25

Chapter 1

Phil Nevitt was one of half a dozen assistant secretaries of Columbia Distillers, an Organization that within two or three years after repeal had quietly become one of the great corporations of the country. It was a good job for his years, which were twenty-five; he could fairly term himself an executive. He had worked hard, which nowadays implies something harder than work–i.e., self-discipline; keeping a firm hand on his vices–but not too firm, and directing every thought and action to the end of making good; consequently he was looked upon as a rising man.

It could not be said that he was on intimate terms with the big boss, Julius Chapman; they had met a few times at some of the larger conferences of officials, that was all. Phil did not suspect that Mr. Chapman had ever singled him out as an individual; consequently, one morning at the beginning of winter it was with some apprehension that he received a summons to the president’s office.

He entered the palatial chamber smiling, to be on the safe side. Mr. Chapman, a small man, grim and white, with an odd rectangular head taller than it was long, looked him up and down before he spoke. There was a good deal of Phil to take in, six feet two of him, and broad in proportion. Mr. Chapman grunted encouragingly, and waved him toward a chair.

Sit down, he said. Smoke?

Phil’s smile broadened in relief as he helped himself to a presidential cigar.

Are you married? asked Mr. Chapman.

Phil laughed at the unexpectedness of the question. No, sir.

I’m not trying to probe into your personal affairs. I merely want to know if your circumstances are such that you can make a voyage on confidential business of the company.

Phil’s heart lifted up at the thought of a voyage. I can, sir.

Good. Do you know anything about rum?

Only the taste of it, sir.

Well, don’t pursue that too far. I have chosen you for this job because I have a good report of you and because you’re too new to be generally known as an official of the company. This business must be carried out in secrecy.

I get you, sir.

Well, it has to do with rum. There are two sources of rum within our country, and both of them have started to produce again since repeal. One is New England rum, which, as you know, we already control. The other is the rum made on our island of Annunziata in the West Indies. Do you know anything about Annunziata?

Nothing but its name, sir.

"A smallish island, off the main routes of travel. Rarely visited by tourists. Very beautiful, I am told, and enjoys a superb climate. Only a handful of white men live there. Years ago Annunziata rum was considered the best of all rums and commanded the highest price. Manufacture had to be abandoned when prohibition went into effect, and incidentally the island was ruined because it was their only industry. Now they’re starting up again. On the face of it, it is a private enterprise promoted by a man called Randal Trantor, who is the government representative on the island. This seems a little irregular, but we need not go into that.

This Trantor must have strong backing, because he ordered a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of machinery two years ago, and has just lately duplicated his order. It constitutes a serious threat of competition to us and we must look into it. So far Trantor has made no attempt to market his rum. I want you to go to Annunziata in the guise of an idle tourist...

But if tourists never visit the island, sir?

You must be an original kind of tourist, one of those fellows that like to poke about in out-of-the-way places.

I get you.

Find out all you can about this Trantor; what sort of man he is; what kind of a plant he is putting up; how far he has got with it; what his connections are in this country; and especially who are his backers. Send me a detailed report of all this–you had better mail it under cover to our lawyers, and remain on the island until you hear from me.

Yes, sir.

There’s only one ship from New York that calls at Annunziata. It’s the Cassandra of the Bowness Line, sailing on Thursday. I’m sorry to give you only three days’ notice, but I would like you to take that ship; otherwise you will have to wait a month.

I’ll be ready, sir.

Good! You should spend these three days in getting together whatever information you can about Annunziata and about the manufacture of rum. Mr. Winberg will instruct you further about the situation and you can come to me on Thursday morning at nine–Mr. Chapman made a note on his desk calendar–to go over the final details.

Very well, sir. And thank you.

Not at all. Not at all.

Chapter 2

Phil began to feel the spell of Annunziata while the island was still thirty miles away and no more than a pale violet cloud on the horizon of the Caribbean. Two hours later, when the little Cassandra sailed into the harbor of Port-of-Grace, it had him fast. The shore hills clothed with dazzling greens, and the soaring mountains black by contrast; the little beige town red-roofed alongside the emerald water; he could scarcely believe in it. In order to cover his tracks Phil had engaged passage to Barbadoes. He went to the purser and said:

I think I’ll be leaving you here.

