Flames Coming out of the Top

by Norman Collins

  It was nearly eleven o’clock when Dunnett reached the Compañia Muras. A small crowd was collected around the gateway. The object of their curiosity was one of the white stucco gateposts which had been knocked down on its side and had shed its stucco in great flakes across the roadway. As a spectacle it lacked perhaps some of the finer points: it was all climax. But the crowd was exhibiting its national genius for sensation. It stood round and chattered and gesticulated; when one of the children bolder than the rest picked up a piece of stucco as a memento and brandished it above his head the onlookers became quite out of hand for a moment: they all wanted a piece of stucco as a memento.

  Dunnett pushed his way through them without pausing. They seemed to respect authority. Only the elderly negro who had apparently appointed himself custodian to this treasure interfered with him. He hobbled forward, his lips slavering with excitement. “Señor,” he exclaimed delightedly. “The gatepost. Last night. One of the lorries. The driver had been drinking. First to one side and then to the other. And then, crash.” The negro threw up his hands to indicate the magnitude of the impact and tried to catch Dunnett by the arm. “Ruin everywhere. If you wait I’ll show you where it hit.”

  When he had thrown the old man off, Dunnett looked at the compound. It was tracked and counter-tracked by the marks of lorries; they ran and crossed each other like the lines at a railway junction. Evidently there had been great activity at the Compañia Muras last night.

  The polite, beautiful youth was ready for him when he got to the office. He had evidently seen Dunnett’s approach, and was standing at the door, smiling and bowing. The German clerks did not pause to look up; to all appearances they might have been working without stopping ever since he last saw them. Dunnett walked past them into the inner-room where the ledgers were kept. The day sheets which had been found with so much difficulty were now on the table ready. He did not doubt that one by one he would be able to extract the other ledgers as he needed them.

  To anyone seriously interested in book-keeping, the ledgers were significant and revealing pieces of work. So far as the initial entries were concerned, everything was superficially all right. The totals at so much a gross, for bars of soap and packets of brass screws and tins of oil, had been correctly and painstakingly extended. Even the daily totals were beyond criticism. But there, good book-keeping stopped. Another and less precise pen had been through afterwards adjusting things to suit its own fancy. Twelve gross of this or that had been altered by progressive stages to ten, nine, eight and a half, and seven gross, and fifteen hundredweight of soft sugar had somehow dwindled to eleven. The total on the page had been suitably diminished as though to prove that this decimation of stock was not an illusion. But whoever had made the alteration had stopped at that point. His attention had not proceeded so far as the daily total. That remained at its original optimistic estimate. And the monthly total was similarly untouched. It was a smiling caricature of its correct self.

  After putting in another two hours’ work on this remarkable document Dunnett rang the bell and summoned Señor Olivares. At first, the man tried to deny everything; the books, he said, had not been touched since the original entries were made—they had remained where they ought to be in the firm’s safe. Confronted by the evidence he became stubborn. He insisted that the alterations in different coloured ink were corrections; and having made the suggestion he stuck to it. When Dunnett pointed out that the alterations had been made by someone extraordinarily unacquainted with the finer points of book-keeping, the man became bewildered. On being told that the whole ledger was meaningless, he hung his head in contrition. He brightened only when the idea of the dishonest clerk occurred to him. He heaped all the accumulations of blame on to the unfortunate youth’s shoulders.

  “Very well,” said Dunnett. “It’s perfectly simple. We’ll check it.”

  “We’ll do what?” Señor Olivares asked aghast. “We’ll check it.”

  “But how?”

  “By going over to the store rooms and seeing which of the entries is right.”

  “But how can we know what has been sold already?”

  “We’ll take the sales ledger with us.”

  “But naturally they will agree with what is written here.”

  “That’s why we’ll take the invoices with us when we go.”

  “Invoices?”

  “Yes; you keep them, don’t you?”

  “Not after they have been entered in the ledger.”

