New York firm of contractors had affixed those beautiful sky-blue tiles to the walls, and laid those lovely sea-green tiles on the floor, and installed that superlative pale green porcelain bath with its gleaming silver taps and showers and other gadgets. Paris had supplied the great crystal jar of bath salts which stood on the window sill, and the new cakes of expensive soap in the dishes.
The Saint's glistening eyes swept the room.
It was not Saturday, but it seemed as if someone were making a departure from the usual habits of the palace household. On a rack above the wash basin were laid out razor, shaving soap, and brush. On a chair beside the bath were snowy towels. On another chair, in a comer, were clothes-a spotless silk shirt, a sash, wide- bottomed Mexican trousers braided with gold, shoes. . . .
For a full minute the Saint stared, struck dumb with wonder at his astounding good fortune. Then, in fear and trembling, he stole into the room and turned on a tap.
The water ran hot.
He hesitated no longer. War, revolution, battle, murder, and sudden death meant nothing to him then. He closed the door, and turned the key.
Blessings, like misfortunes, never come singly. There was even a packet of Havana cigarettes and a box of matches tucked away behind the bath salts. . . .
Ten minutes later, already shaved, the Saint was stretched full length in a steaming bath into which he had emptied the best part of the Presidential jar of bath salts, innocently playing submarines with the sponge and a cake of soap.
A cigarette was canted jauntily up between his lips, and he was without a care in the world.
8
Archie Sheridan mopped his moist forehead and smacked viciously at a mosquito which was gorging itself on his bare forearm.
'Thank the Lord you're back,' he said. 'This blistered place gives me the creeps. Have you fixed anything?'
Kelly settled ponderously on the spread ground sheet.
'I have arranged the invadin' army,' he said. 'Anything come through while I've been away?'
'Nothing that matters. One or two private messages, which I duly acknowledged. I wonder what they're thinking at the Ondia end of the line.'
'There'll be a breakdown gang along sometime,' pronounced Kelly. 'It's now the second day of the wire bein' cut. Within the week, maybe, they'll wake up and send to repair it. What's the time?'
Sheridan consulted his watch.
'A quarter-past eleven,' he said.
They sat under a great tree, in a small clearing in the jungle near the borders of Maduro, some ten miles east of Esperanza. A mile away was the rough track which led from Esperanza across the frontier to Maduro, and which formed the only road link between the two countries; and there Kelly's Ford, in which they had made most of the journey, waited hidden between the trees at a little distance from the road.
But for all the evidence there was to the contrary they might have been a thousand miles from civilization. At the edge of the tiny clearing colossal trees laced together with vines and creepers hemmed them in as with a gigantic palisade; high over their heads the entangled branches of the trees shut out the sky, and allowed no light to pass but a ghostly, gray twilight, in which the glaring crimsons and oranges and purples of the tropical blooms which flowered here and there in the marshy soil stood out with a shrieking violence.
Now and again, in the stillness of the great forest, there would be a rustle of the passing of some unseen wild thing. Under some prowling beast's paw, perhaps, a rotten twig would snap with a report like a rifle shot. Sometimes the delirious chattering of a troop of monkeys would babble out with a startling shrillness that would have sent a shudder up the spine of an impressionable man. And the intervals of silence were not true silence, but rather a dim and indefinable and monotonous murmur punctuated with the sogging sound of dripping water. The air was hot and steamy and heavy with sickly perfumes.
'You get used to it,' said Kelly with a comprehensive wave of the stem of his pipe.
'Thanks,' said Sheridan. 'I'm not keen to. I've been here two days too long already. I have nightmares in which I'm sitting in an enormous bath, but as soon as I've finished washing a shower of mud falls on me and I have to start all over again.'
Now this was on the morning of the day in the afternoon of which the Saint escaped from prison.
On Sheridan's head were a pair of radio headphones. On the ground sheet beside him was a little instrument, a Morse transmitter, which he had ingeniously fashioned before they left Santa Miranda. Insulated wires trailed away from him into the woods.
The telegraph line, for most of its length, followed the roads, but at that point, for some inexplicable reason, it took a short cut across country. They had decided to attack it at that point on grounds of prudence; for, although the road between Esperanza and the Maduro frontier was not much used, there was always the risk of someone passing and commenting on their presence when he reached his destination.
The afternoon before, they had cut the line and sent through to Esperanza, to be relayed to Santa Miranda, the ultimatum purporting to come from the President of Maduro. Since then, night and day, one of them had sat with the receivers upon his ears, waiting for a reply. The arrangement was complicated, for Kelly could not read Morse, while Sheridan's Spanish was very haphazard; but they managed somehow. Several times when Archie had been resting Kelly had roused him to take down a message; but the translation had had no bearing on the threat of war, except occasionally from a purely private and commercial aspect. There had been no official answer.
Sheridan looked at his watch again.
'Their time's up in half an hour,' he said. 'What do you say to sending a final demand?-the 'D' being loud and explosive, as in 'Income Tax.''
'Shure-if there's no chance of 'em surrenderin',' agreed Kelly. 'But we can't let anything stop the war.'
The message they sent was worded with this in view: Understand you refuse to release Quijote. Our armies will accordingly advance into Pasala at noon.
While they waited for zero hour, Kelly completed the task of breaking camp, strapping their tent and equipment into a workmanlike bundle. He finished this job just before twelve, and returned to his prostrate position on the ground sheet.
'I wonder what that blayguard Shannet is doin'?' he said. 'I only hope he hasn't missed the news by takin' a thrip to the concession. It'd be unlucky for us if he had.'
'I think he'll be there,' said Sheridan. 'He was in Santa Miranda when we left, and he's likely to stay there and supervise the hunt for the Saint.'
'He's a good man, that,' said Kelly. 'It's a pity he's not an Irishman.'
Sheridan fanned himself with a handkerchief.
'He's one of the finest men that ever stepped,' he said. 'If the Saint said he was going to make war on Hell, I'd pack a fire extinguisher and go with him.'
Kelly sucked his pipe and spat thoughtfully at an ant.
'That's not what I call your duty,' he remarked. 'In fact, I'm not sure that yez should have been in this at all, with a girl like Lilla watchin' for yez to come back, and worryin' her pretty head. And with a crawlin' sarpint like Shannet about.'
'He's tried to bother her once or twice. But if I thought--'
'I've been thinkin' a lot out here,' said Kelly. 'I'm not savin' what I've thought. But it means that as soon as we've done what we're here to do we're going' to hurry back to Santa Miranda as fast as Tin Lizzie'11 take us. There's my missus an' Lilla without a man to look afther them; an' the Saint--'
Sheridan suddenly held up a hand for silence. He wrote rapidly on his little pad, and Kelly leaned over to read.
'What's it mean?'
'The war's on!' yelled Kelly ecstatically. 'Don Manuel ain't the quitter I thought he was-or maybe he didn't
