Tales of Mysteries & Espionage - John Buchan Edition. Buchan John

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 motor-car 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 at. 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

       Table of Contents

      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 he 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 card-room 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 over-flowed 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 hang-dog, 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 Senor 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 to-day. Once we Latins of America were a great race. We were Europeans, with minds enlarged and spirits braced by a new continent. You are the soldier, Sir Archibald, and will remember that the bloodiest battles of last century were fought