The Key to Yesterday

But, as usual, Rodman, gentleman of multifarious devices, was not letting facts escape him. Indeed, it was at Rodman’s instance that two mail ships, the City of Rio and the Amazon, had marked time for an hour and a half. In the brewing of affairs, Rodman was just now an important personage, and the commanders of these lines were under instructions from their offices to regard his requests as orders, and to obey them with due respect and profound secrecy. The shifting of administrations at Puerto Frio meant certain advantages in the way of concessions to gentlemen in Wall Street whose word, with these steamers, was something more than influential.

Mr. Rodman had been rowed across from the Rio to the Amazon, and he had taken with him the hand-luggage that made his only impedimenta. In Mr. Rodman’s business, it was important to travel light. If he found Señor Miraflores among the passengers of the Amazon, it was his intention to right-about-face, and return south again.

Señor Miraflores had been in the States as the secret and efficient head of that junta which Rodman served. He had very capably directed the shipping of rifles and many sub-rosa details that must be handled beyond the frontier, when it is intended to change governments without the knowledge or consent of armed and intrenched incumbents. The home-coming of Señor Miraflores must of necessity be unostentatious, since his arrival would be the signal for the conversion of the quiet steeps of San Francisco into craters.

Rodman knew that, if the señor were on board the Amazon, his name would not be on the sailing-list, and his august personality would be cloaked in disguise. His point of debarkation would be some secluded coast village where fellow conspirators could hide him. His advent into the capital itself would not be made at all unless made at the head of an invading army, and, if so made, he would remain as minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet of General Vegas, to whom just now, as to himself, the city gates were closed.

But Señor Miraflores had selected a more cautious means of entry than the ship, which might bear travelers who knew him. Rodman spent an hour on the downward steamer. He managed to see the face of every passenger, and even investigated the swarthy visages in the steerage. He asked of some tourists casual questions as to destination, and chatted artlessly, then went over the side again, and was rowed back across the intervening strip of sea. Immediately upon his departure overside, the Amazon proceeded on her course, and five minutes later the City of Rio was also under way.

The next morning, after a late breakfast, Saxon was lounging at the rail amidship. He had ceased looking backward, and all his gaze was for the front. Ahead of him, the white superstructure, the white-duck uniform of the officer pacing the bridge, the whiteness of the holystoned deck, all stood boldly out against the deep cobalt of the gently swelling sea. Saxon was satisfied with life, and, when he saw Rodman sauntering toward him, he looked up with a welcoming nod.

“Hello, Carter – I mean Saxon.” The gun-smuggler corrected his form of address with a laugh.

The breezy American was a changed and improved man. The wrinkled gray flannels had given way to natty white duck. His Panama hat was new and of such quality that it could be rolled and drawn through a ring as large as a half-dollar. He was shaven to an extreme pinkness of face. As Saxon glanced up, his eyes wearing tell-tale recognition of the transformation, the thin man laughed afresh.

“Notice the difference, don’t you?” he genially inquired, rolling a cigarette. “The gray grub is splendidly changed into the snow-white butterfly. I’m a very flossy bug, eh, Saxon?”

The painter admitted the soft self-impeachment with a qualification.

“I begin to think you are a very destructive one.”

“I am,” announced Rodman, calmly. “I could spin you many a yarn of intrigue, but for the fact that, since you began wearing a halo instead of a hat, you have become too sanctified to listen.”

“Inasmuch,” smilingly suggested the painter, “as we might yet be languishing in the cuartel except for the fact that I was able to give so good an account of myself, I don’t see that you have any reasonable quarrel with my halo.”

Rodman raised his brows.

“Oh, I never lost sight of the fact that you had some reason for the saint rôle, and, as you say, I was in on the good results. But, now that you are flitting northward, what’s the idea of keeping your ears stopped?”

“They are open,” declared Mr. Saxon graciously; “you are at liberty to tell me anything you like, but only what you like. I’m not thirsting for criminal confessions.”

“That’s all right, but you – ” Rodman broke off, and his lips twisted into ironical good humor – “no, I apologize – I mean, a fellow who looked remarkably like you used to be so deeply versed in international politics that I think this new adventure would appeal to you. Ever remember hearing of one Señor Miraflores?”

Saxon shook his head, whereupon Rodman laughed with great sophistication. Carter had known Señor Miraflores quite well, and Rodman knew that Carter had known him.

“Very consistent acting,” he approved. “You’re a good comedian. In the Chinese theaters, they put flour on the comedian’s nose to show that he’s not a tragedian, but you don’t need the badge. You’re all right. You know how to get a laugh. But this isn’t dramatic criticism. It’s wars and rumors of wars.”

The adventurer drew a long puff from his cigarette, inhaled it deeply, and stood idly watching the curls of outward-blown smoke hanging in the hot air, before he went on.

“Well, Miraflores has once more been at the helm. Of course, in the lower commissions of the insurrecto organization, we have the usual assortment of foreign officers, odds and ends, but the chief difference between this enterprise and the other one – the one Carter knew about – is the fact that we have some artillery, and that, when we start things going, we can come pretty near battering down the old town.”

Rodman proceeded to sketch the outlines of the conspiracy. It was much the stereotyped arrangement with a few variations. Two regiments in the city barracks, suspected of disloyalty, had been practically disarmed by the President, but these troops had been secretly rearmed with a part of the guns brought in by Rodman, and would be ready to rise at the signal, together with several other disaffected commands – not for the government, but against it.

