by Unknown
* * * * *
I think that what we said sitting there with the slanting moonlight on us, could not have amounted to much. Yet for us, it was so important! Vital. Building memories which I knew--and I think that she knew, even then--we would never forget.
"I will be here a week, Jetta."
"I want--I want very much to know you. I want you to tell me about the world of the Highlands. I have a few books. I can't read very well, but I can look at the pictures."
"Oh, I see--"
"A traveler gave them to me. I've got them hidden. But he was an old man: all men seem to be old--except those in the pictures, and you, Philip."
I laughed. "Well, that's too bad. I'm mighty glad I'm young."
Ah, in that moment, with blessed youth surging in my veins, I was glad indeed!
"Young. I don't remember ever seeing anyone like you. The man I am to marry is not like you. He is old, like father--"
I drew back from her, startled.
"Marry?"
"Yes. When I am seventeen. The law of Nareda--your Highland law, too, father says--will not let a girl be married until she is that age. In a month I am seventeen."
"Oh!" And I stammered, "But why are you going to marry?"
"Because father tells me to. And then I shall have fine clothes: it is promised me. And go to live in the Highlands, perhaps. And see things; and be a woman, not a ragged boy forbidden to show myself; and--"
* * * * *
I was barely touching her. It seemed as though something--some vision of happiness which had been given me--were fading, were being snatched away. I was conscious of my hand moving to touch hers.
"Why do you marry--unless you're in love? Are you?"
Her gaze like a child came up to meet mine. "I never thought much about that. I have tried not to. It frightened me--until to-night."
She pushed me gently away. "Don't. Let's not talk of him. I'd rather not."
"But why are you dressed as a boy?"
I gazed at her slim but rounded figure in tattered boy's garb--but the woman's lines were unmistakable. And her face, with clustering curls. Gentle girlhood. A face of dark, wild beauty.
"My father hates women. He says they are all bad. It is a sin to wear woman's finery; or it breeds sin in women. Let's not talk of that. Philip, tell me--oh, if you could only realize all the things I want to know. In Great New York, there are theatres and music?"
"Yes," I said. And began telling her about them.
The witching of this moonlit garden! But the moon had presently sunk, and to the east the stars were fading.
"Philip! Look! Why, it's dawn already. I've got to leave you."
I held her just a moment by the hand.
"May I meet you here to-morrow night?" I asked.
"Yes," she said simply.
"Good night--Jetta."
"Good night. You--you've made me very happy."
She was gone, into a doorway of the opposite wing. The silent, empty garden sounded with the distant, reassuring snores of the still sleeping Spawn.
I went back to my room and lay on my bed. And drifted off on a sea of magic memories. The world--my world before this night--now seemed to have been so drab. Empty. Lifeless. But now there was pulsing, living magic in it for me.
I drifted into sleep, thinking of it.
CHAPTER IV - The Mine in the Cauldron Depths
I was awakened by the tinkling, buzzing call of the radio-diaphragm beneath my shirt. I had left the call open.
It was Hanley. I lay down, eyeing my window which now was illumined by the flat light of dawn.
Hanley's microscopic voice:
"Phil? I've just raised President Markes, there in Nareda. I've been a bit worried about you."
"I'm all right, Chief."
"Well, you'd better see President Markes this morning."
"That was my intention."
"Tell him frankly what you're after. This smuggling of quicksilver from Nareda has got to stop. But take it easy, Phil; don't be reckless. Remember: one little knife thrust and I've lost a good man!"
I laughed at his anxious tone. That was always Hanley's way. A devil himself, when he was on a trail, but always worried for fear one of his men would come to harm.
"Right enough, Chief. I'll be careful."
He cut off presently.
I did not see Jetta that morning. I told Spawn I was hoping to see President Markes on my petroleum proposition. And at the proper hour I took myself to the government house.
