I saw my late table-mate cross the sun-baked plaza and get into a whopping Bugatti parked across on the other side. I waited until the man at the wheel had checked out with him, then I went inside. The back room at Filthy Frank’s had one of the few telephones there are in Costamala. I kept my eye on the table from where I was, while I was getting a connection. I could see it through the tall, arched doorway. I made a funnel of my hand, for a silencer. “This is the gringo. Send one of your agentes around to Frank’s. Now, get this. Tell him to sit down at the third table from the end, on the outside row, and take a good look at the sketch of a man’s head he’ll find pencilled on the table-top. I want to know who it is. In case he has a little trouble with it, tell him to add a pongee vest, a big rock on the little finger, and a Bugatti — that ought to help it come clear. I think I’m watched, so he shouldn’t give me away.”

I hung up and gave the swinging door next to me a jab with my heel so it flapped in and out a couple of times. Then I showed up outside again as though I’d just come out from the verminous wash-room. I sat down at a different table and ordered another daisy.

In about ten minutes a government man I knew by sight showed up and sat down where I had been first. He wouldn’t have fooled anyone back home for a minute, but they’re slower on the pick-up down there. His technique was punk and I kept cursing under my breath. He ordered some kind of bilge, and then he kept staring straight down at the table. I expected him to come smack over to me after that, but at least he had sense enough not to. He got up and went inside, and we hooked up in there, on different sides of the swinging door.

“That’s Torres, the son of the former minister of war,” he said.

“I wonder who he wants rubbed?” I thought to myself. This was getting into the upper register now. “What else?” I asked.

“The old man is supposed to have had his father shot during the last revolution.”

I didn’t have to wonder any more, after hearing that. “Just forget about it,” I told him. It was a job up my own private alley, I could see that now — one of the very kind I’d been hired for and brought down here from three thousand miles away to handle — and I wasn’t splitting it with anyone. The poor “old man” couldn’t trust anyone in his own country I had a belly-laugh over it without letting it show on my face. They pick his own bodyguard to be their trigger man! Was that punch-drunk or was it punch-drunk? In one way, of course, they had the right angle: a foreigner was their best means of getting at him for the simple reason that he didn’t trust his own countrymen, and they knew it.

The Costamalan dick mooched off one way, looking furtively all around him — he might as well have had a sandwich-board on his shoulders labeled “I am Operative Number 5” — and I ambled off in the other. I thought it over this way: since Torres wasn’t alone in this, and I had no proof so far whom he was out to get, the only thing for me to do was pull my punches until after tonight when I’d made sure. If it was somebody else he was putting the finger on, it was none of my business, I wasn’t a commissioned member of the secret police force; if it was my employer, that was different. I had to be sure, because their idea of a trial down there is to stand the guy up against a wall and bang, bang, bang! — a mouthpiece was never heard of in that country. A spring just meant a season of the year.

I was probably being watched right now, but the thing was — by who? The plaza was dead, too hot for any of the regular bench-lizards to be out yet. There was, however, a guy standing on the opposite corner running through the winning lottery-numbers pasted up on the wall to see if he’d clicked. He’d been there a little too long, though, he should have found out by now. “So it’s you, is it?” I said to myself, “Well, watch me give you a run for your money!”

Four pairs of eyes were watching me. There was an automatic lying on the table, no one’s hand was on it but it was pointed my way. “Either, or—” it said. My own was down under my trouser-leg. I could have had an itch down there that needed scratching, for instance, or a shoelace that needed retying — it would have been easy enough. But I was under pretty definite instructions and it was up to me to follow them out. My orders were to protect the old man from harm, and nothing else; not to make a pinch or try to clean up single-handed. I was his personal bodyguard and not his chief of police. And I’m funny that way, I do just what I’m paid for and nothing else. There’s a gent in Alcatraz right now could tell you the same thing. Besides, by tipping off these four in the room with me, I might be letting forty others get away clean, and the whole thing would only start over again next chance they got.

