John Pierce
Walking Hubert Down

Much has been written about the quality of plot in fiction. Not
too much has been written about the quantity of plot in fiction.
How much plot should there be in a short-short of 1500-to 2500
words? How much in a short story of 5000 to 7000 words? In a
novelet of 10,000 to 15,000 words? In a short novel of 35,000
words? In a novel of 50,000 words or more? Opinions will dif-
fer, of course some readers (and critics) prefer style to sub-
stance; others like their stories fully packed.
Here is the story of the fully packed variety. And yet note
how the author, the gifted John Pierce, meshing substance and
style, cunningly controls his plot material, artfully releases its
details until the whole truth is slowly, inexorably revealed . . .

Four of them studied Spanish in a small town in Mexico. They
had dark airless rooms in the Hotel Esplendido and took
classes in the mornings at the Alianza. Evenings they could be seen
on a stone bench near the bandstand in the Plaza. There they
blinked and scratched themselves and waited for the Main Event.
She appeared with no regularity in any of several fine cars. She
was Pamela Sykes-Coddington, the tungsten heiress, sometime
film starlet and international beauty queen.
Multiple marriages had but ripened her. She wore the surname
of her latest husband, a departed Englishman of means. To him
they attributed her rather droll, rather touchingly pretentious
British accent. Or she could have, perhaps as easily, absorbed it
in drama school (she was briefly visible in a pair of Japanese
late-show monster films).
She lived in the hills above the Pacific not far from Acapulco,
but it was in Ecija, the village where they (on veterans' benefits)
attended classes, that she was most often seen. And they
Farrow, Dewey, Sprague, and the repellent Griggs watched in-
tently as that lissome figure with string shopping bag made its
silken rounds of the knick-knack and liquor stores. They studied
her nubile locomotion and devised orgiastic dreams.
All were surprised when Masden Farrow married her. Farrow,
too, was surprised. He met her in a used-book shop one morning
and took her to coffee with his last 163 pesos. She Mercedes-
Benzed him through the hills to her blinding white establishment
above the cove where rode her white yacht. They lunched on her
terrace, swam in her natural-rock pool, drank her liquor, sup-
pered among her fireflies and drank anew, and were wedded in a
simple secret four A.M. ceremony -this in less than a day.
We are in the late summer of the middle sixties. You may have
read of it: misplaced love and conjugal perfidy; blood on a white
carpet and the inexcusable behavior of Edward Griggs. The cleric
who joined them, an unshaved retired Idahoan dredged up by her
"".from the American colony in the pre-dawn, took generous pay-
ment and was chauffeured back down the hill.
They trudged up the marble stairs to her seaside bedroom with
a fresh pail .of champagne to toast the morn. Their slurred repar-
tee calved silly laughter. They slept and woke to new champagne.
On the bedside table were airplane tickets to Nassau for late to-
night or the following morning whenever, she now interjected,
they had disposed of her father.'
"Repeat?" s&*d Farrow. He was fastening the belt of a yellow
silk robe, the property, he assumed, of Cecil Sykes-Coddington.
"Dispose of father, you said?"
"Yes, he's flying in from Schenectady this evening, dolling. I'm
sure I explained."
"Did you?" Very little was clear to him.
She said, "Then listen carefully now. This is most important.
For the brief while that dad is here tonight I must ask that you
pose as Hubert W. Poundstone."
"Say again? Didn't get you."
She repeated the instructions.
"Who is Hubert W. Poundstone?"
"Oh, Masden," she lamented. "I told you all this last night."
"Told me what?"
"I told you painstakingly. I said, I thought about three weeks
ago I was going to marry Hubert."
"And didn't?"
"Now, how could I have? I married you."
"Ah, yes," he said. "Go ahead."
"Everything was arranged. We were driving off to get married.
We stopped off at a restaurant in Chilpancingo so I could tele-
phone father to give him some good news for a change. Father's
been awfully miffed at me. So I laid it on like fertilizer how
happy I was, how this was forever, how fine and steady Hubert
was. 'Hubert's put it all together,' I said. And dad was happy. And
when I went back to the carmy car, my Bentley Hubert had
picked up some waitress and driven off."
"Why, the skunk."
"To put it lightly. I had to hire a taxi back. Couldn't call home
again. Couldn't do that to father. Result, he thinks we Hubert
and Iare married. He sent us that damned yacht as a wedding
gift. He's flying in tonight. So tonight you're Hubert."
.   Cloudily Farrow recalled lingering over a portrait on the
bureau before they slept. The portrait was no longer visible. "I
thought that was your latest ex, Sykes-Coddington, in the picture."
"What picture? What are you talking about?"
"Portrait on the bureau."
