My going to Valencia was entirely an accident. But the more often I
stated that fact, the more satisfied was everyone at the capital that I
had come on some secret mission. Even the venerable politician who acted
as our minister, the night of my arrival, after dinner, said
confidentially, "Now, Mr. Crosby, between ourselves, what's the game?"
"What's what game?" I asked.
"You know what I mean," he returned. "What are you here for?"
But when, for the tenth time, I repeated how I came to be marooned in
Valencia he showed that his feelings were hurt, and said stiffly: "As
you please. Suppose we join the ladies."
And the next day his wife reproached me with: "I should think you could
trust your own minister. My husband _never_ talks--not even to me."
"So I see," I said.
And then her feelings were hurt also, and she went about telling people
I was an agent of the Walker-Keefe crowd.
My only reason for repeating here that my going to Valencia was an
accident is that it was because Schnitzel disbelieved that fact, and to
drag the hideous facts from me followed me back to New York. Through
that circumstance I came to know him, and am able to tell his story.
The simple truth was that I had been sent by the State Department to
Panama to "go, look, see," and straighten out a certain conflict of
authority among the officials of the canal zone. While I was there the
yellow-fever broke out, and every self-respecting power clapped a
quarantine on the Isthmus, with the result that when I tried to return
to New York no steamer would take me to any place to which any white man
would care to go. But I knew that at Valencia there was a direct line to
New York, so I took a tramp steamer down the coast to Valencia. I went
to Valencia only because to me every other port in the world was closed.
My position was that of the man who explained to his wife that he came
home because the other places were shut.
But, because, formerly in Valencia I had held a minor post in our
legation, and because the State Department so constantly consults our
firm on questions of international law, it was believed I revisited
Valencia on some mysterious and secret mission.
As a matter of fact, had I gone there to sell phonographs or to start a
steam laundry, I should have been as greatly suspected. For in Valencia
even every commercial salesman, from the moment he gives up his passport
on the steamer until the police permit him to depart, is suspected,
shadowed, and begirt with spies.
I believe that during my brief visit I enjoyed the distinction of
occupying the undivided attention of three: a common or garden
Government spy, from whom no guilty man escapes, a Walker-Keefe spy, and
the spy of the Nitrate Company. The spy of the Nitrate Company is
generally a man you meet at the legations and clubs. He plays bridge and
is dignified with the title of "agent." The Walker-Keefe spy is
ostensibly a travelling salesman or hotel runner. The Government spy is
just a spy--a scowling, important little beast in a white duck suit and
a diamond ring. The limit of his intelligence is to follow you into a
cigar store and note what cigar you buy, and in what kind of money you
pay for it.
The reason for it all was the three-cornered fight which then was being
waged by the Government, the Nitrate Trust, and the Walker-Keefe crowd
for the possession of the nitrate beds. Valencia is so near to the
equator, and so far from New York, that there are few who studied the
intricate story of that disgraceful struggle, which, I hasten to add,
with the fear of libel before my eyes, I do not intend to tell now.
Briefly, it was a triangular fight between opponents each of whom was in
the wrong, and each of whom, to gain his end, bribed, blackmailed, and
robbed, not only his adversaries, but those of his own side, the end in
view being the possession of those great deposits that lie in the rocks
of Valencia, baked from above by the tropic sun and from below by
volcanic fires. As one of their engineers, one night in the Plaza, said
to me: "Those mines were conceived in hell, and stink to heaven, and the
reputation of every man of us that has touched them smells like the
mines."
At the time I was there the situation was "acute." In Valencia the
situation always is acute, but this time it looked as though something
might happen. On the day before I departed the Nitrate Trust had cabled
vehemently for war-ships, the Minister of Foreign Affairs had refused to
receive our minister, and at Porto Banos a mob had made the tin sign of
the United States consulate look like a sieve. Our minister urged me to
remain. To be bombarded by one's own war-ships, he assured me, would be
a thrilling experience.
But I repeated that my business was with Panama, not Valencia, and that
if in this matter of his row I had any weight at Washington, as between
preserving the nitrate beds for the trust, and preserving for his
country and various sweethearts one brown-throated, clean-limbed
bluejacket, I was for the bluejacket.
Accordingly, when I sailed from Valencia the aged diplomat would have
described our relations as strained.
Our ship was a slow ship, listed to touch at many ports, and as early as
noon on the following day we stopped for cargo at Trujillo. It was there
I met Schnitzel.
In Panama I had bought a macaw for a little niece of mine, and while we
were taking on cargo I went ashore to get a tin cage in which to put it,
and, for direction, called upon our consul. From an inner room he
entered excitedly, smiling at my card, and asked how he might serve me.
I told him I had a parrot below decks, and wanted to buy a tin cage.
"Exactly. You want a tin cage," the consul repeated soothingly. "The
State Department doesn't keep me awake nights cabling me what it's
going to do," he said, "but at least I know it doesn't send a
thousand-dollar-a-minute, four-cylinder lawyer all the way to this fever
swamp to buy a tin cage. Now, honest, how can I serve you?" I saw it was
hopeless. No one would believe the truth. To offer it to this friendly
soul would merely offend his feelings and his intelligence.
