The Third Hour

by Geoffrey Household

  “Toby! What an idea! But can one?”

  “I think so. The Pan-American highway is open for nearly the whole length. And even if you want to leave it the roads are passable for a heavy car.”

  “Would you come with me?”

  “Do you think I’m to be trusted?”

  “I trust myself,” said Irma, calmly and decisively.

  “Well, I’ll enquire about cars. We might be able to buy a reliable second-hand one by pooling our funds.”

  “Buy one!” exclaimed Irma surprised. “Whatever for?”

  “We can’t very well hire one.”

  “My good, respectable Toby. I should get the use of a party car at home. I have a right to ask for one here.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for dictatorships,” he admitted.

  Irma jumped up and examined the maps spread out on the table. Manuel’s lists and his creased sketch map with its red-ink markings at once aroused her suspicions.

  “What are you up to, Toby? A treasure hunt?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But seriously?”

  “Quite seriously.”

  “I see! And I provide the transport! You’re clever, Toby, and perfidious. I knew you weren’t selling toys.”

  “But I am selling toys.” Toby waved his hand towards a pile of Hanson & Crane’s correspondence. “This is a private venture.”

  “You’d better tell me the story.”

  “Your word of honour that it goes no further?”

  “Of course. A true, German word.”

  “I met a Mexican in Valparaiso, one of Porfirio Díaz’s men expropriated and exiled by the socialists,” he began, trying to make the story as palatable as possible. “He turned most of his possessions into gold when the trouble started and hid the lot. He wants me to recover it for him. That’s about all. There won’t be anything in it for either of us. But I love the man and I’m willing to go the limit for him.”

  “How like you, Toby!” she laughed, completely pacified.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. I won’t pretend to understand you. You’ve changed so much. But you were always loyal.”

  “I’m not sure that I’m showing any loyalty to you. It’s a risky affair and you might be compromised.”

  “Yes. I must avoid any scandal. But I’ll take a reasonable risk. What exactly do you want me to do?”

  “Load your car, if you get one, with empty baggage that I’ll supply, and meet me at a point outside Durango that we will arrange. Help me to dig up this gold and transport it on horses back to the car. Then carry me off to a railway station on the main line to Laredo. I’ll get myself over the frontier alone.”

  “All right, I’ll do it. I’ll ask about a car at dinner to-night and then we can fix the details.”

  Irma woke him up at seven the next morning with an enthusiastic telephone call to say that the consul at Monterrey had lent her his big Benz. He had been present at the dinner and had dutifully insisted that he would much rather return to his post by train, and would be only too grateful if she were to drive the car back to Monterrey for him. All the German businessmen were agreed that it would be excellent for her to see something of the country and its resources, and the First Secretary had promised to get her a Mexican driving licence.

  Toby dressed and went down to her room with the maps. They found a track leading out of Durango along the railway that appeared from the contours to be passable. About forty kilometres from Durango and six from the railway, it either petered out in the desert or, more probably, turned sharply to the west along the dotted line of a dry watercourse from which it was indistinguishable.

  “When can you leave?” Toby asked.

  “Saturday.”

  “Let’s see. The day after to-morrow. With an early start you ought to be in Durango some time on Monday afternoon. In that case I’ll leave to-night by train and be travelling most of Friday. By Saturday night I’ll have bought the stores and horses and I can make the first day’s march on Sunday. I’ll camp at the end of the track, or as far up it as I think a car can get, and look out for you the next day.”

  “This is exciting!”

  “Is it?” asked Toby. “It is to me, of course. But I should have thought you’d have had enough excitement in Germany to last you a lifetime.”

  “Romantic boy! Propaganda and public speaking—that’s all I have ever had to do. I’m thrilled by this. Tell me—what do I bring?”

  “The baggage that I shall buy to-day and send to your room. And water. All the water you can carry.”

  “What in?”

  “Skins. I’ll buy them here, but you fill them at Durango.”

  “Then you’ll look after the tents or whatever we want?” she asked.

  “We shan’t want any—or so Manuel said. We sleep in serapes, head on a saddle and feet to the fire. Food, cooking pots and all that I will look after. You might pick up two dozen fresh eggs, if you like eggs.”

  “I love eggs! Then I’ll just come in shirt and breeches and send all my baggage by train to Monterrey.”

  “Good girl!”

  Toby had a busy morning. He bought the lightest wardrobe trunk he could find, and lightened it still further by scrapping all the internal fittings except three drawers. The porters on that line would be accustomed to handle the colossal trunk of the North American female tourist, weighing at least a third of a ton; they would shift six hundred pounds of gold with curses, but without question. The remaining four hundred pounds would go into his own three suitcases. He jettisoned his clothes, books and papers and left in his bags, in imitation of Claudio Cavira Martínez, nothing but a stock of light, cheap underclothing bought to cover the bullion. To hold the bars in place he trusted to a series of light trays.

  In order to impress the United States Customs he meant to time his departure from Monterrey in such a way that he would arrive in New York on the same day that he sailed for England. Thus they would not be bothered to open his baggage. To accomplish this took some thought. He managed it by depositing his fare with a travel agency which had a subagency in Monterrey. He told them that he would wire from Durango what boat he intended to take, and that they were then to wire their Monterrey office to deliver him the ticket when he got there. Meanwhile, he obtained from them a receipt for his passage money which enabled him to get a transit visa from the United States Consulate.