* * * * *
This Lowland village by daylight seemed even more fantastic than shrouded in the shadows of night. The morning sun had dissipated the overhead mists. It was hot in the rocky streets under the weird overhanging vegetation. The settlement was quietly busy with its tropical activities. There were a few local shops; vehicles with the Highland domestic animals--horses and oxen--panting in the heat; an occasional electro-automatic car.
But there were not many evidences of modernity here. The street and house tube-lights. A few radio image-finders on the house-tops. An automatic escalator bringing ore from a nearby mine past the government checkers to an aero stage for northern transportation. Cultivated fields in the village outskirts operated with modern machinery.
But beyond that, it seemed primitive. Two hundred years back. Street vendors. People in primitive, ragged, tropical garb. Half naked children. I was stared at curiously. An augmenting group of children followed me as I went down the street.
The President admitted me at once. In his airy office, with safeguards against eavesdropping, I found him at his desk with a bank of modern instruments before him.
"Sit down, Grant."
* * * * *
He was a heavy-set, flabby man of sixty-odd, this Lowland President. White hair; and an old-fashioned, rolling white mustache of the sort lately come into South American fashion. He sat with a glass of iced drink at his side. His uniform was stiffly white, and ornate with heavy gold braid, but his neckpiece was wilted with perspiration.
"Damnable heat, Grant."
"Yes, Sir President."
"Have a drink." He swung a tinkling glass before me. "Now then, tell me what is your trouble. Smuggling, here in Nareda. I don't believe it." His eyes, incongruously alert with all the rest of him so fat and lazy, twinkled at me. "We of the Nareda Government watch our quicksilver production very closely. The government fee is a third."
I might say that the Nareda government collected a third on all the mineral and agricultural products of the country, in exchange for the necessary government concessions. Markes exported this share openly to the world markets, paying the duty exactly like a private corporation.
He added, "You think--Hanley thinks--the smuggling is on too large a scale to be any illicit producer?"
I nodded.
"Then," he said, "it must be one of our recognized mines."
"Hanley thinks it is a recognized mine, falsifying its production record," I explained.
"If that is so, I will discover it," he said. He spoke with enthusiasm and vigor. "For you I shall treat as what you are--the representative of our most friendly government. The figures of our quicksilver production I shall lay before you in just a few days. Let me fill up your glass, Grant."
* * * * *
The lazy tropics. I really did not doubt his sincerity. But I did doubt his ability to cope with any clever criminal. His enthusiasm for action would wilt like his neckpiece, in Nareda's heat. Unless, perhaps, the knowledge that the smuggler was cheating him as well as the United States--that might spur him.
He added--and now I got a shock wholly unexpected: "If we think that some recognized producer of quicksilver here is cheating us, it should not be difficult to check up on it. Nareda has only one large cinnabar lode being worked. A private individual: that fellow Jacob Spawn--"
"Spawn?" I exclaimed involuntarily.
"Why, yes. Did not he mention it? His mine is no more than ten kilometers from here--back on the south
ern slope."
"He didn't mention it," I said.
"So? That is strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He specializes in prying into the other fellow's affairs. Hm-m."
He fell into a reverie while I stared at him. Spawn, the big--the only big--quicksilver producer here!
* * * * *
The President interrupted my startled thoughts. "I hope you did not intimate your real purpose?"
"No."
We both turned at the sound of an opening door. Markes called, "Ah, come in Perona! Are you alone? Good! Close that slide. Here is Chief Hanley's representative." He introduced us all in a breath. "This is interesting, Perona. Damnably interesting. We're being cheated, what? It looks that way. Sit down, Perona."
This was Greko Perona. Nareda's Minister of Internal Affairs. Spawn had mentioned him to me. A South American. A man in his fifties. Thin and darkly saturnine, with iron-gray hair, carefully plastered to cover his half-bald head. He sat listening to the President's harangue, twirling the upturned waxen ends of his artificially black mustache. A wave of perfume enveloped him. A ladies' courtier, this Perona by the look of him. His white uniform was immaculate, carefully tailored and carefully worn to set off at its best his still trim and erect figure.
