“Mr Blenkiron discovered Castor?” Janet asked.
“Yes. He came on the track of some of Castor’s agents and in his slow, patient way worked backwards to the source. Then he succeeded in laying himself alongside of Castor. How he managed it, I can’t tell. You see, he’s a big engineering swell, and I daresay he made himself useful over the actual copper business. Not as John Scantlebury Blenkiron, of course—as Senor Rosas, the agreeable denationalised Mexican, who has lived long enough in States to have a healthy hatred for them. He must have had a pretty delicate time, and I don’t suppose he was free from anxiety till he managed to arrange for his opportune decease. He was never in Castor’s full confidence, for he didn’t belong to the Conquistadors and never touched astura—gave out that he had to be careful in his habits because of his duodenum. His graft was that he understood the mining business like nobody else except Castor. But he had to be very cautious and had to stick like a limpet to his rock. Till he got in touch with Luis, he was next door to a prisoner.”
Janet asked how that had been contrived, and Luis replied, “Through Wilbur. I am afraid you underrated that drawling New England Consul! Wilbur is a great man. He was a friend of mine, and enlisted me, and then we enlisted others. After a time—after a long time—we got in touch with Lord Clanroyden.”
Archie drew a deep breath. “I think I see the layout,” he said. “That is to say, I see what Castor is driving at. But I can’t for the life of me see what we can do to stop him… Unless we got America to chip in first.”
“That was Blenkiron’s original plan,” said Sandy. “But it was too difficult—might have precipitated what we wanted to avoid. So we decided to do the job ourselves.”
Archie stared at the speaker, and then whistled long and low. “You haven’t lost your nerve, old man,” he said at last. “I’m on for anything you propose—likewise Janet—but what precisely are the odds? About a million to one?”
Sandy laughed and hoisted himself out of the chair.
“Not quite so bad! Stiffish, I agree, but not farcical. You see, we hold certain cards.”
“I should like to know about them,” said Archie. “You seem to me to have taken on one of the toughest propositions in history. A species of Napoleon—unlimited cash in—a big, docile, and highly competent staff—a graft everywhere—and at his back the republic of Olifa with the latest thing in armies. I assure you, it won’t do to underrate the Olifa field force. And to set against all that you’ve Blenkiron, more or less a prisoner—yourself—Miss Dasent and her friends—with Janet and me as camp-followers. It’s a sporting proposition.”
“Nevertheless, we hold certain cards. There’s a fair amount of explosive stuff in the Gran Seco and we have been organising it.”
“The Indians?”
“The Indians. Castor has bled them white with his accursed forced labour, but there’s still a reserve of manhood to be used—very desperate and vindictive manhood. Also, there is an element among the white employees. You have the Conquistadors at the top and the Indians at the bottom, and between them the foremen and the engineers. They are the weak point of Castor’s scheme, for they are not under his spell and know nothing of astura. He had to have skilled men and men whose interest lay in asking no questions, but he could never count upon their loyalty. He recruited every kind of scallywag and paid them lavishly, for he wanted people whose interest lay in sticking to the Gran Seco. But he has always had his troubles with them, and he and his Conquistadors in self-protection had to have their bodyguard. What sort of bodyguard? Oh, the usual bad-man type, the killer, the gunman… You must have noticed them in the Gran Seco, quiet, steady-eyed, frozen-faced fellows—the Town Police is full of them, and so was the Mines Police till Blenkiron began to weed them out.
“Well, Blenkiron has had a lot to do for the past year with recruiting both the foremen and engineers and the Mines Police, and we have managed to get them pretty well staffed with our own men. Hard cases, most of them, but a different kind of hard case. Blackguards often, but a more wholesome brand of blackguard. The Gran Seco at this moment is a sort of chess-board of black and white, and we know pretty exactly which are the white squares. If a row begins, we calculate that we have rather the balance of strength on that cheerful plateau. But I hope there will be no row. I don’t like that crude way of doing things.”
Archie passed a hand over his forehead.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said plaintively. “There must be a row, a most unholy row. You want to raise the Indians, assisted by your friends in the Police and in the Mines, against the Administration. The Gobernador, if he is what you say he is, will resist like a tiger, and he has his gunmen behind him, and Olifa at the back of all. You will have to fight Castor… “
Sandy smiled. “Oh, no. We will not fight Castor. We mean to fight for him. Castor will be our leader. The Indians in the back-country are wearing medals with his face on them, and look to him as their deliverer. That’s the advantage of being a mystery man. No one knows him, except the Conquistadors, who don’t count. He is going to be the Bolivar of the Gran Seco, the pioneer of liberty.”
“Good God! Do you mean to say you are working in with him?”
“No. I won’t go as far as that. But we hope to make him work for us. He won’t like it, but it’s the obvious move in the game. It will not be a rising of the oppressed against the Administration, but a revolt of the whole Gran Seco, oppressed and oppressors, against the tyrannical government of Olifa. And in the forefront of the battle will be Castor, like a new Uriah the Hittite.”
Janet, who had been listening with a strained face, suddenly broke into one of her fits of helpless laughter.
“That was your idea. Sandy. Mr Blenkiron never thought of anything so wild.”
“It is not wild. It is common sense. It’s ju-jitsu, where you use the strength of your opponent to defeat him.”
“It is not common sense,” Archie declared vehemently. “It is insanity. If Dick Hannay were here, he’d say the same thing. Supposing you unite the Gran Seco, with Castor at your head, what better off are you? You’re up against Olifa with an army that will crumple you as easy as winking. You are cut off from the sea. You have no base and no communications. Where are you to get your munitions? Olifa will smash you in a week—or, better still, starve you out in a month.”
“May be,” said Sandy calmly. “That’s the risk we run. But it isn’t quite as bad as you think. We have a base, and presently you’ll hear all about it. Also, I rather think it will be a new kind of war. I always had a notion of a new kind of war—an economical war—and I’m going to have a shot at it, even though we take a good many chances. You’ve been doing useful work, old man, in sticking your nose into Olifa’s army system, and you naturally have a high regard for it. So have I. But it’s an old-fashioned system.”
“You’re wrong. It’s the most up-to-date thing on the globe.”
“It has learned all the lessons of our little scrap in France and Flanders, and I daresay it would make a very good showing in that sort of business. But it won’t be allowed to, for it’s going to be a different kind of business. We’re the challengers, and will decide the form of the combat. The Olifa army is as rigid in its up-to-dateness as the old British army was rigid in its antiquarianism. Castor is going to puzzle it.”
Archie