“Well,” he said, “what’ve you got to say?” And his fingers, drumming the table, inched nearer the automatic.

To have taken what he had just paid off to me without a jolt, would have been a dead give-away; they would have tumbled in a minute that I was phony if I’d appeared willing to go through with it that easy. Even a stumblebum derelict would have shied at the kind of proposition this had turned into. So I squawked, not too much and not too little, just enough to make it look right.

“Seventy-five C’s,” I said with a lopsided smile. “Why didn’t you make it two million? I’ll be where I can’t enjoy ’em. You’re not paying me to rub Savinas, you’re paying me to commit suicide. Why didn’t you give it to me straight?”

For a minute his paw closed on the automatic, and I knew I could never get down to my hoof in time so I didn’t try. But I must have stacked up just right for their trigger-man, I guess he hated to waste me. He banged open a drawer instead and took out some stuff in an envelope. “Here’s a forged Costamalan passport, here’s your ticket for the Pan-American night-plane that touches here at midnight tomorrow night. My Bugatti will be waiting outside the grounds for you. It can get you over to the airfield in ten minutes flat — there’s not another thing on wheels in the country that can catch it. All you have to do is remember which door you came in by in the Villa Rosa; the chief electrician there is in with us. When he hears your shot, a fuse will ‘accidentally’ blow, every light in the place will go out, it will be half an hour before they go on again. What more could you ask?”

“That’s more like it,” I drawled. “Y’had me going for a minute when you first sprung it at me like you did. The way you tell it, I’d call it a very classy little set-up. I’m your guy.”

He put the gun away. “I’m glad we came to an agreement,” he said smoothly, “I would have hated to have to bury you in the garden outside — my servants just got through spading it.”

I looked politely bored. “And there really is a seventy-five hundred, or zat just a figure of speech? I’ve only got twenty-four hours I can swear to, so I’d like to get the feel of it,” I told him. But what I really wanted was to get out and turn in my report to the old man as quick as I could, so he’d have time enough to take whatever precautions he needed to, and unloading a little of the blood-money around town came in handy as an excuse for getting away.

But they weren’t the suckers they looked. “You can have it right now,” he said, “but I don’t know what good it’s going to do you, because you’re not going any place to spend it. You’re staying right here.” And he took out a rubber-banded wad of it and pitched it at me.

I pocketed it — for evidence. “So what am I gonna do,” I yelped angrily, “sit here and play solitaire with this all night?”

“What’d you have in mind?” he said. He was fiddling with the gun again, this time leaving it in the drawer. I saw one of the others bring one out too. Then he must have pushed a button without my noticing it, for the driver was suddenly standing behind me, blocking the doorway.

“I wanna take a bath in cologne-water,” I said. “I wanna lie there cracking champagne-bottles in the tub. I wanna sleep in silk pajamas and light my Perfecto with a five-peso bill. This is my last night on earth, damn it all; I gotta lot of back splurging to catch up on!”

“You think we’re crazy?” he snapped. “You think this town hasn’t eyes? This afternoon you’re flat broke, tonight you start buying half the town drinks — and talking your head off. I know your kind! Savinas’ police agents pick you up in a minute, ask you where you got the sudden money, they have ways of making people talk. You can do everything you want to do right here under this roof. Take him upstairs and lock the door!” he snapped at the driver. “Then go out and bring in a case of Mumm’s 1915, and a pair of silk pajamas from one of the Chinese stores, and a box of Perfectos, and a deck of cards — anything he wants, I don’t care!”

That being the way it was, I shrugged. “You win,” I said. It was a cinch I’d get out of here before the night was over, anyway, so why gum up the works now?

In front of 14, I braked the Bugatti exactly where I’d picked it up, right over the same gasoline-drippings. Then I went around and slipped into the grounds by the side gate, which I’d left ajar. The house was dead, the only light that showed was from the rear room that I’d left, and I could hear snores coming from there. The rope of sheets was still hanging from the balcony, like a white vine in the gloom. Getting up it wasn’t as simple as getting down it had been, but the gardener had managed it without any rope so why shouldn’t I with one?

