is I never rightly understood.”
“It’s like you would say his physique.”
“The slimy yellow ounce-cat.”
“Heya, Chico,” Sumecta called, “Chico!”
The Carib caught Sumecta’s eye. Sard was watching him at the moment and
saw a strange look of fear, or at least anxiety, pass over the savage
face. Sumecta opened his mouth and tapped his teeth with his fingers:
whatever the sign may have meant, it made Chico smile uneasily.
“Yes,” Sard said to himself, “these two ruffians have bought El Chico to
lose the bout, and now that it comes to the point, El Chico is scared of
these buck negroes with their razors. The whites will shoot him if he
wins, and the coloured men will skin him if he doesn’t. And who is this
Mr. Kingsborough who will not have much show, and for whom there will be
time enough? I wish that they would say some more about Mr. Bloody
Kingsborough.”
Mr. Wiskey suddenly turned round upon Sard. He had his head ducked down
so as to avoid giving pain to his boil, and the ducked-down dart of the
skull gave the movement something deadly, like the strike of a snake or
ferret.
“He’s a treat, sir, for looks, and a beautiful boxer, this Chico, the
Carib here,” he said to Sard. “Would you like to have a friendly dollar
on him, just to give an interest to the proceedings?”
“Thank you. I do not bet,” Sard said.
Mr. Wiskey looked at him, but thought it better to be quiet.
“Quite right, sir,” he said. “I respect your feelings. I’m a gentleman
myself and can appreciate them. They do you credit, sir.” He turned
round to the ring again, took another wrench and spit from his
pomegranate, bit into the seeds and said something in a low voice, with
a full mouth in Spanish, to Sumecta, about “one of nature’s bloody
caballeros.” There was a chill upon the talk for nearly a minute; then
Sumecta turned round, had a look at Sard, and surveyed the benches
behind him.
“There’s old Abner,” he said.
“Where?”
“In the back row, about seven from the end.”
Mr. Wiskey burst into song, parodying a familiar advertisement:
“He’s one of the party,
Old Abner MacCarty,
On the day of St. Patrick, at ten.”
“I don’t see Mr. Sagrado B.,” Sumecta said.
“He’s not staying for the party: he’s off: out of it: going by the
briny.”
“The sort of thing he would do; mind his own skin.”
“Sound sense, too,” Mr. Wiskey said. “If a man won’t mind his own skin,
there’s darned little he will mind, and no one else will mind it for
him.”
Presently Sumecta turned again to Mr. Wiskey.
“What is Mr. Sagrado B.’s game with Mr. Kingsborough?” he asked in
Spanish. “Besides the bit of skirt in the case, what is he out for?”
“You’ve seen the bit of skirt?” Mr. Wiskey asked.
“Yes. She’s it.”
“That’s what he is out for: just the woman in the case.”
“He’s getting to be too old for that kind of game,” Sumecta objected.
“He’s got a bit of needle against this one and so she’s got to go.”
“What was the needle?”
“Something that touched him where he lives. But Mr. B. has a long arm
and a way of getting his own back.”
“Then she’s to be Mrs. Sagrado B.,” Sumecta said in English. “And what
is Mr. K. to be?”
“He’s going to be beef-stoo,” Mr. Wiskey said in the same tongue. “And
if he don’t like being in the soup, he can go in the cold-meat cart.”
“I wonder at Mr. B. starting this,” Sumecta said, “just at this time,
when the other thing is getting ready. This woman business will make a
stir.”
“Naturally, and while the stir is on, we’ll be visiting friends in Santa
Barb. But here comes Ben. Viva Ben!
We want only Ben,
Ben, Ben and white men.”
The white men present joined in the cry of “Long live the Christian.”
Captain Cary, edging back to his seat with his cigar, was doubtful for a
moment if they meant him.
Ben, the hope both of his colour and his creed, came slouching into the
ring with his back turned to the coloured men’s seats. He was a pale,
very evil-looking man, with oblique eyes that were downcast: nothing
short of an execution would have brought a smile on his mouth. He
slipped off his shabby clothes and appeared in boxing tights. With his
clothes on, he looked mean, but when stripped to fight, he looked
dangerous. His arms and shoulders were knotted with muscles: he had a
fine chest and magnificent pectoral muscles. When he had been gloved, he
stood up to shake himself down: a more villainous looking ruffian never
entered a ring.
“Will Ben be at Mr. K.’s party?” Sumecta asked.
