“You’ll find campus life pretty tame after this, won’t you?” he remarked.
“Oh, I won’t be going back there with him. I’d hate to be a burden like that to him, poor dear, on his salary. I earn my own living — I’m a very good secretary. Of course I’ll have to look for a new job — I had to give up my old one when we came down here. But now I’ve developed a yen to see more of the world. I’m going to look for a business man who does a lot of travelling and who’d like to take a Girl Friday with him.”
“It mightn’t be easy to keep him at a strictly business-like distance.”
“Well, that mightn’t be hard to take if I really liked him,” she said frankly. “I’m not hopelessly old-fashioned.”
It was obvious that they could have made beautiful music together.
Loro arrived when they were having coffee, and accepted a seat and a bottle of Balboa beer. He was a pudgy brown man in a clean but unpressed white shirt and trousers, with long black hair, a single gold earring, and a wide white-toothed grin. He looked like a genial brigand, which was precisely what he was. Quite early in the Professor’s exile, he had volunteered to carry the Professor’s bag from a taxi into a hotel; turning from paying off the driver, the Professor had just been fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of his suitcase and Loro disappearing around the next corner. Mr Nestor, who could still put forth a most respectable turn of speed in an emergency, had overtaken him within two blocks, but to Loro’s even greater astonishment he had not capped his victory by calling for the police. Instead, he had given him five dollars and invited him to have a drink. Mr Nestor had already realized that a native accomplice might be almost indispensable to whatever bunco routine he finally adapted to the locale, and the problem of finding a native with the requisite guarantees of un-scrupulousness had been most happily solved.
Loro’s larcenous instinct immediately recognized a master, and he had become a very gratifying pupil. His part was relatively simple, and he brought to it an innate flair for dramatic deceit.
“I go back any time, señor,” he said in response to Alice’s prompting. “Bring back frogs. Me indio. No trouble.”
“Then why did they have trouble before, when you were with them?” Simon asked.
“Head-hunters seen me with yanquis, they think me like yanqui. Much trouble. Cut off all heads.” Loro made a graphic gesture, laughing delightedly. “Yanqui heads very valuable, but they take mine for small-change. Okeh. Me go alone, wear no clothes, they see me indio. Can be friends. No trouble.”
“Why didn’t you go back by yourself, then, and get the frogs?”
“Cost much money, señor. Too much for me.”
“But I thought they were going to be your friends.”
“Sure. All good friends. Okeh. Me go to cave. Okeh. Me take out frogs. Head-hunters see. They know gold very valuable. No more friends.”
“Tell him how you thought of doing it, Loro,” Alice said.
The guide leaned over his bare forearms on the table.
“Take plenty guns, yes. But who going to shoot them? No good take soldiers, they steal everything. Take other indios, they no can shoot straight. Or head-hunters come, they run away. Okeh. I got better idea.”
“What is it?”
“Sell guns to head-hunters. For gold frogs.”
“Do you think they’d trade?”
“Sure. Head-hunters want guns. Get more heads, more quick.” Loro chortled tolerantly. “Not our heads, we no worry.”
“How many guns would it take?” Simon asked.
“I think, fifty, with bullets — can do.”
“But that’s impossible,” Alice said. “You couldn’t bring in that many guns — the Panamanians would think you were trying to start a revolution. And you couldn’t buy that many here, for the same reason. Why, we had the worst time getting permits for our .22 and one shotgun.”
“Give me money, I get,” Loro said. “I have friends keep guns, wait for revolution, wait too long, get tired. They take money for guns now, think maybe they buy more guns mañana. But it cost plenty. Maybe two hundred dollars each gun and bullets.”
“Then we wouldn’t save anything,” said Alice. “It would still cost ten thousand dollars.”
“Save much trouble. No fighting. Save heads.”
Simon lighted a cigarette.
“What would you want for doing this?” he asked.
Loro’s fat cheeks dimpled on each side of his jolly bandit’s smile.
“Me, for love, señor. For the señorita I love. But perhaps I buy some guns more cheap, not pay all two hundred dollars. Me keep some dollars for working. You will not ask me give back, okeh?”
“Okay,” said the Saint steadily.
Loro stood up, beaming. He bowed deeply to the girl.
“I go now. I tell you soon, all is ready. Buenos noches, diosa.”
He was gone, melting into the darkness of the parking lot outside the patio as he might have melted into the jungle. Professor Nestor had painstakingly taught him to do this instead of scooting out as if he had dropped a fire-cracker with a short fuse.
Alice was looking at the Saint with misty eyes.
“I can hardly believe that my crazy idea is coming true,” she said.
“I wouldn’t call it so crazy,” he said. “And I like Loro’s contribution. Now that we’re more or less partners, would you risk telling me what part of the country this cache of golden frogs is in? I bought a map this afternoon to help my feeble geography.”
He took the map from his pocket and spread it on the table between them. She moved her chair around towards him until their shoulders touched, and the perfume of her hair was sweetly close to his nostrils as she leaned over to study the tinted outlines.
“We’re here.” She pointed to the south-eastern end of the Canal. “We’d have to charter a boat — the same one that Pappy and I had, if we can get it. We go out here, past Taboga Island, and down the coast to the mouth of this river. Then we go up the river — it’s quite deep, most of the time, and Loro knows all the channels — up — up around here...” Her red lacquered fingernail traced the winding course of the stream more hesitantly, but finally settled on a definite point. “Yes, the head-hunters’ territory starts here, at this third fork. So the cave would be a little farther north, about — there.”
Simon gazed at the map as if instead of its green ink he were seeing the lush rain jungle itself. Even though he was far more familiar with such stories than most men, he felt the tug of romance in it as appreciatively as the most frustrated slave to a stock market report. There could have been no higher tribute to the cunning with which Mr Nestor had blended its ingredients.
“I’m going to enjoy this trip,” he said.
“Would you want to go along?”
She asked the question for necessary information, but he stared at her almost indignantly.
“Do I look like a guy who’d miss anything like that?”
“No — quite the contrary. That’s one thing that bothers me. You’ve got that daredevil look. So I’ll have to make a condition. You’ve got to promise me you won’t try to go beyond that third fork on the river. You’re not an Indian like Loro, and you couldn’t pretend to be. I don’t want your head cut off and shrunk and dried. I wouldn’t want anything at that price. Promise you won’t try to go all the way — or it’s no deal.”