Shannet was closeted with De Villega when the message arrived, and for the moment he was no better able to account for it than was the Minister.
'Who is this man Quijote?' he asked. 'It's a ridiculous name. Here is a book called Don Quijote, Quixote in English, and there is a man in it called Sancho Panza.'
'I know that,' said Don Manuel, and sent for the judge.
He heard the story of the peon's crime and sentence and was not enlightened. But he had enough presence of mind to accuse the magistrate of inefficiency for not having suspected that the name Sancho Quijote was a false one.
'It is impossible,' said De Villega helplessly, when the magistrate had been dismissed. 'By Wednesday noon- that hardly gives us enough time to get him to the frontier even if we release him immediately. And who is this man? A labourer, a stranger, of whom nobody knows anything, who suddenly appears in Santa Miranda with more money than he could have ever come by honestly, and preaches a revolution to a mob that he has first made drunk, He deserves his punishment, and yet the President of Maduro, without any inquiry, demands his release. It means war.'
'He knew this would happen,' said Shannet. 'The judge told us-he boasted that he would not stay in prison seven days.'
They both saw the light at the same instant.
'An agent provocateur--'
'A trap!' snarled De Villega. 'And we have fallen into it. It is only an excuse that Maduro was seeking. They sent him here, with money, for no other purpose than to get himself arrested. And then this preposterous ultimatum, which they give us no time even to consider. ...'
'But why make such an intrigue?' demanded Shannet. 'This is a poor country. They are rich. They have nothing to gain.'
Don Manuel tugged nervously at his mustachios.
'And we cannot even buy them off,' he said. 'Unless we appeal to the Estados Unidos--'
Shannet sneered.
'And before their help can arrive the war is over,' he said. 'New Orleans is five days away. But they will charge a high price for burying the hatchet for us.'
Dan Manuel suddenly sat still. His shifty little dark eyes came to rest on Shannet.
'I see it!' he exclaimed savagely. 'It is the oil! You, and your accursed oil! I see it all! It is because of the oil that this country is always embroiled in a dozen wars and fears of wars. So far Pasala has escaped, but now we are like the rest. My ministry will be overthrown. Who knows what Great Power has paid Maduro to attack us? Then the Great Power steps in and takes our oil from us. I shall be exiled. Just now it is England, through you, who has control of the oil. Perhaps it is now America who tries to capture it, or another English company. I am ruined!'
'For God's sake stop whining!' snapped Shannet. 'If you're ruined, so am I. We've got to see what can be done about it.'
De Villega shook his head.
'There is nothing to do. They are ten to one. We shall be beaten. But I have some money, and there is a steamer in two days. If we can hold off their armies so long I can escape.'
It was some time before the more brutally vigorous Shannet could bring the minister to reason. Shannet had the courage of the wild beast that he was. At bay, faced with the wrecking of his tainted fortunes, he had no other idea but to fight back with the desperate ferocity of a cornered animal.
But even when Don Manuel's moaning had been temporarily quietened they were little better off. It was useless to appeal to the President, for he was no more than a tool in De Villega's hands. Likewise, the rest of the Council were nothing but figureheads, the mere instruments of De Villega's policy, and appointed by himself for no other reason than their willingness, for a consideration, to oppose nothing that he put forward.
'There is but one chance,' said De Villega. 'A radiografo must be sent to New Orleans. America will send a warship to keep the peace. Then we will try to make out to Maduro that the warship is here to fight for us, and their armies will retire. To the Estados Unidos, then, we will say that we had made peace before their warship arrived; we are sorry to have troubled them, but there is nothing to do.'
It seemed a flimsy suggestion to Shannet, but it was typical of De Villega's crafty and tortuous statesmanship. Shannet doubted if America, having once been asked to intervene, would be so easily put off, but he had no more practicable scheme to suggest himself, and he let it go.
He could not support it with enthusiasm, for an American occupation would mean the coming of American justice, and Shannet had no wish for that while there were still tongues wagging with charges against himself. But he could see no way out. He was in a cleft stick.
'Why not let this peon go?' he asked.
'And will that help us?' demanded Don Manuel scornfully. 'If we sent him away now he would hardly have time to reach the border by noon to-morrow, and they would certainly say that they had not received him. Is it not plain that they are determined to fight? When they have taken such pains to trump up an excuse, will they be so quickly appeased?'
A purely selfish train of thought led to Shannet's next question.
'This man Sheridan and his friend-has nothing been heard of them yet? They have been at large two days.'
'At a time like this, can I be bothered with such trifles?' replied De Villega shortly. 'The squadron of Captain Tomare has been looking for them, but they are not found.'
This was not surprising, for the searchers had worked out wards from Santa Miranda. Had they been inspired to work inwards they might have found Simon Templar, unwashed and unshaven, breaking stones in their own prison yard, chained by his ankles in a line of other unwashed and unshaven desperadoes, his identity lost in his official designation of Convicto Sancho Quijote, No. 475.
It was the Saint's first experience of imprisonment with hard labour, and he would have been enjoying the novel ad venture if it had not been for various forms of microscopic animal life with which the prison abounded.
6
There came one morning to the London offices of Pasala Oil Products, Ltd. (Managing Director, Hugo Campard), a cable in code. He decoded it himself, for it was not a code in general use; and his pink face went paler as the transliteration proceeded.
By the time the complete translation had been written in between the lines Hugo Campard was a very frightened man. He read the message again and again, incredulous of the catastrophe it foreboded.
Maduro declared war Pasala on impossible ultimatum. Believe deliberately instigated America or rival combine. Pasala army hopelessly outnumbered. No chance. Villega appealed America. Help on way but will mean overthrow of government. Concessions probably endangered. Sell out before news reaches London and breaks market.
Shannet.
Campard's fat hands trembled as he clipped the end of a cigar.
He was a big, florid man with a bald head and a sandy moustache. Once upon a time he had been a pinched and out-at-elbows clerk in a stockbroker's office, until his ingenuity had found incidental ways of augmenting his income. For a few years he had scraped and saved; then, with five hundred pounds capital, and an intimate knowledge of the share market, he had gone after bigger game.
He had succeeded. He was clever, he knew the pitfalls to avoid, he was without pity or scruple, and luck had been with him. In fifteen years he had become a very rich man. Innumerable were the companies with which he had been associated, which had taken in much money and paid out none. He had been 'exposed' half a dozen times, and every reputable broker knew his stock for what it was; but the script of the Campard companies was always most artistically engraved and their prospectuses couched in the most attractive terms, so that there was never a lack of small investors ready to pour their money into his bank account.
It is said that there is a mug born every minute, and Campard had found this a sound working principle.
