Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by the sound of bells
pealing out the arrival of Pedrito Montero, Sotillo had spent the
morning in battling with his thoughts; a contest to which he was
unequal, from the vacuity of his mind and the violence of his passions.
Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear made a tumult, in the colonel’s
breast louder than the din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned
had come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the mine had fallen
into his hands. He had performed no military exploit to secure his
position, and had obtained no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito
Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread. The sound of
bells maddened him.
Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, he had made his
battalion stand to arms on the shore. He walked to and fro all the
length of the room, stopping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his
right hand with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with
a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume his tramping in
savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, sword, and revolver were lying on
the table. His officers, crowding the window giving the view of the town
gate, disputed amongst themselves the use of his field-glass bought last
year on long credit from Anzani. It passed from hand to hand, and the
possessor for the time being was besieged by anxious inquiries.
“There is nothing; there is nothing to see!” he would repeat
impatiently.
There was nothing. And when the picket in the bushes near the Casa
Viola had been ordered to fall back upon the main body, no stir of life
appeared on the stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and the
waters of the port. But late in the afternoon a horseman issuing from
the gate was made out riding up fearlessly. It was an emissary from
Senor Fuentes. Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismounting at
the great door he greeted the silent bystanders with cheery impudence,
and begged to be taken up at once to the “muy valliente” colonel.
Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe Politico, had
turned his diplomatic abilities to getting hold of the harbour as well
as of the mine. The man he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a
Notary Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in the common
jail on a charge of forging documents. Liberated by the mob along with
the other “victims of Blanco tyranny,” he had hastened to offer his
services to the new Government.
He set out determined to display much zeal and eloquence in trying to
induce Sotillo to come into town alone for a conference with Pedrito
Montero. Nothing was further from the colonel’s intentions. The mere
fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Pedrito’s hands had
made him feel unwell several times. It was out of the question--it was
madness. And to put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It would
render impossible a systematic search for that treasure, for that wealth
of silver which he seemed to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere
near.
But where? Where? Heavens! Where? Oh! why had he allowed that doctor
to go! Imbecile that he was. But no! It was the only right course, he
reflected distractedly, while the messenger waited downstairs chatting
agreeably to the officers. It was in that scoundrelly doctor’s true
interest to return with positive information. But what if anything
stopped him? A general prohibition to leave the town, for instance!
There would be patrols!
The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in his tracks as if
struck with vertigo. A flash of craven inspiration suggested to him an
expedient not unknown to European statesmen when they wish to delay a
difficult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled into the hammock
with undignified haste. His handsome face had turned yellow with the
strain of weighty cares. The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp;
the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. The velvety, caressing
glance of his fine eyes seemed dead, and even decomposed; for these
almond-shaped, languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot
with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the surprised envoy
of Senor Fuentes in a deadened, exhausted voice. It came pathetically
feeble from under a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person
right up to the black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign of bodily
prostration and mental incapacity. Fever, fever--a heavy fever
had overtaken the “muy valliente” colonel. A wavering wildness of
expression, caused by the passing spasms of a slight colic which had
declared itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, had
a genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a cold fit. The colonel
explained that he was unable to think, to listen, to speak. With an
appearance of superhuman effort the colonel gasped out that he was
not in a state to return a suitable reply or to execute any of his
Excellency’s orders. But to-morrow! To-morrow! Ah! to-morrow! Let his
Excellency Don Pedro be without uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda Regiment
held the harbour, held--And closing his eyes, he rolled his aching head
like a half-delirious invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy,
who was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order to catch the
painful and broken accents. Meantime, Colonel Sotillo trusted that his
Excellency’s humanity would permit the doctor, the English doctor, to
come out of town with his case of foreign remedies to attend upon him.
He begged anxiously his worship the caballero now present for the grace
of looking in as he passed the Casa Gould, and informing the English
doctor, who was probably there, that his services were immediately
required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of fever in the Custom House.
