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CHAPTER IX

Puerto Frio sits back of its harbor, a medley of corrugated iron roofs, adobe walls and square-towered churches. Along the water front is a fringe of ragged palms. At one end of the semicircle that breaks the straight coast line, a few steamers come to anchorage; at the other rise jugged groups of water-eaten rocks, where the surf runs with a cannonading of breakers, and tosses back a perpetual lather of infuriated spray. From the mole, Saxon had his first near view of the city. He drew a long inhalation of the hot air, and looked anxiously about him.

He had been asking himself during the length of his journey whether a reminder would be borne in on his senses, and awaken them to a throb of familiarity. He had climbed the slippery landing stairs with the oppressing consciousness that he might step at their top into a new world – or an old and forgotten world. Now, he drew to one side, and swept his eyes questioningly about.

Before him stretched a broad open space, through which the dust swirled hot and indolent. Beyond lay the Plaza of Santo Domingo, and on the twin towers of its church two crosses leaned dismally askew. A few barefooted natives slouched across the sun-refracting square, their shadows blue against the yellow heat. Saxon’s gaze swung steadily about the radius of sight, but his brain, like a paralyzed nerve, touched with the testing-electrode, gave no reflex – no response.

There was a leap at his heart which became hope as his cab jolted on to the Hotel Frances y Ingles over streets that awoke no convicting memories. He set out almost cheerfully for the American Legation to present the letters of introduction he had brought from New York and to tell his story. Thus supplied with credentials and facts, the official might be prepared to assist him.

His second step – the test upon which he mainly depended – involved a search for a yellow cathedral wall, surrounded with red flowers and facing an open area. There, Saxon wanted to stand, for a moment, against the masonry, with the sounds of the street in his ears and the rank fragrance of the vine in his nostrils. There he would ask his memory, under the influence of these reminders, the question the water-front had failed to answer.

That wandering, however, should be reserved for the less conspicuous time of night. He would spend the greater part of the day, since his status was so dubious, in the protection of his room at the hotel.

If night did not answer the question, he would go again at sunrise, and await the early glare on the wall, since that would exactly duplicate former conditions. The night influences would be softer, less cruel – and less exact, but he would go first by darkness and reconnoiter the ground – unless his riddle were solved before.

The American Legation, he was informed, stood as did his hostelry, on the main Plaza, only a few doors distant and directly opposite the palace of the President.

He was met by Mr. Partridge, the secretary of legation. The minister was spending several days at Miravista, but was expected back that evening, or to-morrow morning at the latest. In the meantime, if the secretary could be of service to a countryman, he would be glad. The secretary was a likable young fellow with frank American eyes. He fancied Saxon’s face, and was accordingly cordial.

“There is quite a decent club here for Anglo-Saxon exiles,” announced Mr. Partridge. “Possibly, you’d like to look in? I’m occupied for the day, but I’ll drop around for you this evening, and make you out a card.”

Saxon left his letters with the secretary to be given to the chief on arrival, and returned to the “Frances y Ingles.”

He did not again emerge from his room until evening, and, as he left the patio of the hotel for his journey to the old cathedral, the moon was shining brightly between the shadows of the adobe walls and the balconies that hung above the pavements. As he went out through the street-door, Mr. Howard Stanley Rodman glanced furtively up from a corner table, and tossed away a half-smoked cigarette.

The old cathedral takes up a square. In the niches of its outer wall stand the stone effigies of many saints. Before its triple, iron-studded doors stretches a tiled terrace. At its right runs a side-street, and, attracted by a patch of clambering vine on the time-stained walls, where the moon fell full upon them, Saxon turned into the byway. At the far end, the façade rose blankly, fronting a bare drill-ground, and there he halted. The painter had not counted on the moon. Now, as he took his place against the wall, it bathed him in an almost effulgent whiteness. The shadows of the abutments were inky in contrast, and the disused and ancient cannon, planted at the curb for a corner post, stood out boldly in relief. But the street was silent and, except for himself, absolutely deserted.

For a time, he stood looking outward. From somewhere at his back, in the vaultlike recesses of the building, drifted the heavy pungency of incense burning at a shrine.

His ears were alert for the sounds that might, in their drifting inconsequence, mean everything. Then, as no reminder came, he closed his eyes, and wracked his imagination in concentrated thought as a monitor to memory. He groped after some detail of the other time, if the other time had been an actual fragment of his life. He strove to recall the features of the officer who commanded the death squad, some face that had stood there before him on that morning; the style of uniforms they wore. He kept his eyes closed, not only for seconds, but for minutes, and, when in answer to his focused self-hypnotism and prodding suggestion no answer came, there came in its stead a torrent of joyous relief.

Then, he heard something like a subdued ejaculation, and opened his eyes upon a startling spectacle.

