Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “No. I won’t go as far as that. But we hope to make him work for us. He won’t like it, but it’s the obvious move in the game. It will not be a rising of the oppressed against the Administration, but a revolt of the whole Gran Seco, oppressed and oppressors, against the tyrannical government of Olifa. And in the forefront of the battle will be Castor, like a new Uriah the Hittite.”

  Janet, who had been listening with a strained face, suddenly broke into one of her fits of helpless laughter.

  “That was your idea. Sandy. Mr Blenkiron never thought of anything so wild.”

  “It is not wild. It is common sense. It’s ju-jitsu, where you use the strength of your opponent to defeat him.”

  “It is not common sense,” Archie declared vehemently. “It is insanity. If Dick Hannay were here, he’d say the same thing. Supposing you unite the Gran Seco, with Castor at your head, what better off are you? You’re up against Olifa with an army that will crumple you as easy as winking. You are cut off from the sea. You have no base and no communications. Where are you to get your munitions? Olifa will smash you in a week — or, better still, starve you out in a month.”

  “May be,” said Sandy calmly. “That’s the risk we run. But it isn’t quite as bad as you think. We have a base, and presently you’ll hear all about it. Also, I rather think it will be a new kind of war. I always had a notion of a new kind of war — an economical war — and I’m going to have a shot at it, even though we take a good many chances. You’ve been doing useful work, old man, in sticking your nose into Olifa’s army system, and you naturally have a high regard for it. So have I. But it’s an old-fashioned system.”

  “You’re wrong. It’s the most up-to-date thing on the globe.”

  “It has learned all the lessons of our little scrap in France and Flanders, and I daresay it would make a very good showing in that sort of business. But it won’t be allowed to, for it’s going to be a different kind of business. We’re the challengers, and will decide the form of the combat. The Olifa army is as rigid in its up-to-dateness as the old British army was rigid in its antiquarianism. Castor is going to puzzle it.”

  Archie called fervently upon his Maker.

  “You’re as mad as a hatter,” he cried, “but it’s a madness I’ve got to have a hand in. You promised to let me in, Sandy. I’ll do anything I’m told...”

  “I gave you a promise. But now you know what we propose, do you still hold me to it? What do you say, Janet? I can’t put the odds better than three to one. We may all be blotted out. Worse still, we may end in a fiasco with our reputation gone for good. This is not your quarrel. I’ve no business to implicate you, and if you both slip down to Olifa and take the next steamer home, I admit I’ll be happier in my mind.”

  “You want us to go home?” Janet asked. Her slight figure in the firelight had stiffened like a soldier on parade.

  “I should be easier if you went.”

  Miss Dasent rose and came out of the shadows.

  “You say it is not Sir Archibald’s quarrel,” she said. The clear sweet pallor of her skin was coloured by the glow from the hearth, and her dark eyes had the depth of a tragic muse. “But is it your quarrel, Lord Clanroyden? Why are you doing this? Only out of friendship for my uncle? If you say that, I cannot believe you. I could understand you taking any risk to get my uncle out of the Gran Seco — that would be your loyalty — but this is more than that. It cannot be for America’s sake, for I have heard you say harsh things about my country. What is your reason? You can’t expect Lady Roylance to answer till she has heard it.”

  Sandy flushed under the gaze of the dark eyes.

  “I don’t know. I never analyse my motives. But I think I think I would go on with this affair, even if your uncle were out of it. You see, down at the bottom of my heart I hate the things that Castor stands for. I hate cruelty. I hate using human beings as pawns in a game of egotism. I hate all rotten, machine-made, scientific creeds. I loathe and detest all that superman cant, which is worse nonsense than the stuff it tries to replace. I really believe in liberty, though it’s out of fashion...And because America in her queer way is on the same side, I’m for America.”

  “Thank you,” the girl said quietly.

  Janet held out her hand.

  “We shan’t stay out, Sandy. I wouldn’t let Archie go home if he wanted to. We’re both too young to miss this party. It’s what I used to dream about as a child at Glenraden...Is there anything to drink? We ought to have a toast.”

