on duty is a cabrón, Señor. Mr. Fielding will have much better coffee for you, anyway."
Hall chuckled as he washed the sleep out of his eyes with cold water and combed his hair. The waiter is a cabrón! There was one for the book. Hall made up a song while he dressed, a song about yes we have no coffee today because the son of a gun is a dirty cabrón so we have no coffee today.
Souza slammed his palm down on the bell twice when the elevator let Hall into the lobby. "Pepito!" he shouted.
The biggest cab driver Hall had ever seen outside of the United States bounded into the lobby from the blackness of the San Hermano night. He advanced toward the desk in seven-league strides, wiping his right hand on the blouse of his pale-blue slack suit and taking off his white chauffeur's cap with the other hand. He hovered over Hall like a mother hen.
"Pepito," Souza said, "this is Señor Hall." This he said in Spanish. In English, he again told Hall that the man was a very reliable driver.
"Con mucho gusto, Señor 'All. Me llamo Delgado." Sheepishly, the giant offered his hand to Hall.
"I am much pleased," Hall said. "Shall we start now?"
Pepito Delgado led Hall to a blue 1935 LaSalle parked in front of the Bolivar. "She is my own machine after I make the last payment next month," Delgado said. "I am glad you speak Spanish. It is the only language I know." He drove Hall to the ten-story Comercio building in a few minutes.
When Hall tried to pay him, Delgado shook his head happily. "You'll pay me later," he smiled. "I'll wait for you."
"But I may be hours," Hall protested.
Delgado called upon the Saints in a series of genially blasphemous exhortations. "Mother of God," he said, "it is bad luck not to make a round trip with the first American of the season. I'll wait and not charge you more than two pesos for the whole trip."
"I do not wish to rob you," Hall said. "Wait, and we shall make a fair price later."
He entered the Comercio building, but as the doors of the elevator closed and he started on his way up to the seventh floor Hall knew that Delgado was only playing the fool and was in fact no man's fool at all, and it bothered him. The right side of his face twitched slightly as he left the car and walked down to the bend in the hall leading to Room 719.
Chapter three
The frosted glass door of Room 719 bore the words, "Roger Fielding Y Cia." The anteroom was dark, but Hall could see the dim form of a man sitting in a lighted inner room. He knocked on the glass without trying the knob. In a moment, the light snapped on in the anteroom, and the man from the inner office opened the hall door.
"Mr. Hall?" he asked. "I'm Roger Fielding. Welcome to San Hermano. And please come inside."
Fielding fitted to the last detail the mental image Hall had conjured of the man on the phone. Genial, peppery, he not only talked like a Hollywood Englishman, he was a casting director's dream. Let the call go out for a man to play a retired India colonel, a British Ambassador, the Duke of Gretna Green, the popular professor of Chaldean Culture at Oxford, the Dean of Canterbury or the Chief of Scotland Yard, and Fielding was the man who could slip into the role without even changing from street clothes to costume. Fielding was the man, complete to the faintly grizzled face with the gaunt features, the dazzling plaid jacket, the thick-walled Dunhill pipe with the well-caked bowl.
He ushered Hall into the inner office, whose shades were all drawn to the sills. There was a large mahogany desk at the window; against the wall stood a long table bearing a row of glass coffee makers, a tray of demi-tasse cups, and a series of earthen canisters. On the wall above this table hung a large sepia-tinted photograph of London, taken about 1920. It faced a large print of a cottage and a brook in the Shakespeare country. This engraving hung over a row of four filing cabinets with steel locks. The walls were further decorated with framed certificates of Fielding's membership in coffee associations of San Hermano, Rio and New Orleans.
"Sit down, sit down," Fielding urged, pulling a comfortable leather chair to the side of his desk for Hall, and taking the swivel chair behind the desk for himself. The highly polished desk was bare, except for a calendar pad and a folded red-leather picture frame whose picture faced Fielding.
"I'm in coffee, you see."
Hall glanced up at the certificates and the long table. "I see," he said.
"How was your trip? Not too tiring, I hope? That's the sad thing about planes. Faster than ships, but rather confining."
"It was not too bad," Hall said. "Besides, I stole an hour's cat nap at the hotel while waiting for you to get to town."
"Good for you," Fielding said. "I like a man who can steal an hour's sleep when the spirit so moves him. May I make you some coffee to keep you awake, though?"
"If it's not too much trouble."
The Englishman was already at his coffee table. He took the pipe out of his mouth, pointed with the end of the curved stem at one of the canisters. "I guess we'll mix you a little of that Monte Azul with some of this light roast from the south," he said. "If that doesn't sit well, I have two dozen other roasts you can try."
Hall asked him how good a blend would result from the mixture of Monte Azul, Bogota, and the various Brazilian growths Androtten had described to the Brazilian on the plane.
"Ah," Fielding smiled, "so you know coffees, too?"
"Not at all. My education started on the plane." Hall described Androtten, and told Fielding of the Dutchman's experiences in Java and his theories of the perfect blend.
Fielding set some coffee and water into one of the vacuum makers, put a match to the alcohol burner. "Androtten," he mumbled. "I don't remember meeting him before. However, if it's the Monte Azul bean he's after, I'll venture he'll be in to see us before the week is over. Let me see, Androtten ..." He picked up his phone, asked for a local number. "Hello," he said into the phone. "Sorry to call so late, old man. About a chap named Androtten. A Hollander. Blitzed out of Java by the Nippos. Of course. In coffee. Came in tonight on the Clipper to buy Monte Azul for blending. Know him? I see. Well, thanks, anyway."
The Englishman put the phone away. "One of my countrymen," he explained. "He's not in Monte Azul and I'm not in southern crops. We help one another in a case like this. Incidentally, he never heard of your Androtten." He chatted aimlessly about the coffee business until the coffee in the vacuum maker was ready, then he poured it into a small jug and brought the jug and two demi-tasse cups to the desk. "Sugar?" he asked.
Hall had lost his taste for sugar in San Sebastian. "I have it black and pure," he said.
"That's the only way to enjoy real coffee, Mr. Hall." Fielding took a key from his pocket and went to the first filing cabinet. "However," he said, "it wasn't to talk about coffee that you were generous enough to come here tonight. Not to talk about coffee." He pulled a brown-paper portfolio out of the file and returned with it to the desk. He undid the strings that bound the portfolio, removed a manila folder.
"I think you had better pull your chair around and sit next to me here," Fielding said. "We have to look over some
