by John Buchan
If the doings at the railway-station were curious, still more remarkable was what took place elsewhere in the city. In the area of the smelting and refining works there had been since the early morning a great peace. Walkers in the Avenida Bolivar suddenly awoke to the fact that the hum of industry, which day and night sounded like breakers on a beach, had ceased. The previous night had been a busy time for a certain section of the white employers, perhaps three-fourths of the total. They had begun by isolating the works area from the city and guarding the approaches.
Then they had set about the compulsory conversion of the remaining fourth, a rapid business, and not unattended by violence. Three men attempted to break away, and were shot before they crossed the barrier. After that came the dealing with the Indian and mestizo labourers. Some were sent back to their pueblas under escort of a file of Mines Police, a few picked men were added to the white strength, but most remained in their compounds, which were put under guard. The furnaces were damped down, and by 6 a.m. the whole of the great works area was shuddering into quiet. The white employees, armed and disciplined, were waiting on the next stage.
An hour later mutiny broke out in the barracks of the Town Police. It had been skilfully prepared, for many of the chief officers were implicated, and at first it moved swiftly and surely. The armoury was captured, those known to be recalcitrant were made prisoners in their beds, and in less than half an hour the mutineers held the barracks and had at any rate immobilised the opposition. But a certain part of the police was on duty in the city, and beside these was that special force, the Mines Bodyguard, which was responsible not to the Commissary of Police but directly to the Administration, and which was not concentrated in one place but scattered in many quarters.
It was now that the ill-effect was felt of the failure to cut the line at the San Tome Mine. For the manager of the San Tome had rung up the Administration secretariat about eight o’clock, and, since he babbled of rebellion, he had been put through to the officer in charge of the Bodyguard. This man, Kubek by name, had long been uneasy and alert — indeed he had been the cause of the Gobernador’s suspicion. The appeal from San Tome put him on his mettle, and he at once mobilised his force. He could rely on the fit members of the Bodyguard who had not been tampered with, and, as soon as he found out what was happening at the barracks, he turned his attention to the members of the Town Police on outside duty. He informed the Administration of what was happening, a message received but not circulated by Senor Rosas’s private secretary.
The consequence was that by 10 a.m. the situation was as follows: The works area was held by a force of foremen and engineers, who had cut it off from the city and we waiting for the arrival of the Mines Police. The Town Police were in the main on the side of the rebels and waiting in barracks, but some of their members were with Kubek who had about two hundred men under him and was holding what he regarded as the key positions — a house at the corner of the Avenida Bolivar and the Calle of the Virgin, the Regina Hotel, and the house in the garden behind the Administration building which was the residence of the Vice President. He believed that he had to deal only with the mutinous Town Police and with trouble at the Mines, and had no notion that the Mines Police were in the rising. The city as a whole knew nothing of what was happening. Promenaders in the Avenida Bolivar noted only the curious quiet and the absence of policemen on point duty.
Meantime the meeting presided over by Senor Rosas pursued its decorous way. There were marketing reports fro Europe which had to be discussed, and certain difficulties which had arisen with the shipping companies. Mr. Lariarty presented a report on the latter subject which required close consideration.
At 11 a.m. the first contingent of the Mines Police under Peters arrived. They went straight to the works, where they found everything satisfactory, and gave directions in the forces assembled there. The latter had sent out scouts, who reported what had happened at the barracks of the Town Police, Peters was a cautious man, and, before effecting a junction, sent out patrols to discover if all was quiet in the city. His intention was to round up the Bodyguard man by man, for he knew all their lairs; but his patrols brought the disquieting news that the Bodyguard were forewarned and mobilised, and that they held the Regina Hotel and the corner house in the Calle of the Virgin. The third concentration, at the Vice-President’s residence, they had not discovered. Their news meant that the approaches to the Administration Building were blocked and must be cleared. Peters accordingly got in touch with the Town Police and made his plans.
