Flames Coming out of the Top (24 page)

To enter the hotel the guest climbed a steep and irregular ladder of seven steps, pushed open the corrugated zinc and butter muslin front door and stepped into the grand saloon. The saloon was furnished with four marble tables (marble table tops are heavy to carry, but once they have been got to any place they possess the advantage of being inedible to even the most voracious of termites), an automatic piano, two pin-tables and a green baize fix-up for the more serious kind of gambling. One whole wall was the bar. It was the pride of the house: there were seventeen different ways of getting drunk—mostly native ways—on view as a permanent offer to patrons. Two sleeping figures in the far corner suggested that the offer had already been accepted.

“This is our little home,” Señor Muras remarked as they entered.

“Do you mean to say that you've got your daughter here?” Dunnett asked.

Señor Muras squeezed Dunnett's arm above the elbow. “You give yourself away by asking after her,” he said. “I felt sure that it couldn't have been only me that you came to see.”

“This is a business visit,” Dunnett replied. “I told you so.”

“For you perhaps,” Señor Muras answered. “But not for her. She has been talking about you ever since you first met. Remember there is a special dispensation for travellers.” Señor Muras's voice trailed off almost as though he had been talking to himself.

They were interrupted by the arrival of Señorita Muras herself. The bead screen parted and there she was. She looked young and fresh and excited. “Oh my! Mr. Dunnett,” she said. “This is a surprise. I never expected to see you here.”

“She has been waiting at the window ever since she heard you were on the way,” Señor Muras remarked. “She could not sleep at night for wondering if you were all right.”

“I couldn't sleep at night because of the bugs,” Carmel Muras corrected him. “This is the lousiest dump I've ever fetched up in.”

Señor Muras began to stroke her head. “Only two more days,” he said. “Just until the launch has come. And then we go on. I have finished my business.”

“Which way do you go?” Dunnett enquired suspiciously.

“Straight on down the river to Los Calpas,” Señor Muras replied. “And then to Asuncion. After that we shall go to Rio for a little. Our final plans are not yet fixed.”

“But if you go down to Los Calpas you'll be arrested,” Dunnett observed.

“By whom?”

“By the Paraguayans.”

Señor Muras laughed. “I have arranged that,” he said.
“You see, I have connections. In fact it is a Government launch that we shall be using. The Captain is a very old friend of mine.”

“It's your funeral,” Dunnett reminded him.

“Say, you're kind of cheerful, aren't you?” Carmel remarked.

“It is better than going back, anyhow,” Señor Muras observed placidly. “If I returned to Amricante now I should be arrested. There is a warrant out for me there.”

“How did you know?”

“The Chief of Police told me. It is usual for the Police Department to pass on word when a warrant has been taken out. It is their chief source of living. The corrupt ones sometimes give a false warning just to collect the reward.”

“Pop thought it was you who'd taken out the warrant,” Carmel explained. “That's what made him so mad with you.”

“I
was
thinking of doing so,” Dunnett replied.

“Now you two men don't start quarrelling again,” Carmel interrupted them. “I'm hungry, I'll say I am.”

“Perhaps Mr. Dunnett would like to wash first,” Señor Muras suggested.

He pointed towards another doorway concealed by the bead screen. The word
Hombres
had been inscribed above it on a piece of hammered out bamboo. Dunnett took his advice. When he got inside a plate of tired brown mirror was facing him, the tropic remains of what had once been an elegant cheval glass. He stood still in amazement. What he saw looking out at him was a sagging, unkempt creature in a sweaty cotton vest, with shaggy hair falling forward over his forehead. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks seemed to have fallen in a little. He wondered what Kay would have said if she could have seen him then; and idiotically enough, he wished that someone could have taken his photograph at that moment so that when he got back he could have shown them all the sort of thing that he had been through for the firm.

He cheerfully raised the tin jug and poured out a little
opaque water. The first thing that came was a large drowned something, its insect legs knotted above its head in a barbed and tangled embrace. Dunnett removed it and began to prepare himself for the forthcoming dinner party under Capricorn.

