sun, came down to dinner, they found a strange young man awaiting them. Don Mario’s evening garb had been a little like that of a deaf-mute at a funeral, but this young man wore the trimmest of dinner-jackets and the neatest of patent-leather shoes. His hair was as fair as Archie’s; but some colouring in his skin had made him sunburn not to Archie’s brick-red but to a rich golden-brown. His eyes were brown, and the large expanse of white in them was the only foreign thing in his appearance. Otherwise he looked like a young English cavalry subaltern, whose duties permitted him to hunt three days a week. + 

Dinner that evening was a cheerful meal. Don Luis chaffed his distant kinsman, with whom he was obviously in high favour, and Don Mario expanded in silent laughter. All spoke English⁠—Don Mario very correct and stilted, Don Luis nobly ungrammatical but notably idiomatic. To Janet’s questions he replied that his education had been chiefly in Olifa, but that he had visited Europe seven times, and during the last six months of the War had had a commission in the French Air Force. He had only just returned from Paris. + 

The mention of flying woke up Archie, and for a little the room hummed with technicalities. Archie inquired concerning the Olifa Air Force, and was told that it was efficient but small⁠—not more than five squadrons. The Olifero did not take readily to the air, and the pilots were mostly foreigners⁠—Germans who had found their career cut short at home, and, Don Luis thought, one or two Russians. “It is like all our army,” he said, “a little force of expert mercenaries. Olifa needs no army. In the future she will fight her battles with gold.” + 

Don Luis was very ready to talk. He answered Archie’s many questions on sport with enthusiasm, and drew sketch-maps to illustrate the lie of the land. As to politics, he had not Don Mario’s apathy. He was ready with amusing portraits of Olifa’s statesmen and with cogent summaries of policy. He was also a humorist, and had a repertoire of tales. But he was a discreet young man, and ventured no opinion of his own. He was neither reactionary nor progressive, only an interested spectator. + 

On the Gran Seco he was highly informing. He described the nature of the copper deposits, and the new processes which had reduced costs and made it the Golconda of Olifa. Castor he knew only by sight. “We of Olifa do not meet him, but we worship him from afar. He is the god who dwells in the sanctuary.” + 

“The American Consul thought there might be trouble some day. The mine-labourers are rather a savage lot, aren’t they?” + 

Don Luis laughed. + 

“I think the wish may be⁠—how you say?⁠—mother to the thought. Señor Wilbur does not love the Gran Seco. No doubt it is a difficult place, but Señor Castor is beyond doubt a Napoleon and flourishes on difficulties. It will be all right.” + 

“Why does he keep the place so tightly shut? We have been waiting a fortnight for a permit to enter.” + 

“So! Then there must be some foolish mistake of clerks. Señor Castor is not likely to be uncivil⁠—least of all to a charming lady and to a member of the English Parliament. He is a lover of Europe.” + 

Don Luis had many questions to ask in turn, and it slowly dawned upon one of his hearers that this candid and friendly young man was taking in more than he gave out. Archie was drawn to speak of his own past⁠—his eastern travels, his experiences in the War, even of his friends, who could mean nothing to a South American who had only once been in England. He found himself quoting Sandy Arbuthnot by name, as if he had been in his club at home. + 

“I beg your pardon,” he said confusedly. “You can’t be interested in my yarning about people you never heard of.” + 

“But I am deeply interested. Your friend is a wise man. How do you call him⁠—Arbuttnot?” + 

“He was Sandy Arbuthnot, but his father is dead and he is Lord Clanroyden now.” + 

“A lord! Clan‑roy‑den. Por dios! That is a strange name.” + 

“Scotch,” said Archie. + 

“Ah yes⁠—Scotch. That is your Highlands? Your Gran Seco? This Lord Clay-roy-den, he is in Scotland?” + 

“I’m blessed if I know where he is at the moment. He’s never long off the road.” + 

Janet, too, to her surprise found herself talking to this stranger as if she had known him from childhood. She described vivaciously her encounter with the Moplahs. + 

“They are common as lentils in Olifa at certain seasons,” said Don Luis, “those noisy, emancipated American children. They have gone, you say, to the Gran Seco, where Americans are not loved. There may be work then for Señor Wilbur.” + 

“They are really rather nice,” said Janet. “I think I have met one of them before.⁠ ⁠… Archie, I didn’t tell you, but I believe the tall girl who was with the Moplahs the first day and whom we never saw again was the Miss Dasent who came to Strathlarrig. She was some sort of relation of Mr. Blenkiron.” + 

“Not really?” exclaimed the interested Archie. “That’s curious. Did you ever hear of Blenkiron, Don Luis? He died the other day⁠—American, rather a great man⁠—he was the chap I was telling you about in the Shark-Gladas affair.” + 

The other shook his head. “I do not think so. But American names are so difficult that it is hard to remember. They are worse than Clan-roy-den.” + 

Don Mario made it his habit to retire to rest at ten o’clock, and Janet, being very sleepy, followed soon after. Archie and Don Luis lit a final cigar, and in the smoking of it strolled into the moonlit verandah. On this side of the house the view was not broken by outbuildings, and beyond a string of paddocks the eye passed to an endless sweep of yellow savannah which faded in the distance into a golden haze. The air was fresh, and, though the night was still, cool wafts seemed to drift soundlessly down from the hidden mountains. + 

“My countrymen and yours fought each other for three hundred years,” said Don Luis, “but a Spaniard and an Englishman, when they meet, usually understand each other. I presume, with your permission, on that old sympathy, and I ask you boldly what are you doing here?” + 

The young man’s manner had changed from the debonair ease which had marked it at dinner. It had become at once confidential and authoritative. + 

“Fact is, I don’t know,” was Archie’s reply. “Principally, Janet and I are on a postponed honeymoon. I had a notion to pick up something about South American politics, which might be useful to me in Parliament.” + 

“And you find Olifa rather barren ground?” + 

“I did at first.⁠ ⁠… Now, I am not so sure.” + 

“Will you let me advise you? We are both young men and have served in war. Stay a little in Olifa if you have not yet exhausted the charm of the capital, and then take your delightful lady on board the first ship and go straight home.” + 

“Home? Why in the world?” Archie stared at the speaker. + 

“You can go to Valparaiso and Buenos Aires if they amuse you. But get out of Olifa.” + 

“But why?” + 

“I cannot tell you why. I am your friend, and a friend may venture to advise without reasons.” + 

“But what’s the trouble? Olifa is a great deal more peaceful than Europe. You don’t mean to say that there’s danger.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Olifa is a mask⁠—you have not seen her face. Look in front of you. You see nothing but flat pastures. But beyond you know that there are wild mountains. So I tell you that behind the flatness of Olifa there are wild things.” + 

“Well, I’m blessed! D’you know, Don Luis, you are making Olifa rather attractive. You are giving me a very good reason why I should stay.” + 

“But madame⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I don’t know. For heaven’s sake, don’t tell her what you’re telling me, for if she gets a notion that there’s mystery abroad she won’t stop till she is up to the neck in it. But of course I can’t let her run any risks.⁠ ⁠…” + 

“I do not think that you will be able to help yourself⁠—if you stay. You may be caught up in a tide which will carry you to things very different from your respectable English politics.⁠ ⁠… And these things will not be a honeymoon.” + 

Archie stared at his companion’s face. The moon was very bright and the face which it revealed was grave and set. + 

“You are talking in riddles,” said Archie. “I wish you would be more explicit. You tell me to get out of the country, because if I stay I may have trouble. You can hardly leave it at that, you know. What kind of trouble? Perhaps it’s the kind that Janet and I might rather fancy.” + 

“That is why I warn you. You are a young man with a wife. It is easy to see that you are not the type which avoids danger. But a wife makes a difference⁠—especially such a lady as yours. You would not wish to involve her, and yet you may unwittingly, if you do not leave Olifa.” + 

“Supposing I were a bachelor, what would you say?” + 

Don Luis laughed. “Ah, then, I should speak otherwise. I should make of you a confidant⁠—perhaps an ally. You wish to visit the Gran Seco, but your passports are unaccountably delayed. I might offer to take you to the Gran Seco, but not by Santa Ana and the Company’s railway.” + 

Archie pondered. “Everything in this country seems to turn on the Gran Seco,” he said, “and we don’t seem to be able to get there.” + 

“It may be that that blunder of officialdom is doing you a service,” said Don Luis solemnly. + 

“Well, I’ve no desire to go there and get tangled up in a local shindy, which I take it is what you are hinting at. I remember Mr. Wilbur said that the miners seemed to be an ugly crowd. I’m very much obliged to you, Don Luis.” + 

“You will not tell anyone that I have warned you.” + 

“Certainly not.⁠ ⁠… I’m rather inclined to take your advice, and tell Gedd to drop the passport business. I didn’t come here looking for trouble⁠—and, besides, there’s my wife.” + 

But in this Archie was not wholly candid. He told himself that what he called a “dago revolution” had no charms for him, especially with Janet to take care of. But he realised that this phrase did not exhaust the mystery in Olifa, which had been slowly accumulating in his mind till the sense of it was like an atmosphere about him. Also he had taken a strong liking to Don Luis. The young man had a curious appeal in his alternate gaiety and gravity. There was that in him which seemed to beckon to wild and delightful things; he was such a companion as Archie a dozen years ago would have welcomed to ride with over the edge of the world. But Archie⁠—rangé, married, lame of one leg⁠—decided with a half-sigh that such visions and such comrades were no longer for him. + 

V + 

On their return to the city they were met by an incensed Don Alejandro. Not only had the permits for the Gran Seco not arrived, they had been definitely refused. It was not the work of the Government⁠—this he had ascertained from his second cousin, the Minister for External Affairs. The refusal came from the Company itself, and Don Alejandro was positive that it was due to the interference of the American Consul. No doubt Wilbur had meant well, but apparently he had pressed the request so that the Company had assumed that he was its principal sponsor, and had naturally refused, since they thought they had done enough for his unpopular country by permitting the entrance of the party from the Corinna. There was no doubt about it. Don Alejandro had heard from a friend who was deep in the Company’s affairs that Wilbur was the cause of the refusal. + 

To Janet’s surprise Archie seemed rather relieved than otherwise. “Just as well, perhaps,” he said. “We should probably have got fever or something, and we didn’t come six thousand miles to look at a mining district. We have plenty of them at home.” + 

He had not told Janet of Don Luis’s warning, but he had brooded over it, and with his separation from the giver its good sense seemed to grow more convincing. Why on earth should Janet and he waste time in visiting a dusty plateau, even though it was the source of Olifa’s prosperity and might have importance in Olifa’s future politics? He would learn little in a hurried tour, and it wasn’t his line to pick up gossip and go home and raise a racket in Parliament about Gran Seco atrocities.⁠ ⁠… They would go south to Cardanio and Alcorta, and might make a short trip into the mountains. The Twelve Apostles would bear inspection from closer quarters.⁠ ⁠… After that they would go home by Panama, and perhaps visit Jamaica. His mother’s family had once owned big plantations there, established by an ancestor who had left the country hurriedly after Culloden. + 

So they fell back upon Olifa society, and Archie played polo daily at the club, and they gave a dinner at the hotel; and were just preparing to set out for Cardanio, when they were bidden to luncheon by no less a person than the President. A superb card of invitation, surmounted by the Olifa arms in gold, gave Archie the title of “Right Honourable,” and designed Janet as the “Honourable Lady A. Roylance.” Archie consulted Don Alejandro as to his garments, and was informed that the manners of Olifa were English and that they might both wear what they pleased. So Janet and he appeared at the President’s mansion in their ordinary clothes, to find most of the men in evening dress with ribbons and stars, and all the women in Paris hats and what looked like wedding gowns. Janet promptly had a fit of giggles, and it was a flushed and embarrassed pair who made their bow to the heavy, sallow, bull-necked Excelentísimo. + 

The day was hot, the place where they sat was as heavily upholstered as a Victorian dining-room, and the conversation had the languor of a ceremonial banquet. Janet, as the guest of honour, sat on the President’s right hand, while Archie at the other end was sandwiched between a voluminous elderly woman who was the President’s wife and a sleepy Frenchwoman whose husband was Don Alejandro’s kinsman. His head had been confused by many introductions, but he had made out that kinsman, a Sanfuentes of the younger branch, and a tall man with a forked beard who was Aribia, the Minister of Finance. There was a vacant chair on Janet’s right side. + 

The meal seemed interminable. The food was pretentiously good, and the guests seemed to have been starved for days, for they refused none of the dishes. Sweet champagne was served, and the Olifa Tokay, but when Archie, greatly daring, asked for a whisky-and-soda, it was brought him, and to his surprise was prewar whisky. There seemed to be about twenty footmen, all in knee-breeches, mestizos who in their gaudy liveries had an air of comic opera. Archie tried his bad Spanish on his two ladies, and, having exhausted the beauties and greatness of Olifa, the distress of Europe, their families, and his visit to Veiro, was hard put to it for topics. Señora Sanfuentes received every mention of Don Alejandro with a shrug and a giggle, Madame la Présidente did not appear to have heard of him. + 

Suddenly there was a movement in the company. Someone had entered and taken the vacant chair by Janet’s side. The light in the room was very dim, and Archie saw only a tall figure, to greet whom the President and the other men rose and bowed. The man, whoever he was, was not in evening dress. Later, he saw Janet’s fair head inclined towards him, and from the vivacity of her manner she seemed to be finding interest in the new guest. + 

At last, with a marvellous course of fruits and sweetmeats, the meal came to an end. The hostess rose heavily and led the ladies from the room, and the men moved up to a semicircle round their host. Room was made for Archie next to the President, and beyond that impressive figure sat the late arrival. With a thrill he recognised the man he had seen the first day leaving the office in the Avenida, the great Señor Castor, the Gobernador of the province of the Gran Seco and the head of the Company. + 

Huge cigars had been provided, but the Gobernador had refused them, and, after asking his host’s permission, had lit a short briar pipe. It was some minutes before the President formally introduced them, being himself engaged in a whispered conversation, so Archie had the opportunity to study the great man’s features. Seen at close quarters they were not less impressive than in the fleeting view in the Avenida. The brow was broad and high, and had the heavy frontal development above the eyebrows which Archie had been told betokened mathematical genius. The complexion was pale, but clear and healthy; the nose short and finely formed, and springing from the forehead like the prow of a ship. The mouth was hidden by the beard, but it might be guessed that the lips were full. The eyes were the compelling feature. They were large and grey and set rather wide apart, and, though narrow-lidded, gave their possessor an air of steady, competent watchfulness. There was thought in them, and masterfulness, but no hint of passion, only a calm, all-embracing intelligence. Among the beady opaque eyes around him, this man’s were like pools of living light contrasted with scummed morasses. The face was grave and composed, but when Archie’s name was spoken it broke into a curiously pleasant smile. + 

The Gobernador of the Gran Seco addressed him in flawless English. He inquired after his journey, spoke of the pleasure with which he had made Janet’s acquaintance, and, on being informed by the President that Archie was a member of the British Legislature, asked one or two shrewd questions about current British politics. In five minutes’ talk across the table he seemed to take soundings of Archie’s mind, and elicited his special interests. He even detected his love of birds, and had something to say of the need for a sound ornithologist to investigate certain of the mountain areas. Archie had a feeling that this astonishing man, if he had been told that his hobby was marine zoology or Coptic antiquities, would have talked about it with the same intimate intelligence. + 

“You will visit us, I hope, in our little mountain kingdom. Perhaps you have heard of our Gran Seco?” + 

“I’ve heard about nothing else. But there’s a hitch somewhere, and I’ve been told that we can’t get passports for the present.” + 

The Gobernador frowned. + 

“What incomprehensible folly! That is a matter which shall at once be set right. I cannot think how the mistake has arisen. Your hotel? The Constitución? Permits shall be sent round to you this afternoon, and you have only to fix the day of your journey and we shall make all arrangements. What must you think of us, Sir Archibald? Believe me, we are not accustomed to treat distinguished strangers with impoliteness.” + 

The manner of the Gobernador was so open and friendly that Archie’s distaste for the Gran Seco and his memory of Don Luis’s talk straightway vanished. The President observed that in old days the Gran Seco had been a closed country, and that, as Sir Archibald would realise, it could not be thrown open in a day. + 

“I am positive Sir Archibald will understand,” said the Gobernador. “We have established, as it were, a Sheffield and a Birmingham in a rude hill-country, and we must limit our administrative problems. The sixteenth century and the twentieth can coexist only if the latter is given in small doses. Slowly they will harmonise⁠—but slowly. You have the same problem in your India. I understand that you do not permit tourists, however well accredited, even to enter some of the hill-states.” + 

“That’s true,” said Archie. “When I was there, they wouldn’t let me put a foot across the Nepal border.” + 

“Also we are a big business, with our secrets, and we cannot have agents of our rivals prowling about the place, which is, so to speak, all one workshop. But we welcome visitors who recognise our difficulties and submit to our modest rules.” + 

“It is the Yanquis who give trouble,” said the President darkly. + 

The Gobernador laughed. “Some Yanquis. I do not share his Excellency’s distrust of the whole of that great nation. The bright special correspondent on the lookout for a ‘scoop’ is the most dangerous of created things. But we welcome the reasonable journalist. You may have read a series of articles on Olifa in the Saturday Evening Post. There you had the Gran Seco accurately portrayed with our full assent. Yet on the whole it is not the journalist who perplexes us most. It is the Yanqui tripper on a circular tour. We cannot have them making drunken fools of themselves in a place where the prestige of the white man is his only security.” + 

“There was an American party at the hotel,” said Archie. “Noisy young devils from a yacht. I think they went up to the Gran Seco a week ago.” + 

The Gobernador shrugged his shoulders. + 

“We do not antagonise the great, we who are business men. But those young people will not be given the privileges which await you, Sir Archibald.” + 

Archie felt as if he were being treated with especial frankness and friendliness, and his susceptible soul was in a pleasant glow. Then the conversation became general, and he had leisure to observe the company. The Gobernador said little, the Olifero statesmen much, but it seemed to Archie that they all talked under his eye and for his approbation. After an argument there came a hush, as if they deferred to him for the ultimate word. But he scarcely spoke. He sat silent, watchful, now and then smiling tolerantly. Once only he intervened. The Minister of Finance was discoursing on some aspect of the policy of the United States, and his comments were caustic. The Gobernador looked across at Archie and spoke in English. + 