I was winded by the time I rolled across the balcony-rail and landed on my feet. I hauled the sheets up after me and took a look in. Their Nibs were both dead to the world, sprawled there producing nasal music. One of the two electric globes had burned out during my absence and the corners of the room were in shadow. The door however was still securely locked. I removed the driver’s gun and refilled it with blanks, put it back again. Then I cracked the gardener’s, and just as I had that reloaded, I suddenly froze, bent over him.

There was a little round, cold steel mouth pressing into the back of my neck, just below the hair-line. Sort of kissing me, if you want to be poetic about it. Another one came up against me on my right side, and then a third just over my heart. There hadn’t been a sound in the room around me.

It was Torres’ voice that spoke. “I told you he’d come back. The way he left the gate down there open showed me that.”

I turned slowly, elbows out. The three of them were on top of me, and in the background was the woman who had contacted me at Filthy’s, hood thrown back now and eyes glittering with malice.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Pull your triggers!” she rasped. “You saw me with your own eyes! If he hasn’t already crossed us, he will tomorrow night! He knows too much. Are you going to let him go on living?” She meant it, too.

I was sweating like a needle-shower, not so much because I was afraid of being killed but because I had bungled the whole thing up the way I had.

Torres silenced her with his hand. “One thing at a time. If he has already betrayed us, then killing him won’t save us. If he hasn’t, it will be easy enough to silence him — for the rest of his life. Call the Villa Rosa. One of the presidential secretaries is on my pay-roll. Find out if the banquet has been cancelled or not, that will tell the whole story!”

They frisked me, but missed the leg-holster. They brought out rope and nearly broke both my arms fastening them wrist-to-elbow behind my back. They didn’t waste their time asking me where I’d been or what I’d done, just waited for word to come back.

The one who had gone to find out came running back again. “We’re safe! No orders have been given to postpone the banquet!”

“Then he hasn’t told them yet!” Torres gloated. “Well, we’ll make sure that he doesn’t! Stuff something in his mouth. Help me to get him down to the car. There’s a better way of getting rid of him than killing him here in the house—”

They all turned to look at him inquiringly.

“The House of the Good Shepherd,” he smiled evilly.

My blood froze, and for the first time I knew real fear; I was wishing now they had shot me down a while ago! I hadn’t been in the country long, but I already knew what that place meant, for all its high-sounding name. The State Institute for the Insane, a madhouse with three-feet thick walls, from which no one had ever yet been known to come out alive! I knew how they treated the insane down there, no restrictions, no experts on lunacy to make an examination. Once you were in you were as good as dead! And Torres just had pull enough to have me railroaded into that hell-on-earth, under a false name so that even the old man couldn’t get me out again. And he’d be dead by tomorrow night anyway, shot down by somebody else in my place.

I put up a terrific struggle, but all I could use was my legs, and that didn’t get me anywhere. They dragged me backwards down the stairs and dumped me into the car with my mouth gagged. “The more violent he is, the better!” I heard Torres chuckle. “He won’t last a week in that place!” He turned to the woman, whom they called “La Vibora” — the snake! “You lower your veil and come along with us. You can sign the commitment papers, as his nurse. We’ll book him as a homicidal maniac; the director there is a personal friend of mine.”

They got in with me and we started off, Torres himself at the wheel since his driver was still out. I reared violently, trying to throw myself out of the car and finish myself under the wheels, if I couldn’t do anything else, but one of them brought the butt of his gun down on my head and I slumped and went out. The last thing I heard was Torres saying, “We’ll go through with it tomorrow night just the way we intended to. Send somebody else there with the same sketches this damned gringo made; if he keeps his head lowered until he’s right in front of Savinas the old fool will never know the difference, he’s near-sighted, anyway!”

