Black White/Chapter 2
II
I DECIDED that I did not like White. I had long known that I did not like Lord. So I arose and went to my room, got my hat and walked out on the streets to see what amusement I could find.
I soon found some, for it was well known about town that I had brought down a good cargo of balata and had plenty of money; so it was not long before I was met by men who were very friendly and invited me to gamble. I did gamble, and spent a pleasant and profitable evening. When at last I tired of the game it was very late and the town very quiet. I said buen’ noche’ to my friends, who answered rather sourly—you see, I had kept all my own money and won from them six morrocotas, which in your money is one hundred twenty dollars of gold.
Then I went out into the bright moonlight and started for the hotel, walking in the middle of the street, as is wise when one has won in a gambling game and shadows are thick beside walls and under trees.
But the night was so cool and clear that I felt like walking on and on. And walk I did, leaving the Paseo and climbing up the Calle Libertad, and passing around by the cuartel to look at the soldiers sitting on guard all in a row, and so on down and around the hill. Then my legs said: “Enough!” So I swung back to Calle Libertad, still walking in the middle of the street.
The moon now was well over to the west, and half the street was very bright and half quite dark, except at the corners where the electric lights burned. The cobblestones began to hurt my feet. So, having seen no sign that I was being followed or waited for, I stepped to the smooth sidewalk on the shady side and swung on down it, walking on the curb, watching doorways, and making no sound with my well-worn alpargatas.
All at once I saw, in a doorway a little ahead, something move. I stopped short and loosened my poniard. The figure crouching there did not move again, but I saw its projecting head, watching. As I looked fixedly at it I saw also that it was watching, not me, but the house across the street. It came to me that the watcher did not know I was there.
Beside me was an empty doorway. In two steps I was within it. I know my way about this town, and I was quite sure that the house being watched was that of General—I will not speak the name here; but it is that of a man very high in power, who has—or had—the most beautiful daughter in Bolívar. Whether he himself was being awaited at this late hour by some assassin, or whether something else was afoot, I did not know. Neither did I care. But I was curious. So I waited.
I stood there hidden for perhaps half an hour. Nobody passed. Nothing happened. Then, slowly and silently, the door of the watched house moved open. A head came out, looked quickly up and down the street, the moonlight striking into its eyes. The door swung wider, and out stepped a tall man whom I instantly recognized. He was White.
He was not dressed in white now, but in a dark suit not so easily seen at night; and he wore no hat. Beyond him in the darkness, though, was something white; something like a robe or a frock. He turned, and for a minute he held this white figure very close. Then the door swung shut, and he started swiftly away down the walk.
Something flashed over the cobbles—a thing that flew like an arrow and glittered like a knife. It struck with a hard thud. White staggered, threw out his arms, and collapsed.
I came out. The lurking figure in the doorway down the hill also had sprung forth, and was starting toward the motionless man.
“Alto ahí!” I commanded, speaking low.
The other halted as if paralyzed. Even when I walked up to him he made no move to fight or run, but stood with face drawn and big brown eyes wide and glassy.
I recognized him—a young fellow of good family, hardly more than a boy, called Paquito; a lively young rogue, usually full of deviltry, but not at all bad. I was much astonished.
“Paquito? It is you?” I asked. “You have become a thrower of the knife? What means this thing?”
He swallowed, and his eyes became less large.
“Ah, Loco León!” he muttered. “I did not know you. It is—it is my sister.”
“Oh!” I said. “I did not know you had a sister. Her name?”
“Mercedes. This Norte Americano has”
“Say no more,” I broke in. “But your sister does not live here, in the house of the general. Why have you come here?”
“I followed,” he whispered, staring at the still figure on the sidewalk and beginning to tremble. “I could not—I could not quite do it when he went in—my hand shook. So I have waited.”
I looked at him, and at the man he had struck down, and at the doorway through which White had just come—now shut and blank. I thought of what Lord had said, and of the words of White—that a girl named Mercedes could jump into the river for all he cared. And I thought also of the proud general and his beautiful daughter. And then White moved.
One of his arms began to twitch on the stones. He was not dead. I jumped to him, looked closely at him, and then pulled a keen-pointed knife from the left shoulder of his coat.