Immediately. Most urgently required. Awaited with extreme impatience.
A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and would not open
them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, dumb, insensible, overcome,
vanquished, crushed, annihilated by the fell disease.
But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of the landing, the
colonel leaped out with a fling of both feet in an avalanche of woollen
coverings. His spurs having become entangled in a perfect welter of
ponchos he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his balance
till the middle of the room. Concealed behind the half-closed jalousies
he listened to what went on below.
The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the morose officers
occupying the great doorway, took off his hat formally.
“Caballeros,” he said, in a very loud tone, “allow me to recommend
you to take great care of your colonel. It has done me much honour and
gratification to have seen you all, a fine body of men exercising the
soldierly virtue of patience in this exposed situation, where there
is much sun, and no water to speak of, while a town full of wine and
feminine charms is ready to embrace you for the brave men you are.
Caballeros, I have the honour to salute you. There will be much dancing
to-night in Sulaco. Good-bye!”
But he reined in his horse and inclined his head sideways on seeing
the old major step out, very tall and meagre, in a straight narrow
coat coming down to his ankles as it were the casing of the regimental
colours rolled round their staff.
The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a dogmatic tone the
general proposition that the “world was full of traitors,” went on
pronouncing deliberately a panegyric upon Sotillo. He ascribed to him
with leisurely emphasis every virtue under heaven, summing it all up in
an absurd colloquialism current amongst the lower class of Occidentals
(especially about Esmeralda). “And,” he concluded, with a sudden rise in
the voice, “a man of many teeth--‘hombre de muchos dientes.’ Si, senor.
As to us,” he pursued, portentous and impressive, “your worship is
beholding the finest body of officers in the Republic, men unequalled
for valour and sagacity, ‘y hombres de muchos dientes.’”
“What? All of them?” inquired the disreputable envoy of Senor Fuentes,
with a faint, derisive smile.
“Todos. Si, senor,” the major affirmed, gravely, with conviction. “Men
of many teeth.”
The other wheeled his horse to face the portal resembling the high gate
of a dismal barn. He raised himself in his stirrups, extended one arm.
He was a facetious scoundrel, entertaining for these stupid Occidentals
a feeling of great scorn natural in a native from the central provinces.
The folly of Esmeraldians especially aroused his amused contempt. He
began an oration upon Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn countenance. He
flourished his hand as if introducing him to their notice. And when he
saw every face set, all the eyes fixed upon his lips, he began to
shout a sort of catalogue of perfections: “Generous, valorous, affable,
profound”--(he snatched off his hat enthusiastically)--“a statesman, an
invincible chief of partisans--” He dropped his voice startlingly to a
deep, hollow note--“and a dentist.”
He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid straddle of his legs,
the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the rakish slant of the sombrero
above the square, motionless set of the shoulders expressing an
infinite, awe-inspiring impudence.
Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move for a long time.
The audacity of the fellow appalled him. What were his officers saying
below? They were saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked. It was not
thus that he had imagined himself at that stage of the expedition. He
had seen himself triumphant, unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the
soldiers, weighing in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives of
power and wealth open to his choice. Alas! How different! Distracted,
restless, supine, burning with fury, or frozen with terror, he felt
a dread as fathomless as the sea creep upon him from every side. That
rogue of a doctor had to come out with his information. That was clear.
It would be of no use to him--alone. He could do nothing with it.
Malediction! The doctor would never come out. He was probably under
arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos. He laughed aloud
insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was Pedrito Montero who would get the
information. Ha! ha! ha! ha!--and the silver. Ha!
All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became motionless and silent
as if turned into stone. He too, had a prisoner. A prisoner who must,
must know the real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And
Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, felt an
inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceeding to extremities.
He felt a reluctance--part of that unfathomable dread that crept on all
sides upon him. He remembered reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the
hide merchant, his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It
was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility. The fact was that
though Sotillo did never for a moment believe his story--he could not
believe it; nobody could believe such nonsense--yet those accents of
despairing truth impressed him disagreeably. They made him feel sick.