“Yanquis are unpopular in England?” he asked. + 

“No. I shouldn’t say that. Americans are popular with us, as they always have been. You see, we get the best of them. But the abstract thing, America, is unpopular. She always seems to have a rather left-handed Government.” + 

A spark seemed to kindle in the other’s eye. + 

“That is right. No section of humanity deserves blame. It is governments, not peoples, that offend.” + 

Then the spark died out. + 

As Janet and Archie walked back to the hotel they spoke of the luncheon party. They had taken the road through the old town, and were in the marketplace among the stalls. + 

“That man Castor doesn’t belong here,” said Archie. “He has nothing in common with those bland Oliferos. He’s nearer to that lot,” and he pointed to a group of Indians in shaggy ponchos squatted by the fountain. + 

“He is one of the most extraordinary people I ever met,” said Janet. “Can you guess what he talked to me about? Ossian⁠—Papa’s bête noire, you know⁠—Lord Balfour, and Marcel Proust! And I believe he could have talked just as well about clothes and Paris models.” + 

“I never in my life got so strong an impression of all-round competence.⁠ ⁠… I like him, too. I think he’s a good fellow. Don’t you?” + 

“I’m not so sure,” said Janet. “I should like to see him clean-shaven. I’ve an idea that the mouth under that beard of his might be horribly cruel.” + 

VI + 

The Gran Seco has not often appeared in the world’s literature. Francisco de Toledo first entered it in the sixteenth century, but after that there is no mention of it till Calamity Brown wandered thither from the coast in the late years of the eighteenth. That luckless and probably mendacious mariner has little good to say of it; it was the abode of devilish insects and devilish men, and, if we are to believe him, he barely escaped with his life. In the nineteenth century it was partially explored by the Spanish naturalist, Mendoza, and a Smithsonian expedition investigated its peculiar geology. Its later history is written in the reports of its copper companies, but Sylvester Perry visited it in his celebrated journey round the globe, and it has a short and comminatory chapter in his Seeing Eyes. Mr. Perry did not like the place, and in his characteristic way has likened it to a half-healed abscess, sloughed over with unwholesome skin. + 

Mr. Perry was partially right. The Gran Seco is not built to the scale of man and it has no care for his comforts. But it has its own magnificence. Its gate is the town of Santa Ana, in whose marketplace stands the colossal figure of the crucified Christ, first erected by Pizarro, many times destroyed by earthquakes, and always replaced, since it is the defiance of the plains to the mountains. But the gate is far from the citadel, for the avenue is a hundred miles long. The Gran Seco railway, now a double line most skilfully engineered, and wholly controlled by the Company, runs first up a long valley where only in midwinter a river flows. Then it passes over tiers of high desert, sinks into hollows where sometimes there are waters and forests, climbs again in tortuous gullies, till at length it emerges upon the great plateau; and always beside it can be traced the old highroad where once rode Toledo’s men-at-arms, and only the other day the ore from the mines jolted down-country on mule-back. But there are still many miles to go before the city of Gran Seco is reached, sunk in a shallow trough among its barren and blistered hills. + 

At first sight Sylvester Perry’s phrase seems to have a certain justice. Twenty years ago in the hollow there was only a wretched Indian puebla roosting among the ruins of an old city, for the copper from the distant mines was exported in its crude form. It was chiefly what is called virgin copper, with a certain amount of malachite and azurite ores. Ten years ago a new city began to rise, when the sulphuretted ores were first mined, and smelting was started. There was a furious rivalry among the companies till they were united in a great combine, and the whole mineral wealth gathered under a single direction. Process succeeded process, furnaces were multiplied till they covered many acres, wells were sunk and pumping-stations erected, great dams were built in the hills to catch the winter rains, and street after street rose in the dust. The Castor methods of calcination and electrolytic refining soon quadrupled its size. To one looking down from the surrounding ridges the place seems a hive of ugly activity: on one side a wilderness of furnaces and converters, with beyond them the compounds where the workmen are housed; on the other a modern city with high buildings and clanking electric trams. By day it is an inferno of noise and dust and vapours, with a dull metallic green the prevailing tint; by night a bivouac of devils warmed by angry fires. Mr. Perry is right. The place has the look of a gangrening sore, with for the surrounding skin the pale shaley hills. And the climate is in itself a disease. In winter the hollow is scourged and frozen, and in summer the sun’s heat, refracted from naked stone, strikes the face like a blow. + 

In the streets the first impression is of extreme orderliness. The traffic is methodically conducted by vigilant police in spruce uniforms⁠—for the most part of the Indian or mestizo type, with European superintendents. They are a fine body of men; too good, the spectator decides, for such an environment. The main street, the Avenida Bolivar, is broad and paved with concrete, and along it rise structures which would not disgrace New York. The Regina Hotel is larger than the Ritz, and there are others; the offices of the Company’s administration form a block scarcely smaller than Carlton House Terrace; there are clubs and many apartment houses, all built of the white local stone. But the shops are few and poor, and there are no villas in the environs, so that the impression grows that the Gran Seco is a camp, which its inhabitants regard as no continuing city. Hourly the sense of the bivouac expands in the traveller’s mind. The place is one great caravanserai for pilgrims. These busy, preoccupied people are here for the day only and tomorrow will be gone. + 

Other things will soon strike him. There seem to be no peasants. No neighbouring countryside obtrudes itself into this monastic industry. Every man⁠—there are few women⁠—is regimented by the Company. If the traveller is escorted to the area of the smelting and refining plant (and his passports must be very high-powered to ensure this privilege), he will see the unskilled work done by Indians and mestizos⁠—men with faces like mechanical automata⁠—but the skilled foremen are all European. He will puzzle over these Europeans, for however wide his racial knowledge, he will find it hard to guess their nationality, since their occupation seems to have smoothed out all differences into one common type with a preoccupation so intense as to be almost furtive. In the streets, too, in the clubs and hotels, he will be struck by the waxwork look of some of the well-dressed employees. They are inhumanly pale, and so concentrated upon some single purpose that their faces are expressionless and their eyes unseeing. + 

He will be much shepherded and supervised, and, though his permission de séjour is for only a few days, he will be apt to find these days pass heavily. If he is a mining expert, he will not be allowed to indulge his curiosity, for the Castor processes are jealously guarded. If he is the ordinary tourist, he will find no sights to repay him, and for the only amusement an occasional concert of austerely classical music, given by the Administration staff. He will probably leave the place with relief, glad to have seen the marvel, but thankful that his lines are cast among ordinary humanity. At the station, on his departure, he will be presented with a wonderful booklet, containing an eloquent speech of the Gobernador, and extracts (with illustrations) from the recent articles on the Gran Seco in the Saturday Evening Post. + 

The young party from the Corinna did not appear to find the time hang heavy on their hands. There were ten of them, five of each sex, with no older person to look after them, though a very moderate chaperonage seemed to be exercised by a tall girl with fine eyes and a pleasant Southern voice. That their purchase was considerable was shown by their entertainment, for they were shown everything and went everywhere; that they were unwelcome visitors, unwillingly privileged, was proved by their close oversight. Indeed they were uncomfortable guests, for they made a patch of garish colour in the drab of the Gran Seco and a discord in its orderly rhythm. The mere sight of them in the streets was enough to send the ordinary policeman to the Commissary to ask for instructions. + 

They were patently harmless, but deplorably silly. The Regina was turned by them into a cabaret. They danced every night in the restaurant to the disquiet of the diners, and they chaffed mercilessly an unsmiling staff. Bedroom riots seemed to be their speciality, and it was an unlucky official of the Company who had his quarters in their corridor. When they were entertained to luncheon by the Administration they asked questions so sublimely idiotic that the Vice-President, a heavy sallow man, called Rosas, of Mexican extraction, actually coloured, thinking that he was being made a fool of; and their visit to the smelting plant was attended by the same exasperating buffoonery. Presently it appeared that their idiocy was congenital and not a pose. Their jazz chatter and jazz manners were the natural expression of jazz minds, and must be endured because of the prestige of Mr. Burton Rawlinson. So “Baby” and “Bawby” and “Honey” and “Gerry” went their preposterous way, and the Gran Seco shrugged outraged shoulders and spat. + 

Nevertheless there were signs, had there been eyes to note them, that the yacht party was not quite what it seemed. In unguarded moments, as Janet had already observed, they could be betrayed into sanity and good breeding. At nights, too, when their ragging was over, there were odd discussions in the privacy of bedrooms. At least one of the young men would sit far into the dawn working at notes and plans. + 

Presently, as if they had had enough of the city, they extended their revels into the surrounding country. They procured two touring cars, and, after some trouble with the Commissary of Police, embarked on long excursions. The mines lie in three main groups⁠—the San Tomé, the Alhuema, and the Universum⁠—and they visited all three. There they seemed to find much to interest them, and the managers feverishly telephoned to headquarters for instructions. These children were imbeciles doubtless, they reported, but they were poking their noses into forbidden places. So on their return the troupe had to interview the Commissary of Police, who politely cautioned them against breaches of the regulations of the province. + 

Their next escapade was more serious. They packed luncheon-baskets and departed, as they said, for a visit to the caves of Marequito⁠—a permitted excursion. Then for three days they disappeared, the police were furious and anxious, and a posse was sent out in motorcars to discover their whereabouts. Six of the party⁠—five girls and a man⁠—and one of the cars were found two hundred miles off in a valley under the high peaks called the Spanish Ladies. They told a pitiful story; they had lost their road, exhausted their food, and had had to spend chilly nights on the ground. The other car had gone off the day before to find supplies, and had not returned. + 

The inspector of police wrung his hands. “Do you not know that in these parts the natives are dangerous? You have narrowly escaped throat-cutting.” The party was sent back to the city in disgrace, but they did not seem to feel their position. They were inordinately cheerful, and scarcely looked as if they had suffered a three days’ fast. + 

In spite of the police activity no word came of the other car, till two days later it returned brazenly of its own accord. The occupants told the same story⁠—a lost road, a breakdown, semi-starvation, a lucky meeting in the end with an intelligent vaquero who put them on the way to the San Tomé mine. This party did indeed show some signs of privation, and one of the four men had his arm in a sling, the result, he said, of a fall from a rock when he was trying to get a prospect. + 

There was a stern inquiry at the office of the Commissary, and the four were closely cross-examined about their journey. But they proved to be bewildered and obtuse. Their accounts conflicted, and when maps were placed before them they were quite unable to point out their route. “Can’t you realise that we were lost?” they repeated, “lost like a tick in a woodpile? What d’you keep worrying about? It’s no good quoting lists of your darned hills. We can’t locate them.” + 

After this episode the American party showed better behaviour. For the last days of their stay they confined themselves to the city, and got up a fancy-dress ball in the Regina, into which they dragged some of the unwilling residents. The young man with his arm in a sling did not appear at this function; indeed he did not leave his room, being a little fevered⁠—so he told the hotel servants⁠—by his accident, though he refused to see a doctor. This was perhaps natural, for in the small hours after his return there had been some rough surgery in his bedroom. One of his companions had cut out a pistol bullet from above his left elbow, and the tall girl, who had once nursed in a hospital, had done the bandaging. + 

Archie and Janet were very different visitors. It almost appeared as if they were welcome ones. A special coach was attached for them to the Santa Ana train, and this was shunted on to the Gran Seco line. It contained two compartments, in one of which they were given excellent meals, while the other was on the lines of an observation car, so filled with bridal flowers that Archie looked anxiously about for rice and slippers. They were also given a guide, a well-mannered young Olifero who unobtrusively offered information. He pointed out the objects of interest on the way to Santa Ana, and during the hour of waiting there conducted them over the cathedral, which has a famous altarpiece, and, under the great crucifix, told with pride the tale of the first Conquistadors. The long climb into the Gran Seco was enlivened by his anecdotes. He showed them the valley where Toledo’s men had been ambushed by Indians, the corner where the copper convoy had once been destroyed by a landslide, the gully which had long defied the railway engineers. At the frontier station he had managed their passes for them, and as the train crawled on to the plateau had sketched for them vivaciously the history of the mining industry. + 

“We can’t tip this fellow,” Archie whispered to Janet. “He’s a gentleman.” And his wife had agreed. + 

He saw them to their hotel, where rooms had been secured for them by the Administration. On parting, Archie and Janet warmly thanked him, and asked him his name. The young man smiled pleasantly. “That is nice of you, for I think we shall meet again. They call me Carlos Rivero.” He added, “I am a friend of Luis de Marzaniga,” and it seemed to Archie that his eyes said something confidential which he could not fathom. + 

The Moplahs were in the hotel, but in a somewhat chastened mood. The tall girl, whom Janet believed she had recognised, did not appear, nor did the young man in the starched linen knickerbockers, though Archie looked for him longingly. But the corybants of the Club de Residentes Extranjeros were there and greeted them with boisterous friendliness, though, somewhat to Janet’s surprise, they did not invite them to join their party. + 

In any case that would have been impossible, for the newcomers found a complex programme provided for their entertainment. They had no occasion to hire a car: the Administration provided one, a neat Daimler limousine which at all hours waited on their convenience. They were shown every phase of the great industry, and the day after their arrival they lunched with the Administration. The Gobernador himself appeared at the meal, an honour which, it was hinted, was almost unexampled. He apologised for the absence of the Vice-President, the same who had been made to blush by the Moplahs. “My colleague,” he said, “sends his profound apologies, but at the moment he is suffering from a slight attack of jaundice. He deeply regrets that he cannot be here to welcome you, for he has many friends in your country and in Europe. He is of Mexico, and a Mexican is like a Russian⁠—his country is so remote from the life of the world that he must needs adopt all countries. He is the true international.” + 

The meal was a Spartan one compared to the banquet at the President’s mansion, but the food was perfectly cooked, and, for a place in the heart of wild hills, extraordinarily varied. The company were all grave, pallid, perfectly mannered, with expressionless eyes and no gestures⁠—what Don Alejandro had called the “type Gran Seco.” There was nothing of the hustling liveliness which Archie associated with a luncheon of commercial magnates. Also all seemed to be in awe of their President, and hung on his lips. Castor talked indeed, brilliantly and continuously, but it was a monologue, and he went through a series of subjects, adorning each and then dropping it. There was none of the give-and-take of good conversation. Yet the time passed pleasantly, and when they rose from table Castor offered to show them his office. + 

It was on the first floor of the main building, lit by four large windows, into which travellers on the top of the tramcars could look and see the great man at his work. Here there was no seclusion or mystery. The big bright chambers gave its occupant no more privacy than an aviary gives a bird, for not only could it be looked into from the street, but at one end was a glass partition separating it inadequately from a room full of busy secretaries. There were maps and plans of the Gran Seco on the walls, a complicated mechanism of desk telephones, a bookcase full of mining reports, an immense safe, a cigar cabinet⁠—and that was all. It might have been the office of a real-estate agent in a provincial town in the United States or Canada. The contrast between Castor’s personality and his modest habitation was so startling that Janet laughed. + 

The Gobernador seemed to understand her feelings. “I have other lairs,” he said, smiling. “One, much grander, is in Olifa, and I have my rooms too in Paris and London. But this is my true workshop.” + 

He opened a door, which revealed a tiny bedroom and bathroom. + 

“Compact, is it not?” he said. “I need no more. I am a simple man.” + 

That night Archie and Janet dined in the hotel with the Financial Secretary, and afterwards went to hear Beethoven performed by a string quartet in the music-room of the Gran Seco Club. When they returned to their apartments, Archie was loud in his praises of his hosts. + 

“Odd, isn’t it? to find Castilian manners in business grandees! We didn’t find them at Veiro, for old Sanfuentes was just like the ordinary country gentleman at home. But these fellows here are all hidalgos. I feel noisy and rather vulgar among them. And, good Lord! what must they think of the Moplahs? + 

“Castor too!” he went on. “What rot it was Gedd and Wilbur making him out a mystery man! He’s an extraordinarily clever fellow, but as open as the day. A mystery man couldn’t live in a place like a cricket pavilion!” + 

“Did you ever read a poem called ‘How It Strikes a Contemporary’? Browning, you know.” + 

“No,” said Archie. + 

“Well, the poem is all about a tremendous mystery man⁠—the Corregidor, Browning calls him⁠—and he lived in just such a way as Mr. Castor. How does it go?⁠— + 

‘Poor man, he lived another kind of life + 

In that new stuccoed third house by the bridge, + 

Fresh-painted, rather smart than otherwise! + 

The whole street might o’erlook him as he sat + 

Leg crossing leg⁠—and⁠—’ + 

I can’t remember it all, but anyhow he played cribbage every night with his housekeeper and went to bed punctually at ten.” + 

Their permit for the Gran Seco had specified no time-limit. For two days they explored the details of the industry, were conducted through vast laboratories, studied the latest type of furnace and converter, pored over blue prints in offices, and gave themselves vile headaches. Archie declared that the smelting works were like the Ypres Salient after a gas attack. He tried to be intelligent, but found himself gravely handicapped by his lack of all scientific knowledge. “I have had the meaning of a reverberatory furnace explained to me a dozen times,” he complained, “but I’m hanged if I can keep it in my head. And what Bessemerising is remains for me one of Allah’s secrets. It’s no good, Janet, this isn’t my pidgin. Thank God, we’re going to the Mines tomorrow. I think that should be more in my line.” + 

They were taken to the Mines through a sad grey country, a desert of shale and rock. “Calcined,” Archie called it, having just acquired that word, and Janet said that she supposed it must be like the landscapes in the moon. Every stream-course was bone-dry, and the big dams they passed, with the green water very low in their beds, only accentuated the desiccation. Yet, where wells had been sunk, the soil was not without fertility, and the thin grasses seemed to give a living to considerable flocks of sheep and goats. They passed many ruins⁠—not only old mine workings, but the remains of Indian villages, which suggested that at one time the Gran Seco had been a more habitable country. + 

