Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 Part 33

He left with me. Jetta remained in her room, her thoughts upon the coming night. She trembled at them. She would meet me again, this evening in the moonlit garden....

The sound of a man walking the garden path aroused her from her reverie. Then came a soft ingratiating voice:

"Jetta, _chica Mia_!"

It was Perona, standing by the pergola preening his effeminate mustache.

"Jetta, little love bird, come out and talk to me."

Jetta slammed the window slide and sat quiet.

"Jetta, it is your Greko."

"Well do I know it," she muttered.

"Jetta!" He strode down the path and back. "Jetta." His voice began rising into a strident, peevish anger.

"Jetta, are you in there? _Chica_, answer me."

No answer.

"Jetta, _por Dios_--" He fumed, then fell to pleading. "Are you in there? Please, little love bird, answer your Greko. Are you in there?"

"Yes."

"Come out then. Come to Greko."

She said sweetly. "My father does not want me to talk to men. You know that is so, Senor Perona."

It grounded him. "Why--"

"Is it not so?"

"Y-yes, but I am not--"

"A man?" Little imp! She relished impaling him upon the shafts of her ridicule. Her sport was interrupted by the arrival of Sp.a.w.n. He had left me at the mine and come directly back home. Jetta heard his heavy tread on the garden path, then his voice:

"Ah, Perona."

And Perona: "Jetta will not come out and talk to me." The waxen mustached Minister of Nareda's Internal Affairs was like a sulky child. But Sp.a.w.n was unimpressed. Sp.a.w.n said:

"Well, let her alone. We have more important things to engage us. I have the American occupied at the mine. You heard from De Boer?"

"I went last night. All is ready as we planned. But Sp.a.w.n, this fool of an American, this Grant--"

"Hush! Not so loud, Perona!"

"I am telling you--!" Perona was excited. His voice rose shrilly, but Sp.a.w.n checked him.

"Shut up: you waste time. Tell me exactly the arrangements with De Boer. _Le grand coup_! now; to-night most important of nights--and you rant of your troubles with a girl!"

They were standing by the pergola, quite near Jetta's shaded window.

She crouched there, listening to them. None of this was entirely new to Jetta. She had always been aware more or less of her father's secret business activities. As a child she had not understood them.

Nor did she now, with any clarity. Sp.a.w.n, had always talked freely within her hearing, ignoring her, though occasionally he threatened her to keep her mouth shut.

She heard now fragments of this discussion between her father and Perona. They moved away from the pergola and sat by the fountain, speaking too low for her to hear. And then they paced the path, coming nearer, and she caught their voices again. And occasionally they grew excited, or vehement, and then their raised tones were plainly audible to her.

And this that she heard, with what she knew already, and with what subsequently transpired, enables me now to piece together the facts into a connected explanation.

In the establishment of his cinnabar mine some years before, Sp.a.w.n was originally financed by Perona. The South American was then newly made Minister of Nareda's Internal Affairs. He became Sp.a.w.n's business partner. They kept the connection secret. Sp.a.w.n falsified his production records; and Perona with his governmental position was enabled to pa.s.s these false accounts of the mine's production. Nareda was systematically cheated of a portion of its legal share.

But this, after a time, did not satisfy the ambitious Perona and Sp.a.w.n. They began to plan how they might engage in smuggling some of their quicksilver into the United States.

Perona, during these years, had had ambitions of his own in other directions. President Markes, of Nareda, was an honest official. He handicapped Perona considerably. There were many ways by which Perona could have grown rich through a dishonest handling of the government affairs. It was done almost universally in all the small Latin governments. But Markes as President made it dangerous in Nareda. Even the duplicity with the mine was a precarious affair.

There was at this time in Nareda a young adventurer named De Boer. A handsome, swaggering fellow in his late twenties. He was a good talker; he spoke many languages; he could orate with fluency and skilful guile. His smile, his colorful personality, and his gift for oratory, made it easy for him to stir up dissatisfaction among the people.

De Boer became known as a patriot. A revolution in Nareda was brewing.

Perona, as Nareda's Minister, was De Boer's political enemy. The Nareda Government ran De Boer out, ending the potential revolution.

But Perona and Sp.a.w.n had always secretly been friends with De Boer. It would have been very handy to have this unscrupulous young scoundrel as President.

When De Boer was banished with some of his most loyal followers, he began a career of petty banditry in the Lowland's depths. Sp.a.w.n and Perona kept in communication with him, and, by a method which was presently made startlingly clear to Jetta and me, De Boer smuggled the quicksilver for Perona and Sp.a.w.n. It was this activity which had finally aroused my department and caused Hanley to send me to Nareda.

This however, was a dangerous, precarious occupation. De Boer did not seem to think so, or care. But Perona and Sp.a.w.n, with their established positions in Nareda, were always fearful of exposure. Even without my coming, they had planned to disconnect from De Boer.

"And for more than that," as Jetta had one day heard Perona remark to her father. "I'll tell to you that this De Boer is not very straight with us, Sp.a.w.n." De Boer would, upon occasion, fail to make proper return for the smuggled product.

So now they had planned a last coup in which De Boer was to help, and then they would be done with him: the two of them, Sp.a.w.n and Perona, would remain as honest citizens of Nareda, and De Boer had agreed to take himself away and pursue his banditry elsewhere.

It was a simple plan; it promised to yield a high stake quickly. A final fling at illicit activity; then virtuous reformation, with Perona marrying the little Jetta.

Beneath the strong room at the mine, Perona and Sp.a.w.n had secretly built a cleverly concealed little vault. De Boer, this night just before the midnight hour, was to attack the mine. Sp.a.w.n and Perona had bribed the police guards to submit to this attack. The guards did not know the details: they only knew that De Boer and his men would make a sham attack, careful to harm none of them--and then De Boer would withdraw. The guards would report that they had been driven away by a large force. And when the excitement was over, the ingots of radiumized quicksilver would have vanished!

De Boer, making away into distant Lowland fastnesses, would obviously be supposed to have taken the treasure. But Perona, hidden alone in the strong-room, would merely carry the ingots down into the secret vault, to be disposed of at some future date. The ingots were well insured, by an international company, against theft. The Nareda government would receive one-third of that insurance as recompense for the loss of its share. Perona and Sp.a.w.n would get two-thirds--and have the treasure as well.

Such was the present plan, into which, all unknown to me, I had been plunged. And my presence complicated things considerably. So much so that Perona grew vehement, this afternoon in the garden, explaining why. His shrill voice carried clearly to Jetta, in spite of Sp.a.w.n's efforts to shut him up.