Cabbages and Kings | Page 6

careful about these things,
my boy. It won't do to trifle with the feelings of the public this way.
You'll be getting a pink note some day with violet scent on it; and then
the country'll be steeped in the throes of a revolution."
Goodwin had strolled up the street and met the boy with the message.
The ox-eyed women gazed at him with shy admiration, for his type
drew them. He was big, blond, and jauntily dressed in white linen, with
buckskin ~zapatos~. His manner was courtly, with a merciful eye.
When the telegram had been delivered, and the bearer of it dismissed
with a gratuity, the relieved populace returned to the contiguities of
shade from which curiosity had drawn it--the women to their baking in
the mud ovens under the orange-trees, or to the interminable combing
of their long, straight hair; the men to their cigarettes and gossip in the
cantinas.
Goodwin sat on Keogh's doorstep, and read his telegram. It was from
Bob Englehart, an American, who lived in San Mateo, the capital city
of Anchuria, eighty miles in the interior. Englehart was a gold miner,
an ardent revolutionist and "good people." That he was a man of
resource and imagination was proven by the telegram he had sent. It

had had been his task to send a confidential message to his friend in
Coralio. This could not have been accomplished in either Spanish or
English, for the eye politic in Anchuria was an active one. But
Englehart was a diplomatist. There existed but one code upon which he
might make requisition with promise of safety--the great and potent
code of Slang. So, here is the message that slipped, unconstrued,
through the fingers of curious officials, and came to the eye of
Goodwin:
"His Nibs skedaddled yesterday per jack-rabbit line with all the coin in
the kitty and the bundle of muslin he's spoony about. The boodle is six
figures short. Our crowd in good shape, but we need the spondulicks.
You collar it. The main guy and the dry goods are headed for the briny.
You to know what to do.
BOB."
This screed, remarkable as it was, had no mystery for Goodwin. He was
the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative
Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that
enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight
and deduction. He had taken up political intrigue as a matter of
business. He was acute enough to wield a certain influence among the
leading schemers, and he was prosperous enough to be able to purchase
the respect of the petty-officeholders. There was always a revolutionary
party; and to it he had allied himself; for the adherents of a new
administration received the rewards of their labors. There was now a
Liberal party seeking to overturn President Miraflores. If the wheel
successfully revolved, Goodwin stood to win a concession to 30,000
manzanas of the finest coffee lands in the interior. Certain incidents in
the recent career of President Miraflores had excited a shrewd
suspicion in Goodwin's mind that the government was near a
dissolution from another cause than that of a revolution, and now
Englehart's telegram had come as a corroboration of his wisdom.
The telegram, which had remained unintelligible to the Anchurian
linguists who had applied to it in vain their knowledge of Spanish and
elemental English, conveyed a stimulating piece of news to Goodwin's

understanding. It informed him that the president of the republic had
decamped from the capital city with the contents of the treasury.
Furthermore, that he was accompanied in his flight by that winning
adventuress Isabel Guilbert, the opera singer, whose troupe of
performers had been entertained by the president at San Mateo during
the past month on a scale less modest than that with which royal
visitors are often content. The reference to the "jackrabbit line" could
mean nothing else than the mule-back system of transport that
prevailed between Coralio and the capital. The hint that the "boodle"
was "six figures short" made the condition of the national treasury
lamentably clear. Also it was convincingly true that the ingoing
party--its way now made a pacific one--would need the "spondulicks."
Unless its pledges should be fulfilled, and the spoils held for the
delectation of the victors, precarious indeed, would be the position of
the new government. Therefore it was exceeding necessary to "collar
the main guy," and recapture the sinews of war and government.
Goodwin handed the message to Keogh.
"Read that, Billy," he said. "It's from Bob Englehart. Can you manage
the cipher?"
Keogh sat in the other half of the doorway, and carefully perused the
telegram.
"'Tis not a cipher," he said, finally. "'Tis what they call literature, and
that's a system of language put in