“Well,” Farnham said at last, “it just happens that you’re not the only chap with a coincidence. Only a few days ago the Governor asked me to go and see the Maroons. I’d have been there already, only your wire came immediately afterwards, so I put it off till you .got here.”
Simon slanted a quizzical eyebrow.
“I thought you said you were all through with Government.”
“I am. But the Maroons know me, and trust me, and I can talk to them. His Excellency asked me to do it as a personal favor, and I couldn’t refuse.”
“So I gather this trip has to be made right away.”
“Tomorrow, if you don’t mind.”
Simon drew on his cigarette, and watched smoke drift out into the velvet night.
“I’m free and willing. And it’s nice of you to put off this important visit until I got here. I feel quite guilty about having kept the Maroons waiting for a cozy chat with you about the weather and the banana crop.”
Farnham extinguished a match and leaned back in aromatic comfort.
“I’m sure you know the big thing we’re all trying to cope with,” he said soberly. “In the United States, it seems to be mainly a matter of spies and fifth columnists in high places. In what’s left of our poor old Empire, we have special complications. We were imperialists before the word became an international insult, and we did a pretty good job of it, but whether or not we were ever drunk with power, we’re certainly getting the hangovers today. Among other things, we were left with a lot of subject people that we just jolly well conquered and took over in the days when that was a respectable thing for the white man to do. I don’t think we did too badly by them, as colonialism goes, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they’re a ready-made audience for the new propaganda against us. Well, we had to let India go. We’re losing Africa piece by piece, and in the part that we really thought we could hang on to, I’m sure you’ve read about all that Mau Mau business. The terrorists may be natives, but you know the encouragement is Russian. And the opportunity here isn’t so different.”
“You don’t mean you’re afraid of a kind of Mau Mau outbreak in Jamaica?”
“It’s already started. There have been three brutal, motiveless, barbarous killings of white people in the last six weeks.”
Simon stared, frowning.
“But your colored people aren’t naked savages like the Kikuyu. They’re as civilized as the negroes in the United States.”
“You’d have said that about Guiana—and it wasn’t so long ago, if you remember, that I’ve had to send a warship there to nip a Communist coup in the bud. No, actually there’s a lot of difference. In some ways, our colored people are a lot better off than they are in America. There’s no segregation, some of them are in big business and make a lot of money, their children go to our best schools, and they can go into any club or restaurant on the island. They not only have the vote, they hold the political power, and they’re very active with it. Unfortunately, some of their leaders are pretty radical. And even more unfortunately, in spite of a lot of good Government intentions, there are still an enormous number who are desperately poor, totally illiterate, completely ignorant—and therefore the perfect chumps for the Communists to stir up. And that Maroon settlement makes a rather ideal focal point for it.”
“I’m beginning to see a few ways that it could be used,” Simon admitted slowly. “Do you know anything more about the brains of the act?—I’d hate to succumb to the obvious cliché of ‘the nigger in the woodpile.’ ”
“A little,” Farnham said. “It may have started several years ago, when an English writer who’s since become a rather notorious apologist for the Reds came over here and paid the Maroons a visit. Then, after a while, there were a couple of so-called artists with foreign accents who moved in with the Maroons, allegedly to paint a lot of pictures of their life and customs. I never saw the pictures, but I heard rumors that they were talking a lot of party-line poppycock to anyone who’d listen to them. But presently they went away. And then a few months ago, it seems, we got a chap we could really worry about. One of their own people.”
“You mean a Russian?”
“No. A Maroon.”
The Saint’s brows drew lower over his quietly intent eyes.
“I see. And of course you’re not supposed to touch him. But he’d naturally have more influence than any outsider. And if he’s an upper-echelon hammer-and-sickle boy—”
“I believe he is. Our Secret Service knows a bit about him—we aren’t quite such hopeless fuddy-duddies as some people think. There’s no doubt that he’s a real Maroon, but he’s spent most of his life away from here. He’s had a good education—and a thoroughly bad one, too. But he’s got plenty of brains, and, I’m told, a terrific personality. He may be quite a problem.”
Farnham got up and walked across to gaze out briefly at the stars, his old briar firmly gripped between his teeth and puffing stolidly, hands deep in his pockets, seemingly unaware of any enormity of understatement.
He said, “I don’t expect you to be too concerned with our wretched colonial headaches, but a Communist base in the Caribbean would be rather nasty for all of us. Frankly, I don’t quite know how I’m going to handle this blighter, and I thought if you came along you might have an idea or two.”
“I’ll be along, for whatever it’s worth,” said the Saint. Something more personal was troubling him: it was absurd, impossible within the established limits of chronology and space, but…“Do you know the name of this black commissar?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Farnham said. “His background is a bit different from your Johnny’s. You probably know his name. It’s Mark Cuffee.”