  José Xabec came down to the station to see off the messenger whom the Almighty had sent him. They strolled up and down the platform, while Herr Xabec earnestly begged him to convey his eternal gratitude to Hanson & Crane.

  “I will tell Mr Seafair all about you,” Toby assured him. “You can count on him. You have the same ideas. You belong both of you to the noblesse du commerce international.”

  “I thank you for the compliment,” said Herr Xabec with a dignified little bow, “and I shall look forward to dealing with you when Mr Seafair retires.”

  “I doubt it,” Toby answered with a laugh.

  “Cher collègue,” said the old agent stiffly. “I have promised you to live for ten years. I shall keep my word.”

  “I have the completest trust that you will live to be a hundred. I didn’t mean that. I meant that I might soon be leaving Hanson & Crane.”

  “If I may ask—where are you going?”

  “Into a monastery.”

  It was the first time that Toby had admitted it aloud. He was surprised at his own sureness.

  José Xabec stopped dead as if Toby had been a piece of ancient architecture, and looked him in the face. It was lit by joy and certainty.

  “It does not surprise me,” he answered after a short pause. “For my generation it was enough, this commerce. There was so much to be done, so many new countries. For you it is not enough. You suffer as I did with my worthless agencies before you came.
If you pray in your monastery, Monsieur Manning, pray for me.”

  Toby took his seat in the train, wondering at the old man’s insight. He never considered himself a person who had greatly suffered; yet the maturity that he felt in himself could hardly have come otherwise. He was, he decided, made on a different plan from most sensitive men. Their commonest protection against their own capacity for suffering was to take refuge in stoicism, to turn themselves into disembodied spirits. His was to overcome the awareness of the soul to misery by the awareness of the body to pleasure—at its lowest expression to cure a fit of the blues by good burgundy and a cigar to follow; at its highest, to take such delight in colour and shape, warmth and wind, and the odd music of humanity that he could no more be long depressed than a young lover who had only to reach out a hand to touch the nakedness of his mistress.

  He walked through to the restaurant car, and there took stock of his more immediate self. It was unfamiliar and intriguing. His adventures in living, beyond mere recreations such as shooting and climbing minor mountains, had never taken him into the wilds. This figure in a khaki shirt and field boots, with an elementary change of clothes in a canvas sack, the prospect of hard physical work and a fair chance of going to gaol at the end of it, was a very satisfactory Toby Manning. He suddenly appreciated the humour of his own trust in Manuel. Considered from a common-sense point of view, he was going off on an expensive wild-goose chase on the word of a casually met waiter whom he had known for three days—and that ten weeks ago. Yet in spite of the ten weeks Manuel’s words were distinct and his image clear. It walked as vividly and confidently through his memory as the shades of old friends.

  He reached Durango in the late afternoon and, after taking a room at the only comfortable hotel in the town, walked back to the station to present his letter of introduction to the stationmaster. This was a merry little official full of patriotic pride and eager to oblige, who at once let it be seen that he thought railways faultless, especially Mexican, and commercial men dishonest, especially those of Mexico City; a creed which must have led him into continual warfare with shippers, but admirably suited Toby’s purpose. He offered the stationmaster a cigar, and slowly approached his business.

  Yes, said the railwayman, he was prepared to admit that there had been accidents during the revolution, and no doubt the merchants had taken advantage of them to avoid payment of their just debts. There was no avoiding it. Possibly the same thing had happened in the English Revolution?

  Toby admitted that it would have happened if there had been any railways, and explained apologetically that his country had not enjoyed a revolution for three hundred years. Since this seemed incredible to the stationmaster, he added that when the rich men were tired of a government, they upset it with money instead of armed forces; it was the same system, but not so gallant.

  The stationmaster could give no details of the various attacks on the line, but there were, he remembered—and Toby thrilled to the intrusion of present reality into a story of the past—a few rusty girders and wheels near the forty-seventh kilometre which were the remains of some serious disaster. If the señor wished to see them for himself, he would find him a guide and horses. Toby thanked him and invited him to dinner. No, he could not dine; he had only time for a quick meal at home between trains. When the twenty-one-fifty down had passed, he was free and would be delighted to take coffee with so sympathetic a caballero and to show him something of the town.

  By midnight Toby had been introduced to most of the cafés and worthies of Durango. He listened to innumerable stories of the revolution, and satisfied himself that the gold and its disappearance had been completely forgotten in Durango. Lara’s name was frequently mentioned, but the exploits of the famous caudillero had passed into ancient history. The chief of police, the principal barber, the postmaster and a retired general stood him a drink in turn, and told each other about his business. All of them were anxious to be of use and to recommend him reliable companions. To get away alone Toby was compelled to libel Irma.