“He will stir the beef-stoo,” Mr. Wiskey said.
Captain Cary took his seat beside Sard.
“You are just in time, sir,” Sard said. “What do you think of the
Christian champion?”
“He’s like a man I saw hanged once at Hong Kong.”
“He’s got a fine chest, sir.”
“He’s well ribbed up, but what’s inside? If we have to meet at night,
may it be moonlight and may I be first. I shall speak to my agents for
giving me tickets for such a place. Now that I am here, I will stay, but
I count it a degrading exhibition.” He settled himself into his seat,
sucked his cigar and stared at Ben.
“The very twin-brother of the half-caste I saw hanged,” he growled. “He
was one of those women-killers that go about cutting women up.” He
stared again, with dislike of the entertainment mixed with determination
to see it through, now that he was there.
“I’m not sure,” he added, “that he did not cut up the women and sell
them as dogs’-meat. If he did, it was sheer cannibalism, since they eat
dogs there, in some of the quarters. Seven women, altogether, he cut
up.” He lapsed into silence, gazing over Ben’s head into that other
scene in his memory of the long past.
Sard turned his attention to the two men in front of him, hoping for
more information from them, but Mr. Wiskey was now deep in his
pomegranate and Sumecta was smoking a cigarillo. Sard pieced together in
his mind all that they had said. “After this fight, which you have
arranged, so that the Carib shall lose, you two, with the help of a Mr.
Abner, and of Ben Hordano, are going to a party to lay out a Mr.
Kingsborough, and abduct a woman, presumably Mr. Kingsborough’s wife,
for the benefit of a Mr. B. Who is Mr. B.? He is apparently in late
middle age, and vindictive. He must be a dangerous criminal, since he
has planned this abduction. He must be powerful, because here he is
controlling at least four men to do something dangerous while he leaves
the country. He must be wealthy or he could not control the men or leave
the country. Where is he going, when he leaves the country? They
mentioned ‘being safe in Santa Barb’: no doubt they will all go to Santa
Barbara; to some part or port of it. There is room enough for them to
hide, on that wild coast. At the same time, this is Mr. B.’s
self-indulgence, not his real occupation, that is preparing something
else, more important. ‘The other thing is getting ready.’ I wonder what
thing. Before they mentioned ‘the other thing’ I should have said that
they were all liquor-smugglers, but it sounds now more like politics of
some sort: a revolution here, perhaps. And yet, these men are all
criminals; they must be in law-breaking of some kind: liquor smuggling
is likeliest. They bring the rum to leeward, land it somewhere here,
carry it across Las Palomas province, over the frontier into Entre las
Montanas, where they sell it, at three hundred per cent profit, among
the gold-miners. Mr. Kingsborough has the cards stacked against him: I
wonder what I can do to help him.”
While he was wondering, he turned leisurely round, first to his right,
as a blind, then to his left, to see who was sitting in the back row
about seven from the end. There were three or four people close together
at that point: a young well-dressed native, with much silver in his hat;
a sad-faced, thoughtful, middle-aged man, with a goatee beard: neither
of those could be “old Abner.” Next to the middle-aged man was a man
with a pale, predatory, grim face, having pale eyes, bony cheeks, a beak
nose and a slit of a mouth: he seemed likelier. Next to him was a
rosy-faced old man, white-haired and bearded, jovial and bright-eyed
with good living, like the pictures of Father Christmas: could that be
old Abner? The grim man seemed likeliest of the four.
“Bueno; mucho bueno,” Mr. Wiskey shouted to the referee, who now came
into the ring to examine the boxer’s gloves. “You’re only one hour and
thirty minutes late.”
The Master of the Ceremonies now followed the referee into the ring. He
wore an evening suit, with a white waistcoat. A large silver disc hung
on his chest from a broad red ribbon that went about his collar. He
carried a white wand with a cross at its end, like a billiard cue rest.
His hair was plastered down into his eyes with grease: he had the look
of a retired cut-throat who was also a retired dancing-master: he looked
graceful, cruel and fatigued. He explained that the moment was now come
when the two great champions would display the splendour of the ancient
athletic. The delay, he said, the deeply regretted delay in beginning,
could only be described as an insult to such an audience: the people
responsible for the delay had been discharged, so that it would never
happen again. Now that all was ready, he would introduce the referee,
Don Isidor . . .
