“But you're—why, hang it, you're not a Latin?”
“No, I'm a mixture, with Latin predominating. My forbears were pure Castilians from Madrid, and crossed the Western Ocean in caravels. It's been a matter of pride with the house of Ruey to keep the breed pure, but despite all precautions, the family tree has been grafted once with a Scotch thistle, twice with the lily of France, and once with the shamrock of Ireland. My mother was an Irishwoman.”
“You alibi yourself perfectly, Ricardo, and my curiosity is appeased. Permit me to continue my tale,” he added in Spanish; and forthwith he related with humorous detail his adventure at the gangplank of the steamer that had borne him and Ricardo Ruey south. Ricardo interrupted him. “We know all about that, friend Webster, and we knew the two delightful gentlemen had been told off to get you—unofficially.”
“How did you find out?”
“A leak in the Intelligence Bureau, of which our friend Colonel Caraveo is an assistant chief.”
“Explain,” Webster demanded peremptorily. “Why all this intrigue extending to two countries and private individuals?”
“Certainly. The Sobrantean revolutionary junta has headquarters in New Orleans. It is composed of political exiles, for Sarros, the present dictator of Sobrante, rules with an iron hand, and has a cute little habit of railroading his enemies to the cemetery via the treason charge and the firing-squad. Quite a quaint fellow, Sarros! Robs the proletariat and spends it on the army with a lavish hand, and so in sheer gratitude they keep him in office. Besides, it's a sign of bad luck to oppose him at the regular elections. Well, he—he killed my father, who was the best president this benighted country ever had, and I consider it my Christian duty to avenge my father and a patriotic duty to take up the task he left unfinished—the task of making over my country.
“In Sobrante, as in most of the countries in Central America, there are two distinct classes of people—the aristocrats and peons—and the aristocrat fattens on the peon, as he has had a habit of doing since Adam. We haven't any middle class to stand as a buffer between the two—which makes it a sad proposition. My father was an idealist and a dreamer and he dreamed of reform in government and a solution of the agrarian problem which confronts all Latin-America. Moreover, he trusted the common people—and one should not trust this generation of peons. We must have fifty years of education—free and compulsory—first.
“My father headed a revolution that was brief and practically bloodless, and the better to do the task he had set himself, he created a dictatorship with himself as dictator—this because he was shy on good cabinet and legislative material, the kind he could trust to play fair with the people.”
Ricardo paused. “You are interested in all this, my friend?” he asked.