Just after noon, when the Board meeting had reached the question of a contract with Guggenheims, the noise of dropping fire began to be heard. A confused murmur penetrated into the back chamber from the Avenida Bolivar. The Vice-President, who was frequently interrupted by the advent of his secretary with messages from the inner office, pushed his spectacles up on his brow and smiled benignly.
“There’s a little trouble, gentlemen,” he observed. “Some foreign matter has gotten into our machine, and the police are digging it out.”
Before 1 p.m. there was fighting at three points in the city, for the garrison in the Vice-President’s house had revealed itself by sniping one of Peters’s contingents. The bodyguard were all desperadoes, and very quick with their guns, but there were hopelessly outnumbered, and, for the matter of that, outgeneralled. The Regina fell about 2.30, for it had not been difficult to force a way in from the back and take the defence in the rear. Nine of the defenders were killed, and the Police had seven dead and fifteen wounded. The house in the Calle of the Virgin resisted longer, for, being a corner house with fronts on two streets, it was less open to attack from behind. Yet that nest was smoked out before 4 p.m. and Peters could concentrate all his forces on the Vice-President’s residence.
The Board meeting after three o’clock sat to a continuous accompaniment of rifle fire. But Senor Rosas, with a Roman fortitude held the attention of his colleagues to the business of the agenda. The members seemed sunk in bewilderment, and it is difficult to believe that their minds worked competently on their business. The Vice-President did most of the talking. “It is all right, gentlemen,” he would say, on receiving a message from his secretary: “the Police are managing this little affair very well.”
At half past five the last defences of the Bodyguard fell. It was a bloody business, for Kubek, who had learned the art of street-fighting in Eastern Europe, put up a stout resistance till he got a bullet in his windpipe. Peters ruefully calculated that that day the Police had over sixty men dead and nearly a hundred wounded, but he consoled himself with the reflection that the Bodyguard could not have a dozen survivors. He himself was bleeding from two wounds, but they must go untended, for he had still much to do. He hastened to confer with a slight youngish man, who wore civilian clothes — an old tweed jacket and riding breeches of the English cut — and who had joined him at the smelting works on his arrival that morning.
About 6 p.m. the Vice-President at last brought the Board meeting to an end. His secretary had just handed him written message which seemed to give him satisfaction.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “our labours are over for the day, I thank you for the attention you have given to the Company’s business under somewhat trying conditions. And now, I judge, we are all going to have a bit of a holiday. I ought to tell you that important events have just taken place in this city, and our activities have got to close do for a spell. There has been a revolution, gentlemen. The workers of the Gran Seco have risen against the Government of Olifa, and they are counting on our President be their leader. I have no authority to speak for his Excellency, but I guess it’s more than likely that he will consent. What I have got to say is that you gentlemen are free to do what you please. You can’t oppose the revolution in township, for it has already succeeded, but there’s no call for you to take a part in it unless you like. You can stay on here, and “ — here there was a significant pause—”I will make it my business to see that your comforts are a
ttended to.”
The members, hypnotised by the long tension of the afternoon, stared blankly at the speaker. Then slowly life seemed to waken in their opaque eyes. The man called Lariarty became their spokesman. He rose and bowed to the chair.
“I think we will go down to Olifa,” he said.
At that moment there came the sound of explosions one after another in a chain, which set the windows rattling.
The Vice-President shook his head.
“I reckon that’s impossible, gentlemen. What you hear is the blowing up of the rolling stock at the railway-station. There will be no facilities for travel to Olifa, till Olifa makes them afresh.”
XIII
About 8 p.m., when the dark had fallen, two men groped their way into a room in the oldest quarter of the city, just above the dusty hollow which separated it from the works area. It was a hut in a yard, reached by a circuitous passage among sheds and the back premises of low-class taverns. The place was very quiet, for the inhabitants were out in the main streets, eager to catch what they could in the troubled waters. It was also very dark, till one of the men struck a light and revealed a dirty little cubby-hole which had once been an Indian cabin. Then he put his back to the door and listened, as if he were expecting others to join him.