  “So if the ledger was cooked there would be no way of detecting it?”

  “Cooked?”

  “Yes; faked; dressed-up, falsified. There’d be no finding it out, would there?”

  The chief book-keeper remained deep in thought for a minute. Then his face cleared. “No,” he said. “I don’t think there would.”

  “So there’s nothing for it but for me to write for copies of the invoices?”

  “Copies of invoices?”

  “So that I can check up the ledger.”

  “I see,” the chief ledger clerk’s face became downcast again. Evidently the prospect failed to please him. “It seems a very drastic measure,” he said.

  “It’s what I’m going to do,” Dunnett assured him. “And there’s something else I’m going to do.”

  “What is that, please?”

  “I’m going to take stock of what there is in the store rooms at the present moment.”

  Señor Olivares fairly jumped out of his chair. “No,” he said, “you mustn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I could not allow it.”

  “When did you have authority to say what I could do?”

  “It is an insult to my book-keeping. I must forbid it.”

  “You can forbid it just as much as you like. I’m going to make a check in those stock rooms.”

  For a moment Dunnett and Señor Olivares stood still looking at each other: it was the nearest thing that had yet come to an open row. Then Señor Olivares moved hurriedly to the door and stood in front of it, his arms outstretched. He remained there like a man crucified. “No one,” he said, “can be permitted to visit the stock rooms.”

  He was a small man and, at the moment, he looked a small and very frightened man. His close, black eyes had the fixed, unblinking stare of a bird’s as he saw Dunnett approach.

  “Are you going to get out of my way?” Dunnett asked.

  “It is not allowed.”

  “Who said that it isn’t allowed?”

  “Señor Muras.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “This morning. He gave orders that no one was to approach.”

  “But he told me yesterday that I was free to go anywhere I wanted. You’re making a very bad mistake.”

  “Yesterday is not this morning,” Señor Olivares replied gravely. “It is this morning that all visits are forbidden.”

  It was at that point that Mr. Verking’s injunction about treating foreigners so that they knew who was master in their own country came back to him in a flash. “Get out of my way,” he said, “before I get you out of it.”

  “Never,” said Señor Olivares and stuck up his delicate ivory fists in a fighting attitude.

  The moment Dunnett had closed upon him he regretted it. Señor Olivares was so diminutive. It was like grappling with a well-dressed child. His wrists, when Dunnett seized them, were like a girl’s. But he put up a remarkably efficient struggle. He fought as though, if not his honour, at least his job were at stake. And his look of neatness and distinction vanished in the encounter. His front stud flew off like a stone from a catapult and his collar gaped into a pair of spreading white wings. His hair, too, which had lain along his head in smooth, satin-like folds, became dishevelled and stood up in a crest of points. Only his insistence remained. “Please not to struggle,” he kept repeating. “It is not allowed to visit the stock rooms.”

  When Dunnett really got hold of the little man, he whisked him clean off his feet like a danc
er and swung him behind him. It was all over in a moment and Señor Olivares was too much surprised to protest. He stood where Dunnett placed him, his lower lip quivering. From his expression Dunnett expected him to burst into tears. But in that he misjudged him. For Señor Olivares, silently and without any fuss, was whipping himself into a fury. He sprang, just as Dunnett opened the door.

  Outside on the mat, Señor Muras was waiting.

