"Why not?" said Madama, counting the change. "Two; but the smallest
while finished to arrive. One senor, not quite old, and one senorita
of sufficient hadsomeness. To their rooms they have ascended, not
desiring the to-eat nor the to-drink. Two rooms - ~Numero~9 and
~Numero~ 10."
"I was expecting that gentleman and that lady," said Goodwin. "I have
important ~negocios~ that must be transacted. Will you allow me
to see them?"
"Why not?" sighed Madama, placidly. "Why should not Senor Goodwin
ascend and speak to his friends? ~Esta bueno~. Romm ~Numero~ 9 and
romm ~Numero~ 10."
Goodwin loosened in his coat pocket the American revolver that he
carried, and ascended the steep, dark stairway.
In the hallway above, the saffron light from a hanging lamp allowed
him to select the gaudy numbers on the doors. He turned the knob on
Number 9, entered and closed the door behind him.
If that was Isabel Guilbert seated by the table in that poorly
furnished room, report had failed to do her charms justice. She
rested her head upon one hand. Extreme fatigue was signified in
every line of her figure; and upon her countenance a deep perplexity
was written. Her eyes were gray-irised, and of that mold that seems
to have belonged to the orbs of all the famous queens of hearts.
Their whites were singularly clear and brilliant, concealed above
the irises by heavy horizontal lids, and showing a snowy line between
them. Such eyes denote great nobility, vigor, and, if you can
conceive of it, a most generous selfishness. She looked up when
the American entered, with an expression of surprised inquiry, but
without alarm.
Goodwin took off his hat and seated himself, with his characteristic
deliberate ease, upon a corner of the table. He held a lighted cigar
between his fingers. He took this familiar course because he was
sure that preliminaries would be wasted upon Miss Guilbert. He knew
her history, and the small part that the conventions had played in it.
"Good evening," he said. "Now, madame, let us come to business at
once. You will observe that I mention no names, but I know who is in
the next room, and what he carries in that valise. That is the point
which brings me here. I have come to dictate terms of surrender."
The lady neither moved nor replied, but steadily regarded the cigar
in Goodwin's hand.
"We," continued the dictator, thoughtfully regarding the neat buckskin
shoe on his gently swinging foot - "I speak for a considerable majority
of the people - demand the return of the stolen funds belonging to
them. Our terms go very little further than that. They are very
simple. As an accredited spokesman, I promise that our interference
will cease if they are accepted. Give up the money, and you and your
companion will be permitted to proceed wherever you will. In fact,
assistance will be given you in the matter of securing a passage
by any outgoing vessel you may choose. It is on my personal
responsibility that I add congratulations to the gentleman in Number
10 upon his taste in feminine charms."
Returning his cigar to his mouth, Goodwin observed her, and saw that
her eyes followed it and rested upon it with icy and significant
concentration. Apparently she had not heard a word he had said.
He understood, tossed the cigar out the window, and, with an amused
laugh, slid from the table to his feet.
"That is better," said the lady. "It makes it possible for me to
listen to you. For a second lesson in good manners, you might now
tell me by whom I am being insulted."
"I am sorry," said Goodwin, leaning one hand on the table, "that my
time is too brief for devoting much of it to a course of etiquette.
Come, now; I appeal to you good sense. You have shown yourself,
in more than one instance, to be well aware of what is to your
advantage. This is an occasion that demands the exercise of your
undoubted intelligence. There is no mystery here. I am Frank
Goodwin; and I have come for the money. I entered this room at a
venture. Had I entered the other I would have had it before me now.
Do you want it in words? The gentleman in Number 10 has betrayed
a great trust. He has robbed his people of a large sum, and it is
I who will prevent their losing it. I do not say who that gentleman
is; but if I should be forced to see him and he should prove to be
a certain high official of the republic, it will be my duty to arrest
him. The house is guarded. I am offering you liberal terms. It is
not absolutely necessary that I confer personally with the gentleman
in the next room. Bring me the valise containing the money, and we
will call the affair ended."
The lady arose from her chair and stood for a moment, thinking
deeply.
"Do you live here, Mr. Goodwin?" she asked, presently.
"Yes."
"What is your authority for this intrusion?"
