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, Senor,” he said. “I have information that there is a leakage somewhere. It is certain that in recent months unlicensed persons have bee 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, 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 a almost childlike candour. The hard lines of the jaw an cheek-bones 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 the 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, Senor. 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, Senor. 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 in 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 in 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 in la Paz. He did not leave the building much—at any rate of day; but he was a magnet to draw the eminent thither. Senor Vicente Sanfuentes and Senor Aribia visited him here, and on two occasions the President himself, modestly in 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, I have inquired into the doings of our friend Don Luis in Marzaniga. He spends his time between the country house where he lives alone with his widowed mother, and the 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, Senorita 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 it a message which he had received from Paris a month earlier, warning him that there was reason to believe the 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; the physical appearance had suggested Senor 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 special importance in them; weekly, daily, he was in the habit of receiving similar communications; but some instinct in 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 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 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 played 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 talk about America’s manifest destiny; responsible newspapers discoursed upon the difficulty of a high civilisation existing side by side with a lower, and of the duty of imperfect democracies of the South to accept the guidance the mature democracy of the North. The popular press waved the flag vigorously, published half-tone 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 Senor Sanfuentes. “Holloway has not disappointed me.”
The press of the Latin South had a quieter tone, but 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
