O, Erin, mavourneen, slan laght go bragh!
At the theatre we sit patiently waiting for the stage electrician to switch on the footlights and warn us that the drama is about to begin. Let us, in a broader sense, appropriate that cue to mark the beginning of the drama with which this story deals; instead of a stage, however, we have the republic of Sobrante; in lieu of footlights we have the sun popping up out of the Caribbean Sea.
Those actors whose acquaintance we have so briefly made thus far must be presumed to be supers crossing the stage and loitering thereon while the curtain is down. Now, therefore, let us drive them into the wings while the curtain rises on a tropical scene.
In the patio of Mother Jenks's establishment in the Çalle de Concordia, No. 19, the first shafts of morning light were filtering obliquely through the orange trees and creeping in under the deep, Gothic-arched veranda flanking the western side of the patio, to reveal a dusky maiden of more or less polyglot antecedents, asleep upon a bright, parti-coloured blanket spread over a wicker couch.
Presently, through the silent reaches of the Calle de Concordia, the sound of a prodigious knocking and thumping echoed, as of some fretful individual seeking admission at the street door of El Buen Amigo, by which euphonious designation Mother Jenks's caravansary was known to the public of Buenaventura. In the second story, front, a window slid back and a woman's voice, husky with that huskiness that speaks so accusingly of cigarettes and alcohol, demanded:
“Quien es? Who is it? Que quiere usted? Wot do yer want?”
“Ye might dispinse wit' that paraqueet conversation whin addhressin' the likes av me,” a voice replied. “'Tis me—Cafferty. I have a cablegram Leber give me to deliver——”
“Gawd's truth! Would yer wake the 'ole 'ouse with yer'ammering?”
“All right. I'll not say another worrd!”
A minute passed; then the same husky voice, the owner of which had evidently descended from her sleeping chamber above, spoke in a steadily rising crescendo from a room just off the veranda: