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“Buenas tardes
!
”
he brayed at them in his great hollow voice.

“Buenas tardes, señor
,
”
they said in their soft voices.

They made room for him to sit. The bus deviated from its normal route to let him off at the main gate of El Hutchinson. The driver made no attempt to collect a fare. The bus had been silent ever since he had boarded it. The moment they drove away from the hotel, everyone began to talk at once.

By Monday, the fourteenth of August, the colonel pronounced himself perfectly capable of driving his car back to the States. He did not look at all well. All attempts to dissuade him failed. He would leave the next morning.

On Monday evening Barbara went to Colonel Hildebrandt’s room before dinner. He had just finished his packing.

“Colonel,” she said, “would you do me a big favor?”

“Of course, of course.”

“I’d like to ride with you. You have room and … I could
share the expenses and the driving. It would be a big help to me. I understand you’re going to Washington.”

“Get this leg looked at. Doesn’t feel right to me.”

“Could you take me along?”

He frowned at her. “Long trip in an old car, my dear.”

“I know. But it would be a great favor to me. Please.”

“Won’t look right, you know. Not very proper.”

“When we get rooms at a motel, you could register me as your daughter, I suppose, if you think it would look better. Please, Colonel.”

“Well … if you want to come along, you’re welcome. Be a little easier having somebody do some of the driving, I guess. Understand, I don’t want to fadiddle around here until noon, young woman. You be packed and ready to leave by eight sharp.”

“Thanks a lot, Colonel. I’ll go pack.”

She went and repored her success to the others. “I certainly will feel a hundred per cent better,” Hildabeth said. “I was sure he wouldn’t take you. Stubborn old fool. Now you keep him from getting overtired, and if he doesn’t act right, you stop wherever you are and make sure he sees a doctor.”

Barbara and the colonel left at eight on Tuesday morning.

The survivors continued. Gil and Jeanie. Hildabeth and Dotsy. Monica and Harvey. Agnes and Gam. Paul Klauss was seldom seen. Miles Drummond rented a room down in town to move into when school ended, a room that would suffice until he could move back into his own little house.

Miles had imagined that the Workshop, even in its shrunken form, would continue right up until the last day of August, but it did not work out that way. Gil and Jeanie decided that they wanted to see San Miguel de Allende, and so they left on Friday, the twenty-fifth. On Monday, the twenty-eighth, after a lot of confused scheduling, Agnes Partridge Keeley left, taking Monica and Harvey as far as Mexico City where they had obtained reservations on the same flight. Hildabeth and Dotsy left the next day in the pink-and-blue Buick, having made an arrangement with Gam to take him as far as Texas. Miles Drummond, Fidelio, Rosalinda and Margarita waved until they were out of sight and then went back through the main gate into the compound in front of the hotel where the red bus stood lonely in the morning sun.

Rosalinda snuffled and said, “The very last, señor. Now they have all departed. This is a sad time.”

“The Señor Ball, he is the very last,” Margarita said loyally.

There was a dreary echoing emptiness about the hotel. On that day Miles made the final arrangements to close the Cuernavaca Summer Workshop. He arranged for disposition of the small amount of excess supplies. He paid off the small staff, giving each one a little bit more than was due, even Alberto.

After consideration of all factors, he told Felipe Cedro that he would not need him any longer. Felipe had been sullen and insubordinate of late. Miles realized he had always been a bit afraid of the man. But Felipe’s black scowl did not alarm him at all now. He felt relief at being at last free of him. And Fidelio was delighted to be employed as Señor Drummond’s personal servant. In the late afternoon Fidelio loaded Miles’s belongings into the red bus and moved them down to the room Miles had rented.

It troubled Miles that Paul Klauss’s possessions were still in the hotel, in his padlocked room. It offended his sense of order. He wanted the school to be terminated cleanly and completely. He had arranged that on the first day of September he would meet with the representative of the owners of the hotel and, after an inspection of the premises, turn over the keys. Also, on that day, he would return the red bus to its owner. He was annoyed that such efficiency should be compromised by the carelessness of Paul Klauss.