"No, no, that was Hubert. I threw it away. Threw him away.
That's all over. He's gone to Hong Kong."
"Who has?"
"Poundstone."
"Where is Sykes-Coddington?"
"My God, how do I know? Merrie England, I supple."
"Do continue."                               
"I said it's father's periodic audit of my life, Masden. He’ll look
things over, satisfy himself I've at last got a decent marriage, and
make provision for our needs for the year ahead."
Dawn pinked the balustrade outside the walk-in windows and
touched the white hull of the yacht below. "We have needs?"
"Of course we do, dumbbell. I live off the proceeds of capital I
can't touch till I'm thirty."
"And you've exhausted said yearly proceeds by July?"
"Every ruble. Don't look so obtuse. It's nothing; it's a tedious
ritual dance we perform semiannually. It gives dad the most vul-
gar sense of power and of being loved. Nudging people around is
what he understands. He wants this time to evaluate my hus-
band; there've been some that didn't work."
Farrow's mind fought its traces. Only now, sobering, did the
incongruity of this his marriage to a nymph millionairess
present itself as a phenomenon to be analyzed.
"And I'm to be Hubert Poundstone."
"Well, if dad finds out you're not he'll be back at that Acapuico
airport before I can mix him a loaded drink."
"Describe Poundstone."
"Tall, rotund, conceited, overbearing. It has nothing to do with
anything. I said father's never laid eyes on Hubert, never will."
"If I must," Farrow said tepidly.
"Oh, but you definitely must. Let's face it, dolling, as Masden
Farrow of the G. 1. Bill at age thirty you're hardly the social or
financial catch of the summer season. Go to sleep. Get yourself
some cash from one of those bureau drawers when you wake up.
Look through the garage for a car you like and drive down to a
good store in Ecija for some decent clothes."
"What sort would Hubert wear?"
"Please don't start making things difficult, dolling. I'm getting
the most awful headache. Get anything that isn't army surplus
and torn tennis shoes. And do not rush to tell your local school-
mates about this. If the wire services get it and father reads it
before getting here well, he just won't get here."
No father, no money? Farrow pondered it and slept until noon.
He rose and showered. Petty cash in large bills stuck out from the
bureau drawers.. He dressed and left Pamela prettily non compos
in her bare flesh and large black eyeshades. On the terrace he re-
ceived breakfast from a portly smiling servant named Pilar.
He went to the garage and selected a Tsetse-Fly GTX-400C 3.8
bearing British plates and slipped down the winding asphalt to
Ecija. At a clothing shop well removed from his hotel and student
haunts he picked out a small but respectable beginner's wardrobe.
He gave them his own clothes to present to charity and, in ma-
roon slacks, white sandals, aloha shirt, black glasses, and yacht-
ing cap, debouched into the bright sunlight with armfuls of wares.
He was not halfway to the Tsetse-Fly when he smelled itthe
sour dreadful odor of Edward Griggs's socks. Griggs was waiting
in the passenger seat for him, his wise smirk too exultant to be
controlled.
Farrow threw the boxes into the jump seat. "Griggs."
Griggs showed his yellow teeth in a grin. "We were wondering
if you'd forgotten your old pals."
He was shorter than Farrow, but fat and heavier. His complex-
ion was coarse and pinkish. Horrid local toilet waters failed to
compensate for his disinclination to bathe. He used a cloying,
grease-based tonic on his unwashed blond hair.
"Pals?" Farrow asked.
"Share and share alike; you know our motto."
"Do I? No, I didn't know we had a 'motto.' Certainly never
heard it from you." He had the keys in the ignition but Griggs
made no move to disembark.
"Back to the big snow-white hacienda?" Griggs asked.
"Beat it, Griggs. Find your own girl."
Griggs chuckled. "Girl or wife?" he purred. "I know you got
married to her."
Farrow felt an arctic chill. "Who said that?"
"Well, now, you didn't show up at class yesterday or at the
hotel last night and I got sort of worried. I know/ a little friend of
a housemaid who's an in-law of a gardener at JPamela's. An old
technique of minecon one of these local girls into thinking you
might take them to the States, you can get anything." This last
he gave gamy significance with his vulpine grin.
Farrow looked tiredly at him. All Griggs's character assess-
ments ended on some variation of "get." "That Kepelhoff is a good
guy; he'll do anything in the world for you," Griggs would say.
An armada of swirling flies announced the grand arrival of the
ice-cream vendor. A wobbly wheeled burro cart supporting a
gross, dirty, shaveless man hove to. When small children came
running he blew his nose, wiped grimy hands on his stained
trousers, and began to issue cones.
Farrow shuddered. The scene evoked the squalor of that rancid
bedbug hotel from which he had by sheer miracle escaped. Every-
thing about it, like Griggs, induced a leaden vertigo.
