“You cannot do that!”
“Tut, tut, man. Of course I can. Or are you forgetting again? When you borrowed that money, you signed a paper giving me the right to take your land in full settlement if you were ever behind in your payments. You’re behind now, and I have to get my money back somehow.”
“If you do that, how shall I live?”
“You’ll get a job,” Mr Quire said heartily, “like anyone else. All these new factories are crying for workers, and they train you free. I’ll be glad to give you a recommendation.”
“But my wife, señor—”
“Probably I can get her a job too,” Mr Quire said magnanimously. “Between you, you might easily earn more than you ever could from growing tomatoes.”
“She will have a new baby very soon,” Gamma said in a dull voice. “And already there are four to take care of…”
Mr Quire put a last large piece of pork chop into his mouth, and mopped his plate with a piece of bread.
“Really,” he said, “sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever understand you people. I suppose most of you are Catholics and the rest are just irresponsible. Anyway, you breed like rabbits and then you expect special consideration because you’ve got too many children to support. I’m truly sorry for you, but it isn’t my fault that you’ve got a bigger family than you can afford. You should have thought about that before you had them. Why, if I gave money away to everyone on this island who just happens to be poor, I’d be a pauper myself before dinner.”
Gamma sat with his shoulders hunched, staring haggardly at the table.
Presently he said, with a sort of frightened hesitancy, “You spoke of the new factories, señor. My land is on the main road they are building over to Ponce. Perhaps some company would like to buy it. We could sell it for a good price, and I would pay you back and have something to start over again.”
“I’ll certainly have to try and sell it to somebody,” said Mr Quire. “But it isn’t your land any more. It’s mine, to do what I like with—or will be as soon as I record that paper you signed.”
Gamma raised his eyes slowly, and they glowed with a dark pain and understanding that made them hot pools in his tense tortured face.
“Señor,” he said, “they speak of you as a good man, but now I think you are a devil!”
Mr Elmer Quire sat quite still, but a deep flush crept out of his collar and climbed up into the roots of his hair, mantling his rosy complexion with rich purple as it rose. His bright eyes were no longer twinkling, but became glassy and seemed to protrude. His head still kept up its slight monotonous nodding, but now the movement seemed to acquire a sinister and deliberate emphasis.
At last his voice came, a hoarse choking splutter of incredibly low-pitched violence.
“How dare you. How dare you speak to me like that. You ungrateful wretch. After all I’ve done for you. You made a straightforward business deal, and now because you can’t keep your end of the bargain you justify yourself by insulting me. Next thing, you’ll be going to some damned shyster lawyer and trying to wriggle out of the whole thing. Well, let me tell you something. That paper you signed is legal, and I’ll defend it all the way to the Supreme Court if I have to, if it costs me ten thousand dollars. And let me tell you something else. You go around talking like that, and I’ll have you in jail. There’s a law to stop you saying things like that about me, and you’d better find out about it damn quick. And if I ever hear that you’ve repeated a lie like that, I’ll not only have the police after you, I’ll see that you never get any kind of job as long as you live—or your wife, or your unwashed brats either!” The strangling voice paused and gathered itself for one last burst. “Now get out of my sight before I lose my temper!”
Gamma got to his feet, pale and shaken, but he managed to start to speak.
“It is not right, señor—”
“Get out!” said Mr Quire, in a whisper of such concentrated viciousness that the man turned and stumbled hurriedly away in an almost superstitious panic.
Mr Quire wiped his brow with a snowy handkerchief.
The congestion subsided slowly from his face, and he began to unwrap a cigar.
In spite of the intensity of the paroxysm, his rage had been so muted that in the general chatter and clatter of the restaurant not a word might have been audible at a distance of more than six feet.
But he remembered that the tourist with the pirate’s profile at the next table was within that range, and turned to find a disconcertingly cool gaze resting steadily on him.
“Well, bless my soul,” said Mr Quire with disarming joviality. “I do believe I was getting quite steamed up.”
“I only thought you were going to have a stroke,” said the Saint mildly, and refrained from adding that he had hoped to see it.
Mr Quire lighted his cigar.
“Some of these people would try the patience of a saint,” he remarked unconsciously. “You must have heard some of the conversation, so you may have gotten a rough idea. They’re like overgrown children—full of quick enthusiasms without the stamina to carry them through, hopelessly inefficient on details, and sulky when they upset their own apple carts.”
“Who was your problem child?”
“Pedro Gamma. A nice fellow, but a hopeless bungler. I’m afraid I’ll have to write him off as one of my failures.”
“It seemed to me,” Simon said with no expression, “that he might have been entitled to another chance.”
“You don’t know how many chances I’ve given him already,” Mr Quire said heavily. “It’s the only hobby I’ve got, trying to help these people. You’ve got to expect some disappointments. And you have to know when to take a firm line, even though it’s heartbreaking sometimes.” Mr Quire dismissed the subject with a final shrug of noble resignation. “You’re a visitor here, I take it?”
Simon nodded.
“Sort of.”
“Not in any kind of business?”
“I might get into some,” said the Saint thoughtfully.
