Part 10

The inside pages had little of interest. Bits of international and Washington news. A feature story from Mexico City on the great religious revival that was sweeping Mexico and threatening the Marxist forces in the government. This was in _El Imparcial_, and Hall recognized the byline of the author, a prominent lieutenant of the Mexican fascist leader, Gomez Morin. There was a full page of local society items, dry stuff about weddings, dinners, parties, the goings and comings of the smart set. And the inevitable puff story, this one about the "great and noted lawyer" Benito Sanchez, about whom no one had ever heard a thing and who would sink back into obscurity until he paid for another personality feature at so much per column, cash on the barrel. Hall forced himself through this flowery account of the lawyer's ancestry, wit, humanitarianism, piety, fertility, education, patriotism, skill in court, and kindness to his mother. Try as he could, the hack who wrote this story had not been able to completely fill three columns, the accepted length for such compositions. The bottom of the third column had therefore been filled with a stock item in small type: "Ships Arriving and Leaving Today and Tomorrow."

Mechanically, Hall read the shipping notes. The _Drottning-holm_ was in port. The _Estrella de Santiago_ was returning to Havana. Tomorrow, the _Marques de Avillar_ was due from Barcelona. Tomorrow the _Ouro Preto_ was sailing back to Lisbon. The _City of Seattle_ was now six days overdue; U. S. Lines, Inc., had no explanation. Mails for the _Ouro Preto_ closed at midnight.

Hall turned the page and stopped. The rustle of the paper struck a hidden chord in his mind. He turned back to the shipping news, read it carefully. The _Marques de Avillar_ became as great as the _Normandie_ and the _Queen Mary_ rolled into one. He recalled the conversation he had overheard between Ansaldo and Marina. _Find out if they came today.... Too dangerous to come by Clipper._ But by Spanish boat?

He went back to the conversation. Yes, that was exactly the way they talked. And after the talking came the rustling of a paper. Not evidence, of course, and even in wartime you couldn't shoot two bastards like them unless you knew more. But was it worth following up? Perhaps Margaret Skidmore would be able to supply another piece of the jigsaw. She had a sharp tongue, and this meant a sharp head. Sharp and tough, and Felipe was probably right about her other value, but if it happened at all it would have to happen when this mess was cleared up.

The train pulled into Juarez on time. Hall got off and gaped at the station. It was covered from ground to roof with the blazing "tiger vines" whose orange orchid-shaped flowers were the unofficial flag of the country. Margaret was waiting for Hall under the station shed. "Hi," she shouted, "have a nice trip?"

"Swell. Let me look at you under the sunlight." In a tennis eye shade, green sports dress, and rope-soled _zapatos_ she seemed to be more of a woman than she was in evening clothes.

"Well?"

"You'll do," he laughed. "It's just that evening clothes rarely reveal more than the size of a woman's shopping budget."

Margaret laughed easily. "You mean that you can't tell whether a girl in an evening gown has knock knees or a wooden leg. I have neither. There's my car. That little jalopy."

"How far is your place from the station?" Hall asked.

"It starts right here." Margaret pointed to a green field to the left of the road. "I have four thousand acres between the tracks and the main house, and then there's a lot of scrub forest behind the house that belongs to me."

"All yours?"

The car was raising great clouds of dust on the dry dirt road. "Uh huh. The money came from Mother's side of the family. Since she died, I more or less keep the old man in embassies. She left him only cigarette money." She was very cold and matter of fact about it.

"I see," he said.

"Don't be so shocked. I always talk the way I feel. The old man's a stuffed shirt and you know it. If he hadn't married money the best he'd get out of life would be a career as a floor-walker in Macy's. No, he's too aristocratic for Macy's. In Wanamaker's Philadelphia store. Do me a favor. There's a big heavy ledger in the side door pocket. Take it out and put it on my lap. No, with the binding facing the radiator. Thanks."

"What's it for?"

She opened the front ventilator in the cowl. The gush of wind which poured in lifted her skirt to the edge of the book. "See?" she said. "Keeps my skirt from blowing over my head when I open the vent."