So, with much mystery, I asked him to describe the "situation," and he
did so with the exactness of one who believes that within an hour every
word he speaks will be cabled to the White House.
When I was leaving he said: "Oh, there's a newspaper correspondent after
you. He wants an interview, I guess. He followed you last night from the
capital by train. You want to watch out he don't catch you. His name is
Jones." I promised to be on my guard against a man named Jones, and the
consul escorted me to the ship. As he went down the accommodation
ladder, I called over the rail: "In case they _should_ declare war,
cable to Curaçoa and I'll come back. And don't cable anything
indefinite, like 'Situation critical' or 'War imminent.' Understand?
Cable me, 'Come back' or 'Go ahead.' But whatever you cable, make it
_clear_."
He shook his head violently and with his green-lined umbrella pointed
at my elbow. I turned and found a young man hungrily listening to my
words. He was leaning on the rail with his chin on his arms and the brim
of his Panama hat drawn down to conceal his eyes.
On the pier-head, from which we now were drawing rapidly away, the
consul made a megaphone of his hands.
"That's _him_," he called. "That's Jones."
Jones raised his head, and I saw that the tropical heat had made Jones
thirsty, or that with friends he had been celebrating his departure. He
winked at me, and, apparently with pleasure at his own discernment and
with pity for me, smiled.
"Oh, of course!" he murmured. His tone was one of heavy irony. "Make it
'clear.' Make it clear to the whole wharf. Shout it out so's everybody
can hear you. You're 'clear' enough." His disgust was too deep for
ordinary words. "My uncle!" he exclaimed.
By this I gathered that he was expressing his contempt.
"I beg your pardon?" I said.
We had the deck to ourselves. Its emptiness suddenly reminded me that we
had the ship, also, to ourselves. I remembered the purser had told me
that, except for those who travelled overnight from port to port, I was
his only passenger.
With dismay I pictured myself for ten days adrift on the high
seas--alone with Jones.
With a dramatic gesture, as one would say, "I am here!" he pushed back
his Panama hat. With an unsteady finger he pointed, as it was drawn
dripping across the deck, at the stern hawser.
"You see that rope?" he demanded. "Soon as that rope hit the water I
knocked off work. S'long as you was in Valencia--me, on the job. Now,
_you_ can't go back, _I_ can't go back. Why further dissim'lation? _Who
am I?_"
His condition seemed to preclude the possibility of his knowing who he
was, so I told him.
He sneered as I have seen men sneer only in melodrama.
"Oh, of course," he muttered. "Oh, of course."
He lurched toward me indignantly.
"You know perfec'ly well Jones is not my name. You know perfec'ly well
who I am."
"My dear sir," I said, "I don't know anything about you, except that you
are a damned nuisance."
He swayed from me, pained and surprised. Apparently he was upon an
outbreak of tears.
"Proud," he murmured, "_and_ haughty. Proud and haughty to the last."
I never have understood why an intoxicated man feels the climax of
insult is to hurl at you your name. Perhaps because he knows it is the
one charge you cannot deny. But invariably before you escape, as though
assured the words will cover your retreat with shame, he throws at you
your full title. Jones did this.
Slowly and mercilessly he repeated, "Mr.--George--Morgan--Crosby. Of
Harvard," he added. "Proud and haughty to the last."
He then embraced a passing steward, and demanded to be informed why the
ship rolled. He never knew a ship to roll as our ship rolled.
"Perfec'ly satisfact'ry ocean, but ship--rolling like a stone-breaker.
Take me some place in the ship where this ship don't roll."
The steward led him away.
When he had dropped the local pilot the captain beckoned me to the
bridge.
"I saw you talking to Mr. Schnitzel," he said. "He's a little under the
weather. He has too light a head for liquors."
I agreed that he had a light head, and said I understood his name was
Jones.
"That's what I wanted to tell you," said the captain. "His name is
Schnitzel. He used to work for the Nitrate Trust in New York. Then he
came down here as an agent. He's a good boy not to tell things to.
Understand? Sometimes I carry him under one name, and the next voyage
under another. The purser and he fix it up between 'em. It pleases him,
and it don't hurt anybody else, so long as I tell them about it. I don't
know who he's working for now," he went on, "but I know he's not with
the Nitrate Company any more. He sold them out."
"How could he?" I asked. "He's only a boy."
"He had a berth as typewriter to Senator Burnsides, president of the
Nitrate Trust, sort of confidential stenographer," said the captain.
"Whenever the senator dictated an important letter, they say, Schnitzel
used to make a carbon copy, and when he had enough of them he sold them
to the Walker-Keefe crowd. Then, when Walker-Keefe lost their suit in
the Valencia Supreme Court I guess Schnitzel went over to President
Alvarez. And again, some folks say he's back with the Nitrate Company."
"After he sold them out?"
"Yes, but you see he's worth more to them now. He knows all the
Walker-Keefe secrets and Alvarez's secrets, too."