'He's going down to Italy. I've got rather a ticklish job for him to do and I want you to stand by. I'm not keen on trusting him with a lot of money. He's a gambler and he's a bit too fond of the girls. I suppose you came from Geneva on your Ashenden passport?'
'Yes.'
'I've got another for you, a diplomatic one, by the way, in the name of Somerville with visas for France and Italy. I think you and he had better travel together. He's an amusing cove when he gets going, and I think you ought to know one another.'
'What is the job?'
'I haven't yet quite made up my mind how much it's desirable for you to know about it.'
Ashenden did not reply. They eyed one another in a detached manner, as though they were strangers who sat together in a railway carriage and each wondered who and what the other was.
'In your place I'd leave the General to do most of the talking. I wouldn't tell him more about yourself than you find absolutely necessary. He won't ask you any questions, I can promise you that, I think he's by way of being a gentleman after his own fashion.'
'By the way, what is his real name?'
'I always call him Manuel. I don't know that he likes it very much, his name is Manuel Carmona.'
'I gather by what you have not said that he's an unmitigated scoundrel.'
R. smiled with his pale blue eyes.
'I don't know that I'd go quite as far as that. He hasn't had the advantages of a public-school education. His ideas of playing the game are not quite the same as yours or mine. I don't know that I'd leave a gold cigarette-case about when he was in the neighbourhood, but if he lost money to you at poker and had pinched your cigarette-case he would immediately pawn it to pay you.
If he had half a chance he'd seduce your wife, but if you were up against it he'd share his last crust with you. The tears will run down his face when he hears Gounod's Ave Maria on the gramophone, but if you insult his dignity he'll shoot you like a dog. It appears that in Mexico it's an insult to get between a man and his drink and he told me himself that once when a Dutchman who didn't know passed between him and the bar he whipped out his revolver and shot him dead.'
'Did nothing happen to him?'
'No, it appears that he belongs to one of the best families. The matter was hushed up and it was announced in the papers that the Dutchman had committed suicide. He did practically. I don't believe the Hairless Mexican has a great respect for human life.'
Ashenden, who had been looking intently at R., started a little and he watched more carefully than ever his chiefs tired, lined, and yellow face. He knew that he did not make this remark for nothing.
'Of course a lot of nonsense is talked about the value of human life. You might just as well say that the counters you use at poker have an intrinsic value. Their value is what you like to make it; for a general giving battle, men are merely counters and he's a fool if he allows himself for sentimental reasons to look upon them as human beings.'
'But, you see, they're counters that feel and think and if they believe they're being squandered they are quite capable of refusing to be used any more.'
'Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. We've had information that a man called Constantine Andreadi is on his way from Constantinople with certain documents that we want to get hold of. He's a Greek. He's an agent of Enver Pasha and Enver has great confidence in him. He's given him verbal messages that are too secret and too important to be put on paper. He's sailing from the Piraeus, on a boat called theIthaca, and will land at Brindisi on his way to Rome. He's to deliver his dispatches at the German Embassy and impart what he has to say personally to the ambassador.'
'I see.'
At this time Italy was still neutral; the Central Powers were straining every nerve to keep her so; the Allies were doing what they could to induce her to declare war on their side.
'We don't want to get into trouble with the Italian authorities, it might be fatal, but we've got to prevent Andreadi from getting to Rome.'
'At any cost?' asked Ashenden.
'Money's no object,' answered R., his lips twisting into a sardonic smile.
'What do you propose to do?'
'I don't think you need bother your head about that.'
'I have a fertile imagination,' said Ashenden.
'I want you to go down to Naples with the Hairless Mexican. He's very keen on getting back to Cuba. It appears that his friends are organizing a show and he wants to be as near at hand as possible so that he can hop over to Mexico when things are ripe. He needs cash. I've brought money down with me, in American dollars, and I shall give it to you tonight. You'd better carry it on your person.'
'Is it much?'
