65 Short Stories (98 page)

But how much must that old woman know! With her sharp eyes and sharp ears she must have had the chance to discover matters that were closely hidden from persons that seemed less insignificant. Ashenden thought again how he had the impression that something of real consequence was being prepared round about him. It was curious that Holzminden should have come to the hotel that day; and why had Prince Ali and the pasha, those wild gamblers, wasted an evening in playing contract-bridge with him? It might be that some new plan was in question, it might be that the very greatest affairs were afoot, and perhaps what the old woman had to say might make all the difference in the world. It might mean defeat or victory. It might mean anything. And there she lay powerless to speak. For a long time Ashenden stared at her in silence.

‘Has it got anything to do with the war, Miss King?’ he said on a sudden, loudly.

Something passed through her eyes and a tremor shot across her little old face. It was a distinct movement. Something strange and horrible was happening and Ashenden held his breath. The tiny frail body was suddenly convulsed and that old woman, as though by a final desperate effort of will, raised herself up in the bed. Ashenden sprang forward to support her.

‘England,’ she said, just that one word, in a harsh cracked voice, and fell back in his arms.

When he laid her down on the pillow, he saw that she was dead.

THE HAIRLESS MEXICAN

♦

 ‘Do you like macaroni?’ said R

‘What do you mean by macaroni?’ answered Ashenden. ‘It is like asking me if I like poetry. I like Keats and Wordsworth and Verlaine and Goethe. When you say macaroni, do you mean spaghetti, tagliatelli, 
vermicelli, fettuccini, 
tufali, 
fatfalli, 
or just macaroni?’

‘Macaroni,’ replied R, a man of few words.

‘I like all simple things, boiled eggs, oysters and caviare, truite au 
bleu, 
grilled salmon, roast lamb (the saddle by preference), cold grouse, treacle tart, and rice pudding. But of all simple things the only one I can eat day in and day out, not only without disgust but with the eagerness of an appetite unimpaired by excess, is macaroni.’

‘I am glad of that because I want you to go down to Italy.’

Ashenden had come from Geneva to meet R at Lyons and having got there before him had spent the afternoon wandering about the dull, busy and prosaic streets of that thriving city. They were sitting now in a restaurant on the 
place 
to which Ashenden had taken R on his arrival because it was reputed to give you the best food in that part of France. But since in so crowded a resort (for the Lyonese like a good dinner) you never knew what inquisitive ears were pricked up to catch any useful piece of information that might fall from your lips, they had contented themselves with talking of indifferent things. They had reached the end of an admirable repast.

‘Have another glass of brandy?’ said R

‘No, thank you,’ answered Ashenden, who was of an abstemious turn.

‘One should do what one can to mitigate the rigours of war,’ remarked R as he took the bottle and poured out a glass for himself and another for Ashenden.

Ashenden, thinking it would be affectation to protest, let the gesture pass, but felt bound to remonstrate with his chief on the unseemly manner in which he held the bottle.

‘In my youth I was always taught that you should take a woman by the waist and a bottle by the neck,’ he murmured.

‘I am glad you told me. I shall continue to hold a bottle by the waist and give women a wide berth.’

Ashenden did not know what to reply to this and so remained silent. He sipped his brandy and R called for his bill. It was true that he was an important person, with power to make or mar quite a large number of his fellows, and his opinions were listened to by those who held in their hands the fate of empires; but he could never face the business of tipping a waiter without an embarrassment that was obvious in his demeanour. He was tortured by the fear of making a fool of himself by giving too much or of exciting the waiter’s icy scorn by giving too little. When the bill came he passed some hundred-franc notes over to Ashenden and said:

‘Pay him, will you? I can never understand French figures.’

The groom brought them their hats and coats.

‘Would you like to go back to the hotel?’ asked Ashenden.

‘We might as well.’

It was early in the year, but the weather had suddenly turned warm, and they walked with their coats over their arms. Ashenden knowing that R liked a sitting-room had engaged one for him, and to this, when they reached the hotel, they went. The hotel was old-fashioned and the sitting-room was vast. It was furnished with a heavy mahogany suite upholstered in green velvet and the chairs were set primly round a large table. On the walls, covered with a dingy paper, were large steel engravings of the battles of Napoleon, and from the ceiling hung an enormous chandelier once used for gas, but now fitted with electric bulbs. It flooded the cheerless room with a cold, hard light.

‘This is very nice,’ said R, as they went in.

‘Not exactly cosy,’ suggested Ashenden.

‘No, but it looks as though it were the best room in the place. It all looks very 
good 
to me.’

He drew one of the green velvet chairs away from the table and, sitting down, lit a cigar. He loosened his belt and unbuttoned his tunic.

‘I always thought I liked a cheroot better than anything,’ he said, ‘but since the war I’ve taken quite a fancy to Havanas. Oh well, I suppose it can’t last for ever.’ The corners of his mouth flickered with the beginning of a smile. ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good.’

Ashenden took two chairs, one to sit on and one for his feet, and when R saw him he said: ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ and swinging another chair out from the table with a sigh of relief put his boots on it.

‘What room is that next door?’ he asked.

‘That’s your bedroom.’

‘And on the other side?’

‘A banqueting hall.’

R got up and strolled slowly about the room and when he passed the windows, as though in idle curiosity, peeped through the heavy rep curtains that covered them, and then returning to his chair once more comfortably put his feet up.

‘It’s just as well not to take any more risk than one need,’ he said.

