Hall finished his shave and dressed, toying all the while with the notion of walking down the corridor to Jerry"s room before she had a chance to leave. Pepe would heartily approve, he thought, and, besides, since that hour in the woods on top of Monte Azul, Jerry had not exactly indicated that he would be unwelcome if he made a try. But while he speculated, Jerry phoned him again from downstairs. "Daydreaming?" she asked, and he answered, "Yes, about you."
She met him at the elevator in the lobby. "Come on," she laughed, "let"s go to that place in back of the Cathedral. The little Dutch drip was around here a second ago. He wants to tell you the story of his life, he told me."
"O.K. Let"s just keep walking."
She took his arm as they left the hotel. "Miss me?" she asked.
"I did."
"You"re a liar."
Hall winced. "Is that the best you have to say? How about the magnificent doctor?"
"He"s really good, Matt. I"m not kidding. I"ve worked with some corking medics in my day, but this guy is tops." She told Hall about the masterly way in which Ansaldo had taken command of the situation, kicking all the San Hermano doctors out of the sick room and examining Tabio only in the presence of Marina, Jerry and Tabio"s son.
"What"s the matter with him?"
"Ansaldo has an idea. But he has to make certain."
"What does it look like to you?"
"It could be many things. What"s good to drink here?"
"Anything. Scotch and soda?"
"Oke. But really, Matt, you should have seen Doctor in that sick room."
She launched into a long and enthusiastic account of the doctor at work.
The girl was on the point of repeating herself when Hall cut her short.
"Listen," he said. "Let me tell you something about Anibal Tabio and his generation of young democrats who walked out of jail and started to make history." He told her of the schools and the hospitals which had been built in the country in the last decade, of the minimum-wage laws, of the work of Tabio followers like Dr. Gonzales.
He told her how he first met Tabio in Geneva. "His was supposed to be just a small voice in the League; a little South American dressing to make the whole show look good. But a month after he got there, Mussolini started to pop his goo-goo eyes at Ethiopia. h.o.a.re and Laval and Halifax were so nice and ready to give the Italian steamroller a healthy shove downhill to Addis Ababa. Then one afternoon Litvinov got up to fire some heavy shots. But that was expected. Then del Vayo started, and the fun began. Because, when Vayo was through, it was Tabio"s turn. And lady, what Anibal Tabio did to hot shots like h.o.a.re and Laval without even raising his voice was just plain murder."
Jerry put her hand on Hall"s arm. "I suppose I read about it in the papers at the time. It didn"t mean much to me then. I"m afraid it didn"t mean much to me until right now, Matt."
"Weren"t you interested in what happened in the world?"
"Not too much, I"m afraid. I was interested in myself. I was making up my mind to go to Reno, and then I sat in Reno for six weeks cramming on my old school books, and then I was off to nursing school."
"Didn"t Ethiopia, and later Spain, make any impression upon you?" Hall"s question was very gently stated.
"Of course it did, Matt. I was sorry for the Africans and I was sorry for the Spaniards. I wanted Mussolini to get licked and I wanted the Loyalists to win. But most of all I wanted to get through nursing school and then earn enough money to study medicine."
"In other words, if Geraldine Olmstead got her M.D., all would be right with the world, eh?"
She avoided his eyes. "It sounds stupid and mean," she said. "But I guess I deserve it. I"m afraid that was the idea."
"When did the idea die?"
"About ten seconds ago, when you put it into words," she admitted. "I never thought of it in that way before. But I wasn"t the only one, Matt."
"h.e.l.l, no! You were in a majority when the war started. The whole country was sitting back and, as it thought, minding its own business.
We thought we were wonderfully immune until the bombs began to drop on Pearl Harbor."
"Now you"re being gallant," she laughed. "There were plenty of people in the country like--like you, Matt. Have we time for another drink?"
Hall was staring into s.p.a.ce. Suddenly he exploded. "_Madre de Dios!_ Now I remember!"
"Remember what? You look like you"ve seen a ghost."
"I have." Hall tapped his head. "In here."
Jerry laughed. "I wish someone would come along and tell me what this is all about."
"There"s no time. Let"s get back to the hotel. I"ve got to change clothes and there"s a guy I want to see before I go to the party."
"But what"s it all about?"
"I"ll tell you later."
Walking back to the hotel, he asked Jerry if she had ever found the solution to a problem in a dream. "Because just now I did. Do you remember when you woke me up this morning that I sounded like a guy in a fog? Well, I was. But just a few minutes ago at that table on the sidewalk, the fog lifted."
"And now you feel better?"
"Sure. It"s all over."
"I think you"re lying. I think that whatever it is, it"s just beginning."
"No. It"s over."
Jerry was right. But what she did not know was that the fog had lifted on Dr. Varela Ansaldo. The doctor was the Spanish officer of Hall"s dream, the one at whose back Hall hurled the knife. And at the table, sipping his second drink, Hall had recalled in a flash where he had seen Varela Ansaldo before. It had happened in Burgos, in April of 1938, during a review of the 12th Division of the fascist army. Ansaldo, wearing the uniform of a Franco major, with a big Falange yoke and arrows sewn over the left breast pocket, had shared a bench on the reviewing stand with an Italian and a German officer. Directly behind them, on that day, had flown the flags of Imperial Spain, The Falange, n.a.z.i Germany and fascist Italy. Hall remembered the tableau vividly, remembered so clearly perhaps because while watching the review from the sidewalk he had been annoyed by the staff photographer of Franco"s _Arriba_, who must have shot a hundred pictures of the officials in the stands that day and who had also shoved Hall aside or stepped on his toes before shooting each picture.
"I"ll see you at the Emba.s.sy tonight," he said.
"Oke. But get that scowl off your face first," she smiled. "You promised to be nice tonight, and right now you look as if you are planning to kill someone with your bare hands."
_Chapter six_
The American Emba.s.sy was three blocks beyond the Presidencia. Hall wanted to walk to the party, but when he reached the street he became self-conscious about his palm-beach tuxedo jacket, and he hailed a strange cab.
The Emba.s.sy was housed in an old Spanish palace which a former Amba.s.sador had left to the United States Government in his will. After the first World War, when the government had taken t.i.tle to the palace, Washington sent an architect and an office efficiency man to San Hermano to redesign the structure. The outside remained more or less intact. But inside, many changes had been effected. The s.p.a.cious street floor, designed as the slave quarters in the seventeenth century and later converted to storerooms and servants" quarters, was now a hive of offices and waiting rooms. The second floor was devoted largely to a tremendous ballroom, a state dining room, and the tapestried private offices of the Amba.s.sador himself. The living quarters of the Amba.s.sador took up the third floor, while the low-ceilinged fourth floor, originally designed for soldiers, was now given over to servants" rooms.
A secretary at the entrance checked Hall"s name off against a list on a teak table. He took the carpeted stairs to the ballroom. Two butlers stood at a screen in the doorway to the big room. The first butler announced his name, but not loud enough to disturb any of the Amba.s.sador"s two hundred-odd guests. The second butler nodded to Hall, and led the way through a maze of dignitaries, diplomats" wives, and young people trying to dance to the music a rumba band was producing from a bandstand in a corner. Hall followed him patiently, looking for a sign of Jerry"s red hair. The butler nodded gravely at a young girl dancing with a thin Latin in tails. She left her dancing partner and advanced on Hall with an outstretched hand.
"Mr. Matthew Hall, Miss Margaret," the butler whispered.