The Saint on the Spanish Main (22 page)

“If you do that, how shall I live?”

“You’ll get a job,” Mr. Quire said
heartily, “like any
one else. All these new factories are crying
for workers, and they train you free. I’ll be glad to give you a recom
mendation.”

“But my wife,
se
ñ
or——
”

“Probably I can get her a job
too,” Mr. Quire said
magnanimously. “Between you, you might
easily earn
more
than you ever could from growing tomatoes.”

“She will have a new baby very
soon,” Gamma said in
a dull voice. “And already there are
four to take care
of… .”

Mr. Quire put a last large piece of pork
chop into his
mouth,
and mopped his plate with a piece of bread.

“Really,” he said, “sometimes
I don’t think I’ll ever
understand you people. I suppose most of you
are Cath
olics and the rest are just irresponsible. Anyway, you
breed
like rabbits and then you expect special considera
tion because you’ve
got too many children to support. I’m truly sorry for you, but it isn’t my
fault that you’ve
got
a bigger family than you can afford. You should
have thought about that before you had them. Why, if I gave money away
to everyone on this island who just happens to be poor, I’d be a pauper myself
before din
ner.”

Gamma sat with his shoulders hunched,
staring hag
gardly
at the table.

Presently he said, with a sort of frightened
hesitancy:
“You spoke of the new factories,
se
ñ
or.
My land is on
the main road they
are building over to Ponce. Perhaps some company would like to buy it. We could
sell it for
a good price, and I would pay you back and have some
thing to
start over again.”

“I’ll certainly have to try and sell it to somebody,”
said Mr. Quire. “But it isn’t your land any more. It’s
mine, to do what I like with—or will be as soon
as I
record that paper you
signed.”

Gamma raised his eyes slowly, and they
glowed with
a dark pain and understanding that made them hot
pools in
his tense tortured face.

“Se
ñ
or,”
he said, “they speak of you as a good man,
but now I
think you are a devil!”

Mr. Elmer Quire sat quite still, but a deep
flush crept
out of his collar and climbed up into the roots of his
hair, mantling his rosy
complexion with rich purple as it rose. His bright eyes were no longer
twinkling, but became glassy and seemed to protrude. His head still kept
up its slight monotonous nodding, but now the movement
seemed to acquire a sinister and deliberate em
phasis.

At last his voice came, a hoarse choking
splutter of
incredibly
low-pitched violence.

“How dare you. How dare you speak to me
like that.
You
ungrateful wretch. After all I’ve done for you. You
made a straightforward business deal, and now because
you can’t
keep your end of the bargain you justify your
self
by insulting me. Next thing, you’ll be going to some
damned shyster lawyer and trying to wriggle out of
the
whole thing. Well let me tell you something. That paper you signed
is legal, and I’ll defend it all the way to the
Supreme Court if I have to, if it costs me ten thousand
dollars. And let me tell you something else. You
go
around talking like that, and I’ll
have you in jail. There’s a law to stop you saying things like that about me,
and you’d better find out about it damn quick. And if I ever
hear that you’ve repeated a lie like that, I’ll
not only
have the police after you,
I’ll see that you never get any kind of job as long as you live—or your wife,
or your
unwashed brats either!”
The strangling voice paused
and
gathered itself for one last burst. “Now get out of my sight before I lose
my temper!”

Gamma got to his feet, pale and shaken, but
he man
aged to start to speak.

“It is not right,
se
ñ
or——
”

“Get out!”
said Mr. Quire, in a whisper of such con
centrated viciousness that the man turned and
stumbled
hurriedly away in an almost
superstitious panic.

Mr. Quire wiped his brow with a snowy
handkerchief.

The congestion subsided slowly from his face, and he
began to unwrap a cigar.

In spite of the intensity of the paroxysm,
his rage had
been so muted that in the general chatter and clatter of
the
restaurant not a word might have been audible at a distance of more than six
feet. But he remembered that the tourist with the pirate’s profile at the next
table was
within that range, and turned to find a disconcertingly
cool gaze
resting steadily on him.

“Well, bless my soul,” said Mr.
Quire with disarming
joviality. “I do believe I was getting
quite steamed up.”

“I only thought you were going to have a
stroke,”
said the Saint mildly, and refrained from adding that he
had hoped to see it.

Mr. Quire lighted his cigar.

“Some of these people would try the
patience of a
saint,”
he remarked unconsciously. “You must have
heard some of the conversation, so you may have gotten a rough idea.
They’re like overgrown children—full of
quick enthusiasms without the stamina to carry them
through,
hopelessly inefficient on details, and sulky when they upset their own
applecarts.”

“Who was your problem child?”

“Pedro Gamma. A nice fellow, but a
hopeless
bungler.
I’m afraid I’ll have to write him off as one of
my failures.”

“It seemed to me,” Simon said with
no expression,
“that
he might have been entitled to another chance.”

“You don’t know how many chances I’ve
given him
already,” Mr. Quire said heavily. “It’s the
only hobby
I’ve got, trying to help these people. You’ve got to ex
pect some
disappointments. And you have to know
when to take a firm line, even though
it’s heartbreaking
sometimes.” Mr. Quire dismissed the subject with a
final
shrug of noble resignation. “You’re a visitor here, I take
it?”

