Transcriber's Note:
A Table of Contents has been added.
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

FOMBOMBO

"I—I—how far do we have to run?" she gasped.

FOMBOMBO

BY

T. S. STRIBLING

AUTHOR OF
TEEFTALLOW, Etc.

GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1923, by
The Century Co.
——
Copyright, 1923, by
T. S. Stribling

Printed in U. S. A.

TO MY UNCLE
LEE B. WAITS
Soldier, Fox-Hunter, and Philosopher

FOMBOMBO

CONTENTS

FOMBOMBO

CHAPTER I

In Caracas, Thomas Strawbridge called at the American Consulate, from a sense of duty. The consul, a weary, tropic-shot politician from Kentucky, received him with gin, cigars, and a jaded enthusiasm. He glanced at Mr. Strawbridge's business card and inquired if his visitor were one of the Strawbridges of Virginia. The young man replied that he lived in Keokuk, Iowa, and that his father had moved there from somewhere East. Upon this statement the consul ventured the dictum that if any family didn't know they had come from Virginia, they hadn't.

Having exhausted their native states as a topic of conversation, they swung around, in their talk, to the relatively unimportant Venezuela which sweltered outside the consulate in a drowse of endless summer. The two Americans damned the place, with lassitude but thoroughness. They condemned the character of the Venezuelan, his lack of morals, honesty, industry, and initiative. The Venezuelan was too polite; he was cowardly. He had not the God-given Anglo-Saxon instinct for self-government. But the high treason named in this joint bill of complaint was that the Venezuelan was unbusinesslike.

"I'm no tin angel," proceeded Mr. Strawbridge, emphatically, "but you know just as well as I do, Mr. Anderson, that the fellow who pulls slick stuff in a business deal has hit the chutes for the bowwows. Business methods and strict business honesty will win in the long run, Mr. Anderson."

The consul nodded a trifle absent-mindedly at this recommendation of his nation's widely advertised virtue.

"In fact," continued Mr. Strawbridge, with an effect of having begun to recite some sort of creed he could not stop until he reached the end, "in fact, continual aggressive business policies coupled with an incorruptible honesty are bound to land the American exporter flat-footed on the foreign trade. And, moreover, Mr. Anderson—" Strawbridge had the traveling salesman's habit of repeating a companion's name over and over in the course of a conversation, so he would not forget it—"moreover, Mr. Anderson, we American traveling business men have got to set an example to these people down here; show 'em what to do and how to do it. Snap, vim, go, and absolute honesty."

"Yes, ... yes," agreed the consul, still more absently. He was holding Mr. Strawbridge's card in his fingers and apparently studying it. Presently he broke into the homily:

"Speaking of business, how do you find the gun-and-ammunition business in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge?"

"Rotten. I've hardly booked an order since I landed in the country."

The consul lifted his brows.

"Have you booked any at all?"

"Well, no, I haven't," admitted Strawbridge.

The consul smiled faintly and finished off his glass of gin and water.

"I thought perhaps you hadn't."

"What made you think that?"

"No one does who just passes through the country offering them to any and every merchant."

"Why not?"

"Isn't allowed."

Strawbridge stared at his consul—a very honest blue-eyed stare.

"Not allowed? Who doesn't allow it, Mr. Anderson? Why, look here—" he straightened his back as there dawned on him the enormity of this personal infringement of his right to sell firearms whenever and wherever he found a buyer—"why the hell can't I sell rifles and—"

"Forbidden by the Government," interposed Mr. Anderson, patly.

Strawbridge was outraged.

"Now, isn't that a hell of a law! No reason at all, I suppose. Like their custom laws. They don't tax you for what you bring into this God-forsaken country; they tax you for the mistakes you make in saying what you've brought in. They look over your manifest and charge you for the errors you've made in Spanish grammar. Venezuela's correspondence course in the niceties of the Castilian tongue!"

The consul again smiled wearily.

"They have a better reason than that for forbidding rifles—revolutions. You know in this country they stage at least one revolution every forty-eight hours. The minute any Venezuelan gets hold of a gun he steps out and begins to shoot up the Government. If he wings the President, he gets the President's place. It's a very lucrative place, very. It's about the only job in this country worth a cuss. So you see there's a big reason for forbidding the importation of arms into Venezuela."

Mr. Strawbridge drew down his lips in disgust.

"Good Lord! Ain't that rotten! When will this leather-colored crew ever get civilized? Here I am—paid my fare from New York down here just to find out nobody buys firearms in this sizzling hell-hole; can't be trusted with 'em!"

In the pause at this point Mr. Anderson still twirled his guest's card. He glanced toward the front of his consulate, then toward the rear. The two Americans were alone. With his enigmatic smile still wrinkling his tropic-sagged face, the consul said in a slightly lower tone:

"I didn't say no one bought firearms in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge. I said they were not allowed to be sold here."

"O-o-oh, I se-e-e!" Mr. Strawbridge's ejaculation curved up and down as enlightenment broke upon him, and he stared fixedly at his consul.

"All I meant to say was that the trade is curtailed as much as possible, in order to prevent bloodshed, suffering, and the crimes of civil war."

Mr. Strawbridge continued his nodding and his absorbed gaze.

"But, still, some of it goes on—of course."

"Naturally," nodded Strawbridge.

"I suppose," continued the consul, reflectively, "that every month sees a considerable number of arms introduced into Venezuela, as far as that goes."

Strawbridge watched his consul as a cat watches a mouse-hole—for something edible to appear.

"Yes?" he murmured interrogatively.

"Well, there you are," finished the consul.

Strawbridge looked his disappointment.

"There I am?" he said in a pained voice. "Well, I must say I am not very far from where you started with me; am I?"

"It seems to me you are somewhat advanced," began the diplomat, philosophically. "You know why you haven't sold anything up to date. You know why you can't approach a Venezuelan casually to sell him guns, as if you were offering him stoves or shoe-polish." The consul was still smiling faintly, and now he drew a scratch-pad toward him and began making aimless marks on it after the fashion of office men. "In fact, to attempt to sell guns at all would be quite against the law, as I have explained, for the reasons I have stated. It's a peculiar and I must say an unfortunate situation."

As he continued his absent-minded marking his explanation turned into a soliloquy on the Venezuelan situation:

"You may not know it, Mr. Strawbridge, but there are one or two revolutions which are chronic in Venezuela. There is one in Tachira, a state on the western border of the country. There is another up in the Rio Negro district, headed by a man named Fombombo. They never cease. Every once in a while the federal troops go out to hunt these insurrectionists, a-a-and—" the consul dragged out his "and" after the fashion of a man relating something so well known that it isn't worth while to give his words their proper stress—"a-a-and if they kill them, more spring up." His voice slumped without interest. He continued marking his pad. "Then there are the foreign juntas. About every four or five years a bunch of Venezuelans go abroad, organize a filibustering expedition, come back, and try to capture the presidency. Now and then one succeeds." The consul yawned. "Then the diplomatic corps here in Caracas have to get used to a different sort of ... of ... President." He paused, smiling at some recollection, then added, "So, you see, one can hardly blame the powers that be for wanting to keep rifles out of the country."

The young man was openly disappointed.

"Well, ... that's very interesting historically," he said with a mirthless smile, "and I am sure when I send in my expense account for this trip my house will be deeply interested in the historical reasons why I blew in five hundred dollars and landed nothing."

"Well, that's the state of affairs," repeated the consul, with the sudden briskness of a man ending an interview. "Insurrectionists in Tachira, old Fombombo raising hell on the Rio Negro, and an occasional flyer among the filibusters." He rose and offered his hand to his caller. "Be glad to have you drop in on me any time, Mr. Strawbridge. Occasionally I give a little soirée here for Americans. Send you a bid." He was shaking hands warmly now, after the fashion of politicians. His air implied that Mr. Strawbridge's visit had been sheer delight. And Mr. Strawbridge's own business-trained cordiality picked up somewhat even under his unexpressed disappointment. In fact, he was just loosing the diplomat's hand when he discovered there was a bit of paper in Mr. Anderson's palm pressing against his own. When the consul withdrew his hand he left the paper in his countryman's fingers.

"Well, good-by; good luck! Don't forget to look me up again. When you leave Caracas you'd better give me your forwarding address for any mail that might come in."

The consul was walking down the tiled entrance of the consulate, floating his guest out in a stream of somewhat mechanical cordiality. Strawbridge moved into the dazzling sunshine, clenching the bit of paper and making confused adieus.

He walked briskly away, with the quick, machine-like strides of an American drummer. After a block or two he paused in the shade of a great purple flowering shrub that gushed over the high adobe wall of some hidden garden. Out of the direct sting of the sun he found opportunity to look into his hand. It held a sheet of the scratch-pad. This bore the address, "General Adriano Fombombo, No. 27 Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas." Inside the fold was the sentence, "This will introduce to you a very worthy young American, Mr. Thomas Strawbridge, a young man of discretion, prompt decision, strict morals, and unimpeachable honesty." It bore no signature.

Strawbridge turned it over and perused the address for upward of half a minute. Now and then he looked up and down the street, then at the numbers on the houses, after the fashion of a man trying to orient himself in a strange city.

CHAPTER II

In the capital of Venezuela, ancient usage has given names to the street corners instead of to the streets. This may have been very well in the thinly populated days of the Spanish conquest, but to-day this nomenclature forms a hopeless puzzle for half the natives and all the foreigners.

To Mr. Thomas Strawbridge the address on the consul's note was especially annoying. He hardly knew what to do. He could not go back and ask Mr. Anderson where was Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas, because in a way there was a tacit understanding between the two men that no note had passed between them. On the other hand, he felt instinctively that it was not good revolutionary practice to wander about the streets of Caracas inquiring of Tomas, Ricardo, and Henrico the address of a well-known insurrectionary general. However, he would have to do just that thing if he carried out the business hint given him by the consul. It was annoying, it might even be dangerous, but there seemed to be no way out of it. It never occurred to the drummer to give the matter up. The prospect of a sale was something to be pursued at all hazards. So he put the note in his pocket, got out a big silver cigar-case with his monogram flowing over one of its sides, lit up, frowned thoughtfully at the sun-baked streets, then moved off aimlessly from his patch of shade, keeping a weather eye out for some honest, trustworthy Venezuelan who could be depended upon to betray his country in a small matter.

As the American pursued this odd quest, the usual somnolent street life of Caracas drifted past him: a train of flower-laden donkeys, prodded along by a peon boy, passed down the calle, braying terrifically; native women in black mantillas glided in and out of the ancient Spanish churches, one of which stood on almost every corner; lottery-ticket venders loitered through the streets, yodeling the numbers on their tickets; naked children played in the sewer along foot-wide pavements; dark-eyed señoritas sat inside barred windows, with a lover swinging patiently outside the bars. Banana peels, sucked oranges, and mango stones littered the calles from end to end and advertised the slovenliness of the denizens.

All this increased in Strawbridge that feeling of mental, moral, and racial superiority which surrounds every Anglo-Saxon in his contacts with other peoples. How filthy, how slow, how indecent, and how immoral it all was! Naked children, lottery venders, caged girls! Evidently the girls could not be trusted to walk abroad. Strawbridge looked at them—tropical creatures with creamy skins, jet hair, and dark, limpid eyes; soft of contour, voice, and glance.

A group of four domino-players were at a game just outside a peluqueria. A fifth man, holding a guitar, leaned against a little shrine to the Blessed Virgin which some pious hand had built into the masonry at the corner of the adobe. He was a graceful, sunburned fellow, and as he bent his head over the guitar, during his intermittent strumming, Strawbridge was surprised to see that his hair was done up like a woman's, in a knot at the back of his head.

Just why the American should have decided to ask this particular man for delicate information, it is impossible to say. It may have been because he was leaning against a shrine, or because he showed splendid white teeth as he smiled at the varying fortunes of the players. There is a North American superstition that a man with good teeth also possesses good morals. If one can believe the dentifrice advertisements, a good tooth-paste is a ticket to heaven. At any rate, for these or other reasons, the drummer moved across the calle and came to a stand, with his own hand resting on the base of the little clay niche that sheltered the small china Virgin. He was so close to the man that he could smell the rank pomade on his knob of hair. He stood in silence until his nearness should have established that faint feeling of fellowship which permits a question to be asked between two watchers of the same scene. Presently he inquired in a casual tone, but not loud enough for the players to hear:

"Señor, can you tell me where is Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas?"

The strumming paused a moment. The man with the knot of hair gave Strawbridge a brief glance out of the corners of his eyes, then resumed his desultory picking at the strings.

"How should I know where is Eschino San Dolores y Hormigas?" he replied in the same nonchalant undertone.

"I thought perhaps you were a native of this town."

"Pues, you are a stranger?"

"Yes."

"Un Americano, I would say?"

"Yes."

The strumming proceeded smoothly.

"Señor, in your country, is it not the custom in searching for an address to inquire of the police?"

A little trickle of uneasiness went through the American's diaphragm.

"Certainly," he agreed, with a faint stiffness in his undertone, "but when there is no policeman in sight, one can inquire of any gentleman."

The man with the knob of hair muted his guitar, then lifted his hand and pointed.

"Yonder stands one, two corners down, señor."

"Gracias, señor." Strawbridge had a feeling as if a path he meant to climb along a precipice had begun crumbling very gently under his feet. "Gracias; I'll just step down there." He made a little show of withdrawing his attention casually from the game, glanced about, got the direction of the policeman in question, then moved off unhurriedly toward that little tan-uniformed officer.

As he went, Strawbridge tried quickly to think of some other question to ask the police. He wondered if it would be best not to go up to the officer at all. If he knew the man with the hair was not looking after him.... He was vaguely angry at everything and everybody—at Venezuela for making a law that would force an American salesman to go about the important function of business like a thief; at the consul for not giving him complete sailing instructions; at himself for asking ticklish questions of a man with a wad of hair. He might have known there was something tricky about a man like that!

Then his thoughts swung around to the nation again. He began swearing mentally at the basic reason of his slightly uncomfortable position. "Damn country is not run on business principles," he carped in his thoughts. "Looks like they're not out for business. Then what the hell are they out for? Why, they were all trying to pull crooked deals, overcharging, milking the customs! One honest, upright, strictly business American department-store down here in Caracas would grab the business from these yellow sons of guns like a burglar taking candy from a sick baby!" He moved along, pouring the acid of a righteous indignation over his surroundings. However, he was now approaching the policeman, and he stopped insulting the Venezuelan nation, to think of a plan to circumvent it.

He was again beginning to debate whether or not he should make a show of going to the officer at all, when he heard the thrumming of a guitar just behind him. He looked around quickly and saw that the man with the knot of hair had followed him. Then Strawbridge realized that not only would he have to go to the policeman, but he would have to inquire for the actual address in order to maintain an appearance of innocence. Right here he lost his order! He damned his luck unhappily and was on the verge of crossing the street, when the man with the knob of hair continued their conversation, in the same low tone they had used:

"By the way, señor, I just happened to recall an errand of my own at the address you inquired for, if you care to go along with me."

"Why, sure!" accepted Strawbridge, vastly relieved. He drew out a silk handkerchief and touched the moisture on his face. "Sure! Be glad to have your company."

The man began tinkling again.

"I suppose you are going to ... er ... to the house with the blue front?" He lifted his eyebrows slightly.

"I'm looking for Number ... I never was there before, so I don't know what color the house is."

"No?" The guitarist lifted his brows still more. He seemed really surprised. But the next moment his attention broke away. He smote his guitar to a purpose, and broke out in a bold tenor voice:

"Thine eyes are cold, thine eyes are cold to me.

Would I could kindle in their depths a flame.

I bring my heart, a bold torero's heart to thee."

The American was startled at this sudden outbreak of song, but no one else took any notice of it. That is, no one except a girl inside a barred window, who dropped a rose through the grille and withdrew. As the two men passed this spot, the singer stooped for the flower and in a shaken voice murmured into the window, "Little heaven!" and somewhere inside a girl laughed.

The two men walked on a few paces, when the guitarist shrugged, spread a hand, and said:

"They always laugh at you!"

Strawbridge stared at him.

"Who?" he asked.

"A bride ... that bride ... any bride."

The American had been so absorbed in the matter of the police and the street address that he had followed none of this by-play.

"A bride?" he repeated blankly.

"Yes, she married three nights ago. Caramba! The house was crowded, and everybody was tipsy. The guests overflowed out here, into the calle...." He broke off to look back at the window, after a moment waved his hand guardedly, then turned around and resumed his observations:

"Don't you think there is something peculiarly attractive ... well, now ... er ... provocative in a young girl who has just been married?"

The American stared at his new acquaintance, vaguely outraged.

