The Three Sentinels

by Geoffrey Household

  ‘But, all the same, you are here alone.’

  ‘And you, too! And do not forget it!’

  ‘Don Gil, I am tired of telling people that one cannot negotiate with a dead man.’

  ‘Enough conversation! You said at the committee that no one would ever drive us from our homes. Were you speaking for the Company?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then what am I doing here?’

  ‘Sit down, man! I was speaking for myself.’

  ‘If you mean it, that’s good enough for some of us.’

  ‘Don Gil, after a compliment like that I must insist that you take a brandy.’

  Delgado this time could not refuse. Mat observed that the slack, elastic line of his orator’s mouth was equally well designed for wrapping round a fat cigar.

  ‘I intend that any of you shall be able to rent his house whether he works for the Company or not. But you cannot call off the boycott on my word alone. The Company must formally agree.’

  ‘Who says we will call it off?’

  ‘Nobody yet. There have to be votes in your committee and in London as well. I shall carry the day. Can you?’

  Delgado sipped his brandy in silence and at last remarked that half the field would do whatever Rafael Garay said.

  ‘What happens then?’

  ‘Rafael is a man of peace, Don Mateo. He shows no mercy.’

  A paradox on the face of it! One never knew what would come out of these intelligent fellows whose only education was raw life. Mat saw what he meant. Britain and Hitler, for example. There was a limit to tolerance. Peace and mercy were two entirely different things. The more you believed in one, the less you could afford of the other.

  ‘Then we shall be back at the beginning.’

  ‘That will depend on you and him. He believes what you tell him.’

  ‘And you don’t?’

  ‘That’s as may be. Now that we know each other, what was your game with the Charca? It’s in your interest that there should be no water for the land.

  ‘They say that milk only flows from a contented cow.’

  ‘You’ve got one hell of a farmyard against you. Up here between the ridges they do not trust you, Don Mateo. They say you are paid to keep the boycott going. They say they had to give up their policemen, and that women and children dare not go out at night.’

  Annoying nonsense, but to be expected. It was difficult for them to see sense in all his quiet building of bridges. Yet libels and gossip were only flies to be brushed away. They had no solidarity like the knock-out punch which was being prepared for Garay behind his back.

  ‘And what does your waiter friend tell you that they say about me in London?’

  That at last got him a laugh. Delgado appreciated a good thrust in his own style.

  He saw him to the gate and went to bed contented. Results were good for a first interview. It had not been very cordial or conclusive but Delgado himself had asked for it and his intention of proposing a return to work was clear. The collapse of the boycott might even be without violence if provocation were avoided. That, as Delgado had said, could well depend on the friendship between Garay and himself. A strong word, friendship. Better call it a lack of bitterness.

  After breakfast the managerial car was waiting for him without the dutiful Lorenzo. He asked if he were ill. The substitute driver supposed he was; at any rate Lorenzo had not turned up for work. Mat thought no more of it and gave orders that someone should go to his room and see if he wanted anything. Lorenzo was probably suffering from a hang-over—Cabo Desierto’s occupational disease—being among the few workers with enough money to buy one. It was hard to imagine him ill; he had the sort of inhospitable body which germs bounced off.

  Mat looked forward to telling Bill Gateson of his success. It would be a relief to share out even a little of the load. With all his faults, Bill was loyal and could deal discreetly with those libellous rumours up in the ghetto. He might also have some ideas—though sure to be too drastic—on how and where the intervention of the State could be valuable.

  When the Field Manager came in, Mat was lounging in one of the deep chairs by the window of his office—an indication that there was no brisk morning business which demanded desk or telephone. Gateson was in a far from sunny mood. One could always tell. He was a handsome man with sculptured, rather Italianate features. If frustrated or out of his depth the straight mouth was inclined to become loose at the corners and the fine nose to droop over it—possibly because he tended to look down instead of facing the world with his usual, not unattractive touch of vanity.

  Mat told him that there was at last a chance of a split in the boycott committee. They couldn’t count on it, but should start planning for a three-cornered battle rather than the present solid opposition.

  ‘It never looked less like it to me,’ Gateson said. ‘Do you know that black bastard Garay has put a guard on the Charca?’

  ‘Yes. I practically told him to.’

  ‘You! You told him?’

  ‘Why not? I don’t think it had ever occurred to him that the dam could be emptied without his men being able to do anything about it.’

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’

  ‘He asked me just that. I didn’t tell him in so many words. The answer is the Union plus a trained saboteur with plenty of explosives and an hour or two to place them.’

  ‘But think of the loss of life there would be!’

  A curious remark, that was. It did not fit at all with that first indignant snap of reaction when he heard that Mat was responsible for the guard.

  There was no one in the communal lands overnight and the nearest houses were on rising ground. Even supposing that a pair of lovers were neatly tucked in between wheat and cane, they would have time to run. No saboteur could make any impression on the dam itself; he would have to go for the pipes, the downstream valve or the gates. That inevitably emptied the Charca but not in one solid cataract. As an engineer, Gateson must see that. So why did he mention loss of life when he knew there would not be any?

