Soldiers of Fortune Part 15

"No," Stuart replied. "Rojas and I were with him all the morning.

Rojas is an old trump, Clay. He's not bright and he's old-fas.h.i.+oned; but he is honest. And the people know it. If I had Rojas for a chief instead of Alvarez, I'd arrest Mendoza with my own hand, and I wouldn't be afraid to take him to the carcel through the streets. The people wouldn't help him. But the President doesn't dare. Not that he hasn't pluck," added the young lieutenant, loyally, "for he takes his life in his hands when he goes to the review tomorrow, and he knows it. Think of it, will you, out there alone with a field of five thousand men around him! Rojas thinks he can hold half of them, as many as Mendoza can, and I have my fifty. But you can't tell what any one of them will do for a drink or a dollar. They're no more soldiers than these waiters. They're bandits in uniform, and they'll kill for the man that pays best."

"Then why doesn't Alvarez pay them?" Clay growled.

Stuart looked away and lowered his eyes to the table. "He hasn't the money, I suppose," he said, evasively. "He--he has transferred every cent of it into drafts on Rothschild. They are at the house now, representing five millions of dollars in gold--and her jewels, too--packed ready for flight."

"Then he does expect trouble?" said Clay. "You told me--"

"They're all alike; you know them," said Stuart. "They won't believe they're in danger until the explosion comes, but they always have a special train ready, and they keep the funds of the government under their pillows. He engaged apartments on the Avenue Kleber six months ago."

"Bah!" said Clay. "It's the old story. Why don't you quit him?"

Stuart raised his eyes and dropped them again, and Clay sighed. "I'm sorry," he said.

MacWilliams interrupted them in an indignant stage-whisper. "Say, how long have we got to keep up this fake game?" he asked. "I don't know anything about dominoes, and neither does Ted. Tell us what you've been saying. Is there going to be trouble? If there is, Ted and I want to be in it. We are looking for trouble."

Clay had tipped back his chair, and was surveying the restaurant and the blazing plaza beyond its open front with an expression of cheerful unconcern. Two men were reading the morning papers near the door, and two others were dragging through a game of dominoes in a far corner.

The heat of midday had settled on the place, and the waiters dozed, with their chairs tipped back against the walls. Outside, the awning of the restaurant threw a broad shadow across the marble-topped tables on the sidewalk, and half a dozen fiacre drivers slept peacefully in their carriages before the door.

The town was taking its siesta, and the brisk step of a stranger who crossed the tessellated floor and rapped with his knuckles on the top of the cigar-case was the only sign of life. The newcomer turned with one hand on the gla.s.s case and swept the room carelessly with his eyes.

They were hard blue eyes under straight eyebrows. Their owner was dressed un.o.btrusively in a suit of rough tweed, and this and his black hat, and the fact that he was smooth-shaven, distinguished him as a foreigner.

As he faced them the forelegs of Clay's chair descended slowly to the floor, and he began to smile comprehendingly and to nod his head as though the coming of the stranger had explained something of which he had been in doubt. His companions turned and followed the direction of his eyes, but saw nothing of interest in the newcomer. He looked as though he might be a concession hunter from the States, or a Manchester drummer, prepared to offer six months' credit on blankets and hardware.

Clay rose and strode across the room, circling the tables in such a way that he could keep himself between the stranger and the door. At his approach the new-comer turned his back and fumbled with his change on the counter.

"Captain Burke, I believe?" said Clay. The stranger bit the cigar he had just purchased, and shook his head. "I am very glad to see you,"

Clay continued. "Sit down, won't you? I want to talk with you."

"I think you've made a mistake," the stranger answered, quietly. "My name is--"

"Colonel, perhaps, then," said Clay. "I might have known it. I congratulate you, Colonel."

The man looked at Clay for an instant, with the cigar clenched between his teeth and his blue eyes fixed steadily on the other's face. Clay waved his hand again invitingly toward a table, and the man shrugged his shoulders and laughed, and, pulling a chair toward him, sat down.

"Come over here, boys," Clay called. "I want you to meet an old friend of mine, Captain Burke."

The man called Burke stared at the three men as they crossed the room and seated themselves at the table, and nodded to them in silence.

"We have here," said Clay, gayly, but in a low voice, "the key to the situation. This is the gentleman who supplies Mendoza with the sinews of war. Captain Burke is a brave soldier and a citizen of my own or of any country, indeed, which happens to have the most sympathetic Consul-General."

Burke smiled grimly, with a condescending nod, and putting away the cigar, took out a brier pipe and began to fill it from his tobacco-pouch. "The Captain is a man of few words and extremely modest about himself," Clay continued, lightly; "so I must tell you who he is myself. He is a promoter of revolutions. That is his business,--a professional promoter of revolutions, and that is what makes me so glad to see him again. He knows all about the present crisis here, and he is going to tell us all he knows as soon as he fills his pipe. I ought to warn you, Burke," he added, "that this is Captain Stuart, in charge of the police and the President's cavalry troop. So, you see, whatever you say, you will have one man who will listen to you."

Burke crossed one short fat leg over the other, and crowded the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe with his thumb.

"I thought you were in Chili, Clay," he said.