Carmel Muras left them early. Even her vivacity was not proof against that climate. As the evening progressed the heat abated a little. But the damp increased. A blue, feverish mist rose out of the ground and found its way upwards through the floor boards of the saloon in which they were sitting. It condensed on the knives and forks, leaving them wet and sticky to the touch. Señor Muras had asked for a screen to be placed round the table—the presence of Carmel Muras at Subrico attracted all the officers from the garrison—and behind this temporary barricade Dunnett and Señor Muras sat smoking, the sweat rolling steadily off them.

A bugle had sounded somewhere in the darkness outside— it had about it the melancholy note of all distant noises heard at night—and the room had emptied. Dunnett turned to Señor Muras.

“Now, Señor Muras,” he said. “Perhaps we could discuss what I came about.”

Señor Muras did not reply, and Dunnett repeated his remark. This time Señor Muras roused himself. His rattan chair creaked under him.

“If I gave you a cheque for the whole amount, would you stop worrying me?” he asked.

“Yes; after I had cashed the cheque,” Dunnett answered cautiously.

“How much is it for?” Señor Muras enquired.

“The last statement was for eleven thousand eight hundred and eleven pounds,” Dunnett told him. “It's more than that altogether.”

“Say twelve thousand?”

“About that.”

Señor Muras rolled over in his chair so that the broad arm
became a writing table. Then he began unbuttoning an inner pocket. He removed a highly-decorated cheque book of the United Argentine Bank and began feeling about for a pen. Dunnett crossed the room and gave him one from a neighbouring table. Señor Muras breathed heavily as he wrote. Then he tore the cheque off and handed it to Dunnett. “It's drawn on a Buenos Aires bank,” he said. “That account is quite safe: I only use it in emergencies. I've made it out to you personally. You can do just whatever you like with it.”

Dunnett took it and read it carefully. “Thanks,” he said quietly, “I'll endorse it and pass it over.” The realisation that he had got what he came for made him suddenly feel limp and exhausted. In the hour of victory, all that he felt was a little sick.

There was a silence between them after that, and Dunnett could feel that Señor Muras was waiting to say something. When he did speak, his voice was low and intimate.

“Señor Dunnett,” he said. “A month ago I had never even heard your name. To-morrow I go on and you go back. If I am to say what is on my mind I must speak now. If we ever meet again we shall be different men by then.”

“What is it you want to say?” Dunnett asked.

“It is not easy to put it into words,” Señor Muras answered. “It is a piece of advice from someone who has seen a great deal of the world.” He broke off and began playing with the cigar between his fingers. “In brief, it is this,” he said, “You are a young man of great ability and integrity. You have been sent out on a difficult mission on which I was determined you should fail—and you have succeeded. You are now going back to London. Unless you are careful you will simply be an animal in a cage that has been let out for an airing.” Señor Muras paused and played with his cigar again.

“Well?”

“Suppose you did not go back?” Señor Muras suggested. “Suppose you were to come with me on the gunboat to
Asuncion and on to Rio. You could be a rich man tomorrow.”

“You forget why I came,” Dunnett answered.

“I'm forgetting nothing,” Señor Muras answered. “It is because of that loyalty that I want to have you. In business I have been cheated all my life. It is not my rivals I have had to fear but my associates. You can send back the money to London and resign. At least you will have done what you were sent out to do. An opportunity such as this does not come twice to any man.”

“What opportunity?”

“To come in with me,” Señor Muras answered. “At the moment I'm a millionaire.”

Dunnett steadied himself. “Why are you offering me this?” he asked.

“Because I need you,” Señor Muras answered. “Because you're incorruptible.”

Dunnett shook his head. “It's impossible,” he said briefly.

Señor Muras leant forward. “May I ask why?” he enquired.

“Because I'm going to be married when I get back.”

