CHAPTER VIII
THE PAWN AND THE BOARD
There was a silence of several seconds.
"That man was Ganley?" foolishly repeated the operator. His eyes, as he peered back at the woman, were almost vacuous. He studied her face, perplexed and uncertain, like a traveller studying a road-map. He had expected surprises, he had prepared himself for emergencies: but this, apparently, was more than he had counted on.
The frightened-eyed woman still confronted him, her face seeming one of pity touched with fear. When she next moved, her gesture was almost that of a person wringing their hands.
"And you have promised to act with this man?" she little more than whispered.
"But he came to me as a man named Duffy, the man who's got to turn Ganley over to the authorities at Puerto Locombia."
Still again the woman's wide and pitying eyes rested on his face.
"They are making a tool of you," was all she said.
"Of me?"
"Of you! They are deceiving you—they mean to make use of you."
"But how?"
The woman remained silent. McKinnon stood before her, lost in a moment of troubled thought, puzzled as to how much he should say and how much it would be best to leave unsaid.
"But who are you?" he suddenly demanded, noting her quick glance down at her little jewelled watch. He felt, as she stood there compelling herself to calmness, that there was some thing epochal in the moment, that in some way the uncomprehended was about to reveal itself.
He turned slowly about and relocked the cabin door. Then he sat down opposite the broken steamer-chair in which she was already seated.
"You want to know who that man is?" she said at last, perplexed a little by his sudden decisiveness, disturbed by the hardening of his face.
"I want to know who you are."
"That will come later," she explained.
McKinnon studied her face, line by line, from the pale ivory of her dark-browed forehead to the tender curve of her almost statuelike chin, for the shadowy and thick-planted lashes did not lift from her cheek until she began to speak again.
"You want me to explain everything?" she asked.
"Everything!"
"The man who was in this room is Kaiser Ganley—King-maker Ganley they call him everywhere south of Guatemala. His business is to make revolutions. He has agents in almost every one of the Central American republics, in New York, in Cuba, in New Orleans—everywhere. When he sees signs of unrest he sends a man to strike a bargain with the enemies of the government. He waits like a buzzard on a housetop until his meal is ready. Then he is given money, and he brings so many men and so many carbines, and so many mules and machine guns. Sometimes it's for the patriots, sometimes it's for railway charters or for mine rights. Sometimes it's for rubber and coffee concessions. A more conciliatory man must be made dictator, or a more dependable friend must be set up as president. That's the way he won the Caqueta Asphalt concession; that's why he never dares land in Brazil or be seen in Venezuela again."
She paused for a moment. Then she added:
"And now he has the rebellion in Locombia. The Locombian president has been called the 'Friend of Foreigners;' he has been good to the Americanos. He is modern and progressive; he is"
"Are you a Locombian?"
"I am not a Locombian," answered the woman, after the slightest pause, "but I have my interests in that country. Oh, believe me, I know this man to be its enemy. He is fighting for the downfall of its government. His plan is made. He is only waiting for the end. Now, to-night, while we sit here, his men—deluded peons and beachcombers and paid mercenaries—are drawing up closer and closer on Guariqui. They are to wait there; they are to be moved, like wooden pawns on a chessboard, when he orders it, and in the manner he orders."
"Can't you tell me how or when? Can't you be more specific?"
"On the thirteenth of the month a revolutionist, wearing the uniform of the government, is to assault an American citizen in the Prado of Puerto Locombia. A Mobile ore-boat is to take the assaulter on board openly. He is to be dragged ashore again by government officers. Roof-tiles are to be flung down on these officers as they pass through the town. Arrests, of course, will follow. That will arouse the people—they are so foolish in their hate for the Americanos! And while this is going on, many miles up the coast machine guns will be landed, and tubs of cartridges, and two thousand rifles."
"But how do you know all this?"
"It became my duty to know it."
"But why?"
"Because my brother is Arturo Boynton, the Locombian minister of war," she answered, after a moment's silence.
McKinnon gazed at her in a mingling of wonder and perplexity.
"Is he a Locombian?"
"No."
"Then why the Arturo?"
"That was a concession to local prejudices," she answered, after still another moment's pause.
"But why such concessions? You see, you'll have to be perfectly frank with me."
She smiled a little. It was not a smile of condescension, for her earnest eyes were almost deprecative as she looked at him.
