Why he paid Billy even the small sums that from time to time Billy wrung from the president’s strong box the foreign colony were at a loss to explain. Wagner, the new American consul, asked Billy how he managed it. As an American minister had not yet been appointed to the duties of the consul, as Wagner assured everybody, were added those of diplomacy. But Haytian diplomacy he had yet to master. At the seaport in Scotland where he had served as vice-consul, law and order were as solidly established as the stone jetties, and by contrast the eccentricities of the Black REPUBLIC baffled and distressed him.
“It can’t be that you blackmail the president,” said the consul, “because I understand he boasts he has committed all the known crimes.”
“And several he invented,” agreed Billy.
“And you can’t do it with a gun, because they tell me the president isn’t afraid of anything except a voodoo priestess. What is your secret?” coaxed the consul. “If you’ll only sell it, I know several Powers that would give you your price.” Billy smiled modestly.
“It’s very simple,” he said. “The first time my wages were shy I went to the palace and told him if he didn’t come across I’d shut off the juice. I think he was so stunned at anybody asking him for real money that while he was still stunned he opened his safe and handed me two thousand francs. I think he did it more in admiration for my nerve than because he owed it. The next time pay-day arrived, and the pay did not, I didn’t go to the palace. I just went to bed, and the lights went to bed, too. You may remember?” The consul snorted indignantly.
“I was holding three queens at the time,” he protested. “Was it YOU did that?”
“It was,” said Billy. “The police came for me to start the current going again, but I said I was too ill. Then the president’s own doctor came, old Gautier, and Gautier examined me with a lantern and said that in Hayti my disease frequently proved fatal, but he thought if I turned on the lights I might recover. I told him I was tired of life, anyway, but that if I could see three thousand francs it might give me an incentive. He reported back to the president and the three thousand francs arrived almost instantly, and a chicken broth from Ham’s own chef, with His Excellency’s best wishes for the recovery of the invalid. My recovery was instantaneous, and I switched on the lights.
“I had just moved into the Widow Ducrot’s hotel that week, and her daughter Claire wouldn’t let me eat the broth. I thought it was because, as she’s a dandy cook herself, she was professionally jealous. She put the broth on the top shelf of the pantry and wrote on a piece of paper, ‘Gare!’ But the next morning a perfectly good cat, who apparently couldn’t read, was lying beside it dead.”
The consul frowned reprovingly.
“You should not make such reckless charges,” he protested. “I would call it only a coincidence.”