The Gun-Runner: A Novel/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
THE REVERSE OF THE SHIELD
The captain of the Laminian wheeled about and strode out of the cabin, swinging the door shut with a slam that loosened flakes of white-lead paint from the ceiling-boards.
"So he's against us, too!" murmured the operator.
There was a moment of unbroken silence before the woman looked up.
"Why did you say that to him?" she demanded, trembling with indignation. Even her voice shook a little as she spoke. "How dare you say a thing like that?"
McKinnon crossed the room until he stood almost at her side.
"I had to say that," he answered. "It was the only way out."
"A lie—a base lie like that—the only way out?"
"Yes, the only way, for now that man must not suspect."
"Suspect what?"
"What each of us knows!"
"But you have just challenged his power; you've disclaimed his authority! What can he do?"
"He can do anything! On the high seas he's king over this little floating kingdom of his."
"And you, too, are under him?"
"As much as one of his stokers, in a way."
"But what have you gained by a lie like this?"
He found it hard to understand her scruples, to fathom her indignation. He stopped her as, she started to speak again.
"Wait! Don't say anything more until I try to explain what it means to you.
He peered out along the deck and then slipped the bolt in the cabin door before he turned to her again.
"Listen! What I have to say is only the other half of your own story, of what you yourself have said. If Duran and his army are shut up in Guariqui, it s because they're there without ammunition!"
"You know that?" she cried.
"Yes; and this man Ganley knows it. He knows it because he s been the cause of it. Six hundred thousand rounds of ammunition went out of Mobile for the Locombian troops, for Ulloa and his men. They were carried to Puerto Locombia on the Santa Anna, secretly, in barrels that were labelled and invoiced as cement, so they could be shipped on to Guariqui without suspicion. But Ganley or the Junta or their spies got to know of it. The Santa Anna was scuttled in the roadstead at Puerto Locombia. Those cartridges went to the bottom—forty-six barrels with double heads, the heads holding a sprinkling of cement and the main space full of cartridges packed in excelsior. Every pound of it went down."
"This can't be true!" almost groaned the girl at his side.
"Every word of it's true. But let me go on. De Brigard and his men have been in almost as bad a predicament. This advantage was useless unless he had ammunition for his own men. That's where Ganley came in. His agents found that ground iron slag, packed in cases, weighed up to just about what a case of cartridges would. So they bought eighty-eight cases of iron slag from a Hudson River factory town and ferried it down to New York. It was consigned to Locombia, properly enough, as basic iron silicate for fluxing purposes. The law compels all such exporters to file with the port collector a distinct declaration of the goods shipped, the country shipped to, and the name of the consignee. This has to be accompanied by oath. Besides the due inspection of the shipment, the shipper has to make his declaration before the consul of the country to which any such goods are sent. All this was done."
"But how do you know this?"
"Let's say that I stumbled upon it in my work as a wireless operator. But here is the real point: in some way, which needn't now concern us, those innocent boxes of powdered slag were tampered with. They became cases neatly packed with ammunition, with just enough iron silicate thrown in to fill up the chinks and cover the real contents. In other words, Ganley and his men have sent out of New York five hundred and eighty thousand rounds of ammunition, consigned to the revolutionary Junta at Puerto Locombia!"
"But how do you know this!" once more demanded the listening woman.
"Let me finish, please. Along with those cartridges were sent eight cases of structural iron. These cases, in reality, contain eight hundred Remington rifles. And not only has this stuff been sent out of New York by Ganley and his men, but these guns and cartridges at this very moment are on this ship, and under this very deck!"
Alicia Boynton sank slowly down into the steamer-chair against which she had been leaning. McKinnon could see that her breath was coming fast and short.
"This can't be true!" she whispered, letting her hands fall weakly between her knees. "They may have said this, but it was only to deceive you, to point out some false trail!"
"One moment, until I explain. I am only the wireless operator on this boat. I am a new-comer, as well, for this is my first run. One hour before the Laminian sailed her old operator failed to report, and could not be found. The De Forest Company at once hurried a new man over to the ship. I am that man."
"Still I don't understand. Why are you here?"
"That's what the captain of this ship is so uncertain about. That's why he's so down on us! That's why he's sneaking about and spying on this cabin like a cat on a mouse-hole! I don't mean that he's a paid agent of the Junta—I don't even believe he knows what this ship is carrying. He's only soured with alcohol, and jealous—bullheadedly jealous—of his little world of authority."
"But still you haven't told me who you are, or why you came here."
"I am a wireless operator," he said after a moment's glance into the girl's clear eyes, as though to fathom just how brightly the old-time fires of intelligence were burning there.