"I am an instrument of the republic. I was advised by wire of the
movements of the - gentleman in Number 10."
"May I ask you two or three questions? I believe you to be a man
more apt to be truthful than - timid. What sort of town is this -
Coralio, I think they call it?"
"Not much of a town," said Goodwin, smiling. "A banana town, as they
run. Grass huts, 'dobes, five or six two-story houses, accomodations
limited, population half-breed Spanish and Indian, Caribs and
blackamoors. No sidewalks to speak of, no amusements. Rather
unmoral. That'a an offhand sketch, of course."
"Are there any inducements, say in a social or in a business way,
for people to reside here?"
"Oh, yes," answered Goodwin, smiling broadly. "There are no
afternoon teas, no hand-organs, no department stores - and there
is no extradition treaty."
"He told me," went on the lady, speaking as if to herself, and with
a slight frown, "that there were towns on this coast of beauty and
importance; that there was a pleasing social order - especially an
American colony of cultured residents."
"There is an American colony," said Goodwin, gazing at her in some
wonder. "Some of the members are all right. Some are fugitives from
justice from the States. I recall two exiled bank presidents, one
army paymaster under a cloud, a couple of manslayers, and a widow -
arsenic, I believe, was the suspicion in her case. I myself complete
the colony, but, as yet, I have not distinguished myself by any
particular crime."
"Do not lose hope," said the lady, dryly; "I see nothing in your
actions tonight to guarantee you further obscurity. Some mistake has
been made; I do not know just where. But ~him~ you shall not disturb
tonight. The journey has fatigued him so that he has fallen asleep,
I think, in his clothes. You talk of stolen money! I do not
understand you. Some mistake has been made. I will convince you.
Remain where you are and I will bring you the valise that you seem
to covet so, and show it to you."
She moved toward the closed door that connected the two rooms, but
stopped, and half turned and bestowed upon Goodwin a grave, searching
look that ended in a quizzical smile.
"You force my door," she said, "and you follow your ruffianly behavior
with the basest accusations; and yet" - she hesitated, as if to
reconsider what she was about to say - "and yet - it is a puzzling
thing - I am sure there has been some mistake."
She took a step toward the door, but Goodwin stayed her by a light
touch upon her arm. I have said before that women turned to look
at him in the streets. He was the viking sort of man, big, good-
looking, and with an air of kindly truculence. She was dark and
proud, glowing or pale as her mood moved her. I do not know if Eve
were light or dark, but if such a woman had stood in the garden
I know that the apple would have been eaten. This woman was to be
Goodwin's fate, and he did not know it; but he must have felt the
first throes of destiny, for, as he faced her, the knowledge of what
report named her turned bitter in her throat.
"If there has been any mistake," he said, hotly, "it was yours. I do
not blame the man who has lost his country, his honor, and is about
to lose the poor consolation of his stolen riches as much as I blame
you, for, by Heaven! I can very well see how he was brought to it.
I can understand, and pity him. It is such women as you that strew
this degraded coast with wretched exiles, that make men forget their
trusts, that drag - "
The lady interrupted him with a weary gesture.
"There is no need to continue your insults," she said, coldly.
"I do not understand what you are saying, nor do I know what mad
blunder you are making; but if the inspection of the contents of
a gentleman's portmanteau will rid me of you, let us delay it no
longer."
She passed quickly and noiselessly into the other room, and returned
with the heavy leather valise, which she handed to the American with
an air of patient contempt.
Goodwin set the valise quickly upon the table and began to unfasten
the straps. The Lady stood by, with an expression of infinite scorn
and weariness upon her face.
The valise opened wide to a powerful, sidelong wrench. Goodwin
dragged out two or three articles of clothing, exposing the bulk of
its contents - package after package of tightly packed United States
bank and treasury notes of large denomination. Reckoning from the
high figures written upon the paper bands that bound them, the total
must have come closely upon the hundred thousand mark.
Goodwin glanced swiftly at the woman, and saw, with surprise and
a thrill of pleasure that he wondered at, that she had experienced
an unmistakeable shock. Her eyes grew wide, she gasped, and leaned
heavily against the table. She had been ignorant, then, he inferred,
that her companion had looted the government treasury. But why,
he angrily asked himself, should he be so well pleased to think this
wandering and unscrupulous singer not so black as report had painted
her?