Hall glanced at her bare legs. "Some day you'll catch cold," he smiled. "What have you got planted on your land? Looks to me like soy."

"It is soy. Three thousand acres."

"That makes you a farmer."

"The hell it does. That makes me an Ambassador's daughter. The Rockefeller committee planted it, with local help, of course. It's part of a demonstration project. The idea is to teach them how to grow new crops so that after the war Detroit can keep the home price on soy down by importing just enough soy to keep it growing in South America. All I did was donate my land."

"What happens to the proceeds when you sell the crop?"

"Oh, I suppose the old man will make a big show of donating the proceeds to the Red Cross in San Hermano."

"That the house?"

"That's my hideaway. The old man can't come out here. He's violently allergic to soy beans."

She started to talk about the soy-bean project and the by-products of its crop. The words flowed without effort. She knew the facts, the theories, the statistics, the chemistry of the soy-bean industry as well as she knew the road to her house. She discussed them as she might yesterday's weather, or a neighbor's dog. I don't give a damn about soy beans, she seemed to be saying, I just know about them because I was roped in to lend my land and I'll be damned if I'll give my land without knowing why.

"Well, that's enough talk about soy, I guess," she said when she turned off the road to the lane leading to her house.

"I don't imagine there's anything else to know about it," Hall said.

"Here we are, Matt."

"Say, it is a nice house."

"Hollow tile and stucco. I found the plans in an old issue of _House and Garden_."

"I'll be damned. It looks as Spanish as the Cathedral."

"Oh, it should," Margaret said. "It's supposed to be an authentic New Mexican ranch house. Let's go in and get a drink."

Like the railroad station, the house was also covered with tiger vines. It was built around a flagstone patio. Leaded glass doors opened from the patio to the two-story-high beamed living room, the kitchen, and the back corridor. This corridor opened on both the living room and the stairs to the upstairs quarters. Inside, the living room was furnished like a quality dude ranch--hickory and raw-hide furniture, Mexican _serapes_ and dress sombreros hanging on the walls and over the large stone fireplace, a Western plank bar with a battered spittoon at the rail and a lithograph of the Anheuser-Busch Indians scalping General Custer. The saloon art classic, of course, hung in a yellow oak frame behind the bar.

"Holy God," Hall said, "when I was a kid this litho used to give me nightmares. It used to hang in the dirty window of Holbein's saloon on West Third Street in Cleveland--that's my home town--and every time I passed it I used to see more gore pouring down old Custer's throat."

Margaret took off her eye shade and went behind the bar. "A drink should drive away that terrible memory," she said. "Scotch?"

"Black rum, if you have it."

"Coming right up. That's a pirate's drink, though. Although when you come right down to it, you do look like a freebooter."

Hall had his foot on the bar. "Better smile when you say that, Pard," he said.

She smiled out of the side of her mouth and laughed. "Here's to Captain Kidd," she said, raising her Scotch.

"This is good rum."

"Wait. I can improve it." She reached below the bar for a small wooden platter and a lemon. Deftly, she carved off a slice of thick skin, twisted it above an empty glass, dropped the peel into the glass and covered it with rum. "Try it this way."

"It is good. So you're a bartender, too!"

Margaret refilled her own glass and sat down on the edge of a wheeled settee. "Right now I'm farmer, bartender, chambermaid and cook. If you must know, outside of the dogs in the yard and the horses in the shed, we're the only living things within five miles. All my help is in the next town celebrating some saint's day or something."

"You'll manage to survive," Hall smiled.

"I'm a pretty self-sufficient lady," she said. "Or hadn't you noticed?"

"I'm not blind."

"Hungry?"

"I could eat. What's cooking?"

"Sandwiches. Cold beef sandwiches and coffee. And if you're nice you can have some _montecado a la_ Skidmore."

"Real ice cream?"

"No. But a reasonable facsimile. Let's go to the kitchen. You can help me carry the tray and stuff."

They ate at the monastery table in the living room. Margaret told Hall the story of how she had supervised the building of the house and then ordered her furniture from a dozen different stores between Houston and San Hermano. She spoke of plumbing and artesian wells and wiring systems with the same detailed knowledge she had displayed of soy-bean culture.

