by A. A. Fair
The road was smooth. The car seemed eager to get going and I settled back to enjoy the scenery.
Rodolfo Maranilla sensed my mood. He kept over in his own corner, saying nothing, smoking a cigarette, smiling from time to time, his eyes twinkling at the blue smoke as though he liked the taste of the cigarette very much indeed. He paid absolutely no attention to the scenery. Evidently some quiet little joke of his own was as syrup in his thoughts.
We followed along a canyon with a stream sweeping down between ribbons of green fields which gradually became more narrow, until they pinched out entirely and left only the walls of the mountains. The mountains were still soft and green, dotted here and there with grazing cattle. High above us the crests knifed against ever-changing cloud formations, which boiled and writhed in the vortex of winds from the high places.
Señor Maranilla finished chain smoking his sixth cigarette. His eyes looked questioningly across at me.
“It’s all very beautiful,” I said.
He merely nodded.
I looked over at the bullet head of the chauffeur, sitting straight-backed in rigid immobility. “He’s going pretty fast. Does he know the way?”
“But perfectly.”
“I mean is he a skilful enough driver to handle a car like this on these roads at this speed?”
“But of course.”
I said, “He doesn’t look overly intelligent.”
“He is a good chauffeur.”
“A native of this country?”
“I believe so, yes. It is difficult, Señor Lam, to judge the characters of people of a foreign race—Or do you find it so?”
I said, “I don’t know This man looks rather stolid to me. I am wondering if his reaction time might be a little slow in case we met another car coming around a turn.”
Maranilla shook his head. “That I can vouch for. The man is quick as a cat. Have no fear of the road, Señor Lam.”
That settled that. We talked about the scenery for a while. Then a wildly driven car careening around a curve ahead made me grab for support.
Our driver was everything Maranilla had said. He seemed to be stolidly indifferent, but his big wrists twisted the wheel, seemingly within the same hundredth of a second that the other car came around the turn. We were past in a breathless rush that seemed to me to leave our wheels on the right hanging over a precipice, the left side of the car all but grazing the fenders of the other machine.
My heart, which had stopped beating, gave a wild throb and then raced until I had to cough.
Señor Maranilla, smoking a cigarette, kept his eyes on the trailing smoke, smiling dreamily at it, never even bothering to glance at the crazily driven car that went screaming past.
“Well, I guess you’re right,” I said, when I could talk.
Maranilla raised courteous eyebrows.
I nodded to the chauffeur.
“But of course,” Maranilla said, and let it go at that—a mere incident of travel, unworthy of notice.
The road dropped abruptly. Grazing country gave way to timbered jungles. The heat became oppressive, not that the thermometer seemed inordinately high but the heat permeated everywhere, closing us in as though it were a tangible substance. I took off my coat. My shirt was wet with perspiration and that perspiration evaporated but slowly, leaving my skin suffering from the warmth.
Near the middle of the afternoon we emerged on a sluggish, wide stream. Apparently at this time of year the water was relatively low, as wide gravel bars extended out into the current. We drove through a sleep-drugged little town and then took a narrow dirt road up to a wooden gate, over which a board carried the words, Double Clover Mine. Above the board was a big wooden horseshoe and enclosed in the horseshoe two four-leaf clovers cut from tin had been painted green. The buildings had been kept in repair, but certain signs indicated they were mostly of an ancient vintage.
A tall, thin man in sweat-soaked whites came to greet us. He was Felipe Murindo, the mine manager. Apparently he did not speak English.
This was a complication I hadn’t foreseen.
Señor Maranilla spoke in Spanish and Murindo listened with grave attention. He turned to me with a bow and a handshake.
Maranilla interpreted with a smooth, easy eloquence which made me feel I was getting only the general high spots by way of translation.
“I’ve explained to Murindo that you are a friend of the trustees, that you came to Colombia to look over the mine.”
“That,” I said, “is hardly correct.”