A noise in the other room startled them both. The door swung open,
and a tall, elderly, dark complexioned man, recently shaven, hurried
into the room.
All the pictures of President Miraflores represent him as the
possessor of a luxuriant supply of dark and carefully tended whiskers;
but the story of the barber, Esteban, had prepared Goodwin for
the change.
The man stumbled in from the dark room, his eyes blinking at the
lamplight, and heavy from sleep.
"What does this mean?" he demanded in excellent English, with a keen
and perturbed look at the American - "robbery?"
"Very near it," answered Goodwin. "But I rather think I'm in time
to prevent it. I represent the people to whom this money belongs,
and I have come to convey it back to them." He thrust his hand into
a pocket of his loose, linen coat.
The other man's hand went quickly behind him.
"Don't draw," called Goodwin, sharply; "I've got you covered from
my pocket."
The lady stepped forward, and laid one hand upon the shoulder of her
hesitating companion. She pointed to the table. "Tell me the truth
- the truth," she said, in a low voice. "Whose money is that?"
The man did not answer. He gave a deep, long-drawn sigh, leaned
and kissed her on the forehead, stepped back into the other room
and closed the door.
Goodwin foresaw his purpose, and jumped for the door, but the report
of the pistol echoed as his hand touched the knob. A heavy fall
followed, and some one swept him aside and struggled into the room
of the fallen man.
A desolation, thought Goodwin, greater than that derived from
the loss of cavalier and gold must have been in the heart of the
enchantress to have wrung from her, in that moment, the cry of one
turning to the all-forgiving, all-comforting earthly consoler - to
have made her call out from that bloody and dishonored room - "Oh,
mother, mother, mother!"
But there was an alarm outside. The barber, Esteban, at the sound
of the shot, had raised his voice; and the shot itself had aroused
half the town. A pattering of feet came up the street, and official
orders rang out on the still air. Goodwin had a duty to perform.
Circumstances had made him the custodian of his adopted country's
treasure. Swiftly cramming the money into the valise, he closed it,
leaned far out of the window and dropped it into a thick orange-tree
in the little inclosure below.
They will tell you in Coralio, as they delight in telling the
stranger, of the conclusion of that tragic flight. They will tell
you how the upholders of the law came apace when the alarm was
sounded - the ~Comandante~ in red slippers and a jacket like a head
waiter's and girded sword, the soldiers with their interminable guns,
followed by outnumbering officers struggling into their gold and lace
epaulettes; the bare-footed policemen (the only capables in the lot),
and ruffled citizens of every hue and description.
They say that the countenance of the dead man was marred sadly by
the effects of the shot; but he was identified as the fallen president
by both Goodwin and the barber Esteban. On the next morning messages
began to come over the mended telegraph wire; and the story of the
flight from the capital was given out to the public. In San Mateo
the revolutionary party had seized the sceptre of government, without
opposition, and the ~vivas~ of the mercurial populace quickly effaced
the interest belonging to the unfortunate Miraflores.
They will relate to you how the new government sifted the towns
and raked the roads to find the valise containing Anchuria's surplus
capital, which the president was known to have carried with him,
but all in vain. In Coralio Senor Goodwin himself led the searching
party which combed that town as carefully as a woman combs her hair;
but the money was not found.
So they buried the dead man, without honors, back of the town near
the little bridge that spans the mangrove swamp; and for a ~real~
a boy will show you his grave. They say that the old woman in whose
hut the barber shaved the president placed the wooden slab at his
head, and burned the inscription upon it with a hot iron.
You will hear also that Senor Goodwin, like a tower of strength,
shielded Dona Isabel Guilbert through those subsequent distressful
days; and that his scruples as to her past career (if he had any)
vanished; and her adventuresome waywardness (if she had any) left
her, and they were wedded and were happy.
The American built a home on a little foothill near the town. It is
a conglomerate structure of native woods that, exported, would be
worth a fortune, and of brick, palm, glass, bamboo and adobe. There
is a paradise of nature about it; and something of the same sort
within. The natives speak of its interior with hands uplifted in
admiration. There are floors polished like mirrors and covered with
hand-woven Indian rugs of silk fibre, tall ornaments and pictures,
musical instruments and papered walls - "figure-it-to-yourself!"
they exclaim.