The man at the door bore the marks of hard usage. He was dirty and dishevelled, there was a long shallow cut on his left cheek, and he limped as if from a wound in the leg. His face was white, his air was weary and dejected, but his eyes were as quick and ugly as a mad hound’s. The other, who had seated himself on a barrel, was of a different type. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit, with a blue linen collar, a black tie, and a pearl pin. His face likewise was white, but it was with the pallor of settled habit and not of strain, and his eyes, opaque and expressionless, gave him an air of calm and self-possession.
“How many’s left?” said the man at the door, as if in answer to a question. “God knows, and He won’t tell. Mollison got away from the last bloody show, and Snell was on the Regina roof and presumably escaped the round-up. Bechstein was never in the scrap at all, for he was in bed this morning with a touch of fever. Radin got off, I hear, and no one saw Molinoff after midday. Let’s put our salvage at half a dozen. Enough to do the job, say I, if there’s any luck left to us.”
The man on the barrel said something in a low voice, and the other laughed angrily.
“That blasted Mexican was at the bottom of it. Of course I know that, but how in hell can we touch him? He has gotten five thousand men to protect his fat carcass. Poor old Kubek! He never spotted that Rosas was in the game or there would have been one dago less in the world. It’s the other we’re laying for, the man that Kubek got on the trail of but couldn’t get up with. I don’t know his name, curse him, but I know the cut of his jib. If I can put it across him, I’ll die happy. He’s been up here off and on for months, slipping about in the dark like a skunk, and leaving no trace but a stink.”
“He will not come here,” said the man on the barrel.
“I say he will. Mollison knew where to find him, for they used to drink together. Pete is the stricken penitent now, anxious to stand well with the new authorities, and that God — darned mystery man is the brain of the business. He wants to round up the remnant of us, and Pete’s going to help him. He’s coming here at half past eight to be put wise by Pete about certain little things that concern the public peace. I reckon he’ll find the peace of God.”
There were steps in the alley, and the doorkeeper, looking through a chink in the boarding, was satisfied. He opened, and a man entered. It was a squat fellow with a muffler round his throat and the bright eyes of fever. “Snell’s dead,” he gasped as he dropped wearily on a heap of straw.
A moment later there came the sound of double footsteps, and two men were admitted, one a tall man with high cheek-bones and the other a handsome youth with a neat fair moustache. Both wore bandages, one on his left arm and one across the forehead. But they seemed less weary than the others, and they remained standing, each with a hand in a side pocket and their eyes fixed on the doorway.
Once again came double footsteps and the little party fell as silent as the grave. A hat was put over the lantern.
The man at the door held up a warning hand and did not open it, but stood back a pace. There was a sound of fumbling with the latch, and the door opened slowly. Two men entered, one a bearded giant whose coat had been rent so that the left side flapped over his shoulder and whose lips were bleeding, the other a slim, youngish man in an old tweed jacket and breeches of an English cut.
No sooner were they inside than the covering was removed from the lamp. The doorkeeper had his back to the door, the man on the straw got to his feet, and the giant caught his companion from behind and held his arms.
Four pistol barrels glimmered in the scanty light.
“Hullo,” said the newcomer. “There are more friends here than I expected. You have done me proud, Mollison.”
It was a strange and macabre scene. The man with the dark suit and the pearl pin sat unmoved on the barrel, his opaque eyes stolidly regarding him who seemed to be a prisoner. Bechstein, the man with the fever, had his revolver laid over one arm, as if he were uncertain of his shaking limbs. The doorkeeper lolled against the door-post grinning, Radin and Molinoff stood on each side like executioners, and the giant Mollison spat blood from his mouth, while his great face hung like a monstrous gargoyle over the slim figure of his captive.
That captive seemed very little perturbed.
“I owe you a good turn for this, Mollison,” he said pleasantly. “Hullo, Bechstein! I heard you were ill in bed. I’m afraid you are taking liberties with your health...I can’t see very well, but can it be Radin, and, by Jove, Molinoff, too? The Devil has looked after his own to-day.”