  Registering horror. Protecting himself from suspicion. God Almighty, of course he was! Gateson and Birenfield had been in it with the Union from the word go. And he had never suspected it for a moment. Well, set a trap and get the vile business over! One could stick a head out of the window and puke on the palm tree afterwards.

  ‘The Union doesn’t care about loss of life,’ he said. ‘And obviously they intended to put the blame on us.’

  ‘That was why you warned Garay?’

  ‘Of course. If only there were some way of proving that the Company was not responsible!’

  ‘I could suggest one, Mat.’

  ‘Well, go ahead,’ he answered cordially.

  ‘I thought it best to make an up-to-date inventory of our explosives in case the store was broken into. That was before your arrival. I made González check it and gave him two copies, one for himself and one for his chiefs.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘If the explosive used on the Charca was something we never used and hadn’t got, it would let us out at any enquiry.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Gelignite.’

  ‘I see. So you and Birenfield planned to break the boycott that way?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I think you do. At any rate, if you didn’t plan it you made no effort to stop the Union.’

  ‘And why the hell should we? It’s a gift!’

  ‘To destroy all our cultivated land?’

  ‘Starve ’em out. No nonsense about living without wages then!’

  ‘It is not my policy to force men into desperation, Bill.’

  ‘No, I’ll bet it isn’t! Your way is to do damn-all except walk around with that supercilious smile on your face.’

  ‘Do you find much to do in the office yourself?’

  ‘You know very well that I am working on plans for the new refinery.’

  He did indeed,
for it had been his own suggestion. A futile task. London would certainly send out its own men when the time came. But Gateson’s planning was sure to be elegant, and Henry Constantinides would find a use for it. He might well have it expensively printed with a coloured jacket, put it, as it were, on his back and peddle it round the City. Gateson was a master of his trade in spite of his limitations; and after all he and Birenfield had a case though their methods were nauseating. Courtesy must be preserved as long as possible.

  ‘The smile—well, well!’ Mat said with such humour as he could manage. ‘And I thought I was keeping up morale! It may be just that I have led a different sort of life to the rest of you.’

  ‘I’ll say you have! We all know you were down and out when you grabbed this job.’

  ‘It’s true there weren’t any offers from Standard Oil or the Bank of England. But what has that to do with it? All the more incentive to get our oil flowing!’

  ‘And a better incentive not to.’

  ‘How do you work that out, Bill?’

  ‘Is it possible that one of the majors is paying you to keep the boycott alive?’

  Certainly possible. At least three of the major oil companies were ready to buy before the boycott. The longer it lasted, the less the value of the field as a straightforward investment. So if the General Manager—this down and out fellow—could do with a fat credit in a Swiss bank account he had only to keep Cabo Desierto quietly heading towards insolvency.

  A thousand to one that the jealous Gateson was him self responsible for this ingenious slander! Mat felt his forehead going red with shock and anger. It had not happened often enough in his life for him to have learned to control the flush. Anger was turning Gateson white. Guilt as well, no doubt. It would not be fear since he did not think his General Manager worth fearing.

  It was time to put him out of pain—another sort of courtesy. He invited the beastly nakedness of power like some fool of an enemy commander who insisted on sacrificing his men for nothing. He had to be finished off so thoroughly that he would never be even a nuisance again.

  ‘Bill, has it ever occurred to you that Cabo Desierto is on my side?’

  ‘For God’s sake, it bloody well isn’t!’

  ‘Not up here yet, but down in the town. You would know it if you ever talked to anyone outside this office and the club.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘I mean that I could take over the police tomorrow from González if I didn’t prefer to work through him. I mean that I have no need to get you sacked and produce a flaming row between Chairman and Managing Director. I have only to make known what you and Birenfield intended and let nature take its course.’

  ‘Are you threatening to have me murdered?’

  ‘No, Bill. In fact I should put back a conspicuous police guard on your house to protect you, and see myself that it did. I should then dictate and collect signed statements from reliable citizens—which are so liable to be exaggerated in Latin countries. On the whole it seems likely that the Government would want you removed at once, of course to my great regret. Now, where is that gelignite?’

  ‘I swear I don’t know, Mat.’

  ‘But you know it is here.’

  ‘I think so. Birenfield gave me no details at all. He kept all the negotiations in his own hands.’

  ‘How far is Dave Gunner implicated?’

  ‘You’ve met him. You know what he is. If anyone had tried to put him in the picture, he’d have stopped them before they could begin. He just told Birenfield to cooperate in every way with the Union and he would back him to the hilt.’

  ‘A fine lump of jelly to fall back on! Very well, I shall have the stuff removed in the way it came and González will see that it is kept quiet.’

  ‘González isn’t in on this.’

  ‘No. Not altogether. But he knows the right address.’

  ‘Is there anything you want me to do?’

  ‘No. Keep your trap shut and play tennis! There’s no workable law of libel in this country, so I can’t stop you saying what you like about me. But God help you if you make one move to interfere!’

  When Gateson had gone, he gave himself five minutes to recover and then strolled into Pilar’s office, needing her company but certain that his superior secretary would be with the Birenfield-Gateson party if she knew anything at all of the difference of opinion. She looked up from her desk with a half smile and the usual neutrality of her large, brown eyes.