But they cannot tell you in Coralio (as you shall learn) what became
of the money that Frank Goodwin dropped into the orange-tree. But
that shall come later; for the palms are fluttering in the breeze,
bidding us to sport and gaiety.
V
Cupid's Exile Number Two
The United States of America, after looking over its stock of
consular timber, selected Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood, of
Dalesburg, Alabama, for a successor to Willard Geddie, resigned.
Without prejudice to Mr. Atwood, it will have to be acknowledged
that, in this instance, it was the man who sought the office. As
with the self-banished Geddie, it was nothing less than the artful
smiles of lovely woman that had driven Johnny Atwood to the desperate
expedient of accepting office under a despised Federal Government
so that he might go far, far away and never see again the false, fair
face that had wrecked his young life. The consulship at Coralio
seemed to offer a retreat sufficiently removed and romantic enough
to inject the necessary drama into the pastoral scenes of Dalesburg
life.
It was while playing the part of Cupid's exile that Johnny added his
handiwork to the long list of casualties along the Spanish Main by
his famous manipulation of the shoe market, and his unparalleled feat
of elevating the most despised and useless weed in his own country
from obscurity to be a valuable product in international commerce.
The trouble began, as trouble often begins instead of ending, with
a romance. In Dalesburg there was a man named Elijah Hemstetter, who
kept a general store. His family consisted of one daughter called
Rosine, a name that atoned much for "Hemstetter." This young woman
was possessed of plentiful attractions, so that the young men of
the community were agitated in their bosoms. Among the more agitated
was Johnny, the son of Judge Atwood, who lived in the big colonial
mansion on the edge of Dalesburg.
It would seem that the desirable Rosine should have been pleased to
return the affection of an Atwood, a name honored all over the state
long before and since the war. It does seem that she should have
gladly consented to have been led into that stately but rather empty
colonial mansion. But not so. There was a cloud on the horizon, a
threatening, cumulus cloud, in the shape of a lively and shrewd young
farmer in the neighborhood who dared to enter the lists as a rival to
the high-born Atwood.
One night Johnny propounded to Rosine a question that is considered
of much importance by the young of the human species. The accessories
were all there - moonlight, oleanders, magnolias, the mockingbird's
song. Whether or no the shadow of Pinkney Dawson, that prosperous
young farmer came between them on that occasion is not known; but
Rosine's answer was unfavorable. Mr. John De Graffenreid Atwood bowed
till his hat touched the lawn grass, and went away with his head high,
but with a sore wound in his pedigree and heart. A Hemstetter refuse
an Atwood! Zounds!
Among other accidents of that year was a Democratic president. Judge
Atwood was a warhorse of Democracy. Johnny persuaded him to set the
wheels moving for some foreign appointment. He would go away - away.
Perhaps in years to come Rosine would think how true, how faithful
his love had been, and would drop a tear - maybe in the cream she
would be skimming for Pink Dawson's breakfast.
The wheels of politics revolved; and Johnny was appointed consul to
Coralio. Just before leaving he dropped in at Hemstetter's to say
good-bye. There was a queer, pinkish look about Rosine's eyes; and
had the two been alone, the United States might have had to cast
about for another consul. But Pink Dawson was there, of course,
talking about his 400-acre orchard, and the three-mile alfalfa tract,
and the 200-acre pasture. So Johnny shook hands with Rosine as
coolly as if he were only going to run up to Montgomery for a couple
of days. They had the royal manner when they chose, those Atwoods.
"If you happen to strike anything in the way of a good investment
down there, Johnny," said Pink Dawson, "just let me know, will you?
I reckon I could lay my hands on a few extra thousands 'most any time
for a profitable deal."
"Certainly, Pink," said Johnny, pleasantly. "If I strike anything of
that sort I'll let you in with pleasure."
So Johnny went down to Mobile and took a fruit steamer for the coast
of Anchuria.
When the new consul arrived in Coralio the strangeness of the scenes
diverted him much. He was only twenty-two; and the grief of youth
was not worn like a garment as it is by older men. It has its
seasons when it reigns; and then it is unseated for time by the
assertion of the keen senses.