What! said the purser. Annunziata? It’s a hole!

I like it, said Phil, grinning.

You ought to see St. Kitts or Martinique. Plenty of winter visitors in those islands. Port-of-Grace is the most dead-and-alive town in the Indies!

I like it!

The young purser shrugged. Well, dine on board, he said, and I’ll go ashore with you afterwards and introduce you at the club.

This suited Phil very well.

The swift tropical darkness had fallen when they were rowed ashore, and a wave of some strange perfume was coming off the land. It was Phil’s first sniff of the tropics and it had a powerful emotional effect on him. He didn’t speak of it to the bored purser. The shore of the harbor was hung with sparkling jewels of light that were reflected in the black water.

This island is a great place for magic, remarked the purser.

Magic? said Phil.

Nigger magic. Witches and conjure men and all that. Obeah, they call it. I don’t know what the special attraction is, but there’s something here that attracts the nigger Obeahs from all the other islands. Of course, they’re quiet enough aboard ship, but you can always spot them by their crazy eyes. Gives you the creeps.

Phil glanced up at black mountain masses silhouetted against the starry sky and pictured the hidden gorges. Something in the purser’s light words stirred him. He said, It looks like a place where you might find black magic.

Upon landing at the quay the little town presented a strong contrast in styles. The island had been colonized by the Spanish, conquered by the French, picked up by the Danes when France was busy elsewhere, and finally sold to the United States. There was a four-square Danish custom-house on the quay, and up the street a big stucco church, pure Spanish, with the addition of a Danish bell-tower. A crowd of loitering negroes watched the lighters bringing freight ashore from the Cassandra.

As Phil and his bags landed on the quay a dark man in beautifully tailored white linen came up. He had an ugly flat face, but there was power in it. The purser presented him.

Mr. Alfred Bareda, Deputy-Commissioner for Annunziata.

Amongst many other things, I’m the Customs, said Bareda, with a pleasant smile. In the case of American citizens it is purely a formality. Have you any firearms, ammunition, or spirituous liquors? His English was as good as Phil’s own, but he had an indefinably foreign air.

No, said Phil. Go ahead and look.

Your word is sufficient. I am also supposed to ask what your business is in Annunziata, Mr. Nevitt?

No business, said Phil carelessly. Just traveling.

Ah! We don’t have many travelers here. Please call on me if I can be of service in any way. I trust that your stay may be a pleasant one.

Thanks.

The bags were picked up by a couple of ragged negroes, and they went on across the street to the hotel.

That guy has a nerve! growled the purser.

Why? said Phil, surprised. He was polite, God knows.

Too damn polite! Talking up to you as if he was a white man!

I thought he was a white man. Of course, his complexion was dark...

Creole.

What’s a creole?

A native who is light enough to claim to be white.

Phil thought this over. In Bareda he had the impression of meeting a personality. The man’s ugly composed face and pleasant manner suggested powerful self-control.

Bareda pretty near runs this island, the purser added; but he’s got a flick of mud in his eye. They all have. They claim Spanish or French descent.

Runs the island? said Phil. How about Randal Trantor, the Commissioner?

He’s a sot.

Phil laughed. I am certainly getting the lowdown.

The hotel was an ancient wooden building in the French style, with galleries and jalousies, all unpainted and silvery with age. Inside it smelled like a second-rate hotel anywhere in the world.

The chow here will be terrible, said the purser.

Maybe I’ll find a boarding-house, said Phil.

You can’t do that. Nobody keeps boarders but creoles.

Well, why not?

We don’t run with them.

The hotel-keeper, Pernisson, was a swarthy creole with a cast in one eye. He gave Phil a hard look and shouted for a servant to show him upstairs. Phil judged from the register that he was the only roomer, but the bar was doing a good business. A barefooted young girl appeared from the back. She had shining black eyes and hair like a raven’s wing, hanging in soft curls to her neck. Her slender bare legs were like two golden poems. To Phil her beauty was of a piece with the delicious perfume on the night air–wicked and alluring.