  “I said I would be happier if you went home,” said Sandy, “but I lied.”

  Luis jumped to his feet. A whistle had blown faintly out-of-doors, and a second later there was another low whistle in the corridor.

  “Quick,” he said to Sandy. “That is Jose. The outer pickets have seen something, and passed the word back.”

  The two men slipped through the curtained window into the darkness. Don Mario rang a bell and bade a servant bring mate and other drinks, and no more than five glasses. Earlier in the evening the company had numbered six. Then Luis re-entered by the window, drew the curtains, and dropped into an armchair with a cigarette.

  Presently there was the sound of a motor-car on the hard earth of the courtyard, and the bustle of arrival in the hall.

  The door of Don Mario’s room was thrown open, and the butler ushered in three men in the uniform of the Olifa police. Two were junior officers, but the third was no less than Colonel Lindburg, the commissioner of the province in which Veiro lay.

  The Colonel was a tall Swede, with a quick blue eye, close-cropped hair, and a small jaw like a terrier’s. He greeted Don Mario heartily, announcing that he was on his way to Bonaventura, and had called to beg an additional tin of petrol. Luis he already knew, and he was introduced to the others — Sir Archie who limped about to get him a chair, Janet who was turning over an American picture paper, Miss Dasent who was busy with a small piece of needle-work. The group made a pleasant picture of a family party, just about to retire to bed. The Colonel noted the five glasses, and when the servants brought mint juleps the three officers toasted Don Mario and the ladies. The newcomers talked of horses, of the visit of the Gobernador on the previous day, of the cool air of Veiro as compared with the Olifa heats. “You were not here yesterday, Senor de Marzaniga,” the Colonel said, and Luis explained that he had only arrived from his ranch that afternoon.

  They stayed for twenty minutes, finished their juleps and, at a nod from the Colonel, rose to go. Don Mario and Luis accompanied them to the door. One of the peons made himself useful in filling the tank of the car, and was rewarded with a twenty-peseta piece.

  When the sound of the car had died away, the two men returned to the ladies. Luis was laughing. “They are clumsy fellows, the police. There were four of them, not three. The fourth was young Azar. He asked permission to wash his hands, and, since he knows the house, for has been to see the yearlings, he took the opportunity inspecting all the bedrooms. Pedro heard him tramping about upstairs. Also that story of too little petrol was stupidly contrived. They had four full tins.”

  The curtains opened and the peon entered, he who had been so useful with the car. He held up the twenty-peso piece.

  “I have got my stake,” he said. “Janet, you shall keep it. This little coin against Castor’s millions.”

  With his rough clothes and dark skin he seemed to have shrunken to the leanest of lean scarecrows. He swayed a little, and caught Janet’s shoulder.

  “Sandy, you are worn out,” she cried in alarm.

  “I’m rather done up. Luis, you must put me in a place where I can sleep for a round of the clock. I must say good-bye, for it won’t do for us to be together...Luis will look after you.”

  He took the whisky-and-soda which Don Mario brought him, and, in the toast he gave, Janet heard for the first time a name which was to haunt her dreams..

  “I drink,” he said, “to our meeting in the Courts of the Morning.”

  X

  Mr Sylv
ester Perry in his Seeing Eyes asked a question which has often been asked by travellers, why the Gran Seco had no other route to the sea except by the three-hundred-mile journey south to the port of Olifa. Its city is not more than a hundred miles as the crow flies from the Pacific. The answer which Mr Perry gives is that which he had from one of the transient managers of the struggling copper companies, that on the western side of the plateau the mountains simply cascade into the sea. Archie, who had asked himself the question, reached the same conclusion from a study of a map prepared long ago by the British Admiralty. The close lines of the hatching, though they must have been largely a matter of guesswork, showed that the sailors who had surveyed the coast had no doubt about its precipitous character, and up in the northern apex, where the great peak of Choharua overhung the ocean, the contours made the drop as sheer as the side of a house.