Leaning out from the shadow of an abutment stood a thin man, whose face in the moon showed a strange mingling of savagery and terror. It was a face Saxon did not remember to have seen before. The eyes glittered, and the teeth showed as the thin lips were drawn back over them in a snarling sort of smile. But the most startling phase of the tableau, to the man who opened his eyes upon it without warning, was the circumstance of the unknown’s pressing an automatic pistol against his breast. Saxon’s first impression was that he had fallen prey to a robber, but he knew instinctively that this expression was not that of a man bent on mere thievery. It had more depth and evil satisfaction. It was the look of a man who turns a trick in an important game.

As the painter gazed at the face and figure bending forward from the abutment’s sooty shadow like some chimera or gargoyle fashioned in the wall, his first sentiment was less one of immediate peril than of argument with himself. Surely, so startling a dénouement should serve to revive his memory, if he had faced other muzzles there!

When the man with the pistol spoke, it was in words that were illuminating. The voice was tremulous with emotion, probably nervous terror, yet the tone was intended to convey irony, and was partly successful.

“I presume,” it said icily, “you wished to enjoy the sensation of standing at that point – this time with the certainty of walking away alive. It must be a pleasant reminiscence, but one never can tell.” The thin man paused, and then began afresh, his voice charged with a bravado that somehow seemed to lack genuineness.

“Last time, you expected to be carried away dead – and went away living. This time, you expected to walk away in safety, and, instead, you’ve got to die. Your execution was only delayed.” He gave a short, nervous laugh, then his voice came near breaking as he went on almost wildly: “I’ve got to kill you, Carter. God knows I don’t want to do it, but I must have security! This knowledge that you are watching me to drop on me like a hawk on a rat, will drive me mad. They’ve told me up and down both these God-forsaken coasts, from Ancon to Buenos Ayres, from La Boca to Concepcion, that you would get me, and now it’s sheer self-defense with me. I know you never forgave a wrong – and God knows that I never did you the wrong you are trying to revenge. God knows I am innocent.”

Rodman halted breathless, and stood with his flat chest rising and falling almost hysterically. He was in the state when men are most irresponsible and dangerous.

Meanwhile, a pistol held in an unsteady hand, its trigger under an uncertain finger, emphasized a situation that called for electrical thinking. To assert a mistake in identity would be ludicrous. Saxon was not in a position to claim that. The other man seemed to have knowledge that he himself lacked. Moreover, that knowledge was the information which Saxon, as self-prosecutor, must have. The only course was to meet the other’s bravado with a counter show of bravado, and keep him talking. Perhaps, some one would pass in the empty street.

“Well,” demanded Rodman between gasping breaths, “why in hell don’t you say something?”

Saxon began to feel the mastery of the stronger man over the weaker, despite the fact that the weaker supplemented his inferiority with a weapon.

“It appears to me,” came the answer, and it was the first time Rodman had heard the voice, now almost velvety, “it appears to me that there isn’t very much for me to say. You seem to be in the best position to do the talking.”

“Yes, damn you!” accused the other, excitedly. “You are always the same – always making the big pyrotechnic display! You have grandstanded and posed as the debonair adventurer, until it’s come to be second nature. That won’t help now!” The thin man’s braggadocio changed suddenly to something like a whine.

“You know I’m frightened, and you’re throwing a bluff. You’re a fool not to realize that it’s because I’m so frightened that I am capable of killing you. I’ve craned my neck around every corner, and jumped at every shadow since that day – always watching for you. Now, I’m going to end it. I see your plan as if it were printed on a glass pane. You’ve discovered my doings, and, if you left here alive, you’d inform the government.”

Here, at least, Saxon could speak, and speak truthfully.

“I don’t know anything, or care anything, about your plans,” he retorted, curtly.

“That’s a damned lie!” almost shrieked the other man. “It’s just your style. It’s just your infernal chicanery. I wrote you that letter in good faith, and you tracked me. You found out where I was and what I was doing. How you learned it, God knows, but I suppose it’s still easy for you to get into the confidence of the juntas. The moment I saw you on the boat, the whole thing flashed on me. It was your fine Italian brand of work to come down on the very steamer that carried my guns – to come ashore just at the psychological moment, and turn me over to the authorities on the exact verge of my success! Your brand of humor saw irony in that – in giving me the same sort of death you escaped. But it’s too late. Vegas has the guns in spite of you! There’ll be a new president in the palace within three days.” The man’s voice became almost triumphant. He was breathing more normally once again, as his courage gained its second wind.

Saxon was fencing for time. Incidentally, he was learning profusely about the revolution of to-morrow, but nothing of the revolution of yesterday.

“I neither know, nor want to know, anything about your dirty work,” he said, shortly. “Moreover, if you think I’m bent on vengeance, you are a damned fool to tell me.”

