Holly walked out of the stall, and along the passage toward the door. There his fingers found a light switch — Starke had not known that the stable was fitted with electricity — and flooded the place with light.
He walked back toward Starke, stood over him grimly. Dangling from his fingers was a gun.
“Here is the gun, Starke!” he said.
But Starke did not hear him.
Again, there was the pounding of horse’s hoofs. Again, Holly spoke to Starke.
“Tommy is taking a canter, Starke. He often does that — out the south door, around the house, and back through the north door—”
But it was a waste of time talking to Starke, so Holly went to the north door to meet Tommy.
Arson in the Jungle
by George Allan England
When $200,000 in Big Bills Burned, but Only Charred “Ones” and “Twos” Could be Found— Well, It Looked Funny
I
The true story of this crime was given me by Secret Service Investigator “Hartwell,” some of whose other adventures I have already recorded. To give his real name would not only endanger his life, but would impair his usefulness to Uncle Sam and would probably lose him his job. Furthermore, as the brother of a former president of a certain Latin-American republic is involved, fictitious names must be used.
Hartwell is a truly extraordinary man, of Franco-American parentage and born in Mexico. He has also lived much among Italians. Thus he speaks French. English, Spanish and Italian perfectly, without a trace of accent. He passes freely as a citizen of the United States, a Frenchman or an Italian, as well as a Spaniard or a Latin-American; and knows not only many local dialects, but also crook slang in four languages.
Hartwell is the last man in the world you’d suspect of being a Secret Service man. He’s not piercing-eyed, lean or in any way like Sherlock Holmes. On the contrary, he’s round-faced, stout, good-natured and cheerful, and an easy mixer. He looks like a salesman, business-man or contractor; and this helps him along. The underworld can’t believe that such an easy-going, jolly and friendly chap can be dangerous. This is one prime reason for his long record of brilliant success.
So much, then, for Hartwell. Now his inside story of the famous $200,000 Pay Roll Arson Case.
In the fall of 1929, the big insurance concern known as Lloyd’s reported a heavy loss by fire. This loss was that of a $200,000 pay roll, all in American bills, at the little town of San Fulano de Tal, in the banana Republic of Equis Igriega, somewhere to the southward of the U. S. A. — never mind just where.
“All we know,” they told me, “is that the pay roll was consigned to the Mengano Sugar Company, about twenty miles from San Fulano, to pay off both the office force and the field hands for a month. The money reached San Fulano, all right. The night of its arrival, before it had been delivered to the Mengano Central, or sugar mill, the post office burned up, and the money was lost — or so the Postal Department of the Republic has the honor to report. We aren’t making any charge of crime, theft, arson, collusion, or anything, but before we pay the insurance we want to know what it’s all about. Now go to it.”
I went to it. First of all, I got a list of the bills sent. There were so many fives, so many tens and twenties. No ones or twos. All fives or better.
My trip to San Fulano is of no importance, except to say that the place was far up-country, away beyond the terminus of even such narrow-gauge and jerkwater railroads as that Spig republic boasted. I let it be casually known, all the way, that my name was Señor Alguien, arid I looked and dressed and talked the part of a mining engineer from Mexico City, interested in picking up any good properties that might be lying around loose.
The last seventy-five kilometers I made along jungle trails on horseback in two days, and as I weigh close to two hundred and was pretty soft from lack of roughing it for some time, it was a mighty lame mining expert who one fine afternoon drew rein in front of the Hotel Encanto, at San Fulano de Tal.
I’ll waste no time describing the town, except to mention three or four alleged streets, some banana palms and coconut trees, plenty of pigs, poultry and buzzards, and a sufficiency of mañana natives in bare feet and dirty white cotton clothes. Also a store, a town hall and a telegraph office, a timeworn church, a few rurales in charge of a lieutenant, and a jail that looked like the last hoosegow in the world I’d ever want to see the inside of. San Fulano seemed to be suffering extensively from hookworm and a lack of insomnia. But the rifles of the rurales were well oiled, and the lieutenant was a black gentleman with a wicked eye. What you’d call a very bad hombre.
As for the Hotel Encanto (which means Enchantment), the least said the most eloquent. I’ve seen a good many better ones of that type, but none worse. However, it was that or else sleep with the scorpions out under a palm tree, so I hired three beds and got settled the best I could.
II
Why three beds? Well, I’ll tell you. There was just one sleeping room, with eight beds in it, at forty cents American a throw. I didn’t want any Spig snoring close to me, on either side, so I took three beds and slept in the middle one, which set me back a dollar twenty a day.
I got cleaned up as well as I could, considering that there was no water except down at a pump in the patio, where horses and mules and various other kinds of live stock were quartered. Plenty of live stock in the beds, too, small but ambitious. That sort of thing, however, is all in the game. I figured that if I didn’t get punctured by anything bigger than a chinche, or B-flat, before I got through, I’d be sitting pretty.
The grub — black beans, tortillas and empanadas or meat cooked in dough — was ladeled out to us in an alleged dining room where dogs and pigs wandered round, and chickens pecked on the tiled floor or even hopped on to the chairs and flew up on the tables, if not shoo’d off. The guests were rancheros, cattle-men and sugar-hands, and all that sort. But one of them was different, a priest named Padre Ninguno, and he was a good scout if there ever was one.
I introduced myself and chummed up to him right away, and spilled my little tale — how I’d been sent there by the Estrella Mining Company, from Mexico City, to look up abandoned mining properties, especially Indian mines. In a day or two we got as thick as two peas in a pod. Of course my being considered a mining man and O. K. by the padre put me in right with everybody, and for the present nobody had the slightest suspicion of my real character or object.
Well, I had my optics peeled, and sized up things pretty carefully, including the ruins of the burned post office. When Sunday came, I was mighty careful to go t o church and contribute liberally. The padre certainly thought I was the goods, and invited me to his house that afternoon.
As I say, the padre was a regular guy, and we had a few refreshments, native style. Without seeming to steer the conversation, which was, of course, all in Spanish, none the less I managed to get it around to the post office fire. The good padre was glad to have something to gossip about.
“A great calamity, señor,” he explained. “And what a fatality that so much money should have been in the building when it just happened to burn! All due to a storm, too.”
“How so, padre?”
“Well, because of the storm, the steamer that was bringing the money wasn’t expected to arrive at Rio Fangoso that day. Don José Chanchullero, the paymaster at the Mengano sugar-central, had been waiting for the pay roll, but went away without it. The steamer came in unexpectedly, and the registered mail pouch was brought here and put in the post office.”