“Do you know what, Capataz? I think that when the time comes and some
information must be given, I shall indicate the Great Isabel. That is
the best place I can think of. What is the matter?”
A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo. The doctor waited, surprised,
and after a moment of profound silence, heard a thick voice stammer out,
“Utter folly,” and stop with a gasp.
“Why folly?”
“Ah! You do not see it,” began Nostromo, scathingly, gathering scorn as
he went on. “Three men in half an hour would see that no ground had been
disturbed anywhere on that island. Do you think that such a treasure can
be buried without leaving traces of the work--eh! senor doctor? Why! you
would not gain half a day more before having your throat cut by Sotillo.
The Isabel! What stupidity! What miserable invention! Ah! you are all
alike, you fine men of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray
men of the people into undertaking deadly risks for objects that you are
not even sure about. If it comes off you get the benefit. If not, then
it does not matter. He is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios, I would--” He
shook his fists above his head.
The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce, hissing vehemence.
“Well! It seems to me on your own showing that the men of the people
are no mean fools, too,” he said, sullenly. “No, but come. You are so
clever. Have you a better place?”
Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had flared up.
“I am clever enough for that,” he said, quietly, almost with
indifference. “You want to tell him of a hiding-place big enough to take
days in ransacking--a place where a treasure of silver ingots can be
buried without leaving a sign on the surface.”
“And close at hand,” the doctor put in.
“Just so, senor. Tell him it is sunk.”
“This has the merit of being the truth,” the doctor said,
contemptuously. “He will not believe it.”
“You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to lay his hands on it,
and he will believe you quick enough. Tell him it has been sunk in the
harbour in order to be recovered afterwards by divers. Tell him you
found out that I had orders from Don Carlos Gould to lower the cases
quietly overboard somewhere in a line between the end of the jetty and
the entrance. The depth is not too great there. He has no divers, but he
has a ship, boats, ropes, chains, sailors--of a sort. Let him fish for
the silver. Let him set his fools to drag backwards and forwards and
crossways while he sits and watches till his eyes drop out of his head.”
“Really, this is an admirable idea,” muttered the doctor.
“Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not believe you! He will
spend days in rage and torment--and still he will believe. He will have
no thought for anything else. He will not give up till he is driven
off--why, he may even forget to kill you. He will neither eat nor sleep.
He--”
“The very thing! The very thing!” the doctor repeated in an excited
whisper. “Capataz, I begin to believe that you are a great genius in
your way.”
Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed tone, sombre,
speaking to himself as though he had forgotten the doctor’s existence.
“There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a man’s mind. He
will pray and blaspheme and still persevere, and will curse the day he
ever heard of it, and will let his last hour come upon him unawares,
still believing that he missed it only by a foot. He will see it every
time he closes his eyes. He will never forget it till he is dead--and
even then----Doctor, did you ever hear of the miserable gringos on
Azuera, that cannot die? Ha! ha! Sailors like myself. There is no
getting away from a treasure that once fastens upon your mind.”
“You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most plausible thing.”
Nostromo pressed his arm.
“It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger in a town full of
people. Do you know what that is? He shall suffer greater torments than
he inflicted upon that terrified wretch who had no invention. None!
none! Not like me. I could have told Sotillo a deadly tale for very
little pain.”
He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards the body of the late
Senor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch in the semi-transparent obscurity
of the room between the two tall parallelograms of the windows full of
stars.
“You man of fear!” he cried. “You shall be avenged by me--Nostromo. Out
of my way, doctor! Stand aside--or, by the suffering soul of a woman
dead without confession, I will strangle you with my two hands.”
He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall. With a grunt of
astonishment, Dr. Monygham threw himself recklessly into the pursuit. At
the bottom of the charred stairs he had a fall, pitching forward on his
face with a force that would have stunned a spirit less intent upon a
task of love and devotion. He was up in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a
queer impression of the terrestrial globe having been flung at his head
in the dark. But it wanted more than that to stop Dr. Monygham’s body,
possessed by the exaltation of self-sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation,
determined not to lose whatever advantage chance put into its way. He
ran with headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going like a windmill
in his effort to keep his balance on his crippled feet. He lost his hat;
the tails of his open gaberdine flew behind him. He had no mind to lose
sight of the indispensable man. But it was a long time, and a long way
from the Custom House, before he managed to seize his arm from behind,
roughly, out of breath.
“Stop! Are you mad?”
Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head dropping, as if checked in
his pace by the weariness of irresolution.
“What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me for something. Always.
Siempre Nostromo.”
“What do you mean by talking of strangling me?” panted the doctor.
“What do I mean? I mean that the king of the devils himself has sent you
out of this town of cowards and talkers to meet me to-night of all the
nights of my life.”
Under the starry sky the Albergo d’ltalia Una emerged, black and low,
breaking the dark level of the plain. Nostromo stopped altogether.
“The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?” he added, through his
clenched teeth.
“My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing to do with this. Neither
has the town, which you may call by what name you please. But Don Carlos
Gould is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You will admit that?” He
waited. “Well?”
“Could I see Don Carlos?”
“Great heavens! No! Why? What for?” exclaimed the doctor in agitation.