He looked at Ashenden reflectively. There was a slight smile on his thin lips, but the pale eyes, too closely set together, remained cold and steely. R’s stare would have been embarrassing if Ashenden had not been used to it. He knew that R was considering how he would broach the subject that he had in mind. The silence must have lasted for two or three minutes.

‘I’m expecting a fellow to come and see me tonight,’ he said at last. ‘His train gets in about ten.’ He gave his wrist-watch a glance. ‘He’s known as the Hairless Mexican.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s hairless and because he’s a Mexican.’

‘The explanation seems perfectly satisfactory,’ said Ashenden.

‘He’ll tell you all about himself He talks nineteen to the dozen. He was on his uppers when I came across him. It appears that he was mixed up in some revolution in Mexico and had to get out with nothing but the clothes he stood up in. They were rather the worse for wear when I found him. If you want to please him you call him General. He claims to have been a general in Huerta’s army, at least I think it was Huerta; anyhow he says that if things had gone right he would be Minister of War now and no end of a big bug. I’ve found him very useful. Not a bad chap. The only thing I really have against him is that he will use scent.’

‘And where do I come in?’ asked Ashenden.

‘He’s going down to Italy. I’ve got rather a ticklish job for him to do and I want you to stand by. I’m not keen on trusting him with a lot of money. He’s a gambler and he’s a bit too fond of the girls. I suppose you came from Geneva on your Ashenden passport?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got another for you, a diplomatic one, by the way, in the name of Somerville with visas for France and Italy. I think you and he had better travel together. He’s an amusing cove when he gets going, and I think you ought to know one another.’

‘What is the job?’

‘I haven’t yet quite made up my mind how much it’s desirable for you to know about it.’

Ashenden did not reply. They eyed one another in a detached manner, as though they were strangers who sat together in a railway carriage and each wondered who and what the other was.

‘In your place I’d leave the General to do most of the talking. I wouldn’t tell him more about yourself than you find absolutely necessary. He won’t ask you any questions, I can promise you that, I think he’s by way of being a gentleman after his own fashion.’

‘By the way, what is his real name?’

‘I always call him Manuel. I don’t know that he likes it very much, his name is Manuel Carm.ona.’

‘I gather by what you have not said that he’s an unmitigated scoundrel.’ R smiled with his pale blue eyes.

‘I don’t know that I’d go quite as far as that. He hasn’t had the advantages of a public-school education. His ideas of playing the game are not quite the same as yours or mine. I don’t know that I’d leave a gold cigarette-case about when he was in the neighbourhood, but if he lost money to you at poker and had pinched your cigarette-case he would immediately pawn it to pay you.

If he had half a chance he’d seduce your wife, but if you were up against it he’d share his last crust with you. The tears will run down his face when he hears Gounod’s 
Ave Maria 
on the gramophone, but if you insult his dignity he’ll shoot you like a dog. It appears that in Mexico it’s an insult to get between a man and his drink and he told me himself that once when a Dutchman who didn’t know passed between him and the bar he whipped out his revolver and shot him dead.’

Did nothing happen to him?’

‘No, it appears that he belongs to one of the best families. The matter was hushed up and it was announced in the papers that the Dutchman had committed suicide. He did practically. I don’t believe the Hairless Mexican has a great respect for human life.’

Ashenden, who had been looking intently at R, started a little and he watched more carefully than ever his chiefs tired, lined, and yellow face. He knew that he did not make this remark for nothing.

‘Of course a lot of nonsense is talked about the value of human life. You might just as well say that the counters you use at poker have an intrinsic value. Their value is what you like to make it; for a general giving battle, men are merely counters and he’s a fool if he allows himself for sentimental reasons to look upon them as human beings.’

‘But, you see, they’re counters that feel and think and if they believe they’re being squandered they are quite capable of refusing to be used any more.’

‘Anyhow, that’s neither here nor there. We’ve had information that a man called Constantine Andreadi is on his way from Constantinople with certain documents that we want to get hold of He’s a Greek. He’s an agent of Enver Pasha and Enver has great confidence in him. He’s given him verbal messages that are too secret and too important to be put on paper. He’s sailing from the Piraeus, on a boat called the 
Ithaca, 
and will land at Brindisi on his way to Rome. He’s to deliver his dispatches at the German Embassy and impart what he has to say personally to the ambassador.’

‘I see.’

At this time Italy was still neutral; the Central Powers were straining every nerve to keep her so; the Allies were doing what they could to induce her to declare war on their side.

‘We don’t want to get into trouble with the Italian authorities, it might be fatal, but we’ve got to prevent Andreadi from getting to Rome.’

‘At any cost?’ asked Ashenden.

‘Money’s no object,’ answered R, his lips twisting into a sardonic smile. ‘What do you propose to do?’

‘I don’t think you need bother your head about that.’

‘I have a fertile imagination,’ said Ashenden.

‘I want you to go down to Naples with the Hairless Mexican. He’s very keen on getting back to Cuba. It appears that his friends are organizing a show and he wants to be as near at hand as possible so that he can hop over to Mexico when things are ripe. He needs cash. I’ve brought money down with me, in American dollars, and I shall give it to you tonight. You’d better carry it on your person.’

‘Is it much?’

‘It’s a good deal, but I thought it would be easier for you if it wasn’t bulky, so I’ve got it in thousand-dollar notes. You will give the Hairless Mexican the notes in return for the documents that Andreadi is bringing.’

A question sprang to Ashenden’s lips, but he did not ask it. He asked another instead.

‘Does this fellow understand what he has to do?’