"What were you?" she was asking him, her note of frustration seeming to merge into one of distrust.
"I'll have to go back, away back, to make even that clear to you."
"Please do."
"Well, it was over five years ago that I first went to Peru, to look after the electrical equipment of the Pachita Water Power Corporation. They had to protect the forests on their power watersheds, so I wired their whole countryside and equipped their fire-rangers with portable telephones. That meant they could cut in anywhere and send for help in case of emergency. But a peon or a gaucho wouldn't stand for witchcraft like that, and the mandador sorrowfully intimated that I was too modern.
"So I next found myself in Nicaragua, with the task of superintending certain telegraph-construction work for Zelaya. When that was finished, for two years I was in the intelligence department of the Brazilian government, but the climate wasn't the sort that a white man could thrive on, and I had to give it up. Then, when the Masso Parra trouble first broke out Magoon invited me over to Pinar del Rio and consigned me to a wireless station there. My real duty at Pinar del Rio was to forward cipher reports to Havana and keep the authorities there in proper touch with any filibuster movements in the affected district. Then came a lean year, when I tallied coffee-bags and banana-bunches from a roof-car at Port Limon, until I elbowed my way into a position as night operator on the Costo Rican Northern. It's all very tame to tell about, yet it had its compensating touches of adventure now and then. But I wanted to get North and work out some electrical apparatus that had been preying on my mind."
He came to a stop.
"And you went North?" she prompted him.
He looked up with his quick smile.
"You know there's a certain group of rocks on the Olancho River, near Jutigalpa, where the water is beautifully clear. They say that if you once dive from that cliff, no matter where you go, you will return to Olancho, in the end, that you will die somewhere along the fringe of the Caribbean. I took that dive."
She gave vent to her habitual little head-shake.
"They say the same thing if you drink from the Fontana di Trevi in Rome. It's very pretty, but, of course, it's also very foolish."
"In one way it is, but still it's hard to explain how the unattached man from the North is held by the tropics. That's what made me catch at the old bait when I had a chance to go to the Cantonese District to look into the Chinese boycott affair. And it's the same thing, I suppose, that's taking me south to Locombia."
The girl gave vent to a gesture of impatience,
"That doesn't explain."
"What more can I say?" he demanded. He struggled to conceal the fact that he was afraid of her, that life had always taught him to be wary before the unknown factor in the equation of adventure, that her very softness was something against which he had to steel himself, grimly and resolutely.
"You can say everything you have so carefully left unsaid," was her unexpectedly spirited answer.
"There's nothing more," he protested, feeling the silence grow heavy about him.
"I trusted you!" said the girl at last.
"And I would trust you!" he said quite openly and honestly.
"You mean you are not free to speak?" she persisted, evading the personal issue which his declaration had thrust before her.
"I mean that it's worse than foolish for us to quibble over side issues when we're confronted by things of so much more importance. I mean, for instance, that this steamer is carrying ammunition to De Brigard and his men. If that ammunition is delivered into the hands of the Locombian Government instead of to their enemies, Ulloa and his army can at once re-enter the field."
"But why re-enter the field? They are free."
"In a way, yes; but they are now shut up in Guariqui, practically, with only a few thousand reserve cartridges and a half ton of useless cordite. But the moment they have made sure that the Laminian is safely tied up at the pier in Puerto Locombia they plan to run a banana-train, armoured with boiler-plate, down through De Brigard's lines to the coast. They will fight their way down, probably under cover of night, run their cars out on the pier next to the Laminian's berth, seize their slag-boxes as contraband of war, and fight their way back to Guariqui."
"You know this?"
"It is the knowledge of this," he guardedly replied, "which makes me say that you and I are compelled, or will be compelled, to act together."
Alicia Boynton did not speak for several seconds, but her studious eyes were fixed on McKinnon's face.
"You mean that you might be able to warn them?" she asked at last.
"I mean that it might be possible, under certain conditions, for Duran's palace operator to get a message from me. It might also be possible for your brother's men to be aboard this boat five or six hours after that message was received. So why not explain the whole situation by saying that both of us chance to be acting for the same cause? We're fighting for the same end, so no matter how it hurts, or whatever may happen, we must stick together!"
"But why leave any mystery between us, if we are already that close?" asked the girl. "Why can't you still tell me everything?"
"I'm beginning to learn that you can't tell things, in my calling, until you're sure of your ground. That's why I had to fling that lie to the captain. It's warfare—and I've got to be true to my people before everything else."
"But who are your people?" she persisted.
He laughed, a little wearily, a little ambiguously. "I have no people," he said. "But we've got to fight for Guariqui, whatever it costs!"