"Do you know San Hermano politics as well as you know soy beans and housing?" he asked.

"Better," she smiled. "I'm closer to it. But we've got plenty of time to talk about San Hermano. I thought we'd saddle up two horses and go for a ride in the backwoods. Do you ride?"

"After a fashion. I spent a summer vacation as a ranch hand in Wyoming once."

Margaret concentrated on Hall's feet for a minute. "Oh, I can fix you up with boots and breeches. You sit here and I'll go on up, change, and find you riding things. Just turn on a radio and relax or fix yourself a drink while I'm changing."

She went upstairs to her room. Hall lit his pipe, turned on the radio. He found a program of Mexican marimba music.

"That's swell," Margaret shouted through the open transom of her door.

He could hear the water splashing into the bath upstairs. He lay back and closed his eyes, the radio keeping him awake. In San Hermano, the announcer looked at the studio clock, gave the station's call letters, and read another "no change" bulletin on the health of the President.

"Matt ..."

"Ready so soon?"

"Come on up to my room. It's the third door to the left of the stairs."

"Sure."

"Would you shut off the radio, too?"

He flipped the radio switch and climbed the stairs to the upper landing. Margaret's door was slightly ajar. "That you, Matt?"

"The old pirate himself." He pushed the door open.

Margaret was standing near her bed, freshly bathed and completely naked. "I changed my mind," she said, thickly.

"Margaret ..."

"No. Don't talk." She had her arms around him, her mouth against his lips. The pine salts of her bath and the sharp perfume in her hair and behind her ears choked in Hall's throat.

"You're biting my lips," she said.

He picked her up and carried her to the bed while she undid the buttons of his shirt with closed eyes and steady fingers. "I knew you were a pirate," she smiled.

Hall kicked his shoes off, drew the blinds.

"Are you surprised?" she asked.

He locked the door and joined Margaret. "Don't talk," he said. "You kiss too well to talk in bed."

There was the pine scent and the perfume and the savage odor of whisky on hot breath and then there was the faint saline taste of blood on his tongue and the rigid breasts of the girl pressed against his bare skin and she was trying to gasp an insane gibberish of love words and sex words and sounds that were not words at all. He shut off the gibberish with his hard mouth and then he started to lose himself in the devils that were coursing through his blood and the sharp pain of her nails digging fitfully into the back of his shoulders and the taut smoothness of her writhing thighs. For a searing moment the emptiness and the agonies of the past four years rose to the surface like a two-edged razor in his brain, rose slashing wildly to torture and torment, and then, as suddenly, they were lost in the devils and the blood and the white, pine-scented thighs of the girl and Hall stopped thinking and gave himself completely to the one, to the only one, to the only thing that could answer the devils and the pain and the moment.

Then she lay at his side, limp, whispering, "God, oh my God, oh my God," and smiling at him with tear-filled eyes.

"Hello."

"Was I good? Was I, Matt?"

And he realized how adept she actually was at it. Sex was a soy bean, something you used, developed, exploited. "You're very good at this sort of thing," he said, "and you know it."

"I'm not always good," she said. "This is one thing that takes two for perfection. Like now." She reached into the drawer of the night table. "Cigarette?"

"No."

"Light mine for me, darling. I'm half dead."

She smoked her cigarette in happy, satisfied silence, moving closer to Hall and putting her free arm under his neck. Then, with an abrupt movement, she ground the butt into the ash tray and kissed the scar on Hall's chin. "Who cut you up?" she asked. "Some Frenchwoman's husband?" But before he could answer she was lying on his chest with her open mouth pressing heavily against his lips.

This time he could ignore the devils until the hot furies that drove the girl finally moved him to respond. But what had earlier been an experience which reached in and shook the guts was now a performance--overture, theme, variations, theme and soaring climax and maybe it was what she wanted and maybe it wasn't but baby that's the best you get this trip. When it was done she seemed happy enough. She smoked another cigarette and then she fell into a light sleep, her head nuzzling under his arm pit like a puppy's.