"That will mean a sad lot of family history," she said with a little shrug, as exotic, almost, as the Southern inflection of her voice.
He laughed a little, too, for all the anxiety that was weighing on him.
"But you see we have to understand each other's position in this."
"My brother went to Guariqui seven years ago," she said, quite sober by this time. "He was compelled to go there to look after my father's nitrate claims."
"Your father, then, was an American!" interrupted McKinnon. He felt glad, in some vague way, as he saw her head-shake of assent.
"He was an American soldier," she said, and McKinnon noticed the almost phosphorescent kindling of her eyes as she uttered the words.
"Yes," he responded encouragingly.
"We are—or, rather, we used to be the New Orleans Boyntons," she answered. "But father had interests in Argentina, cattle lands and things, and property in Belgrano, where the English-speaking colony is, just outside Buenos Ayres. So for nine years Buenos Ayres was our home—if you could say we ever had a home. But as I wanted to tell you, my brother Arturo was a mining engineer. I think, too, he had a good deal of father's spirit of adventure. He saw great chances in Locombia, but what was more important, he found that the altitude of Guariqui agreed with him. So he stayed on and on, and kept working harder and harder, and getting newer interests, until finally he undertook to work the abandoned government mines with Doctor Duran. They were copper mines."
"Do you mean Duran the president?"
"Yes; but that was before he had been made president. Indeed, when Duran first actively entered Locombian politics he persuaded my brother to join him. I was at school then, in France—but I know that when their party came into power my brother found himself in Duran's cabinet, as minister of war."
"And you are going down there to face all this?" McKinnon asked, with a vaguely comprehensive wave of the arm.
The woman said "Yes." She looked, for all her inalienable aura of vitality, very slender, and unsuited to the ways of war, above all things, to the ways of Latin-American guerilla war.
"But that seems as brutal, as unthinkable, as a girl going into a ring with two prize-fighters," he tried to explain to her.
"Yes, I know; but I'm not going into the ring," she answered. "All I can do is hover about the outside edges of it, and do what I can when I know there is underhand work, when there is foul play like this going on."
"Foul play like what?"
"Like this!" she averred, tapping the deck with her shoe-heel.
"Do you mean the Laminian? Or do you mean certain persons who are on the Laminian?"
"Both," she retorted.
"Then that brings us to the question of just why you are going back to Locombia in such a way and at such a time," McKinnon patiently insisted.
"But Guariqui is my home—it is the only home I have, now." She noticed the fleeting look of concern, that amounted to anxiety, over spreading his face, and she hastened to add, with her slow and almost mournful smile: "You know, they often speak of it as the Paris of America! We don't actually tattoo each other down there! And there's something appealing in the life, when you've got used to it—the stir and colour and romance and movement of it all."
"But you see you haven't yet quite explained why you are going back to Locombia."
Her deep and troubled eyes seemed to be weighing him; she seemed to be pondering his possible weakness and strength.
"How can I explain to you, when you're a paid agent of Ganley's?"
"Don't be too sure of that!" McKinnon ejaculated, with more feeling, apparently, than the woman had expected.
"You mean you may not work with him?"
"If you like to take it that way."
"But he has won you over to his side—he has captured you against your will!"
"I don't quite understand," persisted the operator.
"No; but Ganley does. That's why he has bought you over, and led you into his power in this way." She was speaking more rapidly now; a brightened colour had come into her cheeks.
"But how am I in his power?" McKinnon asked.
"What was the paper you signed? What have you promised? What was the money paid over to you for?"
"To hold back certain messages."
"Yes, to hold back messages. And why do that?"
"So that this man Ganley—the man he calls Ganley—can be held at Puerto Locombia."
"You mean the other man, the man in the cabin? Then you don't believe what I have said about the real Ganley?"
"I don't know what to believe," the noncommittal McKinnon complained, studying the woman's face. The only conclusion he came to was that it was a disturbingly beautiful one.
She was silent for a moment, apparently deep in thought.
"I don't ask you to believe me now—it's not fair. But do you realise where you stand?"
The solemnity of her manner, more than her words, prompted McKinnon to ask: "Where do you think I stand?"
