Hearts of Three. Джек Лондон

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СКАЧАТЬ is Henry I want to see out of the way. Let the Francis one go back to his beloved New York.”

      “He must go out to-day, and for reasons you will appreciate. As you know, from reading my telegrams through the government wireless – ”

      “Which was our agreement for my getting you your permission to use the government station,” the Jefe reminded.

      “And of which I do not complain,” Torres assured him. “But as I was saying, you know my relations with the New York Regan are confidential and important.” He touched his hand to his breast pocket. “I have just received another wire. It is imperative that the Francis pig be kept away from New York for a month – if forever, and I do not misunderstand Senor Regan, so much the better. In so far as I succeed in this, will you fare well.”

      “But you have not told me how much you have received, nor how much you will receive,” the Jefe probed.

      “It is a private agreement, and it is not so much as you may fancy. He is a hard man, this Senor Regan, a hard man. Yet will I divide fairly with you out of the success of our venture.”

      The Jefe nodded acquiescence, then said:

      “Will it be as much as a thousand gold you will get?”

      “I think so. Surely the pig of an Irish stock-gambler could pay me no less a sum, and five hundred is yours if pig Francis leaves his bones in San Antonio.”

      “Will it be as much as a hundred thousand gold?” was the Jefe’s next query.

      Torres laughed as if at a joke.

      “It must be more than a thousand,” the other persisted.

      “And he may be generous,” Torres responded. “He may even give me five hundred over the thousand, half of which, naturally, as I have said, will be yours as well.”

      “I shall go from here immediately to the jail,” the Jefe announced. “You may trust me, Senor Torres, as I trust you. Come. We will go at once, now, you and I, and you may see for yourself the preparation I shall make for this Francis Morgan’s reception. I have not yet lost my cunning with a rifle. And, as well, I shall tell off three of the gendarmes to fire only at him. So this Gringo dog would storm our jail, eh? Come. We will depart at once.”

      He stood up, tossing his cigarette away with a show of determined energy. But, half way across the room, a ragged boy, panting and sweating, plucked his sleeve and whined:

      “I have information. You will pay me for it, most high Senor? I have run all the way.”

      “I’ll have you sent to San Juan for the buzzards to peck your carcass for the worthless carrion that you are,” was the reply.

      The boy quailed at the threat, then summoned courage from his emptiness of belly and meagerness of living and from his desire for the price of a ticket to the next bull-fight.

      “You will remember I brought you the information, Senor. I ran all the way until I am almost dead, as you can behold, Senor. I will tell you, but you will remember it was I who ran all the way and told you first.”

      “Yes, yes, animal, I will remember. But woe to you if I remember too well. What is the trifling information? It may not be worth a centavo. And if it isn’t I’ll make you sorry the sun ever shone on you. And buzzard-picking of you at San Juan will be paradise compared with what I shall visit on you.”

      “The jail,” the boy quavered. “The strange Gringo, the one who was to be hanged yesterday, has blown down the side of the jail. Merciful Saints! The hole is as big as the steeple of the cathedral! And the other Gringo, the one who looks like him, the one who was to hang to-morrow, has escaped with him out of the hole. He dragged him out of the hole himself. This I saw, myself, with my two eyes, and then I ran here to you all the way, and you will remember…”

      But the Jefe Politico had already turned on Torres witheringly.

      “And if this Senor Regan be princely generous, he may give you and me the munificent sum that was mentioned, eh? Five times the sum, or ten times, with this Gringo tiger blowing down law and order and our good jail-walls, would be nearer the mark.”

      “At any rate, the thing must be a false alarm, merely the straw that shows which way blows the wind of this Francis Morgan’s intention,” Torres murmured with a sickly smile. “Remember, the suggestion was mine to him to storm the jail.”

      “In which case you and Senor Regan will pay for the good jail wall?” the Jefe demanded, then, with a pause, added: “Not that I believe it has been accomplished. It is not possible. Even a fool Gringo would not dare.”

      Rafael, the gendarme, rifle in hand, the blood still oozing down his face from a scalp-wound, came through the courtroom door and shouldered aside the curious ones who had begun to cluster around Torres and the Jefe.

      “We are devastated,” were Rafael’s first words. “The jail is ‘most destroyed. Dynamite! A hundred pounds of it! A thousand! We came bravely to save the jail. But it exploded – the thousand pounds of dynamite. I fell unconscious, rifle in hand. When sense came back to me, I looked about. All others, the brave Pedro, the brave Ignacio, the brave Augustino – all, all, lay around me dead!” Almost could he have added, “drunk”; but, his Latin-American nature so compounded, he sincerely stated the catastrophe as it most valiantly and tragically presented itself to his imagination. “They lay dead. They may not be dead, but merely stunned. I crawled. The cell of the Gringo Morgan was empty. There was a huge and monstrous hole in the wall. I crawled through the hole into the street. There was a great crowd. But the Gringo Morgan was gone. I talked with a moso who had seen and who knew. They had horses waiting. They rode toward the beach. There is a schooner that is not anchored. It sails back and forth waiting for them. The Francis Morgan rides with a sack of gold on his saddle. The moso saw it. It is a large sack.”

      “And the hole?” the Jefe demanded. “The hole in the wall?”

      “Is larger than the sack, much larger,” was Rafael’s reply. “But the sack is large. So the moso said. And he rides with it on his saddle.”

      “My jail!” the Jefe cried. He slipped a dagger from inside his coat under the left arm-pit and held it aloft by the blade so that the hilt showed as a true cross on which a finely modeled Christ hung crucified. “I swear by all the Saints the vengeance I shall have. My jail! Our justice! Our law! – Horses! Horses! Gendarme, horses!” He whirled about upon Torres as if the latter had spoken, shouting: “To hell with Senor Regan! I am after my own! I have been defied! My jail is desolated! My law – our law, good friends – has been mocked. Horses! Horses! Commandeer them on the streets. Haste! Haste!”

      Captain Trefethen, owner of the Angelique, son of a Maya Indian mother and a Jamaica negro father, paced the narrow after-deck of his schooner, stared shoreward toward San Antonio, where he could make out his crowded long-boat returning, and meditated flight from his mad American charterer. At the same time he meditated remaining in order to break his charter and give a new one at three times the price; for he was strangely torn by his conflicting bloods. The negro portion counseled prudence and observance of Panamanian law. The Indian portion was urgent to unlawfulness and the promise of conflict.

      It was the Indian mother who decided the issue and made him draw his jib, ease his mainsheet, and begin to reach in-shore the quicker to pick up the oncoming boat. When he made out the rifles carried by the Solanos and the Morgans, almost he put up his helm to run for it and leave them. When he made out a woman in the boat’s sternsheets, romance and thrift whispered in him to hang СКАЧАТЬ