  Impressions are formed quickly at such moments. It occurred to Dunnett in the instant he saw Señor Muras standing there that he was not entirely unprepared for what was happening; it was as though he had been outside all the time listening to what had been going on. But even if that were so, it availed him nothing in the result. For no one could have anticipated Señor Olivares’s leap. At one moment Señor Muras was regarding Dunnett with his condescending, slightly contemptuous smile and at the next a thin, wiry figure was flying through the air to land on Dunnett’s shoulder. Under the suddenness of the shock Dunnett gave way completely. He went down on his knees and his head went into Señor Muras’s stomach. When he came to look back on it afterwards it seemed to have gone in a surprisingly long way. It certainly produced a long gasp of astonishment from Señor Muras. He collapsed heavily forward on top of Dunnett and remained there frantically swallowing at air. He was thus in his new position brought face to face with Señor Olivares, who was now struggling desperately to get to his feet again. And it was then that Dunnett saw a gesture on the part of Señor Muras that he was to remember on several occasions during the months that were to follow; something that became in the end inextricably knit-up with his whole reading of the man. Señor Muras waited until his chief book-keeper was almost on his feet again—indeed he partly helped him there—and then he struck him full across his mouth with the back of his hand. It was not in some ways a particularly powerful blow. But Señor Muras was wearing two large rings on that hand and, as he struck, there was the sound of something hard— a diamond perhaps—striking Señor Olivares’s little yellow teeth. Blood immediately began to flow from the man’s lips; and as Dunnett picked himself up from underneath them he saw Señor Muras do the same thing again—not a violent blow, but a slow, calculating stroke directed full in the face of a man whose whole means of livelihood would not allow him to strike back.

  When Señor Muras saw that Dunnett was watching him, he smiled. “The man was out of his mind,” he apologised. “I had to adopt sharp measures to bring him round.” He turned to Señor Olivares, who was mopping his streaming chin with a handkerchief, and said, as though completing a scientific demonstration, “You see he is quite normal again now. It was only a passing attack. No doubt it was the heat.”

  He began dusting his clothes as he spoke, and stood to one side for Señor Olivares to leave them. The little man went by without a word. He had stopped dabbing at his lips and had now produced a pocket comb which he was using as he walked. It was evident from every gesture that he was trying hard to revert to the normal tenor of office routine as quickly as possible.

  “May I have an explanation of this?” Dunnett demanded.

  Señor Muras affected surprise. “What can I say?” he asked. “I know nothing of the circumstances. No doubt it is the sun that is to blame. When he is quite recovered we will question him. I have never known him like this before.” He paused and smiled a trifle more broadly. “For a moment I almost thought that you and Señor Olivares had quarrelled about something.”

  “We had,” Dunnett replied briefly.

  “Indeed.” There was anxiety and concern in Señor Muras’s voice.

  “He refused to allow me to pass out of the room.”

  Señor Muras held up his hands in dismay. “Undoubtedly the sun,” he said. “What else could it be?”

  “It could be several things,” Dunnett replied slowly. “It might have been that he did not want me to see inside the stock rooms.”

  “But why?”

  “That is what I wish to find out.”

  “Naturally.” Señor Muras linked his arm through Dunnett’s and led him gently in the direction of his private office. “If you will forgive my saying so, Mr. Dunnett,” he said gently and almost reprovingly, “you fail to make allowances for temporary failings. Señor Olivares is an excellent servant—obedient, faithful and reliable—but no discernment, no imagination. Unusual circumstances are quite beyond him; I have noticed it before. He is unable to distinguish between the general and the particular, between the other officers of the company and yourself.”

  Dunnett removed his arm from the encompassing embraces of Señor Muras. “I’m afraid I haven’t understood,” he replied briefly.

  Señor Muras lifted his hands again. “How could you be expected to do so?” he asked. “I have not yet explained myself. But the facts are very simple. It is merely that I gave orders that no one of the staff was to be allowed in any of the store rooms and Señor Olivares misunderstood my instructions.”

  “May I ask why no one is to be allowed there?”

  “Because we are stocktaking,” Señor Muras explained. “And where there are loiterers about things have a way of disappearing. To you, brought up in England, that may seem very strange. But with us you must believe me that it is so. The experience with the dishonest clerk, remember. It was all very disagreeable.”

  “And when will this stocktaking be over?”

  Señor Muras considered the point for a moment, his eyes almost shut; almost, but not quite. Dunnett had the odd sensation that he was being turned over and inspected. “In about a week,” Señor Muras replied. “We generally do one wholesale house at a time; it may take seven days to get through with it or it may take more. The rooms are solid with merchandise. The one thing we have to avoid is unnecessary interruption.”