“Oh, it is near enough,” he said, smiling. “After all, one does not go into details with these people. One tells them what one wishes them to do and gives only short explanations. More than that is lost.”
But it didn’t sound to me as though Maranilla’s explanations were particularly short. Thereafter, he and Murindo engaged in voluble conversation, laying down a barrage of words at each other, interpolating their comments occasionally with shrugs of the shoulders and that peculiar long drawn out “no-o-o-o-o” with a rising inflection so typical of South Americans when they are engaged in something that is a first cousin to an argument.
We made a round of the mining properties, looking at the big flume which carried water down to the intake, inspecting the giant nozzle by which that water was thrown in a smashing stream against the dirt, washing it down over the riffles which caught the gold.
Felipe Murindo made explanations and comments. Maranilla interpreted them to me. I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t known in high school. Water was directed against the bank. This dissolved the dirt into a muddy stream and sent it over the boxes where the gold was saved.
I didn’t see anything to get excited about.
It was hot and sticky. I felt as though a million insects were crawling over my tortured skin. The wooden-faced chauffeur, evidently doubling as bodyguard, slopped doggedly along behind, a big six-gun dangling from one hip. I began to get an uneasy feeling about that chauffeur.
We got back to the mine office just as a dilapidated car came rattling and wheezing along the dirt road. A peculiar something about that car gave me a foreboding of trouble.
The car rattled to a stop. A nondescript native got out and leisurely walked around to its rear. I saw motion from within, someone struggling to get out. Then I had a glimpse of Bertha Cool’s flushed, perspiring face.
The driver was talking in Spanish.
I heard Bertha yell, “Get your damn garlic breath out of my face and open this door!”
The man made no attempt to open the door but kept tossing Spanish at Bertha.
Bertha pulled out one of the Spanish-English books you can buy at almost any newsstand south of the border and fingered through the pages while the man, becoming more vehement, gesticulated with arms and shoulders, waved his palms, and sputtered Spanish all over the place.
Finally Bertha found what she was looking for. She read from the book, “Ahb-rah lah poo-air-tah esstoyee ah-pray-soo-rah-doh.”
The man kept on talking.
Señor Maranilla looked at Bertha and then at me. “A friend of yours?” he asked.
“Why, yes,” I said, and hurried out to the car.
Bertha looked up at me and said, “For God’s sake, get this damn door open. I’m smothering in here and this so-and-so of a such-and-such has locked me in.”
Bertha had rolled the window all the way down. Her face pushed out at me and I thought for a minute she would try to climb through the door.
I said, “Well, well, well. If it isn’t my friend, Mrs. Cool. Well, this certainly is a surprise, seeing you down here.”
“You’re damn right,” Bertha said grimly.
I went on hurriedly: “I came down to look over some property. I have an eye open for some mining investments, and my friend, Señor Maranilla, of the state police, has kindly consented to show me the properties of the Double Clover Mine owned, I believe, by a Mr. Sharples and a Mr. Cameron.”
Bertha said angrily, “To hell with
that stuff. Get this door open.”
Maranilla bowed from the waist. “I beg the señora’s pardon,” he said. “Perhaps I might be of some assistance? Would you wish an interpreter?”
“Interpreter, hell!” Bertha stormed. “The sonuvabitch doesn’t know his own language. I’ve been reading to him out of this book just as plain as day. It says to get the door open—I’m in a hurry.”
Señor Maranilla was unsmiling. “The gentleman says he was to be paid an amount which leaves you in his debt by five pesos.”
“He’s a liar,” Bertha said. “I hired him to make this trip and he knew where he was going. I paid him, and that’s that.”
“But he insists the understanding was he would take you only to the little town some twelve kilometers up the road.”
“Well,” Bertha said, “they told me that the mine was there at the town.”
“But it is a difference of twelve kilometers,” Señor Maranilla said, smiling.
The driver of the disreputable car was nodding his head vehemently.
