Complete Fictional Works of John Buchan (Illustrated)

by John Buchan

  “But this alters everything,” Castor cried. “If we had thought of it before—”

  “I thought about it — thought about it till my head ached. I always meant it to be my last card, and it would have been if things had gone better. If Lossberg had been getting pinched and worried, I meant to use this as the last straw — to leave Escrick and Peters to watch him, and to lead a picked mounted force through the passes up to the gates of Olifa. I calculated that that would do the trick. But — but — now — I don’t see how it is going to work.”

  He stopped and looked round the table. In each face, as his eyes rested on it, even in Castor’s, the excitement seemed to die down.

  “Because,” he went on, “if Olifa is confident and has reasons for confidence, such a hussar-ride would have no effect. She has still a part of her regular army left behind, and she has an enormous capacity for calling up reserves. We should have the people against us, and they would rise up at our backs and cut us off. We should achieve nothing, and even if we managed to hack our way out, where should we be? Back in the Gran Seco, with the game going hard against us.”

  He turned to Castor. “Do you see any answer to that?” he asked.

  “I am considering...I will tell you presently.”

  “Do you?” he demanded of Blenkiron.

  “Not just right away. I’m rather of your way of thinking. It isn’t much good crossing the Potomac unless you can reckon on help from Maryland or Pennsylvania.”

  Suddenly Barbara spoke — eagerly — stammeringly.

  “I think I understand Don Luis’s letter. The Conquistadores have found a sanctuary in the mountains. Why does he want none of them to get out? To keep them together and deal with all of them at once? Perhaps, but I think he has another reason. He does not want any message carried to General Lossberg. What kind of message? Not a prayer for relief, for at present no one is troubling them. It must be a message of information, vital information. What could that be? Only that they have found the road through the mountains from the Gran Seco to Olifa, and they want to warn him so that he may prevent our taking it.”

  “Good for you, Babs,” said Blenkiron. “I guess she’s right, gentlemen. But it gets us no further.”

  “Wait a moment,” said Sandy. “There may be something in it. The message is from Luis, who alone knows he passes. He evidently thinks these passes are our trump card, or he wouldn’t be so keen to keep them open for us. Luis knows Olifa better than any one of us here. He knows it up to date, which none of us do, for he has been living with one foot there and one in the Gran Seco. He’s a mysterious beggar, for he asked not to be given any responsible job — said he had other very important things to attend to. It looks as if Luis believed that there was a chance of doing something by a flank movement on Olifa.”

  There was a knock at the door and it opened to admit a young staff-officer.

  “I apologise for intruding, sir,” he said, “but Colonel Jeffries thinks it important. The patrols have just brought in a prisoner. He was on horseback, accompanied by an Indian servant, and he seems pretty well dead to the world. Where he came from we haven’t a notion, but he asked to see you at once — said it was very urgent. He is not armed and he’s a funny little rag of a man. He talks English perfectly, and looks like a gentleman. Says his name is Alejandro Gedd.”

  Blenkiron shouted. “Why, it’s the British vice-consul. A good little citizen and a great pal of Wilbur. Let’s have him in at once and feed him. What in thunder has brought him here? You’d as soon expect to see a canary-bird in Labrador.”

  Five minutes later the staff-officer ushered in the remains of the best-appointed dweller in the city of Olifa. Gone were the trim garments, the ribboned eyeglass, the air of being always freshly barbered. Don Alejandro’s breeches and jacket were stained and torn, spectacles had replaced his monocle, he had a week’s beard on his chin, his eyes were hollow with fatigue, and his dark cheeks had been burned almost black. He walked painfully as if from saddle-stiffness, and he was clearly aching in every bone. But at the sight of the company he tried to straighten himself, and he made an effort to bow to Barbara.

  Blenkiron almost swung him off his feet and settled him in a chair. “Bring food,” he shouted to the mess-waiter. “Whatever you’ve got, and also any hard drinks you can raise. Sandy, have you any champagne? We’re mighty glad to welcome you, Don Alejandro, but don’t say a word till you’ve got something under your belt.”