Rodman laughed satirically.

“Oh, I’m not so easy as you give me credit for being. You are trying to ‘kiss your way out,’ as the thieves put it. You’re trying to talk me out of killing you, but do you know why I’m willing to tell you all this?” He halted, then went on tempestuously. “I’ll tell you why. In the first place, you know it already, and, in the second place, you’ll never repeat any information after to-night. It’s idiotic perhaps, but my reason for not killing you right at the start is that I’ve got a fancy for telling you the true facts, whether you choose to believe them or not. It will ease my conscience afterward.”

Saxon stood waiting for the next move, bracing himself for an opportunity that might present itself, the pistol muzzle still pointed at his chest.

“I’m not timid,” went on the other. “You know me. Howard Rodman, speakin’ in general, takes his chances. But I am afraid of you, more afraid than I am of the devil in hell. I know I can’t bluff you. I saw you stand against this wall with the soldiers out there in front, and, since you can’t be frightened off, you must be killed.” The man’s voice gathered vehemence as he talked, and his face showed growing agitation. “And the horrible part is that it’s all a mistake, that I’d rather be friends with you, if you’d let me. I never was informant against you.”

He paused, exhausted by his panic and his flow of words. Saxon, with a strong effort, collected his staggered senses.

“Why do you think I come for vengeance?” he asked.

“Why do I think it?” The thin man laughed bitterly. “Why, indeed? What except necessity or implacable vengeance could drive a man to this God-forsaken strip of coast? And you – you with money enough to live richly in God’s country, you whose very face in these boundaries invites imprisonment or death! What else could bring you? But I knew you’d come – and, so help me God, I’m innocent.”

A sudden idea struck Saxon. This might be the cue to draw on the frightened talker without self-revelation.

“What do you want me to believe were the real facts?” he demanded, with an assumption of the cold incredulity that seemed expected of him.

The other spoke eagerly.

“That morning when General Ojedas’ forces entered Puerto Frio, and the government seized me, you were free. Then, I was released, and you arrested. You drew your conclusions. Oh, they were natural enough. But, before heaven, they were wrong!”

Saxon felt that, until he had learned the full story, he must remain the actor. Accordingly, he allowed himself a skeptical laugh. Rodman, stung by the implied disbelief, took up his argument again:

“You think I’m lying. It sounds too fishy! Of course, it was my enterprise. It was a revolution of my making. You were called in as the small lawyer calls in the great one. I concede all that. For me to have sacrificed you would have been infamous, but I didn’t do it. I had been little seen in Puerto Frio. I was not well known. I had arranged it all from the outside while you had been in the city. You were less responsible, but more suspected. You remember how carefully we planned – how we kept apart. You know that even you and I met only twice, and that I never even saw your man, Williams.”

Through the bitterness of conviction, a part of Saxon’s brain seemed to be looking on impersonally and marveling, almost with amusement, at the remarkable position in which he found himself. Here stood a man before him with a pistol pressed close to his chest, threatening execution, denouncing, cursing, yet all the while giving evidence of terror, almost pleading with his victim to believe his story! It was the armed man who was frightened, who dreaded the act he declared he was about to commit. And, as Saxon stood listening, it dawned upon him, in the despair of the moment, that it was a matter of small concern to himself whether or not the other fired. The story he had heard had already done the injury. The bullet would be less cruel… Rodman went on:

“I bent every effort to saving you, but Williams had confessed. He was frightened. It was his first experience. He didn’t know of my connection with the thing. So help me God, that is the true version.”

The story sickened Saxon, coming to him as it did in a form he could no longer disbelieve. He raised his hands despairingly. At last, he heard the other’s voice again.

“When the scrap ended, and you were in power, I had gone. I was afraid to come back. I knew what you would think, and then, after you left the country, I couldn’t find where you had gone.”

“You may believe me or not,” the painter said apathetically, “but I have forgotten all that. I have no resentment, no wish for vengeance. I had not even suspected you. I give you my word on that.”

“Of course,” retorted Rodman excitedly, “you’d say that. You’re looking down a gun-barrel. You’re talking for your life. Of course, you’d lie.”

Then, the revolutionist did a foolish and unguarded thing. He came a step nearer, and pressed the muzzle closer against Saxon’s chest, his own eyes glaring into those of his captive. The movement threw Saxon’s hands out of his diminished field of sight. In an instant, the painter had caught the wrist of the slighter man in a grip that paralyzed the hand, and forced it aside. The pistol fell from the nerveless fingers, and dropped clattering to the flagstones. As it struck, Saxon swept it backward with his foot.

