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Of course the off-shift navvies were there, from both sides of the Atlantic, handsome in their scarves and colorful waistcoats, high boots and great hats, pushing their way through the pack and giving ground to no man. The olive-ski
Nor were the navvies the only customers of local goods, for where the tu
Merchants came, too, not men of established business who displayed their wares in public and stated their price clearly, but gray men with folding boxes and velvet bags in secret pockets, who produced rings and watches, diamonds and rubies at ridiculously low prices, inferring, or whispering, that the goods were lava, hot that is, stolen that is, though it would take an insane thief to steal such poor wares, for the rings turned green, the watches stopped ticking when the roaches inside them died, the diamonds and rubies fell to smithereens of glass if dropped.
And there were women, oh yes, hapless creatures of the night, betrayed, stolen, enslaved, entrapped, doomed to a life of hell that does not bear describing on the printed page lest the ink that forms the words grows warm, then scorching hot enough to burn the letters from the paper, for the eye of the gentle reader dare not behold the facts of such as these and the trade they plied.
All these were upon the sidewalks this afternoon, and more as well, Moorish traders come with dhows from Africa and Iberia bringing food, for the few islands of the archipelago could not produce enough for the great numbers of men based here, dark-ski
Gus always enjoyed the show and when he came to his favorite establishment, the Tampico, he turned in and sat at a table on the porch, just a few feet above the street, resting his arm on the thick brass rail that surrounded it, waving to the bowing owner and smiling at the rushing waiter who was bringing a chilled bottle of the local wine he favored, vinho de cheiro, a delicately scented, sweetly flavored wine that had the taste and smell of roses. He sipped at this and felt at peace. The work went well, there was nothing to complain about. But as he watched the crowd he was aware, out of the corner of his eye, of someone sitting at the next table, back to him, moving very close. That this arrangement was not accidental was made manifest when the man, for it was a man, spoke in a low voice that only Gus could hear.
“Your navvies good workers, Meestair Washington, work very hard and need to eat very much. Feed them you must, beeg meals, beeg money. I joost happen to have many tons of ca
The speaker had terminated his conversation in this unusual ma
“More tons of concrete cut with sand?” Sapper asked, still standing but pouring himself a glass of wine for his services.
“Not this time. From the little I heard before you terminated the conversation it was either a stolen shipment of meat, or tainted, or some such. They never stop trying, do they?”
Sapper grunted a monosyllabic answer and faded from sight inside the cafe. Gus sipped at his wine. The entrepreneurs would never believe that he could not be bribed, it was their lifetime of experience that everyone had their price, everyone was accessible, so they persisted in trying with him. He had long since stopped trying to talk to them so arranged that one of his men was always nearby when he was in public and that a certain gesture of his hand, apparently meaningless in itself, carried the information that once again a conversation never begun was due to be terminated.
He forgot about this matter at once, so common had it become, and had more wine while the gentle tropical evening drew on apace. When he was refreshed and cooled he made his leisurely way through the still streaming crowd to the Terra Nostra Hotel where he kept a room at the best hotel on the island, which was by no means an extravagant claim, as well as being hideously overcrowded as were all hotels and restaurants since the tu
When he unlocked the door he saw that the room was dark, that the chambermaid had neglected once again to turn on the light. This was a normal occurrence and he thought little of it as he closed the door and groped for the switch and threw it. Nothing happened. The electricity must be off again, he thought, the coal-fired generating plant was hideously inefficient. Yet the lights had been on in the lobby. Puzzling over this, he had just turned back to the door when the sudden glare of an electric torch burned into his eyes, the first intimation he had had that he was not alone in the room. Whoever his secret visitor might be, he was certainly here for no good end, that was Gus’s instant thought, and he turned to hurl himself at the light source. He was stayed from attacking by the silent appearance of a man’s hand in the beam, a hand clutching a nickel-plated and very efficient-looking revolver.
“You’are here to rob me?” said Gus, coolly.
“Not exactly,” the secret visitor answered in what were obviously American tones. “Let us say I wished first to see who you were, then to make sure you were alone, and lastly the gun, if you will excuse its presence, to ensure you did nothing hasty in this darkened room as, I believe, you were starting to do.”