  “Am I an unnecessary interruption?”

  “I trust not,” Señor Muras answered. “I see no reason why you should be.”

  “What exactly do you mean by that?”

  “I mean,” said Señor Muras slowly, “that, so far as I or anyone at the Compañia Muras are concerned, there is no reason why you should even go near the stock rooms this week. You naturally wish to complete your work and return to England; you feel all the time that you are intruding. Let me assure you that this is not so. We feel privileged to have you with us, absolutely privileged. We are not at your service merely to-morrow or the next day, but next week or next month as well—whenever you care to call upon us. Might I suggest that it would be a very charming act on your part if you agreed to accommodate us in this matter?”

  They had come to Señor Muras’s private office and Señor Muras stood politely to one side for Dunnett to pass. Then he turned and regarded him. “If I might say so,” he remarked, “you are looking very far from well. You are working too hard. Giving yourself no time to recuperate from the voyage before you plunge yourself into business ashore.”

  “I’ve never felt better in my life,” Dunnett assured him.

  Señor Muras shook his head. “It is a treacherous climate remember, Mr. Dunnett. White men can break up under it easily. In places like Amricante it is the heat; and up in La Paz it is the rarefied air that makes life difficult. The siesta is indispensable. Yet how few foreigners learn to take it. For my part I should suggest a week or so in sight-seeing. Trips on horseback to get the salt water out of your bones. Or motoring—my car is at your service whenever you call for it. The important thing is to rest. I ask you again, Mr. Dunnett, do you not think that perhaps you could delay taking your own check of our stock rooms just for a few days—until we are clear ourselves? I ask it as a small personal favour.”

  Dunnett paused. “Very well, then,” he said. “If it’s more convenient I’ll take stock next week. I’m rather enjoying those books of yours.” He did not doubt that somehow or other he could get into those stock rooms if he really set his mind to it.

  Señor Muras’s face broadened into a circumscribing smile. “That is extraordinarily charming of you” he said. “Extra
-ordinarily charming. Some day I hope I shall be able to repay it. In the meantime there is another matter. I have a message from my daughter. She wishes to organise a hunt for you. Not the sort of thing you are used to in England, but they tell me amusing enough of its kind. One of the cattle hands arranged it. It is he who looks after the dogs. The smell of a coyote, they say, is very powerful.”

  When Dunnett left the Compañia Muras that evening he was suffering from that dejection which descends upon an orderly mind in the presence of chaos. He was tired of columns of figures which had ceased to bear their primary relation to mathematical truth. It was not exactly that the books of the Compañia Muras were in disorder; it was rather that it seemed that they had imposed their own laws of order upon themselves. Nothing quite resembled established practice. As he worked through them Harold felt as though at any moment he would come upon the clue that was missing, would stumble upon the solution to the apparently insoluble equation of sale and purchase which lurked somewhere in their pages. But at six o’clock it had still escaped him.

  He had not gone a hundred yards from the gates when a figure detached itself from the shadow of the wall and began to come towards him. It was more like a flopping scarecrow than a man. His clothes, several sizes too large, had been turned up and belted, until they no longer resembled clothes. His trousers in particular were disgraceful. They did not even conceal what they were intended to make secret. When he spoke he looked up sideways from under the bent shiny peak of his cap.

  “Are you English?” he asked,

  “Yes, I’m English,” Dunnett answered.

  “Do you want a good time?”

  Dunnett shook his head.

  “Nice clean girls,” the man continued. “Make you forget everything.” He spoke without enthusiasm. He had a dull, flat voice as though all the life in it had been trampled out. The voice, however, had retained its authentic flavour of Cockney. It was as much a piece of London as Ludgate Circus.

  “Who the hell are you?” Dunnett asked.

  “I’m down on my luck,” the man replied. “I’m a sailor without a ship.”