The notion had only occurred to him in the last few minutes. Mr Quire took out his wallet, extracted a card, and passed it over.
“If I can be of any help to you, give me a call. I’ve been here for ten years, so I know my way around pretty well. And I’m really interested in anything that’s good for the island.” He stood up. “Please feel free to take me up on that, any time.”
Simon read the name and address, and put the card away carefully, and looked up to see Mr Quire chatting genially with the proprietor at the entrance as he paid his bill. It was obvious that he was a well-known and favored customer. There was a parting gust of cordial amenities as he went out, and through the window Simon watched him climb into a large black Cadillac and drive away.
The Saint finished his own meal presently, and also went to the front counter with his bill.
“Do you know Mr Quire well?” he asked, in conversational Spanish.
“Si, señor. Muy bien.”
“What sort of man is he?”
“A very respected man, señor. He does much good for Puerto Rico.”
“He rather likes to have things his own way, doesn’t he?”
The proprietor raised his shoulders discreetly.
“If he likes someone, he will do anything in the world for him. But I should not like to cross him. He has a strong character.”
“That is one way to describe him,” said the Saint.
3
“It’s a really interesting prison,” said Tristan Brown, as he drove her away. “The men almost seem happy to be there. There’s practically nothing to stop them escaping, as you saw, but when they do, they usually come back by themselves in a few days, and explain that they had to go to a funeral, or attend to some business, or maybe just needed a night out.”
“It’s probably more comfortable than home to a lot of them,” said the Saint. “And most of ’em wouldn’t be habitual criminals. Just nice normal guys who gave way to a natural impulse
to stick a knife in somebody who got out of line.”
“The warden is doing quite a job of making them over, anyway. He’s a rare type—a natural philanthropist.”
Simon glanced at her.
“Could he qualify for an Ogden H. Kiel endowment?”
“He might. You see, we don’t just write checks to organized charities, and yet we obviously can’t deal with thousands of individual cases. So in each area we go into, we try to find a good local administrator, give him an allocation, and leave the handling of it to his judgment.”
“Doesn’t that get you besieged by all kinds of phonies who think what a good thing they could make for themselves out of it?”
“It would if they knew what I was doing. But you haven’t read any publicity about my visit, have you? Because I haven’t told anyone except you. For the other people I meet, I’m just a gadabout social worker nosing around.”
“And I still couldn’t qualify?”
It was the perfect cue for her to begin to hint that perhaps he might qualify after all—if, for instance, he could produce a large amount of cash as evidence of his solvency and bona fides. If that was how the routine was to go. But she shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Now please stop making me think you’re only interested in me because of Mr Kiel’s money, and tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“I’ve been studying another type who won’t qualify—even more definitely.”
He gave her a detailed account of his inadvertent eavesdropping on Mr Elmer Quire, and was grateful that she quickly grasped its implications, for the subtlety of Mr Quire was not easy to convey at second hand.
“The restaurant proprietor scored it right in the bull’s eye, whether he knew it or not,” he said at the conclusion. “ ‘He’ll do anything in the world for you if he likes you, but don’t cross him.’ It sounds fine, doesn’t it? A stalwart salty character. But think about it a bit longer, and you find it’s the perfect description of the worst kind of spoiled selfish brat. Sweet as pie if he gets his own way, and a son of a bitch if he doesn’t. The only difference is that Quire is older in years and has some power and dough to back it up. The ‘little tin god’ cliché was coined for him. He’s an arrogant, willful, egotistical chiseler masquerading as a big-hearted Lord Bountiful, a hypocrite so hungry for flattery and so terrified of the truth that any criticism turns him literally blue with rage. I saw it happen. Take it from me, Tristan—when you hear a man spoken about like that, look out. You’re getting the low-down on a bastard.”
“If you go on like that you’re going to turn blue yourself,” she said, and he suddenly grinned apology.
They drove up through the dense tropical rain-jungle, stopped to pick and taste wild strawberries that were brilliantly red and totally flavorless, and went on to the lodge near the summit, where they sat and drank beer on a terrace that looked out over a whole quadrant of the island. It was one of those rare clear days on El Yunque, which is usually wreathed with dripping clouds, and towards the north they could see all the way to the coast and the deep blue of the ocean beyond. And then the daylight was fading and a chill came in the air, and they drove down again and stopped for cocktails at a place where orchids grew in the open, and stayed to eat dinner with the city lights spread out far below them. It made a day to remember.
But as they drove down again into the soft warmth of Santurce, and she was a little sleepy, and they did not have to talk so much, he was thinking again about Elmer Quire, and she knew it telepathically.
She said, “Are you going to do something about that man?”
“I might, one of these days,” he said. “When I can’t have this much fun with you.”
“Then opportunity is just around the corner,” she said. “I’m starting off early tomorrow, to go around the island, to Mayagüez and Ponce. I’m still a working girl. I’ll be gone for a couple of days.”
“What’s wrong with this car?”
“A local judge and his wife are taking me. And I can’t get out of that, because he’s a former classmate of one of my bosses. Besides, I have to maintain some reputation.”