“Paquito,” I said, rising, “you are a poor knife-thrower, and you may be glad of it. Your knife flew high and turned, so that the haft hit him over the ear. Then it fell, and the point caught in his coat without cutting him. You are very lucky, for it is not well to kill a foreigner on the streets of this town. Now follow this knife, and never throw it again at a man—until you can throw like this.”
With that I swung my arm, and the poniard went chuck! into the middle of a telephone pole several varas away. Then I gave Paquito a shove. He fled to the pole, jerked the blade from it, and disappeared around the next corner.
I turned back to White just in time to find him rising with eyes full of rage. He swung a fierce blow at me. I dodged, and for a minute I was kept dodging, for he came after me with both fists flying. Then I became a little angry; I am not accustomed to being attacked without fighting back.
“Stop it, you fool!” I snapped. “Do you wish to wake the general with your noisy feet?”
It was the best thing I could have said. He stopped short, his eyes darting to the closed door.
“Now listen, hombre,” I went on. “I am not the man who knocked you down. I know who did, but I shall not tell you here. I go to the hotel, and I advise you to go there too, at once. From what I have seen, you should not linger here.”
He stood glaring at me, and his eyes were not girlish now; there was something infernal in them. But he did not strike at me again.
“Who are you?” he demanded, his voice low but hard. “Somebody’s spy?”
“No.”
I began walking away toward the hotel. He followed promptly, and closely. As soon as we turned the corner he spoke again. “Listen, you!” he ordered. “You’ve got some explaining to do, and you’d better do it quick. Right here and now!”
“Very well,” I said. “Perhaps it is better. The hotel has ears.”
And I told him just what I had seen and how I had happened to see it. But I mentioned no names—neither that of Paquito nor of Mercedes, nor that of the daughter of the general. The knife was thrown, I said, by a relative of a young woman who felt herself wronged.
“As for me,” I ended, “I am Lucio León of the Alto Orinoco, and I have no interest in you. Ask anyone here tomorrow whether Lucio León, called Loco, is a spy. Buen’ noche’.”
“Bah! Every one of you Venezuelans is a spy!” he growled. “Now who’s this woman you say is gunning for me?”
“If I were the spy you think, I might answer that question for a price,” I told him. “But you get no name from me. And if you do not like us Venezuelans, the sooner you leave our country the better for you. Again I bid you good night.”
He moved as if to stop me, but I looked him straight in the eye and he put no hand on me.
“Say, you talk straight,” he admitted grudgingly. “And you don’t look like a sneak, either. Well, I’m much obliged.”
I walked away and left him there.
A little later, as I was undressing in my room, I heard him go quietly past my door. When I ate breakfast the next morning he was still sleeping, and I saw him only once in the following days—being late at meals seemed to be his habit, and I was in the hotel only at meal-times or late at night. When I did see him he looked just as on that first night, except for a lump over the left ear; and he gave no sign of ever having seen me before.
I heard, though, as one hears many things here in town, that he really was going to the Caura, in order to investigate and report on the extent of the serrapia and balata forests there; that he was doing this for some big company which might lease a concession from the government if the prospects were rich enough, and that he himself was not an employe of that company, but an official of it, and was thought to be wealthy. He had chartered a launch and picked a good crew, and so should have a safe journey, people said.
I knew well enough that if he was to make a thorough survey of the Caura country he could not do it in any launch—he would have to forsake the gas-boat and rely on canoes and paddlers and guides of the Indians. But I said nothing. It was not my business, and I was not his friend. I was only a “ Venezuelan.”
Then he was gone. I heard nothing of any trouble about women, or about any other thing. With his launch and his crew and his gun and maps and mosquito-nets and broad hat and beautiful skin, he was gone up the Orinoco.
My respect for him, which had been very small, increased a good deal when I learned that he had actually started for those wild lands. Whether I liked him or not, I had to admit that he was not afraid; and in a fearless man many other things can be overlooked. Yet I wondered whether he knew just how hard a task he had set for himself.
No word came back, except that brought by the master of a piragua bringing down rubber. He reported seeing a lancha rushing up the river, and was curious to know what party it carried. The next down-bound trader had no news of any gas-boat, so we knew it had turned into the Caura.
And that, señores, was the last time White or his crew, or even the launch that carried them, ever was seen on the Orinoco.