At the Mines they were shown little, for there was little time. Managers were ready with sheafs of statistics, and at the Universum they lunched luxuriously. But of the miners at work they saw nothing. They returned invigorated by the keen air of the steppes, and Archie, who had caught from a ridge a glimpse of the snowy peaks of the Spanish Ladies, had had his appetite whetted for further travel. But the Administration was not encouraging. That was all Indian country⁠—policed, it was true, for it was the chief recruiting-ground of labour, but not open to ordinary travel. “We could send you there,” said an urbane secretary, “but you would have to take an escort, and you would have to submit to be treated like a schoolboy. You will understand, Sir Archibald, that this Gran Seco of ours is in parts a delicate machine, and the presence of ever so little extraneous matter might do harm.” + 

That evening after dinner Janet and Archie were in their sitting-room. The Regina was full of the preparations for departure of the Moplahs, who were going down-country by the night train, and their shrill cries could be heard in the corridor, since their rooms were on the same floor. + 

“We’re extraneous matter here,” said Archie. “What about it, Janet? They’ve given us a very good show, but I’m disillusioned about the Gran Seco. Wilbur must have been pulling my leg. The place is as humdrum as the Potteries, and just about as ugly. I should have liked to have had a shot at the high mountains, but I can see their reason for not encouraging visitors in their labour reserve. I rather like the crowd⁠—they behave well and they must be the last word in efficiency.⁠ ⁠… Confound those Moplahs! This is like living beside a hen-coop!” + 

Janet looked serious, and, as was her way in such a mood, she sat with her hands idle in her lap. + 

“Let’s get away from this place,” she said. “I hate it!” + 

“Why in the world⁠ ⁠… ?” + 

“I hate it. Those soft-spoken, solemn men have got on my nerves. I think there’s something inhuman about them. Most of the faces of the people at the smelting works and at the Mines were like masks.⁠ ⁠… And at that awful luncheon!⁠ ⁠… I believe that sometimes I saw the devil grinning out from behind them.⁠ ⁠… And in the streets. I saw one or two villainous ruffians, who should have been in rags, but were as spruce as bagmen. I felt as if I were in an orderly and well-policed Hell.⁠ ⁠… Why did they shepherd us away from the Mines, for remember we saw nothing there? Why won’t they let us go into the back country? I believe it is because they are concealing something, something so bad that the world must never know of it.” + 

Archie stared. + 

“I must say you’ve got a lively imagination,” he began, but Janet was not listening. + 

“Let us go away⁠—at once⁠—tomorrow morning. I should like to be going tonight.⁠ ⁠… Ring up the Administration and say we must get home in a hurry.⁠ ⁠… I think there’s something infernal about this big, noiseless machine. I want to be back at Veiro, 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 tomorrow, 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 goodbye 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 pellet tight in his fingers. When his door closed behind him, he 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 wristwatch. “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 maté, 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 a cup. I’m going to have one myself. You might lock that 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 maté, and then from Archie’s case he took a cigarette. + 

“Yes. I want to know just how you managed it,” he 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 Café de l’Enfer were not altogether wasted.” + 

He finished his maté and lit a cigarette. He looked at the two before him, Janet with her girlish windblown 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 tomorrow 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 any danger.” + 

“No, but you are a source of danger to others. Myself, for example, and the Vice-President, Señor 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 today.” + 

“Mr. Castor!” Janet exclaimed. “Archie liked him, but I felt that he might be a devil.” + 

“A devil! Perhaps. He is also a kind of saint, and he is beyond doubt a genius. You will know more about him some day.” + 

“But you are sending us away.⁠ ⁠… Sandy, I won’t have it. We are too old friends to be bundled off like stray dogs from a racecourse. You are in some awful pickle and we must help.” + 

“I am sending you away,” said the waiter gravely, “because I want your help⁠—when the time comes. There’s another woman in this business, Janet, and I want you to be with her. I want you both. I pay you the compliment of saying that I can’t do without you. You will go back to Olifa to the Hotel de la Constitución, and you will make friends with an American girl there. She is expecting you and she will give you your instructions.” + 

“I know,” said Janet. “She is Mr. Blenkiron’s niece⁠—a Miss Dasent. What is her Christian name?” + 

The waiter looked puzzled. “I’m afraid I don’t know. I never asked her.” + 

VII + 

The waiter at the Regina was an exemplary servant. He dispensed the morning meal of fruit and coffee with soft-footed alacrity. At the midday déjeuner, when it was the custom of the Company’s officials, including some of the greatest, to patronise the hotel, he had the big round table in the north window, and in a day or two had earned the approval of his fastidious clients. Miguel was his name, and presently he was addressed by it as if he had been an old feature of the establishment. Those solemn gentlemen talked little, and at their meals they did not ransack the wine-list or summon the cook, but each had his little peculiarities of taste which Miguel made it his business to remember. He was always at their elbow, smiling gravely, to anticipate their wants. In the evening the restaurant was less full, only the guests living in the hotel and a few junior officials, for it was the custom of the magnates to dine at the club. In the evening Miguel was frequently off duty in the restaurant, engaged in other branches of hotel work, and twice a week he had his time after 7 p.m. to himself. + 

The waiter did not spend his leisure hours in his attic bedroom, which was like an oven after the sun had beat all day on the slatted roof. Once or twice he joined his fellow-employees in a visit to the cinema or to a shabby little gaming-room where one drank cheap aguardiente and played a languid kind of poker. But generally he seemed to have business of his own, and the negro porter at the back entrance grew familiar with his figure arriving punctually on the stroke of midnight, and chaffed him heavily about an imaginary girl. It was no one’s business to keep a watch on this humble half-caste, whose blood showed so clearly in his shadowy fingernails and dull yellow skin. But if he had been followed, curious things might have been noted.⁠ ⁠… + 

He generally made for a new block of flats on the edge of the dry hollow which separated the smelting works from the city, and he frequently varied his route thither. The place, with its concrete stairs and whitewashed walls, was not unlike a penitentiary, but it housed many of the works engineers and foremen. He would stop at a door on the third landing, consult his watch as to the hour, wait a minute or two, and then knock, and he was instantly admitted. Thence he would emerge in half an hour, generally accompanied by someone, and always in a new guise. Sometimes he was a dapper Olifero clerk with a spruce collar and an attaché case; sometimes in rough clothes with big spectacles, so that his former half-caste air disappeared, and he might have been an engineer from Europe; sometimes a workman indistinguishable from an ordinary hand in the furnaces. He always returned to the same door about half past eleven, and issued from it once more the waiter at the Regina. + 

Between the hours of 7:30 and 11 p.m. the waiter seemed to have a surprising variety of duties. Occasionally he would pass the evening in one of the flats, or in a room in another block which adjoined the costing department. There he would meet silent people who slipped in one by one, and the conversation would be in low tones. Maps and papers would lie on the table, and there would be much talk of the names on certain lists, and notes would be pencilled alongside them. Sometimes there would be a colloquy of one or two, and then the waiter would do most of the talking⁠—but not in Spanish. Sometimes the meeting would be at a café in a back street, which could only be entered by devious ways, and there, over glasses of indifferent beer, the waiter would make new acquaintances. His manners were odd, for he would regard these newcomers as a sergeant regards recruits, questioning them with an air of authority. There were strange ceremonies on these occasions, so that the spectator might have thought them meetings of some demented Masonic lodge. Sometimes, too, the waiter in one of the rooms of the big block of flats would meet a figure with the scorched face of a countryman and the dust of the hills on his clothes⁠—often in the uniform of the Mines Police and once or twice dressed like a mestizo farmer. Then the talk would be hard to follow⁠—strings of uncouth names, torrents of excited description, and a perpetual recourse to maps. + 

But the waiter’s most curious visits⁠—and they happened only twice during his time at the Regina⁠—were to a big house behind the Administration Headquarters, which stood in what for the Gran Seco was a respectable garden. At such times the waiter became the conventional clerk, very dapper in a brown flannel suit, yellow boots, and a green satin tie with a garnet pin. He was evidently expected, for, on giving his name, he was admitted without question, and taken to a little room on the first floor which looked like the owner’s study. “Señor Garcia from the Universum”⁠—thus he was ushered in, and the occupant greeted him gruffly with “Come along, Garcia. Say, you’re late. Have you brought the figures I asked for?”⁠—followed by the injunction to the servant, “I can’t be disturbed for the next two hours, so I guess you’d better disconnect the telephone. If anyone calls, say I’m mighty busy.” + 

Then the occupant of the room would lock the door and pay some attention to the windows, after which he would greet the waiter like a long-lost brother. He was a big man, with a sallow face but a clear healthy eye⁠—a man who looked as if he would have put on flesh but for some specially arduous work which kept him thin. He would catch the so-called Garcia by the shoulder as if he would hug him, then he would pat his back, and produce such refreshments as are not usually offered to a junior clerk. Strangely enough, there would be no mention of the awaited figures from the Universum. + 

“How much longer can you stick it?” he asked on the second occasion. “You’re looking peaked.” + 

“I’ve another week here. Then I break for the open. I doubt if I could keep it up for more than a week, for people are asking questions. Have you squared it with old Josephs and notified the Universum people?” + 

The big man nodded. “But after that you’re beyond my jurisdiction. Peters in the Police is prepared for you, but it’s up to you to slip over to him without exciting comment. The cook-boy at the Universum has got to perish. Can you manage that neatly?” + 

“I’ll try. I’ll have to do a lot of perishing in the next fortnight, before Luis picks me up. I’m terrified of going sick, you know. The Regina hasn’t done me any good, and the Tierra Caliente isn’t exactly a health-resort.” + 

The other looked at him with affectionate anxiety. + 

“That’s too bad.⁠ ⁠… I haven’t an easy row to hoe, but yours is hell with the lid off, and the almighty vexation is that I can’t do much to help you. Just at present the game’s with you. For the love of Mike keep on your feet, sonnie. You don’t mean to go far into the Poison Country?” + 

“Not a yard farther than I can help. But Luis says I must be at least a couple of days there. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of myself.” + 

After that the conversation was conducted in low tones, as if even the locked door and the guarded window might have ears. But had that talk been overheard, one phrase would have puzzled the eavesdropper, a phrase which constantly recurred and was spoken by both with a certain hesitation, even in that secret room. It was “Los Patios de la Mañana,” which, being translated, means “The Courts of the Morning.” It might have been a mere password, or the name of some authority to which the speaker was subject, or a poetic description of a place. Most likely the last, for a map was produced⁠—an amateur map neatly drawn and coloured, inscribed not with names but with letters. It showed steep gradients, so it must have referred to some mountain district. + 

At their parting the Roylances were mentioned. “They’re back in Olifa,” said the big man, “and Babs is looking after them good and sure. I’m mighty relieved that Babs has got a wise lady to keep her company. You’re certain you can make use of Sir Archibald?” + 

“I can use him right enough,” was the answer, “if he’ll stay quiet on the ice till I want him.” + 

A week later the waiter Miguel was seen no more at the Regina. When the occupants of the big table in the north window inquired of M. Josephs, the proprietor, as to his absence, they were told that he had been lent to the mess at the Universum Mine. + 

Miguel was four days at the Universum. He had a variety of tasks, for not only did he wait at table in the big adobe mess-room, but he lent a hand in the kitchen, for he was the soul of friendliness. Indeed he carried his willingness too far, for he was found in the kitchens of the compounds, where the Indian miners were fed like pigs at troughs, and was peremptorily ordered back. He had little leisure these days, but he managed to do various things not quite within the sphere of his duties. For one thing, he became intimate with the engineering staff, which contained two Scots, one American, and three Italians, and he used to gossip with them at their table when the room emptied at the end of meals. Also he was found sometimes in their office among blue prints and specimens of ore, and on these occasions the door happened to be locked. If he was not permitted inside the compounds, he used to fossick about the mines themselves, when the shifts of sallow, hollow-eyed labourers were going up or down. Occasionally he talked to them when no overseer was at hand, and he seemed to know something of their patois, for they replied, furtively, and once or twice volubly, when no one was looking. + 

The cheerful inquisitiveness of the mess waiter was his undoing. For on the evening of the fourth day there was a sad accident. Through a mysterious blunder a small packet of lentonite was detonated, and a corner of the compound wall was blown down and a great crater made in the earth. For some inexplicable reason Miguel seemed to have been in the neighbourhood at the time and he was the only casualty. Fragments of his clothing were found, and a bit of a hat which he was known to be wearing, and it was assumed that his remains were dispersed among the two acres of debris. The fatality was duly reported to the Administration and to M. Josephs, and the agreeable half-caste waiter ceased to be on the register of the Gran Seco. + 

Next morning a certain Featherstone Peters, a captain of the Mines Police, whose station was ten miles or so from the Universum, introduced at breakfast to his troopers a new recruit, who had just arrived to report. Peters was a tough, grizzled fellow of fifty, who had fought for the Boers in the South African War, had been in the old Macedonian gendarmerie, and was believed by his friends to have done a good deal of gunrunning in Morocco. The new recruit, whose name was Black, was a sallow youngish man, who looked as if he had fever in his blood. He spoke English fluently but ungrammatically, and gave out that his father had been in the Italian Consulate at Alexandria. He was good company, and entertained the men with yarns which enthralled even that collection of hard citizens. + 

For the next week Black was engaged on patrols far up into the Indian country. The map shows that east of the city of Gran Seco lies the land of rolling desert hills where the copper is mined, but beyond that the traveller enters a region of deep-cut desiccated valleys⁠—a plateau, but with the contours of highlands. It is the Indian territory, whence the Mines’ labourers are drawn, a place of sparse tillage but much pasturage, a place, too, which in recent centuries has been drying up, since the wretched pueblas are often on the site of what, from the ruins, must once have been considerable cities. It is called the Tierra Caliente, for there is little shade from a merciless sun, and the stages are long from water to water. The midday heat falls like a suffocating curtain, and does not lift till night arrives with the speed of a wind from the far snows. + 

It was patrol not escort duty, but the new recruit saw many of his fellow-policemen engaged in the latter task. The processions of labourers had the melancholy of a funeral cortège, and Black, who was well-read for one in his position, was reminded of the pictures of the Zanzibar slave-caravans in old books of African travel. It was a sight which visitors to the Gran Seco were not allowed to see, for there were no permits for the Indian country. The gangs bound for the Mines were not shackled, but they were closely shepherded by armed police escorts, and the faces of the men showed every degree of sullen and hopeless ferocity. But the gangs returning from the Mines to the villages were a spectacle to send a man to his prayers. “Returned empties,” Peters called them. Young men crawled and tottered like dotards, all were terribly emaciated, their eyes had lost every human quality and had the blank impassiveness of beasts. Yet the Mines were a business concern, famed for feeding their workers well and for utilising the latest scientific conclusions on hygiene and industrial fatigue. Had not the intelligent press of America and Europe borne testimony to their progressiveness? + 

As Black and Peters watched one gang pass, the latter spat vigorously and observed: “I’ve never taken stock in all that meetinghouse stuff about individual liberty and the rights of man. But I guess there may be something in it. That outfit kind of makes one think.” + 

Black said nothing, but his bright feverish eyes seemed to miss little. He was obviously on good terms with his officer, for he was constantly going off on little journeys of his own, which could scarcely be interpreted as police duty. These journeys took him generally into the Indian pueblas, and on two occasions he did not return to the police bivouac till the following day. He was obviously a sick man, and when the patrol reached the limit of its journey, Peters was heard to complain loudly that the new recruit should be in hospital. By this time they were nearing the eastern edge of the Indian country, with the peaks of the Cordilleras within a day’s march. The land was changing, for they had come to a watershed. The line of the great mountains was not the watershed, for, as in the case of the Nepal Himalaya, they stood a little beyond it. It was a country of running waters, and the streams flowed east, cutting a path through the range in deep gorges on their way to the distant Orazon. + 

They arrived at a ruined village of mud where a couple of Indians had made their camp⁠—hunters they seemed, tall active fellows of a different stamp from the broken men of the pueblas. Peters appeared to know them, for he called them by their names, and addressed them in pidgin Spanish which they understood. That night he told his troopers that the patrol was ended. He had been instructed to report on this eastern frontier of the Gran Seco, and next morning they would turn back. All to the east, he told them, was a God-forgotten country, which nature and man had combined to make unhealthy for Christians. He asked questions of the Indians and expounded their replies. There was fever there, and much poison, and very bad men, and valleys so deep that from the bottom one could see by day the stars and the moon. The troopers were impressed, and looked anxiously at the menacing mountain wall, with its coronal of snowfields now rosy in the afterglow. + 

But next morning Black was in no state to travel. Peters condemned the cussedness of things and declared that he could not afford to wait another hour. He was not unkind, and he did his best to ease the sufferer, but duty was duty and his called him back to headquarters. Black must be made as comfortable as possible, and the two Indians, whom he knew to be trustworthy, would look after him till the bout of fever had passed, and put him on his way home. After breakfast the patrol jingled off up the slope, and left Black wrapped in a foxskin kaross, drowsing in a corner of the ruins, while the Indians twenty yards off sat hunched and meditative beside their brushwood fire. + 

Black was really sick, but not with malaria. His vitality had run down like a clock, since too much had been demanded of it, and his trouble was partly a low nervous fever, and partly a deep fatigue. When the police had been gone an hour, the two Indians held a consultation on his case. Then they proceeded to strange remedies. They seemed to be friends of his, for he grinned when they bent over him and submitted readily to their ministrations. The country was volcanic, and close at hand, hidden in a crinkle of the hills, a hot sulphur spring bubbled from the rocks. They undressed him, and carried him, wrapped in the kaross, to the pool, where they plunged him into the most violent bath which he had ever encountered. Then they dried him roughly with a fine leather poncho, and rubbed the skin of his back and chest with an aromatic ointment. After that one of them massaged him for the space of an hour, a cunning massage which seemed to remould flaccid muscles and adjust disordered nerves and put him into a state of delicious stupor. Lastly, he was given a bitter brew to drink, and then permitted to sleep. This he proceeded to do for eighteen hours, and when he awoke in broad daylight the following morning his head was cool and his eye was clear, though he was still shaky on his feet. Peters had left enough provisions, and he ate the first enjoyable meal he had known for weeks. + 

There was another figure at breakfast, a fair young man with a golden-brown skin, who, judging by the dust on his boots and breeches, had ridden far that morning. + 