Billy Keogh and Johnny seemed to conceive a mutual friendship at
once. Keogh took the new consul about town and presented him to the
handful of Americans and the smaller number of French and Germans who
made up the "foreign" contingent. And then, of course, he had to be
more formally introduced to the native officials, and have his
credentials transmitted through an interpreter.
There was something about the young Southerner that the sophisticated
Keogh liked. His manner was simple almost to boyishness; but he
possessed the cool carelessness of a man of far greater age and
experience. Neither uniforms nor titles, red tape nor foreign
languages, mountains nor sea weighed upon his spirits. He was heir
to all ages, an Atwood, of Dalesburg; and you might know every
thought conceived to his bosom.
Geddie came down to the consulate to explain the duties and workings
of the office. He and Keogh tried to interest the new consul in
their description of the work that his government expected him to
perform.
"It's all right," said Johnnie from the hammock that he had set up as
the official reclining place. "If anything turns up that has to be
done I'll let you fellows do it. You can't expect a Democrat to work
during his first term of holding office."
"You might look over these headings," suggested Geddie, "of the
different lines of exports you will have to keep account of. The
fruit is classified; and there are the valuable woods, coffee,
rubber - "
"That last account sounds all right," interrupted Mr. Atwood. "Sounds
as if it could be stretched. I want to buy a new flag, a monkey, a
guitar and a barrel of pineapples. Will the rubber account stretch
over 'em?"
"That's merely statistics," said Geddie, smiling. "The expense
account is what you want. It is supposed to have a slight elasticity.
The 'stationery' items are sometimes carelessly audited by the State
Department."
"We're wasting our time," said Keogh. "This man was born to hold
office. He penetrates to the root of the art at one step of his
eagle eye. The true genius of government shows its hand in every
word of his speech."
"I didn't take this job with any intention of working," explained
Johnny, lazily. "I wanted to go somewhere in the world where they
didn't talk about farms. There are none here, are there?"
"Not the kind you are acquainted with," answered the ex-consul.
"There is no such art here as agriculture. There never was a plow
or a reaper within the boundaries of Anchuria."
"This is the country for me," murmured the consul, and immediately
he fell asleep.
The cheerful tintypist pursued his intimacy with Johnny in spite
of open charges that he did so to obtain a preemption on a seat in
that coveted spot, the rear gallery of the consulate. But whether
his designs were selfish or purely friendly, Keogh achieved that
desirable privilege. Few were the nights on which the two could
not be found reposing there in the sea breeze, with their heels on
the railing, and the cigars and brandy conveniently near.
One evening they sat thus, mainly silent, for their talk had dwindled
before the stilling influence of an unusual night.
There was a great, full moon; and the sea mother-of-pearl. Almost
every sound was hushed, for the air was but faintly stirring; and
the town lay panting, waiting for the night to cool. Offshore lay
the fruit steamer ~Andador~, of the Vesuvius line, full-laden and
scheduled to sail at six in the morning. There were no loiterers on
the beach. So bright was the moonlight that the two men could see
the small pebbles shining on the beach where the gentle surf wetted
them.
Then down the coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little
sloop, white-winged like some snowy sea fowl. Its course lay within
twenty points of the wind's eye; so it veered in and out again in
long, slow strokes like the movements of a graceful skater.
Again the tactics of its crew brought it close in shore, this time
nearly opposite the consulate; and then there blew from the sloop
clear and surprising notes as if from a horn of elfland. A fairy
bugle it might have been, sweet and silvery and unexpected, playing
with spirit the familiar air of "Home, Sweet Home."
It was a scene set for the land of the lotus. The authority of the
sea and the tropics, the mystery that attends unknown sails, and the
prestige of drifting music on moonlit waters gave it an anodynous
charm. Johnny Atwood felt it, and thought of Dalesburg; but as soon
as Keogh's mind had arrived at a theory concerning the peripatetic
solo he sprang to the railing, and his ear-rending yawp fractured
the silence of Coralio like a cannon shot.
"Mel-lin-ger a-hoy!"
The sloop was now on its outward tack; but from it came a clear,
answering hail:
"Good-bye, Billy... go-ing home - bye!"