"No, you didn't think I was in Chili," Clay replied, kindly. "I left Chili two years ago. The Captain and I met there," he explained to the others, "when Balmaceda was trying to make himself dictator. The Captain was on the side of the Congressionalists, and was furnis.h.i.+ng arms and dynamite. The Captain is always on the winning side, at least he always has been--up to the present. He is not a creature of sentiment; are you, Burke? The Captain believes with Napoleon that G.o.d is on the side that has the heaviest artillery."

Burke lighted his pipe and drummed absentmindedly on the table with his match-box.

"I can't afford to be sentimental," he said. "Not in my business."

"Of course not," Clay a.s.sented, cheerfully. He looked at Burke and laughed, as though the sight of him recalled pleasant memories. "I wish I could give these boys an idea of how clever you are, Captain,"

he said. "The Captain was the first man, for instance, to think of packing cartridges in tubs of lard, and of sending rifles in piano-cases. He represents the Welby revolver people in England, and half a dozen firms in the States, and he has his little stores in Tampa and Mobile and Jamaica, ready to s.h.i.+p off at a moment's notice to any revolution in Central America. When I first met the Captain," Clay continued, gleefully, and quite unmindful of the other's continued silence, "he was starting off to rescue Arabi Pasha from the island of Ceylon. You may remember, boys, that when Dufferin saved Arabi from hanging, the British s.h.i.+pped him to Ceylon as a political prisoner.

Well, the Captain was sent by Arabi's followers in Egypt to bring him back to lead a second rebellion. Burke had everybody bribed at Ceylon, and a fine schooner fitted out and a lot of ruffians to do the fighting, and then the good, kind British Government pardoned Arabi the day before Burke arrived in port. And you never got a cent for it; did you, Burke?"

Burke shook his head and frowned.

"Six thousand pounds sterling I was to have got for that," he said, with a touch of pardonable pride in his voice, "and they set him free the day before I got there, just as Mr. Clay tells you."

"And then you headed Granville Prior's expedition for buried treasure off the island of Cocos, didn't you?" said Clay. "Go on, tell them about it. Be sociable. You ought to write a book about your different business ventures, Burke, indeed you ought; but then," Clay added, smiling, "n.o.body would believe you." Burke rubbed his chin, thoughtfully, with his fingers, and looked modestly at the ceiling, and the two younger boys gazed at him with open-mouthed interest.

"There ain't anything in buried treasure," he said, after a pause, "except the money that's sunk in the fitting out. It sounds good, but it's all foolishness."

"All foolishness, eh?" said Clay, encouragingly. "And what did you do after Balmaceda was beaten?--after I last saw you?"

"Crespo," Burke replied, after a pause, during which he pulled gently on his pipe. "'Caroline Brewer'--cleared from Key West for Curacao, with cargo of sewing-machines and ploughs--beached below Maracaibo--thirty-five thousand rounds and two thousand rifles--at twenty bolivars apiece."

"Of course," said Clay, in a tone of genuine appreciation. "I might have known you'd be in that. He says," he explained, "that he a.s.sisted General Crespo in Venezuela during his revolution against Guzman Blanco's party, and loaded a tramp steamer called the 'Caroline Brewer'

at Key West with arms, which he landed safely at a place for which he had no clearance papers, and he received forty thousand dollars in our money for the job--and very good pay, too, I should think," commented Clay.

"Well, I don't know," Burke demurred. "You take in the cost of leasing the boat and provisioning her, and the crew's wages, and the cost of the cargo; that cuts into profits. Then I had to stand off sh.o.r.e between Trinidad and Curacao for over three weeks before I got the signal to run in, and after that I was chased by a gun-boat for three days, and the crazy fool put a shot clean through my engine-room. Cost me about twelve hundred dollars in repairs."

There was a pause, and Clay turned his eyes to the street, and then asked, abruptly, "What are you doing now?"

"Trying to get orders for smokeless powder," Burke answered, promptly.

He met Clay's look with eyes as undisturbed as his own. "But they won't touch it down here," he went on. "It doesn't appeal to 'em.

It's too expensive, and they'd rather see the smoke. It makes them think--"

"How long did you expect to stay here?" Clay interrupted.

"How long?" repeated Burke, like a man in a witness-box who is trying to gain time. "Well, I was thinking of leaving by Friday, and taking a mule-train over to Bogota instead of waiting for the steamer to Colon."

He blew a mouthful of smoke into the air and watched it drifting toward the door with apparent interest.

"The 'Santiago' leaves here Sat.u.r.day for New York. I guess you had better wait over for her," Clay said. "I'll engage your pa.s.sage, and, in the meantime, Captain Stuart here will see that they treat you well in the cuartel."

The men around the table started, and sat motionless looking at Clay, but Burke only took his pipe from his mouth and knocked the ashes out on the heel of his boot. "What am I going to the cuartel for?" he asked.

"Well, the public good, I suppose," laughed Clay. "I'm sorry, but it's your own fault. You shouldn't have shown yourself here at all."

"What have you got to do with it?" asked Burke, calmly, as he began to refill his pipe. He had the air of a man who saw nothing before him but an afternoon of pleasant discourse and leisurely inactivity.

"You know what I've got to do with it," Clay replied. "I've got our concession to look after."

"Well, you're not running the town, too, are you?" asked Burke.

"No, but I'm going to run you out of it," Clay answered. "Now, what are you going to do,--make it unpleasant for us and force our hand, or drive down quietly with our friend MacWilliams here? He is the best one to take you, because he's not so well known."