“My felicitations, Señor,” the newcomer said. “I do not think you have taken any hurt in the last weeks, and that is a miracle. But where we are now going we must go on our feet, and for that you are not yet able. I am in command for the moment, and my orders are that today you rest.” + 

So Black slept again and awoke in the afternoon with a most healthy hunger. The newcomer sat by him and rolled and smoked many cigarettes, but he would not permit the patient to talk. “Time enough, my friend. We do not part company for a little while. But I will show you this to cheer you.” + 

He exhibited a small tinsel medal, such as humble pilgrims purchase at some famous shrine. On one side it bore a face which was clearly that of the Gobernador of the Gran Seco. + 

Black puzzled over it, for he was still dazed, and asked whose was the head. + 

“It is that of our noble leader,” the young man laughed. “Yours and mine⁠—he who is to lead this unhappy people to freedom.” + 

Black seemed to see the obscure joke, for he too laughed. + 

“Jesucristo!” said the young man, “but that is a chief to fight for!” + 

VIII + 

Black slept soundly all night, and next morning rose renewed in body and mind. The party set out down the glen of the stream, one of the Indians carrying food and blankets, while the other remained behind with the horses. Black had his pistol, but he had left his police carbine at the bivouac, while the newcomer had no weapon at all. “What do I want with a gun?” he had said lightly in reply to his companion’s question. “We are going into the Poison Country⁠—El País de Venenos⁠—where lead and powder are trivial things. A gun is of as little use as a single lifebelt would be to a man proposing to cross the Atlantic in a skiff. We are now in the hands of the older gods.” + 

It was a strange land which they entered, when the stream which they were descending plunged into the shadow of the high peaks. It was fed by many affluents, and presently became a considerable river, running in a broad grassy vale on which the dew lay like hoarfrost. Suddenly the hills closed in like a wall, and the stream leaped in a great spout into a profound ravine, where in potholes and cascades it poured its way from shelf to shelf of the mountain ribs. The sides of the glen were cloaked with bush, which in the lower levels became tall timber trees. In the woody recesses the freshness went out of the air, mosses and creepers muffled the tree-trunks, gaudy birds and butterflies flitted through the branches, and a hot, headachy languor seemed to well out of the sodden ground. + 

The party, guided by the Indian, kept high above the stream, following paths no wider than a fox’s track. As they advanced they descended, the ravine opened, and from a promontory they looked into a great cup among the cliffs, brimming with forest, with above on the periphery the hard bright line of the snows. Black, who was apparently something of a scholar, quoted Latin. It was a sight which held the two men breathless for a moment. Then Luis shook his head. “It is beautiful, but devilish,” he said. “The malevolence rises like a fog,” and Black nodded assent. + 

They found themselves in an eery world, as if they were sunk deep in a hot sea. Moisture streamed from every twig and blade and tendril, and a sickening sweetness, like the decaying vegetation of a marsh, rose from whatever their feet crushed. Black remarked that it was like some infernal chemist’s shop. Under the Indian’s direction they took curious precautions. Each man drew on leather gauntlets which strapped tight on the wrist. Each shrouded his face and neck with what looked like a fine-meshed mosquito-curtain. Also they advanced with extreme caution. The Indian would scout ahead, while the other two waited in the sweltering vapour-bath. Then he would return and lead them by minute tracks, now climbing, now descending, and they followed blindly, for in that steaming maze there was neither prospect nor landmark. + 

That there was need for caution was shown by one incident. The Indian hurriedly drew them off the trail into the cover of what looked like a monstrous cactus, and from their hiding-place they watched four men pass with the softness of deer. Three were Indians, not of the pueblas in the Tierra Caliente, for they were tall and lean as the Shilluks of the Upper Nile. The fourth was a white man in shirt and breeches, gauntleted and hooded, and his breeches were the type worn by the Mines Police. But he was not an ordinary policeman, for, as seen under the veil, his face had the pallor and his eyes the unseeing concentration of the magnates of the Gran Seco. + 

Black looked inquiringly at Luis, who grinned behind his mosquito-mask. “One of the Conquistadors,” he whispered, and the other seemed to understand. + 

In that long, torrid day the party neither ate nor drank. Just before nightfall they descended almost to the floor of the cup, where they were within hearing of the noise of the river. Here they moved with redoubled caution. Once they came out on the stream bank, and Black thought that he had never seen stranger waters. They were clear, but with purple glooms in them, and the foam in the eddies was not the spume of beaten water, but more like the bubbling of molten lead. Then they struck inland, climbed a tortuous gully, and came into a clearing where they had a glimpse of a cone of snow flaming like a lamp in the sunset. + 

The place was cunningly hidden, being a little mantelpiece between two precipitous ravines⁠—on the eyebrow of a cliff, so that from below it was not suspected⁠—and protected above by a screen of jungle. An empty hut stood there, and the Indian proceeded to make camp. A fire was lit in a corner, and water from the nearest rivulet put on to boil. It might have been a Jewish feast, for all three went through elaborate purification ceremonies. Food had been brought with them, but no morsel of it was touched till the hands of each had been washed with a chemical solution. The food-box was then sealed up again as carefully as if it were to be cached for months. The hut floor was swept, and before the bedding was laid down it was sprayed with a disinfectant. There was no window, and the door was kept tightly shut, all but a grating in it over which Luis fastened a square of thick gauze netting. The place would have been abominably stuffy but for the fact that with nightfall a chill like death had crept over the land, as if with the darkness the high snows had asserted their dominion. + 

Later in the night men came to the hut, silently as ghosts, brought by the Indian, who, though not of their tribe, seemed to know them and speak their tongue. They were of the same race as the three whom the travellers had encountered in the forest that afternoon and had stepped aside to avoid. Strange figures they were, lean and tall, and in the lantern light their cheekbones stood out so sharp that their faces looked like skulls. Their eyes were not dull, like those of the Gran Seco magnates, but unnaturally bright, and their voices had so low a pitch that their slow, soft speech sounded like the purring of cats. Luis spoke to them in their own language and translated for Black’s benefit. When they had gone, he turned to his companion. + 

“You have seen the people of the País de Venenos. An interesting case of adaptation to environment? What would the scientists of Europe not give to investigate this curiosity? These men during long generations have become immune to the rankest poison in the world.” + 

“They terrify me,” said Black. “I have seen men very near to the brutes, but these fellows are uncannier than any beast. They are not inhuman, they are unnatural. How on earth did you get a graft here?” + 

“They have their virtues,” said Luis, “and one of them is faithfulness. My graft is ancestral. Centuries ago one of my family came here and did them a service, and the memory is handed down so that only a Marzaniga can go among them. Indeed, I think that my blood has something of their immunity. I take precautions, as you see, but I do not know if in my case they are so needful.” + 

Black asked about the poison. + 

“They are many,” he was told. “There is poison here in earth and water, in a hundred plants, in a thousand insects, in the very air we breathe. But the chief is what they call astura⁠—the drug of our friends the Conquistadors. Once this country was guarded like a leper-settlement, so that nothing came out of it. Now, as you know, its chief product is being exploited. The Gran Seco has brought it within its beneficent civilisation.” + 

The Indian was already asleep, and, as the two white men adjusted their blankets, Black commented on the utter stillness. “We might be buried deep under the ground,” he said. + 

“There is no animal life in the forest,” was the answer, “except insects. There are no birds or deer or even reptiles. The poison is too strong. But there is one exception. Listen!” + 

He held up his hand, and from somewhere in the thickets came a harsh bark, which in the silence had a horrid savagery. + 

“Jackal?” Black asked. + 

“No. That is one of our foxes. They are immune, like the men, and they hunt on the uplands above the forest where there is plenty of animal life. I think they are the chief horror of the place. Picture your English fox, with his sharp muzzle and prick ears, but picture him as big as a wolf, and a cannibal, who will rend and eat his own kind.” + 

As Black fell asleep, he heard again the snarling bark and he shivered. It was as if the devilishness of the Poison Country had found its appropriate voice. + 

They stayed there for four days, and in all that time they did not move from the little mantelpiece. Every night ghosts which were men slipped out of the jungle and talked with them in the hut. Black fell ill again, with his old fever, and Luis looked grave and took the Indian aside. The result was that on the third night, when the men came and Black lay tossing on his couch, there was a consultation, and one of the visitors rolled in his hands a small pellet. It began by being a greyish paste, but when rolled it became translucent like a flawed pearl. Black was made to swallow it, and presently fell into a torpor so deep that all the night Luis anxiously felt his heartbeats. But in the morning the sickness had gone. Black woke with a clear eye and a clean tongue, and announced that he felt years younger, and in the best of spirits. + 

“You have tasted astura,” said Luis, “and that is more than I have ever done, for I am afraid. You will have no more, my friend. It cures fever, but it makes too soon its own diseases.” + 

The four days were cloudless and very warm. The forest reeked in the sunshine, and wafts of odours drifted up to the mantelpiece, odours such as Black had never before known in nature. The place seemed a crucible in some infernal laboratory, where through the ages Natura Maligna had been distilling her dreadful potions. His dreams were bad, and they were often broken by the yelp of the cannibal foxes. Horror of this abyss came on him, and even Luis, who had been there before and had grown up with the knowledge of it, became uneasy as the hours passed. These days were not idle. Information was collected, and presently they had a fairly complete knowledge of the methods by which those whom they called the Conquistadors worked. Then on the last night came a deluge of rain, and Luis looked grave. “If this continues,” he said, “we may be trapped; and if we are trapped here, we shall die. Then it will be farewell to the Courts of the Morning, my friend.” + 

But in the night the rain stopped, and at dawn they hooded and gauntleted themselves and started back. It was a nightmare journey, for the track had become slime, and the queer smells had increased to a miasma. Their feet slipped, and they made shrinking contact with foetid mud and obscene plants whose pallid leaves seemed like limbs of the dead. The heat was intense, and the place was loud with the noise of swollen rivulets and the buzz of maleficent insects. Black grew very weary, but Luis would permit of no halt, and even the Indians seemed eager to get the journey over. + 

They did not reach their old camp till the darkness had long fallen, but the last hour was for Black like an awakening from a bad dream. For he smelt clean earth and herbage and pure water again, and he could have buried his face in the cool grass. + 

The next day they left the Indians behind and rode over the mountains by intricate passes farther to the south, which brought them to a long valley inclining to the southwest. Three nights later they slept in an upland meadow, and by the following evening had crossed a further pass and reached a grassy vale which looked westward to the plains. Luis pointed out a blue scarp to the north. + 

“That is the Gran Seco frontier,” he said. “It is guarded by patrols and blockhouses, but we have outflanked them. I have brought you by a way which the Gobernador does not know⁠—only those of my family and perhaps two others. We may relax now, for our immediate troubles are over.” + 

They slept at a camp of vaqueros, and in the morning Black had several surprises. The first was an ancient Ford car which stood under a tarpaulin in the corner of one of the cattle-pens. The second was the change in his garb upon which Luis insisted. The uniform of the Mines Police was carefully packed in the car, and in its place he was given the cotton trousers and dark-blue shirt of an ordinary peon on the estancias. Luis drove the Ford all day through rolling savannah, with beside him a lean mestizo servant, to whom he talked earnestly, except when they halted for food at an inn or met other travellers. In the evening they came to a big hacienda, low and white, with wide corrals for cattle, and red-roofed stables which suggested Newmarket. + 

Half a mile from the place a girl, who had seen them approaching, cantered up to them on a young Arab mare. The car slowed down, and driver and peon took off their hats. + 

“You are a day behind time,” she said. + 

“Well, what about it, Miss Dasent?” It was the peon who spoke, and there was anxiety in his tone. + 

“Only that you have missed his Excellency the Gobernador,” said the girl in her pleasant Southern voice. “He paid us a visit of ceremony yesterday, to talk about horses. Curious that he should have chosen the day you were expected. Don Mario thinks that Lord Clanroyden had better not sleep in the house. If he will get out at the gate of the cattle-yard, I will show him the way to the overseer’s quarters.” + 

IX + 

When Archie and Janet came down to dinner that evening at Veiro they found Don Luis de Marzaniga, a little thinner and browner than before, but spruce and composed as if he were about to dine at his Olifa club. He kissed Janet’s hand, and asked Archie if he had enjoyed the weeks since his return from the Gran Seco. + 

“I’ve been obeying orders,” was the answer. “There’s my commander-in-chief. She’ll tell you how docile I’ve been, and how I’ve never bothered her with questions, though Janet and I are sick with curiosity.” + 

The tall girl, whose name was Barbara Dasent, smiled. “I’ll testify that he has been a good boy.” + 

She was very slim, and at first sight the delicate lines of her neck and her small head gave her an air of fragility⁠—an impression presently corrected by the vigour and grace of her movements. Her face was a classic oval, but without the classic sculptural heaviness, her dark hair clustered about her head in childish curls, her clear skin had a healthy pallor which intensified the colouring of lips and eyes. These eyes were a miracle⁠—deep and dark, at once brooding and kindling, as full of changes as a pool in the sunlight, and yet holding, like a pool, some elemental profundity. The lashes were long and the eyebrows a slender crescent. Janet had crossed the room and stood beside her, and each was to the other a perfect foil. Yet, though they had no feature in common, there was an odd kinship, due perhaps to the young freedom of each, their candid regard and a certain boyish gallantry of bearing. + 

At dinner, under the Sanfuentes Murillo, Luis cross-examined Archie about his recent doings. It appeared that, on Miss Dasent’s instructions, he had been travelling widely in the coastal flats of Olifa. He had been given introductions from the Minister of Defence, and had been the guest of several regiments, attended an infantry camp of instruction, and taken part in cavalry manoeuvres. Also he had visited various flying-stations, and had made several flights. The result was unqualified admiration. + 

“I can’t claim to be a military pundit,” he said, “but I know a first-class thing when I meet it. All I have to say is that Olifa has got the most completely professional outfit I have ever seen. There isn’t one lesson of the Great War she hasn’t learned. Her infantry tactics are the sort of thing we were feeling our way to before the Armistice. Her tanks are the latest pattern, better than anything I’ve seen in England, and, by Jove, she knows how to use them. Her army is mechanised to the full, but not too far, for she has the sense to see that cavalry rightly handled will never be out of date. And she has an amazing good staff, picked from up and down the earth, all as keen as mustard⁠—like what we used to imagine the German staff to be, but less hidebound. Of course I don’t know what strength she has in the way of reserves, and I can’t speak of the fighting spirit, but there’s no doubt she has a most efficient standing army for a nucleus. What puzzles me is why she should want anything so good when she’s so secure.” + 

Luis asked about the Air Force. + 

“That was the only thing with which I was a little disappointed,” Archie replied. “It’s extraordinarily good in the scientific way⁠—the last word in machines and engines and all that sort of thing⁠—but just a little lacking in life. Those chaps don’t spend enough hours in the air. They’ve got all the theory and expert knowledge they can carry, but they haven’t got as much devil as we have. Too serious, I should say. Keener about the theory than the game.” + 

Luis had been listening closely. “You are very near the truth, Señor Roylance,” he said. “We in Olifa have all that science and money can give us, but we have not enough soul. What is your English word⁠—‘guts’?” + 

“Oh, I didn’t say that.” + 

“But I will say it. And it is perhaps fortunate. I do not blame my nation, for our army is not national, since its leaders are mercenaries.” + 

“I’m still puzzled. What do you want it for? I never got any figures of manpower and reserves, but if you’ve an adequate shaft behind this spearhead, you’ve a superb fighting-machine. What do you mean to use it against?” + 

Luis laughed. “It is the conventional insurance premium which our rich Olifa pays. Pays carelessly and without conviction. That is why, as you truly say, our army is made up chiefly of mercenaries. We have collected the best soldiers of Europe who were out of a job. It is a police, if you choose. If a little political war came with a neighbour, Olifa would use her pretty toy and ask only that she got her money’s worth.⁠ ⁠… Unless, of course, it was a war which touched her heart, and then she would fight in the old way⁠—with her people.” + 

They sat late at table, Archie answering Luis’s questions and illustrating his views by diagrams on the backs of envelopes. Presently Miss Dasent left the room, and on her return said something to Don Mario. He rose and led the way to his sitting-room, where, according to custom, a wood fire crackled on the wide hearth. The curtains, usually left untouched to reveal the luminous night, were now closely drawn. A man in a flannel suit stood with his back to the fireplace. + 

Janet blinked at him for a moment, and then ran up to him with both hands outstretched. + 

“Oh, Sandy dear, I have been miserable about you. Thank God, you’re safely back. You’re desperately thin. You’re not ill?” + 

“I’m perfectly well, thank you. But I’ve been pushed up to the limit of my strength. It’s all right. I’ve done it often before, you know. I only want to lie fallow for a bit. It’s good to see you and Archie.⁠ ⁠… I feel as if I had come home.” + 

“Are you safe here?” Janet asked anxiously. + 

Luis answered. “Perfectly⁠—at present. The Gobernador must suspect something or he would not have been here yesterday. But he can know nothing. We have pickets out, and at the worst we shall get ample warning. Tonight, at any rate, we can sleep sound.” + 

“We have asked no questions,” said Janet. “For the past week Archie has been behaving like the intelligent tourist, and I have been sketching in watercolours. We want to be enlightened, Sandy dear.” + 

The man addressed⁠—he looked very young in the dim light, for his hair had grown long and was tousled like a boy’s over his forehead⁠—flung himself into an armchair and stretched his lean shanks to the blaze. He slowly filled an old pipe and looked round at the audience⁠—Don Mario erect and prim, Luis sprawling on a couch, Archie swinging his long legs from a corner of the table, Miss Dasent very quiet in the shadow, Janet standing on the tiger-skin rug, an incarnate note of interrogation. He looked round and laughed. + 

“You ask a good deal. Luis knows everything, and Miss Dasent. Don Mario knows as much as he wants to. But you two are newcomers, so I must begin from the beginning. Sit down on that stool, Janet, and, Archie, get off the table. I’m going to make a second-reading speech, as they say in your little Parliament. After that the House can go into committee.⁠ ⁠… + 