"Well," he said, when at last the President paused, "of a surety something must be done."
Perona seemed not excited, rather more carefully watchful, of his own words, and of me. His small dark eyes roved me.
"What is it you would plan to do about it, Señorito?"
An irony was in that Latin diminutive! He spread his pale hands. "Your United States officials perhaps exaggerate. I am very doubtful if we have smugglers here in Nareda."
"Unless it is Spawn," the President interjected.
* * * * *
Perona frowned slightly. But his suave manner remained. "Spawn? Why Spawn?"
"You need not take offense, Perona," Markes retorted. "We are discussing this before an envoy of the United States, sent here to consult with us. We have nothing to hide."
Markes turned to me. And his next words were like a bomb exploding at my feet.
"Perona is offended, Grant. But I promise you, his natural personal prejudice will not affect my investigation. Of course he is prejudiced, since he is to marry Spawn's daughter, the little Jetta."
I started involuntarily. This pomaded old dotard! This perfumed, ancient dandy!
For all the importance of my mission in Nareda my thoughts had been subconsciously more upon Jetta--far more--than upon smugglers of quicksilver. This palsied popinjay! This, the reality of the specter which had been between Jetta and me during all that magic time in the moonlit garden!
This suave old rake! Betrothed to that woodland pixie whose hand I had held and to whom I had sung love songs in the magic flower-scented moonlight only a few hours ago! And whom I had promised to meet there again to-night!
This, then, was my rival!
* * * * *
Nothing of importance transpired during the remainder of that interview. Markes reiterated his intention of making a complete governmental investigation at once. To which Perona suavely assented.
"Por Dios Señorito," he said to me, "we would not have your great government annoyed at Nareda. If there are smugglers, we will capture them of a certainty."
From the Government House, it now being almost time for the midday meal, I returned to Spawn's.
The rambling mud walls of the Inn stood baking in the noonday heat when I arrived. The outer garden drowsed; there seemed no one about. I went through the main door oval into the front public room, where first I had met Spawn. He was not here now, nor was Jetta.
A sudden furtiveness fell upon me. With noiseless steps I went the length of the dim, padded interior corridor to my own room. My belongings seemed undisturbed; a vague idea that Spawn might have seized this opportunity to ransack them had come to me. But it seemed not; though if he had he would have found nothing.
I stood for a moment listening at my patio window. I could see the kitchen from here; there was no one in it. I started back for the living room. That furtive instinct was still on me. I made no noise. And abruptly I heard Spawn's voice, floating out softly in the hushed silence of the house.
"So, Perona?"
* * * * *
A brief silence, in which it seemed that I could hear a tiny aerial answer. Then Spawn again. A startled oath.
"De duvel! You say--"
I stood frozen, listening.
"She is here.... Yes, I will keep her close. I am no fool, Perona."
Spawn's laugh was like a growl. "Later to-day, yes. Fear not! I am no fool. I will be careful of it."
Spawn, talking by private audiphone, to Perona. The colloquy came to an abrupt end.
"... Might eavesdrop? By hell, you are right!"
I heard the click as Spawn and Perona broke connection. Spawn came from his room. But he was not quick enough. I slipped away before he saw me. In the living room I had time to be calmly seated with a lighted cigarette. His approaching heavy footsteps sounded. He came in.
"Oh--Grant."
"Good noon, friend Spawn. I'm hungry." I grinned at him. "I understand my bargain with you included a noonday meal. Does it?"
He eyed me suspiciously. "Have you been waiting here long?"
"No. I just came in."
He led me to the kitchen. He apologized for the informality of his hotel service: visitors were so infrequent. But the good quality of his food would make up for it.
"Right," I agreed. "Your food is marvelous, friend Spawn."