The mountain of San Francisco is really not a mountain at all, but a foot hill of the mountains. Yet, it looks down on the city of Puerto Frio as Marathon on the sea, and here are guns trained inward as well as outward. These guns can shell the capital into ruins in the space of a few hours; then, they can hurl their projectiles further, and play havoc with the environs. Also, they can guard the city from the approach that lies along the roads from the interior. A commander who holds San Francisco stands at the door of Puerto Frio with a latch-key in his hand. The revolutionists under Vegas had arranged their attack on the basis of unwarned assault. The Dictator had indeed some apprehensions, but they were fears for the future – not for the immediate present. The troops garrisoned on San Francisco, ostensibly the loyal legion of the Dictator’s forces, were in reality watching the outward approaches only as doors through which they were to welcome friends. The guns that were trained and ready to belch fire on signal from Vegas, were the guns trained inward on the city, and, when they opened, the main plaza would resemble nothing so much as the far end of a bowling alley when an expert stands on the foul-line, and the palace of the President would be the kingpin for their gunnery. The insurrecto forces were to enter San Francisco without resistance, and the opening of its crater was to be the signal for hurling through the streets of the city itself those troops that had been secretly armed with the smuggled weapons, completing the confusion and throwing into stampeding panic the demoralized remnants upon which the government depended.

Unless there were a traitor in very exclusive and carefully guarded councils, there would hardly be a miscarriage of the plans.

Saxon stood idly listening to these confidences. Nothing seemed strange to him, and least of all the entire willingness of the conspirator to tell him things that involved life and death for men and governments. He knew that, in spite of all he had said, or could say, to the other man, he was the former ally in crime. He had thought at first that Rodman would ultimately discover some discrepancy in appearance which would undeceive him, but now he realized that the secret of the continued mistake was an almost miraculous resemblance, and the fact that the other man had, in the former affair, met him in person only twice, and that five years ago.

“And so,” went on Rodman in conclusion, “I’m here adrift, waiting for the last act. I thought Miraflores might possibly be on the Amazon last night, and so, while you sat dawdling over letter-paper and pen, little Howard Stanley was up and doing. I went across to the other boat, and made search, but it was another case of nothing transpiring. Miraflores was too foxy to go touring so openly.”

Saxon felt that some comment was expected from him, yet his mind was wandering far afield from the doings of juntas. All these seemed as unreal as scenes from an extravagantly staged musical comedy. What appeared to him most real at that moment was the picture of a slim girl walking, dryad-like, through the hills of her Kentucky homeland, and the thought that he would soon be walking with her.

“It looks gloomy for the city,” he said, abstractedly.

“Say,” went on Rodman, “do you know that the only people on that boat booked for Puerto Frio were three fool American tourists, and that, of the three, two were women? Now, what chance have those folks got to enjoy themselves? Do you think Puerto Frio, say day after to-morrow, will make a hit with them?” The informant laughed softly to himself, but Saxon was still deep in his own thoughts. It suddenly struck him with surprised discovery that the view from the deck was beautiful. And Rodman, also, felt the languid invitation of the sea air, and it made him wish to talk. So, unmindful of a self-absorbed listener, he went on garrulously.

“You know, I felt like quoting to them, ‘Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell, sailed the three tourists,’ but that would have been to tip off state secrets. If people will fare forth for adventure, I guess they’ve got to have it.”

“Do you suppose,” asked Saxon perfunctorily, “they’ll be in actual danger?”

“Danger!” repeated the filibuster with sarcasm. “Danger, did you say? Oh, no, of course not. It will be a pink tea! You know that town as well as I do. You know there are two places in it where American visitors can stop – the Frances y Ingles, where you were, and the American Legation. By day after to-morrow, that plaza will be the bull’s-eye for General Vegas’s target-practice. General Vegas has a mountain to rest his target-gun on, and it’s loaded with shell. Oh, no, there won’t be any danger!”

“Wasn’t there some pretext on which you could warn them off?” inquired the painter.

Rodman shook his head.

“You see, I have to be careful in my talk. I might say too much. As it was, I knocked the town to the fellow all I could. But he seemed hell-bent on getting there, and getting there quick. He was a fool Kentuckian, and you can’t head off a bull-headed Kentuckian with subtleties or hints. I’ve met one or two of them before. And there was a girl along who seemed as anxious to get there as he was. That girl was all to the good!”

Saxon leaned suddenly forward.

“A Kentuckian?” he demanded. “Did you hear his name?”

“Sure,” announced Mr. Rodman. “Little Howard Stanley picks up information all along the way. The chap was named George Steele, and – ”

But the speaker broke off in his story, to stand astounded at the conduct of his auditor.

“And the girl!” shouted Saxon. “Her name?”

“Her name,” replied the intriguer, “was Miss Filson.”

Suddenly, the inattention of the other had fallen away, and he had wheeled, his jaw dropping. For an instant, he stood in an attitude of bewildered shock, gripping the support of the rail like a prize-fighter struggling against the groggy blackness of the knock-out blow.

Saxon stood such a length of time as it might have required for the referee to count nine over him, had the support he gripped been that of the prize-ring instead of the steamer’s rail. Then, he stepped forward, and gripped Rodman’s arm with fingers that bit into the flesh.

“Rodman,” he said in a low voice that was almost a whisper, between his labored breathings, “I’ve got to talk to you – alone. There’s not a minute to lose. Come to my stateroom.”