Without further particulars, etc., I take great pleasure in signing myself
Your grateful and affectionate servant,
(Signed) A. Victor Segno,
President per Sec.
Dictated to No. 1 S.
There was no doubt that Santiago had followed the injunction to read the pamphlet letter by letter. Thanks to his Colombian schooling, that was the only way he could read it. But how was he to send the mere $6 to Inspiration Point without his fellow-townsmen knowing it and perhaps forestalling his opportunity to be the first in his locality to possess the powerful secret? There is no postal-order system between Colombia and the United States. He dared not send the cash, even if so large an amount of Nariño silver could be enclosed in a parcel the post would carry. So he had hidden the letter away and lain in wait for the rare foreigners that drift into San Pablo. While we read it, he sat on one of our “beds” nervously fingering his toes. When we had finished, he begged us to find some way of sending the money, imploring us, on our hopes of eternity, not to whisper a word of the secret to his fellow-townsmen. We promised to think the matter over.
“When are you going to open the shop this morning?” asked Hays, as our host turned toward the door.
“Oh, I shall not trouble to open to-day,” said the barber, in a weary voice, and wandered away with the air of a man who sees no need of common toil when he is on the point of becoming the dictator of fate in all his locality.
We hatched a scheme against his return. If we fancied he might forget the matter, we were deceived. Nothing else seemed to be weighing on his mind when he turned up again in the evening, dejected and worried. To have tried to explain the truth to him would have been only to convince him that we were agents of some rival house, sent down here purposely to ruin his chances of imposing his will upon San Pablo.
“If you feel you must have this system,” I began, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I have some money in a bank in the Estados Unidos, and I will give you a personal check for $6 that you can mail to the Chirological College.”