Don Isidor, a short, thickset, bull-necked, bullet-headed man, with a
bronze-coloured face, scarred from chin to brow with a horn-rip,
advanced into the ring with a set stage smile, amid thunders of
applause. He had been a matador of renown in his day, but had been
“unlucky with a bull” and had come down to this. He had something of a
style and a tradition about him; a rose in his ear, the walk and swagger
of a tenor, and the contest look of a bull entering a ring, looking for
a fight.
“And now, gentlemen,” the Master of the Ceremonies said, “let me
introduce to you the famous El Chico, of the Tierra Firme, and the noble
Ben Hordano, of Mexico City, on my left, on my right; now, as I turn, on
my right, on my left; champions both; noble exponents of the ancient
athletic; gentlemen both, sportsmen both, and, let me add, gentlemen,
quite ready both.”
He bowed, amid cheers, and stalked out of the ring: a bell gave a broken
tinkle and all four seconds hopped out of the ring: the boxers
stiffened, looked at each other, the gong banged for time, the men rose,
their backless chairs were whisked away by the legs behind them, and the
fight began.
Ben came out of his corner looking downwards out of the corners of both
eyes. It was difficult for anyone to say what he was looking at or
whether he saw what he looked at. He came out with a crouching shuffle,
pale, very silent and very evil. He crossed his opponent, led without
style, squared up to him and sparred for an opening. The Carib was a
very different kind of fighter. Sard saw at once that El Chico was not
only a superb boxer, but the master of Ben Hordano in every way. He
smiled and shifted and was sleek with a body of a golden bronze. He
played light and landed and got away, then came again, smiling,
muttering little mocks in Spanish, and tapped Ben in the face, then
warmed to his task and put in some hot ones. Ben came into a clinch, hit
the Carib low in the clinch, hit him low again, hit him in the
breakaway, grappled with him again and again hit him low. The negroes
rose from their seats yelling “Foul!” The Carib grinned, shook Ben from
him, punched him hard on both sides of the head, rushed him: they
grappled again: he bored Ben to the ropes, they sidled along the ropes,
putting in short-arm blows, Ben hitting low continually. When they
broke, they paused and feinted, then rushed into a clinch: the Carib had
the better of it; Ben came out of it uncertain. The Carib rushed and
landed; Ben countered wildly, the Carib drew blood and shook him and
followed him up. All the negroes rose again and cheered and cheered and
cheered. Ben went into a clinch and hit low and hung on: the gong put an
end to the round.
“What do you think of that?” Captain Cary asked.
“Hordano ought to be pitched out of the ring, sir, and the referee with
him. I’ve never seen fouler fighting.”
Others thought the same, for at least a hundred negroes surged down to
the ringside yelling “Foul! Foul!” Half-a-dozen of the bloods, in sailor
suits, clambered up by the ropes to insult the referee, with dirty words
ending in ucho and uelo. The referee seemed not to regard them for a
moment: he stalked up and down, looking over their heads. Someone flung
a bottle at him as he stalked, it hit him on the side of the head and
knocked the rose out of his ear. He changed on the instant to a
screaming madman; he picked up the bottle by the neck and beat the
bloods off the ropes with it, and then yelled at them in a sort of
frenzy of blasphemy till they went back to their seats. He stood glaring
down at them till they were quiet, then, with a gesture he resumed his
dignity, and told them that as the referee he would stop the bout if
they did not behave more like caballeros. “I am the referee and I am
Isidor, and no man shall dictate to me nor daunt me. Never had I thought
that my fellow-citizens of Las Palomas would try to impose the mob-will
upon the individual. On this individual they fail, for I am Isidor
. . .”
He broke off his remarks in order to walk across to Ben, to caution him
for hitting low: in doing this, it occurred to him that he might seem
less partial if he cautioned the Carib, so he walked over and cautioned
El Chico also. The time between the rounds had lengthened out to some
three minutes with all this, so that Ben was fresh again.
“So,” Don Isidor said, “all is quiet, is it not so? This is Las Palomas,
I hope, not Europe with her savagery. It is thus that we deport
ourselves, with calm, with the individual, with Isidor.” He gave a grand
gesture to the time-keeper; the gong clanged: the second round began.
