Under a gay awning of red and white which covered a portion of the
famous roof-garden of the Palacete Mendoza at Rio, reclined Gideon
Mendoza Morse, the richest man in Brazil, and--it was said--the third
richest man in the world.
He lay in a silken hammock, smoking those little Brazilian cigarettes
which are made of fragrant black tobacco and wrapped in maize leaf.
It was afternoon, the hour of the siesta. From where he lay the
millionaire could look down upon his marvelous gardens, which surrounded
the white palace he had built for himself, peerless in the whole of
South America.
The trunks of great trees were draped with lianas bearing
brilliantly-colored flowers of every hue. There were lawns edged with
myrtle, mimosa, covered with the golden rain of their blossoms, immense
palms, lazily waving their fans in the breeze of the afternoon, and set
in the lawns were marble pools of clear water from the center of which
fountains sprang. There was a continual murmur of insects and flashes
of rainbow-colored light as the tiny, brilliant humming birds whirred
among the flowers. Great butterflies of blue, silver, and vermilion,
butterflies as large as bats, flapped languidly over the ivory ferns,
and the air was spicy and scented with vanilla.
Beyond the gardens was the Bay of Rio de Janeiro, the most beautiful bay
in all the world, dominated by the great sugar-loaf mountain, the Pao de
Azucar, and studded with green islands.
Gideon Morse took a pair of high-powered field-glasses from a table by
his side and focused them upon the harbor.
A large white yacht, lying off Governador, swam into the circle, a
five-thousand-ton boat driven by turbines and oil fuel, the fastest and
largest private yacht in existence.
Gideon Morse gave a little quiet, patient sigh, as if of relief.
He was a man of sixty odd, with a thick thatch of white hair which came
down upon his wrinkled forehead in a peak. His face was tanned to the
color of an old saddle, his nose beaked like a hawk, and his mouth was a
mere lipless cut which might have been made by a knife. A strong jaw
completed an impression of abnormal quiet, and long enduring strength.
Indeed the whole face was a mask of immobility. Beneath heavy black
brows were eyes as dark as night, clear, but without expression. No one
looking at them could ever tell what were the thoughts behind. For the
rest, he was a man of medium height, thick-set, wiry, and agile.
A brief sketch of Gideon Mendoza Morse's career must be given here. His
mother was a Spanish lady of good family, resident in Brazil; his father
an American gentleman of Old Virginia, who had settled there after the
war between North and South. Morse was born a native of Brazil. His
parents left him a moderate fortune which he proceeded to expand with
extraordinary rapidity and success. When the last Emperor, Dom Pedro
II., was deposed in 1889, Gideon Mendoza Morse was indeed a rich man,
and a prominent politician.
He took a great part in establishing the Republic, though in his earlier
years he had leaned towards the Monarchy, and he shared in the immense
prosperity which followed the change.
His was not a paper fortune. The fluctuations of stocks and shares could
hardly influence it. He owned immense coffee plantations in Para, and
was practically the monopolist of the sugar regions of Maranhao, but his
greatest revenues came from his immense holdings in gold, manganese, and
diamond mines. He had married a Spanish lady early in his career and was
now a widower with one daughter.
She came up upon the roof-garden now, a tall slip of a girl with an
immense quantity of lustrous, dead-black hair, and a voice as clear as
an evening bell.
"Father," she said in English--she had been at school at Eastbourne, and
had no trace of Spanish accent--"what is the exact hour that we sail?"
Morse slipped out of the hammock and took her arm in his.
"At ten to-night, Juanita," he replied, patting her hand. "Are you glad,
then?"
"Glad! I cannot tell you how much."
"To leave all this"--he waved his hand at what was probably the most
perfect prospect earth has to offer--"to leave all this for the fogs and
gloom of London?"
"I don't mind the fogs, which, by the way, are tremendously exaggerated.
Of course I love Rio, father, but I long to be in London, the heart of
the world, where all the nicest people are and where a girl has freedom
such as she never has here."
"Freedom!" he said. "Ah!"--and was about to continue when a native
Indian servant in a uniform of white linen with gold shoulder knots,
advanced towards them with a salver upon which were two calling cards.
