Pepe grabbed the check for the coffee, refused to relinquish it to Hall.

"This is my table," he said with quiet dignity. He also refused to discuss his fee for driving Hall around San Hermano for days.

"_Manana_," he laughed. "But about the room. I think Fernando can arrange it. The wife of the owner of the Bolivar is a member of the Centro Asturiano. She is also a first cousin of Dr. Gonzalez."

"I hope he can do it," Hall said.

"_Hola!_" Pepe boomed. "_Que tal?_" He exchanged loud pleasantries with a chauffeur who came in and sat down at a table in the corner.

"A Gallego," he explained to Hall. "But otherwise a pretty decent man."

"There are many decent Gallegos," Hall said.

Pepe whistled through his teeth, shook the limp and dangling fingers of his right hand, and looked behind his back. Hall grinned. Pepe's gesture was as old as Spain.

"Listen, Pepe," he laughed, "we have much to do. And all in a very short time. I am going to see the Press Secretary in the Gobernacion. I am requesting an interview with Gamburdo."

"Gamburdo is a _cabron_," Pepe said.

"I know. In my eyes he is an _hijo de la gran puta_. But for the present I want Gamburdo and his friends to think that I am an admirer of the _cabrito_. Clear?"

"I think I understand."

"Good. Tell all of this to Souza when you drop me at Gobernacion. When can you see him?"

"I will try to see him at once."

"_Bueno._ Let's go, then."

In the car, Hall had a fresh idea. "This young Juan Antonio, the teacher. Is he really a Communist?"

"Yes."

"Member of the party?"

"Of course. He writes for _Mundo Obrero_ regularly."

"Good. If you see him, ask him to go to the Communist headquarters and from there to telephone a friend. From there, understand? Tell him to call any friend. No, wait. Make it a friend in the office of _Mundo Obrero_. I want him to denounce me to this friend as an admirer of Gamburdo and an enemy of Tabio."

"But why?"

"I have an idea that Gamburdo has made some changes since he became Acting President," Hall answered. "If he has, he's got some Cross and Sword b.a.s.t.a.r.ds listening in on all Communist phones."

"It is possible," Pepe said. "I will discuss your idea with Juan Antonio."

"Talk him into it, Pepe."

Pepe stopped the car in front of the Gobernacion building. He promised to meet Hall at the Bolivar in two hours.

Hall entered the polished marble corridors of the Gobernacion. There was a popular song about this building. Hall thought of the words, written by no known poet, and yet so well known in the nation that it had become the unofficial anthem of the Hermanitos in the guerrilla armies which had fought the Seguristas. Even today, after nearly three decades, San Hermano youngsters learned the words from slightly older playmates when they were barely old enough to play by themselves. Somehow, the kids of the city sang a slightly less ribald version of the ballad of the _edificio magnifico_ which cost the nation over twenty million pesos and which, the song maintained, supported a village full of Don Augusto's wh.o.r.es and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds.

"I want to see the Press Secretary," Hall told an attendant in the right department.

"So do I," the attendant laughed. "He resigned last week."

"Didn't anyone take his place?"

The attendant was a very old man. He leaned back in his chair and with an eloquent look gave Hall to understand that he had completely lost patience with the visitor. "_Chico_," he said, "no one could take Don Pascual's place."

"Please, _viejo_, I am in a hurry. Is anyone trying to take Don Pascual's place?"

"Ha!" The old man shifted in his chair. With withering scorn he raised his arm and pointed a handful of gnarled brown fingers at a door marked _Prensa_. There were many other men in San Hermano who pointed to things with just that gesture. Hall recognized the gesture at once. He had seen it for the first time in Geneva, when Anibal Tabio rose to make that gesture toward the pile of captured Italian and German military doc.u.ments with which the Spaniards had tried to impress the League.

Hall smiled with compa.s.sion at the figure of the old man imitating the gesture of his idolized President.

"Go in, go in," the old man said, petulantly. "Go in and see that burro of a dolt who is _trying_ to take Don Pascual's place."

"And has this burro a name?"

"The burro has a name. It is Valenti. Now you made me say the unspeakable name! Please, _chico_, in the name of my sainted mother and the Educator, go away!"

The old man's att.i.tude told Hall more about what Gamburdo had already done to the Press Bureau than he could have learned in a week of routine digging. He handed the old man a cigar and a box of matches and walked through the door to Valenti's office. He found himself in a small anteroom facing a dark-haired girl pecking genteely at the keys of a typewriter with creamy fingers whose long nails were painted a deep blood red. She was immaculately groomed and pretty.

"I would like to see Senor Valenti," he said.

"Your name, Senor?"

So you had voice training, too, he thought. "Matthew Hall," he said. "I am a journalist from New York."

"How nice!" The secretary switched to English immediately. There was only the slightest suggestion of an accent to her English, and over the faint Spanish intonations she tried to impose the broad a's of something resembling the Oxford drawl. "It is quite a relief to speak English during office hours, really." She p.r.o.nounced it as "re-ahl-y."

"Yours is a very good English, Miss ..."

"Vardieno," she said.

"Pick it up in school in San Hermano?"

Miss Vardieno made a mouth of disdain. "Heavens, no!" she said. "Dad sent me to finishing school in the States. Stuffy old place, but charming in its own Adirondack way. Besides, I could always sneak down to town for a week-end when it became too boring."

"Of course," Hall smiled. "Nothing like good old New York to work off a bore."

"And how! What brings you to this forsaken village?"

"Pan American Airways," he laughed. "There's a flight out of Miami every two days they tell me."

The girl laughed with him. "O.K.," she said. "I asked for it. I'll find out if Mr. Valenti can see you now." She pushed her chair back and got up, pausing mid-way long enough to give Hall a fleeting look at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a casualness she had never learned in the Adirondacks. But Hall had eyes only for the pendant which dangled at the end of a thin platinum chain. When she sat at her desk or stood erect, Miss Vardieno's Cross and Sword emblem sank neatly below the neck line of her blue New York dress.

"There are so many lovely sights in San Hermano," Hall sighed as the girl walked into the private office.

She was in the private office for quite some time. Emerging, she had regained her finishing-school poise. "I am so sorry," she said. "Mr.

Valenti is tied up in a conference that will last for hours. Our Congress opens in five days, you know, and what with the situation being what it is, Mr. Hall, it is the feeling of the Press Director that it will be impossible for any writer to obtain an interview with Mr.