“The first reason was good enough. You didn’t have to add such a dull one.”
She snuggled a little closer.
“In case you think I’m a prude,” she said, “I was planning to invite you to my room for a nightcap anyway.”
When he came down to breakfast the next morning she had already left, but there were two cablegrams in his box.
The first one he opened verified that Tristan Brown was indeed a graduate of Columbia Law School. The second said:
GLAD CONFIRM TRISTAN BROWN OUR FULLY ACCREDITED REPRESENTATIVE WILL APPRECIATE YOUR COOPERATION
JAMES TANTRUM
OGDEN H KIEL FOUNDATION
So the improbable story was true, after all, as improbable stories occasionally could be. It made him feel even better.
But it still left him with time on his hands and nothing but the matter of Mr Elmer Quire on his mind—which, for the Saint, was a highly unstable state to be in.
Mr Quire was in the small office he maintained in San Juan, in conference with a vice-president of an Alabama textile mill, when the phone call came.
“I couldn’t think of a better location for your factory,” he was saying. “It’s right outside Caguas, on the new four-lane highway to Ponce. Electricity, water, fine transportation, and plenty of labor to draw on. Used to be a hydroponic tomato farm, but it’s nice level ground and naturally worth a lot more as an industrial site. They’re good hardworking people around there, educated enough to learn fast, and yet they still aren’t demanding the kind of wages you’re used to paying. With the tax exemption you’ll get…Excuse me.”
He picked up the phone.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes…The Mallorquina at Caguas? Yes, of course. I do remember…Certainly…Delighted…Well, I’m going to be busy this afternoon. How about a small libation later?…Fine. Suppose you meet me at the Club Náutico at six o’clock…Not at all, it’ll be a pleasure!”
4
To Mr Quire, the word “pleasure” began to seem a wholly inadequate description of their meeting. After he had listened attentively for some time, he felt like a man who had been personally introduced to Santa Claus.
“Do you mean,” he said, “that the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation would consider handing me, say, a million dollars to disburse here as I saw fit?”
“That would be the idea,” said the Saint. “You see,” he went on, glibly appropriating the speech which Tristan Brown had generously provided for him, “we don’t just write checks to organized charities, and yet we obviously can’t deal with thousands of individual cases. So in each area we go into, we try to find a good local administrator, give him an allocation, and leave the handling of it to his judgment.”
“There is certainly a lot of good to be done here,” said Mr Quire, nodding even more rapidly. “When the sugar market collapsed, the Puerto Ricans didn’t stop breeding. We’ve got the densest population on any American soil, more than six hundred to the square mile, and still growing. Even all the new industry that’s been coming in can’t absorb them. I’m afraid there will always be hardship here. But may I ask, why did you happen to think of me?”
“As soon as I started to make inquiries, I kept hearing your name mentioned as a real local philanthropist.”
“I have tried to do my small best for the island since I settled here,” Mr Quire said modestly. “Being retired from business, it keeps me occupied and helps me to feel I’m not altogether useless.” His bright eyes blinked keenly through his glasses. “Now we come to that, by the way, I don’t think I even know your name—or didn’t I hear it?”
The Saint did not hesitate for an instant.
“Brown,” he said. “Tristan Brown.” With unsurpassable confidence he added, “I know this must seem a rather fantastic situation, but it’s easy for you to check up on. Just send a wire to the Ogden H. Kiel Foundation in New Yor
k and ask them about me.”
Mr Quire continued to gaze at him shrewdly.
“Then our meeting the other day wasn’t entirely an accident?”
“No, it was purely coincidence. But when your name came up, I remembered having seen you in action, so to speak.” The Saint frowned. “To be perfectly frank, I’ve been just a little worried about that.”
“In what way, sir?”
“About the last things you said to that man.”
“Gamma?” Mr Quire smiled. The smile ripened gradually into a resonant jolly chuckle, deep in his chest, the chortle of a good guy enjoying a good joke. “My dear fellow! How you must have misunderstood me. But of course you’re new to these parts. Puerto Ricans are Latins, and they’re used to violent expressions. In fact, they don’t understand any other kind. And now and again you have to scold them, just like you would a child, and let them know you mean business. Certainly, I was putting the fear of God into Pedro, because that’s what he needed. But by this time he’s thought it over, and we’ll be able to work something out. Before we’re finished, he’ll be telling everyone I’m his best friend.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Simon looked relieved. “Because our investigation has to be very thorough. As a matter of fact, one of our requirements is to have the person we are considering submit a list of everyone he has done any kind of business with for the past five years. Then we interview all those people, and naturally, if any one of them gives the impression that he’s had a raw deal, or been taken advantage of in any way, the application is probably dropped right there. Would you be prepared to go along with that?”
Mr Quire rubbed his chin.
“A list like that would take me a little time,” he said. “But, yes, I could let you have one.”
“There’s just one other thing,” said the Saint.
Since he had already stolen so much of Tristan Brown’s material, he saw no reason to waste the rest of the act which he had projected for her in his own skeptical mind and unjustly suspected her of leading up to.
The Saint on the Spanish Main (The Saint Series) Page 14