* * * * *
There was a difference in Spawn's manner toward me now. He seemed far more wary. Outwardly he was in a high good humor. He asked nothing concerning my morning at the Government House. He puttered over his electron-stove, making me help him; he cursed the heat; he said one could not eat in such heat as this; but the meal he cooked, and the way he sat down opposite me and attacked it, belied him.
He was acting; but so was I. And perhaps I deceived him as little as he deceived me. We avoided the things which were uppermost in the thoughts of us both. But, when we had very nearly finished the meal, I decided to try him out. I said suddenly, out of a silence:
"Spawn, why didn't you tell me you were a producer of quicksilver?" I shot him a sharp glance. "You are, aren't you?"
It took him by surprise, but he recovered himself instantly. "Yes. Are you interested?"
I tried another shot. "What surprised me was that a wealthy mine owner--you are, aren't you?--should bother to keep an unprofitable hotel. Why bother with it, Spawn?"
I thought I knew the answer: he wanted Nareda's visitors under his eyes.
"That is a pleasure." There was irony in his tone. "I am a lonesome man. I like--interesting companionship, such as yours, young Grant."
It was on my tongue to hint at his daughter. But I thought better of it.
"I am going to the mine now," he said abruptly. "Would you like to come?"
"Yes," I smiled. "Thanks."
* * * * *
I wanted to see his mine. But that he should be eager to show it, surprised me. I wondered what purpose he could have in that. I had a hint of it later; for when we took his little autocar and slid up the winding road into the bloated crags towering on the slope behind Nareda, he told me calmly:
"I shall have to put you in charge of my mine commander. I am busy elsewhere this afternoon. You will see the mine just as well without me."
He added. "I must go to the Government House: President Markes wants a report on my recent production."
So that was what Perona had told him over the audiphone just before our noonday meal?
It was an inferno of shadows and glaring lights, this underground cavern. As modern mining activities go, it was small and primitive. No more than a dozen men were here, beside the sweating pudgy mine commander who was my guide. A voluble fellow; of what original nationality I could not determine.
We stood watching the line of carts dumping the ore onto the endless lifting-belt. It went a hundred feet or so up and out of the cavern's ascending shaft, to fall with a clatter into the bins above the smelter.
"Rich ore," I said. "Isn't it?"
The cinnabar ran like thick blood-red veins in the rock.
"Rich," said the mine commander. "That it is. Rich. But who does it make rich? Only Spawn, not me." He waved his arms, airing his grievance with which for an hour past he had regaled me. "Only Spawn. For me, a dole each week."
The smelter was in a stone building--one of a small group of mine houses which stood in a cauldron depression above excavations. Rounded domes of rock towered above them. The sun, even at this tri-noon hour, was gone behind the heights above us. The murky shadows of night were gathering, the mists of the Lowlands settling. The tube-lights of the mine, strung between small metal poles, winked on like bleary eyes.
"Of a day soon I will fling this job to hell--"
* * * * *
I was paying scant attention to the fellow's tirade. Could there be smuggling going on from this mine? It all seemed to be conducted openly enough. If the production record were being falsified I felt that this dissatisfied mine commander was not aware of it. He showed me the smelter, where the quicksilver condensed in the coils and ran with its small luminous silver streams into the vats.
He was called away momentarily by one of his men, leaving me standing there. I was alone; no one seemed in sight, or within hearing. In the shadow of the condensers I drew out my transmitter and called Hanley.
I got him within a minute.
"Chief!"
"Yes, Phil. I hoped you'd call me. Didn't want to chance it, raising you when you might not be alone."
I told him swiftly what I had done; where I was now.
And Hanley said, with equal briskness: "I've an important fact. Just had Markes on secret wave-length. He tells me that Spawn has been saving up his quicksilver for six months past. He's got several hundred thousand dollar-standards' worth of it in ingots there right now."
"Here at the mine?"
"Yes. Got them all radiuminized, ready for the highest priced markets. Markes says he is scheduled to turn them over to the government checkers to-morrow. The Nareda government takes its share to-morrow; then Spawn exports the rest."