The purser murmured under his breath, You better watch your step, young fellow.

Why?

The climate of this island is said to be bad for white men.

Phil grinned.

Her name was Nina Obeida. With a shake of her curls, she took a key off a rack in the hall and led them upstairs to one of the rooms off the gallery. Phil looked at her beautiful golden legs.

The room was bleak, but appeared to be fairly clean. Phil merely dropped his bags there and went on out again with the purser.

From the quay the curving main street of the town ran east to the hills. It was lined by shabby stores with fixed iron awnings extending over the sidewalks as a protection from the sun. The store windows were but meagerly furnished with goods, and already at eight o’clock the street was deserted.

Business doesn’t seem to be very good in Port-of-Grace, remarked Phil.

Good! said the purser. It’s practically non-existent.

The club was reached through an alley running off to the left between two stores. It was a wide-spreading wooden pavilion standing amongst tennis-courts and croquet-lawns at the edge of the harbor. They entered a bare assembly-room with a dance floor set about with empty tables and chairs; the balance of the building was divided between bar and smoking-room. What life there was centered in the bar, and Phil headed in that direction. The purser pulled him the other way.

You’ll find the Americans in the smoking-room, he said, meaningly.

How come? asked Phil.

There are not enough Americans to support the club, so they have to take in the well-to-do creoles, but they’re not allowed in the smoking-room.

If I was a creole, damned if I’d stand for it, said Phil.

If you were a creole you’d damned well have to, retorted the purser. We’re tops in this part of the world and we’re not going to let them forget it.

The half-dozen Americans in the smoking-room were listless and anæmic specimens. Obviously they had been too long in the tropics. It occurred to Phil that the vitality of the island was confined to the despised creoles. He was introduced to Dr. Ramseur, to Inspector Fielding of the police, to the Reverend Oran Knowles, rector of St. Mary’s, a couple of bank men, and so on.

This guy has fallen for your lousy island, God knows why, said the purser, jocosely. He’s going to stay awhile.

They welcomed Phil in friendly enough fashion, but their unconscious glances suggested that they rather resented his physique and conspicuous vigor.

The purser remained for one drink only, and went off to check up his manifests. The others made an attempt to include Phil in the conversation but it languished. They were not interested in the outside world and soon relapsed into the gossip of the island. So Phil drank his highball and listened. It was not long before the name of the man who had brought him to Annunziata cropped up.

Randy Trantor was drunk again today, remarked the doctor. Ramseur was a tall, stooped, embittered man who looked as if the tropics had sucked him dry.

The mild little clergyman shook his head. How disgraceful!

I went down to the distillery to see him about a field hand who has developed beri-beri. He was plastered and told me to go to hell in his usual style.

What did you do? asked Inspector Fielding, a personable man, still youngish, but discontented-looking.

I fixed it up with Bareda to pitch a tent in the hospital yard so that we could isolate the patient.

Trantor’s been hitting the bottle for twenty years, said Fielding. He can’t keep it up forever in this climate. How long do you give him, Doc?

He will outlive all of us, said Ramseur, dryly. He has a Constitution of iron!

I don’t mind his drinking, said Fielding. It’s his damned arrogance that gripes me.... You fellows in the bank are lucky, he went on to Coulson, the manager. You’re responsible to your head office and not to Trantor.

Nothing in it, said Coulson, with a wry grin. We have to dance when Trantor calls the tune, just like the rest of you. He’s the source of practically all our business in Annunziata. He could have me recalled any day with a word.

Aye, it’s his arrogance, growled Ramseur. I was hard put to it not to knock him down today.

Why didn’t you? asked Phil.

They looked at him pityingly. You don’t know Trantor.

Well, what about him?

He’s our Governor, so to speak. He’s the biggest landowner on Annunziata. He has all the money there is hereabouts and we live off the crumbs that fall from his table.

But surely a man of that sort isn’t fit to govern the island. Why don’t you go over his head?

We might get worse, said Ramseur. After all, Trantor is drunk most of the time and doesn’t trouble us. Bareda does the work. He’s a good enough administrator.

