Captain Gordon bowed, without taking his eyes off Constance.
"I am, like yourself, Mrs. Dunlap, a recent recruit," he explained. "It is a wonderful plan," he added enthusiastically. "We shall sweep the country with it."
He flicked off the ash of his inevitable cigarette, much as if it were the opposition of the governments they were to encounter.
It was evident that the Captain was much impressed by Constance. Yet she instinctively disliked the man. His cameraderie had something offensive about it, as contrasted with the deferential friendship of Santos.
With all her energy, however, Constance plunged directly into her work. Indeed, even at the start she was amazed to find that money for a revolution could be raised at all. She soon, found that it could be done more easily in New York than anywhere else in the world.
There seemed to be something about her that apparently appealed to
those whom she went to see. She began to realize what a tremendous advantage a woman of the world had in presenting the case and convincing a speculator of the rich returns if the revolution should prove successful. More than that, she quickly learned that it was best to go alone, that it was she, quite as much as the promised concessions for tobacco, salt, telegraph, telephone monopolies, that loosed the purse strings.
Her first week's report of pledges ran into the thousands with a substantial immediate payment of real dollars.
"How did you do it?" asked Santos in undisguised admiration, as she was telling him one night of her success, in the dusty, cobwebbed little ship chandlery on South Street where the Junta headquarters had been established.
"Dollar diplomacy," she laughed, not displeased at his admiration. "We shall soon convert American dollars into Vespuccian bullets."
They were alone, and a week had made much difference in the fascinating friendship to Constance.