  Oddly enough, about this time the same question occurred to the Gobernador. That northern angle had been left alone in his careful organisation of his province, for up there was neither wealth to be got nor men to get it. He called for the reports of those who had penetrated its recesses and all spoke with the same voice. The plateau rose in sharp tiers to meet the curve of the mountains, and these tiers were waterless desert. Higher up there were forests, which might some day be used for mine timber, and it might be possible to divert the streams from the snows, which now flowed seaward in sheer ravines, to the Gran Seco watershed. These things, however, were for the future. The Gobernador closed the reports and rolled up the maps, with a mental note that some day soon he must undertake a complete scientific survey of his province.

  It had become necessary for him to pay one of his hurried visits to Europe. The Gobernador led a life as arduous as Napoleon’s during the early years of his Consulate. Like Napoleon, he had made himself the master of every detail in every department, and, like Napoleon, he had instituted a zealous inquest for capacity, and, having found it, used it to the full. But, unlike the First Consul, he did not need to keep a close eye on his subordinates; they had become automata, minor replicas of himself, whose minds worked in accurate conformity with his. Of this loyalty there could be no doubt; they had lost the capacity for treason, since treason implies initiative.

  But on certain matters he kept his own counsel. There were letters from Europe and the United States, specially marked, which he opened himself, and which were never answered or filed by his most efficient secretaries. There were visits to various South American cities of which no report existed in the Gran Seco offices, though at the other end, in various secret Government bureaus, there may he been some record. In recent months these curious activities had increased. Messages in the Gobernador’s most private cypher had been more frequent. He had begun to take minute interest in the policing of his province, the matter of passports, in the safeguarding of every mile of the frontier. Distant police officials had been badgered with questions, and the special bodyguard of the Administration had been increased. Also the Sanfuentes of the younger branch, who was Olifa’s Minister for External Affairs, had twice journeyed to the Gran Seco — an unheard of affair — and had been closeted for hours with the Gobernador, and on the second visit he had been accompanied by Senor Aribia, the Minister of Finance. New business, it appeared, was on the carpet, and for a fortnight the Gobernador did not appear at the Administration luncheons.

  There was an air of tension, too, in the province, which like an electric current, made itself felt in more distant quarters. It affected Olifa, where there was an unwonted bustle in various departments, and high officials went about with laden brows and preoccupied eyes. It affected the foreign consulates and embassies of various South American states. It was felt in certain rooms in Washington, London, Paris, Berlin, and Rome, large rooms decorated and furnished in the deplorable style of Government offices, where behind locked doors anxious men talked far into the night.

  There was even a little extra stir in the dovecotes of Moscow, here a pale young man, who spoke bad French, had an interview with five others whose power was so great that even the governing caste knew them only by numbers, and thereafter a dozen insignificant-looking people crossed the Russian frontier with passports for various remote lands.

  It especially affected Mr Roderick Wilbur, the American consul in Olifa. That heavy man spent two energetic days, and a still more energetic night, which was largely occupied burning papers. Then, leaving his office in the charge of his assistant and under the general care of Don Alejandro Gedd, he announced that he was about to take a holiday, and departed for the capital of an adjacent republic. There his holiday consisted in sitting in the office of the British Consul, and, being permitted to use his cypher, in sending, by way of the British Embassy in Washington, a series messages which brought two of his Ministers out of bed at one in the morning.

  Yet in the midst of this activity the Gobernador must go a-journeying. His mission was, he said, to Europe, and in two months he would return. To Senor Rosas, the Vice-President of the Company, he committed the temporary charge. As the two sat in the big bright room on the first or of the great Administration Headquarters, into which travellers on the top of the tramcars could stare, while the clack of typewriters around them was like the noise of frogs in a pond at night, they made an interesting contrast. Both were big men, but while the Gobernador was hard and trim and spare, the Mexican looked sallow and flabby, as if he had been meant for a fat man but was kept lean by overwork and anxiety. Nevertheless his eye was clear and healthy. There was no intimacy between the two, but there was obviously respect. For Senor Rosas had under his special charge the most difficult element in the community — the white foremen and engineers, who did not belong to the close brotherhood of the Conquistadors or the Bodyguard, and were not subject to the harsh discipline of the mine labourers. They were the nearest approach in the Gran Seco to a free society, and needed careful handling.