  A cocktail restored the little man to speech. He looked curiously at Castor, and addressed Sandy.

  “Where is Luis de Marzaniga?” he asked. “He told me to meet him here. I left Charcillo four days ago.”

  “How have you come?”

  “Through the passes. I had one of Luis’s guides, but it’s a fatiguing journey and terribly cold. I apologise for my appearance, but I thought it best to report at once. I shall be glad of a meal, for I miscalculated and finished my food this morning at breakfast. But first I should like a word with Luis.”

  “He is not here, but he is coming soon. We have no secrets among ourselves, Don Alejandro. You see before you the Commander-in-Chief and his Chief of Staff. You can speak freely.”

  “I only came to report to Luis. It is rather a long story and I shall have to refer to maps and papers. I came to explain to him the exact position at the moment of our Olifa revolution.”

  There was a complete silence. Blenkiron poured out a half-tumblerful of champagne and handed it to the stranger. He gulped it down and it seemed to send new blood through his body.

  “What about your Olifa revolution?” Blenkiron asked in a queer tone.

  “It’s going famously.” Don Alejandro’s voice had lost its flatness. “Going like a fire on the savannah. When Luis and I laid down our lines three years ago, we never thought to have a chance like this. We have all of what you call the gentry behind us, and the haciendados can turn out anything between eight and ten thousand mounted men. Also we have a big movement among the workmen in Alcorta and Cardanio, and we have the train laid in Olifa itself and only waiting for the spark. But the thing’s ripe now and we can’t keep it waiting much longer. We don’t want to show our hand by any premature explosion.”

  Don Alejandro was surprised at the reception of his words. He looked around the table and saw four faces in which delight still struggled vainly with stupefaction. Also there was complete silence.

  Then Blenkiron broke it.

  “Luis certainly knew what he was doing when he sent that message. We’ll have an army back of us in our interview with the Excelentisimo. I guess we’ll get some help from Maryland when we cross the Potomac.”

  XIII

  Janet woke with a start from her uneasy sleep. Her nights had been troubled of late, and she was accustomed to waking with a start.

  The darkness was very thick and close around her, but it was not the closeness of a narrow room. There was a free draught of air and a sense of space, which suggested that she was under the bare vault of heaven. And yet the faint odour was not of the natural world, but of man’s handiwork — hewn stone, and the dust of hewn stone, the smell of a place roofed and enclosed.

  She lit the candle beside her mattress. It scarcely flickered when she lit it, though there was a sound of wind high up in the dark above her. She told herself that here she was safe, safe at any rate till the morning. Every night she came here, and the narrow entrance was blocked by a pile of cut stones which fitted as closely as a door.

  When she was first introduced to these sleeping-quarters she had been in a terror of loneliness and anticipation. And then she had realised that this was a merciful provision, that she had at any rate the hours of night to herself, and that not till the sun rose again and the blocks were removed would she have to face the true burden of captivity. Here in this vast dark place, like the inside of a mountain, she was for the moment free.

  She tried to compose herself to sleep again, for she knew that she needed all her physical and nervous str
ength for the strain of a new day. But she could not stop her mind from racing. She counted the days she had been a prisoner — seven days, an inconsiderable week, which would have passed too soon in her normal happy life. Now in the retrospect it seemed to lengthen into an eternity. It was only by an effort that she could recall the details of her first coming — the dizzy journey half in the clouds; the Gran Seco like a cup below her brimming with the morning sunlight; the serpentine course among the valleys of the high hills; the blue lake on which the sea-plane had alighted; the march with her pilot in the tangled glens through a long day of heat and misery, among strange birds and insects and creepers like the clutching fingers of ghosts; the meeting with a patrol of his allies — the exquisite Pasquali, a man named Molinoff, and four strange Indians with red ponchos; the coming at last into a valley full of stones built in a circle around a huge rotunda. The jungle had not penetrated one inch into this dead city, for the lush vegetation stopped as if edged by a gardener, and the silent avenues were floored with fine white dust, and the walls were so polished and impenetrable that there was no crevice for a blade of grass. Here she had found bivouac fires and evil faces, faces which to her tired eyes were like the demons of a nightmare. They had given her food, and had been civil enough. D’Ingraville’s manners during that awful day had been punctilious, and the men who received her had shown a cold and level politeness. They meant no ill to her — at least for the moment; their careful provision for her safety was proof of it; and when after some fluttering hours in the darkness of the first night she understood this, she had a momentary access of courage.