"Why—great God!—no!"

CHAPTER III

The man with the knob of hair came to a halt, and pointed on a long angle across the street.

"That big blue house, señor. I'll come on more slowly and pass you. There is no use for two men to be seen waiting outside the door at one time."

This touch of prudence reassured Strawbridge more than any other thing the stranger could have said. The drummer nodded briskly and walked ahead of his companion toward the building indicated. It was one of a solid row of houses all of which had the stuccoed fronts and ornamental grilles that mark the better class of Caracas homes. The American paused in front of the big double door and pressed a button. He waited a minute or two and pushed again.

Nothing happened. A faint breeze moved a delicate silk curtain in one of the barred windows, but beyond that the casa might have been empty. The silent street of old Spanish houses, their polychrome fronts, and somewhere the soft, guttural quarreling of pigeons wove a poetic mood in Strawbridge's brain. It translated itself into the thought of a huge order for his house and a rich commission for himself. He began calculating mentally what his per cent. would be on, say, ten thousand cases of cartridges—or even twenty thousand. Here began a pleasant multiplication of twenty thousand by thirty-nine dollars and forty-two cents. That would be ... it would be....

The sonnet of his mood was broken by the guitarist, who walked past him, snarling:

"Diablo, hombre! You'll never get in that way! Ring once, then four short rings, then a second long, then three." He walked on.

This brought Strawbridge back to the fact that his order had not yet reached the stage where he could count his profits. He pressed the button again, using the combination the knob-haired man had given him.

Immediately a small panel in the great door opened and framed the head of a negro sucking a mango. The head withdrew and a moment later a whole panel in the door and a corresponding panel in the iron grille opened and admitted the drummer. Strawbridge stepped into a cool entrance of blue-flowered tiles which led into a bright patio. He looked around curiously, seeking some hint of the revolutionist in his casa.

"Is your master at home?" he asked of the negro.

The black wore the peculiarly stupid expression of the boors of his race. He answer in a negroid Spanish:

"No, seño', he ain't in."

"When'll he be in?"

The negro lowered his head and swung his protruding jaws from side to side, as though denying all knowledge of the comings and goings of his master.

Strawbridge hesitated, speculated on the advisability of delivering his note to any such creature, finally did draw it out, and stood holding it in his hand.

"Could you deliver this note to your master?"

"If de Lawd's willin' an' I lives to see him again, seño'."

Strawbridge was faintly amused at such piety.

"I don't suppose the Lord will object to your delivering this note," he said.

"No, seño'," agreed the black man, solemnly, and Strawbridge placed the folded paper in the numskull's hands.

The creature took it, looked blankly at the address, then unfolded it and with the same emptiness of gaze fixed his eyes on the message.

"It goes to General Fombombo," explained Strawbridge.

"Gen'l Fombombo," repeated the negro, as if he were memorizing an unknown name.

"Yes, and inside it says that ... er ... ah ... it says that I am an honest man."

"A honest man."

"Yes, that's what it says."

"I thought you was a Americano, seño'."

Strawbridge looked at the negro, but his humble expression appeared guileless.

"I am an American," he nodded. "Now, just hand that to your master and tell him he can communicate with me at the Hotel Bolivia." Strawbridge was about to go.

"Sí, seño'," nodded the servant, throwing away the mango stone. "I tell him about de Americano. I heard about yo' country, seño', el grand America del Norte; so cold in de rainy season you freeze to death, so hot in de dry season you drap dead. Sí, seño', but ever'body rich—dem what ain't froze to death or drap dead."

"Sounds like you'd been there," said the drummer, gravely.

"I never was, but I wish I could go. Do you need a servant in yo' line o' business, seño'?"

"I don't believe I do."

"Don't you sell things?"

"Sometimes."

"What, seño'?"

"I sell—" then, recalling the private nature of this particular prospect, he finished—"almost anything any one will buy."

This answer apparently satisfied the garrulous black, who nodded and pursued his childish curiosity:

"An' when you sell something do you have it sent from away up in America del Norte down here?"

"Sure."

"An' us git it?"

Strawbridge laughed.

"If you're lucky."

The black man scratched his head at this growing complication of the drummer's sketch of the North American export trade. Then he discovered a gap in his information.

"Seño', you ain't said what it is you sell, yit."

"That's right," agreed Strawbridge, looking at the fool a little more carefully. "I have not." Then he added, "A man doesn't talk his business to every one."

The negro nodded gravely.

"Dat's right, but still you's bound to talk your business somewhere, to sell anybody at all, seño'."

"That's true," acceded the American, with a dim feeling that perhaps this black fellow was not the idiot he had at first appeared.

"And how would you git paid, away up there in America?" persisted the black.

The American decided to answer seriously.

"Here's the way we do it. We ship the ... the goods ... down here and at the same time draw a draft on a bank here in Caracas. We get our pay when the goods are delivered, but the bank extends the buyer six, nine, or twelve months' credit, whatever he needs. That is the accepted business method between North and South America."

The drummer was not sure the black man understood a word of this. The fellow stood scratching his head and pulling down his thick lips. Finally he said, speaking more correctly:

"Señor, I was not thinking about the time a person had to pay in. It was how you could get paid at all."

"How I could get paid at all?"

The negro nodded humbly, and his dialect grew a trifle worse:

"You see, if anybody was to go an' put a lot o' money in de banks here in Caracas, most likely de Guv'ment would snatch it right at once."

Strawbridge came to attention and stood studying the African.

"How would the Government ever know?" he asked carefully.

"How would you ever keep 'em from knowin'?" retorted the negro. "How could anybody, seño', even a po' fool nigger like me, drive a string o' ox-carts through de country, loaded wid gold, drive up to the bank do' an' pile out sacks o' gold an' not have ever'body in Caracas know all about it?"

The suggestion of gold, of wagon-loads of gold delivered to banks, sent a sensation through Strawbridge as if he had been a harp on which some musician had struck a mighty chord. As he stood staring at the black man his mouth went slightly dry and he moistened his lips with his tongue.

"I see the trouble," he said in a queer voice.

His vis-à-vis nodded silently.

The negro with the mango juice on his face and the trig white man stood studying each other in the blue entrance.

"Well," said Strawbridge, at last, "how will I get the money?"

"Where?"

"Here."

"Impossible, señor."

Strawbridge was getting on edge. He laughed nervously.

"You seem to know more about ... er ... certain conditions in this country than I do. What would you suggest?"

The black cocked his head a little to one side.

"Seño', did you know that the Orinoco River and the Amazon connect with each other up about the Rio Negro?"

"I think I've heard it. Didn't some fellow go through there studying orchids, or something? A man was telling me something about that in Trinidad."

"He went through studying everything, seño'," said the black man, solemnly. "You are thinking of the great savant, Humboldt."

"M—yes, ... Humboldt." Strawbridge repeated the name vaguely, not quite able to place it.

"I would suggest that you follow Herr Humboldt's route, seño'. You can carry the bullion down in boats and get it exchanged for drafts in Rio."

A dizzy foreshadowing of Indian canoes laden with treasure, pushing through choked tropical waterways, shook the drummer. He drew a long breath.

"Is it a practical route? I mean, does anybody know the way? Do you think it can be done?"

"I would hardly say practical, seño'. It has been done."

The negro and the white man stood looking at each other.

"How do I ... er ... how does any one get to Rio Negro?" asked the drummer, nervously.

"You will need some person to pilot you, seño': some black man would make a good guide."

"Now, I just imagine he would," said Strawbridge, drawing in his lips and biting them. "Yes, sir, I imagine he would—" He broke off and suddenly became direct: "When do we start?"

"When you feel like it, seño'—now, if you are ready."

"I stay ready. How do we get there?" He asked the question with a vague feeling that the black man might climb up to the roof of the blue house and show him a flying-machine.

"I have a little motor around at the garage, seño'."

"Uh-huh? Well, that's good. Let's go."

The negro went into a room for an old hat. He took a key from his pocket, opened the door, and courteously bowed the American into the calle. When he had locked the door behind them, he said, "Now you go in front, seño'," and indicated the direction down the street. Strawbridge did so, the negro following a little distance behind. They looked like master and servant set forth on some trifling errand.

They had not gone very far before Strawbridge observed that two or three blocks behind them came the guitarist. This fellow meandered along with elaborate inattention to either the white man or the negro.

CHAPTER IV

Now that his rôle of ignoramus and lout had been played, the black man introduced himself as Guillermo Gumersindo and glided into the usual self-explanatory conversation. He was sure Señor Strawbridge would pardon his buffoonery, but one had to be careful when a police visitation was threatened. He was the editor of a newspaper in Canalejos, "El Correo del Rio Negro," a newspaper, if he did say it, more ardently devoted to Venezuelan history than any other publication in the republic. Gumersindo had been chosen by General Fombombo to make this purchasing expedition to Caracas just because he was black and could drop easily into a lowly rôle.

To the ordinary white American an educated negro is an object of curious interest, and Strawbridge strolled along the streets of Caracas with a feeling toward the black editor much the same as one has toward the educated pony which can paw out its name from among the letters of the alphabet.

Gumersindo's historical interest exhibited itself as he and Strawbridge passed through the mercado, a plaza given over to hucksters and flower-venders, in the heart of Caracas. The black man pointed out a very fine old Spanish house of blue marble, with a great coat of arms carved over the door:

"Where Bolivar lived." Gumersindo made a curving gesture and bowed as if he were introducing the building.

The American looked at the house.

"Bolivar," he repeated vaguely.

The editor opened his eyes slightly.

"Sí, señor; Bolivar the Libertador."

The black man's tone showed Strawbridge that he should have known Bolivar the Libertador.

"Oh, sure!" the drummer said easily; "the Libertador. I had forgot his business."

The black man looked around at his companion as straight as his politeness admitted.

"Señor," he ejaculated, "I mean the great Bolivar. He has been compared to your Señor George Washington of North America."

Strawbridge turned and stared frankly at the negro.

"Wha-ut?" he drawled, curving up his voice at the absurdity of it and beginning to laugh. "Compared to George Washington, first in war, first in—"

"Sí, ciertamente, señor," Gumersindo assured his companion, with Venezuelan earnestness.

"But look here—" Strawbridge laid a hand on his companion's shoulder—"do you know what George Washington did, man? He set the whole United States free!"

"But, hombre!" cried the editor. "Bolivar! This great, great man—" he pointed to the blue marble mansion—"set free the whole continent of South America!"

"He did!"

"Seguramente! And this man, who freed a continent, was at length exiled by ungrateful Venezuela and died an outcast, señor, in a wretched little town on the Colombian coast—an outcast!"

Strawbridge looked at Bolivar's house with renewed interest.

"Well, I be damned!" he said earnestly. "Freed all of South America! Say! why don't somebody write a book about that?"

Gumersindo pulled in one side of his wide-rolling lips and bit them. The two men walked on in silence for several blocks west. They passed the Yellow House, the seat of the Venezuelan Government. On the south side of this building stands a monument with a big scar on the pedestal, where some name has been roughly chiseled out. The negro explained that this monument had been erected by the tyrant Barranca, who occupied the Venezuelan presidency for eight years, but that when Barranca was overthrown by General Pina, the oppressed people, in order to show their hatred of the fallen tyrant, erased his name from the monument.

Strawbridge stood looking at the scar and nodding.

"Did they have to rise against this man Barranca to get him out of office?" he asked in surprise.

"Rise against him!" cried Gumersindo. "Rise against him! Why, señor, the only way any Venezuelan president ever did go out of office was by some stronger man rising against him! But come: I will show you, on Calvario."

They moved quickly along the street, which was changing its character somewhat, from a business street to a thoroughfare of cheap residences. After going some distance Strawbridge saw the small mountain called Calvario which rises in the western part of the city. The whole eastern face of this mountain had been done into a great flight of ornamental steps. Half-way up was a terrace containing three broken pedestals.

"These," decried Gumersindo, "were erected by the infamous Pina, but when Pina was assassinated and the assassin Wantzelius came into power, the people, infuriated by Pina's long extravagances, tore down the statues he had erected and broke them to pieces." The black man stood looking with compressed lips at the shattered monoliths in the sunshine.

There was a certain incredulity in Strawbridge's face. The American could not understand such a social state.

"And you say they just keep on that way—one president overthrowing another?"

"Precisely. Wantzelius had Pina assassinated, Toro Torme overthrew Wantzelius, Cancio betrayed and exiled Toro Torme...."

The American arms salesman stood on the stairs of Calvario, beneath the broken pedestals, and began to laugh.

"Well, that's a hell of a way to change presidents—shoot 'em—run 'em off—exile 'em! It's just exactly like these greaser Latin countries!" He sat down on the stairs in the hot sunshine and laughed till the tears rolled out of his eyes.

The thick-set negro stood looking at him with a queer expression.

"It ... seems to amuse you, señor?"

Strawbridge drew out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes. He blew out a long breath.

"It is funny! Just like a movie I saw in Keokuk. It was called 'Maid in Mexico,' and it showed how these damned greasers batted along in any crazy old way; and here is the wreckage of just some such rough stuff." He looked up at the broken pedestals again with his face set for mirth, but his jaws ached too badly to laugh any more. He drew a deep breath and became near-sober.

Just below him stood the negro, like a black shadow in the sunshine. He stared with a solemn face over the city with its sea of red-tiled roofs, its domes and campaniles, and the blue peaks of the Andes beyond. Abruptly he turned to Strawbridge.

"Listen, señor," he said tensely, and held up a finger. "My country has lived in mortal agony ever since Bolivar himself fell from his seat of power amid red rebellion, but there is a man who will remedy Venezuela's age-long wounds; there is a man great enough and generous enough—"

At this point some remnant of mirth caused Strawbridge to compress his lips to keep from laughing again. The dark being on the steps stopped his discourse quite abruptly; then he said with a certain severity:

"Let us understand each other, señor. You sell rifles and ammunition; do you not?"

"Yes," said Strawbridge, sobering at once at this hint of business.

Gumersindo took a last glance at the city sleeping in the fulgor of a tropical noon:

"Let's get to the garage," he suggested briefly.

CHAPTER V

Gumersindo's automobile turned out to be one of those cheap American machines which one finds everywhere. Its only peculiarity was an extra gasolene-tank which filled the greater part of the body of the car, and which must have given the old rattletrap a cruising-radius of a thousand or fifteen hundred miles.

Just as the negro and the white man were getting into the car the man with the knot of hair at the back of his head strolled into the garage. He called to Gumersindo that the Americano was to take him on the expedition which was just starting.

The black editor looked up and stared.

"Take you!"

"Sí, señor, me. This caballero—" he nodded at Strawbridge—"promised to take me along for the courtesy of directing him to ... well ... to a certain address."

Strawbridge heard this with the surprise an American always feels when a Latin street-runner begins manufacturing charges for his service.

"The devil I did! I said nothing about taking you along. I didn't know where I was going. I still don't know."

"Caramba!" The man with the hair spread his hands in amazement. "Did I not say we would go to the same address, and did not you agree to it!"

"But, you damn fool, you know I meant the address here in Caracas! Good Lord! you know I didn't propose to take you a thousand miles!"

The man with the hair made a strong gesture.

"That's not Lubito, señor!" he declared. "That's not Lubito. When a man attaches himself to me in friendly confidence, I'm not the man to break with him the moment he has served my purpose. No, I will see you through!"

"But—damnation, man!—I don't want you to see me through!"

"Cá! You don't! You go back on your trade!"

The American snapped his fingers and motioned toward the door of the garage.

"Beat it!"

The man with the hair flared up suddenly and began talking the most furious Spanish:

"Diantre! Bien, bien, bien! I'll establish my trade! I'll call the police and establish my trade! Ray of God, but I'm an honest man!" and he started for the door, beginning to peer around for a policeman before he was nearly out. "Yes, we'll have a police investigation!" He disappeared.

Strawbridge looked at Gumersindo, and then by a common impulse the black editor and the white drummer started for the door, after the man with the hair. The editor hailed him as he was walking rapidly down the calle:

"Hold on, my friend; come back!"

Lubito whirled and started back as rapidly as he had departed. His movements were extraordinarily supple and graceful even for Latin America, where grace and suppleness are common.

"We have decided that we may be able to carry you along after all, Señor Lubito. We may even be of some mutual service. What is your profession?"

"I am, señor, a bull-fighter." He tipped up his handsome head and struck a bull-ring attitude, perhaps unconsciously. The negro editor stared at him, glanced at Strawbridge, and shrugged faintly but hopelessly.

"Very good," he said in a dry tone. "We want you. No expedition would care to set out across the llanos without a bull-fighter or two."