The ~Andador~ was the sloop's destination. No doubt some passenger
with a sailing permit from some up-the-coast point had come down
in this sloop to catch the regular fruit steamer on its return trip.
Like a coquettish pigeon the little boat tacked on its eccentric way
until at last its white sail was lost to sight against the larger
bulk of the fruiter's side.
"That's old H. P. Mellinger," explained Keogh, dropping back into his
chair. "He's going back to New York. He was a private secretary of
the late hot-foot president of this grocery and fruit stand that they
call a country. His job's over now; and I guess old Mellinger is
glad."
"Why does he disappear to music, like Zo-zo, the magic queen?" asked
Johnny. "Just to show 'em that he doesn't care?"
"That noise you heard is a phonograph," said Keogh. "I sold him
that. Mellinger had a graft in this country that was the only thing
of its kind in the world. The tooting machine saved it for him once,
and he always carried it around with him afterward."
"Tell me about it," demanded Johnny, betraying interest.
"I'm no disseminator of narratives," said Keogh. "I can use language
for purposes of speech; but when I attempt a discourse the words come
out as they will, and they may make sense when they strike the
atmosphere, or they may not."
"I want to hear about the graft," persisted Johnny, "You've got no
right to refuse. I've told you all about every man, woman and
hitching post in Dalesburg."
"You shall hear it," said Keogh. "I said my instincts of narrative
were perplexed. Don't you believe it. It's an art I've acquired
along with many other of the graces and sciences."
VI
The Phonograph and the Graft
"What was this this graft? asked Johnny, with the impatience of
the great public to whom tales are told.
"'Tis contrary to art and philosophy to give you the information,"
said Keogh, calmly. "The art of narrative consists in concealing
from your audience everything it wants to know until after you expose
your favorite opinions on topics foreign to the subject. A good
story is like a bitter pill with the sugar coating inside of it.
I will begin, if you please, with a horoscope located in the Cherokee
Nation; and end with a moral tune on the phonograph.
"Me and Henry Horsecollar brought the first phonograph to this
country. Henry was a quarter-breed, quarter-back cherokee, educated
East in the idioms of football, and West in contraband whiskey, and
a gentleman, the same as you and me. He was easy and romping in
his ways; a man about six foot, with a kind of rubber-tire movement.
Yes, he was a little man about five foot five, or five foot eleven.
He was what you would call a medium tall man of average smallness.
Henry had quit college once, and the Muscogee jail three times - the
last-named institution on account of introducing and selling whisky
in the territories. Henry Horsecollar never let any cigar stores
come up and stand behind him. He didn't belong to that tribe of
Indians.
"Henry and me met at Texarkana, and figured out this phonograph
scheme. He had $360 which came to him out of a land allotment
in the reservation. I had run down from Little Rock on account
of a distressful scene I had witnessed on the street there. A man
stood on a box and passed around some gold watches, screw case,
stem-winders, Elgin movement, very elegant. Twenty bucks they cost
you over the counter. At three dollars the crowd fought for the
tickers. The man happened to find a valise full of them handy, and
he passed them out like putting hot biscuits on a plate. The backs
were hard to unscrew, but the crowd put its ear to the case, and
they ticked mollifying and agreeable. Three of these watches were
genuine tickers; the rest were only kickers. Hey? Why, empty cases
with one of them horny black bugs that fly around electric lights
in 'em. Them bugs kick off minutes and seconds industrious and
beautiful. So, this man I was speaking of cleaned up $288; and then
he went away, because he knew that when it came time to wind watches
in Little Rock an entomologist would be needed, and he wasn't one.
"So, as I say, Henry had $360 and I had $288. The idea of introducing
the phonograph to South America was Henry's; but I took to it freely,
being fond of machinery of all kinds.
"'The Latin races,' says Henry, explaining easy in the idioms he
learned at college, 'are peculiarly adapted to be victims of the
phonograph. They yearn for music and color and gaiety. They give
wampum to the hand-organ man and the four-legged chicken in the tent
when they're three months behind with the grocery and the bread-fruit
tree."
"'Then,' says I, 'we'll export canned music to the Latins; but I'm
mindful of Mr. Julius Caesar's account of 'em where he says: ~"Omnia
Gallia in tres partes divisa est"~; which is the same as to say, "We
will need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties."'