"Before danger you scarcely dream of," answered the young woman, returning his gaze. "It's not so much that you have formed an alliance with a criminal, an outlaw, who would have to face a fusilado the moment he was caught in Guariqui. But it's the fact that he's as treacherous with his friends as with his foes. You have declared yourself his partner. He will hold you to it. He will use this paper you signed as a proof that you accepted hush-money, if it suits his purpose to do so. He will claim you agreed to work with him. He will hold this over you and force you to act for him."
"But why should I stand for coercion like that?" asked the undisturbed McKinnon.
"What would you do? You can't go to your captain; nor to your company. It's too late for that. You've cut yourself off from them. But that isn't the real danger. The real danger is that Ganley's the actual head of the revolutionary Junta, and that he can now show that you, too, are one of them!"
"That I'm one of them?" almost laughed the other.
"He holds a document which practically brands you as a Locombian revolutionist. We are being carried to a country where things move strangely and quickly. If Duran has the upper hand when we reach Puerto Locombia, you dare not make one move against this man Ganley."
"I dare not, you say?"
"If you do, he will have you handed over to Duran's officers as an enemy of the government—and he will have his document to prove it. If Duran has been deposed, then Ganley is the open and undisputed master, and what he orders you will have to carry out."
"But I'm not going down there to be that government's catspaw!"
"How will you escape it?"
"Well, one way would be to call Ganley up here and get that paper back."
Alicia Boynton laughed quickly and quietly, with an upthrust of her shoulders.
"Can't you see that it's too late? The price has been paid; the bargain's been struck."
"Not necessarily!"
"But a man like Ganley never trades back. The mistake was in the signing of the paper. It was a manifesto, a confession. It was the last will and testament of your good name."
McKinnon, who had been pacing the cabin, suddenly swung about and faced the young woman in the steamer-chair.
"Why are you saying all this to me?" he demanded.
Her troubled eyes once more rested on him, almost in pity.
"Because we are facing a common danger," she answered at last. "Because we may yet have to work together to escape from that danger."
"But you haven't told me anything. You haven't explained how or why you are in this danger.
Again her studious eyes seemed to be weighing and judging him. He knew by the anxiety that crept slowly into her face as she watched him that her decision was not altogether a flattering one.
"I am here because there was no one to take my place," she answered, simply enough. "I can't explain everything now, but I knew they were plotting against Guariqui and against my brother. I knew, at the last moment, that Ganley was hurrying to Locombia, and I knew that the authorities at Washington were sending a cruiser to the Caribbean, to be near in case of trouble."
"You mean the Princeton?" McKinnon asked.
The woman nodded.
"Listen," she went on after another moment of thought. "Anything may happen before we reach Puerto Locombia. If the Junta have carried out Ganley's plans, everything will be ready for his coup d'état."
Her words, for some reason, did not impress him as much as she had expected. She felt that perhaps she was not being specific enough, that she was not making the case sufficiently clear.
"This movement against Guariqui will not be easy," she hurried on to explain, "unless the field-guns have already been landed. The palace is of stone; it could stand to the last—it was built for such purposes. It could hold out for weeks, with only the president's body-guard, until help came."
"From where?" asked McKinnon.
"That is what I must explain. When Duran installed the electric-light plant at Puerto Locombia he put up a wireless station, one at the coast, and another on the palace at Guariqui. Unless the guns have been landed, there is to be no assault on the capital until Ganley has been heard from. Puerto Locombia, of course, will be in the hands of the revolutionists. They will destroy the wireless station at the coast. There are few or no ships there now, on account of the yellow fever. It's not the fever, of course, but the quarantine—the weeks and weeks of imprisonment—they are afraid of. This ship will be the only one in the roadstead."
She watched his face with almost a touch of impatience. She looked for some glance or gesture of enlightenment on his part. But he gave no sign of comprehension; so she was forced to go on, explicitly, like a tutor slowly demonstrating the obvious to a perversely backward pupil.
"You are equipped with wireless. That means you will be able to talk with Guariqui. If Duran and my brother are shut up there, calling for help, you will be the only person to hear their messages. Can't you understand? The Guariqui station is not one of high power. It can't possibly call beyond the coast. Yet the cruiser is to be lying somewhere between Culebra and Locombia, waiting to help, only too anxious to interfere at the first official call. But that call can never reach them without being relayed from the roadstead, out across the Caribbean. You may be the only person who can hear and understand Guariqui's cry for help."