On the morning of the last day of August, Margarita Esponjar slipped away from the household tasks assigned her by her mother, and wandered over to the hotel in the hope that she might see Señor Ball once more. Such a shy and pretty man. Such a strange and timid man, who wept easily.

When she walked through the main gate she saw that the big front door was ajar, and a taxi waiting. She ceased strolling and trotted toward the front door. When she was ten feet away, Felipe came out. He was carrying a suitcase which she recognized at once as belonging to Señor Ball. He was moving quickly and furtively.

“You are stealing from Señor Ball!” she cried. She tried to wrest the suitcase from him but he cursed her and gave her such a mighty push that she trotted backward and sat down suddenly in the dust. As she scrambled to her feet, the taxi turned out through the main gate. She watched it go, and then
she went into the hotel and went to the room of Señor Ball. The things Felipe had thought not worth stealing were scattered on the floor. All the beautiful clothing was gone. Señor Ball was on the floor, on his side, sleeping. There was a great ugly lump on his pretty forehead, right at the hair line, and a trickle of blood that ran down into his delicate, blond eyebrow. With a great, clear cry of concern and love and pity, Margarita dropped to her knees beside him, picked up his limp hand and kissed it, pressed it tenderly to her cheek and looked down at him with brimming eyes.

When Miles arrived at the hotel the next day he was very pleased to see that Paul Klauss’s room was empty and the door open.

On a Thursday in early December, Gregory Hayes, a tall and rather elegant young man, left his desk in the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and went next door to Sanborne’s for a milkshake at the counter. It was a crisp and beautiful morning and he felt very much at home in his world. He had been in Mexico City for over a year and did not like to think of the eventual inevitable transfer. He was a very junior vice-consul. The intensive courses in Berlitz method had given him a good working grasp of Spanish. He had a knack for languages. A current affair with a young Mexican dancer, being conducted with utmost discretion, was improving his fluency. He liked the Mexican people, their warmth and courtesy and pride.

On his way back to his tiny office he looked in on the area where Mexican nationals, employees of the embassy, were interviewing Mexicans who had come to the embassy, screening them so that they could be either routed to the proper officials or told that they had come to the wrong agency with their requests.

He looked at the line of chairs where they were awaiting their turn to be interviewed. Most of them sat with the empty bored faces that are used to hide anxiety. He could make a reasonable guess as to what most of them wanted. It was his
habit sometimes to short-circuit normal procedures by selecting at random someone waiting to be interviewed and handling it himself. As the interviewers did not resent this form of intrusion, particularly by Greg Hayes, and because it improved his Spanish, and because he had a sound grasp of procedures, and because there was a possibility that such personal attentions were good public relations, his superiors were tolerant of this practice, though they did consider it rather eccentric.

Gregory stood inside the doorway and looked along the line until he spotted a young woman. She wore a dingy red dress and over it she wore a short, green wool coat obviously new and of a shade so poisonously virulent that it almost hurt to look at it. In contrast to the glum faces of all the others, she wore a wide, interested, friendly smile. Her face was quite pretty. There was an Indio look about it. And there was the stamp of the slattern, a bland, amiable and automatic sensuousness. He guessed that she was from outside the city. There was a string bag at her feet, bulky and faded. He guessed that she was of low intelligence, one of the ones who had suddenly decided they would go to the United States and, with no knowledge of the difficulties involved, would show up and ask blandly for permission.

Gregory went to Raoul’s desk and said, “Got any idea of what the girl in the green coat wants?”

“Not the slightest. But I know that ranchero one is with her. The one sitting beyond her.”

Gregory had not noticed him before. He sat stolidly, bare brown feet planted on the floor, a ratty sombrero with a broad frayed brim pulled well down over his forehead. He wore one of those white pajama suits all field workers used to wear, which are now being supplanted by the ubiquitous blue jeans and work shirts. He wore a drab brown-and-gray serape of rough heavy wool.

“Okay if I take them, Raoul?”

“Go right ahead, Greg.”

The girl’s smile widened as he approached. He said in a low tone, “Will you and your companion come to my office, señorita, and I will see if I can be of service.”