"I hated to make a show of education; but I was disinclined to be
overdone in syntax by a mere Indian, a member of a race to which we
owe nothing except the land on which the United States is situated.
"We bought a fine phonograph in Texarkana - one of the best make - and
half a trunkful of records. We packed up, and took the T. and P.
for New Orleans. From that celebrated center of molasses and
disfranchised coon songs we took a steamer for South America.
"We landed at Solitas, forty miles up the coast from here. 'Twas
a palatable enough place to look at. The houses were clean and white;
and to look at 'em stuck around among the scenery they reminded you
of hard-boiled eggs served with lettuce. There was a block of
skyscraper mountains in the suburbs; and they kept pretty quiet,
like they had crept up there and were watching the town. And the sea
was remarking 'Sh-sh-sh' on the beach; and now and then a ripe coconut
would drop kerblip in the sand; and that was all there was doing.
Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I judge that
after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, with
Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gully, Arkansas,
hanging onto the rear step, this town of Solitas will wake up and ask
if anybody spoke.
"The captain went ashore with us, and offered to conduct what he
seemed to like to call the obsequies. He introduced Henry and me to
the United States Consul, and a roan man, the head of the Department
of Mercenary and Licentious Dispostions, the way it read upon his
sign.
"'I thouch here again a week from today,' says the captain.
"'By that time,' we told him, 'we'll be amassing wealth in the
interior towns with our galvanized prima donna and correct imitations
of Sousa's band excavating a march from a tin mine.'
"'Ye'll not,' says the captain. 'Ye'll be hypnotized. Any gentleman
in the audience who kindly steps upon the stage and looks this country
in the eye will be converted to the hypothesis that he's but a fly
in the Elgin creamery. Ye'll be standing knee deep in the surf
waiting for me, and your machine for making Hamburger steak out of
the hitherto respected art of music will be playing "There's no place
like home."'
"Henry skinned a twenty off his roll, and received from the Bureau
of Mercenary Dispositions a paper bearing a red seal and a dialect
story, and no change.
"Then we got the consul full of red wine, and struck him for a
horoscope. He was a thin, youngish kind of man, I should say past
fifty, sort of French-Irish in his affections, and puffed up with
disconsolation. Yes, he was a flattened kind of man, in whom drink
lay stagnant, inclined to corpulence and misery. Yes, I think he
was a kind of Dutchman, being very sad and genial in his ways.
"'The marvelous invention,' he says, 'entitled the phonograph, has
never invaded these shores. The people have never heard it. They
would not believe it if they should. Simple-hearted children of
nature, progress has never condemned them to accept the work of
a can-opener as an overture, and rag-time might incite them to a
bloody revolution. But you can try the experiment. The best chance
you have is that the populace may not wake up when you play. There's
two ways,' says the consul, 'they may take it. They may become
inebriated with attention, like an Atlanta colonel listening to
"Marching Through Georgia," or they will get excited and transpose
the key of the music with an axe and yourselves into a dungeon. In
the latter case,' says the consul, 'I'll do my duty by cabling to the
State Department, and I'll wrap the Stars and Stripes around you when
you come to be shot, and threaten them with the vengeance of the
greatest gold export and financial reserve nation on earth. The flag
is full of bullet holes now,' says the consul, 'made in that way.
Twice before,' says the consul, 'I have cabled our government for a
couple of gunboats to protect American citizens. The first time the
Department sent me a pair of gum boots. The other time was when a man
named Pease was going to be executed here. They referred that appeal
to the Secretary of Agriculture. Let us now disturb the senor behind
the bar for a subsequence of the red wine.'
"Thus soliloquized the consul of Solitas to me and Henry Horsecollar.
"But, notwithstanding, we hired a room that afternoon in the Calle de
los Angeles, the main street that runs along the shore, and put our
trunks there. 'Twas a good-sized room, dark and cheerful, but small.
'Twas on a various street, diversified by houses and conservatory
plants. The peasantry of the city passed to and fro on the fine
pasturage between the sidewalks. 'Twas, for the world, like an opera
chorus when the Royal Kafoozlum is about to enter.