Hall lay watching the sun rays as they stretched between the shuttered windows and the smoothness of Margaret's glistening back.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked when she awoke.

"Really want to know?"

"Uh huh."

"About a girl from Ohio."

"Your wife?"

"No. Just a girl I know. I've been wondering if she has freckles on her back."

"Well, anyway, you're frank."

"When are you going back to San Hermano?"

"Tonight. I'll drive you back. I think we should get ready. The help might start straggling back in an hour or so." She kissed him tenderly, then savagely. "No, but this is silly," she said. "We'll get caught." She rolled away and got out of bed.

Later in the living room, Margaret made two rum drinks. She had changed her tennis dress for a dark suit, and her fingers now carried three elaborate rings. "Now I'm dressed for town again," she laughed. "Without my rings I'd feel naked." One of them was a wedding ring; Hall asked no questions about it.

"Are you still interested in San Hermano politics?" Margaret asked.

"Sort of."

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything. Fernandez and his friends had one set of ideas. I guess you know what they are. The Tabio crowd speaks differently. What's the lowdown?"

Margaret went to the wide window of the room. "Look," she said, "see all that land between the fence and the top of that hill? I've got some of it in soy and the rest is just lying fallow. What do you think it's worth?"

"I couldn't say."

"Neither can anyone else. That all depends on the politics down here."

"That's true back home too, isn't it?"

"In a way, yes." She poured another drink for herself and sat down on the settee. "I'll let you in on a secret, Matt. I'll tell you how I came to buy this place. Sit down. It's a long story. And it leads right into the thing you're interested in."

"When did you get it?"

"Two years ago. A young mining engineer in San Hermano met me at a party given at the University. He wanted me to put him in touch with an American financing outfit. On a field trip he had undertaken as a student, the young engineer inadvertently stumbled across a treasure in manganese. The deposits lay in an area he alone could reveal, and for a consideration and a share in the profits, he was willing to lead the right parties to the site of his discovery.

"I became the right party," Margaret said. "The soy is growing over a fortune in manganese."

"What happened to the young engineer?"

"He's in the States. I got him a scholarship in a good mining school. When he gets out, he'll be able to run the works down here."

"You don't miss a trick, do you?"

"Darling," she laughed, "my grandfather didn't come up from a plow on his muscles alone. But why don't you ask me why I'm not mining my manganese now?"

"I suppose that's where the politics comes in," he said.

"Now you're catching on. You see, Matt, anyone who didn't know the score down here might start mining like mad. There's a war on, the Germans have grabbed most of Russia's manganese fields, and Russia had a practical corner on the world's manganese supply. It's almost worth its weight in platinum today."

"Then why in the hell don't you cash in?"

"Because I intend to live for a long time after the war, darling. And I'd like something for my old age. Not inflation-swelled war dollars, but real hard money. That's where the politics comes in, Matt. It costs like hell to start a mine. I'd have to dip into my reserves to get it started, or get partners and let them pay for the works. But they wouldn't do it for nothing. They'd wind up with an unhealthy share of the profits. This is my baby, and under certain circumstances I can run it by myself and make money at it. But those circumstances are determined by the politics here."

"By that," Hall said, "I take it you mean Tabio's politics?"

Margaret was not smiling now. Her eyes had narrowed down to sharp slits, and although she talked as fluently about the mine and Tabio as she had earlier discussed soy beans, her voice had taken on a sharp, metallic edge. "I most certainly do," she said.

"Then you agree with Fernandez and the Cross and Sword crowd?"

"Now don't tell me," she said, wearily, "that they are all a bunch of dirty fascists."

"I'm not telling you a thing. I'm here to get the lowdown, not to hang labels on everyone in San Hermano."

"Thank God for that," she said. "I can give you the lowdown, if you really want it."

"That's what I'm here for."

"I'm so sick of these smart-aleck pundits who are so quick to hang the fascist label on everything they don't like," Margaret said. "I'm not afraid of labels. I'm only interested in the facts. I'm interested in my manganese operation. I'm interested in protecting what I have. And I'll fight against anyone who tries to steal what's rightfully mine."

