Savage Bride

Chapter Nineteen

The second-floor corridor in the government building at Puerto Santo was cool and twilight-dim compared to the broiling glare of the streets outside. It was not the most uncomfortable place in town to have to sit and wait for any prolonged length of time, as Fredericks and Cotter were having to do now. It was no mere passage but a broad gallery, tile-floored and roofed by a succession of stone archways. Set within the arbitrary subdivisions these created along the wall space were a succession of rather monastic doors. As a matter of fact, the building had once been the Palace of the Inquisition.

Opposite the first of these doors, first both in importance and in location, was placed a wooden bench, back to wall, and on it sat Fredericks and his companion, beginning to wilt now after their third successive day of interminable waiting. Facing them, on guard before the stubbornly closed portal whose entrance they sought to gain, stood a high-cheeked, flat-nosed mestizo soldier, in rather sloppy-fitting khaki, a very efficient and unsloppy-looking Mauser planted stock to floor before him.

Cotter came back to the bench, after a brief period of pacing back and forth to relieve the tedium of posture, and sank down on it once more.

“This one’s keeping us waiting the longest of all,” he grunted bitterly.

“The higher you go, the harder they are to see.”

“Well, we’ve worked our way up to the top. After him there’s no one.” He leaned forward, let his hands hang down dejectedly, elbows to knees. “If there was only an American consul in the place we could appeal to, maybe we could get some action, slash through some of this red tape.”

“An American consul wouldn’t be able to give orders over the heads of the departmental officials. Besides, there isn’t one. This country’s not even important enough to have one of our consular representatives accredited to it. It’s lumped in with one of the neighboring republics, and the same consul takes care of both.”

Cotter dispirtedly let his head dangle now, in alignment with his hands. Then presently he raised it again.

“What’s the good anyway?” he remarked. “We’re too late. It’s a solid month since it happened.” Then he added, “If that’s what it was.”

“If that’s what it was! What else was it?” Fredericks caught him up sharply. “Do you have to be told? They disappeared completely, from a place right on the slope of the mountain. The drums were heard. Let others doubt it. We should know what that means, of all people.”

Cotter elevated his eyebrows in moody acceptance of the rebuke, but he let it go without answering.

“You’re willing to turn around and go back, I see.” Fredericks had turned toward him, was looking at him steadily. “Well, I’m not.”

“It’s not that, exactly. But if it’s too late, what then? What good will it do?” He elevated his shoulders, let them drop again. “What do we owe him, after all?”

“Life,” said Fredericks quietly. “We — that is, I — am responsible for this happening to him.”

“No, you’re not. Who told him to run off with her? Who told him to bring her down here, of all places?”

“I have a peculiar sense of duty, then. Indirect and roundabout. But a strong one. You go back if you want to, Cotter.”

Cotter smiled crookedly, looked down at the floor. “I have a peculiar sense of duty too. Not toward them, but toward you. Anything you say, that goes for me.”

The door had opened and the soldier stiffened to attention. A short, plump, bustling figure in beige linen emerged, mopping at the back of his neck with a handkerchief. He was saddle-complexioned. A tiny needle-pointed mustache and almost equally diminutive Vandyke beard suggested three black rays or spokes surrounding his mouth, which was rounded to clasp a projectile-like cigar. He struck off down the tiled corridor toward the stairhead with a quick-sounding, hard heel beat that was somewhat akin to the bite of castanets. An odor of mingled cigar smoke and expensive toilet water back-washed after him.

“That’s him, now,” Fredericks whispered hastily.

“That little—? No, it isn’t. It can’t be.”

“It is! I tell you. He must be going out for his siesta. If we don’t get him now, we won’t get him again until four or five this afternoon.” He jumped up, took a quick step or two across to the soldier, and whispered, “El ministro?”

The man didn’t answer openly, fearful of being overheard by the receding figure, but he gave a surreptitious nod of the head.

Fredericks hurried down the corridor after him and overtook him at the turn.

“Ministro, a moment of your time. We have been waiting three days to see you.”

His manner of speech was staccato, to match his footfall and other mannerisms. “A question of what?”

“The disappearance of four persons from Finca La Escondida on the twenty-fourth of last month.”

The Minister of the Interior had halted, hand to iron-wrought stair rail. “Ah, yes. I remember now. I have a request on my desk, referred to me by my subordinate.”

“Could you — could we ask you to consider it?”

“It means to go in there again, and it is very hot. I was just leaving.” He sighted down the length of his cigar toward the sun-scalded patio below, to which the stairs led. Evidently his powers of making a decision were as rapid-fire as the rest of his personality. Suddenly cigar and head had both swung around and he was already on his way back toward the door from which he had just emerged. Fredericks hung behind for a moment, taken by surprise. Then he quickly rejoined him.