The gong had scarcely stopped before Ben was in the Carib’s corner on a
roving cruise. Like many men, he boxed better for having had his stage
fright warmed out of him in the knock and hurry of a first round. He hit
rather low still; perhaps with his oblique and downcast eyes he could
not do otherwise. He was clumsy but exceedingly strong. The Carib fought
him off and made some play upon his face, but lightly as though the bout
were a sparring match. Ben’s seconds shouted insults at him; the negroes
yelled to him to go in and finish the dirty white dog. He boxed on
gracefully, grinning alike at insults and cheers: he was playing with
Ben. He drove Ben into a corner and clouted him right and left, Ben
kneed him hard in the ribs and drove himself out of the corner; turning
sharply, he fouled the Carib with both hands, kneed him in the ribs
again and sent his right across as the Carib staggered. He was short
with his blow; the Carib slipped aside, recovered, rushed and sent Ben
flying through the ropes, off the platform, into his seconds’ arms. The
negroes rose and yelled and sang; knives and revolvers came out on to
the laps of the whites. The referee counted five very slowly while Ben
climbed back into the ring. The Carib rushed: Ben stopped him: got into
a clinch with him: refused to break: hung on to him: wore through the
round with him hanging on his shoulder, while the negroes sank back into
their seats with a moaning croon. Right at the end of the round the men
broke: the Carib came in like a flash, Ben rallied to it, there was a
hot exchange: then—Time.
Instantly there came yells of protest at the foulness of Ben’s fighting,
but the yells this time were from a few, because all saw that it had
been the Carib’s round. The referee let the protests pass by, turning
his back on the negroes and talking about something else in a loud tone
on the other side of the ring. He abused a sweetmeat seller for bringing
flies into the arena; when he had finished with him he swaggered to the
centre of the ring with a phrase:—“It is well known that I am for the
sport, the sport English, the sport native, the sport antique, the sport
all the time. I am not for the white, I am not for the coloured, I am
for the sport: it is well known. Money speaks all languages, is it not
so? The coloured man’s money is as good as the white’s; is it not so?
Good, then; money speaks all languages, and I am for all money and all
sport.”
This, because he was well known, was received with loud applause by the
negroes. He ended by calling for some lemonade, sipping it, and making a
joke about there being no little bit of good in it.
“I think we need stay for no more, Mr. Harker,” Captain Cary said. “The
white man cannot win, and I do not think it decent to watch the Carib
overcome him. Shall we go?”
“Certainly, sir, if you wish.”
They had risen from their seats and had reached the entrance alley close
to their seats, when the gong struck and the two men rose for the third
round. Both sailors paused where they stood to watch the start of the
round. The fighters were now both warmed to their work, they went for
each other hot and hot. Ben came out of an exchange with a bloody lip
and looking wild; he clinched, hit in the clinch, was told to break,
broke, but clinched again immediately. They wrestled round the ring
together, then broke, with the look of strain at their nostrils and
blood-smears on their ribs. The Carib feinted, then rushed, Ben ducked,
and, as Sard saw, trod with all his weight on the Carib’s foot, the
Carib tripped, then hit him as he fell, hit him again and fell over him.
Ben got up and stood away, but the Carib lay still and was counted out.
Sard saw him smile as he lay there.
Sard saw that Mr. Wiskey and Sumecta were standing at his elbow.
“That is what Mr. K. will get to-night,” Sumecta said in Spanish; “the
right across.”
“Or the cross all right,” Mr. Wiskey said.
“Will you come then, Mr. Harker?” Captain Cary said.
They turned swiftly up the alley out of the arena, while Don Isidor held
up his hand for silence. A roar of riot broke out behind them an instant
later, when Ben was declared the winner. Sard, glancing back at the
door, saw a mob of negroes at the ropes, and bottles, flasks, oranges,
tortillas, pieces of water melon and bananas falling in the ring round
Don Isidor, who was slipping out of the ring into a phalanx of whites
already formed to receive him.
In the fresh air, outside the Circo, Captain Cary hailed a caleche.
“We’re well out of that,” he said. “I understood that it would be a
display of athletics, but it was a very low piece of blackguardism: I
call it degrading.”
“Sir,” Sard said, as they settled into their caleche, “you perhaps
noticed the two men in front of us. They were talking in Spanish of
raiding a Mr. Kingsborough to-night, with a gang, in order to kidnap a
woman.”
“Kingsborough? I do not know the name.”
“He must be English or American, with that name, sir: and they talked as
if they meant to do it.”
“Kingsborough? I suppose they were these liquor-smugglers, going to
punish one of their gang?”
“No, sir: they called him _Mr._ Kingsborough, as though he were outside
their gang. I wondered, sir, if you would mind enquiring at the Club,
where Mr. Kingsborough lives, so that we could give him a warning.”