'It's a good deal, but I thought it would be easier for you if it wasn't bulky, so I've got it in thousand-dollar notes. You will give the Hairless Mexican the notes in return for the documents that Andreadi is bringing.'
A question sprang to Ashenden's lips, but he did not ask it. He asked another instead.
'Does this fellow understand what he has to do?'
'Perfectly.'
There was a knock at the door. It opened and the Hairless Mexican stood before them.
'I have arrived. Good evening, Colonel. I am enchanted to see you.'
R. got up.
'Had a nice journey, Manuel? This is Mr Somerville, who's going to Naples with you, General Carmona.'
'Pleased to meet you, sir.'
He shook Ashenden's hand with such force that he winced.
'Your hands are like iron, General,' he murmured. The Mexican gave them a glance.
'I had them manicured this morning. I do not think they were very well done. I like my nails much more highly polished.'
They were cut to a point, stained bright red, and to Ashenden's mind shone like mirrors. Though it was not cold the General wore a fur coat with an astrakhan collar and with his every movement a wave of perfume was wafted to your nose.
'Take off your coat, General, and have a cigar,' said R.
The Hairless Mexican was a tall man, and though thinnish gave you the impression of being very powerful; he was smartly dressed in a blue serge suit, with a silk handkerchief neatly tucked in the breast pocket of his coat, and he wore a gold bracelet on his wrist. His features were good, but a little larger than life-size, and his eyes were brown and lustrous. He was quite hairless. His yellow skin had the smoothness of a woman's and he had no eyebrows nor eyelashes; he wore a pale brown wig, rather long, and the locks were arranged in artistic disorder. This and the unwrinkled sallow face, combined with his dandified dress, gave him an appearance that was at first glance a trifle horrifying. He was repulsive and ridiculous, but you could not take your eyes from him. There was a sinister fascination in his strangeness.
He sat down and hitched up his trousers so that they should not bag at the knee.
'Well, Manuel, have you been breaking any hearts today?' said R. with his sardonic joviality.
The General turned to Ashenden.
'Our good friend, the Colonel, envies me my successes with the fair sex. I tell him he can have just as many as I if he will only listen to me. Confidence, that is all you need. If you never fear a rebuff you will never have one.'
'Nonsense, Manuel, one has to have your way with the girls. There's something about you that they can't resist.'
The Hairless Mexican laughed with a self-satisfaction that he did not try to disguise. He spoke English very well, with a Spanish accent, but with an American intonation.
'But since you ask me, Colonel, I don't mind telling you that I got into conversation on the train with a little woman who was coming to Lyons to see her mother-in-law. She was not very young and she was thinner than I like a woman to be, but she was possible, and she helped me to pass an agreeable hour,'
'Well, let's get to business,' said R.
'I am at your service, Colonel.' He gave Ashenden a glance. 'Is Mr Somerville a military man?'
'No,' said R., 'he's an author.'
; 'It takes all sorts to make a world, as you say. I am happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Somerville. I can tell you many stories that will interest you; I am sure that we shall get on well together. You have a sympathetic air. I am very sensitive to that. To tell you the truth I am nothing but a bundle of nerves and if I am with a person who is antipathetic to me I go all to pieces.'
'I hope we shall have a pleasant journey,' said Ashenden.
'When does our friend arrive at Brindisi?' asked the Mexican, turning to R.
'He sails from the Piraeus in the Ithaca on the fourteenth. It's probably some old tub, but you'd better get down to Brindisi in good time.'
'I agree with you.'
R. got up and with his hands in his pockets sat on the edge of the table. In his rather shabby uniform, his tunic unbuttoned, he looked a slovenly creature beside the neat and well-dressed Mexican.
'Mr Somerville knows practically nothing of the errand on which you are going and I do not desire to tell him anything. I think you had much better keep your own counsel. He is instructed to give you the funds you need for your work, but your actions are your own affair. If you need his advice of course you can ask for it.'