  The following day she had realised her position more fully. She was a hostage, to be protected as such, a card when the time arrived to be ruthlessly played. She was given an Indian servant, who brought her water and towels and her meals when she chose to feed alone. Otherwise she was welcome to sit with her captors, at least with one section of them. For she soon discovered that there were two groups in the camp. One was composed of men of the D’Ingraville type, who in dress and speech and manners were gentlemen. These she realised were the Conquistadors, of whom she had heard so much, and even in her loneliness and fear she could not repress her interest in them...

  Some of the names she had known before. There was Lariarty, who had been at school with Sandy, and Larbert, whom she believed she had danced with at a Perth ball, and who had once been engaged to a distant cousin. Romanes, too, Cyril Romanes — she had known his name as a noted figure in the hunting-field and a polo-player of world-wide fame. The other names were new to her, Calvo, and Suvorin, and Pasquali, and Seminov, and Laringetti, and Duclos-Mazarin, and Glorian. They were of every physical type — D’Ingraville slim and fair with a pointed beard and a faunlike head; Suvorin, tall, bony, with a skin like old parchment, and hair as light as an albino; Calvo, short and fat; Pasquali, dark, elegant, and hook-nosed; Lariarty with full, well-cut features and a fine brow; Larbert built on the scale of an athlete; Romanes with his neat light-cavalry figure. But all had something in common — the pallor of their faces, their small, considered gestures, and the opaqueness of their eyes.

  The other group was of different clay. They were of the type of the four who had carried her off, men whose character showed brazenly in their faces. They fed apart from the Conquistadors, and, though they took their general orders from them, lived very much their own life. They gambled and quarrelled and occasionally fought, but since they had no liquor they were reasonably well behaved. They went off in twos and threes to hunt and prospect, and they always reported on their return to Romanes, who seemed to be in charge of the camp. There was little comfort to be had from looking at their faces, on which life had written too plainly its tale. But at any rate they could laugh. Sometimes into the frozen urbanity of the Conquistadors’ talk the distant sound of their guffaws came like an echo of life in a world of the dead.

  She had to keep a tight hold on her nerves to prevent a breakdown, when she sat among her strange companions. Sandy had called the Gran Seco a “port of missing ships,” and these ships seemed to be phantoms, green with the weeds of some unholy sea. They were mechanically polite, rising when she entered and bowing like automata, helping her first to the monotonous fare; but their words to her were like the commonplaces of a French conversation book. She made many efforts to talk — of music to Pasquali, of hunting to Romanes, of home and friends to Larbert and Lariarty, but she found a wall of opaque civility. Those pages were shut for them, and would not be reopened. She realised that the memories of these men were drugged and their emotions atrophied. But not their minds. Very soon she understood that their minds were furiously alive.

  For, after the first day or two, while they did not talk to her they talked among themselves before her. There was no danger to be feared from her, for she was securely in their power. They spoke as sparingly as they ate, but bit by bit she gathered the import of their talk. They were desperately anxious about something, and presently it was clear to her that this something was Castor. He was the one anchor of these missing ships. Without him there was no safety in any port...The girl, as she watched, grew amazed and awed at the extent of Castor’s power. He had plucked these derelicts out of the storm, and bestowed on them a dreadful simulacrum of peace. His drug had blotted out the past and given them a keen intellectual life in the present. Without him they were lost again, and all the power of their minds was devoted to winning him back...Soon, from small pieces of evidence, she realised that the same thing was true of the ruffians of the Bodyguard. They, too, were loyal to their salt. The Gobernador had cast his spell over them, and they were resolved to return to his service. Both parties knew what the world did not know, that the Gobernador had been carried off, and was an unwilling figurehead of the rebellion. For Olifa they cared nothing at all, but they were determined that Castor should be set free, and the Castor regime restored.