“First of all, I need hardly tell you that the world today is stuffed with megalomania. Megalomania in politics, megalomania in business, megalomania in art⁠—there are a dozen kinds. You have the man who wants to be a dictator in his own country, you have the man who wants to corner a dozen great businesses and control the finance of half the world, you have the man who wants to break down the historic rules of art and be a law to himself. The motive is the same in every case⁠—rootlessness, an unbalanced consciousness of ability, and an overweening pride. They want to rule the world, but they do not see that by their methods they must first deprive the world of its soul, and that what would be left for their dictatorship would be an inanimate corpse. You see, for all their splendid gifts they have no humour.” + 

“What is Mr. Castor’s nationality?” Janet asked irrelevantly. + 

“He has none. He was born in Austria, and I think he has a Spanish strain in him. Blenkiron has a notion that he has English blood, too, but he cannot prove it. The man is like Melchizedek, without apparent origin. He’s what you call a weltkind, the true international.” + 

“He has no humour,” said Janet with emphasis. + 

“I agree. But he has most other things, and one is a clear and searching mind. His strength, and also his weakness, is that he has no illusions. For one thing, he does not possess the illusion which ordinary people call a creed. He does not want to remake the world on some new fantastic pattern, like the Communists. He has none of Mussolini’s arbitrary patriotism. He wants to root out various things, but I doubt if he has a preference for what should take their place. I don’t profess to understand more than bits of him. He is an egotist, but in the colossal sense, for he has no vanity. He considers that he has been called on to do certain things, and that he is the only man living who can. The world, as he sees it, is suffocating from the debris of democracy, and he wants to clear it away. He does not hate it, he despises it. He is the scientist and philosopher, who would introduce the reign of reason and the rule of law, but first some decaying refuse called popular liberties must be destroyed. Therefore he is against Britain, but only half-heartedly, for he thinks that with us democracy is tempered by more rational instincts, and that in any case our number is up. But for America he has the unfaltering contempt which a trained athlete might have for a great, overgrown, noisy, slobbering, untrained hobbledehoy. With America it is war to the death.” + 

“I’ve known other people take that view,” Archie put in. + 

“With him it is not a view, it is a crusading passion. In Castor you have the normally passionless, scientific mind kindled to a white heat. The mischief is that he is inhuman⁠—not cruel, but inhuman. He will use the ordinary stuff of humanity to further his ends as ruthlessly as a furnace swallows coke. He will do any evil in order that what he considers good may come.” + 

“That is the definition of a devil,” said Janet. + 

“Not quite. Castor is just as near being a saint. If he had a different religion he might deserve to be beatified, for he is scrupulously loyal to what he believes to be the right. He’s not evil⁠—he just happens to have missed the human touch. He knows nothing of friendship⁠—nor, of course, of any kind of love. His world is a narrow cell with the big dynamo of his brain purring in it. He is cruel, simply because he cannot conceive the feelings of anybody but himself, and is not interested in them. He is a master over things, and over men so long as he can treat them as things. If he were Emperor of the world I have no doubt he would be a just ruler. As it is⁠—well, I have been seeing too much of his methods these last days to be in love with him.” + 

He paused for a second to shake out the ashes from his pipe. + 

“Well, I’ve given you what Blenkiron would call the ‘general Castor proposition.’ Now, how would a man, obsessed by this idea, set about realising it? First of all, he would want money, money on a gigantic scale. He has got it in the Gran Seco. Remember, he is a very great practical engineer and chemist⁠—Blenkiron, who should know, says the greatest in the world⁠—and he is a first-class man of business. Second, he would want a base, and a well-camouflaged base. He has got that in the republic of Olifa. You have seen for yourselves how completely Olifa is in his power. He has changed in a few years the whole character of her governing class. He has made her Government rich and supine, and got it under his thumb. The thing is a miracle of tact and diplomacy. The Olifa ministers do not share in his secrets, they know very little of his schemes, but he has organised them as he wanted, and they do his bidding without a question. Up in the Gran Seco he has his laboratory and factory, and in the State of Olifa he has his outer barrage, the decorous, bourgeois republic which keeps watch at his door. + 

“Thirdly, he had to have his staff and his army to operate for him throughout the globe. He has got that, too⁠—slaves who mechanically obey him. You have seen some of them in your Olifa hotel and in the Gran Seco. You have lunched with them, and Janet says that they made her flesh creep.” + 

“The ‘type Gran Seco,’ ” said Archie. + 

“The ‘type Gran Seco.’ Have you any notion who they are? They look like robots, with their pallid faces and soft voices and small, precise gestures. All their individuality seems to have been smoothed away, so that they conform to one pattern. Nevertheless, they were once men of brains and character. Their brains they have kept, but their characters have been stereotyped, and they have surrendered their wills into the hand of their master. They have been most carefully selected from every nation. One or two you have known before, Archie.” + 

“I swear I haven’t.” + 

“But you have. The Gran Seco is the port for missing ships. Men who have foundered somehow in life⁠—respectable careerists who suddenly crash on some private vice⁠—fellows who show the white feather⁠—soldiers without regiments, financiers without credit⁠—they are all there. Do you remember Lariarty, Archie? He was about your time at Eton. There was a bad scandal about him in 1915.” + 

“Good God! Of course I do. I heard he was dead.” + 

“He sat opposite you a few weeks ago when you lunched with the Administration. You couldn’t recognise him. Everything that once was Lariarty has gone out of him, except his brain. You remember he was a clever fellow. And Romanes⁠—the man who was in the 23rd⁠—people said he was with the Touaregs in the Sahara. He is one of them, but I believe at the moment he is in Europe. And Freddy Larbert, who was once a rising man in the Diplomatic Service. He did not hang himself at Bucharest, as they said he did, for today he is in the Gran Seco. I could mention others, and they come from every country⁠—Russian aristocrats who were beggared and Russian revolutionists who were too clever, broken soldiers and blown-on politicians and speculators who missed their market. The Gran Seco is the true Foreign Legion, and it needs no discipline. Castor asks only for two things, brains and submission to his will, and once a man enters his service he can never leave it.” + 

“Why?” Archie asked. + 

“Because he does not want to. Because the Gran Seco is his only home and away from it he is lost. I told you that Castor was like the Old Man of the Mountain in the chronicle I showed you at Laverlaw. There is nothing new under the sun. Castor rules his initiates as the old ruffian in the Lebanon ruled his Assassins. You remember he gave them hashish, so that their one desire was to get their job in the outer world finished and return to the Lebanon to dream. Castor has the same secret. As I have told you, he is a mighty chemist, and this continent is the home of drugs. One in particular is called astura and is found in what they call the País de Venenos, the Poison Country in the eastern mountains. The secret of it was lost for ages till he revived it, and, except as a legend in the Marzaniga family, it was unknown in Olifa. This astura is deadly poison, but it can be used in two ways as a drug. In one preparation it takes the heart out of a man, but gives him increased physical strength, till suddenly he cracks and becomes doddering. That preparation Castor uses to turn out docile labourers for the mines. He gets marvellous results in output, and the reports say that it is due to his scientific management and his study of industrial fatigue, but we know better. The other preparation does not apparently weaken the bodily strength, though it alters the colour of the skin and the look in the eyes. But it is a most potent mental stimulant, and its addicts tend to live for the next dose. It kills in the end, but only after a considerable period, and during that period it gives increased intellectual vitality and an almost insane power of absorption, varied by languors like the opium-eater’s. Those who once take to it can never free themselves, and they are the slaves of him who can supply it. Willing slaves, competent slaves, even happy slaves, but only the shadows of what once were men. Lariarty and Romanes and Larbert and others are among the initiates. They go about the world on Gran Seco business and they do Castor’s will as little wheels obey a master-wheel. They have a name for their brotherhood. They call themselves the new Conquistadors⁠—conquerors, you see, over all the old standards and decencies of human nature.” + 

Archie inquired what precisely they did in their journeys about the world. He had rumpled his hair, and his eyes looked as if he were painfully adjusting a manifold of experience in the light of a new idea. + 

“First of all, they make money. They are the most efficient bagmen alive. For the rest, they break down things and loosen screws, and they have unlimited funds at their disposal, for Castor spends nearly as fast as he earns.⁠ ⁠… No, no. Not Bolshevism. The donkeys in Moscow have in a sense played Castor’s game, but they were far too crude for him, and today I fancy he finds them rather a nuisance. By their folly they are creating a reaction in favour of that democracy which he hates.⁠ ⁠… Remember, I don’t know him. I’ve seen him, but have never spoken to him. I can only speak at secondhand of his methods, but I’ll give you Blenkiron’s summary. Blenkiron says that half a century ago Abraham Lincoln fought a great war to prevent democracy making a fool of itself. He says that Castor’s object is just the opposite⁠—he wants to encourage democracy to make a fool of itself, to inflate the bladder till it bursts.⁠ ⁠… His instruments? The press, for one thing. He has a mighty grip on that. The politicians, too, and every kind of fool organisation for boost and uplift. You’d be amazed to learn how many gushing societies, that look like spontaneous ebullitions of popular folly, have his patient direction behind them. He is the greatest agent provocateur in history.” + 

“But the thing is impossible,” Archie exclaimed. “He can’t bring it to a head, and I take it that he knows he is not immortal and wants some sort of result in his lifetime.” + 

Sandy nodded. “He has a general ultimate purpose, but he has also a very clear, practical, immediate purpose. He wants to make trouble for America⁠—before she can set her house in order. The United States, Blenkiron says, have reached the biggest crisis in their history. They have got wealth and power, but they have lost the close national integration they had when they were poorer. Their best men are labouring like galley-slaves to discipline their country. They have to give it an adequate law, and a proper public service, and modernise its antediluvian constitution. Castor wants to catch them at the moment of transition, when they haven’t found their balance. He believes that bad foreign trouble, which they couldn’t afford to neglect, would split the unwieldy fabric. Democracy, of which America is the incoherent champion, would become a laughingstock, and he and his kind would have the reordering of the fragments.” + 

“I think,” said Janet, “that he has taken on too big a job. Does he imagine that any alliance of Latin republics would have any effect on America? I have heard you say yourself that she couldn’t be conquered.” + 

“True.” The speaker’s eyes were on the other girl who was sitting in the shadow outside the circle of firelight. “No Power or alliance of Powers could conquer America. But assume that she is compelled to quarrel with a group of Olifas, and that with her genius for misrepresenting herself she appears to have a bad cause. Has she many friends on the globe except Britain? Most countries will flatter her and kowtow to her and borrow money of her, but they hate her like hell. Trust them not to help matters by interpreting her case sympathetically. Inside her borders she has half a dozen nations instead of one, and that is where Castor comes in. A situation like that, when she was forced to act and yet didn’t want to and didn’t know how to, might, if properly manipulated, split her from top to bottom. Look what happened in the Civil War, and she was an integrated nation then compared to what she is now. Twenty years ago the danger would not have been there; ten years hence, if all goes well, it may be past; but today, Blenkiron says, there is precisely as big a risk of a blowup as there was in Europe in June 1914. The men who count in America know it, even without Blenkiron telling them.” + 

“Mr. Blenkiron discovered Castor?” Janet asked. + 

“Yes. He came on the track of some of Castor’s agents, and in his slow, patient way worked backwards to the source. Then he succeeded in laying himself alongside of Castor. How he managed it, I can’t tell. You see, he’s a big engineering swell, and I daresay he made himself useful over the actual copper business. Not as John Scantlebury Blenkiron, of course⁠—as Señor Rosas, the agreeable denationalised Mexican, who has lived long enough in the States to have a healthy hatred for them. He must have had a pretty delicate time, and I don’t suppose he was ever free from anxiety till he managed to arrange for his opportune decease. He was never in Castor’s full confidence, for he didn’t belong to the Conquistadors and never touched astura⁠—gave out that he had to be careful in his habits because of his duodenum. His graft was that he understood the mining business like nobody else except Castor. But he had to be very cautious and had to stick like a limpet to his rock. Till he got in touch with Luis, he was next door to a prisoner.” + 

Janet asked how that had been contrived, and Luis replied. + 

“Through Wilbur. I am afraid you underrated that drawling New England Consul! Wilbur is a great man. He was a friend of mine, and enlisted me, and then we enlisted others. After a time⁠—after a long time⁠—we got in touch with Lord Clanroyden.” + 

Archie drew a deep breath. “I think I see the layout,” he said. “That is to say, I see what Castor is driving at. But I can’t for the life of me see what we can do to stop him.⁠ ⁠… Unless we got America to chip in first.” + 

“That was Blenkiron’s original plan,” said Sandy. “But it was too difficult⁠—might have precipitated what we wanted to avoid. So we decided to do the job ourselves.” + 

Archie stared at the speaker, and then whistled long and low. “You haven’t lost your nerve, old man,” he said at last. “I’m on for anything you propose⁠—likewise Janet⁠—but what precisely are the odds? About a million to one?” + 

Sandy laughed and hoisted himself out of the chair. “Not quite so bad! Stiffish, I agree, but not farcical. You see, we hold certain cards.” + 

“I should like to know about them,” said Archie. “You seem to me to have taken on one of the toughest propositions in history. A species of Napoleon⁠—unlimited cash⁠—a big, docile, and highly competent staff⁠—a graft everywhere⁠—and at his back the republic of Olifa with the latest thing in armies. I assure you, it won’t do to underrate the Olifa field force. And to set against all that you’ve Blenkiron, more or less a prisoner⁠—yourself⁠—Miss Dasent and her friends⁠—with Janet and me as camp-followers. It’s a sporting proposition.” + 

“Nevertheless, we hold certain cards. There’s a fair amount of explosive stuff in the Gran Seco and we have been organising it.” + 

“The Indians?” + 

“The Indians. Castor has bled them white with his accursed forced labour, but there’s still a reserve of manhood to be used⁠—very desperate and vindictive manhood. Also, there is an element among the white employees. You have the Conquistadors at the top and the Indians at the bottom, and between them the foremen and the engineers. They are the weak point of Castor’s scheme, for they are not under his spell and know nothing of astura. He had to have skilled men and men whose interest lay in asking no questions, but he could never count upon their loyalty. He recruited every kind of scallywag and paid them lavishly, for he wanted people whose interest lay in sticking to the Gran Seco. But he has always had his troubles with them, and he and his Conquistadors in self-protection had to have their bodyguard. What sort of bodyguard? Oh, the usual bad-man type, the killer, the gunman.⁠ ⁠… You must have noticed them in the Gran Seco, quiet, steady-eyed, frozen-faced fellows⁠—the Town Police is full of them, and so was the Mines Police till Blenkiron began to weed them out.⁠ ⁠… Well, Blenkiron has had a lot to do for the past year with recruiting both the foremen and engineers and the Mines Police, and we have managed to get them pretty well staffed with our own men. Hard cases, most of them, but a different kind of hard case. Blackguards often, but a more wholesome brand of blackguard. The Gran Seco at this moment is a sort of chessboard of black and white, and we know pretty exactly which are the white squares. If a row begins, we calculate that we have rather the balance of strength on that cheerful plateau. But I hope there will be no row. I don’t like that crude way of doing things.” + 

Archie passed a hand over his forehead. + 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said plaintively. “There must be a row, a most unholy row. You want to raise the Indians, assisted by your friends in the Police and in the Mines, against the Administration. The Gobernador, if he is what you say he is, will resist like a tiger, and he has his gunmen behind him, and Olifa at the back of all. You will have to fight Castor.⁠ ⁠…” + 

Sandy smiled. “Oh, no. We will not fight Castor. We mean to fight for him. Castor will be our leader. The Indians in the back-country are wearing medals with his face on them, and look to him as their deliverer. That’s the advantage of being a mystery man. No one knows him, except the Conquistadors, who don’t count. He is going to be the Bolivar of the Gran Seco, the pioneer of liberty.” + 

“Good God! Do you mean to say you are working in with him?” + 

“No. I won’t go as far as that. But we hope to make him work for us. He won’t like it, but it’s the obvious move in the game. It will not be a rising of the oppressed against the Administration, but a revolt of the whole Gran Seco, oppressed and oppressors, against the tyrannical government of Olifa. And in the forefront of the battle will be Castor, like a new Uriah the Hittite.” + 

Janet, who had been listening with a strained face, suddenly broke into one of her fits of helpless laughter. “That was your idea, Sandy. Mr. Blenkiron never thought of anything so wild.” + 

“It is not wild. It is common sense. It’s jujitsu, where you use the strength of your opponent to defeat him.” + 

“It is not common sense,” Archie declared vehemently. “It is insanity. If Dick Hannay were here, he’d say the same thing. Supposing you unite the Gran Seco, with Castor at your head, what better off are you? You’re up against Olifa with an army that will crumple you as easy as winking. You are cut off from the sea. You have no base and no communications. Where are you to get your munitions? Olifa will smash you in a week⁠—or, better still, starve you out in a month.” + 

“May be,” said Sandy calmly. “That’s the risk we run. But it isn’t quite as bad as you think. We have a base, and presently you’ll hear all about it. Also, I rather think it will be a new kind of war. I always had a notion of a new kind of war⁠—an economical war⁠—and I’m going to have a shot at it, even though we take a good many chances. You’ve been doing useful work, old man, in sticking your nose into Olifa’s army system, and you naturally have a high regard for it. So have I. But it’s an old-fashioned system.” + 

“You’re wrong. It’s the most up-to-date thing on the globe.” + 

“It has learned all the lessons of our little scrap in France and Flanders, and I daresay it would make a very good showing in that sort of business. But it won’t be allowed to, for it’s going to be a different kind of business. We’re the challengers, and will decide the form of the combat. The Olifa army is as rigid in its up-to-dateness as the old British army was rigid in its antiquarianism. Castor is going to puzzle it.” + 

Archie called fervently upon his Maker. + 

“You’re as mad as a hatter,” he cried, “but it’s 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 José. 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 maté and other drinks, and no more than five glasses. Earlier in the evening the company had numbered six. Then Luis reentered by the window, drew the curtains, and dropped into an armchair with a cigarette. + 

Presently there was the sound of a motorcar 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 needlework. 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, Señor 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 he has been to see the yearlings, he took the opportunity of 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-peseta 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 goodbye, 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 subordinates; they had become automata, minor replicas of himself, whose minds worked in accurate conformity with his. Of this loyalty there could be no doubt; they had lost the capacity for treason, since treason implies initiative. + 