“He hasn’t looked after you, my friend,” said Mollison. “Your number’s up all right. You’re going to be a quiet little corpse within sixty seconds, as soon as we have tossed for who is to have the pleasure of sending you to hell.”
“Well, let go my arm and let me draw my last breath in comfort. I haven’t a gun.”
The giant ran one hand down the prisoner’s figure “True enough,” he said, and relaxed his grip. “But don’t move, or you won’t have sixty seconds.”
“It’s my right to kill the swine,” said the doorkeeper. “I was Kubek’s second-in-command and I owe him one for the chief.”
The plea seemed to meet with general acceptance, and the prisoner saw his time of probation shortened by this unanimity. For a moment he seemed at a loss, and then he laughed with a fair pretence of merriment.
“By the way, you haven’t told me what you have against me. Isn’t it right that I should hear the charge?”
“Damn you, there’s no time to waste,” said the door-keeper. “You have been the mainspring of this tomfool revolution, which has already done in our best pals and will make life a bloody hell for the rest of us. W are going to give ourselves the satisfaction of shooting you like a dog before we scatter.”
“You don’t even know my name.”
“We know your game and that’s enough for us.”
The prisoner seemed to be anxious to continue the talk. He spoke slowly, and in a pleasant, soft voice. It might have been noticed that he held his head in the attitude of a man listening intently, as if he expected to hear more steps on the cobbles of the yard.
“There’s one here who knows me,” he said. “Tim — Tim Lariarty,” and he addressed the sphinx-like figure on the barrel. “You remember Arbuthnot. I was at Brodie’s when you were at Ridgeway’s. We got our twenty-two together, and we were elected to Pop the same day. You were a bit of a sap and got into the Sixth, while I never got beyond the First Hundred. You remember Sandy Arbuthnot?”
The face of the man on the barrel did not change perceptibly, but there was a trifle more life in his voice when he spoke. “You are Arbuthnot? Of course you would be Arbuthnot. I might have guessed it.”
>
“Then for God’s sake, Timmy, tell that blighter behind me to put down his gun. I’ll take my medicine when it comes, but I’d like to tell you something. You’re a clever chap with a future, and I’ve got something to say to you about the Gran Seco which you ought to hear. Give me five minutes.”
There was a protest, but the sphinx nodded. “Give him five minutes,” he said and took out his watch.
The prisoner began to talk in his compelling way, and unconsciously the interest of his executioners awakened.
Being on the edge of death, he had no reticences. He divulged the whole tale of the revolution, and he made a good story of it. He told of Blenkiron’s coming to the Gran Seco, of the slow sapping of the loyalty of the Mines police, of the successful propaganda among the technical staff, of the organising of the Indian pueblas, in which he claimed a modest share. The others dropped their pistol-hands and poked forward their heads to listen. The five minutes lengthened to six, to eight, to ten, and he still held his audience. He addressed himself to the man on the barrel, and sometimes he lowered his voice till the door-keeper took a step nearer. Then he became more confidential, and his voice dropped further. “How do you think it was managed? A miracle? No, a very simple secret which none of you clever folk discovered. We had a base and you never knew it. Go into the pueblas and the old men will speak of a place which they call Uasini Maconoa. That means the Courts of the Morning — Los Patios de la Mariana. Where do you think it is? Listen, and I will tell you.”
They listened, but only for his words, while the speaker was listening for another sound which he seemed at last to have detected. He suddenly caught two of the heads bent forward, those of Radin and Molinoff, and brought them crashing together. The doorkeeper could not shoot, because Mollison was in his way, and in an instant the chance was gone, for a blow on the head felled him to the ground. Mollison with a shout swung the dazed Radin and Molinoff aside and had his pistol in the air, when a report rang out and he toppled like a great tree, shot through the brain. The hut had filled with men, and the two whose heads had crashed and the fever-stricken Bechstein were throttled from behind and promptly pinioned. Then the prisoner showed what the strain had been by fainting at the feet of the man on the barrel.