And he suspected also that the man might have gone mad with fear. A
lunatic is a hopeless subject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence.
He would know how to deal with that.
He was working himself up to the right pitch of ferocity. His fine eyes
squinted slightly; he clapped his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared
noiselessly, a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a
stick in his hand.
The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miserable Hirsch, pushed
in by several soldiers, found him frowning awfully in a broad armchair,
hat on head, knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing,
irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible.
Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently
into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently
forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full
of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows,
passive, sunk in hebetude. He listened to threats and admonitions, and
afterwards made his usual answers to questions, with his chin sunk on
his breast, his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front of
Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced to hold up his head,
by means of a bayonet-point prodding him under the chin, his eyes had a
vacant, trance-like stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were
seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of his white face.
Then they stopped suddenly.
Sotillo looked at him in silence. “Will you depart from your obstinacy,
you rogue?” he asked. Already a rope, whose one end was fastened to
Senor Hirsch’s wrists, had been thrown over a beam, and three soldiers
held the other end, waiting. He made no answer. His heavy lower lip hung
stupidly. Sotillo made a sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a
yell of despair and agony burst out in the room, filled the passage of
the great buildings, rent the air outside, caused every soldier of the
camp along the shore to look up at the windows, started some of the
officers in the hall babbling excitedly, with shining eyes; others,
setting their lips, looked gloomily at the floor.
Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. The sentry on the
landing presented arms. Hirsch went on screaming all alone behind the
half-closed jalousies while the sunshine, reflected from the water of
the harbour, made an ever-running ripple of light high up on the wall.
He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a wide-open mouth--incredibly
wide, black, enormous, full of teeth--comical.
In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he made the waves
of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N. Company’s offices. Captain
Mitchell on the balcony, trying to make out what went on generally, had
heard him faintly but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling sound
lingered in his ears after he had retreated indoors with blanched
cheeks. He had been driven off the balcony several times during that
afternoon.
Sotillo, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held consultations
with his officers, gave contradictory orders in this shrill clamour
pervading the whole empty edifice. Sometimes there would be long and
awful silences. Several times he had entered the torture-chamber where
his sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass were lying on the table,
to ask with forced calmness, “Will you speak the truth now? No? I can
wait.” But he could not afford to wait much longer. That was just it.
Every time he went in and came out with a slam of the door, the sentry
on the landing presented arms, and got in return a black, venomous,
unsteady glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being merely the
reflection of the soul within--a soul of gloomy hatred, irresolution,
avarice, and fury.
The sun had set when he went in once more. A soldier carried in two
lighted candles and slunk out, shutting the door without noise.
“Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver! The silver, I say!
Where is it? Where have you foreign rogues hidden it? Confess or--”
A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the racked limbs, but the
body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising business man from Esmeralda, hung
under the heavy beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel
awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled by the snows of the Sierra,
spread gradually a delicious freshness through the close heat of the
room.
“Speak--thief--scoundrel--picaro--or--”
Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his arm lifted up.
For a word, for one little word, he felt he would have knelt, cringed,
grovelled on the floor before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed
eyeballs starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that drooped very
still with its mouth closed askew. The colonel ground his teeth with
rage and struck. The rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long
string of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging motion was
imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, the well-known hide merchant on
the coast. With a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a
few inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. Senor
Hirsch’s head was flung back on his straining throat; his chin trembled.
For a moment the rattle of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast,
shadowy room, where the candles made a patch of light round the two
flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo, staying his raised hand,
waited for him to speak, with the sudden flash of a grin and a straining
forward of the wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his face.