It was further out than I thought — everything seemed to be against me — all I kept gritting was “Faster! Faster!” while the damned thing rocked from side to side over the dirt road. But finally after about twenty minutes or so, the lights of the town began to show ahead of us, in a big semicircle. I didn’t need him any more after that.

“Open the door,” I said, and I took the wheel over with one hand, motioned him out with the gun. “Jump — and go to hell!” I slowed just enough so he couldn’t be killed, then sped on again, leaving him back there on his face. A minute later the lights of Costamala had blossomed all around me.

The Villa Rosa was blazing with them when I finally braked outside the grounds, vaulted out and tore for the entrance. It took the fact a minute to sink in — the fact that this meant I was in time and not too late. The pistol shot, they’d told me, was to be the signal for plunging the place in darkness; this meant it hadn’t been fired yet. I didn’t even take time off to be thankful, just kept going.

There were plenty of horse-drawn carriages lined up, and even decrepit taxis, but only a few private cars, and the Bugatti stood out from these like the Normandie from a crowd of tugs. It was off by itself to one side, and I could make out the outline of someone sitting waiting in the front seat. So he was in there already, whoever he was!

Somebody had been passing out champagne to the sentinels at the main entrance, that was all that saved me — rushing at them the way I did, out of the dark, with a bared revolver in my hand. Their rifles had been laid aside and they were too slow on the uptake; by the time they were rushing for them and yelling at me to stand and deliver, I was halfway up the marble staircase already.

The hum of dozens of voices was coming from the big banqueting hall on the second floor. There were no soldiers on guard there, only a couple of plainclothes men. I knocked them both apart before they even saw me coming, and looked in and saw what was going on.

It hadn’t happened yet, but it was going to in about a second more. A long table loaded with flowers, wines, and dishes ran the entire length of the room, from where I was to the opposite side. Halfway down it sat Savinas, and directly in front of him, facing him across the table, stood a man busily sketching on a drawing-board. I couldn’t make out who he was at that distance, and I didn’t give a rap. All I saw was that he had on a thick pair of glasses, to partly conceal his identity. I glimpsed the old man’s face — yellow with fear, glistening with sweat; he was edged as far back in the chair as he could get, unable to save himself. He knew what was coming, knew something had happened, knew they had sent someone else in my place — and yet couldn’t lift a finger in his own defense, surrounded on all sides by men he couldn’t trust.

Right while I stood looking on, the man finished the sketch with a flourish, turned it around and offered it to Savinas. I saw his other hand reach toward his coat, as though to put the pencil away — there was no time to get over there, to call out, to do anything. I simply aimed at the broad part of his skull, above the ear, and fired. I saw him jolt upward, rise about an inch on his toes, and then the whole room plunged into darkness around me, before I even saw him fall. The bribed electrician had simply mistaken the signal, that was all.

Instantly there were two other shots just behind me, from the plainclothes men on door duty, and I dropped, unhit, and swerved to one side. The table was the only thing that showed faintly in the pitch-blackness. I found the edge with my hand, kept my palm on it for a guide, and ran down the length of it, bent double. The body of the would-be assassin, lying in my path, which tripped me and sent me sprawling on my face, showed me where Savinas was — otherwise I might have run too far past him to the lower end.

I picked myself up, reached across the table, and grabbed someone’s shoulder — the stump of someone’s shoulder. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t even had time to get out of his chair yet.

“Boss!” I breathed in his face, “It’s Stiff! Duck underneath to this side. I’ll get you out of here!”

His shoulder sank from reach, not an instant too soon. “Death to the tyrant!” a voice bellowed beside the chair, and there was the hiss of a saber cleaving the air and a splitting of wood. I fired, once, at where the voice had come from, and heard a groan and — crazy sound — the tinkling of a lot of medals and decorations as they swept the table-top.

A moment later a hand gripped my leg, and the game old man had crawled through unhurt to where I was. I hoisted him to his feet. “Keep your head down!” I cautioned, and began zig-zagging toward the door, towing him after me by one hand — the only hand he had.