"Denounced me? But why?"
"Yes, Señor. And it was a most dangerous denunciation, too. A prominent communist leader telephoned the editor of the official Red paper and denounced you for being an enemy of Tovarich Tabio and a supporter of Señor Gamburdo."
Hall smiled. "But that couldn't be so bad," he demurred. "The Reds are always denouncing someone. Tomorrow the Communist Party paper will attack me as a fascist, and I guess that will be the end of the whole thing."
"No, that is not what will happen," Segundo Vardieno insisted. "Tell him the rest of the information, Don José."
Again José Fernandez looked around to make sure that he was not being overheard. "Señor Vardieno is right, my friend. You see," he said, "the Red who phoned the Mundo Obrero ordered the editor not to print a word about you—yet. Do you understand what that means?"
Davila, the lawyer, explained. "What Don José means," he said, "is that a secret denunciation generally precedes an assassination. You see, Señor Hall, if the Reds denounce you in their press, you would be marked before the world as an enemy of the Tovarich. Then, if anything happened to you—they are not only blameless, but even after killing you they can make great propaganda about how the alleged fascists killed you because you are a noted American patriot who stands for free enterprise."
"Pretty clever," Hall said.
"Jewish cleverness!" Segundo Vardieno was shaking with rage. "Give a Jew a hundred pesos and in a day he has a thousand and you'll never know how he did it. But will he apply his cleverness for the good of the country? No! Only for communism."
"Is Tabio a Jew?" Hall asked.
"Confidentially," Vardieno answered, "El Tovarich is a Sephardic Jew. But we're not making it public because we are gentlemen."