If he hoped by voice and manner to discourage Lubito's attendance, he was disappointed. The fellow walked briskly back and was the first man in the car.

The other two men followed, and as the motor clacked away down the calle Lubito resumed the rôle of cicerone, cheerfully pointing out to Strawbridge the sights of Caracas. There was the palace of President Cancio; there was an old church built by the Canary Islanders who made a settlement in this part of Caracas long before the colonies revolted against Spain.

"There is La Rotunda, señor, where they keep the political prisoners. It is very easy to get in there." Whether this was mere tourist information or a slight flourish of the whip-hand, which Lubito undoubtedly held, Strawbridge did not know.

"Have they got many prisoners?" he asked casually.

"It's full," declared the bull-fighter, with gusto. "The overflow goes to Los Castillos, another prison on the Orinoco near Ciudad Bolívar, and also to San Carlos on Lake Maracaibo, in the western part of Venezuela."

"What have so many men done, that all the prisons are jammed?" asked the drummer, becoming interested.

It was Gumersindo who answered this question, and with passion:

"Señor Strawbridge, those prisons are full of men who are innocent and guilty. Some have attempted to assassinate the President, some to stir up revolution; some are merely suspected. A number of men are put in prison simply to force through some business deal advantageous to the governmental clique. I know one editor who has been confined in the dungeons of La Rotunda for ten years. His offense was that in his paper he proposed a man as a candidate for the presidency."

Strawbridge was shocked.

"Why, that's outrageous! What do the people stand for it for? Why don't they raise hell and stop any such crooked deals? Why, in America, do you know how long we would stand for that kind of stuff? Just one minute—" he reached forward and tapped Gumersindo two angry taps on the shoulder—"just one minute; that's all."

Lubito laughed gaily.

"Yes, La Rotunda to-day is full of men who stood that sort of thing for one minute—and then raised hell."

Strawbridge looked around at the bull-fighter.

"But, my dear man, if everybody, everybody would go in, who could stop them?"

Gumersindo made a gesture.

"Señor Strawbridge, there is no 'everybody' in Venezuela. When you say 'everybody' you are speaking as an American, of your American middle class. That is the controlling power in America because it is sufficiently educated and compact to make its majority felt. We have no such class in Venezuela. We have an aristocratic class struggling for power, and a great peon population too ignorant for any political action whatsoever. The only hope for Venezuela is a beneficent dictator, and you, señor, on this journey, are about to instate such a man and bring all these atrocities to a close."

A touch of the missionary spirit kindled in Strawbridge at the thought that he might really bring a change in such leprous conditions, but almost immediately his mind turned back to the order he was about to receive, how large it would be, how many rifles, how much ammunition, and he fell into a lovely day-dream as the tropical landscape slipped past him.

At thirty- or forty-mile intervals the travelers found villages, and at each one they were forced to report to the police department their arrival and departure. Such is the law in Venezuela. It is an effort to keep watch on any considerable movements among the population and so forestall the chronic revolutions which harass the country. However, the presence of Strawbridge prevented any suspicion on the part of these rural police. Americans travel far and wide over Venezuela as oil-prospectors, rubber-buyers, and commercial salesmen. The police never interfere with their activities.

The villages through which the travelers passed were all just alike—a main street, composed of adobe huts, which widened into a central plaza where a few flamboyants and palms grew through holes in a hard pavement. Always at the end of the plaza stood a charming old Spanish church, looking centuries old, with its stuccoed front, its solid brick campanile pierced by three apertures in which, silhouetted against the sky, hung the bells. In each village the church was the focus of life. And the only sign of animation here was the ringing of the carillon for the different offices. The bell-ringings occurred endlessly, and were quite different from the tolling which Strawbridge was accustomed to hear in North America. The priests rang their bells with the clangor of a fire-alarm. They began softly but swiftly, increased in intensity until the bells roared like the wrath of God over roof and calle, and then came to a close with a few slow, solemn strokes.

As is the custom of traveling Americans, Strawbridge compared, for the benefit of his companions, these dirty Latin villages with clean American towns. He pointed out how American towns had an underground sewage system instead of allowing their slops to trickle among the cobblestones down the middle of the street; how American towns had waterworks and electric lights and wide streets; and how if they had a church at all it was certainly not in the public square, raising an uproar on week-days. American churches were kept out of the way, up back streets, and the business part of town was devoted to business.

Here the negro editor interjected the remark that perhaps each people worshiped its own God.

"Sure we do, on Sundays," agreed Strawbridge; "or, at least, the women do; but on week-days we are out for business."

When the motor left the mountains and entered the semi-arid level of the Orinoco basin, the scenery changed to an endless stretch of sand broken by sparse savannah grass and a scattering of dwarf gray trees such as chaparro, alcornoque, manteco. The only industry here was cattle-raising, and this was uncertain because the cattle died by the thousands for lack of water during the dry season. Now and then the motor would come in sight, or scent, of a dead cow, and this led Strawbridge to compare such shiftless cattle-raising with the windmills and irrigation ditches in the American West.

On the fifth day of their drive, the drummer was on this theme, and the bull-fighter—who, after all, was in the car on sufferance—sat nodding his head politely and agreeing with him, when Gumersindo interrupted to point ahead over the llano.

"Speaking of irrigation ditches, señor, yonder is a Venezuelan canal now."

The motor was on one of those long, almost imperceptible slopes which break the level of the llanos. From this point of vantage the motorists could see an enormous distance over the flat country. About half-way to the horizon the drummer descried a great raw yellow gash cut through the landscape from the south. He stared at it in the utmost amazement. Such a cyclopean work in this lethargic country was unbelievable. On the nearer section of the great cut Strawbridge could make out a movement of what seemed to be little red flecks. The negro editor, who was watching the American's face, gave one of his rare laughs.

"Ah, you are surprised, señor."

"Surprised! I'm knocked cold! I didn't know anything this big was being done in Venezuela."

"Well, this isn't exactly in Venezuela, señor."

"No! How's that?"

"We are now in the free and independent territory of Rio Negro, señor. We are now under the jurisdiction of General Adriano Fombombo. You observe the difference at once."

By this time the motor was again below the level of the alcornoque growth and the men began discussing what they had seen.

"What's the object of it?" asked Strawbridge.

"The general is going to canalize at least one half of this entire Orinoco valley. This sandy stretch you see around you, señor, will be as fat as the valley of the Nile."

The idea seized on the drummer's American imagination.

"Why!" he exclaimed, "this is amazing! it's splendid! Why haven't I heard of this? Why haven't the American capitalists got wind of this?"

Gumersindo shrugged.

"The federal authorities are not advertising an insurgent general, señor."

After a moment the drummer ejaculated:

"He will be one of the richest men in the world!"

Gumersindo loosed a hand from the steering-wheel a moment, to hold it up in protest.

"Don't say that! General Fombombo is an idealist, señor. It is his dream to create a super-civilization here in the Orinoco Valley. He will be wealthy; the whole nation will be wealthy,—yes, enormously wealthy,—but what lies beyond wealth? When a people become wealthy, what lies beyond that?"

This was evidently a question which the drummer was to answer, so he said:

"Why, ... they invest that and make still more money." The editor smiled.

"A very American answer! That is the difference, señor, between the middle-class mind and the aristocratic mind. The bourgeois cannot conceive of anything beyond a mere extension of wealth. But wealth is only an instrument. It must be used to some end. Mere brute riches cannot avail a man or a people."

The car rattled ahead as Strawbridge considered the editor's implications that wealth was not the end of existence. It was a mere step, and something lay beyond. Well, what was it, outside of a good time? He thought of some of the famous fortunes in America. Some of their owners made art collections, some gave to charity, some bought divorces. But even to the drummer's casual thinking, there became apparent the rather trivial uses of these fortunes, compared with the fundamental exertion it required to obtain them. Even to Strawbridge it became clear that the use was a step down from the earning.

"What's Fombombo going to do with his?" he asked out of his reverie.

"His what?"

"Fortune—when he makes it?"

"Pues, he will found a government where men can forget material care and devote their lives to the arts, the sciences, and pure philosophy. Great cities will gem these llanos, in which poverty is banished; and a brotherhood of intellectuals will be formed—a mental aristocracy, based not on force but on kindliness and good-will."

"I see-e-e," dragged out the drummer. "That's when everybody gets enough wealth—"

"When all devote themselves to altruistic ends," finished the editor.

The drummer was trying to imagine such a system, when Gumersindo clamped on the brakes and brought the car to a sudden standstill. Strawbridge looked up and saw a stocky soldier in the middle of their road, with a carbine leveled at the travelers.

Strawbridge gasped and sat upright. The soldier in the sunshine, with his carbine making a little circle under his right eye, focused the drummer's attention so rigidly that for several moments he could not see anything else. Then he became aware that they had come out upon the canal construction, and that a most extraordinary army of shocking red figures were trailing up and down the sides of the big cut in the sand, like an army of ants. Every worker bore a basket on his head, and his legs were chained together so he could take a step of only medium length.

The guard, a smiling, well-equipped soldier, began an apology for having stopped the car. He had been taking his siesta, he said; the popping of the engine had awakened him, and he had thought some one was trying to rescue some of the workers. He had been half asleep, and he was very sorry.

The cadaverous, unshaven faces of the hobbled men, their ragged red clothes gave Strawbridge a nightmarish impression. They might have been fantasms produced by the heat of the sun.

"What have these fellows done?" asked the American, looking at them in amazement.

The guard paused in his conversation with Gumersindo to look at the American. He shrugged.

"How do I know, señor? I am the guard, not the judge."

Out of the rim of the ditch crept one of the creatures, with scabs about his legs where the chains worked. He advanced toward the automobile.

"Señors," he said in a ghastly whisper, "a little bread! a little piece of meat!"

The guard turned and was about to drive the wretch back into the ditch, when Strawbridge cried out, "Don't! Let him alone!" and began groping hurriedly under the seat for a box where they carried their provisions. When the other prisoners learned that the motorists were about to give away food, a score of living cadavers came dragging their chains out of the pit, holding out hands that were claws and babbling in all keys, flattened, hoarsened, edged by starvation. "A little here, señor!" "A bit for Christ's sake, señor!" "Give me a bit of bread and take a dying man's blessing, señor!" They stunk, their red rags crawled. Such odors, such lazar faces tickled Strawbridge's throat with nausea. Saliva pooled under his tongue. He spat, gripped his nerves, and asked one of the creatures:

"For God's sake, what brought you here?"

The prisoners were mumbling their gracias for each bit of food. One poor devil even refrained, for a moment, from chewing, to answer, "Señor, I had a cow, and the jefe civil took my cow and sent me to the 'reds.'" "Señor," shivered another voice, "I ... I fished in the Orinoco. I was never very fortunate. When the jefe civil was forced to make up his tally to the 'reds,' he chose me. I was never very fortunate."

An old man whose face was all eyes and long gray hair had got around on the side of the car opposite to the guard. He leaned toward Strawbridge, wafting a revolting odor.

"Señor," he whispered, "I had a pretty daughter. I meant to give her to a strong lad called Esteban, for a wife, but the jefe civil suddenly broke up my home and sent me to the 'reds.' She was a pretty girl, my little Madruja. Señor, can it be, by chance, that you are traveling toward Canalejos?"

The American nodded slightly into the sunken eyes.

"Then, for our Lady's sake, señor, if she is not already lost, be kind to my little Madruja! Give her a word from me, señor. Tell her ... tell her—" he looked about him with his ghastly hollow eyes—"tell her that her old father is ... well, and kindly treated on ... on account of his age."

Just then the bull-fighter leaned past the American.

"You say this girl is in Canalejos, señor?" he broke in.

"Sí, señor."

"Then the Holy Virgin has directed you to the right person, señor. I am Lubito, the bull-fighter, a man of heart." He touched his athletic chest. "I will find your little Madruja, señor, and care for her as if she were my own."

The convict reached out a shaking claw.

"Gracias á Madre in cielo! Gracias á San Pedro! Gracias á la Vírgen Inmaculada!" Somehow a tear had managed to form in the wretch's dried and sunken eye.

"You give her to me, señor?"

"O sí, sí! un millón gracias!"

"You hear that, Señor Strawbridge: the poor little bride Madruja, in Canalejos, is now under my protection."

The drummer felt a qualm, but said nothing, because, after all, nothing was likely to come from so shadowy a trust. The red-garbed skeleton tried to give more thanks.

"Come, come, don't oppress me with your gratitude, viejo. It is nothing for me. I am all heart. Step away from in front of the car so we may start at once. Vamose, señors! Let us fly to Canalejos!"

Gumersindo let in his clutch, there was a shriek of cogs, and the motor plowed through the sand. The bull-fighter turned and waved good-by to the guard and smiled gaily at the ancient prisoner. The motor crossed the head of the dry canal, and the party looked down into its cavernous depths. As the great work dropped into the distance behind them, the dull-red convicts and their awful faces followed Strawbridge with the persistence of a bad dream. At last he broke out:

"Gumersindo, is it possible that those men back there have committed no crime?"

The negro looked around at him.

"Some have and some have not, señor."

"Was the fisherman innocent? Was the old man with the daughter innocent?"

"It is like this, Señor Strawbridge," said Gumersindo, watching his course ahead. "The jefes civiles of the different districts must make up their quota of men to work on the canal. They select all the idlers and bad characters they can, but they need more. Then they select for different reasons. All the jefes civiles are not angels. Sometimes they send a man to the 'reds' because they want his cow, or his wife or his daughter—"

"Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic ends!" cried Strawbridge.

"Mi caro amigo," argued the editor, with the amiability of a man explaining a well-thought-out premise, "why not? There must be a beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They would never be convinced."

"But that is such an outrageous thing—to take an innocent man from his work, take a father from his daughter!"

The editor made a suave gesture.

"Certainly, that is simply applying a military measure to civil life, drafted labor. The sacrifice of a part for the whole. That has always been the Spanish idea, señor. The first conquistadors drafted labor among the Indians. The Spanish Inquisition drafted saints from a world of sinners. If one is striving for an ultimate good, señor, one cannot haggle about the price."

"But that isn't doing those fellows right!" cried Strawbridge, pointing vehemently toward the canal they had left behind. "It isn't doing those particular individuals right!"

"A great many Americans did not want to join the army during the war. Was it right to draft them?" Gumersindo paused a moment, and then added: "No, Señor Strawbridge; back of every aristocracy stands a group of workers represented by the 'reds.' It is the price of leisure for the superior man, and without leisure there is no superiority. Where one man thinks and feels and flowers into genius, señor, ten must slave. Weeds must die that fruit may grow. And that is the whole content of humanity, señor, its fruit."

Two hours later the negro pointed out a distant town purpling the horizon. It was Canalejos.

Strawbridge rode forward, looking at General Fombombo's capital city. The houses were built so closely together that they resembled a walled town. As the buildings were constructed of sun-dried brick, the metropolis was a warm yellow in common with the savannahs. It was as if the city were a part of the soil, as if the winds and sunshine somehow had fashioned these architectural shapes as they had the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona.

The whole scene was suffused with the saffron light of deep afternoon. It reminded the drummer of a play he had seen just before leaving New York. He could not recall the name of the play, but it opened with a desert scene, and a beggar sitting in front of a temple. There was just such a solemn yellow sunset as this.

As the drummer thought of these things the motor had drawn close enough to Canalejos for him to make out some of the details of the picture. Now he could see a procession of people moving along the yellow walls of the city. Presently, above the putter of the automobile, he heard snatches of a melancholy singing. The bull-fighter leaned forward in his seat and watched and listened. Presently he said with a certain note of concern in his voice:

"Gumersindo, that's a wedding!"

"I believe it is," agreed the editor.

Lubito hesitated, then said:

"Would you mind putting on a little more speed, señor? It ... it would be interesting to find out whose wedding it is."

Without comment the negro fed more gasolene. As the motor whirled cityward, the bull-fighter sat with both hands gripping the front seat, staring intently as the wedding music of the peons came to them, with its long-drawn, melancholy burden.

Strawbridge leaned back, listening and looking. He was still thinking about the play in New York and regretting the fact that in real life one never saw any such dramatic openings. In real life it was always just work, work, work—going after an order, or collecting a bill—never any drama or romance, just dull, prosy, commonplace business ... such as this.

CHAPTER VI

Canalejos was no exception to the general rule that all Venezuelan cities function upon a war basis. At the entrance of a calle, just outside the city wall, stood a faded green sentry-box. As the motor drove up, a sentry popped out of the box, with a briskness and precision unusual in Venezuela. He stood chin up, heels together, quite as if he were under some German martinet. With a snap he handed the motorists the police register and jerked out, from somewhere down in his thorax, military fashion:

"Hup ... your names ... point of departure ... destination ... profession...."