But on certain matters he kept his own counsel. There were letters from Europe and the United States, specially marked, which he opened himself, and which were never answered or filed by his most efficient secretaries. There were visits to various South American cities of which no report existed in the Gran Seco offices, though at the other end, in various secret Government bureaus, there may have been some record. In recent months these curious activities had increased. Messages in the Gobernador’s most private cipher had been more frequent; He had begun to take a minute interest in the policing of his province, in the matter of passports, in the safeguarding of every mile of the frontier. Distant police officials had been badgered with questions, and the special bodyguard of the Administration had been increased. Also the Sanfuentes of the younger branch, who was Olifa’s Minister for External Affairs, had twice journeyed to the Gran Seco⁠—an unheard-of affair⁠—and had been closeted for hours with the Gobernador, and on the second visit he had been accompanied by Señor Aribia, the Minister of Finance. New business, it appeared, was on the carpet, and for a fortnight the Gobernador did not appear at the Administration luncheons. + 

There was an air of tension, too, in the province, which, like an electric current, made itself felt in more distant quarters. It affected Olifa, where there was an unwonted bustle in various departments, and high officials went about with laden brows and preoccupied eyes. It affected the foreign consulates and embassies of various South American States. It was felt in certain rooms in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome, large rooms decorated and furnished in the deplorable style of Government offices, where behind locked doors anxious men talked far into the night. There was even a little extra stir in the dovecotes of Moscow, where a pale young man, who spoke bad French, had an interview with five others whose power was so great that even the governing caste knew them only by numbers, and thereafter a dozen insignificant-looking people crossed the Russian frontier with passports for various remote lands. It especially affected Mr. Roderick Wilbur, the American Consul in Olifa. That heavy man spent two energetic days, and a still more energetic night, which was largely occupied in burning papers. Then, leaving his office in the charge of his assistant and under the general care of Don Alejandro Gedd, he announced that he was about to take a holiday, and departed for the capital of an adjacent republic. There his holiday consisted in sitting in the office of the British Consul, and, being permitted to use his cipher, in sending, by way of the British Embassy in Washington, a series of messages which brought two of his Ministers out of bed at one in the morning. + 

Yet in the midst of this activity the Gobernador must go journeying. His mission was, he said, to Europe, and in two months he would return. To Señor Rosas, the Vice-President of the Company, he committed the temporary charge. As the two sat in the big bright room on the first floor of the great Administration Headquarters, into which travellers on the top of the tramcars could stare, while the clack of typewriters around them was like the noise of frogs in a pond at night, they made an interesting contrast. Both were big men, but while the Gobernador was hard and trim and spare, the Mexican looked sallow and flabby, as if he had been meant for a fat man but was kept lean by overwork and anxiety. Nevertheless his eye was clear and healthy. There was no intimacy between the two, but there was obviously respect. For Señor Rosas had under his special charge the most difficult element in the community, the white foremen and engineers, who did not belong to the close brotherhood of the Conquistadors or the Bodyguard, and were not subject to the harsh discipline of the mine labourers. They were the nearest approach in the Gran Seco to a free society, and needed careful handling. + 

Instructions were given, minute instructions, reports were referred to, diagrams consulted, calculations made, and the Mexican took many notes. Then the Gobernador pushed the papers aside, and his penetrating eyes dwelt on the other’s face. There was no cordiality between these two, only the confidence of a business partnership. They addressed each other formally, as was the custom in the Gran Seco. + 

“I am not satisfied with the Police, Señor,” he said. “I have information that there is a leakage somewhere. It is certain that in recent months unlicensed persons have been inside our border. They may still be here. If they have gone, what have they gone to do? I have given instructions to make the mesh closer. That is not your province, I know, but as my substitute I look to you to see that the work is done.” + 

The Mexican met the steady gaze of the other with an almost childlike candour. The hard lines of the jaw and cheekbones made his large ruminant eyes at once innocent and unfathomable. English was being talked, and he replied in the drawl which he had learned in the States. + 

“I reckon you can trust me, Excellency, to hand over this territory to you a little bit more healthy than when you left it. I’m to expect you back in two months’ time?” + 

The other smiled. “That is my official leave. I may return earlier.⁠ ⁠… I have much to do, but it may take less time than I expect. Perhaps in a month⁠ ⁠… or less⁠ ⁠…” + 

“Then you’ve got to fly to Europe.” + 

“Europe is for the public, Señor. My business may be done nearer home. As yet I cannot tell.” + 

“Say, you’re taking precautions? You’re not going alone? You’re a lot too valuable a commodity to be touring about like an ordinary citizen. There’s heaps of folk that are keeping something for us. You got to take precautions.” + 

The Gobernador frowned. “It has never been my custom, as you know, Señor. A man who goes in fear of his life is a fool⁠—he had better be dead.” + 

“That’s sound as a general principle. But I guess this is a special emergency, and I can’t have you running risks. You got to take the three men you had when you last went north. You know the bunch⁠—Carreras, and Dan Judson, and Biretti. I’ll have them washed and tidied up so as to do you credit. They won’t obtrude themselves, and they’ll do as they’re bid, but they’ll be at hand in case of dirty work. If there’s any shooting, I’ll say they shoot first. You aren’t justified in taking risks, Excellency. There’s a darned lot too much depends on you. I reckon you’re too big a man and too brave a man to be afraid of having some fool say you take mighty good care of your skin.” + 

The frown relaxed. “I suppose that is common sense. I will take the men with me.” + 

In Olifa the Gobernador did not go to a hotel. He had his rooms in the great Gran Seco building in the Avenida de la Paz. He did not leave the building much⁠—at any rate by day; but he was a magnet to draw the eminent thither. Señor Vicente Sanfuentes and Señor Aribia visited him there, and on two occasions the President himself, modestly on foot, and not accompanied by the tossing plumes and bright harness of the Presidential Guard. Also General Bianca, the Minister of War, who had been in a dozen of the old wars of Olifa, came to pay his respects, and with him came the departmental heads, the Chief of Staff, the Director-General of Transport, the officer commanding the Olifa district, all youngish men, who had found in Olifa a market for professional talents which were no longer valued in Europe. + 

Among the callers was Colonel Lindburg, the commissioner of police of one of the provinces. He had a report to make. “Acting upon your instructions, Excellency, we have inquired into the doings of our friend Don Luis de Marzaniga. He spends his time between the country house, where he lives alone with his widowed mother, and his cattle-ranch in the Vulpas valley. In an ancient car he is at all times bumping over the roads between the two. Also he is often at Veiro, for he advises the old Don Mario about his young stock. I am satisfied that every movement of Don Luis for the past month can be amply explained.” + 

“And Veiro?” + 

“You yourself have seen, Excellency. Don Mario has entertained the young English baronet and his wife, and the American girl, Señorita Dasent. They were sent to him by his foolish cousin, Don Alejandro Gedd. I have had the place watched, and, except for Don Luis, no one else has visited there.” + 

The Gobernador appeared to be satisfied, and, after compliments, Colonel Lindburg withdrew. But when the policeman had gone the great man opened a dispatch-box and took from it a small memoranda book. He reread in it a message which he had received from Paris a month earlier, warning him that there was reason to believe that one X⁠⸺ (the name was obviously in code) had left Europe and was probably in Olifa. At the same time he turned up certain reports handed to him by the most trusted member of the Administration’s special police. These recorded various odd actions on the part of several members of the Mines engineering staff, on whom the Administration had chosen to keep a special eye. There seemed, said one report, to be a good deal of private meeting and talking among them, as if some agent had arrived to stir them up. A mysterious visitor had been seen, but the trail of him had been lost before he could be identified; his physical appearance had suggested Señor de Marzaniga, with whom, as a member of an ancient and intransigent Olifa family, the secret service was well acquainted. The Gobernador brooded over these notes. There was nothing of special importance in them; weekly, daily, he was in the habit of receiving similar communications; but some instinct had led him to single these out, and he had diverted the Olifa police to what had proved to be a wild-goose chase.⁠ ⁠… He was not satisfied, but he dismissed the thing from his mind. He had too many hard certainties before him to waste time on speculations. + 

It was surprising during these days how much time the great man gave to the study of the press. Not the Olifa press, but that of every other South American country, and of the United States. His sitting-room was often like the reading-room in a public library, for he seemed to have an insatiable appetite for the journalism of the New World. Often he studied it in conjunction with the Olifa Ministers, and the study appeared to give them pleasure. There was at the moment an awkward situation in Mexico, and a more awkward one in connection with the little republic of Costemala, where Washington was upholding with several warships and a considerable force of marines an administration which apparently was not desired by the Costemalans. There was also trouble in the Canal Zone, where a certain State, hitherto most amenable to America’s persuasion, had displayed a sudden recalcitrancy. The American people seemed to be in a bad temper over these pinpricks, an influential Senator had made a truculent speech, various patriotic societies had held monster demonstrations, and the press was inclined to be flamboyant. There was a great deal of talk about America’s manifest destiny; responsible newspapers discoursed upon the difficulty of a high civilisation coexisting side by side with a lower, and of the duty of the imperfect democracies of the South to accept the guidance of the mature democracy of the North. The popular press waved the flag vigorously, published halftone pictures of stalwart American marines among the debased citizens of Costemala, and graphs showing how trivial was the wealth and how trumpery the armed forces of Latin America as compared with their own. The rest of the New World, it said, had got to learn to be democratic or take its medicine. These heroics did not go unchallenged, for on the Gobernador’s table were clippings from high-toned American weeklies, and addresses by University professors, and speeches of cross-bench public men, who, also in the name of democracy, denounced what they called a policy of imperial brigandage. The Gobernador read both sides with an approving eye. “This thing has been well managed,” he told Señor Sanfuentes. “Holloway has not disappointed me.” + 

The press of the Latin South had a quieter tone, but it was notable for its curious unanimity, which extended even to the phrasing. The United States, it announced, was forsaking democracy for imperialism, the white robes of liberty for the purple of the tyrant. Very carefully and learnedly and urbanely, with many references to past history, it stated the case for the sacrosanctity of nationalities. It did not refer to the League of Nations, but professed to base its arguments on America’s past professions, and the great republican cause to which the continent was dedicated. There was an admirable good temper in its tone, and a modest but complete defiance. It could not believe that the great hearts and the wise heads of Washington would be betrayed into this dictatorial folly. The sounder elements in the United States would prevent it. It appealed from Philip drunk to Philip sober. + 

The Gobernador studied the journalism of the Latin republics with special attention, and his visitors shared his satisfaction. “There is not a word wrong or a word too much,” observed Señor Aribia, who was himself a newspaper-owner. “This will make havoc among the mugwumps.” + 

“What a fortunate chance,” exclaimed the Minister for External Affairs, “that the trouble with Costemala and Panama has arisen just at this moment!” His prominent eyes twinkled. + 

“It is indeed a fortunate chance,” said the Gobernador gravely. + 

XI + 

On the third day of the Gobernador’s stay visitors of a different type came to the building in the Avenida. Archie, in a new suit of flannels, limped up the steps, and had his card sent up to the great man. While he waited, Janet appeared, in a summer costume of pale blue linen, with a cornflower-blue hat which brought out delightfully the colour of her eyes and hair. They were admitted at once, for they had evidently come by appointment. The tall porter who conducted them to the lift looked approvingly at the lady, and the three men who were lounging in the corridor outside the Gobernador’s private room made audible and appreciative comments. The three were dressed like the ordinary Olifero clerk, but they bulged a little at the hips; their names were Carreras, a Spaniard, Biretti, an Italian, and Daniel Judson, who passed as an Australian. + 

The Gobernador seemed to welcome the Roylances’ intrusion. He had many questions to ask⁠—about their impressions of the Gran Seco, about Veiro and Don Mario, what class of polo Olifa afforded in Archie’s view, the date of their return home. His manner towards them was paternal, as to two attractive children who had strayed into a dusty office. + 

“The heats are beginning,” he said, “and Olifa loses its pleasant visitors. The Americans have fled, I understand⁠—the noisy young people, I mean, who were in the Gran Seco when you were there.” + 

“All but one,” said Janet. “Barbara Dasent, whom you met at Veiro, is still here. The Corinna is back in the Old Harbour, and she will give us a lift to Panama.⁠ ⁠… Excellency, I am going to be very bold. We want you to come and dine with us one night before we go.” + 

The Gobernador looked at the girl, flushed, laughing, like a child who is in doubt as to how its audacity will be taken; he looked at Archie, very cool and sunburnt; and then he looked at Janet again. He was a student of human nature, but he had never in his varied experience met such a type before. Here was beauty without egotism, one who seemed to him to look out upon life in a mood of mingled innocence, mirth, and adventure, a woman without those feminine arts which had always wearied him, but with a charm the stronger for its unconsciousness. The Gobernador did not allow himself holidays, but, like all mortals, he needed change, and Janet seemed to offer a new atmosphere. + 

“I thank you, but, alas! I do not go into society,” he said. “There are difficulties, you see. You are at the Hotel de la Constitutión? Well, if I dined with you at the hotel, there would be something of a scene. That is not vanity on my part, Lady Roylance, but there are so many people who wish me to do things for them or to ask me questions that I cannot safely go into public places.” + 

His face showed that he wished to accept, and Janet was emboldened. + 

“We quite see that. Besides, the hotel is a noisy place. What we propose is that you come and dine with us on the Corinna. It will be deliciously cool on the water, and only Barbara Dasent will be there. Then we can have a proper talk, and Archie and I will sit at your feet.” + 

The Gobernador smiled. “Your invitation is very seductive. I think I can arrange tomorrow night. I will be on the quay at the Old Harbour at half past seven⁠—the Corinna, I think, lies in the outer basin.⁠ ⁠… By the way, I have to take certain precautions⁠—the Government insist on it. There are three men who always attend me⁠ ⁠…” + 

“That’s all right,” said Archie. “We’ll send the big launch. I say, this is topping. I only wish you were coming on with us to Panama!” + 

The three men, Carreras, Biretti, and Judson, took their duties seriously. As soon as they heard that the Gobernador was to dine on board the American yacht, they set about preparing for emergencies. They were supreme ruffians, each with a string of murders to his credit, but they were loyal to their immediate paymaster. They arranged with the Port authorities⁠—for the Gobernador’s bodyguard had considerable purchase in Olifa and often acted without consulting their master⁠—that a harbour patrol boat should be lying adjacent to the Corinna between the hours of seven and eleven on the following night. In response to an agreed signal it should close the yacht. They also took counsel with one of the Corinna’s engineers, for in their profession they left nothing to chance. This was a rough, sulky-looking fellow who spoke with a strong Glasgow accent. He must have had a past uncommon among the hands of a well-appointed yacht, for on his arrival in Olifa he had been welcomed into a life of which the authorities of that respectable capital knew little. He seemed to have ample leisure, and spent it for the most part in shadowy back streets. In small wine-shops, in rooms remote from the public eye, he drank and gambled and talked with queer customers. They were not the ordinary riffraff of the port, but some of them men of good presence and manners, with pale faces and absorbed eyes and a great gift of silence. It was a furtive company, which dispersed always one by one, and did not talk till it was certain of secrecy. + 

Carreras, Biretti, and Judson had joined this group on their arrival, and the Scotsman had become their special intimate. To the others he was Señor Jorge, but Judson, who seemed to have known him before, called him Red Geordie. The massive set of his jaw and his sullen blue eyes seemed to have earned him respect, for, when he spoke, he was always listened to. There was some bond between him and the Gobernador’s three, for they told him of the approaching visit to the Corinna and the precautions they had taken. The consequence was that on the following morning he, too, became active. He put on his engineer’s uniform and visited the Port authorities, where he interviewed a variety of polite officials. After that he descended into the harbourside quarters, and had speech with others who were not polite. It is probable that he returned from his round of interviews a little poorer than when he started. + 

The early tropic dusk had fallen when the Gobernador’s car deposited him at the quay of the Old Harbour, and from a taxi in his wake descended his three attendants. Archie Roylance was waiting on the steps, and conducted his guest to the trim launch, manned by two of the yacht’s hands and the sulky Scottish engineer. The three trusties bestowed themselves forward, and a look of intelligence passed between them and the engineer. Archie fussed about to make the Gobernador comfortable in the stern, and wrapped a rug round his knees to avert the evening chill from the water. + 

The launch threaded its way through the shipping of the Old Harbour and came into the outer basin where the Corinna lay alone, except for a patrol boat a quarter of a mile off. In the dusk the waterfront was a half-moon of twinkling lights, while beyond them the Avenida de la Paz ran in a great double belt of radiance to the starry cone of the Ciudad Nueva. Against the mulberry sky a thin fluff of smoke stood out from the Corinna’s funnels. + 

“Getting up steam, sir,” Archie observed. “We’ve said goodbye to Olifa and we start in the small hours. A place always looks its jolliest when you are leaving it.” + 

The dining-room of the yacht was already cool with the land breeze drifting through its open portholes. The little table, bright with linen and glass and silver, was only large enough for the party of four. The Gobernador, sitting between Janet and Barbara Dasent, was in good spirits, and looked appreciatively at the soft harmony of colours. Some sunset gleam had caught the water and the reflection of it brought a delicate glow into the room. Even Barbara’s paleness was rosy. + 

They talked of many things⁠—of Europe, of politics, of books, of the future of mankind (these were some chaotic speculations of Archie, who seemed to be nervous and had the air of a lower boy breakfasting with the headmaster), of England a little, and much of America. The Gobernador was the soul of courtesy, and was accustomed to respect the prejudices of others. But Barbara was in a mood of candour about her countrymen and she occasionally forced him into a polite agreement. Something had happened to Barbara, for she talked fast and brilliantly, and her eyes had an unaccustomed vivacity. + 

“We are overrun with silly women,” she said. “The United States is a woman’s country, Excellency, and we let them paint the picture which we show to the world. I do not think it is an attractive picture⁠—a mixture of shallow schwärmerei and comfortless luxury⁠—a life of plumbing, and dentistry, and bifocal glasses, and facial and mental uplift, and snobbery about mushroom families, and a hard, brittle sweetness stuck on with pins. No wonder you do not like us!” + 

