“Excuses are unnecessary. You told me you had a ship. Where is that ship? You said you would take twenty thousand bunches. Where are they? Are they on the ship? They are there.” He waved his hand toward the devastated plantation.
Johnny’s head whirled. What was this—more treachery?
“Our boat,” he said in as quiet a tone as he could command, “was at your dock three days. In such a storm you could not expect her to hold to her moorings. Where is she now? Who knows? Perhaps at the bottom of the sea. The reason she left without a cargo was that your manager, Senor Diaz, would not supply it.”
“Is this true?” The dark eyes of the Honduran capitalist bored him through and through.
“Ask any workman on the dock or in the village. If he has not been corrupted by a scoundrel, he will tell you it is true.”
Whirling about, the man shot a few sharp questioning words in Spanish to a boy who sat half asleep in the corner.
Starting up, the boy answered rapidly.
“He says,” Don del Valle turned slowly about, “that all you have told me is the truth. It is my honor to beg your most humble pardon. You have been badly treated. Ask me some favor and I will grant it.”
Johnny’s heart beat fast. His mind worked like some speeding mechanism.
“Shall I?” he asked himself. “I will.”