  Instructions were given, minute instructions, reports were referred to, diagrams consulted, calculations made, and the Mexican took many notes. Then the Gobernador pushed the papers aside, and his penetrating eyes dwelt on the other’s face. There was no cordiality between these two, only the confidence of a business partnership. They addressed each other formally, as was the custom in the Gran Seco.

  “I am not satisfied with the Police, Senor,” he said. “I have information that there is a leakage somewhere. It is certain that in recent months unlicensed persons have bee inside our border. They may still be here. If they have gone, what have they gone to do? I have given instructions to make the mesh closer. That is not your province, know, but as my substitute I look to you to see that the work is done.”

  The Mexican met the steady gaze of the other with a almost childlike candour. The hard lines of the jaw an cheek-bones made his large ruminant eyes at once innocent and unfathomable. English was being talked, and he replied in the drawl which he had learned in the States.

  “I reckon you can trust me, Excellency, to hand over the territory to you a little bit more healthy than when you left it. I’m to expect you back in two months’ time?”

  The other smiled. “That is my official leave. I may return earlier...I have much to do, but it may take less time than I expect. Perhaps in a month...or less...”

  “Then you’ve got to fly to Europe.”

  “Europe is for the public, Senor. My business may be done nearer home. As yet I cannot tell.”

  “Say, you’re taking precautions? You’re not going alone? You’re a lot too valuable a commodity to be touring about like an ordinary citizen. There’s heaps of folk that are keeping something for us. You got to take precautions.”

  The Gobernador frowned. “It has never been my custom, as you know, Senor. A man who goes in fear of his life is a fool — he had better be dead.”

  “That’s sound as a general principle. But I guess this in a special emergency, and I can’t have you running risks. You got to take the three men you had when you last went north. You know
the bunch — Carreras, and Dan Judson, and Biretti. I’ll have them washed and tidied up so as in do you credit. They won’t obtrude themselves, and they’ll do as they’re bid, but they’ll be at hand in case of dirty work. If there’s any shooting, I’ll say they shoot first. You aren’t justified in taking risks, Excellency. There’s a darned lot too much depends on you. I reckon you’re too big a man and too brave a man to be afraid of having some fool say you take mighty good care of your skin.”

  The frown relaxed. “I suppose that is common sense. I will take the men with me.”

  In Olifa the Gobernador did not go to a hotel. He had his rooms in the great Gran Seco building in the Avenida in la Paz. He did not leave the building much — at any rate of day; but he was a magnet to draw the eminent thither. Senor Vicente Sanfuentes and Senor Aribia visited him here, and on two occasions the President himself, modestly in foot, and not accompanied by the tossing plumes and bright harness of the Presidential Guard. Also General Bianca, the Minister of War, who had been in a dozen of the old wars of Olifa, came to pay his respects, and with him came the departmental heads, the Chief of Staff, the Director-General of Transport, the officer commanding the Olifa district, all youngish men, who had found in Olifa a market for professional talents which were no longer valued in Europe.

  Among the callers was Colonel Lindburg, the commissioner of police of one of the provinces. He had a report to make. “Acting upon your instructions, Excellency, I have inquired into the doings of our friend Don Luis in Marzaniga. He spends his time between the country house where he lives alone with his widowed mother, and the cattle-ranch in the Vulpas valley. In an ancient car he is at all times bumping over the roads between the two. Also he is often at Veiro, for he advises the old Don Mario about his young stock. I am satisfied that every movement of Don Luis for the past month can be amply explained.”

  “And Veiro?”

  “You yourself have seen, Excellency. Don Mario has entertained the young English baronet and his wife, and the American girl, Senorita Dasent. They were sent to him by his foolish cousin, Don Alejandro Gedd. I have had the place watched, and, except for Don Luis, no one else has visited there.”