At the door the minister motioned him back to the bench. “Wait out here. I will familiarize myself with it a second time. The details have escaped me.”’

The door closed and some twenty minutes went lethargically by.

“What’s taking him so long?” Cotter asked at last.

“I don’t know. I suppose the original memorandum has collected a lot of additional reports along the way, like a snowball that keeps growing, and he has to read the whole batch of them. Bureaucratic red tape is pretty much the same the world over.”

A blurred voice called out something from behind the door, echoing cavernously. The soldier took a quick side step, threw the door open behind him, and motioned them in.

The minister’s mood had been affected for the worse by the delay they had caused in his personal plans. He let them stand before him for the space of several uncomfortable minutes, thick underlip pouting sullenly, while he completed reading the last of a litter of papers of all sizes clipped together before him. Then he looked up.

“The request is refused,” he said briskly, and made a motion to shunt aside the accumulation before him.

Fredericks flashed a look of white-faced dismay at his companion. “But señor, these people’s lives are at stake. Surely—”

“It is regrettable, of course. However, this is simply an accident of nature. They have become lost, and may have died of exposure. There is no objection to your organizing a private search party if you wish to do so, of course. But there is no necessity that I can see for providing a military escort, as you ask us to. I see nothing in this case to warrant it. There is the expense involved, and my department is not wealthy. Frankly, we have other things to do. This not a matter for us, señores.”

“But a military escort, and a good-sized one, is essential if we hope to bring them back. It is the only way of saving their lives.”

The minister swept a lazy hand back and forth before his face, as though brushing away insects. “I cannot take the responsibility of dispatching a detachment of soldiers inland to an uninhabited valley, as you ask me to do. Against whom? Against what? When our men march, they must have something to march against.”

Fredericks brought his palm down despairingly against the desk. “But the valley is not uninhabited. That is what I have been trying to tell everyone!”

The minister regarded him coldly. “You have been trying to tell us, señor? It is a well-known fact that it has been uninhabited for five hundred years. Do you two gentlemen, who have just arrived down here, think you can tell us things about our own country that we do not know ourselves?” He waited to let this sink in. “I have soldiers on the very premises from the regions lying closest to there. Just a moment, I will convince you.” He raised his voice and shouted: “Guardia!”

The sentry stepped in, stood at attention just within the door.

“I believe you are from San Juan Obispo?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know the so called Tierra de los Muertos?”

“Very well, sir. It is just on the other side of the rise from us.”

“Is it inhabited? Does anyone live in it?”

“Not a soul, sir. Not a living soul.”

“That will do. Back to your post.” He waited until the door had closed, then he heeled his hands to the corners of his desk, about to rise and terminate the interview.

“Has he ever been in it himself, though, that man?” Fredericks asked quietly.

“Nobody has. Nobody goes there,” the minister snapped, the seat of his pants remaining poised clear of his chair.

“I have,” Fredericks said.

The minister’s pants rejoined the chair. “What did you say?” he faltered.

Fredericks went on speaking quietly, though his hand, still on the desk, was trembling slightly, from some inner emotion.

“Tell me, it is necessary to obtain a permit to engage in certain archaeological work, is it not? And a record is kept of the permits granted, the number of people involved, the destination, as well as the dates of departure and return.”

“All that is true, but I have not got them here.”

“But they are available to you, is it not so? Let me trespass on your time a moment longer. Inquire if there was not a permit granted covering a party of two, giving the names of Allan Fredericks and Hugh Cotter, in the late spring of 1946. And the date of return of the same expedition.” He stopped a moment. “I urge you to do this,” he added.

The minister stared at him a long moment. Then he executed another of his snap judgments. He decapitated the telephone on his desk with a slashing motion.

Cotter, who had taken no part in the interview, caught Fredericks’ eye. “Look out,” he cautioned under his breath.

“There isn’t any other way,” was the cryptic answer.

“Read it back to me,” the minister was saying.

There was a wait. He picked up his cigar, then interrupted himself to set it down again, untouched. “And what record is there covering the return? Read that.”

Suddenly he had replaced the phone as abruptly as though he had received an electric shock from it. His swarthy face had turned a shade paler. His collar bothered him.

“They have on record the fact that such a permit, to enter this valley, was granted to two men, Fredericks and Cotter, on April twentieth, 1946. In other words, two people, both males. The record goes on to indicate that the same party of two returned from there on September fifteenth, 1947, bringing out with them various relics, including a mummy case or sarcophagus, which they had obtained from a tomb they had excavated. All objects of intrinsic value, such as ornaments of gold or silver, they were compelled to turn over to the authorities, in conformance with the national law governing this matter. However, for the mummy case, after a brief official inspection, which showed that it contained nothing but the remains of a young girl, in a remarkable lifelike state of preservation, they were granted an export license, and allowed to carry it out of the country with them aboard ship, there being no museum or other such institution in this country, to take an interest in it.”