It amused Strawbridge to see a South American performing such military antics. It was like a child playing soldier. He was moved to mimic the little fellow by grunting back in the same tones, "Hup ... Strawbridge ... Caracas ... Canalejos ... sell guns and ammunition...." Then he wrote those answers in the book.

An anxious look flitted across the face of the sentry at this jocularity. His stiff "eyes front" flickered an instant toward the sentry-box. While the negro and the bull-fighter were filling in the register, a peon came riding up on a black horse. He stopped just behind the motor and with the immense patience of his kind awaited his turn.

While his two companions were signing, Strawbridge yielded to that impulse for horse-play which so often attacks Americans who are young and full-blooded. He leaned out of the motor very solemnly, lifted the cap of the sentry, turned the visor behind, and replaced it on his head. The effect was faintly but undeniably comic. The little soldier's face went beet-colored. At the same moment came a movement inside the sentry-box and out of the door stepped a somewhat corpulent man wearing the epaulettes, gold braid, and stars of a general. He was the most dignified man and had the most penetrating eyes that Strawbridge had ever seen in his life. He had that peculiar possessive air about him which Strawbridge had felt when once, at a New York banquet, he saw J. P. Morgan. By merely stepping out of the sentry-box this man seemed to appropriate the calle, the motor and men, and the llanos beyond the town. Strawbridge instantly knew that he was in the presence of General Adriano Fombombo, and the gaucherie of having turned around the little sentry's cap set up a sharp sinking feeling in the drummer's chest. For this one stupid bit of foolery he might very well forfeit his whole order for munitions.

Gumersindo leaped out of the car and, with a deep bow, removed his hat.

"Your Excellency, I have the pleasure to report that I accomplished your mission without difficulty, that I have procured an American gentleman whom, if you will allow me the privilege, I will present. General Fombombo, this is Señor Tomas Strawbridge of New York city."

By this time Strawbridge had scrambled out of the motor and extended his hand.

The general, although he was not so tall as the American, nor, really, so large, drew Strawbridge to him, somehow as if the drummer were a small boy.

"I see your long journey from Caracas has not quite exhausted you," he said, with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.

Strawbridge felt a deep relief. He glanced at the soldier's cap and began to laugh.

"Thank you," he said; "I manage to travel very well."

The general turned to the negro.

"Gumersindo, telephone my casa that Señor Strawbridge will occupy the chamber overlooking the river."

The drummer put up a hand in protest.

"Now, General, I'll go on to the hotel."

The general erased the objection:

"There are no hotels in Canalejos, Señor Strawbridge; a few little eating-houses which the peons use when they come in from the llanos, that is all."

By this time Strawbridge's embarrassment had vanished. The general somehow magnified him, set him up on a plane the salesman had never occupied before.

"Well, General," he began cheerfully, using the American formula, "how's business here in Canalejos?"

"Business?" repeated the soldier, suavely. "Let me see, ... business. You refer, I presume, to commercial products?"

"Why, yes," agreed the drummer, rather surprised.

"Pues, the peons, I believe, are gathering balata. The cocoa estancias will be sending in their yield at the end of this month; tonka-beans—"

"Are prices holding up well?" interrupted Strawbridge, with the affable discourtesy of an American who never quite waits till his question is answered.

"I believe so, Señor Strawbridge; or, rather, I assume so; I have not seen a market quotation in...." He turned to the editor: "Señor Gumersindo, you are a journalist; are you au courant with the market reports?"

The negro made a slight bow.

"On what commodity, your Excellency?"

"What commodity are you particularly interested in, Señor Strawbridge?" inquired the soldier.

"Why ... er ... just the general trend of the market," said Strawbridge, with a feeling that his little excursion into that peculiar mechanical talk of business, markets, prices, which was so dear to his heart, had not come off very well.

"There has been, I believe, an advance in some prices and a decline in others," generalized Gumersindo; "the usual seasonal fluctuations."

"Sí, gracias," acknowledged the general. "Señor Gumersindo, during Señor Strawbridge's residence in Canalejos, you will kindly furnish him the daily market quotations."

"Sí, señor."

The matter of business was settled and disposed of. Came that slight hiatus in which hosts wait for a guest to decide what shall be the next topic. The drummer thought rapidly over his repertoire; he thought of baseball, of Teilman's race in the batting column; one or two smoking-car jokes popped into his head but were discarded. He considered discussing the probable Republican majority Ohio would show in the next presidential election. He had a little book in his vest pocket which gave the vote by states for the past decade. In Pullman smoking-compartments the drummer had found it to be an arsenal of debate. He could make terrific political forecasts and prove them by this little book. But, with his very fingers on it, he decided against talking Ohio politics to an insurgent general in Rio Negro. His thoughts boggled at business again, at the prices of things, when he glanced about and saw Lubito, who had been entirely neglected during this colloquy. The drummer at once seized on his companion to bridge the hiatus. He drew the espada to him with a gesture.

"General Fombombo," he said with a salesman's ebullience, "meet Señor Lubito. Señor Lubito is a bull-fighter, General, and they tell me he pulls a nasty sword."

The general nodded pleasantly to the torero.

"I am very glad you have come to Canalejos, Señor Lubito. I think I shall order in some bulls and have an exhibition of your art. If you care to look at our bull-ring in Canalejos, you will find it in the eastern part of our city." He pointed in the direction and apparently brushed the bull-fighter away, for Lubito bowed with the muscular suppleness of his calling and took himself off in the direction indicated.

At that moment the general observed the peon on the black horse, who as yet had not dared to present himself at the sentry-box before the caballeros.

"What are you doing on that horse, bribon?" asked the general.

"I was waiting to enter, your Excellency," explained the fellow, hurriedly.

"Your name?"

"Guillermo Fando, your Excellency."

"Is that your horse?"

"Sí, your Excellency."

"Take it to my cavalry barracks and deliver it to Coronel Saturnino. A donkey will serve your purpose."

Fando's mouth dropped open. He stared at the President.

"T-take my caballo to the ... the cavalry...."

A little flicker came into the black eyes of the dictator. He said in a somewhat lower tone:

"Is it possible, Fando, that you do not understand Spanish? Perhaps a little season in La Fortuna...."

The peon's face went mud-colored. "P-pardon, su excellencia!" he stuttered, and the next moment thrust his heels into the black's side and went clattering up the narrow calle, filling the drowsy afternoon with clamor.

The general watched him disappear, and then turned to Strawbridge.

"Caramba! the devil himself must be getting into these peons! Speaking to me after I had instructed him!"

The completely proprietary air of the general camouflaged under a semblance of military discipline the taking of the horse from the peon. It was only after the three men were in Gumersindo's car and on their way to the President's palace that the implications of the incident developed in the drummer's mind. The peon was not in the army; the horse belonged to the peon, and yet Fombombo had taken it with a mere glance and word.

Evening was gathering now. The motor rolled through a street of dark little shops. Here and there a candle-flame pricked a black interior. Above the level line of roofs the east gushed with a wide orange light.

The dictator and the editor had respected the musing mood of their guest and were now talking to each other in low tones. They were discussing Pio Barajo's novels.

In the course of their trip the drummer had that characteristic American feeling that he was wasting time, that here in the car he might get some idea of the general's needs in the way of guns and ammunition. In a pause of the talk about Barajo, he made a tentative effort to speak of the business which had brought him to Canalejos, but the general smoothed this wrinkle out of the conversation, and the talk veered around to Zamacois.

The drummer had dropped back into his original thoughts about the injustice and inequalities of life here in Rio Negro, and what the American people would do in such circumstances, when the motor turned into Plaza Mayor and the motorists saw a procession of torches marching beneath the trees on the other side of the square. Then the drummer observed that the automobile in which he rode and the moving line of torches were converging on the dark front of a massive building. He watched the flames without interest until his own conveyance and the marchers came to a halt in front of the great spread of ornamental stairs that flowed out of the entrance of the palace. A priest in a cassock stood at the head of the procession, and immediately behind him were two peons, a young man and a girl, both in wedding finery. They evidently had come for the legal ceremony which in Venezuela must follow the religious ceremony, for as the car stopped a number of voices became audible: "There is his Excellency!" "In the motor, not in the palacio!" The priest lifted his voice:

"Your Excellency, here are a man and a woman who desire—"

While the priest was speaking, a graceful figure ran up the ornamental steps and stood out strongly against the white marble.

"Your Excellency," he called, "I must object to this wedding! I require time. I represent the father of the bride. It is my paternal duty, your Excellency, to investigate this suitor."

Every one in the line stared at the figure on the steps. The priest began in an astonished voice:

"How is this, my son?"

"I represent the father of this girl," asserted the man on the steps, warmly. "I must look into the character of this bridegroom. A father, your Excellency, is a tender relation."

A sudden outbreak came from the party:

"Who is this man?" "What does he mean by 'father'? Madruja's father is with the 'reds.'"

General Fombombo, who had been watching the little scene passively, from the motor, now scrutinized the girl herself. It drew Strawbridge's attention to her. She was a tall pantheress of a girl, and the wavering torchlight at one moment displayed and the next concealed her rather wild black eyes, full lips, and a certain untamed beauty of face. Her husband-elect was a hard, weather-worn youth. The coupling together of two such creatures did seem rather incongruous.

General Fombombo asked a few questions as he stepped out of the car: Who was she? What claim had the man on the steps? He received a chorus of answers none of which were intelligible. All the while he kept scrutinizing the girl, appraising the contours visible through the bridal veil. At last he waggled a finger and said:

"Cá! Cá! I will decide this later. The señorita may occupy the west room of the palace to-night, and later I will go into this matter more carefully. I have guests now." He clapped his hands. "Ho, guards!" he called, "conduct the señorita to the west room for the night."

Two soldiers in uniform came running down the steps. The line of marchers shrank from the armed men. The girl stared large-eyed at this swift turn in her affairs. Suddenly she clutched her betrothed's arm.

"Esteban!" she cried. "Esteban!"

The groom stood staring, apparently unable to move as the soldiers hurried down the steps.

By this time General Fombombo was escorting the drummer courteously up the stairs into the deeply recessed entrance of the palace. Strawbridge could not resist looking back to see the outcome of this singular wedding. But now the torchbearers were scattering and all the drummer could see was a confused movement in the gloom, and now and then he heard the sharp, broken shrieks of a woman.

His observations were cut short by General Fombombo who, at the top of the stairs, made a deep bow:

"My house and all that it contains are yours, señor."

Strawbridge bowed as to this stereotype he made the formal response, "And yours also."

CHAPTER VII

As the general led the way into the palace, through a broad entrance hall, the cry of the peon girl still clung to the fringe of Thomas Strawbridge's mind. He put it resolutely aside, and assumed his professional business attitude. That is to say, a manner of complimentary intimacy such as an American drummer always assumes toward a prospective buyer. He laid a warm hand on the general's arm, and indicated some large oil paintings hung along the hallway. He said they were "nifty." He suggested that the general was pretty well fixed, and asked how long he had lived here, in the palace.

"Ever since I seized control of the government in Rio Negro," answered the dictator, simply.

For some reason the reply disconcerted Strawbridge. He had not expected so bald a statement. At that moment came the ripple of a piano from one of the rooms off the hallway. The notes rose and fell, massed by some skilful performer into a continuous tone. Strawbridge listened to it and complimented it.

"Pretty music," he said.

"That is my wife playing—the Señora Fombombo."

"Is it!" The drummer's accent congratulated the general on having a wife who could play so well. He tilted his head so the general could see that he was listening and admiring.

"Do you like that sort of music, General?" he asked breezily.

"What sort?"

"That that your wife's playing. It's classic music, isn't it?"

The general was really at a loss. He also began listening, trying to determine whether the music was of the formal classic school of Bach and Handel, or whether it belonged to the later romantic or to the modern. He was unaware that Americans of Strawbridge's type divided all music into two kinds, classic and jazz, and that anything which they do not like falls into the category of classic, and anything they do is jazz.

"I really can't distinguish," admitted the general.

"You bet I can!" declared Strawbridge, briskly. "That's classic. It hasn't got the jump to it, General, the rump-ty, dump-ty, boom! I can feel the lack, you know, the something that's missing. I play a little myself."

The general murmured an acknowledgment of the salesman's virtuosity, and almost at the same moment sounds from the piano ceased. A little later the door of the salon opened and into the hall stepped a slight figure dressed in the bonnet and black robe of a nun.

For such a woman to come out of the music-room gave the drummer a faint surprise; then he surmised that this was one of the sisters from some near-by convent who had come to give piano lessons to Señora Fombombo. The idea was immediately upset by the general:

"Dolores," and, as the nun turned, "Señora Fombombo, allow me to present my friend, Señor Strawbridge."

The strangeness of being presented to a nun who was also the general's wife disconcerted Strawbridge. The girl in the robe was bowing and placing their home at his disposal. The drummer was saying vague things in response: "Very grateful.... The general had insisted.... He hoped that she would feel better soon...." Where under heaven Strawbridge had fished up this last sentiment, he did not know. His face flushed red at so foolish a remark. Señora Fombombo smiled briefly and kindly and went her way down the passage, a somber, religious figure. Presently she opened one of the dull mahogany doors and disappeared.

The general stood looking after his wife thoughtfully and then answered the question which he knew was in his guest's mind:

"My wife wears that costume on account of a vow. Her sister was ill in Madrid, and my wife vowed to the Virgin that if her sister were restored she would wear a Carmelitish habit."

"And she's doing it?" ejaculated Strawbridge, in an amazed voice.

The general made a gesture.

"Her sister was restored."

The American began impulsively:

"Well, I must say that's rather rough on.... Why, her vow had nothing to do with.... You know her sister would have...." It seemed that none of the sentences which the American began could be concluded with courtesy. Finally he was left suspended in air, with a slight perspiration on his face. He drew out a silk handkerchief, dabbed his face, and wiped his wrists.

"General," he floundered on to solider ground, "now, about how many rifles are you going to want?"

The dictator looked at him, almost as much at loss as the drummer had been.

"Rifles?"

"Yes," proceeded the drummer, becoming quite his enthusiastic self again at this veering back to business. "You see, it will depend upon what you are going to do with 'em, how many you will need. If you are just going to hold this state which you have ... er ... seized, why, you won't need so many, but if you are going out and try to grab some more towns, you'll need a lot more."

With a penetrating scrutiny the dictator considered his guest.

"Why do you ask such a question, Señor Strawbridge?" he inquired in a changed tone.

"Because it's your business."

"My business!"

"Why, yes," declared Strawbridge, amiably and with gathering aplomb. "You see, General, when my firm sends out a salesman, the very first rule they teach him is, 'Study your customer's business.' 'Study his business,' said my boss, 'just the same as if it was your own business. Don't oversell him, don't undersell him. Sell him just exactly what he needs. You want your customer to rely on you,' says my old man, 'so you must be reliable. When you sell a man, you have really gone into partnership with him. His gain is your gain.'" By this time Strawbridge was emphasizing his points by thumping earnestly on the dictator's shoulder. "A hundred times I've had my old man say to me, 'Strawbridge, if you don't make your customer's business your own, if his problems are not your problems, if you can't give him expert advice on his difficulties, then you are no salesman; you are simply a mut with a sample case.'"

This eruption of American business philosophy came from Strawbridge as naturally and bubblingly as champagne released from a bottle. He had at last got his prospect's ear and had launched his sales talk. With rather a blank face the general listened to the outburst.

"So you were inquiring through considerations of business?" he asked.

"Exactly; I want to know your probable market. Perhaps I can think up a way to extend it."

"I see." The general was beginning to smile faintly now. "Because I am going to buy some rifles from you, you ask me what cities I am going to attack next."

A slight disconcert played through Strawbridge at this bald statement, but he continued determinedly:

"That's the idea. If you are going to use my guns, I'm partners with you in your ... er ... expansion. That's American methods, General; that's straightforward and honest."

General Fombombo drew in his lips, bit them thoughtfully, and considered Strawbridge. No man with a rudimentary knowledge of human nature could have doubted the drummer's complete sincerity. The general seemed to be repressing a smile.

"Suppose we step into my study, here, a moment, Señor Strawbridge. We might discuss my ... my business, as you put it, if you will excuse its prematurity."

"That's what I'm here for—business," said Strawbridge, earnestly, as he passed in at a door which the dictator opened.

A wall map was the most conspicuous feature of General Fombombo's library, a huge wall map of Venezuela which covered the entire west wall of the room. As the two men entered, only the lower third of this cartograph was revealed by reading-lamps ranged along tables, but the general switched on a frieze of ceiling lights and swept the whole projection into high illumination.