The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back with a low cry of
dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of deadly venom. Quick as thought he
snatched up his revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concussion
of the shots seemed to throw him at once from ungovernable rage into
idiotic stupor. He stood with drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he
done, Sangre de Dios! What had he done? He was basely appalled at his
impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips from which so much was to
be extorted. What could he say? How could he explain? Ideas of headlong
flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; even the craven and
absurd notion of hiding under the table occurred to his cowardice.
It was too late; his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great
clatter of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and wonder. But
since they did not immediately proceed to plunge their swords into his
breast, the brazen side of his character asserted itself. Passing the
sleeve of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together, His
truculent glance turned slowly here and there, checked the noise where
it fell; and the stiff body of the late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after
swaying imperceptibly, made a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst
of awed murmurs and uneasy shuffling.
A voice remarked loudly, “Behold a man who will never speak again.” And
another, from the back row of faces, timid and pressing, cried out--
“Why did you kill him, mi colonel?”
“Because he has confessed everything,” answered Sotillo, with the
hardihood of desperation. He felt himself cornered. He brazened it out
on the strength of his reputation with very fair success. His hearers
thought him very capable of such an act. They were disposed to believe
his flattering tale. There is no credulity so eager and blind as the
credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the
moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind. Ah! he had
confessed everything, this fractious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he
was no longer wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the senior
captain--a big-headed man, with little round eyes and monstrously fat
cheeks which never moved. The old major, tall and fantastically ragged
like a scarecrow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch,
muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that like this there was
no need to guard against any future treacheries of that scoundrel. The
others stared, shifting from foot to foot, and whispering short remarks
to each other.
Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremptory orders to hasten
the retirement decided upon in the afternoon. Sinister, impressive, his
sombrero pulled right down upon his eyebrows, he marched first through
the door in such disorder of mind that he forgot utterly to provide for
Dr. Monygham’s possible return. As the officers trooped out after him,
one or two looked back hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from
Esmeralda, left swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the two burning
candles. In the emptiness of the room the burly shadow of head and
shoulders on the wall had an air of life.
Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by companies without
drum or trumpet. The old scarecrow major commanded the rearguard; but
the party he left behind with orders to fire the Custom House (and “burn
the carcass of the treacherous Jew where it hung”) failed somehow in
their haste to set the staircase properly alight. The body of the
late Senor Hirsch dwelt alone for a time in the dismal solitude of the
unfinished building, resounding weirdly with sudden slams and clicks
of doors and latches, with rustling scurries of torn papers, and the
tremulous sighs that at each gust of wind passed under the high roof.
The light of the two candles burning before the perpendicular and
breathless immobility of the late Senor Hirsch threw a gleam afar over
land and water, like a signal in the night. He remained to startle
Nostromo by his presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by the mystery of
his atrocious end.
“But why shot?” the doctor again asked himself, audibly. This time he
was answered by a dry laugh from Nostromo.
“You seem much concerned at a very natural thing, senor doctor. I wonder
why? It is very likely that before long we shall all get shot one after
another, if not by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or Fuentes, or Gamacho.
And we may even get the estrapade, too, or worse--quien sabe?--with your
pretty tale of the silver you put into Sotillo’s head.”
“It was in his head already,” the doctor protested. “I only--”
“Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil himself--”
“That is precisely what I meant to do,” caught up the doctor.
“That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I say. You are a
dangerous man.”
Their voices, which without rising had been growing quarrelsome, ceased
suddenly. The late Senor Hirsch, erect and shadowy against the stars,
seemed to be waiting attentive, in impartial silence.
But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nostromo. At this supremely
critical point of Sulaco’s fortunes it was borne upon him at last that
this man was really indispensable, more indispensable than ever the
infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his proud discoverer, could conceive;
far beyond what Decoud’s best dry raillery about “my illustrious friend,
the unique Capataz de Cargadores,” had ever intended. The fellow was
unique. He was not “one in a thousand.” He was absolutely the only
one. The doctor surrendered. There was something in the genius of that
Genoese seaman which dominated the destinies of great enterprises and
of many people, the fortunes of Charles Gould, the fate of an admirable
woman. At this last thought the doctor had to clear his throat before he
could speak.