"We were rubbing the dust off the machine and getting fixed to start
business the next day, when a big, fine-looking white man in white
clothes stopped at the door and looked in. We extended the
invitations, and he walked inside and sized us up. He was chewing
a long cigar, and wrinkling his eyes, meditative, like a girl trying
to decide which dress to wear to the party.
"'New York?' he says to me finally.
"'Originally, and from time to time,' I says. 'Hasn't it rubbed off
yet?'
"'It's simple,' says he, 'when you know how. It's the fit of
the vest. They don't cut vests right anywhere else. Coats, maybe,
but not vests.'
"The white man looks at Henry Horsecollar and hesitates.
"'Injun,' says Henry; 'tame Injun.'
"'Mellinger,' says the man - 'Homer P. Mellinger. Boys, you're
confiscated. You're babes in the wood without a chaperon or referee,
and it's my duty to start you going. I'll knock out the props and
launch you proper in the pellucid waters of this tropical mud puddle.
You'll have to be christened, and if you'll come with me I'll break
a bottle of wine across your bows, according to Hoyle.'
"Well, for two days Homer P. Mellinger did the honors. That man cut
ice in Anchuria. He was It. He was the Royal Kafoozlum. If me and
Henry was babes in the wood, he was a Robin Redbreast from the topmost
bough. Him and me and Henry Horsecollar locked arms, and toted that
phonograph around, and had wassail and diversions. Everywhere we
found doors open we went inside and set the machine going, and
Mellinger called upon the people to observe the artful music and his
two lifelong friends, the Senores Americanos. The opera chorus was
agitated with esteem, and followed us from house to house. There was
a different kind of drink to be had with every tune. The natives
had acquirements of a pleasant thing in the way of a drink that gums
itself to the recollection. They chop off the end of a green coconut,
and pour in on the juice of it French brandy and other adjuvants.
We had them and other things.
"Mine and Henry's money was counterfeit. Everything was on Homer
P. Mellinger. That man could find rolls of bills concealed in places
on his person where Hermann the Wizard couldn't have conjured out a
rabbit or an omelette. He could have founded universities, and made
orchid collections, and then had enough left to purchase the colored
vote of his country. Henry and me wondered what his graft was. One
evening he told us.
"'Boys, said he, I've deceived you. You think I'm a painted
butterfly; but in fact I'm the hardest worked man in this country.
Ten years ago I landed on its shores; and two years ago on the point
of its jaw. Yes, I guess I can get the decision over this ginger cake
commonwealth at the end of any round I choose. I'll confide in you
because you are my countrymen and guests, even if you have assaulted
my adopted shores with the worst system of noises ever set to music.
"'My job is private secretary to the president of this republic;
and my duties are running it. I'm not headlined in the bills, but I'm
the mustard in the salad dressing just the same. There isn't a law
goes before Congress, there isn't a concession granted, there isn't
an import duty levied but what H. P. Mellinger he cooks and seasons
it. In the front office I fill the president's inkstand and search
visiting statesmen for dirks and dynamite; but in the back room I
dictate the policy of the government. You'd never guess in the world
how I got my pull. It's the only graft of its kind on earth. I'll
put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book -
Honesty is the Best Policy?" That's it. I'm working honestly for a
graft. I'm the only honest man in the republic. The government knows
it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors
know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised
a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets
the goods. I run the monopoly of square dealing here. There's no
competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this
precinct he'd have my address inside of two minutes. There isn't big
money in it, but it's a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.'
"Thus Homer P. Mellinger made oration to me and Henry Horsecollar.
And, later, he divested himself of this remark:
"'Boys, I'm to hold a ~soiree~ this evening with a gang of leading
citizens, and I want your assistance. You bring the musical corn
sheller and give the affair the outside appearance of a function.
There's important business on hand, but it mustn't show. I can talk
to you people. I've been pained for years on account of not having
anybody to blow off and brag to. I get homesick sometimes, and I'd
swap the entire perquisites of office for just one hour to have a
stein and a caviar sandwich somewhere on Thirty-fourth Street, and
stand and watch the street cars go by, and smell the peanut roaster
at old Giuseppe's fruit stand.'
"'Yes,' said I, 'there's fine caviar at Billy Renfrew's cafe, corner
of Thirty-fourth and - '
"'God knows it,' interrupts Mellinger, 'and if you'd told me you knew