Simon nodded.

“Sort of.”

“Not in any kind of business?”

“I might get into some,” said the
Saint thoughtfully.

The notion had only occurred to him in the
last few
minutes.

Mr. Quire took out his wallet, extracted a
card, and
passed it over.

“If I can be of any help to you, give
me a call. I’ve
been here for ten years, so I know my way around pretty
well. And
I’m really interested in anything that’s good
for the island.”
He stood up. “Please feel free to take me
up on that, any
time.”

Simon read the name and address, and put the
card
away carefully, and looked up to see Mr. Quire chatting
genially
with the proprietor at the entrance as he paid
his bill. It was
obvious that he was a well-known and
favored customer. There was a parting
gust of cordial
amenities as he went out, and through the window Si
mon
watched him climb into a large black Cadillac and drive away.

The Saint finished his own meal presently,
and also
went to
the front counter with his bill.

“Do you know Mr. Quire well?” he
asked, in con
versational Spanish.
“S
é
, se
ñ
or.
Muy bien.”

“A very respected man,
se
ñ
or.
He does much good
for Puerto
Rico.”

“He rather likes to have things his own
way, doesn’t
he?”

The proprietor raised his shoulders
discreetly.

“If he likes someone, he will do
anything in the world
for him. But I should not like to cross him.
He has a
strong
character.”

“That is one way to describe him,”
said the Saint.

3

“It’s a really interesting prison,”
said Tristan Brown, as
he drove her away. “The men almost seem
happy to be
there. There’s practically nothing to stop them
escaping,
as you saw; but when they do, they usually come back
by
themselves in a few days, and explain that they had to
go to a funeral, or attend to some
business, or maybe
just needed a night
out.”

“It’s probably more comfortable than
home to a lot
of them,” said the Saint. “And most of ‘em
wouldn’t be
habitual criminals. Just nice normal guys who gave way
to a
natural impulse to stick a knife in somebody who
got out of line.”

“The warden is doing quite a job of
making them over, anyway. He’s a rare type—a natural philanthropist.”

Simon glanced at her.

“Could he qualify for an Ogden H. Kiel
endow
ment?”

“He might. You see, we don’t just write
checks to organized charities, and yet we obviously can’t deal with
thousands of individual cases.
So in each area we go
into, we try to find a
good local administrator, give him
an
allocation, and leave the handling of it to his
judgment.”

“Doesn’t that get you besieged by all kinds of phonies who
think what a good thing they could make for them
selves out of it?”

“It would if they knew what I was doing.
But you
haven’t
read any publicity about my visit, have you? Be
cause I haven’t told anyone except you. For the other
people I meet, I’m just a gadabout social worker
nosing
around.”

“And I still couldn’t qualify?”

It was the perfect cue for her to begin to
hint that
perhaps
he might qualify after all—if, for instance, he could produce a large amount of
cash as evidence of his
solvency and bona
fides. If that was how the routine was
to
go. But she shook her head.

“I’m sorry. Now please stop making me
think you’re
only
interested in me because of Mr. Kiel’s money, and
tell me what you’ve been up to.”

“I’ve been studying another type who won’t qualify—
even more definitely.”

He gave her a detailed account of his
inadvertent
eavesdropping on Mr. Elmer Quire, and was grateful
that she
quickly grasped its implications, for the sub
tlety of Mr. Quire was
not easy to convey at second
hand.

“The restaurant proprietor scored it right in the bulls-
eye, whether he knew it or not,” he said at
the conclu
sion. ” ‘He’ll do anything in the world for you if he
likes
you, but don’t cross him.’ It sounds
fine, doesn’t it? A
stalwart salty
character. But think about it a bit longer,
and you find it’s the perfect description of the worst
kind of spoiled selfish brat. Sweet as pie if he
gets his own way, and a son of a bitch if he doesn’t. The only
difference is that Quire is older in years and has
some
power and dough to back it up. The ‘little tin god’ clich
é
was
coined for him. He’s an arrogant, willful, egotistical
chiseler masquerading as a big-hearted Lord
Bountiful,
a hypocrite so hungry for
flattery and so terrified of the
truth
that any criticism turns him literally blue with
rage. I saw it happen. Take it from me, Tristan—when you hear a man
spoken about like that, look out. You’re
getting the low-down on a
bastard.”

“If you go on like that you’re going to
turn blue your
self,” she said, and he suddenly grinned apology.

They drove up through the dense tropical
rain-jungle, stopped to pick and taste wild strawberries that were brilliantly
red and totally flavorless, and went on to the
lodge near the
summit, where they sat and drank beer on
a terrace that
looked out over a whole quadrant of the
island. It was one
of those rare clear days on El Yunque,
which is usually
wreathed with dripping clouds, and to
wards the north they could see all the
way to the coast
and the deep blue of the ocean beyond. And then the
daylight
was fading and a chill came in the air, and they
drove down again and
stopped for cocktails at a place
where orchids grew in the open, and stayed to
eat dinner
with the city lights spread out far below them. It made
a day to remember.