Morse took the cards. A slight gleam came into his eyes and passed,
leaving his face as impassive as before.
"You must run away, darling," he said to Juanita. "I have to see some
gentlemen. Are all your preparations made?"
"Everything. All the luggage has gone down to the harbor except just a
couple of hand-bags which my maid has."
"Very well then, we will have an early meal and leave at dusk."
The girl flitted away. Morse gave some directions to the servant, and,
shortly after, the rattle of a lift was heard from a little cupola in
one corner of the roof.
Two men stepped out and came among the palms and flowers to the
millionaire.
One was a thin, dried-up, elderly man with a white mustache--the Marquis
da Silva; his companion, powerful, black-bearded and yellow-faced,
obviously with a touch of the half-caste in him--Don Zorilla y Toro.
"Pray be seated," said Morse, with a low bow, though he did not offer to
shake hands with either of them. "May I ask to what I owe the pleasure
of this visit?"
"It is very simple, senor," said the marquis, "and you must have
expected a visit sooner or later."
The old man, speaking in the pure Spanish of Castille, trembled a little
as he sat at a round table of red lima-wood encrusted with
mother-of-pearl.
"We are, in short," said the burly Zorilla, "ambassadors."
They were now all seated round the table, under the shade of a palm
whose great fans clicked against each other in the evening breeze which
began to blow from the cool heights of the sugar-loaf mountain. The face
of Gideon Morse was inscrutable as ever. It might have been a mask of
leather; but the old Spanish nobleman was obviously ill at ease, and the
bulging eyes of the well-dressed half-caste, with his diamond cuff links
and ring, spoke of suppressed and furious passion.
In a moment tragedy had come into this paradise.
"Yes, we are ambassadors," echoed the marquis with a certain eagerness.
"A grand and full-sounding word," said Gideon Morse. "I may be permitted
to ask--from whom?"
Quick as lightning Don Zorilla held out his hand over the table, opened
it, and closed it again. There was a little glint of light from his palm
as he did so.
Morse leant back in his chair and smiled. Then he lit one of his pungent
cigarettes.
"So! Are you playing with those toys still, gentlemen?"
The marquis flushed. "Mendoza," he said, "this is idle trifling. You
must know very well--"
"I know nothing, I want to know nothing."
The marquis said two words in a low voice, and then the heads of the
three men drew very close together. For two or three minutes there was a
whispering like the rustle of the dry grasses of the Brazilian campos,
and then Morse drew back his chair with a harsh noise.
"Enough!" he said. "You are madmen, dreamers! You come to me after all
these years, to ask me to be a party in destroying the peace and
prosperity our great country enjoys and has enjoyed for more than thirty
years. You ask me, twice President of the Republic which I helped to
make--"
Zorilla lifted his hand and the great Brazilian diamonds in his rings
shot out baleful fires.
"Enough, senor," he said in a thick voice. "That is your unalterable
decision?"
Morse laughed contemptuously. "While Azucar stands," he said, "I stand
where I am, and nothing will change me."
"You stand where you are, Mendoza," said the marquis with a new gravity
and dignity in his voice, "but I assure you it will not be for long. You
have two years to run, that's true. But at the end of them be sure, oh,
be very sure, that the end will come, and swiftly."
Morse rose.
"I will endeavor to put the remaining two years to good use," he said,
with grim and almost contemptuous mockery.
"Do so, senor," said Zorilla, "but remember that in our forests the
traveler may press onward for days and weeks, and all the time in the
tree-tops, the silent jaguar is following, following, waiting--"
"I have traveled a good deal in our forests in my youth, Don Zorilla. I
have even slain many jaguars."
The three men looked at each other steadily and long, then the two
visitors bowed and turned to go. But, just as they were moving off
towards the lift dome, Zorilla turned back and held out a card to Don
Mendoza. It was an ordinary visiting card with a name engraved upon it.
Morse took it, looked at the name, and then stood still and frozen in
his tracks.
He did not move until the whirr of the bell and the clang of the gate
told him the roof-garden was his own again.
Then he staggered to the table like a drunken man, sank into a chair and
bowed his head upon the gleaming pearl and crimson.