"Well," he said, "nice seeing you, but right now I've got to go."
"I thought you might invite me up."
"No. We just got married at dawn."
"Maybe I'd like a nice lunch too," Griggs whined. "Meet some-
one from the upper classes for a change. Have a few drinks and
bat some ideas around."
"That sounds stimulating, but not today. I've got to go."
Griggs shook his head dolorously. "I surely would like to meet
her."
"No, Griggs, you can't. Some other time. Right now I'm hurry-
ing back to try," he lied, "to get her on a plane to Mexico City for
the day. She has things to do there."
"On her wedding day?" He smiled.
"Do I have to throw you out of here?"
Smiling, Griggs dug a limp Fatima cigarette from his spotted
plaid jacket. "I was worried about Saenz, the hotelero. Knowing
you'd moved out, he might start handing out your stuff willy-
nilly, so I put it all in my room for safekeeping."
"Find anything you needed?"
"Something fell out."
"I'll bet it did," Farrow began, but then disintegrated. Some-
thing uninvited had taken lodgment in his skull; it was his spine
up there, coiled compactly as an eel.
He knew what Griggs, prowling in Farrow's luggage, had found.
Among his papers was a Las Vegas wedding certificate dated six
or seven years ago. In those days he had the means to drink too
much. Her name was, regrettably, Mary Smith. She was a shill in
a gambling club where he'd won $30. Somehow he married her.
Two days later he lost her in a Los Angeles bus terminal. Never
saw her or heard from her or of her again. Did not know where
she came from. Could never find her for divorce purposes. Maybe
she was dead. "That's been over," he said.
"Over how? She never divorced you or you her. Nobody ever
had the dough to hire people to find the other one, or so you said
one night."
"I said that?"
"That night you got the insurance refund and we did all that
drinking."
Farrow sighed. "So all right, Griggs, what's your angle?"
"There's no angle."
"Come on, you're too dumb to be subtle. We all know you. What
are you planning, to take that piece of paper up to Pamela? She'll
laugh in your face."
"I doubt if the Mexican cops would. Bigamy in a Catholic coun-
try?"
"It has nothing to do with Mexico," Farrow argued inanely.
"The guy was a U.S. nondenominational minister."
"Operating in Mexico."
"Okay. You, wedding certificate, cops. Is that it?"
"No, what I said was, if any of the rest of us had fallen into
something good we'd have shared."
"The day anyone authorizes you to include yourself in their
'we' -all right, so you take it to the cops and then sit there in
triumph while you count up the nothing that's left to share, is
that it?" Farrow drummed the wheel in the sour smell and
watched the ice-cream vendor pull away. How (abed this morning)
he had rejoiced at being clear of it -lumpy bedding and perspira-
tion  and  dirty  toilets  and  Griggs.  Years  of nothing,  then
deliverance and now Griggs again. One thing only would be
worse: consignment for half a lifetime to the mud floor of a village
jail.
He had roughly 3000 pesos or $240 left from the clothing ap-
propriation. With wife Pamela he would be on that Nassau flight
tonight or tomorrow morning beyond Griggs, beyond local juris-
diction. He gave Griggs 2000 pesos. "This is on condition you try
to keep your mouth shut for a couple of days," he said. "Her
father is coming down. You spread this news around and I'll
guarantee you there'll be instant disinheritance problems for
her, for me, for you."
"De acuerdo," quoted Griggs from their textbook.
"I'm serious about this. I'm telling you. Blow your mouth off
about this and there's nothing. Zero."
"Convenido." Done.
"Split some of that money with Sprague and Dewey. They
haven't got a dime between them. And now I've got to go."
"No need to be huffy," Griggs said from the sidewalk. "All we
expect is a modest share."
"I'll ask Dewey later how much of it you shared with them."
His tires threw gravel getting away. He lacked the composure for
that perilous, climbing road. The rage at the thought of Griggs in
his luggage dimmed his eyesight. He drove a few blocks to a
small prim bar. Inside it was quiet, cool, and mahogany. Keeping
the barman awake was a lone gringo philosopher drinking dac-
quiris. Farrow ordered a cognac. He could not chase the stench of
Griggs's socks from his sinuses. They had poisoned the air
through the Hotel Esplendido.
Disconsolately he tapped his glass for a second cognac. He had
everything or he had nothing, contingent on his playing ball with
Edward Griggs. He should never have come down to Ecija in a
$20,000 car. He should have sent for his luggage.
Three cognacs diluted his anger and he provisioned Nassau.
