Shaw walked quickly into the departure building.
He wished he had never come to La Paz at all.
Chapter Fifteen
Arriving early next morning at Punta Arenas, Shaw at first got no satisfaction beyond the somewhat nebulous pleasure of being in the world’s southernmost city. Nothing, it seemed, was known in Punta Arenas of any suspicious happenings in the Magellan Strait, and the Vice-Consul, in whom Shaw confided only so far as was essential and no farther, knew nothing whatever of anything, any project, likely to bring a floating dock into the area. After a while, however, he remembered something and he gave Shaw some information that, though unremarkable enough in itself, was clearly red hot in the light of background knowledge. And he also knew of a place called the Casa Pluma, a dive, apparently, on the waterfront of Rio Grande.…
This information decided Shaw to fly as soon as possible farther south across the Strait to another spot that also had a southernmost-in-the-world record: the airstrip at the small port of Rio Grande in the Argentine sector of Tierra del Fuego, the airstrip at the world’s end. When he got there Shaw realized that he didn’t need the knowledge of Rio Grande’s claim to fame to remind him that he hadn’t much land now between him and the South Pole. Though it was ‘summer’ down here the place was bleak and grey, depressing and forlorn.
Which description, he realized a little later when he was sitting in a fusty back room behind a small shop, could be applied to another feature of the Tierra del Fuego scene — Hipolito Santos, general storekeeper and Her Britannic Majesty’s Vice-Consul in Rio Grande. Or more strictly Acting Vice-Consul, for the Vice-Consul himself had died a month or so earlier and no firm appointment in his place had yet been made. Santos was purely a stop-gap, a grey and dreary stop-gap. But — and Shaw found this interesting — Hipolito Santos was also something else: he was one very scared little man. Also he was fussily pompous, very conscious of his position, but, Shaw could have sworn, dead lazy in the performance of his duty except when that duty presented him with an opportunity of being officious.
Santos’ grey face had gone greyer, almost the colour of the grey alpaca grocer’s coat that he wore, when Shaw had given him the merest clue as to what his job was and had demanded his help. The hint of international complications seemed to conjure up the most fearsome visions in his mind.
‘Senor,’ Hipolito Santos had said beseechingly, his eyes bright with anxiety and his shoulders rising up around his ears, ‘I am merely the British Vice-Consul. That is all.’ He threw his arms into the air. ‘I help your seamen when they come to this port, and that is seldom enough in these days. I look after the interests of the few, the very few, British subjects in the area, when they ask me to — and that also is seldom.’
‘How many times have you acted in your social capacity since you became Acting Vice-Counsul?’ Shaw asked blandly.
Santos shrugged again, rolled his eyes, and muttered something. Then he said reluctantly, ‘Since Senor Galvone died… none.’
Shaw gave a tight grin. ‘Then it’s about time you did something in return for the honour of calling yourself a diplomat, Senor Santos, isn’t it?’
Santos looked gratified at the magnificent description of his official rôle, but lifted his arms deprecatingly. He said, ‘I must have no connexion with illegal activities.’
‘Who said anything about illegal activities?’
‘Well, perhaps not… but then neither can I act against the interests of my own country, which is Argentina, whether or not I am—’
Shaw broke in angrily, ‘I’m not asking you to do that. But it’s curious you should jump to conclusions about illegal activities, isn’t it? It rather seems to me, Senor Santos, as if you may have some information that I should find useful. Right?’
The little grey man stared, plucking nervously at his lower lip, dark eyes peering anxiously over drooping bags of flesh. If he’d had a beard, Shaw thought, he would have looked like a rat peering out of a ball of oakum.…
‘Come on,’ Shaw snapped. ‘I haven’t got all the time in the world.’
‘There is nothing. Nothing.’
‘Uh-huh… Now look, Senor.’ Shaw sat forward, his face hard and set. ‘I’m only asking for information, not a sheriff’s posse. I’m not asking you to go so far as to actually do anything. I’m sure that would be too much to ask. All I want to know is, have you anything to report that might be of interest in the area? Any strange faces, any odd happenings… either around here or farther north in the Magellan Strait, perhaps?’
‘None, Senor. You have already told me that the Vice-Consul at Punta Arenas knows of nothing in this area.’ Santos fidgeted impatiently, nervily. ‘How can you expect me to know, when Rio Grande is not even on the Magellan Strait?’
Shaw sighed. ‘All right, forget Magellan, then. But our man in Punta Arenas told me something else, Senor, which I haven’t yet told you. And that is,’ he went on deliberately, ‘that some German nationals have been seen recently in Rio Grande. Do you know anything about those Germans, Senor Santos?’
‘Nothing.’ The mouth had tightened, the whole aspect of that grey little face was suddenly even more watchful and alert. He was a shocking actor.
‘You’re quite certain of that?’ Shaw asked.
‘Quite.’
Shaw’s eyes narrowed. ‘You don’t even know whether or not these Germans are in fact in Rio Grande, even though news of their presence has reached as far as Punta Arenas in Chile?’
‘I do not.’
‘H’m. I see.’ Shaw stared at him. ‘Then how is it they were seen coming to your store, Senor?’
‘Coming to my store…?’ Santos licked his lips. ‘I would not necessarily know if they had or not. They could have been served by my assistant, in my absence elsewhere. I cannot say.’
Shaw gave a snort. ‘And your assistant wouldn’t have mentioned to you afterwards, as a matter of interest, that there were Germans in the port? Is Rio Grande as cosmopolitan as all that?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘You’ll have to do better than that, Santos.’
They stared at one another. The grey face began to crumple a little and Santos mopped sweat from his forehead. He said, ‘I do not know what you are getting at, Senor. I do not know anything.’
‘Right,’ Shaw said with icy geniality, ‘Let’s be charitable and say you’ve got a bad memory. Maybe this’ll jog it a little.’ Taking a chance on his estimate of the man being correct, he brought out his Webley and aimed it straight at Santos’ chest. ‘This isn’t very constitutional, I know, but time’s getting short, Santos. If you don’t recover your memory within thirty seconds I’m going to squeeze this trigger.’
Santos shook. He gave a sudden cry and said, ‘You will be caught, you will be—’
‘Possibly, but you’d be surprised what my department can get away with. Anyhow, that won’t be your worry, will it, Senor?’
Shaw had summed up Santos accurately enough: the man was spineless. The Webley did the trick. After another terrified cry, the grey man started to open up.
He said in a whining voice, ‘You are not the first to threaten my life. It is disgraceful. Really, disgraceful.’ He mopped at his face again, his hands shaking. ‘Never again shall I consent to fill such a vacancy as this.’