  ‘Your driver, Lorenzo. There is a message for you that he is not at his house and nobody knows where he is.’

  ‘González might know. I’ll ask him.’

  ‘Shall I get him for you?’

  ‘No. I’ll go down to the port. There was a launch last night which he might have taken. Did you tell Mr. Gate-son he was missing?’

  ‘The message was for you not him. Mr Gateson walked straight out.’

  ‘No pained smile for nurse?’

  ‘Mr. Darlow, I have no idea what is the matter with either of you, but you look as if you were being led out to be shot.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone led out to be shot. Got a mirror?’

  She took a small, gold mirror from her bag and handed it to him. Imperious. Pitying. And annoyed as well. He couldn’t imagine why she should be any of them.

  ‘I can’t see more than one eye. It’s bloodshot and has bags underneath. Orange washed with blue.’

  ‘Hold it farther away!’

  ‘Now I see what you mean. Game to the end. Gentlemen, the treasury is empty but I have served my country.’

  ‘And then you’d shake hands with the firing squad and ask after their children.’

  ‘Any objection?’

  ‘None at all. Do you remember asking me which side I was on?’

  ‘Stupid of me. Much too soon.’

  ‘Yes, but I nearly told you the truth. Which side would you be on if you were descended from Grandees of Spain who had lived on the same estate for four hundred years?’

  ‘Against the men, I suppose.’

  ‘Against everything! This silly, pretentious Company! These cowardly crooks of politicians! There was nothing then to take sides about.’

  ‘Well, if you look at it that way, there still isn’t.’

  ‘You notice nothing!’

  ‘Who noticed the carpet slippers?’

  ‘For the gardeners, yes!’

  ‘Always happier with the plain man,’ he answered uneasily.

  ‘Because you’re prejudiced. Because you think it’s easier to find people to your taste at the bottom of society. You! A grandee yourself if there ever was one! Don’t you see that is why you are trusted?’

  ‘I have just found out that I am thoroughly disliked, Pilar.’

  ‘Jesus, man! Do you want all of us?’

  It was the first time she had ever come out of her shell. If he’d got it right, she was trying to say that she was loyal to nothing but some quality she saw in him, putting her own name to it like most women. Just because he had always been able to handle local labour, it didn’t make him some sort of aristocrat. All the same, he could now count on her approval, and that was going to be a lot pleasanter than staring at palm trees. There was no more need to sneak out with hand-written letters to Henry or to disguise his own moods with a lot of cheerful poppycock. What magnificent eyes the woman had when she was angry! He told himself that he had to be very careful or Miss Pilar would be ordering him about.

  He asked her to radio an enquiry to the launch and to telephone Captain González that he was needed. Her answering smile was slightly ironical. It was the first time that he had arranged a delicate and dangerous conversation—or what could be one—while she was in the next-door office. But he had good reason for not going down to the port, apart from his new trust in her. A valued employee of the Company was missing. The General Manager should be seen to be throwing his weight about, not slipping off downtown and giving the tennis players still another impression that
he covered up idleness by an air of mystery.

  González arrived looking exceptionally well polished. There was no doubt that he felt more complimented when asked to call on the General Manager than he did when the Manager called on him. Odd, but understandable. He could think of himself as a valued staff officer rather than the little rat with whom one conspired in corners.

  Yes, Lorenzo’s disappearance had been reported and every effort was being made to find him. Mat was certain, however, that González had not heard a word of the missing man until he entered the building. A few whispered words with the porter or with some friendly clerk casually met in a passage had then revealed why he was wanted and allowed him, a couple of minutes later, to assume a pose of having been occupied since dawn with the investigation.

  Mat told him that the skipper of the launch had just replied that Lorenzo was not on board, and so it looked as if he had met with some accident.

  ‘If you approve I will have a word with the boycott committee,’ he said. ‘We can count on their help with a search party.’

  ‘It may not be so easy, Don Mateo.’

  ‘You once told me he was faithful to his uniform. What exactly did you mean?’

  Well, Lorenzo had no family. He lived in a company rooming house with three other employees who were foremen in the vehicle workshops. He had no known interests outside the Company and its cars. He was like a faithful dog, lost without a master.

  ‘Pepe tells me that he considered he belonged to Birenfield. Could he have run away?’

  ‘From you? Unthinkable!’

  No, it was not. It could well be that he had failed to give to this masterless man a proper feeling of friendly security.

  ‘We had little to say to each other and I did not let him drive enough.’

  ‘Where would he have run to?’ González asked.

  ‘Suicide, perhaps. One never knows what is at work inside these closed men.’

  ‘He has not enough imagination, Don Mateo. For your safety it was my duty to know everything about Lorenzo. He does not drink to excess. He has not got a woman. He does not go fishing. We must ask ourselves who had anything against him.’

  This was a shock. It had never entered Mat’s head that the man could be murdered. In prosperous times manslaughter, messy and in full view of a dozen witnesses, had not been uncommon. Secret assassination, however, was unheard of and unnatural. He considered González’s question in silence. There was only one intrigue which could have involved Lorenzo.