together at the Club or the Regina. What they do beyond that I cannot tell.”
“Who’s here beside Lariarty?”
Luis read from his paper.
“Senores Frederick Larbert, Peter Suvorin, Maximilian Calvo, Jacques D’Ingraville, Luigi Pasquali.”
Blenkiron considered. “After Lariarty I should say that D’Ingraville was the danger. He’s not so deeply dipped, and he’s the youngest. Funny to think that he was once a French flying ace.”
“I have something more to tell you. Romanes is returning. I had information this morning that two days ago he landed in Olifa and that he is now with Lossberg.”
“H’m! I don’t like that. Europe has a bad effect on those lads—breaks their temper and quickens their brains. And he won’t get the dope to quiet him—not unless he goes into the Poison Country, and Peters will have a word to say to that… Darn you, Luis, you’ve given me a thorn to lie on, just when I was feeling comfortable and meaning to hog it on my bed till sundown. What are you going to do?”
“I would beg leave of absence till eight o’clock. You have no need, I think, for my services, and there are one or two inquiries I wish to make before we leave the city.”
So, while Blenkiron, who had slept less than six hours in the past three days, did his best that afternoon to make up arrears, Luis de Marzaniga set out on his own errands.
He visited the Club, and saw in a corner of the deserted dining-room three men lunching. They were just beginning, and in the dislocation of the service their meal was bound to be a slow one. Satisfied with his survey, he joined a young man, who was waiting for him in the street, and the two made a round of domiciliary visits. This young man knew his business, and the outer doors of three flats were neatly opened without damage to the locks. Two of the flats—those of Larbert and D’Ingraville—were in normal order, full of books and bibelots and queer scents, but the third, that of Peter Suvorin, was in a state of supreme untidiness. Its owner had been burning papers in the stove, his bedroom was littered with clothes, while a half-packed valise stood on the bed. “It seems,” said Luis to his companion, “that Senor Suvorin is about to make a journey.”
His next visit was alone, and to the Regina Hotel. There it was plain that he had a friend, for a word to the head-waiter in the almost empty restaurant got him an immediate interview with a servant in a little room behind the office.
“Senor Pasquali’s apartments?” he asked. “You have watched them as I directed?”
“With assiduity. The Senor is going away soon. Where, I do not know, but he has had his baggage prepared as if for a rough journey. Also he has received every night at the hour of ten a visitor.”
The visitor was described: a tall man, with a long dark face and high cheek-bones, like an Indian’s. No, not an Indian—certainly a white man. There was a white scar on his forehead above his right eye. He spoke with Senor Pasquali in French.
Luis whistled. “That is our friend Radin,” he said to himself. “Radin beyond doubt. What has that ugly rogue from the gutter to do with the superfine Pasquali, who plays Scriabin so ravishingly? They may be going travelling together—perhaps also with Suvorin. Luis, my dear, these things must be looked into.”
Luis went out into the glare of the afternoon with a preoccupied face. He walked for a little down the Avenida Bolivar, and then struck through a nest of calles in the direction of the smelting works. His preoccupation did not prevent him keeping a sharp look-out, and presently in a jostle of market-women at a corner he saw a face which made him walk quietly back a little, slip up a side street, and then run his hardest to cut it off. He failed, for the man had disappeared. After a moment’s reflection Luis returned to the Administration Buildings and sought out the room given up to the headquarters of the Air Force. The true air base was the Courts of the Morning, but there was an aerodrome and a single squadron behind the city. There he cross-examined the officer in charge as to whether any Olifa planes had recently crossed their lines. He was told that four had been brought down, but that to the best of Headquarters’ knowledge no voluntary landing had been made.
“But we cannot tell,” said the officer. “We are not holding a continuous line—only two sectors.”
“Then an Olifa plane might land someone in a place from which he could make his way here?”
“It is possible,” was the answer. “Not very likely, but possible.”
In the narrow lane Luis had seen Dan Judson, one of Castor’s three trusties. Where Judson was one might look to find also Carreras and Biretti, and the probability was that all three had been landed from an enemy plane and were now in the city. Suvorin and Pasquali were making a journey, and Radin was privy to it. Luis’s next business was to go to tea with Lariarty, whom he knew a little.
He found that gentleman quite openly preparing for the road. Lariarty’s face was whiter than ever and his eyes looked tortured; but they also looked most furiously alive, and his whole body seemed to have woken into an hysterical life.
“Ho, Senor,” Luis exclaimed. “Do you follow us into exile? I thought you would await the conqueror here—seeing that you have no politics—and advise him wisely about Gran Seco business. That was also Senor Rosas’s belief.”
Lariarty looked at him with a composure which seemed to be the result of a strong effort, for the man was obviously ill at ease.
“Some of us remain,” he said. “But not I. I wish to be at the Gobernador’s side, for his interests are my interests. I have to-day been at Headquarters, and it is arranged that I go with General Escrick.”
“What makes you so certain you will find the Gobernador with Escrick?”
“I am not certain. But if I am with the field army, it stands to reason that I must sooner or later come across the commander-in-chief.”
“Who are staying behind?”
“All the others.”
“Suvorin?”
“Yes.”
“And Pasquali?”
“Certainly. Why do you ask?”
“No reason at all… I congratulate you, Senor, on your courage, for we of Escrick’s command must ride fast and far. You are perhaps out of training for the savannahs and the mountains?”
“I am not in good form. But there was a time when I was never off a horse.”
Luis abounded in friendly advice, as from an old campaigner, and finally took his leave. “We shall meet in the darkness,” he said, and was told that Lariarty had orders to report himself at midnight.
It was now within an hour of nightfall and Luis repaired to Blenkiron’s house for a bath. As he splashed in the tepid water, he reflected. “I am certain that they are all going with Escrick,” he told himself. “Lariarty alone will go openly, but the others will be there somehow—Suvorin and Pasquali and Calvo—likewise that trinity of cherubs, Judson, Carreras, and Biretti. Larbert and D’Ingraville will wait here till Romanes comes, and then join them… there’s going to be a gathering of the vultures somewhere in the North… They’re after the Gobernador, and if they fail to get him they may do some miscellaneous looting.”