Rodman leaped frantically backward, and stood for a moment rearranging his crumpled cuff with the dazed manner of a man who hopes for no quarter. His lower jaw dropped, and he remained trembling, almost idiotic of mien. Then, as Saxon picked up the weapon and stood fingering its trigger, the filibuster drew himself up really with dignity. He stretched out both empty hands, and shrugged his shoulders.

The fear of an enemy silently stalking him had filled his days with terror. Now that he regarded death as certain, his cowardice dropped away like a discarded cloak.

“I don’t ask much,” he said simply; “only, for God’s sake kill me here! Don’t surrender me to the government! At least, let the other fellows know that I was dead before their plans were betrayed.”

“I told you,” said Saxon in a dull voice, “that I had no designs on you. I meant it! I told you I had forgotten. I meant it!”

As he spoke, Saxon’s head dropped forward on his chest, and he stood breathing heavily. The moonlight, falling full on his face, showed such heart-broken misery as might have belonged to the visage of some unresting ghost in an Inferno. His eyes were the eyes of utter despair, and the hand that held the pistol hung limp at his side, the weapon lying loose in its palm. Rodman stood wide-eyed before him. Had he already been killed and returned to life, he could hardly have been more astonished, and, when Saxon at last raised his face and spoke again, the astonishment was greater than ever.

“Take your gun,” said the painter, raising his hand slowly, and presenting the weapon stock first. “If you want to kill me – go ahead.”

Rodman, for an instant, suspected some subterfuge; then, looking into the eyes before him, he realized that they were too surcharged with sadness to harbor either vengeance or treachery. He could not fathom the meaning, but he realized that from this man he had nothing to fear. He slowly reached out his hand, and, when he had taken the pistol, he put it away in his pocket.

Saxon laughed bitterly.

“So, that’s the answer!” he muttered.

Without a word, the painter turned, and walked toward the front of the cathedral; without a word, Rodman fell in by his side, and walked with him. When they had gone a square, Saxon was again himself except for a stonily set face. Rodman was wondering how to apologize. Carter had never been a liar. If Carter said he had no thought of vengeance, it was true, and Rodman had insulted him with the surmise.

Finally, the thin man inquired in a different and much softer voice:

“What are you doing in Puerto Frio?”

“It has nothing to do with revenge or punishment,” replied Saxon, “and I don’t want to hear intrigues.”

A quarter of an hour later, they reached the main plaza, Rodman still mystified and Saxon walking on aimlessly at his side. He had no definite destination. Nothing mattered. After a long silence, Rodman demanded:

“Aren’t you taking a chance – risking it in Puerto Frio?”

“I don’t know.”

There was another pause, broken at last by Rodman:

“Take this from me. Get at once in touch with the American legation, and keep in touch! Stand on your good behavior. You may get away with it.” He interrupted himself abruptly with the question: “Have you been keeping posted on South American affairs of late?”

“I don’t know who is President,” replied Saxon.

“Well, I’ll tip you off. The only men who held any direct proof about – about the $200,000 in gold that left about the same time you did” – Saxon winced – “went into oblivion with the last revolution. Time is a great restorer, and so many similar affairs have intervened that you are probably forgotten. But, if I were you, I would get through my affairs early and – beat it. It’s a wise boy that is not where he is, when he’s wanted by some one he doesn’t want.”

Saxon made no reply.

“Say,” commented the irrepressible revolutionist, as they strolled into the arcade at the side of the main plaza, “you’ve changed a bit in appearance. You’re a bit heavier, aren’t you?”

Saxon did not seem to hear.

The plaza was gay with the life of the miniature capital. Officers strolled about in their brightest uniforms, blowing cigarette smoke and ogling the señoritas, who looked shyly back from under their mantillas.

From the band-stand blared the national air. Natives and foreigners sauntered idly, taking their pleasure with languid ease. But Rodman kept to the less conspicuous sides and the shadows of the arcade, and Saxon walked with him, unseeing and deeply miserable.

Between the electric glare of the plaza and the first arc-light of the Calle Bolivar is a corner comparatively dark. Here, the men met two army officers in conversation. Near them waited a handful of soldiers. As the Americans came abreast, an officer fell in on either side of them.

“Pardon, señors,” said one, speaking in Spanish with extreme politeness, “but it is necessary that we ask you to accompany us to the Palace.”

The soldiers had fallen in behind, following. Now, they separated, and some of them came to the front, so that the two men found themselves walking in a hollow square. Rodman halted.

“What does this signify?” he demanded in a voice of truculent indignation. “We are citizens of the United States!”

“I exceedingly deplore the inconvenience,” declared the officer. “At the Palace, I have no doubt, it will be explained.”

“I demand that we be taken first to the United States Legation,” insisted Rodman.

The officer regretfully shook his head. “Doubtless, señors,” he assured them, “your legation will be immediately communicated with. I have no authority to deviate from my orders.”