The general stood looking at it meditatively, glanced at his watch as if timing some other engagement, then pointed out to Strawbridge that the greater part of the chart was outlined in blue, while the extreme western end of the Orinoco Valley was in red.

"That is my life work, Señor Strawbridge—extending this red outline of the free and independent state of Rio Negro to include the whole Orinoco Valley. I want to consolidate an empire from the Andes to the Atlantic."

Strawbridge stood nodding, looking at the blue-and-red map, and began his characteristic probing for detail:

"How many square miles you got now, General?"

To Strawbridge's surprise, the dictator repeated this question in a somewhat louder tone:

"How many square miles does the state of Rio Negro now contain, Coronel Saturnino?" and a voice from the north end of the study answered:

"Seventeen thousand five hundred and eighty-two, General."

The general repeated these figures to Strawbridge.

At the first words uttered by the voice, Strawbridge turned, to see a third person in the library, a young man behind a reading-lamp at the other end of the room, busy at some clerical work. Strawbridge turned his thoughts back to the figures and fixed them in his mind, then set out after more details.

"How much more is there to be consolidated?"

This question in turn was relayed to the clerk, who said:

"Two hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and eighteen."

The American compared the two figures, looked at the map.

"Then it will take you a long time, a number of years to finish," he observed.

"Oh, no!" objected the general, becoming absorbed in his subject. "Our progress will be in geometrical, not in arithmetical ratio. You see, every new town we absorb gives us so much human material for our next step."

"I see that," assented the drummer, looking at the map; "and your idea is to absorb the whole Orinoco Valley?"

The general's answer to this was filled with genuine ardor. The Orinoco Valley was one of the largest geographical units in the world, a great natural empire. It was variously estimated at from two hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred and fifty thousand square miles in area. It was drained by four hundred and thirty-six rivers and upward of two thousand streams. These innumerable waters would convert the whole region into a seaport. With such cheap transportation the Orinoco country could supply the world with cocoa, tonka-beans, cotton, sugar, rubber, tropical cabinet-woods, cattle, hides, gold, diamonds.

"But what I have just traveled over is almost a desert," objected Strawbridge. "The cattle were dying of thirst."

"Precisamente!" interjected the general, with a sharp gesture; "but right at this moment I am driving a canal from here to here." He took a long ruler and began to point eagerly on the map.

"Yes, I saw your ... your men at work." The drummer stuttered as the ghastly "reds" recurred to his mind.

"That canal will furnish water in the dry season. In the wet season it will form a conduit to impound the waters in this great natural depression here." The dictator pointed dynamically at the configuration showed on the map. "Young man, can you imagine such a development? Can you fancy the Nile Valley magnified thirty times?" He waved at the brilliantly lighted map. "Can you imagine league after league lush with harvest, decked with noble cities, and peopled by the aristocrats of the earth? I refer to the Spanish race. You must realize, señor, there have been but two dominant races in modern history—the English and the Spanish. We two divided the New World between us. You will agree with me when I say that the English North Americans have cultivated the material side of civilization to a degree that has never been approached in the sweep of human history. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the other great segment of humanity, the Spanish South Americans, will cultivate the immaterial side, will establish a great artistic, intellectual, and spiritual hegemony in the world? By such a division our imperial races will supplement each other. One will show the world how to produce, the other how to live. We shall be the halves of a whole."

Strawbridge followed this dithyramb keenly in regard to the irrigation and development project; the artistic end sounded rather nebulous to him.

"And you've got this far with it," he particularized, pointing at the red boundary; "what's the next step?"

The dictator was riding his own hobby now, and he answered without reservation:

"This town, San Geronimo."

"When are you going to do it?"

"We will absorb San Geronimo.... Let me see, ... Coronel Saturnino, on what date do we attack San Geronimo?"

"On the twenty-third of this month," came the voice from the back of the study.

"Exactly. We want to incorporate that town with the state of Rio Negro before our flotilla returns up the Amazon from Rio Janeiro."

"When do you expect them back?"

"Inside of two months."

"Are they the boats Gumersindo was talking about? He spoke of my going up the Orinoco, crossing to the Amazon, and then going down to Rio Janeiro."

"Those were the instructions I gave Señor Gumersindo."

Strawbridge stood looking up at the map. A sudden plan popped into his head.

"Since I'll be here," he said, "it wouldn't be a bad plan for me to run along with your army to San Geronimo and see how the trick of absorbing it is done. Give me some notion of the working end of this business."

"Do you mean you desire to accompany my army to San Geronimo?"

"Wouldn't be a bad idea."

"You would be running a certain risk, señor."

"Is it dangerous?" The salesman was surprised. The general had talked so comfortably about "absorbing" San Geronimo that it sounded a very peaceable operation. "Anyway," he persisted with a certain characteristic stubbornness, "this will be a good opportunity to learn about actual conditions down here, and if you can make a place for me, I believe I'll go."

The dictator became grave.

"It is my duty to advise you against it."

Strawbridge considered his host.

"Your objections are not to me personally, are they, señor?" he asked bluntly.

"No, not at all. My resources are entirely at your disposal."

"Then I think I ought to go," decided the American. "You see, when my old man started me out, he said to me, 'Study conditions first-hand, Strawbridge. Find out what your customer has to meet. Make his problems your problems, his interest your interest.' So, you see, I am very glad of the chance to see just how this absorption business works."

All this was given in a very enthusiastic tone. The dictator smiled faintly.

"You are personally welcome to go. You may speak to Coronel Saturnino. He will arrange your billet."

"Good! Good!" Strawbridge was gratified. Then he dropped automatically into the follow-up methods taught him by the sales manager of the Orion Arms Corporation.

"And now, General," he continued intimately, "about how many rifles do we want shipped here?" As he asked this question he used his left hand to draw a leather-covered book from his hip pocket, while with his right he plucked a fountain-pen from his vest pocket. With a practised flirt he flung open his order-book at a rubber-band marker. Thus mobilized, he looked with bright expectation at his prospect.

The general seemed a little at loss.

"Do you mean how many rifles I want?"

Strawbridge nodded, and repeated in an intimate, confident tone, "Yes; how many do we want?" The pronoun followed up the impression of how thoroughly he had identified himself with the interest of his customer.

Fombombo hesitated a moment, then asked aloud:

"Coronel Saturnino, how many rifles do we want?"

The young colonel did not pause in his work.

"Twenty-five thousand, General." His brain seemed to be a card-index.

"Twenty-five thousand," repeated Fombombo.

A jubilant sensation went through the drummer at the hugeness of the order. He jotted something in his book.

"When do you want them delivered?"

"As soon as I can get them."

Strawbridge made soft, blurry noises of approval, nodding as he wrote.

"And how shipped?"

All through this little colloquy the general seemed rather at sea. At last he said:

"We can arrange these details later, Señor Strawbridge."

The drummer suddenly turned his full-power selling-talk on his prospect. This was the pinch, this was where he either "put it across" or failed. For just this crisis his sales manager had drilled him day after day. He turned on the dictator and began in an earnest, almost a religious tone:

"Now, General, I can make you satisfactory terms and prices. Every article that leaves our shop is guaranteed; the Orion Arms brands are to-day the standards by which all other firearms are judged. You can't make a mistake by ordering now." He pushed the pen and the book closer to the general's hand. All the general had to do now was simply to close his fingers.

"Señor, we can hardly go into such details to-night." The dictator moved back a trifle from the drummer, with a South American's distaste of touching another human being of the same sex. "There is no necessity. You will be here for weeks, waiting for my canoes from Rio. They will bring drafts, some gold, some barter. When all this is arranged I will send you down the Amazon to embark at Rio for New York, but we have a long wait until my flotilla arrives."

The salesman made a flank attack, almost without thinking. He gently insinuated the book and pen into the general's fingers.

"Now, your Excellency," he murmured, raising his brows, "you sign the dotted line, just here; see?" He pointed at it absorbedly. "I want you to do it to protect yourself. If the prices happen to advance, you get the benefit of to-day's quotations; see? If they fall—why, countermand and order again; see? I'm trying to protect your interests just the same as if they were mine, General."

The dictator returned pen and book.

"We will discuss these details later, señor." He again drew out his watch and seemed struck with the hour. "I am sure you are weary after your long ride, Señor Strawbridge. I myself, unfortunately, have another engagement. Allow me to introduce to you Coronel Saturnino." He moved with the salesman toward the man at the desk, a moment later presented the colonel, and bowed himself away.

The drummer was discomfited at his prospect's escape; nevertheless he shook hands warmly with Coronel Saturnino. The colonel was a handsome young officer, in uniform, and his sword leaned against the desk at which he sat writing. Saturnino's face tended toward squareness, and he had a low forehead. His thick black hair was glossy with youth. His square-cut face was marked with a faintly superior smile, as though he perceived all the weaknesses of the person who was before him and was slightly amused by them. He was of middle height. Strawbridge would have called him heavy-set except for a remarkably slender waist. When the colonel stood up and shook hands with the drummer, Strawbridge discovered that he was in the presence of an athlete.

The salesman put himself on a friendly footing with this officer at once, just as he always did with the clerks in American stores. He seated himself on the edge of Coronel Saturnino's desk, very much at ease.

"Well, I thought I was going to land the old general right off the bat!" he confided, laughing.

"Yes?" inquired Saturnino, politely, still standing. "Why your haste?"

"Oh, well—" Strawbridge wagged his head—"push your business or your business will push you. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. Why, there might be a German salesman in here to-morrow with another line of goods!"

"Is a German salesman coming?" asked the colonel, quickly.

"Oh, no, no, no! I said there might be." Strawbridge reached into an inner pocket, drew out and flipped open a silver case. "Have a cigar."

"No, thank you." The colonel hesitated, and added, "I don't smoke after twelve o'clock at night."

Strawbridge jumped up.

"Good Lord! is it as late as that?"

The colonel thought it was.

"By the way," interrupted the drummer, "I'm to go with you to San Geronimo. The old man said so. I'll get the hang of things down there. I suppose it pays—this revolting—or the old man wouldn't stay in the business."

As the colonel simply stood, Strawbridge continued his desultory remarks:

"The old man's got a grand scheme—hasn't he?—canalizing the Orinoco Valley. Say, this goes: when you fellows put that across, this beautiful little city of Canalejos will just have a shade on any damn burg in this wide world. Now you can take that flat; it goes." He made a gesture with his palm down.

Coronel Saturnino did not appear particularly gratified by this encomium heaped upon his home town. He picked up a paper-weight and looked at it with a faint smile.

"Did the general tell you about that?"

"Oh, yes," declared Strawbridge, heartily, "we buddied up from the jump. Why, I never meet a stranger. I'm just Tom Strawbridge wherever you find me."

The colonel passed over Mr. Strawbridge's declaration of his identity.

"Did the general's plan for canalization strike you as economically sound?" he asked, with a certain quizzical expression.

"Why, sure! That's the most progressive scheme I've heard of since I struck South America. I'm for it. I tell you it's a big idea."

The colonel laid down the paper-weight, and asked with a flavor of satire:

"Why should a colony of men canalize a semi-arid country when they can go to other parts of South America and obtain just as fertile, well-watered land without effort?"

With a vague sense of sacrilege the drummer looked at the young officer.

"Why—good Lord, man!—you're not knocking your home town, are you?"

Coronel Saturnino was unaware that this was the cardinal crime in an American's calendar.

"I am stating the most elementary analysis of an economic situation," he defended, rather surprised at his guest's heat.

The drummer laughed in brief amazement at a man who would decry his place of residence for any reason under the sun.

"You certainly must never have read Edgar Z. Best's celebrated poem, 'The Trouble Is Not with Your Town; It's You.'"

"No," said the officer. "I've never read it."

"Well, I'll try to get it for you," said the drummer, in a tone which told Coronel Saturnino that until he had read "The Trouble Is Not with Your Town: It's You," he could never hope to stand among literate men.

Having thus, one might say, laid the foundation of the American spirit in Canalejos, Strawbridge yawned frankly and said:

"If you'll be good enough to show me my bunk, I believe I'll hit the hay."

Coronel Saturnino pressed a button on his desk and a moment later a little palace guard in uniform entered the library, carrying a rifle. The colonel gave a brief order, then walked to the door with his guest and bowed him out of the study.

CHAPTER VIII

Next morning the cathedral bells roused Strawbridge with dreams of fire-alarms. He thought he was in a burning house and he struggled terrifically to move a leg, to twitch an inert arm. Somewhere in the sleeping bulk of the drummer a strange, insubstantial entity sent out desperate alarms. At last a finger flexed, an eyelid trembled, then suddenly something in the sleeper's brain expanded, flowed out through and identified itself with the whole body. It was reinstated as a traveling salesman with trade ambitions who pursued devious ends through ways and means imposed on him by custom and training. The drummer opened his eyes and sat up. He wiped the sweat from his face and damned the bells for waking him. The fact that by some strange means he had been cut off a moment or two from his body, that he had engaged in a terrific struggle to regain its control, did not suggest a mystery or provoke a question in his mind. He had had a nightmare. That explained everything. He often had nightmares. To Thomas Strawbridge's type of mind anything that happens often cannot possibly contain a mystery.

Nevertheless his experience left him in a dour mood. He turned out of bed, shoved his feet into some native alpargatas, and shuffled to the bath which adjoined his chamber.

The bath-tub was a basin of white marble, rather dirty, and built into the tiled floor. It was a miniature swimming-pool. Overhead was a clumsy silver nozzle on a water-pipe. The drummer turned it on, and the water which sprayed over him was neither cool nor very clean. The roaring and banging of the cathedral bells continued as if they would never leave off.

As Strawbridge soaped and rubbed he recalled somewhat moodily his engagement to go with General Fombombo's force to San Geronimo. At this hour of the morning the adventure did not appeal to him. It was rather a wild-goose chase, and he decided he would tell the general he had changed his mind, and have Saturnino remove his name from the lists.

The bells continued their uproar. They did not stop until the drummer had finished his bath and was back in his room. Then their silence brought into notice a distant, watery note. This came from the cataracts in the Rio Negro somewhere below Canalejos. The disquietude of the water was rumored through the room, over the city, and it spread across the llanos for miles and miles. It held a certain disagreeableness for Strawbridge. He liked a quiet morning. Somewhere on the street a native donkey-cart rattled. The cathedral bells started again, but this time not for long—merely to gather in the faithful their previous tumult had awakened. But it all struck Strawbridge on raw nerves.

In fact, every morning Strawbridge was subject to what he called his grouch. He got up with a grouch on. It was a short daily reaction from his American heartiness, his American optimism, his tendency to convert every moment into a fanfare and a balloon ascension. This early morning depression continued until he had had his coffee and the fife-and-drum corps of his spirit started up their stridor again. It is just possible that the American flag, instead of stars, should bear forty-eight coffee beans rampant.

A woman in black passed the barred windows of Strawbridge's room. The drummer, after the manner of men, moved slowly about his window to keep her in sight as long as possible. He fussed with his tie as he did so. He watched her cross the plaza. She passed under a row of ornamental evergreen trees which looked as if they had dark-green tassels hung at regular intervals on perfectly symmetrical limbs. The grace of the trees somehow lent itself to the girl who passed beneath them. At the same moment an odor of frangipani drifted in through the bars, out of the morning.

When any man is looking at a woman, any odor that comes to his nostrils automatically associates itself with her—a relic, no doubt, of our animal forebears, during their mating seasons.

Strawbridge watched the girl intently until at last he had his face pressed against the bars to get a final glimpse of her at a difficult angle.

When he straightened from this rather awkward posture and returned to his tie, he became aware that the maid had entered his room with his morning coffee. She was a short girl, of dusky yellow color, and was evidently half Indian and half negro, or what the Venezuelans call a griffe. She also had moved about the window to its last angular possibility, and when Strawbridge saw her she was peering with very bright black eyes to see who had been the gentleman's quarry.

At this the drummer became acutely aware of every movement he had made. He frowned at the griffe girl.

"Here, give me the coffee! Don't stand all day staring like that!"

The girl started and nervously handed her salver to him.

"Whyn't you knock when you came in?" demanded Strawbridge.

"I did, señor, but I thought you were asleep," she said, a little frightened.

It was the maid's custom to find her master's guests asleep, to steal in noiselessly, awaken them, and administer in a tiny cup two tablespoonfuls of Venezuelan coffee, black as the pit and strong as death.