"You've been threatened?"

"Not directly. That's the hell of it. If not for me, or someone else with as much money to risk as I'm risking, this manganese would be useless to everyone. But I'm not going to sink a fortune into the mine only to have the cream taken away from me."

"By Tabio?"

A slight smile touched Margaret's lips. "Not exactly," she said. "I'm a little more rational than Fernandez and his friends. It's not Tabio I'm afraid of, darling. It's the thing he's started. You don't open a few thousand schools all over a backward country and then expect the people to remain the same. It's not only the kids who go to these schools; grown-ups pack the same school houses every night. People don't want things they don't know about. But when they go to school they start learning about a million things they'd like to have--and none of these are free. They begin to want modern houses and radios and refrigerators and pianos--you have no idea what they begin to want, Matt!

"The schools are only the beginning. Once the miners learn how to read and write, the unions come along and flood them with printed propaganda about higher wages. They tell the miners that higher wages mean higher standards of living."

"Don't they?" Hall asked.

"Not for the mine owners, dear," she said. "Higher wages mean lower profits. And when you run a mine, the idea is to keep the profits up. That's where the politics come in, Matt. You don't pass laws--as the Popular Front has--forcing employers to bargain with the unions without making the unions so powerful that they can and do elect whole blocs of union deputies and senators. And then these blocs push through laws on hospitalization and social security and death benefits that cut into a mine owner's profits nearly as much as the wage increases.

"In other words, Matt, it all boils down to dollars and cents. Tabio and his ideas are great vote-catchers--but the costs are enormous. And these costs don't come out of the pockets of the people who vote for the Popular Front candidates."

Hall watched her in fascination as she spoke. This was no mystic Pilar Primo de Rivera, he thought, no hyper-thyroid hysteric falling on her knees in the cathedral and then rushing out with blood in her eyes and emptying a Mauser full of bullets into the warm bodies of housewives shopping in the Madrid slums. Margaret's voice had not risen by one note. Her hands were calm, she was still relaxed in the settee. If not for the hard sharpness of her voice now, she might still be discussing soy-bean culture or anything else as remote from her true interests.

"Fernandez and the Cross and Sword crowd might be hysterical," Margaret said, "but they are on the right track. The government has to change quickly, or it will be too late for all of us. The Cross and Sword crowd aren't really natives, you know. They're Spaniards. They got the scare of their lives when Tabio's Spanish counterparts took over in Spain."

"But why? They live here. Spain is an ocean away."

"Money has a way of crossing oceans," Margaret said. "They all had plenty invested in Spain. If Franco hadn't come along, Vardieno and Davila and Quinones and a lot of other men you haven't met would have been wiped out."

"Isn't Franco a fascist?"

"Labels don't mean a thing. I think democracy is the phoniest label in the world, Matt. When it means a stable government, like we used to have back home before the New Deal, I'm for it. But when it means the first step on the road to collectivism, I'll take any Franco who comes along to put an end to it. That goes for the Cross and Sword crowd, too. Or am I all wrong?"

Hall laughed, softly. "That's a rhetorical question," he said. "Let's skip the rhetoric. Then things are really bad down here, aren't they?"

"They couldn't be much worse. I know it sounds harsh, but I think the best thing Tabio could do for his country would be to die. With Gamburdo in the Presidencia, you'd see a return to something resembling sanity down here. He has a very sound approach."

"But wouldn't he be too late? What could he do about the school system, for instance?"

"The Cross and Sword crowd want the schools closed down at once. They want education returned to the Church. But Gamburdo is a good politician," Margaret said. "He'd keep the schools open, but he'll clean out the Ministry of Education from the very top down to the personnel of the village schools. He'll simply turn it over to the Jesuits. They won't have to open their own parochial schools; they'll control Tabio's."

"Have they enough teachers?"

"Gamburdo told me that if they need teachers they'll import them from Spain."

"How about the labor laws?"

"A law is no better than its enforcement. That's what I learned in law school and it still goes. Can you imagine what would happen to the Wagner Act if Hoover were back in the White House?"

"You don't need too much of an imagination to figure that one out," Hall said.