But you don’t associate with him.

Ramseur shrugged. He’s a creole.

What’s Trantor’s history? asked Phil.

He comes of a wealthy family in Massachusetts. He came here twenty years ago when the United States took over the islands. The story is that his family shipped him down here. At that time most of the Danes wanted to go back to Denmark, and Trantor bought them out for a song; cane-lands in the flats, and all the pasture on the uplands. Immediately afterwards the United States entered the war, and Trantor cleaned up. Sugar soared and cattle and horses rose to fantastic prices. After the war when sugar faded Trantor concentrated on cattle and went on making money. He ships cattle all over the Indies. Now he’s built a big distillery to make rum and I suppose he’ll die as rich as Henry Ford.

Has he any family? asked Phil.

Not officially. He lives with a creole woman. He’s had three children by her, not to speak of others around the island.

What a man! said Phil, dryly.

In the doorway of the smoking-room appeared a battered white man. He was dressed in a clean, ragged white suit with the jacket pinned across at the neck to hide the absence of a shirt, and broken canvas shoes. On the beach obviously. He had been a fine figure of a man and there was still fire in his drunken eyes.

Good evening, gentlemen, he said, glancing around with inimitable derision.

Get out! said Fielding, turning red. Or I’ll have you thrown out by the blacks.

The intruder coolly met his eye. I didn’t come to see you, Inspector. I heard that we had a white visitor and I wanted to pay him my respects. His eye fixed on Phil. Will you drink with me, sir? I can promise you better entertainment than this.

Phil would have liked to go with him. Sorry, he said, but I’m a guest here at the moment.

Some other time, then. Some other time. The intruder glanced from one to another with his provoking grin. Phil thought he had the look of a molting eagle among neat barnyard fowls.

Isn’t anybody going to offer me a drink? he asked.

I’ll give you just thirty seconds to get out of here, said the red-faced Fielding.

The other paid no attention. His derisive eye dwelt on the Reverend Mr. Knowles, sitting nearest the door with a freshly filled whisky-and-soda on the arm of his chair. Padre, you’re a charitable man, he said, grinning. I can depend on you.

Without waiting for the parson to speak, he whipped up his glass and tossed off the contents as it seemed in a single gulp. As Fielding sprang up in a rage, he dropped the glass and slipped out of the room, laughing.

Fielding dropped back, cursing. They all glanced covertly at Phil to see how he was taking it. Phil suppressed the desire to laugh. Inwardly he was tickled by the old beach-comber’s impudence.

This is intolerable! cried the little parson. In our own club!

What can we do? growled Ramseur. A man can’t mix it up with a bum.

He ought to be arrested!

I’m sick of arresting him, said Fielding, scowling.

Then he ought to be deported from the island.

Where can I deport him to?

Who is he? asked Phil.

Buckra Bart.

Gradually they smoothed down their feathers and returned to their gossiping. Sugar had dropped a fraction of a cent. It was reported that chain stores in the United States were selling it at three cents a pound. How do they expect the planters to live? Cacao was still falling and some men were threatening to cut down their trees. Why not try avocadoes? Randy Trantor was urging everybody to put more acreage into sugar. Next year he would be prepared to take the entire crop for his distillery. Yes, but at what price? And so on. And so on.

Phil wearied of it. Outside, the breathing tropic night was beckoning him like a presence. He had only had two drinks, but he was greatly uplifted. As there seemed to be no chance that Trantor would turn up now, he rose and said good-night.

Consider yourself a member here as long as you’re on the island, said Ramseur.

Phil thanked him and left.

The main street was entirely uninteresting. Parallel with it ran a street of low-spreading bungalows almost hidden in a wealth of flowering hedges, shrubs, and creepers. Under the electric lights gleamed enormous and incredible flowers. On the air hung that unknown fragrance now strong, now faint. He finally located the source of it in a low tree with stubby twigs naked of leaves and flushed with pinkish blossoms. A negro boy was passing and Phil asked:

What kind of tree is that?

Frangipanni, sah.

Frangipanni! The word was music to the ears.

There was not a breath of air stirring; the sky was crowded with stars.