The incident of the servant-girl counteracted, to a certain extent, the heartening effect of the coffee. Strawbridge looked out on the brightening morning and wondered if by any chance her gossip might affect his landing General Fombombo's order for rifles, because he knew that the girl in black he had been watching at such inconvenience was the Señora Fombombo. He felt sure the griffe girl knew it also. But he decided optimistically that she would say nothing about it, or, if she did, it would have no influence on his sale.

The big, somber bedroom to which General Fombombo had assigned his guest was a good observation point, and no doubt the dictator had chosen it for this very reason. The scene at which Strawbridge was looking might have aroused enthusiasm in a more susceptible man. At an angle it gave a view of the Plaza Mayor and a glimpse of the cathedral seen through the trees. Straight east a bit of paved street showed, and beyond that a garden with a side gate facing Strawbridge's window. A heavy hedge divided the garden from the plaza. Beyond the garden rose the walls and buttresses of the rear of the cathedral, and this was a handsome thing. In the soft morning light it was an aspiration toward God.

Beyond the cathedral, the wide river stretched eastward. Two hundred yards down the river bank rose another low, massive building, more heavily built and gloomier even than the palace. In the uncertain light Strawbridge thought he discerned two or three figures on the flat roof of this building.

A little later the sun's limb cut the far eastern reach of the river. Distant quivering reflections marked the rapids whose subdued turmoil brooded over the city and the llanos. The light increased momentarily. Against its widening flame blinked tiny black native boats, like familiar demons traversing the fires of some wide and splendid hell.

None of this interested Strawbridge. He stared at it through the same mechanical compulsion that causes a moth to head toward light, but he did not see it. The first thing that really caught his attention was a bugle blowing reveille; the next breath, from the top of the low building came the flash of a cannon, faintly seen against the brilliant east. After an interval came a brief, hard report.

The concussion not only startled Strawbridge but did some obscure violence to his sensibilities. It did not roar and rumble and so suggest the pomp and panoply of war. The flatness of the llanos lent no echo. The shot was just a hard, abrupt blow, a smash, then silence. There was something dismaying about it. Then Strawbridge could see the figures on the flat roof leaving their cannon and descending.

Like all good Americans who observe a foreign military demonstration, Strawbridge thought:

"That's nothing. An American army with big American guns could blow that little toy right out of existence." Nevertheless he continued to be depressed and somehow dismayed by the hard and savage suddenness of the sunrise gun, and in his heart he determined firmly that he would not go with the army to San Geronimo. In his mind Strawbridge uttered these thoughts resolutely, and he felt himself to be one of those strong-willed men who, having once settled on a program, never vary from it, no matter what chance befalls.

A gong announcing almuerzo brought the drummer out of his reverie and moved him toward the breakfast table. As he went he shook off his mood, and resumed, as if he were putting on a suit of clothes, his quick American walk, his optimism, and his dashing business manner. As he moved briskly down the great hallway, a guard with a rifle directed him to the comidor.

The palace was divided into an east and a west wing, by a series of patios, and the breakfast-room proved to be a little place latticed off from one of the smaller patios. The lattice was overgrown with vines. In this retreat Strawbridge found a small basketry table laid with snowy linen, on which were oranges, sweet lemons, rolls, and coffee.

Thanks to Strawbridge's quick movements, he was the first person here. He sat down at the table and enjoyed the sunshine glinting at him through the vines. Through an end door of the breakfast-room he could see the kitchen. Its principal furnishing was a Venezuelan cooking-range. This was a great stone table punctured with little iron grates each holding a handful of charcoal fire. Above the table spread a big sheet-iron canopy, to convey away the gases and fumes. Ranged on the little fires were pots and pans and saucepans. At the farther end of the kitchen a wrinkled old negress was on her knees on the earthen floor, pouring boiling water into an old stocking leg filled with ground coffee. The beverage dripped out into a silver pot which sat on the ground in front of the crone. Beyond the negress, in the sunshine, stood a meat block with a machete stuck in it and a joint of meat lying on it. Around the meat the flies were so thick that they appeared to Strawbridge as a kind of wavering shadow over the block.

A sound behind the drummer caused him to turn, and he saw the Señora Fombombo, in her religious black, evidently just returned from early mass. The sight of her gave Strawbridge a certain faint satisfaction, but at the same time it brought back the vague embarrassment he had felt on the previous evening. He returned her salutation of "Buenos dias," and was pondering something else to say, when she expressed a fear that the sight of a Venezuelan cocina (kitchen) would be disagreeable to him. She had heard how spotless were American kitchens.

The salesman began a hasty assurance that the kitchen was very interesting, but the señora called to a servant to close the shutter. The same griffe girl whom Strawbridge had seen that morning answered the call, and before she retired she gave the señora and the salesman a certain understanding look, which linked up in Strawbridge's mind with what the girl had seen an hour or two earlier.

The señora herself was proceeding with her table talk.

"We can get only native servants here in Canalejos," she was saying in the faintly mechanical manner of a hostess who has an uninteresting guest, "and they prepare everything in the native way."

Strawbridge said he liked Venezuelan cooking.

"It is monotonous," criticized the señora. "The chicken is always cooked with rice, and the plantains are always fried."

Strawbridge started to say that he loved chicken and rice and fried plantains, but even his imperfect sense of rhetoric warned him that he had already overworked those particular phrases. So he checked that sentiment, cast about for a substitute, and finally fished up:

"I saw you going to early mass this morning, señora."

The girl glanced at him, agreed to this, and continued peeling her orange with a knife and fork, in the Venezuelan fashion.

The drummer wanted strongly to follow this opening with something brisk and lively to compel her attention and interest, but his head seemed oddly empty. His embarrassment persisted and made him a little uncomfortable. He wondered why. It was irritating. Why didn't he tell her a joke, one of his parlor jokes? Strawbridge knew scores and scores of obscene jokes, and perhaps half a dozen parlor jokes which he kept for women. Now, to his discomfiture, he could not recall a single one of his parlor jokes. For some reason or other, he told himself, the señora crabbed his style.

She was a smallish woman with a rather slender, melancholy face, and her eyes had that slightly unfocused look which is characteristic of all pure-black eyes. Her eyebrows and lips were engraved in black and red against a colorless face. Her nun's bonnet and the white cloth that passed beneath it across her forehead concealed the least trace of hair. And Strawbridge speculated with a sort of apprehension whether or no she really had shaved her head nun fashion. If so, the Virgin had exacted a bitter price for her sister's recovery.

During these meditations, however, the salesman was not dumb. He automatically started one of those typically American conversations which consist in a long string of disconnected questions asked without any object whatever. Strawbridge himself regretted these questions. He had hoped to do something amusing and rather brilliant.

"Have you lived here long, señora?"

"About two years. I came here immediately after I was married to General Fombombo."

"Then you were not married here?"

"No, in Spain."

"Then you are a Spanish girl?"

"Yes, I lived in Barcelona."

"How do you like it here?"

"Very well."

"I suppose you miss the stir. I hear Barcelona is the livest town in Spain."

"I believe it is," she agreed a little uncertainly.

"What do they export? Anything besides olive-oil? I understand they export a lot of olive-oil."

Señora Fombombo touched her slender fingers to her lips a moment and then said she believed they exported olive-oil.

"I suppose the girls go in for business over there, too—bookkeepers, you know; stenogs, clerks, cash girls ...?"

"Ye-e-es."

"What was your line before you married?"

The señora came awake and looked at the drummer.

"My line?"

"Yes," said Strawbridge, becoming a little less of an automaton and a little more of a human. "What was your job before you hooked up with the general?"

The señora almost stared at the American. Then she drew in her under lip and seemed to compress it rigorously, thoughtfully, perhaps to assist her in recalling what her line was before she hooked up with the general. Then she said:

"I ... I did a little music."

"Teach?" probed the American.

"Well ... no.... Really, I'm afraid I didn't do anything."

Strawbridge nodded as if some puzzle had been solved for him.

"Now, that's where you made your mistake," he explained paternally. "A woman ought to have a job just the same as a man. She ought to be able to hold over her goods until the market is right. Now take me: suppose I had to sell my rifles right now because I didn't have the overhead to keep them ninety days longer; I'd be in a bad way. It's the same way with you girls. With no overhead, it's no wonder you married Ge—" He caught himself up abruptly, aghast at the implication to which his monologue had led him. He floundered mentally in an effort to turn it off, but all he could do was simply to moisten his lips and stop talking. He wondered chillily if the señora had caught it.

Apparently she had not. A spray of flowers swung near her from the vine. She drew a raceme to her face and began smoothly:

"I know feminism is very modern and up to date, but somehow we Spanish women don't care for it. We are as idle as these flowers." She turned and looked at the blossoms. "This variety of wistaria grew in my garden in Barcelona; that's why I had it planted here. It reminds me of home." She looked up at the American, smiled faintly, and added rather disconnectedly:

"It may seem strange to you, Señor Strawbridge, but once I very nearly entered a convent in Barcelona."

By this time Strawbridge was convinced that she had not observed his false step. He was still warm, and a little shivery, but he was recovering. He said very simply and truthfully:

"Well, I'm glad you didn't. If I have to stay in Canalejos, I'm glad there is an agreeable woman in it to talk to."

The señora expressed her pleasure if she could enliven his stay at Canalejos, and as they talked Coronel Saturnino entered the breakfast-room. He bowed to the señora and inquired of Strawbridge, in his somewhat amused voice, if he had slept well after his enlistment.

Oh, yes, he had slept like a top.

"Enlistment?" echoed the señora.

"Seguramente," smiled the colonel. "Señor Strawbridge has enlisted in the cavalry to march against San Geronimo."

Señora Fombombo seemed utterly astonished. She stared at the colonel, then at the drummer.

"You don't mean Señor Strawbridge will be in the cavalry attack on San Geronimo?"

"Yes, señora; I arranged his billet last night." The colonel made a smiling bow.

The girl turned to the American.

"But why are you going to fight at San Geronimo, señor?" she asked.

Strawbridge hesitated, cleared his throat, glanced through the vine-grown lattice into the sunshine, then apparently came to some inward decision.

"Now, it's like this, señora," he began, getting back the ring and confidence in his voice which had heretofore been missing: "It's like this. In order to meet your clients' needs you've got to get first-hand information." He patted his right fingers against his left palm and looked the señora squarely in the eye for the first time. "Before you can grasp your patrons' problems, you've got to make 'em yours. Why, the first thing my old man said to me, he said: 'Strawbridge, an expert salesman is first aid to the financially injured; he's the star of Bethlehem to the sinners of commerce.' He's a cutter, my old man is. I wish you could know him, señora."

"You mean your father?" hazarded the President's wife.

"Holy mackerel, lady! no!" cried the drummer, with a touch of Keokuk gusto in his voice. "I mean my boss, the head knocker of my firm. Great old chap, and rich as Limburger cheese. Say, he owns fifty-one per cent. of the Orion Arms stock, and he started in as a water boy. How do you like that?" Mr. Strawbridge gave his auditors a little triumphant smile.

"Caramba! Very American, I say," laughed the colonel.

The señora interposed quickly:

"And very good and very fine, I say, Señor Strawbridge!" She looked at the colonel with a certain little light in her eye, then added emphatically, "I am sure I should like him."

She was rising to leave the table.

Coronel Saturnino, who was about to seat himself, said:

"If I concede his admirable qualities, I wonder if you would stay and eat another orange, señora?"

But the girl pleaded that she must practise some music in the cathedral.

Strawbridge hesitated, half-way out of his chair. He was undecided whether to stay with Coronel Saturnino or to go with the señora. He decided for the latter and walked out of the breakfast-room with her, but he was vaguely embarrassed for fear he had done the wrong thing.

CHAPTER IX

His talk at the breakfast table, with Señora Fombombo, braced the spirits of Thomas Strawbridge. The girl seemed to bring a kind of comfort to the drummer. Now as he walked down the long marble steps of the presidencia, the tropical sunshine slanting into the plaza, the cries of gathering street venders, the rattle of carts, the stir of pigeons in the cathedral tower all conspired to speed his thoughts and energy along their customary channel—that is to say, toward the selling of merchandise. He was in fettle, and he wanted to sell hardware. He felt so full of power he believed he could sell anything to anybody.

And the Señora Fombombo was in some degree responsible for his exaltation. A pleasant woman always grooms a man for a fine deed. So it was the Spanish girl who sent the big blond American striding through the plaza, smiling to himself and seeking whom he might sell.

It was Strawbridge's plan to go to the general merchandise stores in Canalejos and stock them up on hardware, by the mere élan and warmth of his approach. It is conceivable that enough Thomas Strawbridges, a whole army of them, could bankrupt the manufacturing interests of all foreign nations, could wither them right out of existence in the overpowering sunshine of their good-fellowship and love for humanity.

As Strawbridge hurried through the plaza, filled, one might say, with this destructive amiability, he was accosted by a voice asking him if he did not desire a fortune of ten million pesetas.

The drummer looked around and saw a lottery-vender holding out his sheaf of tickets. He was offering coupons on the National Spanish Lottery, an institution which circulates its chances all over South America, including even insurgent Rio Negro.

The good fairy who was offering this chance of fortune was a ragged man whose lean ribs and belly could be seen through the rents in his clothes. The American paused, took the sheaf, and looked at the tickets curiously. Each ticket was a long strip of small coupons which could be torn into ten pieces and divided among indigent buyers. They were vilely printed on the cheapest of paper.

Strawbridge stood looking at the tickets and shaking his head. Life, he told the ticket-seller, was what a man made it, and he could not afford to mix up his solid success with lottery chances and such like. What he wanted was certainties, and not moonshine. Here he handed back the sheaf and moved on briskly through the plaza, a big, well-tailored American, the ensample of a man who had taken his life in his own hands and molded it into a warm and shining success. The vender stared emptily after the drummer. Never before had his hope of a sale inflated so suddenly, or collapsed so completely.

Strawbridge had gone only a little way when a man came running out of a bodega that was down a side street. He was waving his sombrero and calling Strawbridge's name. The American stood in doubt whether he had heard aright, for no one in Canalejos knew his name, and then he saw a wad of hair on the shouter's head and recognized the bull-fighter. Lubito came up quickly and somewhat unsteadily. His face was flushed, his black eyes glistened with alcohol, and his bull-fighter's pigtail was somewhat awry.

"I was just starting to the palacio to see you, señor," he began a little thickly. "I was just starting when my compadre in the bodega says,'There goes the Americano now,' so out I came."

"What can I do for you?" asked the drummer, with brief patience.

The torero grinned laxly.

"You were my comarado coming here from Caracas, señor. You remember, we rode all the way together."

"Sure! Get to your point."

Lubito straightened.

"Well, would you see your comarado wronged? Are you going to see him turned into a laughing-stock?"

"You've turned yourself into a laughing-stock; you're drunk."

"Caramba! Whose fault is it?"

"Why, yours, of course!"

The bull-fighter spread the fingers of both hands on his chest.

"I! It is no fault of mine. The President did this!"

"Aw, you're talking nonsense."

"No, it is true, the fault is with General Fombombo. I am no tippler. I am a bull-fighter. That's what I wanted to see you about. You are a caballero, and a friend of the President. You can stand up and talk to him, but he sends me off to see the bull-ring. You know, you heard him yesterday, sending me off to see the bull-ring, the moment he clapped eyes on me."

Strawbridge was faintly amused.

"Is that what you want me to see him about—because he dismissed you yesterday?"

Lubito was only slightly intoxicated, and now his anger sobered him completely:

"No! No! What do I care for his contempt? I, too, am a Venezuelan, but, señor, when any man interferes with my paternal rights—" he tapped himself threateningly on his powerful chest—"I am a bull-fighter."

"What in the world are you talking about?"

"Cá! Madruja!"

"But your paternal rights!"

Lubito flung out exasperated hands.

"Didn't you hear her father, the old man in the 'reds,' place her in my care?"

"Yes. Well, what has happened?"

"Enough! I saw Madruja carried, by the guards, to one of the rooms in the west wing of the palacio. Very good. I followed, and marked the room. The windows seemed rather old; perhaps the bars could be bent. I did not know. I was in her father's place. It was my duty to see."

Strawbridge's interest picked up, as a man's always does when a woman is introduced into the narrative:

"Yes, I guess you would be very strict about your daughter. Then what?"

"Well, last night I slept in the dressing-room at the bull-ring. That is, I tried to sleep, but I could not. I kept thinking of my daughter Madruja, pining for Esteban. I got up and walked out into the bull-ring, thinking of the lonely little bride. Ah, señor, there were stars! I can never look at stars without thinking of the eyes of brides...." Lubito shivered, reached up and straightened his hair a trifle, then went on: "I said to myself, 'Cá! A man who stumbles goes all the faster if he does not fall.' So I made up my mind. I went back to the dressing-room, in the dark found my guitar, and started for the presidencia. Señor, you will believe it when I tell you I was trembling all the way, like a mimosa leaf. I slipped very quietly around the plaza, past the department of fomento, and so to the window where my little daughter slept. I came up softly and tried the bars with all my strength, but although I am a bull-fighter, señor, they did not budge."