“That girl,” said Fredericks quietly, “was not dead. No wonder her ‘remains’ appeared to be in a lifelike state of preservation. She was a victim of sleeping sickness, or at least a jungle malady very close to it in form. She was fed intravenously, not only during the whole trip down from the mountains, but also during the entire shipboard voyage to the United States. Furthermore, the ‘official inspection’ of the mummy case was quickened, you might say greased, by payment of five hundred American dollars to five various officials who granted the export license. The lid was just lifted, then put right back on again.”

The minister poured himself a drink. It made a lump in his throat going down. His collar still bothered him. He found it warm; his forehead had a satin gloss.

“Wha-what are you saying?” he croaked. “How can you know this? Who are you?”

“Because I am the archaeologist involved, I am one of those two men who brought her out of there in that mummy case. She was not dead then, but she was at least comatose. And she is not dead today, and very far from comatose. She is as much alive as you are, sitting there, or as I am sitting here. Furthermore, I am here to report to you that she has gone back there, to where we first brought her from, and dragged with her a poor unfortunate devil who, according to the civil law of the United States, is her legally married husband!”

The minister was no longer sitting. The minister was very much on his feet, and in a state of gesticulating excitement’ almost bordering on frenzy. They had to keep switching their heads this way and that to keep his face and figure in front of their eyes.

“But my official capacity is involved!” he spluttered. “This comes under the jurisdiction of my department! This must not come out! This must go no further! A five-hundred-dollar bribe! A living girl taken out of a region that I have reported over and over to my superiors is uninhabited! Are you trying to get me dismissed? Are you trying to make me a liar, a grafter?”

“She’s not the only one,” Fredericks said, clenching his jaw grimly. “There’s a whole tribe of others in there. Small but complete. Anywhere from three hundred to five hundred souls. If you didn’t know it before, I’m telling you now.”

“It’s not true! It’s a lie!” the minister thundered, banging his desk. “My department never took five hundred dollars from anyone! Nobody living was ever brought out of there, because nobody living is in there! My department says so! I say so! I will back that up to the full extent of my authority!”

He dashed off something on a slip of paper, went to the door, handed it to the soldier standing out there, and came back again.

“Wait outside. Cotter,” Fredericks said in an undertone to his companion. “I don’t like the turn this is taking. I think one of us ought to safeguard his freedom of movement, to be in a position to help the other if it should become necessary.”

“Who’s he?” the minister demanded suspiciously, as Cotter made the move to get up and go.

“Just a traveling acquaintance,” Fredericks said. “He’s not involved. He doesn’t know of the affair.”

“He overheard this conversation, didn’t he?” the minister suggested craftily.

“He doesn’t understand Spanish.” Fredericks signaled surreptitiously to Cotter to hasten his departure, while the chance was still available.

Cotter closed the door after him and sat down on the bench outside in the hall again.

Suddenly the soldier who had been sent with the message returned at a jog trot. Behind him, in grim intentness, came a number of other people, not soldiers, but wearing some less identifiable garb. Two of these were carrying a pair of poles between them, underarm, with furled canvas around them.

There was a brief, voiceless, but strenuous scuffle from the minister’s office, moments after they had all gone in there. But when Cotter rose and tried to re-enter, the soldier suddenly presented his rifle, muzzle forward. “Keep out,” he warned.

Suddenly the party came out again. The two poles had been expanded to the width of a stretcher, and within the canvas belly of this, strapped to the point of contortion, and even gagged, lay the helpless, heaving form of Fredericks.

Cotter tried to halt them, only to be violently shoved aside and flattened against the wall.

“What are they doing to my friend? Where are they taking him?”

“To San Lázaro,” was the ominous, tight-lipped answer from the man trailing at the rear of the grim procession.

“What’s San Lázaro?” Cotter caught him by the arm to make him stand a moment and answer. “The jail here?”

“Much worse. From the jail they come out again, sooner or later. From San Lázaro, never. It’s the house of the one-way doors. The asylum for the hopelessly insane.”

“But he’s not insane!” Cotter cried out in desperation.

“He will be,” the man said. “So what’s the difference — now or later?”

“And him,” said the livid-faced minister, who had been listening from the doorway, “you can take to the jail.”

Two soldiers promptly pinioned Cotter by the shoulders. “For how long, sir?”

“That is difficult to say,” admitted the minister. “Until he forgets the Spanish that he did not know when he was a witness to this unforgivable scene. Three years? Five? Who can tell? It takes longer to forget a language than it does to learn one.”

“I’m an American citizen!” Cotter bawled in terror from the far end of the corridor.

“Just enter him under the name of some inmate who has already passed away,” the minister added. “If he’s not booked under an American name, who can tell whether he’s an American or not? These little mistakes will happen.”