Bertha said, “That’s too much for twelve kilometers.”
“He wants you to be satisfied,” Señor Maranilla said gravely. “He says if you do not wish to pay him for taking you here, he will then take you back the twelve kilometers to the little town, as the bargain called for. He says you are a gracious lady and are to be satisfied.”
“The hell he will,” Bertha said. “And I’m no gracious lady. I’ll take his damn automobile to pieces. I’m getting out right here.”
The driver broke into more Spanish expostulations.
Señor Maranilla seemed to be gravely impartial, viewing the situation without humor.
If I’d thought there had been any chance of the driver taking Bertha back to the town and of his automobile staying in one piece until he could get her there, I’d have asked for nothing better. But I knew Bertha’s capacity for violence and doubted if the car could withstand her wrath. I said, “It’s all right. She’s a friend of mine.” I took out my purse and gave the driver his five pesos.
He was profuse in his thanks. He fitted a key to the door and held it open for Bertha.
Señor Maranilla said, “I have known this driver many years. He has fitted the rear door with locks so that passengers cannot alight until the fare has been adjusted to his satisfaction. I trust your friend has not been inconvenienced.”
I didn’t say anything to that. Bertha’s face told its own story.
Felipe Murindo said something to Maranilla and Maranilla interpreted to Bertha. The facilities of the Double Clover Mine, such as they were, were at the disposal of his distinguished visitor.
Bertha’s driver pulled baggage out of the car. Evidently Bertha had flounced off a plane, loaded her baggage into this decrepit vehicle, and started blindly out into the jungle.
From my standpoint the situation was complicated to the point of being scrambled.
We all went back to the mine office. Murindo dipped water from an olla, the moist surface of which seemed a cool oasis. But there was hardly enough evaporation to keep the water cool.
Bertha drank two big dippers, heaved a sigh, and said, “That’s a little better, but damn little,” and dropped into a chair
“My God, what a place!” she snorted.
Rodolfo Maranilla said, “I don’t think I fully understood the object of your visit, señora.”
Bertha glared at him with her little suspicious eyes cold as diamonds against the hot flush of her perspiring skin “I guess you don’t,” she snapped, “not unless you’re a mind-reader.”
Maranilla said suddenly, “Wait here.” He nodded to his chauffeur and the two went out. A moment later I heard the hum of the motor in their car.
“This guy speak English?” Bertha asked, jerking her head toward Murindo.
“Apparently not,” I said, “but you can’t ever trust them. It’s just as well to do a little circumlocution.”
“Go ahead and circumlocute then,” Bertha retorted angrily.
I said, “In discussing the purpose underlying the change of environment, in my own case I have assumed the position of one pursuing profits in distributed metallurgy.”
Bertha said, “Well, as far as I am concerned, I’m not chasing around the country throwing money to the birdies. When I travel, I’m on an expense account.”
“A matter of an adequate retainer?”
“He’s good for it,” Bertha said.
“Without mentioning any names, is it someone, perhaps, who has previously desired us to do something?” Bertha glared at me and said, “I don’t know why the hell I should bare my soul to you. You went flying off at a tangent. God knows what you’re working on now. I presume there’s some little trollop at the bottom of it. You always were a pushover for a broad.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Why be so churned up about those two baboons?” Bertha asked.
I said, “One of them is a brainy man. Perhaps both are.”
“Nuts,” Bertha retorted. “Hell, you talk to these babies and they just look at you. Here they are within two days’ plane flight of the United States and you’d think they’d begin to wake up and learn a little English.”
I said, “You’re within two days’ flight of this country. How much Spanish have you learned?”
Bertha picked up an old newspaper, started fanning herself, and said, “Go to hell.”
There was silence for a while, broken only by the droning flies. Felipe Murindo sat down and rolled himself a cigarette, lit it, and beamed at us with an inclusive smile.