3
Mr Mark Cuffee’s career, in many respects, could have been cited as a shining example of the achievement possible to the emancipated negro, and Mr Cuffee himself had scathing epithets with which to describe those who did not regard it with unqualified admiration. His father had left the Maroon country to work in a rum distillery soon after Mark was born, and in due course worked himself up to the rank of foreman. With visions of still higher employment in mind for his son, he sent the boy to school in Kingston, where he proved to be such a brilliant student that at seventeen he won a scholarship to Oxford. With a benevolent Sugar Industries Association supplying the necessary extra funds, he went to England, where he not only won his degree in Law with first-class honors, but also had time to represent his University both as an oarsman and a cricketer, and to give a performance in the title role of an OUDS production of Othello which earned such critical acclaim that he continued it professionally for a six-weeks run in London.
After this brief triumph, knowing full well the narrow limit to the number of starring parts available to a colored actor, no matter how talented, Mr Cuffee with apparent good philosophy turned his histrionic talents back to the Bar. He was a clever lawyer and a born virtuoso in court, and since for a while he continued to play cricket for an exclusive amateur club, he had a social entrée which in England opens all doors to distinguished adepts of the national game, provided they do not play it for money.
Thus far, his record was entirely praiseworthy, and all the auspices pointed to a successful and illustrious future.
It is not known at exactly what moment Mr Cuffee decided to turn his back on his good omens and seek other goals. One obvious milestone is the occasion when he became a Socialist candidate for Parliament in the first post-war election, and was soundly defeated in spite of the general Conservative debacle. Others would date it from the time when a notoriously unconventional peeress, with whom the gossips had frequently linked his name, quite gracefully declined to marry him. At any rate, within a short space of both these events, he resigned from his cricket club, dropped most of his society friends, and soon afterwards went on a visit to Moscow, where he stayed for more than a year.
When he returned he wrote some articles in praise of the Soviet system for one of the pinker weeklies, and
became a vitriolic public speaker against anything he could call reactionary, bourgeois, capitalist, warmongering, or, as a convenient synonym for all sins, American. Few of his former legal clients came back to him, but he was regularly retained for the defense of Communist spies and agitators, and in many other cases which could be disguised as humanitarian and used as sounding-boards for diatribes against anything that contravened the current interests of the Politburo. Although he by no means starved, he did the dirty work of his new masters and endured the inevitable public obloquy for several years, with the strange uncomplaining patience of a dedicated party member, until at last the infinitely elaborate card files in the Kremlin brought forth his name as the perfect instrument for a certain task, and he found himself back in the wild hills of Jamaica where he had spent his boyhood.
He stood near the gate of the village of Accompong, watching a jeep bumping up the winding rocky road which the Government has built from the nearest market town to the Maroon territory, a town with the magnificent name of Maggotty. He had been watching it ever since it came in sight, having been warned of its approach by signals relayed between a chain of outposts stationed down to where the farthest sentry commanded the turn-off from the main road.
Drawn up in loose formation around him were two dozen of his senior followers, whom he had been able to pick a few hours after his arrival from information supplied by previous emissaries. By now he was even more sure of them, for they were linked by what was literally a bond of blood. Most of them were clad in faded rags of incredible age, and all of these carried machetes, the all-purpose knives of the Jamaican laborer, which are as long and heavy as a cutlass and just as handy a weapon.
“Dey only two in de car,” said the man nearest to him.
This was one of the few who wore presentable shirts and trousers and shoes, and in addition he had on a bandolier and a military-style peaked cap with the insigne of a gold crown fastened above the brim. Instead of a machete, he carried a large cardboard mailing tube like a staff of office.
“You didn’t expect a platoon of soldiers, did you?” Cuffee said scornfully. “It’ll be a long time before they dare to go that far.”
He himself was dressed in riding breeches and boots, a khaki shirt with brass buttons, a Sam Browne belt, and a sun helmet painted gold and topped with a red plume. He felt slightly ridiculous in the costume, but it was traditional for the Maroon chieftain to wear some imaginative uniform, and the inspirational effect on at least a majority of his disciples was too valuable to ignore. The pistol in the holster on his hip, however, was strictly practical and it was loaded.
The road went only as far as the gate of the settlement, and there the jeep stopped. The two men who climbed out did not look very formidable, and Cuffee could feel the rising confidence of his bodyguard as they got a closer look at them. The round-faced one with the pipe, although sturdy, was quite short, and his tall companion in the rainbow-patterned shirt was obviously a tourist. They were certainly unarmed, and even Farnham did not look at all official.
“Hullo there,” the short one called out as they approached. “May we come in?”
Cuffee stood with his thumbs hooked in his belt, aware that his ragamuffin elite guard was watching him and that much depended on his first showing.
“You’re Farnham, I believe,” he said.
“That’s right,” Farnham said, ignoring the insolent tone of the address and returning the form of it with imperturbable good humor. “And I suppose you’re Cuffee.”
“I’m Colonel Cuffee,” was the cold reply.
In commemoration of the warrior prowess of their founding fathers, the Maroon leaders have always graded themselves by military titles, and their supreme head is “The Colonel.” Farnham received the implied confirmation of his fears with hardly a flicker of his eyebrows.