“I did not say that, Miss Dasent. I am not sure that I assent to any of your complaints, except the schwärmerei; and that I think is not confined to your ladies.” + 

“I was making a catalogue of the details of the picture we present to the world. It is an ugly picture, and I know you hate it. So do I.⁠ ⁠… All the same it is a false picture, for we are the worst publicity agents on earth. The trouble is that we have had no second Columbus. Nobody from outside has ever discovered the true America.” + 

The Gobernador dissented. + 

“You are hard on yourselves. If I want acrid criticism of the United States, I pick up an American novel. Or I take the saying of one of your own Presidents that the modern American millionaire has usually a daughter who is a foreign princess and a son who is in a lunatic asylum. I do not take that sort of thing at its face value. You are a great people which has not yet found itself.” + 

“You do not like us.” + 

“As a student of humanity I am deeply interested in you.” + 

“You are tolerant, because you do not like America. I am intolerant because I love it.” + 

The Gobernador raised his glass and bowed. “A very honourable confession of faith. If all her daughters were like you, Miss Dasent, it would be right that America should remain a woman’s country.” + 

The talk drifted to lighter matters⁠—to music which Barbara and the Gobernador discussed with a technical profundity appalling to Archie; to a German novel which had set the world talking; to European personalities in art and politics. Presently they left the dining-room, and ascended to a shelter on the upper deck from which the harbour was seen like a gulf of blackness rimmed by fiery particles. The Gobernador, who noticed everything, observed that the patrol boat was no longer there and that the Corinna swam alone in an inky solitude. He saw no signs of his bodyguard; no doubt, he decided, they were ensconced in the shadows beyond, where the lifeboats swung from their davits. + 

But the three trusties were not there. They had spent a turbulent evening, and were now in a less comfortable state than their master. They had insisted on having their meal in close proximity to the dining-room, and the surly Scotch engineer had shared it with them. Between them these convivial souls had consumed a good deal of liquor, which appeared to go rapidly to the heads of the visitors. The engineer had then proposed an adjournment to his own quarters for further refreshment, and had shepherded them down a narrow alleyway, he himself going last. There was a heavy iron door, and as each of the three passed through it, on the other side he was caught round the middle by powerful arms which prevented him getting at his hip-pocket. Other hands swiftly gagged him, and still others removed his gun. The thing was done in almost complete silence. Only one of the three managed to put up a fight, and he was promptly laid low by a terrific uppercut from a seaman who had once been known as Battling Hubby, the pride of Jersey City. In something under three minutes the three heroes were gagged and trussed, and reposing, in a somewhat unreposeful state of mind, on a pile of awnings. + 

“That’s a tidy bit of work, Geordie,” the pugilistic seaman observed to the morose engineer, and the answer was, “I’ve seen waur.” + 

Then the engineer did a curious thing. He went aft, and with a lantern signalled to the patrol boat which lay a quarter of a mile off. The signal was observed, and presently the boat moved quietly away, leaving the Corinna solitary in the outer basin. + 

Coffee was served to the party on the upper deck, and the guest filled his ancient briar. The steward, as he left, gave a message to Archie: “Hamilton’s compliments, sir, and the men has finished the job forward”⁠—at which Archie nodded. He was sitting in an alcove, with a small electric bell behind his arm. The Gobernador sat in a wicker chair, with a lamp on his left side, so that, by the configuration of the deck, his splendid head was silhouetted against the opaque velvet of the harbour waters. Janet and Barbara on lower chairs were sitting literally at his feet. + 

The guest seemed to have fallen under the spell of the night which was drawing round them as close as a mantle. The shore lights did not speak of human habitation; rather they seemed as remote as a star, an extension of the infinite stellar system which faintly patterned the darkness. The stillness, the brooding canopy of the night, silenced the others, but with the Gobernador it acted as a stimulus to talk. He seemed to sit above them like an impersonal mind, his profile growing clearer as the light went out of the background of the sea. + 

“You are a soldier?” he asked Archie. + 

“I was. Keen, but undistinguished. The Air Force wasn’t a place for high strategy. But I’ve always lived among soldiers and heard their chat.” + 

“It has been a great profession, but it is closed now, Sir Archibald. Science has reduced war to an everlasting stalemate. It was always on the edge of stalemate. Consider how few moves any general had to his hand. He could break a line or he could outflank it, and he could do either only by superior force or by surprise. But science has now created a norm of weapon and munitionment, which is substantially the same for all armies. It has eliminated the human factor of superiority both in general and troops. It has established, too, a norm of intelligence which makes surprise impossible. Therefore there is no room today for a military Napoleon. The Napoleon of the future must win by other methods than war. Do you agree?” + 

“No,” said Archie; “I respectfully disagree. I can’t argue properly, but I know what I think. First, I don’t believe you can ever get rid of the human factor. Science has to be applied by mortal men, and the efficiency of its application will depend upon those who use it. You can never create what you call a norm either of character or of brains. Second, I agree that the old rules of war are a back number. A modern army can conquer savages, but in the old style of warfare it can’t conquer another modern army. But I believe that one modern nation can still conquer another. You need a wider definition of war, sir. It’s far more than marching and countermarching, and frontal and flank attacks, and number of men and weight of guns and speed of transport. It’s the effort of one people to smash the morale of another, and there are a thousand ways of doing that.” + 

“I assent. But not in the field.” + 

“Yes, in the field. We’ve been frozen into convention for two thousand years. The autumn of 1918 saw the end of that regime. Now mankind is going to discover new ways of exercising superiority⁠—in the field, but not by the old field tactics. Conquest is always a spiritual conquest, and means will be found for making spirit act directly on spirit.” + 

“You are quoting. Whom?” The voice from above had a sudden interest. + 

“A friend of mine who thinks a lot about these things. You wouldn’t know him.” + 

“I differ from him absolutely. You are still clinging to the old notion of something incalculable and mystic which can defeat reason. You are wrong, for reason is the only power. Every day we are rationalising life, and what we cannot rationalise we can isolate and nullify. You young people are relics of the Middle Ages.” + 

“But so is human nature.” It was Barbara who spoke. + 

“Do not misunderstand me. We allow for the spasmodic impulses of human nature. But we analyse them and evaluate them, and by understanding them we can use them. Liberty, for example. That ancient instinct can be worked out to four places of decimals, and can consequently be used by reason. Is the human intelligence to submit docilely to be governed and thwarted by blind reactions which mankind shares with the brutes?” + 

“You are very clever, Excellency, but I think that there is always an unknown x which will defeat you. You are too clever, for you would make science and reason rule over a dimension to which they don’t apply. Humility may be more scientific than arrogance.” + 

The guest laughed pleasantly. “I think you also are quoting. Whom, may I ask?” + 

“A friend. Sir Archie’s friend.” + 

Had anyone been observing Archie closely, he would have noticed that he had looked at his watch, and then made a movement towards the electric button behind his elbow. The act seemed to afford him some satisfaction, for he gave a sigh of relief and lit a cigarette. + 

The Gobernador had turned to catch Barbara’s reply. + 

“I should like to meet your friend,” he said, and then suddenly he flung his head back and listened. The throb of the propeller was felt through the vessel, and the ear caught the swish of moving water. + 

“You will soon have that pleasure,” said Barbara, “for we are taking you to him.” + 

In an instant the guest was on his feet. “What nonsense is this?” he asked sharply. His tall figure towered menacingly above the others, who remained seated in their chairs. + 

“It is all right, sir,” said Archie. A change had come over the young man, for the diffidence, the lower-boy shyness, which had been noticeable all the evening, had gone. Now he seemed to be at his ease and to be enjoying himself. “I know it is a bit of a liberty, and we apologise and all that sort of thing, but it had to be done. You see, we greatly admire you and we want you to be our leader.⁠ ⁠… It is no use shouting for your bodyguard. I’m afraid we had to handle them a little roughly, and at this moment they are trussed up and adrift in a boat. The tide’s all right and they’ll be picked up tomorrow morning in the harbour.⁠ ⁠… Please don’t do anything rash, sir. Our men are all about, and they carry guns. You see, we really mean business.” + 

The Gobernador had his face averted so the other three could not see his change of mood. But a change there was, for he flung himself down in his chair and refilled his pipe. + 

“I’m a busy man,” he said, “and you are doing more harm than you can realise. Also I am afraid you are making serious trouble for yourselves. But I suppose I must submit to this prank. I was right when I said you were still in the Middle Ages. You are a set of melodramatic children.⁠ ⁠… I hope you don’t mean it to last long. By the way, where are you taking me?” + 

Janet clapped her hands. “I have won my bet. I knew you would take it well. I told you when we asked you to dinner that we were going to sit at your feet. That is true, you know. We want you to lead us.” + 

“We are going to help you to discover America,” said Barbara. “You will be our new Columbus.” + 

“You will meet the friend,” said Archie, “whom Miss Dasent and I have been quoting.” + 

“Perhaps you will now tell me his name,” said the Gobernador. + 

“We call him Sandy,” Archie said casually. “His name used to be Arbuthnot. Now it’s Clanroyden.” + 

The recovered urbanity of the Gobernador was suddenly broken. A cry escaped him, and he turned his face away to the racing seas, but not before Janet had seen his brows knit in a mood so dark that she unconsciously reached for Archie’s hand. + 

XII + 

When the Corinna was beginning to move out of the dusky harbour of Olifa, a wireless message was sent from it to an address in the Gran Seco. That message consisted of two words: Francis First. There had been various schemes agreed upon for the handling of the Gobernador, and the numeral was intended to signify the one which had been adopted. By a happy chance, the first and simplest had succeeded. + 

The receipt of this brief message was like a spark to powder. The events of the next few days in the Gran Seco cannot be told in orderly history. They had the speed and apparent inconsequence of moving pictures, and can only be set forth as flashes of light in a fog of confusion. + 

At the Universum Mine the manager woke as usual, breakfasted on his veranda, read his mail, and was a little surprised that certain telephone calls, which he had expected, had not come through from Headquarters. He was about to ring for his secretary and bid him call up the Gran Seco city, when the chief engineer, a Texan named Varnay, appeared on the scene and accepted a cup of coffee and a cigar. The manager was a newcomer who had been specially chosen by the Gobernador, a highly efficient machine whose pragmatic soul dwelt mainly in graphs and statistics. The Texan was a lean, lanky, hollow-eyed man, whose ordinary costume was dirty duck trousers and shirtsleeves. Today he wore breeches and boots and a drill jacket, and in his belt was an ostentatious revolver. The manager opened his eyes at this magnificence and waited for Varnay to speak. He was itching to get at his secretary and start the day’s routine. + 

The Texan was in no hurry. He poured himself out a cup of coffee with extreme deliberation, lit his cigar, and blew smoke-rings. + 

“The new draft will be in by midday,” said the manager. It was the day in the month when a batch of fresh labour arrived, and what Peters had called the “returned empties” began their melancholy journey to the pueblas. + 

“Yep,” said the Texan. “The outgoing batch went last night, and the new outfit arrived an hour ago.” + 

The manager jumped to his feet. “Who altered the schedule?” he cried angrily. “Who the hell has been monkeying with my plans? I’ve had the schedule fixed this last month, and the Universum Mine has got to be run according to it. I’ll flay the man that stuck his clumsy hoof into it.” + 

He was about to cross the veranda to the bell which would have brought his secretary when the quiet drawl of the other detained him. The Texan had stuck out his long legs, and was regarding with abstracted eyes a butterfly which had perched on his coffee-cup. + 

“Sit down, mister,” he said. “Things have been happening this morning in this outfit, and I got to put you wise about them. The Universum is closed down till further notice.” + 

“By whose order?” the manager barked. + 

“By the Gobernador’s.” + 

The manager cursed with vehemence and point. He was the boss, and any instructions from Headquarters came through him. What misbegotten son of a yellow dog had dared to usurp his authority? If this was a holdup⁠— + 

“Say, this love-talk don’t cut no ice,” said the Texan without heat. “You haven’t been let in on this scheme, because you’re a newcomer and wouldn’t have got the hang of it. Say, listen. Things have been going crooked in this little old country, and his Excellency is going to straighten them out. Those dagos in Olifa are giving us a dirty deal, and we reckon it’s time a white man took charge. It ain’t sense. We’re using up these poor goldarned Indians and chucking them aside like old boots. That’s bad business, mister, and the pueblas won’t stand for it.” + 

“You fool! What can the Indians do?” + 

“You’d be surprised,” said Varnay gently. “But it ain’t the Indians only. There’s the Police, and there’s all of us white men who think the time has come for a cleanup.” + 

“Man, that’s rebellion,” the manager cried, his orderly soul shocked to its roots. + 

“Why, yes. I guess it’s rebellion. But you’ve no cause to get scared, for we’re not rebelling against the boss. It’s our boss rebelling against Olifa.” + 

“You’re a liar. Headquarters would never be such God-forgotten idiots. They’re business men and know where their profit lies.” + 

“I don’t say there mayn’t be some pikers at Headquarters and a bit of trouble, but I reckon that his Excellency Señor Castor is a mighty clever man, and it’s him we follow. Why, the vaqueros are all wearing medals with his face on them, and they look up to him as a God Almighty.” + 

The shaken manager at last turned to the telephone. But there was no answer from Headquarters and the bell failed to bring his secretary. + 

“The lines were cut last night,” said Varnay, “after our orders came through.⁠ ⁠… But see here, mister. We want to treat you on the square. You’ve not been let in on this deal, and you’ve no cause to mix yourself up in it if you don’t want to. We’re going to town presently, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get on ahead and judge things for yourself. There’s an automobile at your disposal whenever you like to start.” + 

The manager took the hint, and departed with a box full of confidential papers and the balances left in the pay-chest. He was loyal to his employers, but it remained for him to find out who these employers were. + 

At the Alhuema Mine things went with equal smoothness, for the manager there was in the plot. But at the San Tomé there was some unpleasantness and for an hour or two a difficult situation. The San Tomé manager had only just come, having been before in the Administration at Headquarters. He was a young American from Montana, who had had experience of copper-mining in half a dozen quarters of the globe, and had earned a reputation as a go-getter and a firm handler of coloured human material. He was set on making good, for there was a girl waiting for him at home, and he had the contempt of the youth of his country, scientifically trained and furiously ambitious, for all things which cannot be set out in graphs and figures. Also, having just come from the city and having heard for months the intimate talk of Headquarters, he was not easy to bluff. + 

The situation was complicated by the fact that the white technical staff of the mine were not unanimous. Three of the engineers had refused to join in the plot, and had only refrained from prematurely exposing it on being assured that the thing had failed and had been abandoned. Moreover, when the ringleader, a Scotsman called Melville, received the message which was to fire the train, it was found impossible to cut the telephone line to Headquarters. The outgoing draft of labour was too slow in starting, and the incoming draft, which was to give the rebels their armed force, was unaccountably delayed. The night was spent anxiously by Melville and his colleagues in a vain attempt to get into touch with Peters and the police. But Peters had his own troubles, for his squadron also had its doubtful elements. Headquarters had taken alarm and had just drafted into it some of the more desperate characters in the Mines guard. The consequence was that there was shooting, and at daybreak, when Peters had his force ready for the road, two dead men and three trussed-up prisoners were left behind. + 

Early in the morning, when Melville played his hand, the young manager was beforehand with him. The manifesto of the malcontents infuriated him, and their use of Castor’s name did not convince, for he rang up Headquarters and thereby precipitated trouble in the city two hours before it was due. Believing that he had to deal with a piece of common brigandage, and having been promised immediate reinforcements, he resolved to hold the fort. He had the three malcontent engineers, his staff of Olifero clerks, his half-caste servants, and his own stout heart. He put his house into a state of defence, and he had one conspicuous asset, for in the same building was the magazine of explosives, and, with such perilous stuff about, his assailants must go circumspectly. + 

About 10 a.m. Peters arrived with his police. The manager took them for his reinforcements, and Peters might have entered his house and taken peaceful possession, but for the fact that his greeting by Melville was observed from an upper window. A parley was attempted, and Peters and the manager sat opposite each other in chairs on the veranda, each with a revolver on his knee. The policeman was no diplomatist. His temper had been soured by his difficulties in the night watches, and he talked to the manager like a sergeant to a recruit, and was met by a stiff defiance. Did he imagine that a rising of Indians and a few mutinous police would worry the Gran Seco, much less the republic of Olifa with its potent army? The thing was moonshine. That the Gobernador was a party to it was an impudent lie. The manager knew the mind of the Administration better than any bush policeman. He would hold the place till succour arrived, and if there was any attempt to rush his defences, they would all go to glory⁠—and he nodded towards the magazine. Peters retired discomfited, for he read in the stiff chin and the frosty eyes that this man would be as good as his word. + 

The impasse continued till noon, while Peters and Melville consulted anxiously, for this delay was dislocating the whole programme. Then at long last the incoming Indian draft arrived, and with it a young man, the Olifero called Carlos Rivero, who had chaperoned Janet and Archie on their journey to the Gran Seco. When he heard of the trouble he proposed to interview the manager a second time, and under a flag of truce the two sat again on the veranda. But Rivero had no revolver on his knee. + 

What he said can only be guessed. But as an Olifero of an ancient stock he must have spoken with an authority denied to Peters. It is probable that he told the manager quite frankly certain things of which Peters had no knowledge. At any rate, he seems to have impressed him, and to have shaken his obstinacy. But the faithful servant demanded proof. If he were to act without superior instruction, he must be convinced that he yielded to the strongest of all arguments. + 

“Right,” said Rivero. “You shall have your proof, Señor. You are familiar with the sight of an incoming draft⁠—sullen, wolfish men herded by the police? Come and see what I have brought you. You have my word of honour that, if you are not convinced, you can return to this place to continue your defiance. More, Señor Melville shall be brought here and remain as a hostage.” + 

The manager accompanied Rivero to the compound behind the Mines buildings which was reserved for the Indian labourers. And this is what he saw. A compact body of five hundred men, mounted on small wiry horses and each carrying a rifle at his saddlebow. These lithe figures were very unlike the weary, hopeless automata that had been accustomed to stumble into the compound. They held themselves erect, and, if their faces were sullen, it was the sullenness of a grim purpose. There were white officers and sergeants among them in the uniform of the Police, but the impressiveness of the spectacle was not in them, but in the solid, disciplined ranks of fighting men sprung out of an older age. + 