In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the Capataz that, to
begin with, he personally ran no great risk. As far as everybody knew he
was dead. It was an enormous advantage. He had only to keep out of sight
in the Casa Viola, where the old Garibaldino was known to be alone--with
his dead wife. The servants had all run away. No one would think of
searching for him there, or anywhere else on earth, for that matter.
“That would be very true,” Nostromo spoke up, bitterly, “if I had not
met you.”
For a time the doctor kept silent. “Do you mean to say that you think I
may give you away?” he asked in an unsteady voice. “Why? Why should I do
that?”
“What do I know? Why not? To gain a day perhaps. It would take Sotillo a
day to give me the estrapade, and try some other things perhaps, before
he puts a bullet through my heart--as he did to that poor wretch here.
Why not?”
The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat had gone dry in a
moment. It was not from indignation. The doctor, pathetically enough,
believed that he had forfeited the right to be indignant with any
one--for anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow heard his story
by some chance? If so, there was an end of his usefulness in that
direction. The indispensable man escaped his influence, because of
that indelible blot which made him fit for dirty work. A feeling as of
sickness came upon the doctor. He would have given anything to know, but
he dared not clear up the point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on
the sense of his abasement, hardened his heart in sadness and scorn.
“Why not, indeed?” he reechoed, sardonically. “Then the safe thing for
you is to kill me on the spot. I would defend myself. But you may just
as well know I am going about unarmed.”
“Por Dios!” said the Capataz, passionately. “You fine people are all
alike. All dangerous. All betrayers of the poor who are your dogs.”
“You do not understand,” began the doctor, slowly.
“I understand you all!” cried the other with a violent movement, as
shadowy to the doctor’s eyes as the persistent immobility of the late
Senor Hirsch. “A poor man amongst you has got to look after himself. I
say that you do not care for those that serve you. Look at me! After all
these years, suddenly, here I find myself like one of these curs that
bark outside the walls--without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth.
_Caramba!_” But he relented with a contemptuous fairness. “Of course,” he
went on, quietly, “I do not suppose that you would hasten to give me
up to Sotillo, for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing!
Suddenly--” He swung his arm downwards. “Nothing to any one,” he
repeated.
The doctor breathed freely. “Listen, Capataz,” he said, stretching out
his arm almost affectionately towards Nostromo’s shoulder. “I am going
to tell you a very simple thing. You are safe because you are needed. I
would not give you away for any conceivable reason, because I want you.”
In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard enough of that. He knew
what that meant. No more of that for him. But he had to look after
himself now, he thought. And he thought, too, that it would not be
prudent to part in anger from his companion. The doctor, admitted to be
a great healer, had, amongst the populace of Sulaco, the reputation
of being an evil sort of man. It was based solidly on his personal
appearance, which was strange, and on his rough ironic manner--proofs
visible, sensible, and incontrovertible of the doctor’s malevolent
disposition. And Nostromo was of the people. So he only grunted
incredulously.
“You, to speak plainly, are the only man,” the doctor pursued. “It is
in your power to save this town and . . . everybody from the destructive
rapacity of men who--”
“No, senor,” said Nostromo, sullenly. “It is not in my power to get the
treasure back for you to give up to Sotillo, or Pedrito, or Gamacho.
What do I know?”
“Nobody expects the impossible,” was the answer.
“You have said it yourself--nobody,” muttered Nostromo, in a gloomy,
threatening tone.
But Dr. Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the enigmatic words and the
threatening tone. To their eyes, accustomed to obscurity, the late
Senor Hirsch, growing more distinct, seemed to have come nearer. And
the doctor lowered his voice in exposing his scheme as though afraid of
being overheard.