“I don’t know that I want to be mixed up in the business, Mr. Harker.
But you say they mean to kidnap a woman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It isn’t a very easy thing to do, in a fine modern town like Las
Palomas.”
“They talked as though it would be easy to them, sir.”
“I fail to see how it can be easy, Mr. Harker. I should not like to have
to try it, even with all hands. However, what is the time?”
“Twenty minutes to five, sir.”
“The tug will be alongside in an hour, and we aren’t hove short yet.
What’s more: I don’t like the look of that sky at all.”
“No, sir.”
“Still, we ought to do what we can. We will just ask at the Club, if
this person should be known. But it would be wiser, I should have
thought, to go direct to the police.”
“Sir, if these people are liquor-smugglers, the chances are that they
have bribed the police, or have an arrangement with them.”
“That is so. There was a man at the Club the other night who said openly
that when he settled here, he asked how he could stock his cellar. They
told him that it would be costly, as liquor is against the law, but that
he could stock his cellar if he put his order through the chief of
police. So he did, and the stuff was delivered. But that was last year,
Mr. Harker. They have put in a new Chief of Police since; this Colonel
Mackenzie, a Scotch-American: there is no such thing as squaring him.”
“Sir, we shall pass the Club on our way to the Palace of Justice. Might
we pass word at both?”
“That is so. Heave round, then, Mr. Harker. Just pass the word to the
driver. But kidnapping a woman, Mr. Harker . . . I don’t believe that it
could ever be done. I’ve never heard of it’s being done. What would be
the object?”
“Partly the woman, sir, and partly (as far as I could gather) to pay off
some old score.”
“Well, a man would have to be a pretty thorough-paced scoundrel even to
plan a thing like that; but the doing of it is what I don’t see. How
would it be done?”
“Sir, they said that Ben Hordano would be there, so I suppose they mean
to knock her senseless: give her the knock-out blow on the chin and then
lash her up, like a hammock.”
“No, no, Mr. Harker; men are not like that.”
“Sir, Ben Hordano is not a man, but a dangerous animal. The others are
the same: they neither think nor act like men.”
“Yes, but, Mr. Harker, a woman is not so easy to attack as a man. You
ask one of these big policemen: they would rather tackle three men than
one woman. I’ve known it take seven policemen to take one woman to
prison: she was a little woman, too; but she kept them guessing and one
of them was streaming with blood.”
“Was that in England, sir?”
“Yes, in London.”
“They are very forbearing men, sir, the London police.”
“They know when they meet their match, Mr. Harker; but here we are at
the stairs.”
“The _Otoque_ is in, sir; we have a fair chance of our mail.”
“There’s nothing much coming to me, that I’ve any reason to look forward
to. The post is like hope, Mr. Harker, best in youth.”
“There is Mr. Brentano, from the agents, sir. He has some letters.”
“Where?”
“There, sir, to port, talking to a priest.”
“Wait one minute, Mr. Harker, he may have some news for us. Ho, Mr.
Brentano, were you waiting here to intercept me?”
Mr. Brentano left the priest and came running up to Captain Cary, who
had now dismounted from the caleche. Mr. Brentano was a middle-aged,
foxy-looking man with an astute mind.
“Ah, Captain Cary,” he said, “the boatmen told me that you had not gone
aboard. I hoped to catch you here as you went off. By the way, here is
some mail for the _Pathfinder_. There is this priest, a Father
Garsinton, from the mining district, who came in, just as the office
closed, to beg a passage to Santa Barbara.”
“Indeed.”
“He has a letter from one of our clients, one of our most important
clients.”
“Do I understand that he wants to come in the _Pathfinder_?”
“Well; he comes from one of our very best clients, Captain Cary, so if
you could manage to strain a point. . . . He is a priest, used to every
kind of hardship; you could put him in the coal-hole, anywhere, it would
make no difference to him, he would give no trouble. I don’t suppose
he’s very rich, but of course he would pay his passage. You see, Captain
Cary, it is a very special case. He is a poor man. He has only a month’s
leave of absence. He wants to reach Santa Barbara to settle the affairs
of his mother, who has died there. He has missed the _Alvarado_. He is
an Englishman and his poor sister is in Santa Barbara all alone.”
Captain Cary bit his glove, and showed a poor mouth.
“I suppose we’ll have to take him,” he growled to Sard; “I hate priests:
they always take snuff. But I’ll have no nonsense about fish on
Fridays.”