  On his account she was a hostage. She saw that they realised that Lossberg might win in the field, but that, even if the rebels were broken up and driven in commandos to the mountains. Castor might be carried with them. To retrieve him she was their chief instrument, their asset to bargain with. If bargaining was impossible, she knew that she need expect no mercy, for pity did not dwell among Conquistadors or Bodyguard...Castor must be recovered, but it was also necessary that Lossberg should win, for if the rebellion succeeded there would be no hope of the restoration of the old life of the Gran Seco, and it was to this that they clung.

  Janet gathered that they were satisfied with Lossberg’s progress. She had heard Magee, who had arrived the day before her, exulting over the news he brought. But she gathered also that the Conquistadors were anxious. On the day after her coming the four men who had carried her off, Dan Judson, Laschallas, Radin, and Trompetter, appeared in the camp. They had come by the seaplane, and apparently damaged it, for D’Ingraville cursed them with a cold bitterness. But others were expected, with messages from Lossberg, messages which must be brought by air, seeing that Sandy’s patrols lay between the two camps...

  These messages did not come. No planes of any kind broke through the cordon and brought news. It was clear that he Conquistadors believed that the messengers had started, and had been shot down, and that their chief preoccupation was to establish communications again.

  Suddenly their anxiety seemed to acquire a sharper edge. Molinoff, Carreras, and Carvilho were out daily, but not as hunters, and every night they returned, bone-weary men. Janet, who had already taken her bearings by the sun, had some rough idea of the position of the camp. She knew nothing about the direction of the Pais de Venenos, but he realised that she must be in the Cordilleras, in a loop of the main chain, where it split into lateral valleys, and that due west of her lay the Gran Seco and her friends. She noticed that the three men in their daily excursions always went south, as if they were looking for something. One night they did not return, and the following afternoon they staggered in drunken with weariness. But they had discovered somet
hing of importance, for Molinoff before he tasted food or drink sought out Romanes.

  What the discovery was Janet could not learn, but at supper that evening her hosts seemed to be shaken out of their frozen composure. They talked — for them — rapidly, and in low tones. Occasionally one of them would look towards her to see if she was listening, and once Romanes seemed to be about to address her, but changed his mind. She pretended absorption in her food, but her ears were open and she caught one thing. They were determined to send a message to someone. That someone could only be Lossberg. They had learned that which might be vital to his success.

  For the first time Janet was diverted from anxiety about herself and about Archie’s peace of mind. She saw dimly a chance for action. She could not escape, but could she not find out their secret — hamper them in some way — do something to relieve the dreadful tedium of her impotence? She lay awake half the night making futile plans.

  Next day she had awoke with a new purpose in life. She observed one result of the previous evening’s discussion. The Indians in the camp were summoned to a council, These were Indians such as she had never seen before — tall men, incredibly lean, with faces like skulls and luminous, feverish eyes. One of them seemed to be chosen for a mission, for he was given a letter by Romanes which he secreted on his body, and the next Janet saw was his red poncho disappearing into the forest...He was not the only messenger. Magee, a wiry little ruffian who knew the Indian speech and acted as interpreter, was also entrusted with a message. To him no letter was given, but Romanes spoke to him long and carefully, drawing plans till he nodded his comprehension. Just before midday Magee also disappeared into the forest which clad the slopes to the westward.

  There was a change in the manner of the Conquistadors. The necessity for haste seemed to have stripped off some of their civilised veneer. Before they had treated her with complete apathy; now she saw in their eyes suspicion, it might be malevolence. Oddly enough, it made her less afraid. She took it as good news. They had earned something which meant advantage to her friends, or they would not be so eager to forewarn the other side. Janet grew almost at her ease. And then she saw that in D’Ingraville’s face which sent a shiver down her spine. The success of her own side meant that she would become valueless as a hostage. But she would remain a prisoner — and a victim.