He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest confidence. Its
implied flattery and suggestion of great risks came with a familiar
sound to the Capataz. His mind, floating in irresolution and discontent,
recognized it with bitterness. He understood well that the doctor was
anxious to save the San Tome mine from annihilation. He would be nothing
without it. It was his interest. Just as it had been the interest of
Senor Decoud, of the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get his Cargadores
on their side. His thought became arrested upon Decoud. What would
happen to him?
Nostromo’s prolonged silence made the doctor uneasy. He pointed out,
quite unnecessarily, that though for the present he was safe, he could
not live concealed for ever. The choice was between accepting the
mission to Barrios, with all its dangers and difficulties, and leaving
Sulaco by stealth, ingloriously, in poverty.
“None of your friends could reward you and protect you just now,
Capataz. Not even Don Carlos himself.”
“I would have none of your protection and none of your rewards. I
only wish I could trust your courage and your sense. When I return in
triumph, as you say, with Barrios, I may find you all destroyed. You
have the knife at your throat now.”
It was the doctor’s turn to remain silent in the contemplation of
horrible contingencies.
“Well, we would trust your courage and your sense. And you, too, have a
knife at your throat.”
“Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What are your politics and your
mines to me--your silver and your constitutions--your Don Carlos this,
and Don Jose that--”
“I don’t know,” burst out the exasperated doctor. “There are innocent
people in danger whose little finger is worth more than you or I and all
the Ribierists together. I don’t know. You should have asked yourself
before you allowed Decoud to lead you into all this. It was your place
to think like a man; but if you did not think then, try to act like a
man now. Did you imagine Decoud cared very much for what would happen to
you?”
“No more than you care for what will happen to me,” muttered the other.
“No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I care for what
will happen to myself.”
“And all this because you are such a devoted Ribierist?” Nostromo said
in an incredulous tone.
“All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist,” repeated Dr. Monygham,
grimly.
Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of the late Senor
Hirsch, remained silent, thinking that the doctor was a dangerous person
in more than one sense. It was impossible to trust him.
“Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?” he asked at last.
“Yes. I do,” the doctor said, loudly, without hesitation. “He must come
forward now. He must,” he added in a mutter, which Nostromo did not
catch.
“What did you say, senor?”
The doctor started. “I say that you must be true to yourself, Capataz.
It would be worse than folly to fail now.”
“True to myself,” repeated Nostromo. “How do you know that I would
not be true to myself if I told you to go to the devil with your
propositions?”
“I do not know. Maybe you would,” the doctor said, with a roughness of
tone intended to hide the sinking of his heart and the faltering of his
voice. “All I know is, that you had better get away from here. Some of
Sotillo’s men may turn up here looking for me.”
He slipped off the table, listening intently. The Capataz, too, stood
up.
“Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do meantime?” he asked.
“I would go to Sotillo directly you had left--in the way I am thinking
of.”
“A very good way--if only that engineer-in-chief consents. Remind him,
senor, that I looked after the old rich Englishman who pays for the
railway, and that I saved the lives of some of his people that time when
a gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one of his pay-trains.
It was I who discovered it all at the risk of my life, by pretending to
enter into their plans. Just as you are doing with Sotillo.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better arguments,” the doctor
said, hastily. “Leave it to me.”
“Ah, yes! True. I am nothing.”
“Not at all. You are everything.”
They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind them the late Senor
Hirsch preserved the immobility of a disregarded man.
“That will be all right. I know what to say to the engineer,” pursued
the doctor, in a low tone. “My difficulty will be with Sotillo.”
And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as if intimidated by the
difficulty. He had made the sacrifice of his life. He considered this
a fitting opportunity. But he did not want to throw his life away too
soon. In his quality of betrayer of Don Carlos’ confidence, he would
have ultimately to indicate the hiding-place of the treasure. That would
be the end of his deception, and the end of himself as well, at the
hands of the infuriated colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very
last moment; and he had been racking his brains to invent some place of
concealment at once plausible and difficult of access.