• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 8899 0

Ben's didn't come off so wel . J. Ward Moorehouse didn't make up to the girls as Ben had hoped. He brought his secretary, a tired blond girl, and they both looked scared to death. They had a dinner Mexican style and champagne and a great deal of cognac and a victrola played records by Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin and a little itinerant band attracted by the crowd played Mexican airs on the street outside. After dinner things were getting a little noisy inside so Ben and Moore-house took chairs out on the balcony and had a long talk about the oil situation over their cigars. J. Ward Moore-house explained that he had come down in a purely un-official capacity you understand to make contacts, to find out what the situation was and just what there was behind Carranza's stubborn opposition to American investors and that the big businessmen he was in touch with in the States desired only fair play and that he felt that if their point of view could be thoroughly understood through some information bureau or the friendly coöperation of Mexi-can newspapermen.

-318-Ben went back in the diningroom and brought out Enrique Salvador and Mac. They al talked over the

situation and J. Ward Moorehouse said that speaking as an old newspaperman himself he thoroughly understood the situation of the press, probably not so different in Mexico City from that in Chicago or Pittsburgh and that al the newspaperman wanted was to give each fresh angle of the situation its proper significance in a spirit of fair play and friendly coöperation, but that he felt that the Mexican papers had been misinformed about the aims of American business in Mexico just as the American press was misinformed about the aims of Mexican politics. If Mr. Enrique would cal by the Regis he'd be delighted to talk to him more ful y, or to any one of you gentlemen and if he wasn't in, due to the great press of appointments and the very few days he had to spend in the Mexican capital, his secretary, Miss Wil iams, would be only too wil ing to give them any information they wanted and a few special y prepared strictly confidential notes on the attitude of the big American corporations with which he was purely informal y in touch. After that he said he was sorry but he had telegrams waiting for him at the Regis and Salvador took him, and Miss Wil iams, his secretary, home in the chief of police's automobile.

"Jez, Ben, that's a smooth bastard," said Mac to Ben after J. Ward Moorehouse had gone.

" Mac," said Ben, "that baby's got a slick cream of mil-lions al over him. By gum, I'd like to make some of these contacts he talks about . . . By gorry, I may do it yet . . . You just watch your Uncle Dudley, Mac. I'm goin' to associate with the big hombres after this." After that the party was not so refined. Ben brought out a lot more cognac and the men started taking the girls into the bedrooms and hal ways and even into the pantry and kitchen. Barrow cottoned onto a blonde named Nadia

-319-who was half English and talked to her al evening about the art of life. After everybody had gone Ben found them locked up in his bedroom.

Mac got to like the life of a storekeeper. He got up when he wanted to and walked up the sunny streets past the cathedral and the façade of the national palace and up Independencia where the sidewalks had been freshly sprinkled with water and a morning wind was blowing through, sweet with the smel of flowers and roasting coffee. Concha's little brother Antonio would have the shutters down and be sweeping out the store by the time he got there. Mac would sit in the back reading or

would roam about the store chatting with people in Eng-lish and Spanish. He didn't sel many books, but he kept al the American and European papers and magazines and they sold wel , especial y The Police Gazette and La Vie Parisienne. He started a bank account and was planning to take on some typewriter agencies. Salvador kept tel ing him he'd get him a contract to supply stationery to some government department and make him a rich man.

One morning he noticed a big crowd in the