“I’d heard rumors to that effect,” he said. “Congratulations. Well, may we still come in?”
“Are you here on Government business?”
“Just a friendly visitor,” Farnham said cheerfully. “Mr Templar here is my guest on the island, and I thought he ought to have a look at the Cockpit.”
“We don’t want to be gaped at by tourists,” Cuffee said. “And for that matter, we don’t want any more uninvited visitors. There have been too many violations of our Treaty rights, and now that I’m Colonel I’m putting a stop to it.”
Farnham sucked his pipe.
“Well, if that’s the way you want it,” he said equably. “I’ll have to make it formal.”
He took an envelope from his pocket and offered it across the gate. Cuffee almost put out a hand to accept it, but checked himself in time and gave a sign to his chief subordinate. The young man in the peaked cap and bandolier stepped forward and took the envelope.
“Read it aloud, Major,” Cuffee said.
The letter said:
Be it known to all men by these Presents:
As Governor of Jamaica, and by virtue of the powers conferred upon me by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, I hereby appoint David Farnham, Esquire, my personal representative, with full authority to represent me in all matters concerning the Maroons.
Given under the Royal Seal, at Government House.
“It doesn’t mean much,” Farnham had confided to the Saint, on the way up, “and His Excellency knows it, but it may help a bit.”
The young Major read it, haltingly and with a strong native accent, with the result that some sense was clear both to the ragged men with machetes and to the Oxford-accented Colonel Cuffee.
Mr Cuffee felt reasonably confident that he could make mincemeat of any such credentials in a court of law, but he saw a pretext on which to keep face with his followers and satisfy his curiosity at the same time.
“On that basis, the free and independent Maroons will receive the Ambassador of Her Britannic Majesty—and his friend,” he said. “Let them in.”
Farnham ambled through the gate as it opened, looking about him with benevolent interest.
“You seem to be quite mobilized,” he observed guilelessly. “I hope you aren’t expecting any trouble.”
“What makes you think that?” Cuffee demanded.
“I don’t see any women and kids around. And the Maroons aren’t usually armed.”
“They’ve always carried machetes, Farnham. You know that perfectly well. It’s just like a stockbroker with his umbrella.”
“I was referring,” Farnham said, “to your gun.”
Cuffee’s right hand touched the holster at his waist, and he laughed.
“This? Just a part of the costume. I think a sword would look better, but I couldn’t find a good one on short notice.”
They walked some distance up a steep rutted trail, with houses multiplying around them. A few of these could have been classed as very modest frame cottages with tarpaper roofs, more were box-like unpainted wooden huts, and many could only be called tumbledown thatch-topped shacks. From several dark open doorways, women and children and some men looked out, but none came out or moved to join the cortege. Walking beside Farnham, as the Major walked on the far side of Cuffee, Simon could sense the unnatural tension and watchfulness that surrounded them like a dark cloud.
Presently they reached a broad grassy clearing with the habitations set back to its perimeter, which gave it something of the air of a parade ground. There Cuffee raised his hand in an imperious gesture to halt their straggling escort, and the four of them moved on a few steps and stopped again.
“All right, Farnham,” Cuffee said bluntly. “What’s really on your mind?”
“Well,” Farnham said mildly, “the Governor thinks he should be officially informed about who is the responsible head of the Maroons.”
“You know now. I’m the Colonel.”
“But quite recently, we heard, they elected another Colonel. What happened to him?”
“He’s gone. As soon as the community Treasury was turned over to him, he took off and hasn’t been seen since.”
“Dear me,” Farnham said. “And nobody knows where he went?”
Cuffee shrugged.
“I don’t think anyone cares very much now. The money was only a few pounds, as you can imagine, and he’s probably spent it by this time. The man himself was obviously unfit for office, and we’re well rid of him. There was another election, and I was elected.”
“You must have made an impression very quickly,” Farnham remarked. “You haven’t been here long, have you?”
“I was born here. And in case you don’t recognize my name, I happen to be a direct descendant of one of the first Maroon leaders, Captain Cuffee. His name is on the Treaty which still protects us.”
“I know. But you’re really almost a Londoner.”
“It may have taken me a long time to see my duty, Farnham. But I know it now. Whatever talents I have, I inherited from my people. And the education I’ve gained should be used in their service.”
“That’s very commendable, of course.”
“It’s going to make a great difference, I assure you. Your Government has had everything its own way for too long. I know the policy. Keep what your Empire poet called the ‘lesser breeds’ in their place. Keep them downtrodden and half starved, so that they can be exploited. Keep them ignorant, so that they can be bamboozled and put upon. But you couldn’t get away with it for ever. You’re going to find that this is just one more place where they’ve got a leader at last who knows all the tricks and all the rules too. I’m going to see that every right and privilege of the Maroons is respected, in court and out of it.”
Farnham nodded, pursing his lips.
“Now, about this election,” he said imperturbably. “Just how was it conducted?”
“In the normal way.”
“A secret ballot? With all the Maroons notified in plenty of time to assemble, and all of them casting their votes?”
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 9