“I tell you it is madness. I will not let you go into the town for
anything.”
“I must.”
“You must not!” hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost beside himself with
the fear of the man doing away with his usefulness for an imbecile whim
of some sort. “I tell you you shall not. I would rather----”
He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out, powerless, holding on
to Nostromo’s sleeve, absolutely for support after his run.
“I am betrayed!” muttered the Capataz to himself; and the doctor, who
overheard the last word, made an effort to speak calmly.
“That is exactly what would happen to you. You would be betrayed.”
He thought with a sickening dread that the man was so well known that he
could not escape recognition. The house of the Senor Administrador was
beset by spies, no doubt. And even the very servants of the casa were
not to be trusted. “Reflect, Capataz,” he said, impressively. . . .
“What are you laughing at?”
“I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not approve of
my presence in town, for instance--you understand, senor doctor--if
somebody were to give me up to Pedrito, it would not be beyond my power
to make friends even with him. It is true. What do you think of that?”
“You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz,” said Dr. Monygham,
dismally. “I recognize that. But the town is full of talk about you; and
those few Cargadores that are not in hiding with the railway people have
been shouting ‘Viva Montero’ on the Plaza all day.”
“My poor Cargadores!” muttered Nostromo. “Betrayed! Betrayed!”
“I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free in laying about you
with a stick amongst your poor Cargadores,” the doctor said in a grim
tone, which showed that he was recovering from his exertions. “Make no
mistake. Pedrito is furious at Senor Ribiera’s rescue, and at having
lost the pleasure of shooting Decoud. Already there are rumours in the
town of the treasure having been spirited away. To have missed that does
not please Pedrito either; but let me tell you that if you had all that
silver in your hand for ransom it would not save you.”
Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoulders, Nostromo
thrust his face close to his.
“Maladetta! You follow me speaking of the treasure. You have sworn my
ruin. You were the last man who looked upon me before I went out with
it. And Sidoni the engine-driver says you have an evil eye.”
“He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him last year,” the doctor
said, stoically. He felt on his shoulders the weight of these hands
famed amongst the populace for snapping thick ropes and bending
horseshoes. “And to you I offer the best means of saving yourself--let
me go--and of retrieving your great reputation. You boasted of making
the Capataz de Cargadores famous from one end of America to the other
about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better opportunity--let me
go, hombre!”
Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor feared that the
indispensable man would run off again. But he did not. He walked on
slowly. The doctor hobbled by his side till, within a stone’s throw from
the Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.
Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed to have changed
its nature; his home appeared to repel him with an air of hopeless and
inimical mystery. The doctor said--
“You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz.”
“How can I go in?” Nostromo seemed to ask himself in a low, inward tone.
“She cannot unsay what she said, and I cannot undo what I have done.”
“I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. I looked in
as I came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe in that house till
you leave it to make your name famous on the Campo. I am going now to
arrange for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring
you news here long before daybreak.”
Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to penetrate the meaning
of Nostromo’s silence, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and starting
off with his smart, lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth
hop in the direction of the railway track. Arrested between the two
wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not
move, as if he, too, had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end
of half an hour he lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the
railway yards, which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous and deadened as
if coming from under the plain. That lame doctor with the evil eye had
got there pretty fast.
Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo d’Italia Una, which he had
never known so lightless, so silent, before. The door, all black in the
pale wall, stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before,
when he had nothing to hide from the world. He remained before it,
irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man betrayed. Poverty, misery,
starvation! Where had he heard these words? The anger of a dying woman
had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if it would come
true very quickly. And the leperos would laugh--she had said. Yes, they
would laugh if they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at the mercy
of the mad doctor whom they could remember, only a few years ago, buying
cooked food from a stall on the Plaza for a copper coin--like one of
themselves.
At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mitchell passed through his
mind. He glanced in the direction of the jetty and saw a small gleam of
light in the O.S.N. Company’s building. The thought of lighted windows
was not attractive. Two lighted windows had decoyed him into the empty
Custom House, only to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No! He
would not go near lighted windows again on that night. Captain Mitchell
was there. And what could he be told? That doctor would worm it all out
of him as if he were a child.
On the threshold he called out “Giorgio!” in an undertone. Nobody
answered. He stepped in. “Ola! viejo! Are you there? . . .” In the
impenetrable darkness his head swam with the illusion that the obscurity
of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, and that the floor dipped
forward like a sinking lighter. “Ola! viejo!” he repeated, falteringly,
swaying where he stood. His hand, extended to steady himself, fell
upon the table. Moving a step forward, he shifted it, and felt a box
of matches under his fingers. He fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He
listened for a moment, holding his breath; then, with trembling hands,
tried to strike a light.
The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly at the end of his
fingers, raised above his blinking eyes. A concentrated glare fell
upon the leonine white head of old Giorgio against the black
fire-place--showed him leaning forward in a chair in staring immobility,
surrounded, overhung, by great masses of shadow, his legs crossed, his
cheek in his hand, an empty pipe in the corner of his mouth. It seemed
hours before he attempted to turn his face; at the very moment the match
went out, and he disappeared, overwhelmed by the shadows, as if the
walls and roof of the desolate house had collapsed upon his white head
in ghostly silence.