"Oh, yes," he said readily. "He is still _incommunicado_."
Without believing it would lead to anything, I suggested:
"It was foolish of him to give offence to Mr. Scott?"
The commandant nodded vivaciously.
"Mr. Scott is very powerful man," he assented. "We all very much love
Mr. Scott. The president, he love Mr. Scott, too, but the judges were
not sympathetic to Mr. Scott, so Mr. Scott asked our president to give
them a warning, and Señor Rojas--he is the warning."
"When will he get out?" I asked.
The commandant held up the glass in the sunlight from the open air-port,
and gazed admiringly at the bubbles.
"Who can tell," he said. "Any day when Mr. Scott wishes. Maybe, never.
Señor Rojas is an old man. Old, and he has much rheumatics. Maybe, he
will never come out to see our beloved country any more."
As we left the harbor we passed so close that one could throw a stone
against the wall of the fortress. The sun was just sinking and the air
became suddenly chilled. Around the little island of limestone the waves
swept through the sea-weed and black manigua up to the rusty bars of the
cells. I saw the barefooted soldiers smoking upon the sloping ramparts,
the common criminals in a long stumbling line bearing kegs of water,
three storm-beaten palms rising like gallows, and the green and yellow
flag of Valencia crawling down the staff. Somewhere entombed in that
blotched and mildewed masonry an old man of seventy years was shivering
and hugging himself from the damp and cold. A man who spoke five
languages, a just, brave gentleman. To me it was no new story. I knew
of the horrors of Cristobal prison; of political rivals chained to
criminals loathsome with disease, of men who had raised the flag of
revolution driven to suicide. But never had I supposed that my own
people could reach from the city of New York and cast a fellow-man into
that cellar of fever and madness.
[Illustration: "Schnitzel, you certainly are a magnificent liar"]
As I watched the yellow wall sink into the sea, I became conscious that
Schnitzel was near me, as before, leaning on the rail, with his chin
sunk on his arms. His face was turned toward the fortress, and for the
first time since I had known him it was set and serious. And when, a
moment later, he passed me without recognition, I saw that his eyes were
filled with fear.
When we touched at Curaçoa I sent a cable to my sister, announcing the
date of my arrival, and then continued on to the Hotel Venezuela. Almost
immediately Schnitzel joined me. With easy carelessness he said: "I was
in the cable office just now, sending off a wire, and that operator told
me he can't make head or tail of the third word in your cable."
"That is strange," I commented, "because it's a French word, and he is
French. That's why I wrote it in French."
With the air of one who nails another in a falsehood, Schnitzel
exclaimed:
"Then, how did you suppose your sister was going to read it? It's a
cipher, that's what it is. Oh, no, _you're_ not on a secret mission! Not
at all!"
It was most undignified of me, but in five minutes I excused myself, and
sent to the State Department the following words:
"Roses red, violets blue, send snow."
Later at the State Department the only person who did not eventually
pardon my jest was the clerk who had sat up until three in the morning
with my cable, trying to fit it to any known code.
Immediately after my return to the Hotel Venezuela Schnitzel excused
himself, and half an hour later returned in triumph with the cable
operator and ordered lunch for both. They imbibed much sweet champagne.
When we again were safe at sea, I said: "Schnitzel, how much did you pay
that Frenchman to let you read my second cable?"
Schnitzel's reply was prompt and complacent.
"One hundred dollars gold. It was worth it. Do you want to know how I
doped it out?"
I even challenged him to do so. "'Roses red'--war declared; 'violets
blue'--outlook bad, or blue; 'send snow'--send squadron, because the
white squadron is white like snow. See? It was too easy."
"Schnitzel," I cried, "you are wonderful!"
Schnitzel yawned in my face.
"Oh, you don't have to hit the soles of my feet with a night-stick to
keep me awake," he said.
After I had been a week at sea, I found that either I had to believe
that in all things Schnitzel was a liar, or that the men of the Nitrate
Trust were in all things evil. I was convinced that instead of the
people of Valencia robbing them, they were robbing both the people of
Valencia and the people of the United States.
To go to war on their account was to degrade our Government. I explained
to Schnitzel it was not becoming that the United States navy should be
made the cat's-paw of a corrupt corporation. I asked his permission to
repeat to the authorities at Washington certain of the statements he had
made.
Schnitzel was greatly pleased.
"You're welcome to tell 'em anything I've said," he assented. "And," he
added, "most of it's true, too."
I wrote down certain charges he had made, and added what I had always
known of the nitrate fight. It was a terrible arraignment. In the
evening I read my notes to Schnitzel, who, in a corner of the
smoking-room, sat, frowning importantly, checking off each statement,
and where I made an error of a date or a name, severely correcting me.
Several times I asked him, "Are you sure this won't get you into trouble
with your 'people'? You seem to accuse everybody on each side."
Schnitzel's eyes instantly closed with suspicion.
"Don't you worry about me and my people," he returned sulkily. "That's
_my_ secret, and you won't find it out, neither. I may be as crooked as
the rest of them, but I'm not giving away my employer."