  “Nothing would please me more than that we should all ride out together,” he said, “but I want to be alone for reasons that you, as men of the world, will understand. There is a German woman—and like all foreigners she thinks that Mexico is a country of tigers and bandits and all kinds of romance. Well, when she heard I had to make this little expedition nothing would content her but to accompany me. And as she is passably good-looking, would any of you say no? So I shall make an adventure for her out of a bit of business that you and I could complete in a couple of hours by taking a train to Torreón and seeing whatever can be seen from the windows. She has a car and can carry enough water, and we shall pass a handful of nights very pleasantly in the sierra. I don’t even want a boy to cook for us. You know what women are—shameless when there are two but purer than a saint when there are three!”

  Toby was instantly accepted as a wily and immoral devil deserving all help that could possibly be given. The retired general, eager to live up to his reputation as a judge of horses and an enemy of women, took him in hand the next day, bought the horses—two pack animals and two to ride—and made the dealer promise to take them back at ten per cent less than the purchase price if returned to him in good condition. He was somewhat puzzled at four horses being required when the party had a car and intended to camp by it, but Toby assured him that they were necessary to his plan of artistic seduction; the general, though not in the least understanding, hastily agreed that of course they were. He dared not buy more pack saddles than the two already at the station for fear of arousing comment, but reckoned that empty water skins slung across the riding saddles would serve well enough to transport the gold to the car.

  Toby started early on Sunday morning, climbing up along the railway and over the pass by the sandy track that he and Irma had picked on the map; it was easy going for horses and quite passable for a heavy car. When the red roofs and dusty towers of Durango had vanished behind the first of the slopes, there was not a sign of man. The track led him down, leaving the side of the line, into a wide desert plain sparsely covered by cactus and sagebrush. To the west were the bare and purple heights of the coast range; to the east the yellow hills along the foot of which ran the railway. It was a world of fierce and blinding sunshine in which reality was limited to a radius of two hundred yards; farther away than that it was impossible to judge distance; a black and crawling train five miles off was indistinguishable, without an instant’s thought, from a dead black branch at the foot of a near-by hillock. There was no sound but the measured whisper of his horses’ hooves over the powdery surface which the wind had strewn upon the baked ground.

  Shortly before dusk he arrived at the shallow watercourse where the track turned to the west, and decided to camp there for the night. He fed, watered and tethered his horses, and was mildly surprised at their docility. Having no more knowledge of the animal than the minimum necessary to keep on its back, he had expected difficulties. After a meal of tortillas and cold meat he wrapped himself in a serape and lay down on a patch of sand. The dim shapes of the horses kept him company and their smell mingled with leather and sage into a perfume suited to the sharp coolness of the night. He slept fitfully, but the brief and frequent periods of wakefulness were so sweet and silent that he arose with the first light of dawn rested as by a night of unbroken sleep.

  Making himself coffee and a dish of eggs, he pushed eastwards towards the railway. After two miles he came to a slight dip where there was evidently water close to the surface, for the brush grew high and freely and formed parallel walls on either side of the faintly marked watercourse. It was a perfect hiding place for the car, if the car could be got there. It seemed possible. He cleared a site for his base camp, left three of the horses there and rode back on the fourth to await Irma’s arrival.

  X

  COUNTESS VON REICHENSUND

  Irma left Mexico City on Saturday morning and took triumphantly to
the road. Her tour was over, and the farewells of the German colony in Mexico had been flattering to her both as a member of the party and a woman. She found herself humming a waltz as the big Benz leapt northwards over the paved road, and the cool wind, fragrant with the scent of pepper trees, loosened the coils of her hair. It was no new experience for her to feel and even to cultivate a sense of exaltation, but in her present happiness there was nothing morbid; she revelled in a free, fine animal enjoyment that she had not known for years.

  The Sunday was a day of abominable roads, punctures, delays and detours; but her mood lasted. She persuaded herself that Toby was dependent on her for water and that she must arrive on schedule; the difficulties merely increased her sense of adventure. On Monday she started at dawn for the last lap of two hundred miles and reached Durango about four in the afternoon, pulling up at the station to ask for news of Toby and fill the water skins.

  She was astonished at the kindliness of her reception. A rather dirty Indian, calling himself a general, helped her to buy stores and petrol. The stationmaster put his offices and taps at her disposal and delivered a long speech, some of which she understood, on the virtues and courage of her Englishman. Their friendliness, it was true, seemed to be lacking in respect. The stationmaster strutted around her with a leer that was effective at any range up to a hundred yards, and the general attempted to stroke the seat of her riding breeches—or at least he looked suspiciously innocent and there was no passer-by quite close enough to be responsible for the touch. But it was not unpleasant to be treated with intimacy. In the Mexican villages through which she had passed they had evidently considered her a rare animal with unaccountable wants, to be stared at from a respectful distance and propitiated with flowery words.

  The track was easy driving, its dusty surface undisturbed except by the hoof marks of a string of horses, which she presumed to be Toby’s. After an hour she saw a figure in a Mexican hat and yellow serape detach itself from the limitless background of dust and cactus, and canter towards her. His appearance delighted her, though she told herself sharply that Toby would be very well aware that he was presenting himself in a favourable light. She felt more kindly towards him when his horse shied at the car, and its inexperienced rider, clutching vainly at the high saddle, slid off into a prickly pear.