Señor Muras paused. “That is something else that I like about you,” he said slowly. “Here you are with the world at your feet and you are still faithful. But I wonder if you are wise. It will be three months before you can get back. Anything may have happened by then. If the girl is beautiful you cannot expect her to have been left alone. And a girl who is lonely is very easy prey. For all you know she may already have agreed to be somebody else's. There may be a letter on the sea at this moment telling you that she has changed her mind.”

“I don't think so,” Dunnett replied.

“Have you been in love often?”

“No; only this one.”

“Then it is possible that it may not last. Most men discover that it is not the first woman they fall in love with who satisfies them.”

“Perhaps our standards are different,” Dunnett remarked.

Señor Muras did not reply immediately; when he did so, it was to ask a question.

“Do you find Carmel beautiful?” he asked.

“I think she is very beautiful,” Dunnett answered. “I hope she finds a good husband.”

“She is more than beautiful,” Señor Muras answered. “She is …” He stopped himself and looked at his watch, “I have been talking too long,” he said, “you must be tired.” He led the way across the saloon and they mounted the stairs without speaking. At Dunnett's door he paused. “If you should change your mind,” he said quietly, “you can tell me in the morning. It would still be time. The gunboat isn't calling for us until nine-thirty. Good-night, Mr. Dunnett.”

“Good-night, Señor Muras,” Dunnett answered. He turned and entered the third guest-room. It was a well serviced little chamber with a large metal spittoon, a rope ladder in case of fire, somebody else's shirt in the corner and two thicknesses of corrugated iron in between the sleeper and the night sky.

The Paraguayan offensive, under the expert direction of Major Schultz, late of the Imperial German Staff, was brilliantly successful, precisely because it was completely unexpected. The storm broke from what, metaphorically speaking, was a clear sky. Actually it came on a steamy, delirious morning when the bright green cascades of the banana leaves broke through the ground mists like rushes in a marshland. At one moment there were nothing but the usual sounds of morning—the hysterical screams and whistles of the tropical song-birds contributing their quota to the discordant dawn chorus—and, at the next, twelve-pounder shells were bursting in the centre compound and sending clots of greasy mud high over the tops of the umbrella palms.

Major Schultz had spent many sleepless nights scratching his square, close-shaven skull while he had been moving his twelve hundred tattered and exhausted warriors up through the Chaco into temporary quarters under the lee of the town. But it was the manner of Señor Muras's departure that gave him his real opportunity. He recognised it as one of those master strokes of Fate on which, in the last analysis, all fruitful military campaigns depend. It had come about simply enough. The Captain of the gunboat, after pocketing Señor Muras's honorarium, had gone straight to his superior officer. Major Schultz's pale blue eyes lit up behind their thick pebble glasses when he heard. He commanded the gunboat Captain to proceed at once to Subrico and prepare to fulfil his mission. But he gave him confidential and over-riding instructions.

At seven o'clock next morning, therefore, the
Hernando Arias de Saavedra
, looking very neat in its dress of service grey and deep olive green, pounded its way up river and anchored
under the shade of a eucalyptus swamp two hundred yards off the landing pier. The Bolivian sentry who had been told to expect it, waved his vest in friendly greeting—he was doing his washing at the time—and got down to some serious delousing. The
Hernando Arias de Saavedra's
Captain waved back; and then, obeying his new orders, he suddenly opened fire.

The shooting was not particularly good. The shells were just tossed in anyhow. But the effect of surprise was terrific. It was as irresistible as a thunderstorm. And one lucky shot fell in the central compound where the horses were. Bits of harness were splashed everywhere and the whole air was filled with squealing. When General Orero came stumbling out of the
lavabo
where he had been quietly sitting, he found himself in the middle of a shambles. His terror was increased by the fact that he imagined himself to be in his first air raid.

When the opening shell brust, Dunnett was standing over the tin wash-basin busily cleaning his teeth. All that he knew was that the flimsy hotel shuddered on its perch and a rain of fragments came hammering down on to the corrugated iron roof. For a moment he thought that some sort of ancient cannon in the encampment had exploded. And then he looked into the main street. One of the adobe huts inhabited by a family of five had been turned completely inside out.