“¿Cómo no?”
she called in a voice so loud and clear that those waiting nearby jumped and gave her a look of annoyance. She got up and took the arm of her companion and, with small cooing, urging sounds, got him to his feet. They followed Greg
to his small office. He sat behind his desk. The girl tugged the man over to a chair and pushed gently against his chest until he sat down. She took the other chair, directly in front of Greg’s desk, and put the heavy string bag on the corner of the desk. He decided her smile was so happy and infectious as to be disconcerting.

“How may we help you, señorita?”

“This is the second time in my entire life that I have come to Mexico City, señor. It is more enormous than I remembered. So many people in one noisy place. Such danger from the vehicles. They seemed to try to kill us, señor.”

“It is a beautiful city. May I have your name?”

“Margarita Esponjar y Roca. I have twenty years, señor. Very soon, in the next month, I am to be betrothed to Señor Roberto Prisma y Martinez. He is the complete owner of a blue truck. He works on the caminos. When one has a truck, it is possible to be employed in an important task and receive much pay. Roberto is a very kindly man. His wife died of fevers of the stomach many months ago. There are small children. He is lonely, señor. His house is large. Three rooms and a shed and a place for the blue truck close beside the shed where it is safer from rain and bandits. There is room in the house for the five children, the three which are his and the two which are mine.”

Greg stared at her rather blankly. “Uh … congratulations.”

“I have never been married. My Roberto is very kindly and understanding about my two little ones. He knows that it is because I have a loving heart. He will take my children as his own, and feed and clothe them. He is a good man.”

“I … I am certain that he must be. I am certain you will be very happy. You have my sincere best wishes, Señorita Esponjar. But I do not understand what it is that you wish us to do for you.”

“Roberto is a kindly man, but there is one thing he has become most angry about. It is Señor Ball. I am not permitted to keep him. When I move to Roberto’s house,
mi madre
will not keep Señor Ball. She says I have been wrong to care for him. Roberto will agree that room could be made for him in such a big house, but he says that it is an indecency. A man is not a pet. And with such a one, whose head is not right, there could be great trouble one day. I have at last agreed. And so, señor, I have brought him to you. He is yours.”

“What? What?”

“He is now yours.” She opened the throat of the string purse and dug into it and took out a wallet and handed it to Gregory Hayes. Greg opened it. It contained no money. He took out the identification cards and the tourist card. Margarita had turned toward her companion and reached and took off his sombrero and placed it in his lap. The companion looked placidly at the wall beyond Greg’s left shoulder with pale, empty eyes. His face was darkened by exposure. He had long blond hair, tangled, matted and dirty, and beard stubble darker than his hair.

“If you will excuse me for a moment, señorita.”

“Of course!”

He came back in five minutes with a file folder. He had been right when he had thought he remembered seeing the name Paul Klauss on the Inquiry List. Year after year, American citizens disappeared in Mexico, some by design and some by accident. Of both groups most of them were eventually located, but there were, each year, a very few who were never seen again.

“This is a matter of great seriousness, señorita,” he said gravely. “According to our records, Mr. Klauss was supposed to have been back in Philadelphia over three months ago. He attended some sort of little art colony affair in Cuernavaca. After he was reported missing, a Mr. Drummond was contacted. Mr. Drummond stated that as far as he knew, Mr. Klauss had left when the school ended, to return to the States. I do not understand this at all. Mr. Klauss. Mr. Klauss!”

“He does not listen, señor. It accomplishes nothing to shout at him.”

“What is wrong with him?”

“He was given a great
golpe
on the head, señor, by an evil person who took away his suitcase and clothing and many valuable things. He has been this way ever since that moment.”

“How do you know this?”

“I was employed by the Señor Drummond. I worked at the school as a maid. I became a most close friend of
el
Señor Ball. The hotel was empty when I found him, and the
golpe
on the head had made him sleep upon the floor. I awakened him and in a little while I was able to lead him to my home. It is a small place and crowded. My mother was most angry and she said it was a matter for the police. I was afraid the
police would remove him, and I wished to care for him. Does not one wish to care for a dear friend who has been injured by an evil person?”