“These,” said Rivero, “are the labourers whom the Gobernador is now calling to his side.” + 

The manager stared, rubbed his eyes, and laughed. + 

“I reckon the game’s with you,” he said at last. “I climb down. This is sure a business proposition.” + 

The daily meeting of the heads of departments was held as usual in the Administration Headquarters at ten o’clock, with the Vice-President, the Mexican Rosas, in the chair. The members met in a large room on the same floor as the Gobernador’s private office, but at the side of the building away from the main street. The Vice-President said a word to his private secretary, who sat in a little office behind the chair, and when the meeting began the doors were quietly locked, so that the only entrance lay through the secretary’s room. There was a vast amount of detail on the agenda that morning, to which the meeting duly bent its mind. + 

During the night there had been odd happenings at the railway-station. The daily freight train, which should have left at 9 p.m., did not start; instead the freight train of the day before, which on its up-journey should have passed the other at the frontier station of Gabones, was ordered by telegraph to proceed without delay to the Gran Seco. Also the upcoming passenger train, which was not due to leave Santa Ana till noon, had been expedited, so that it arrived almost empty about daybreak, and intending travellers that day found themselves stranded at Santa Ana without a connection. The down-going train was due to leave at 10 a.m., but it did not start. Those who meant to travel by it found the station closed and under guard, and the yards full of rolling stock. By 10 a.m. on that morning the whole of the rolling stock of the Gran Seco line, with the exception of a few trucks delayed at Santa Ana, was concentrated at the Gran Seco terminus. + 

If the doings at the railway-station were curious, still more remarkable was what took place elsewhere in the city. In the area of the smelting and refining works there had been since the early morning a great peace. Walkers in the Avenida Bolivar suddenly awoke to the fact that the hum of industry, which day and night sounded like breakers on a beach, had ceased. The previous night had been a busy time for a certain section of the white employers, perhaps three-fourths of the total. They had begun by isolating the works area from the city and guarding the approaches. Then they had set about the compulsory conversion of the remaining fourth, a rapid business, and not unattended by violence. Three men attempted to break away, and were shot before they crossed the barrier. After that came the dealing with the Indian and mestizo labourers. Some were sent back to their pueblas under escort of a file of Mines Police, a few picked men were added to the white strength, but most remained in their compounds, which were put under guard. The furnaces were damped down, and by 6 a.m. the whole of the great works area was shuddering into quiet. The white employees, armed and disciplined, were waiting on the next stage. + 

An hour later mutiny broke out in the barracks of the Town Police. It had been skilfully prepared, for many of the chief officers were implicated, and at first it moved swiftly and surely. The armoury was captured, those known to be recalcitrant were made prisoners in their beds, and in less than half an hour the mutineers held the barracks and had at any rate immobilised the opposition. But a certain part of the police was on duty in the city, and beside these was that special force, the Mines Bodyguard, which was responsible not to the Commissary of Police but directly to the Administration, and which was not concentrated in one place but scattered in many quarters. + 

It was now that the ill-effect was felt of the failure to cut the line at the San Tomé Mine. For the manager of the San Tomé had rung up the Administration secretariat about eight o’clock, and, since he babbled of rebellion, had been put through to the officer in charge of the Bodyguard. This man, Kubek by name, had long been uneasy and alert⁠—indeed he had been the cause of the Gobernador’s suspicions. The appeal from San Tomé put him on his mettle, and he at once mobilised his force. He could rely on the fifty members of the Bodyguard who had not been tampered with, and, as soon as he found out what was happening at the barracks, he turned his attention to the members of the Town Police on outside duty. He informed the Administration of what was happening, a message received but not circulated by Señor Rosas’s private secretary. + 

The consequence was that by 10 a.m. the situation was as follows: The works area was held by a force of foremen and engineers, who had cut it off from the city and were waiting for the arrival of the Mines Police. The Town Police were in the main on the side of the rebels and waited in barracks, but some of their members were with Kubek, who had about two hundred men under him and was holding what he regarded as the key positions⁠—a house at the corner of the Avenida Bolivar and the Calle of the Virgin, the Regina Hotel, and the house in the garden behind the Administration building which was the residence of the Vice-President. He believed that he had to deal only with the mutinous Town Police and with trouble at the Mines, and had no notion that the Mines Police were in the rising. The city as a whole knew nothing of what was happening. Promenaders in the Avenida Bolivar noted only the curious quiet and the absence of policemen on point duty. + 

Meantime the meeting presided over by Señor Rosas pursued its decorous way. There were marketing reports from Europe which had to be discussed, and certain difficulties which had arisen with the shipping companies. Mr. Lariarty presented a report on the latter subject which required close consideration. + 

At 11 a.m. the first contingent of the Mines Police under Peters arrived. They went straight to the works, where they found everything satisfactory, and gave directions to the forces assembled there. The latter had sent out scouts, who reported what had happened at the barracks of the Town Police. Peters was a cautious man, and, before effecting a junction, sent out patrols to discover if all was quiet in the city. His intention was to round up the Bodyguard man by man, for he knew all their lairs; but his patrols brought the disquieting news that the Bodyguard were forewarned and mobilised, and that they held the Regina Hotel and the corner house in the Calle of the Virgin. The third concentration, at the Vice-President’s residence, they had not discovered. Their news meant that the approaches to the Administration Building were blocked and must be cleared. Peters accordingly got in touch with the Town Police and made his plans. + 

Just after noon, when the Board meeting had reached the question of a contract with Guggenheims, the noise of dropping fire began to be heard. A confused murmur penetrated too into the back chamber from the Avenida Bolivar. The Vice-President, who was frequently interrupted by the advent of his secretary with messages from the inner office, pushed his spectacles up on his brow and smiled benignly. “There’s a little trouble, gentlemen,” he observed. “Some foreign matter has gotten into our machine, and the police are digging it out.” + 

Before 1 p.m. there was fighting at three points in the city, for the garrison in the Vice-President’s house had revealed itself by sniping one of Peters’s contingents. The Bodyguard were all desperadoes, and very quick with their guns, but they were hopelessly outnumbered, and, for the matter of that, outgeneralled. The Regina fell about 2:30, for it had not been difficult to force a way in from the back and take the defence in the rear. Nine of the defenders were killed, and the Police had seven dead and fifteen wounded. The house in the Calle of the Virgin resisted longer, for, being a corner house with fronts on two streets, it was less open to attack from behind. Yet that nest was smoked out before 4 p.m. and Peters could concentrate all his forces on the Vice-President’s residence. + 

The Board meeting after three o’clock sat to a continuous accompaniment of rifle fire. But Señor Rosas with a Roman fortitude held the attention of his colleagues to the business of the agenda. The members seemed sunk in bewilderment, and it is difficult to believe that their minds worked competently on their business. The Vice-President did most of the talking. “It is all right, gentlemen,” he would say, on receiving a message from his secretary: “the Police are managing this little affair very well.” + 

At half past five the last defences of the Bodyguard fell. It was a bloody business, for Kubek, who had learned the art of street-fighting in Eastern Europe, put up a stout resistance till he got a bullet in his windpipe. Peters ruefully calculated that that day the Police had over sixty men dead and nearly a hundred wounded, but he consoled himself with the reflection that the Bodyguard could not have a dozen survivors. He himself was bleeding from two wounds, but they must go untended, for he had still much to do. He hastened to confer with a slight youngish man, who wore civilian clothes⁠—an old tweed jacket and riding breeches of the English cut⁠—and who had joined him at the smelting works on his arrival that morning. + 

About 6 p.m. the Vice-President at last brought the Board meeting to an end. His secretary had just handed him a written message which seemed to give him satisfaction. + 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “our labours are over for the day. I thank you for the attention you have given to the Company’s business under somewhat trying conditions. And now, I judge, we are all going to have a bit of a holiday. I ought to tell you that important events have just taken place in this city, and our activities have got to close down for a spell. There has been a revolution, gentlemen. The workers of the Gran Seco have risen against the Government of Olifa, and they are counting on our President being their leader. I have no authority to speak for his Excellency, but I guess it’s more than likely that he will consent. What I have got to say is that you gentlemen are free to do what you please. You can’t oppose the revolution in this township, for it has already succeeded, but there’s no call for you to take a part in it unless you like. You can stay on here, and”⁠—here there was a significant pause⁠—“I will make it my business to see that your comforts are attended to.” + 

The members, hypnotised by the long tension of the afternoon, stared blankly at the speaker. Then slowly life seemed to waken in their opaque eyes. The man called Lariarty became their spokesman. He rose and bowed to the chair. + 

“I think we will go down to Olifa,” he said. + 

At that moment there came the sound of explosions one after another in a chain, which set the windows rattling. + 

The Vice-President shook his head. + 

“I reckon that’s impossible, gentlemen. What you hear is the blowing up of the rolling stock at the railway-station. There will be no facilities for travel to Olifa, till Olifa makes them afresh.” + 

XIII + 

About 8 p.m., when the dark had fallen, two men groped their way into a room in the oldest quarter of the city, just above the dusty hollow which separated it from the works area. It was a hut in a yard, reached by a circuitous passage among sheds and the back premises of low-class taverns. The place was very quiet, for the inhabitants were out in the main streets, eager to catch what they could in the troubled waters. It was also very dark, till one of the men struck a light and revealed a dirty little cubbyhole which had once been an Indian cabin. Then he put his back to the door and listened, as if he were expecting others to join him. + 

The man at the door bore the marks of hard usage. He was dirty and dishevelled, there was a long shallow cut on his left cheek, and he limped as if from a wound in the leg. His face was white, his air was weary and dejected, but his eyes were as quick and ugly as a mad hound’s. The other, who had seated himself on a barrel, was of a different type. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit, with a blue linen collar, a black tie, and a pearl pin. His face likewise was white, but it was with the pallor of settled habit and not of strain, and his eyes, opaque and expressionless, gave him an air of calm and self-possession. + 

“How many’s left?” said the man at the door, as if in answer to a question. “God knows, and He won’t tell. Mollison got away from the last bloody show, and Snell was on the Regina roof and presumably escaped the roundup. Bechstein was never in the scrap at all, for he was in bed this morning with a touch of fever. Radin got off, I hear, and no one saw Molinoff after midday. Let’s put our salvage at half a dozen. Enough to do the job, say I, if there’s any luck left to us.” + 

The man on the barrel said something in a low voice, and the other laughed angrily. + 

“That blasted Mexican was at the bottom of it. Of course I know that, but how in hell can we touch him? He has gotten five thousand men to protect his fat carcase. Poor old Kubek! He never spotted that Rosas was in the game or there would have been one dago less in the world. It’s the other we’re laying for, the man that Kubek got on the trail of but couldn’t get up with. I don’t know his name, curse him, but I know the cut of his jib. If I can put it across him, I’ll die happy. He’s been up here off and on for months, slipping about in the dark like a skunk, and leaving no trace but a stink.” + 

“He will not come here,” said the man on the barrel. + 

“I say he will. Mollison knew where to find him, for they used to drink together. Pete is the stricken penitent now, anxious to stand well with the new authorities, and that God-darned mystery man is the brain of the business. He wants to round up the remnant of us, and Pete’s going to help him. He’s coming here at half past eight to be put wise by Pete about certain little things that concern the public peace. I reckon he’ll find the peace of God.” + 

There were steps in the alley, and the doorkeeper, looking through a chink in the boarding, was satisfied. He opened, and a man entered. It was a squat fellow with a muffler round his throat and the bright eyes of fever. “Snell’s dead,” he gasped as he dropped wearily on a heap of straw. + 

A moment later there came the sound of double footsteps, and two men were admitted, one a tall man with high cheekbones and the other a handsome youth with a neat fair moustache. Both wore bandages, one on his left arm and one across the forehead. But they seemed less weary than the others, and they remained standing, each with a hand in a side-pocket and their eyes fixed on the doorway. + 

Once again came double footsteps and the little party fell as silent as the grave. A hat was put over the lantern. The man at the door held up a warning hand and did not open it, but stood back a pace. There was a sound of fumbling with the latch, and the door opened slowly. Two men entered, one a bearded giant whose coat had been rent so that the left side flapped over his shoulder and whose lips were bleeding, the other a slim, youngish man in an old tweed jacket and breeches of an English cut. + 

No sooner were they inside than the covering was removed from the lamp. The doorkeeper had his back to the door, the man on the straw got to his feet, and the giant caught his companion from behind and held his arms. Four pistol barrels glimmered in the scanty light. + 

“Hullo,” said the newcomer. “There are more friends here than I expected. You have done me proud, Mollison.” + 

It was a strange and macabre scene. The man with the dark suit and the pearl pin sat unmoved on the barrel, his opaque eyes stolidly regarding him who seemed to be a prisoner. Bechstein, the man with the fever, had his revolver laid over one arm, as if he were uncertain of his shaking limbs. The doorkeeper lolled against the doorpost grinning, Radin and Molinoff stood on each side like executioners, and the giant Mollison spat blood from his mouth, while his great face hung like a monstrous gargoyle over the slim figure of his captive. + 

That captive seemed very little perturbed. + 

“I owe you a good turn for this, Mollison,” he said pleasantly. “Hullo, Bechstein! I heard you were ill in bed. I’m afraid you are taking liberties with your health.⁠ ⁠… I can’t see very well, but can it be Radin, and, by Jove, Molinoff, too? The Devil has looked after his own today.” + 

“He hasn’t looked after you, my friend,” said Mollison. “Your number’s up all right. You’re going to be a quiet little corpse within sixty seconds, as soon as we have tossed for who is to have the pleasure of sending you to hell.” + 

“Well, let go my arm and let me draw my last breath in comfort. I haven’t a gun.” + 

The giant ran one hand down the prisoner’s figure. “True enough,” he said, and relaxed his grip. “But don’t move, or you won’t have sixty seconds.” + 

“It’s my right to kill the swine,” said the doorkeeper. “I was Kubek’s second-in-command and I owe him one for the chief.” + 

The plea seemed to meet with general acceptance, and the prisoner saw his time of probation shortened by this unanimity. For a moment he seemed at a loss, and then he laughed with a fair pretence of merriment. + 

“By the way, you haven’t told me what you have against me. Isn’t it right that I should hear the charge?” + 

“Damn you, there’s no time to waste,” said the doorkeeper. “You have been the mainspring of this tomfool revolution, which has already done in our best pals and will make life a bloody hell for the rest of us. We are going to give ourselves the satisfaction of shooting you like a dog before we scatter.” + 

“You don’t even know my name.” + 

“We know your game and that’s enough for us.” + 

The prisoner seemed to be anxious to continue the talk. He spoke slowly, and in a pleasant, soft voice. It might have been noticed that he held his head in the attitude of a man listening intently, as if he expected to hear more steps on the cobbles of the yard. + 

“There’s one here who knows me,” he said. “Tim⁠—Tim Lariarty,” and he addressed the sphinx-like figure on the barrel. “You remember Arbuthnot. I was at Brodie’s when you were at Ridgeway’s. We got our twenty-two together, and we were elected to Pop the same day. You were a bit of a sap and got into the Sixth, while I never got beyond the First Hundred. You remember Sandy Arbuthnot?” + 

The face of the man on the barrel did not change perceptibly, but there was a trifle more life in his voice when he spoke. “You are Arbuthnot? Of course you would be Arbuthnot. I might have guessed it.” + 

“Then for God’s sake, Timmy, tell that blighter behind me to put down his gun. I’ll take my medicine when it comes, but I’d like to tell you something. You’re a clever chap with a future, and I’ve got something to say to you about the Gran Seco which you ought to hear. Give me five minutes.” + 

There was a protest, but the sphinx nodded. “Give him five minutes,” he said and took out his watch. + 

The prisoner began to talk in his compelling way, and unconsciously the interest of his executioners awakened. Being on the edge of death, he had no reticences. He divulged the whole tale of the revolution, and he made a good story of it. He told of Blenkiron’s coming to the Gran Seco, of the slow sapping of the loyalty of the Mines Police, of the successful propaganda among the technical staff, of the organising of the Indian pueblas, in which he claimed a modest share. The others dropped their pistol-hands and poked forward their heads to listen. The five minutes lengthened to six, to eight, to ten, and he still held his audience. He addressed himself to the man on the barrel, and sometimes he lowered his voice till the doorkeeper took a step nearer. + 

Then he became more confidential, and his voice dropped further. “How do you think it was managed? A miracle? No, a very simple secret which none of you clever folk discovered. We had a base and you never knew it. Go into the pueblas and the old men will speak of a place which they call Uasini Maconoa. That means the Courts of the Morning⁠—Los Patios de la Mañana. Where do you think it is? Listen, and I will tell you.” + 

They listened, but only for his words, while the speaker was listening for another sound which he seemed at last to have detected. He suddenly caught two of the heads bent forward, those of Radin and Molinoff, and brought them crashing together. The doorkeeper could not shoot, because Mollison was in his way, and in an instant the chance was gone, for a blow on the head felled him to the ground. Mollison with a shout swung the dazed Radin and Molinoff aside and had his pistol in the air, when a report rang out and he toppled like a great tree, shot through the brain. The hut had filled with men, and the two whose heads had crashed and the fever-stricken Bechstein were throttled from behind and promptly pinioned. + 

Then the prisoner showed what the strain had been by fainting at the feet of the man on the barrel. + 

He came to himself, and found Peters holding a brandy-flask to his mouth. Peters had a whitish face. + 

“My God, sir,” he stammered, “you will never be nearer death.” + 

The young man seemed to have recovered, for he had strength enough to laugh. + 

“I cut it pretty fine, but there was no other way. I had to make myself ground-bait if we were to catch these pike. We’ve got them all now.⁠ ⁠… I think I could have held them for another five minutes, but I chose to precipitate things. You see, I saw by the flicker of the lantern that the door was opening, and that meant you. If I hadn’t thought of that head-crashing dodge, I think I might have stopped a bullet.” + 

The man on the barrel had risen and was looking sombrely on. The policeman jerked his head towards him. “What about that fellow?” he asked. + 

“Oh, let him alone,” was the answer. “He is free to go where he likes. He was at school with me, and I owe him a good turn for this evening.” + 