Bertha Cool picked up her phrase book, said laboriously, “Ee-ay-loh,” and then turned her page, ran her finger down a column and said, “Sair-vay-sah?”
The mine manager shook his head. He expostulated in Spanish. He spoke slowly and punctuated his speech with gestures.
Bertha looked at me. “You getting any of this damn lingo, Donald?”
“A word here and there. I get the general drift. There’s no ice-cold beer to be had. If you want it, you go to town—and then it’s hot.”
Bertha said, “Hot beer. Hell!”
I said, “Be careful not to refute the premise of my initial explanation to the local constabulary.”
Bertha snorted and said, “That damn water slides down my gullet and gets lost. I feel just as thirsty after I drink it as I did before. Cripes, it’s hot!”
I said, “You’ll get accustomed to it in a few days. You’ve been living in an entirely different climate. Your blood’s thicker.”
“A lot of help you are.”
“Did you expect me to do something about it? Don’t run up your blood pressure and it won’t seem so hot.”
“Fry me for an oyster!” Bertha exclaimed angrily. “Have some damn highway robber lock you in a car, jolt you over the roughest roads in the world, stick you seventeen prices for doing it, and then you tell me not to run up my blood pressure. What the hell do you suppose those two guys are doing and where have they gone?”
I glanced significantly at the mine manager. “I wouldn’t know.”
“You say that man’s a member of the state police?” Bertha asked.
I nodded.
“And the other one’s his chauffeur?”
“Chauffeur, bodyguard, and, apparently, general assistant.”
Bertha said, “He hasn’t got brains enough to come in out of the rain—the chauffeur, I mean.”
“The other one’s got sense enough to make up for both of them,” I said.
“Don’t be too sure,” Bertha admonished. “Personally, I haven’t seen anyone yet that could even hold a candle to one of our hard-boiled cops. Sellers, for instance.”
“I see,” I said.
Bertha’s face flushed an angry red. “Now what the hell are you insinuating?”
“Nothing.”
She simply glared at me.
“Let’s be careful not to get our wires crossed,” I warned. “I’ve told you why I was here. I have an i
dea you’re going to be questioned as to what you’re doing here.”
“Let them question and be damned,” Bertha said. “I guess I’m entitled to travel if I want to.”
“Why to this particular place?” I asked.
“Because I was told to.”
“You mean you were instructed to come here?”
“Good heavens! You don’t think I’d come to a dump like this for pleasure, do you?”
“And the person who gave you those instructions was a client?”
“Naturally.”
I glanced across at Felipe Murindo. He was smoking a cigarette. Apparently his mind was a million miles away but I couldn’t be certain. The way things were going, I didn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.
Bertha’s gaze followed mine. She appraised Murindo and showed quite plainly she considered him entirely out of the running.
“When did you see him?”
“I didn’t.”
“How did you get the instructions?”
“A letter.”
I was turning that over in my mind when I heard automobiles. There were two of them. I went to the porch of the little mine office and looked out.
Maranilla was in the lead, his chauffeur driving the car with that same stolid stupidity of expression. Behind Maranilla’s big shiny car was a decrepit rattletrap that looked to be even older than the one in which Bertha Cool had been jolted over the roads.
In that second automobile sat a driver in a rumpled khaki uniform. Behind him sat another uniformed man with a gun and a bayonet. Two other men were in the car. I couldn’t be certain of their identities until I got a good look at them. They were Harry Sharples and Robert Hockley. They looked not only the worse for wear, but as though they had staked their last cent on a losing horse
Maranilla’s chauffeur got out and held the door open. Maranilla came strolling toward the mine office with easy nonchalance, apparently utterly oblivious of the prisoners who were being herded out of the rattletrap car.
“Broil me for a steak!” Bertha said under her breath. “Where the hell did he come from?”
Maranilla made a little, casual gesture, a mere flip of his wrist, but the guards interpreted it and halted the prisoners twenty feet from the porch.