The drummer stood looking at the veins in the bull-fighter's forehead. The fellow went on:

"There was nothing to do, señor, but to sing, to sing a love-song to my little Madruja, and perhaps she would come to the window, or open the door if she could. I touched the chords and began singing 'La Encantadora,' softly, into the window, just for her.

"For minutes nothing stirred, but I have a tender voice, señor. You know; you have heard me sing. It will melt any woman's heart. I began, 'Mi alma, mi amor perdida.'

"Oh, señor, it was a sobbing, plaintive song, and when I had finished and stood holding my breath, something moved in the darkness. There came a little clinking on the windowsill, and I saw the faint gleam of metal. It was a gold coin, señor. Then the voice of General Fombombo said: 'That is Lubito, is it not? Sing to us all night long, Lubito.'"

Strawbridge opened his eyes and thrust his head forward.

"What!" he cried.

"By five thousand devils on horseback, it's true!" Lubito flung up his arms. "And me there—her father! My head grew hot. I went insane! I told General Fombombo I was in her father's place, that I, Lubito, was in her father's place, but the general only laughed and said: 'Sing, sing to us, Lubito. As to your paternal duties, your ideas went out of date with the Neanderthal man, five hundred thousand years ago." The torero came to a pause, breathing heavily; then, after a moment, he asked more rationally, "Now, what did he mean by that?"

The dictator's quip, jest, or philosophy, whatever it was, had not registered at all with Strawbridge. He stood staring at Lubito and suddenly began laughing. The bull-fighter at once looked offended, and Strawbridge began gasping an apology in the midst of his mirth. He got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

"Ex-excuse me, Lubito, b-but wh-what did he say? 'S-s-sing all night! S-s-s...." His effort at the "s" rippled into laughter again.

Lubito flung up his hands in disgust.

"Canastos! what a man! To see a young girl deflowered—and laugh!" The bull-fighter turned on his heel, perfectly sober, and walked away.

Strawbridge also became sober; he even frowned.

"Hell! putting it like that!" Then he shrugged, and continued his unspoken soliloquy: "Well, what better could you expect from a bunch of Venezuelans ... just natives...." His good-natured face began to form another smile; then he thought of Señora Fombombo. At that he became serious enough. The Spanish girl seemed to raise some obscure question in his mind. He made a hazy effort to clarify that question, but nothing came of it.

With this, Strawbridge removed his thoughts from the incident and proceeded to canvass the town in the interest of the Orion Arms Corporation. He walked out of Plaza Mayor into a narrow, dirty calle which was the principal street of the city. It was lined with the usual ill-lighted, inconvenient business houses which characterize Venezuelan towns; a roulette establishment, a charcoal and kindling store with a box of half-decayed mangos as a side line, a gloomy book-store with the works of Vargas Vila lying, back up, on a table outside. The first general merchandise store he found had a single bolt of calico on display. Above the bolt swung the name of the store in faded letters, "Sol y Sombra."

Such complete absence of attractive displays was a real pain to the American. It spurred his commercial missionary spirit. He entered the dark "Sol y Sombra." It had once been an ancient dwelling. Its use had been changed from domestic to mercantile ends by the simple expedients of knocking out some partitions and roofing an old patio. In fact, when a Venezuelan merchant covers an old patio and thereby adds to his floor space, he has just about uttered the last word in Venezuelan progressiveness.

Strawbridge turned into the shop and asked for the proprietor. The proprietor had not arrived, but one of the clerks offered his services. The American introduced himself and vigorously grasped the young man's limp hand.

"I'm a hardware man," he began briskly; "and now, if you'll just carry me back to your hardware department, we'll check through and see what you're short on; then I can hand your boss the lists and prices of the very things he needs and save him a lot of time."

The clerk was a small, withered youth with sad brown eyes that resembled a monkey's. He looked at Strawbridge and said:

"My employer will have all the time there is when he gets here, señor."

"Um ... well, ... we can shove the deal through quicker, anyway."

The little clerk turned and started doubtfully toward the hardware department. It was clear that he did not want to go, but he could not hold his ground against the dynamic force of Strawbridge's enthusiasm. As he moved along he said:

"You are an American, aren't you?"

"Travel out of New York, but my home's in Keokuk. Great little burg; thirty thousand population and thirty-five hundred automobiles, not to mention flivvers...." Here Strawbridge laughed heartily, sharing the wide-spread American conviction that to make a distinction between an automobile and a flivver is the most amusing flight of human wit. "And, say," he added, when he had finished his lonely laugh, "I wish you could see the Keokuk window displays; give you some pointers, young man."

The young man was smiling agreeably, so the drummer turned to business.

"Well," he began optimistically, "trade picking up here as everywhere, I suppose?"

The monkey-eyed youth agreed without enthusiasm.

"Your export trade showing any strength?"

"I am only a clerk, señor; I have no export trade."

"Yes, I know; I meant...." It became clear that it was not worth while to pursue this topic. They had reached the hardware department. The clerk stood silent while Strawbridge looked around him. The stock was fuller than the American had expected.

A sudden idea occurred to Strawbridge:

"Look here, why don't you get out a big display of this stuff? You could push out a lot of it."

"I have no interest here at all, señor," repeated the little man, concealing a yawn with his fingers. "I'm just a clerk."

Strawbridge broke into cheerful irritation:

"Why, damn it, man! if you'll make this business your own, some day it will be your own. Right here is your chance to use your initiative, throw some pep into this establishment. Get this thing moving and you'll be the headliner around here." Strawbridge gave the prospective headliner a cheerful blow on the shoulder, designed to knock energy into him. A constructive impulse seized the American: "Say, I'm quite a lad when it comes to window-dressing. Let's bundle a lot of this stuff out front and fix up something of a scream by the time the old man arrives!" Like a benevolent giant Strawbridge beamed down on the little clerk. Next moment he had caught up an armful of ropes, plow points, hoes, and door hinges and was lugging them toward the front of the store.

The feather of a clerk tried to resist the American whirlwind.

"But, señor, wait one minute! Nombre de Dios! Señor, for God's sake stop! What you are doing is mad!"

Strawbridge was annoyed.

"Mad the devil! It's the only sensible thing in Canalejos; give your joint a prosperous, up-to-date look."

"But, señor, we don't want to look prosperous and up to date."

"What!" The American was scandalized. "Don't want to look up to date! What's eating you?"

"Nothing. We don't want to, because it will raise our taxes. We shall be forced to pay larger contributions to the governor. Caramba! Señor, you do not know this country!"

Strawbridge came to a halt at last.

"Your taxes will be raised if you look prosperous!"

"Seguramente!" affirmed the clerk, excitedly. "To look prosperous is a sort of crime in Venezuela. If we seem too well off, perhaps the dictator will take over our whole business. We dare not risk it. So we keep everything out of sight. That is best."

Thomas Strawbridge stood confounded. He doubted his ears.

"Look here: is that straight goods?"

"It is true, señor," asseverated the little man, solemnly, "if that is what you mean."

"But take your business from you? Take it from you!"

The clerk evidently thought the American did not understand his Spanish, for he elucidated:

"I mean occupy it—receive the money—have the key to the door."

Strawbridge stood staring at the little fellow, wondering if such a fantastic situation could really exist.

"Did you ever know of such a case?" he asked slowly.

"Sin embargo. A friend of mine had a ranch near the President's. It was a good ranch, with water so well placed that it stayed green each summer, much longer than the President's own. So suddenly, one day of a very dry summer, soldiers came to my friend's estancia and carried him away, and all his peons. It lay vacant a week or two. No one dared go on it. Then the President ran his fences around it and claimed it as waste land."

"That really happened?"

"Sí, señor."

"What became of the poor devil of a rancher and his peons?"

"Oh, the peons were put into the army and the man...." The clerk shrugged, and nodded his head in a certain direction. Strawbridge did not know to what he referred.

The American replaced the goods he had chosen for display, and stood in the wareroom rather stunned. A sort of horripilation ran over him as he pondered the clerk's story. Under such a government, all business was in jeopardy.

"Why, that's awful!" he said aloud. "That'll ruin business! If a fellow's investments are not protected, then—" he made a hopeless gesture—"then what in God's name do they hold sacred here?"

The clerk gave a Latin shrug of despondency.

"Cá, señor, they hold nothing sacred here. Why, even our sisters and betrothed are violated—"

Strawbridge lifted a hand and waggled a finger for silence.

"Yes, I know that old stuff, but business—not to respect a man's investment—God! but these people are savages!"

CHAPTER X

Thomas Strawbridge left "Sol y Sombra" and started back up the street, hurrying out of habit but with no objective. His conversation with the little monkey-eyed clerk had suddenly explained to the drummer the squalor and filth of Canalejos. It was an intentional filth, deliberately chosen to escape governmental mulcting. In short, Venezuelan cities were especially designed to do business in the worst possible way and with the greatest amount of friction and inconvenience. Strawbridge was bewildered. He had come from a country where the whole machinery of government is built for the especial purpose of expediting business. Now this sudden reversal of motif seemed to him a mad thing.

What was the object of it? If men did not organize a government to promote business, why did any exist? Why did the shop-keepers persist in running their dirty little shops? Why did the peons go and come, the fishermen labor up and down the rapids? If business was strangled, what reason was there for life to go on?

The drummer's steps had led him back to Plaza Mayor, and by this time the square was full of people. Most of them were loiterers, sitting on the park benches gazing listlessly at the palms and ornamental evergreens, or watching the drip of a fountain too clogged to play. In the center of the plaza was a statue, and the drummer was somewhat surprised to observe that it was a full-length figure of General Fombombo. The statue was of heroic size and held out in its hands a scroll bearing the words, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."

There was a slow movement, among the idlers, toward the cathedral. Señoritas came by with their missals, beggars with their cups. Youths and well-dressed men took a last puff at their eternal cigarettes, tossed away the stubs, and wandered toward the gloomy temple.

Strawbridge had never been in a Roman Catholic church in his life. In fact, since his boyhood he had scarcely been in any sort of church. Now his desire for silence and a place to think out the riddle he had found, drew him through the deeply recessed archway of the cathedral. On one of the columns he saw the holy water, in a shell of a size that amazed him in a superficial way. He passed on in and immediately forgot the shell.

The interior of the church was a semi-darkness punctuated here and there with groups of candles flickering before the different altars. To the right hand of the entrance he saw a life-size effigy of the crucifixion. The head of the figure drooped to one side, and the whole body was painted the pallor of death.

With the impersonal and faintly interested eyes of an American tourist the drummer stood looking at this figure. As he stood, an old man with an aura of white hair shuffled up before the crucifix, laid down a bundle on the stone floor, spread a filthy handkerchief, and knelt stiffly on it. Then he stared fixedly at the effigy, and spread out his old arms to it, and his lips began moving beneath his tobacco-stained beard. In his earnestness his old head shook and nodded; he reached up his scrawny arms farther and farther, as if to pull down from the figure the good he was seeking. He arose and went; other men took his place—young men, well-dressed men. They went through their devotions openly and unashamed.

But Strawbridge was somehow shamed before them. It seemed to him a rather improper thing for a man to be seen praying in public. In North America, to pray in public is a sort of test of audacity, not to say brazenness. In North America one who prays in public seldom thinks about God; he thinks about how he looks and what the people are thinking about his prayer. Now, for these Venezuelans to pray to God earnestly and unaffectedly in the open made Strawbridge feel uncomfortable, as if they were appearing in public wearing too few clothes.

The women, on the other hand, somehow pleased him. As each señorita and señora came in with a white handkerchief spread over her black hair, touched the holy water to her forehead, lips, and breast, and then knelt to pray, it gave the drummer a queer sense of intimacy and pleasure.

Presently reading and responses began in one of the chapels hidden from the American. The voice of the priest would rise in a muffled swell and then taper into silence again; a moment later this would be followed by a hushed babble of women's voices. There was something sad in the reading and responses. The same words were repeated over and over and filled the cathedral with a monotonous and melancholy music.

As Strawbridge stood musing among these frail and unaccustomed pleasures, his mind moved vaguely about the question which had brought him there: what could the Venezuelans find in life to take the place of business? Upon what other cord could any man string the rosary of his days? As the women came and went, as the responses filled the church with a many-tongued music, as the odor of incense flattered the gloom, he pondered his question, but could find no answer.

The drummer found a seat near a column of the nave and relaxed, American fashion, with his legs spread out and his arms lying along the back of the bench. He stopped thinking toward any point and allowed his fancies to drift idly. The life of the cathedral slowly developed itself around him. A woman was on her knees just inside the altar-rail, scrubbing the tiled floor. Several acolytes in lace robes were gathered in the transept, perhaps waiting to take part in some later mass. A priest in his cassock loitered near a confessional, evidently expecting a penitent. Presently a little girl did come and step into the double stall of the confessional. The father moved into the other side with the slowness of a heavy man and with a mechanical movement lifted the little shutter in the partition. The child placed her face in the aperture and began to whisper.

Strawbridge sat and looked with a dreamy emptiness at the priest and the little girl. He could feel the bench pressing his body and catch the queer fragrance of incense. Presently the child stepped out of the confessional and began a round of the stations, kneeling and telling her beads before each one. A beggar entered the booth and presently went away. A few moments later, to the drummer's surprise, Coronel Saturnino came down the aisle and stepped into the confessional. The officer put his mouth to the orifice and whispered steadily for five or ten minutes. Strawbridge could see his profile against the darkness of the booth—a handsome, almost flawless profile, with a slight sardonic molding about the nose and the corners of the mouth even in this moment of confession.

Strawbridge wondered what he was confessing; what kind of sins Saturnino committed.

Just then a hand touched the American's outstretched arm. The drummer looked around and saw Gumersindo standing at the back of his seat. The negro bowed slightly, with his thick lips smiling. Strawbridge aroused himself, really glad to see Gumersindo. He got up and joined the colored man.

"Lots of folks in church to-day," he whispered.

Gumersindo nodded.

"The cavalry expect to go to San Geronimo soon. There is always a crowding in for confession before such an expedition."

"Oh! I see." Strawbridge was rather taken aback. He looked across at the opposite aisle, where two or three soldiers were standing near another confessional, awaiting their turn. "Do they really believe anything is going to happen to them?"

"Why, they know it!" Gumersindo considered Strawbridge, faintly surprised at such a question; then he evidently decided it was one of those thoughtless queries such as every one makes at times, for he passed to another subject: "Would you like to go down into the crypt?"

Strawbridge agreed, with his mind still hovering about San Geronimo. The negro led the way, tiptoeing through the big, murmuring cathedral:

"There's a great painting in that chapel," he said, pointing into one as they passed, but not stopping to enter it; "you must see it some day." Strawbridge said he would, and immediately forgot it.

They passed through the transept and round behind the high altar. In the passage they found another priest, walking slowly back and forth, reading some religious book. Gumersindo introduced Strawbridge to Father Benicio. The priest's face held the worn, ascetic look of a celibate who endures the ardors of the tropics.

"Señor Strawbridge is the American gentleman whom I brought back from Caracas," proceeded the editor; "perhaps you noticed my article about him in the 'Correo'?"

"I have not seen to-day's 'Correo,'" said the father, looking, with the shrewd eyes of his calling, at the American.

Gumersindo was already drawing from his pocket a damp copy of his paper. He opened the limp sheet and handed it to the priest, with his finger at the article. Then he turned away and pretended to inspect the carving on the reredos, glancing repeatedly toward the readers to see what effect his article was producing.

The article itself was typical Spanish-American rhetoric. It referred to the drummer as a merchant prince, a distinguished manufacturer, a world-famous exporter, and once it called him the illustrious Vulcan of the Liberal Arts, a flourish based on the fact that Strawbridge sold hardware.

When they had finished reading, the black man turned with his face beaming in anticipation of praise.

"Elegantly done, Gumersindo," pæaned the priest. "You have a very rich style."

The editor lifted his brows.

"I never hope to command a style, Father. I always write simply. It is all I can do."

Father Benicio patted the black man's arm and smiled the rather bloodless smile of the repressed.

"He is a fountain of eloquence and doesn't know it; don't you think so, Señor Strawbridge?"

"I was never called so many fine names in all my life," murmured Strawbridge, in the subdued tones all three men were using. "I must have a bundle of these papers to send home."

