The Colonel’s lean fingers quivered as he lighted a fresh cigarette. The thin lips twitched beneath the martial mustache. He turned on his heel and strolled aft to the smoking-room. There he slumped upon a cushioned settle and rested his elbows upon the table. He ordered a whiskey and soda and drank it very slowly. Another Colombian official joined him, a loquacious person who babbled about various matters and was indifferent to the brooding, ungracious demeanor of Colonel Fajardo. After a while this acquaintance departed.
The colonel continued to drink, steadily and alone, until the chief engineer drifted in for a cold bottle of beer. He was sweaty and dirty and his legs ached. For sociability’s sake he sat down at the table with the Comandante of the Port. It was an error, as he presently discovered. The morose gentleman of the gold shoulder-straps contributed no more than an occasional grunt or a bored, “Si, señor.”
His eyes were slightly bloodshot and failed to focus. Otherwise his sobriety could not be challenged. He brightened only when about to plunge his predatory beak into another whiskey and soda. Having prudently slaked his own thirst, the chief engineer betook himself back to the task of tinkering with a balky condenser in a temperature that would have made Hades seem frigid. Later in the afternoon, when he emerged on deck for air, he accosted Richard Cary.
“Hearken to me, shipmate. If you insist on sparking the beautiful stewardess, I suggest that you suspend operations until Cartagena is in the offing. What I mean to say is, a little discretion wouldn’t be half bad.”
“Thanks, Mac, but if you had just as soon mind your own damn business,” was the discourteous retort, “I can hearken a lot easier. How did you get this way?”
“By using a normal intelligence and powers of observation in which you are so colossally lacking,” was the unruffled reply. “You have already driven Colonel Fajardo to drink. He has been at it ever since luncheon, according to Jimmy, the barkeep. No, he isn’t drunk, but, my word, his disposition is ruined. He may be chewing glass by this time.”
“Humph! You read too many novels, Mac. Trying to stage a melodrama?”
“This from you, Dick Cary? You wild ass! After boring me with your fantastic nonsense about buried memories of the Spanish Main? Accuse me of being stagey when I offer a friendly bit of common sense? Oh, very well, if you get a knife in your ribs or a bullet in your back, you needn’t expect me to hold your hand and listen to your last words. I have heard gossip in Cartagena, that this Colonel Fajardo has bumped off one or two sprightly young caballeros who got in his way.”
“And you listen to such rot?” scoffed Dick Cary. “The drunken counterfeit! Somebody ought to call his bluff. I wish he would give me a chance.”
“The Devon lad? Spaniards are good hunting,” quizzed McClement. “Up, my hearties, and at ’em.”