'I seldom ask other people's advice and never take it.'
'And should you make a mess of things I trust you to keep Mr Somerville out of it. He must on no account be compromised.'
'I am a man of honour, Colonel,' answered the Hairless Mexican with dignity, 'and I would sooner let myself be cut in a thousand pieces than betray my friends.'
'That is what I have already told Mr Somerville. On the other hand, if everything pans out O.K. Mr Somerville is instructed to give you the sum we agreed on in return for the papers I spoke to you about. In what manner you get them is no business of his.'
'That goes without saying. There is only one thing I wish to make quite plain; Mr Somerville understands of course that I have not accepted the mission with which you have entrusted me on account of the money?'
'Quite,' replied R. gravely, looking him straight in the eyes.
'I am with the Allies body and soul, I cannot forgive the Germans for outraging the neutrality of Belgium, and if I accept the money that you have offered me it is because I am first and foremost a patriot. I can trust Mr Somerville implicitly, I suppose?'
R. nodded. The Mexican turned to Ashenden.
'An expedition is being arranged to free my unhappy country from the tyrants that exploit and ruin it and every penny that I receive will go on guns and cartridges. For myself I have no need of money; I am a soldier and I can live on a crust and a few olives. There are only three occupations that befit a gentleman, war, cards, and women; it costs nothing to sling a rifle over your shoulder and take to the mountains-and that is real warfare, not this manoeuvring of battalions and firing of great guns-women love me for myself, and I generally win at cards.'
Ashenden found the flamboyance of this strange creature, with his scented handkerchief and his gold bracelet, very much to his taste. This was far from being just the man in the street (whose tyranny we rail at but in the end submit to) and to the amateur of the baroque in human nature he was a rarity to be considered with delight. He was a purple patch on two legs. Notwithstanding his wig and his hairless big face, he had undoubtedly an air; he was absurd, but he did not give you the impression that he was a man to be trifled with. His self-complacency was magnificent.
'Where is your kit, Manuel?' asked R.
It was possible that a frown for an instant darkened the Mexican's brow at the abrupt question that seemed a little contemptuously to brush to one side his eloquent statement, but he gave no other sign of displeasure. Ashenden suspected that he thought the Colonel a barbarian insensitive to the finer emotions.
'I left it at the station.'
'Mr Somerville has a diplomatic passport so that he can get it through with his own things at the frontier without examination if you like.'
'I have very little, a few suits and some linen, but perhaps it would be as well if Mr Somerville would take charge of it. I bought half a dozen suits of silk pyjamas before I left Paris.'
'And what about you?' asked R., turning to Ashenden.
'I've only got one bag. It's in my room.'
'You'd better have it taken to the station while there's someone about. Your train goes at one ten.'
'Oh?'
This was the first Ashenden had heard that they were to start that night.
'I think you'd better get down to Naples as soon as possible.'
'Very well.'
R. got up.
'I'm going to bed. I don't know what you fellows want to do.'
'I shall take a walk about Lyons,' said the Hairless Mexican. 'I am interested in life. Lend me a hundred francs, Colonel, will you? I have no change on me.'
R. took out his pocket-book and gave the General the note he asked for. Then to Ashenden:
'What are you going to do? Wait here?'
'No,' said Ashenden, 'I shall go to the station and read.'
'You'd both of you better have a whisky and soda before you go, hadn't you? What about it, Manuel?'
'It is very kind of you, but I never drink anything but champagne and brandy.'
'Mixed?' asked R. dryly.
'Not necessarily,' returned the other with gravity.
R. ordered brandy and soda and when it came, whereas he and Ashenden helped themselves to both, the Hairless Mexican poured himself out three parts of a tumbler of neat brandy and swallowed it in two noisy gulps. He rose to his feet and put on his coat with the astrakhan collar, seized in one hand his bold black hat and, with the gesture of a romantic actor giving up the girl he loves to one more worthy of her, held out the other to R.
'Well, Colonel, I will bid you good night and pleasant dreams. I do not expect that we shall meet again so soon.'
'Don't make a hash of things, Manuel, and if you do, keep your mouth shut.'
'They tell me that in one of your colleges where the sons of gentlemen are trained to become naval officers it is written in letters of gold: There is no such word as impossible in the British Navy. I do not know the meaning of the word failure.'
'It has a good many synonyms,' retorted R.
'I will meet you at the station, Mr Somerville,' said the Hairless Mexican, and with a flourish left them.
R. looked at Ashenden with that little smile of his that always made his face look so dangerously shrewd.
'Well, what d'you think of him?'
'You've got me beat,' said Ashenden. 'Is he a mountebank? He seems as vain as a peacock. And with that frightful appearance can he really be the lady's man he pretends? What makes you think you can trust him?'
R. gave a low chuckle and he washed his thin, old hands with imaginary soap.
'I thought you'd like him. He's quite a character, isn't he? I think we can trust him.' R.'s eyes suddenly grew opaque. 'I don't believe it would pay him to double-cross us.' He paused for a moment. 'Anyhow we've got to risk it. I'll give you the tickets and the money and then you can take yourself off; I'm all in and I want to go to bed.'
Ten minutes later Ashenden set out for the station with his bag on a porter's shoulder.
Having nearly two hours to wait he made himself comfortable in the waiting-room. The light was good and he read a novel. When the time drew near for the arrival of the train from Paris that was to take them direct to Rome, and the Hairless Mexican did not appear, Ashenden, beginning to grow a trifle anxious, went out on the platform to look for him. Ashenden suffered from that distressing malady known as train fever: an hour before his train was due he began to have apprehensions lest he should miss it; he was impatient with the porters who would never bring his luggage down from his room in time and he could not understand why the hotel bus cut it so fine; a block in the street would drive him to frenzy and the languid movements of the station porters infuriate him. The whole world seemed in a horrid plot to delay him; people got in his way as he passed through the barriers; others,
a long string of them, were at the ticket-office getting tickets for other trains than his and they counted their change with exasperating care; his luggage took an interminable time to register; and then if he was travelling with friends they would go to buy newspapers, or would take a walk along the platform, and he was certain they would be left behind, they would stop to talk to a casual stranger or suddenly be seized with a desire to telephone and disappear at a run. In fact the universe conspired to make him miss every train he wanted to take and he was not happy unless he was settled in his corner, his things on the rack above him, with a good half-hour to spare. Sometimes by arriving at the station too soon he had caught an earlier train than the one he had meant to, but that was nerve-racking and caused him all the anguish of very nearly missing it.
The Rome express was signalled and there was no sign of the Hairless Mexican; it came in and he was not to be seen. Ashenden became more and more harassed. He walked quickly up and down the platform, looked in all the waiting-rooms, went to the consigne where the luggage was left; he could not find him. There were no sleeping-cars, but a number of people got out and he took two seats in a first-class carriage. He stood by the door, looking up and down the platform and up at the clock; it was useless to go if his travelling companion did not turn up, and Ashenden made up his mind to take his things out of the carriage as the porter cried en voiture; but, by George! he would give the brute hell when he found him. There were three minutes more, then two minutes, then one; at that late hour there were few persons about and all who were travelling had taken their seats. Then he saw the Hairless
Mexican, followed by two porters with his luggage and accompanied by a man in a bowler-hat, walk leisurely on to the platform. He caught sight of Ashenden and waved to him.
'Ah, my dear fellow, there you are, I wondered what had become of you.'
'Good God, man, hurry up or we shall miss the train.'
'I never miss a train. Have you got good seats? The chef de gare has gone for the night; this is his assistant.'
The man in the bowler-hat took it off when Ashenden nodded to him.
'But this is an ordinary carriage. I am afraid I could not travel in that.' He turned to the stationmaster's assistant with an affable smile. 'You must do better for me than that, mon cher!
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