Gumersindo beamed, and said all Strawbridge needed to do was to give him the names and he would mail out copies direct. Then he again proposed going down into the crypt.

The father agreed. He gathered his cassock about him for convenience in descending the steps, produced a key, opened a small door in the back wall of the cathedral, then, apologizing for preceding his guests, stepped into the opening.

The American followed the editor and groped down a flight of clammy steps into a cellar about ten feet deep. The priest presently found a match and a candle and lighted the cold, unventilated crypt. In the dim light Father Benicio pointed out some old stone slabs set in the sides of the crypt, with half-obliterated names carved upon them. Then he began a recountal of the doings of the first Benedictines who had come into the Orinoco country in 1573. They had formed a flourishing colony, but the evil deeds of the Guipuzcoana Company had provoked the Indians to attack the religious colony, and many of the monks were massacred. The gravestones marked those early martyrs.

With a certain fire the priest told the tale. These early fathers were links in a chain to which he, himself, belonged. Their constancy, their devotion to duty, their faithfulness unto death were ensamples often in his heart, which warmed his monastic life.

Strawbridge did not feel the faintest interest in Father Benicio's recital. He looked at the stone slabs without any widening of his vision of the past. Indeed, anything that antedated 1890 was without interest to him. To the drummer, history had no connection with the present. If he had analyzed his impressions he would have found that he believed that all the acts of mankind prior to the nineties formed history and were completely cut asunder from the press and importance of to-day. The world in which Mr. Thomas Strawbridge lived and had his being was absolutely new and up to date. It was like a new steam-heated apartment house with all the elevators running and the water connections going, and it was utterly cut off from all the past efforts and struggles of mankind. History, to him, was not even the blue-prints from which this house was built, the brick and mortar of which it was constructed. It was simply a kind of confusion that went on in the world until men settled down and produced something worth while—that is to say, the American nation and the New York skyscrapers.

He yawned under his fingers.

"I wonder what they did for a living, back there." He touched one of the stones with his foot.

Father Benicio glanced around at him.

"They raised maize, bananas, and a few chickens," he said drily.

"Ship 'em back to ... Spain?" hazarded the drummer.

"No, they simply lived on what they cultivated, and what the Indians gave them."

The salesman's interest flickered out completely. He glanced at the gravestones of the unenterprising monks and moved a step toward the stairs.

Gumersindo attempted to stir up human interest by pointing out a slab of stone in the bottom of the crypt.

"This is not a gravestone; it conceals the entrance of a tunnel. The early Spanish settlers were great troglodytes, Señor Strawbridge. It is impossible to find an old castle or an old church without a tunnel or two leading into it."

"It was necessary in those unsettled times when a man's house was likely to be burned with the man in it unless he could slip out," put in the priest.

"Where does it lead to?" asked Strawbridge, taking rather more interest in this purely mechanical arrangement than in the human background which caused the tunnels to be dug.

"One branch leads down to the river, another to the palacio, and another to the prison, La Fortuna."

Strawbridge suppressed another yawn and dismissed the tunnels from his mind. His thoughts came back to the original problem which had brought him to the cathedral. He broke out rather abruptly:

"Say, I suppose both you fellows know about the general and his ... er ... business methods?"

Editor and priest looked at their guest quite blankly.

"I mean his method of ... well, ... of confiscating ranches and horses and stores, provisions, and such like. Now, that's a rotten way to do. I was wondering whether a good, straightforward talk with him wouldn't help some."

By now the two men were staring at Strawbridge as if one of the old monks had risen out of his tomb.

"Señor," said the priest, in a queer voice, "would you have the goodness to explain yourself?"

"Sure! A chap told me while ago that the general arrested a rancher and took his ranch. I've been thinking about it all morning."

"The ranch to which your informant alludes," said Gumersindo, in a cold voice, "was deserted, and General Fombombo occupied it as waste land."

The drummer laughed friendlily.

"Yes, I know about that, but just how the general hunched the man off his ranch has nothing to do with it. I say any kind of hunching is bad business." The drummer became very earnest: "Now look here, both you fellows know the only way to make a country pay is through business. Now, look at these old monks—" he nodded at the stones. "Fizzled out because they didn't develop their holdings. I don't know just what they did do, but it's clear they built this church instead of building a factory. No returns; see? All overhead and no production. Not that I'm against praying," he added, with a placating gesture toward the priest. "I'm for it. I think it peps one up, but, as my old man says, 'Get in your prayers when there is no customer in sight'; see? Just to come down to facts: these old boys didn't run on business principles.

"Now, here's what I'm driving at: The general's idea of grabbing things balls up the market. Your market has got to be open and it's got to be protected before you get any real big volume of trade. Any man in General Fombombo's shoes can get better returns in the way of legitimate taxes on legitimate business than he can by grabbing what's in sight and scaring off business men. For, let me tell you, the eagle on the dollar is just about the timidest bird you ever tried to get to roost in your hen-house, and that's straight."

Strawbridge came to an earnest and apparently a questioning pause. The editor and the priest stood looking at him in the candle-light, quite as silent as the ancient and unbusinesslike monks beneath their feet. After a while the editor asked in a strange voice:

"Why have you ... said these things to us, Señor Strawbridge?"

"I'm asking your advice."

"About what?"

"About talking this over with the general. I believe he is making a business mistake. He would realize more if he would boost business instead of knocking it. Perhaps you've read that little poem,

"It's better to boost than to knock;

It's better to help than to shove,

We're brothers all, on the road of Life,

And the law of the road is Love."

The editor said he had never read it.

"The thing I'm driving at," proceeded the drummer, "is, would it be good business for me to spring this on the general? You see, I might queer a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar order for rifles. Still, if he could see the real business side of the situation, I might establish a market for millions of dollars' worth of hardware. What do you think about it? Would you run the risk?"

The priest chose to answer:

"Our President is rather a man of impulse, Señor Strawbridge."

The big American nodded.

"I see what you mean." He looked at Gumersindo.

"The future is always uncertain, Señor Strawbridge," observed the editor.

Strawbridge nodded.

"Uh huh; I see you agree with Father Benicio." He paused, thinking.

"Well, ... I don't know...." He continued to ponder the problem before him, and presently quoted, perhaps subconsciously:

"Did you speak that word of warning?

Did you act the part of friend?

Do your duty resolutely;

It means dollars in the end."

CHAPTER XI

Notwithstanding Strawbridge's apt and well-timed quotation from one of the best of the American business poets, still, he left the cathedral on his way to the presidencia in a shilly-shally mood. He went out at the side entrance, as the most direct route. The glare of sunshine struck his eyes rather uncomfortably after the gloom of the church. Just outside the door a dense flowering hedge delimited the plaza from the garden on the other side.

The drummer felt for his case and drew out a cigar to settle his thoughts on his proposed interview with the dictator. He stopped to scratch a match, when he heard voices talking just inside the garden. They were low voices, a man's and a woman's, but their passionate undertones caught the salesman's attention. He could understand little of what they were saying, but occasionally the woman lost her poise, or her caution, and he would get a phrase or two; then he could hear the man mumbling. Once the woman whipped out, "You are mad, you are insane, Pancho!" The voice of the man seemed to admit this. Later she gasped: "But you can't do that. He's alive!" and after another interval, she cried: "What a monster! I despise you as I do him. You are a bribon!"

This speech was stopped abruptly, as if a hand were laid over the woman's mouth. Came sounds of some guarded physical struggle, then a slap, a little cry, and the sound of running. The woman's restrained cry went through Strawbridge with a queer effect. He tried to peer through the dense hedge, but could make out nothing more than the fact of movement on the other side. A moment's reflection told him the man and the woman had separated.

The incident gripped the salesman in a strange way. He reasoned that if the two had separated one must have gone back into the church and the other toward the small postern at the end of the garden. So he walked briskly in the direction of the latter. Just as he stepped into the thoroughfare between garden and palace, he saw a woman in a nun's costume hurry out at the little gate, cross the road, and pass in at the side entrance of the big state house. With a breath of surprise, Strawbridge recognized Señora Fombombo. He found it difficult to attribute such an adventure to this small, quiet woman in her severe religious garb. And yet she had almost run from the garden gate to the palace. The American pondered this, but at last decided that the señora had been coming from her music practice in the cathedral and some quarreling, fighting couple in the garden had frightened her. The drummer walked quickly to the little postern and looked into the garden for the disturbing couple, but, of course, they had had time to escape.

Strawbridge loitered outside the palace for a few minutes, finishing his cigar and thinking over the incident. Then he walked up to the side door. His intention to ask for the señora at once was somewhat disturbed by the fact that the griffe girl admitted him when he rang the bell.

As the American stepped into the entrance, a little leather-colored soldier in uniform came briskly forward, with his rifle at attention. A word from the girl established Strawbridge's right to enter.

"The señora," she said, giving Strawbridge her knowing look, "is in the music-room." She paused a moment and added, "That's her, now."

The thing which she called the señora was the chromatic scale, played with great velocity.

The maid was so insinuating that Strawbridge thought of denying he had meant to see the chatelaine at all, but he changed this to something about believing he would go and hear the music. Instead of producing the casual effect he had hoped for, this statement lit a brightly intelligent smile on the griffe girl's copper-colored face. As Strawbridge walked down the transverse passage to the main corridor, to turn up toward the music-room, he could feel the eyes of both maid and guard watching his back.

The drummer passed two more guards in the main corridor, and presently paused before the door whence issued the runs and cadenzas. As he was about to tap, he was again seized with the inexplicable hesitancy which afflicted him whenever he came near the señora. It was an odd thing. He knew that she was just inside the dull mahogany panels, but somehow the door seemed to shut him out completely. He felt he would not get in. He tapped uncertainly, with a conviction that it would accomplish nothing. But it did accomplish something: it stopped the music so suddenly that it startled him. Then he waited in a profound silence.

Strawbridge imagined that the señora knew that it was he, and that by the long silence she was showing him that she did not want him in the music-room. A painful humility came over him. After all, he thought, she had a right to dislike him. Every time she saw him he was dull and embarrassed. Queer how she crabbed his style. Now, at home, back in Keokuk, he was rather popular with the ladies, but here.... The drummer's good-natured face sagged in a mirthless quirk. Well, ... he might as well go away. The señora would never know what a jolly friend she was missing, for he was jolly when one took him right; he simply was jolly. And he would never know her, either. It was the fault of neither of them; he saw that. He couldn't help it, she couldn't help it. A faint sense of pathos floated through the drummer's mind, and he turned away from the door.

At that moment it opened and the señora stood before him. Since he tapped she had just had time to walk across the room.

The man and the woman looked at each other in utter surprise, but in an instant this expression vanished from the señora's face and she asked him if he would like to come in and hear her play.

The drummer moistened his lips with his tongue and explained vaguely that he had just been passing and had heard the piano....

He was so painfully ill at ease that the girl said she too had been lonely that forenoon and was wishing some one would come in. She indicated a chair near a barred window, then, wearing the faint, unamused smile of a hostess, she went back to the piano and asked what he would have her play. Mr. Strawbridge said, "Just anything lively."

The señora pondered and began a mazurka. It was a trifle of thematic runs. She began rather indifferently, but presently her fingers or her mood warmed and she did it with dash and brilliancy.

At first Strawbridge's mental state prevented him from listening at all, but gradually the richly furnished room, the murals on the ceiling, the black ebony piano, and the slender nun-like player all re-formed themselves out of original confusion. Then he became aware of the music.

He did not care much for it. The señora did not jazz the piano as Strawbridge craved that it should be jazzed. It should be explained, perhaps, that the drummer's contact with music had been confined almost exclusively to the Keokuk dance-halls. He was, one might say, a musical bottle baby, who had waxed fat on the electric piano. Now he missed that roaring double shuffle in the bass and that grotesque yelping in the treble which he knew and admired and was moved by. He at once classified the señora as a performer who lacked pep.

The girl continued to fill the stately room full of dancing fairies; presently these exquisite little creatures rippled away into the distance; the last faraway fairy gave a last faraway pirouette, and the music ceased. The señora turned with a faint smile and waited a moment for her guest to say he liked the mazurka, but finally was forced to ask if he did.

"Well, y-e-s," he agreed dubiously, he liked it; then, with animation, "Señora, do you play 'Shuffle Along'?"

She repeated the title after him, evidently trying to translate it into intelligible Spanish.

"Who wrote it, señor?" She turned to a big music-rack which apparently held the music of the world.

"I don't know," said the drummer, naïvely. "Maybe you've got 'My Ding-Dong Baby'?"

Señora Fombombo began going through the huge music-cabinet uncertainly.

"You don't know the composer of that, either?"

"No. How about 'Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes'? Or have you got the 'Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle'?"

The señora, who was a methodical woman, began alphabetically with Brahms and looked for the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle." Strawbridge got up from his chair and came to assist.

"Let me help you," he volunteered. "I know the backs of those pieces just as well as I do my own face."

The señora glanced at him.

"Do you play?"

"A little," admitted the drummer. "I have been known to ripple my fingers over the elephants' tusks." Strawbridge laughed pleasantly at this tiny jest. It was the first time he had been able to speak a single sentence in a natural way, to the señora. Now this small success pleased him.

"Play me the kind of music you like," invited the señora, at once. "I don't recognize the English titles. Perhaps I have them, after all."

"Oh, all right." He smiled and sat down on the old-fashioned piano stool. With a pleased expression on his handsome, good-natured face he looked at the señora. Then he popped his left fist into his right palm and his right fist into his left palm, to warm up his finger action.

"Now, this is the rage," he explained with a faint patronage in his voice; "this is what runs 'em ragged in New York," and, lifting his hands high, he boomed into the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle."

Strawbridge did not see the señora's face during the opening bars of his jazz, and therefore had no means of determining her mood. When, presently, he looked about at her, she was much as usual; her black eyes a trifle wider, perhaps, her smile a little less mechanical.

"I've seen a thousand people on the floor at one time, toddling to this," he called to her loudly above his demonstration.

The señora pressed her lips together, her eyes seemed fairly to dance, and she nodded at this bit of information.

Strawbridge realized that he was entertaining the señora highly. He had never seen her look so amused. He had not thought her especially pretty, before, but just at this moment she gave him the impression of a ruby with the dust suddenly polished off and held in the sunshine.

The drummer was very proud of the fact that he could play the piano and talk at the same time, and he always did this.

"Say, I like the tone of this machine," he called out in a complimentary way; "she's hitting on all six cylinders now."

The señora laughed outright, in little gusts, with attempts at suppression. It was as if she had not laughed in a long, long time.

Strawbridge wagged his blond head to the clangor and syncopation of his own making.

"Coming down the home stretch!" he yelled, pounding louder and faster. "Giving her more gas and running up her timer!" He threw his big shoulders into the uproar. "Going to win the all-comers' sweepstakes! Go on, you little old taxi! Go to it! Wow! Bang! You're it, kid! The fifty-thousand-dollar purse is yours!"

He stopped as suddenly as he had begun, reached into his vest pocket, fished out a cigar band, and, with a burlesque curtsy, offered it to the señora as the sweepstakes prize he had just captured.

The señora produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes, then drew a long breath. With her face dimpled and ready to laugh again, she looked at the drummer.

"I knew you'd like me if we ever got acquainted," confided Strawbridge; "nothing like music to get folks together."

"Yes," acquiesced the señora, smiling, "it is one of the shibboleths of culture."

"Why, ... yes, I suppose so," agreed Strawbridge. The phrase "shibboleths of culture" sobered him somewhat. It was not the sort of phrase an American girl would have flung into a gay conversation, at least not without making some sort of face, or saying it in a burlesque tone to show it was meant to be humorous. It plunked into the drummer's careless mood like a stone through a window. "By the way," he said, on this somewhat soberer plane, "let me tell you why I followed you here into this music-room."

"Did you follow me?"

"Yes."

"Where from?" she asked in a different voice.

"From the garden."

The mirth vanished from the señora's face as if some one had turned down a lamp. It left her pale, delicately engraved, and not very pretty.

"May I ask why you followed me?" she questioned.

"Sure!" said Strawbridge with a protective impulse stirring in him. "I was coming out of the cathedral and I heard some rough-neck couple raising a row over in the garden. I came on to the palacio and saw you running out of the gate. I knew they had frightened you with their yelping, and it made me mad. So when you go to the cathedral again, just tip me off, please, and I'll go along with you."

The señora stood leaning over the end of the piano, studying him intently.

"That is very kind, and ... and it's a very unexpected kindness, Señor Strawbridge. I am grateful."

"Don't thank me at all.... Do the same for any woman. And, say, that reminds me what I was balled up about."

"'Balled up'? What do you mean—'balled up'?"