Idly he contemplated the mirror behind the serried bottles. In
that mirror the Englishman two stools from him read his consid-
erable mail. He was small and wiry with a military mustache and
receding brownish hair. He finished with his correspondence and
swept it aside. He took up the local newspaper and looked it over.
In the mirror he caught Farrow's vacant eyes.
"Bit of a glaze on the sea this morning," he said cheerily. "Care
for a look at the paper? What's bloody Osgood doing in the bloody
Grand Prix?"
Farrow had quit reading newspapers.
"Bit depressing, eh? Fishwick," he said, extending his hand.
"Farrow? Yes. Knew a chap named Farrow once. Can't think
where. No, erase. Friend of mine knew him. Any relatives in Al-
giers?"
Farrow thought not.
"dust as well. The Farrow my friend knew was a bit dotty.
Claimed 'Farrow' derived from Pharaoh. Studied Egyptian land
records. Instigated legal claims. Then, too, there was a Farrer,
from Dorking where I once lived. Dead at the turn of the century,
long before my time. Offspring? Let me think . . ."
Farrow nodded and smiled at the monologue that followed,
though-he did not hear the words. Griggs weighed upon him; he
needed drink, not conversation. When next Fishwick departed for
the door marked Caballeros, Farrow glanced at the mail beside
him. There were ten or twelve envelopes all addressed to Cecil
'Sykes-Coddington, Esq., c/o Correspondencia General, Acapulco,
Gro., Mexico. Definitely not the man in the portrait on Pamela's
bureau, but her ex-husband he was.
Farrow came off the bar in all directions. The Tsetse-Fly with
British plates was visible from the window. Sykes-Coddington's
car? He tipped the bartender and quickly made his exit.
He regained the automobile. It was his error. Better to have
come to town by oxcart, or on foot. Who in town didn't know the
car? It spelled Pamela.
"Hola, Farrow!" A woman ran toward him in her high heels.
"Ay, Farrow, me debes dos mil pesos!"
Owe you 2000 nothing, he muttered, and shot forward with a
howl of burning rubber. Clever tart. Posing as a nice girl and
handing him a bill. Her name was Lucrecia. He left her shouting
and waving angry arms. "Dorty peeg!"
They had late lunch on the terrace. They spoke perfunctory,
mid-afternoon words and heard somewhere the snip of a gar-
dener's shears. Farrow's sorties into levity did not fool her. "Bad-
ders, dolling?" she asked.
"If not bad a little spicy."
She exposed her pink tongue at the guacamole. "Tell mama."
"I sat next to a guy in a bar a while ago. He was reading his
mail.  The  addressee  on  the  envelopes  was  Cecil  Sykes-
Coddington."
The pink tongue froze. "Describe him."
This was done.
"Well, blast the man," she exploded. Her wine overturned on
the tablecloth and Farrow's trousers. Smoldering, she watched the
maid Pilar in a chiding mop-up. "Bloody, bloody," she said. "I
should have known."
"Yes."
"His showing up. He keeps showing up. Showing up, showing
up. When I divorced him I hadn't much cash to give him, that's
why."
"I thought he was a big businessman."                           /-"
"He was, till we married. My husbands all quit their jobs and
take a bottle to bed." She pushed her food away in favor of the
cigarette which she smoked in incisive, angry breaths.,” Let’s fig-
ure this dreadful nonsense out. Cecil knows I'd planned a meet-
ing with father about this time of year. He damn/well knows I
never married Hubert. He'll undoubtedly be royally smashed by
evening. Drunk he's impossible. No, we can't have him bumbling
up here."
"Would he bumble up?"
"When he's drinking?" She gestured fatigue. "He wasn't sticky
about the break-up, but he'd thrown away his source of income. I
told him I'd help him along later if we could just prevent a lot of
newspaper mishmash reaching father."
"Something strange is  going on.  He's using the name
'Fishwick.' That's how he introduced himself."
She regarded him sharply. "Don't tell me you sat there and had
a conversation with him?"
"To answer, yes and no."
"But of course he'd have to be Fishwick. Or Turner or Goines or
something equally dull. He's a jump ahead of about fifty bill col-
lectors."
"And your problem is his showing up loaded and spoiling our
domestic charade for your dad."
"My problem, your problem. Or even worse. He's just too unpre-
dictable. Foul temper, bitter about money, there's just no telling."
She stood abruptly. "I've got to go find him, that's all. You didn't
notice the rest of the address on those envelopes?"
"Correspondencia General, Acapuico. General Delivery."
"Good old Cecil. Better waiting in a general delivery line like
some shipping clerk than giving people the name of an un-chic
hotel. Tell me how to find this bar where you saw him."
Chicanery on a large scale, Farrow deduced, was like stomping
out a grassfire in a shifting wind. There was Griggs, there was
Sykes-Coddington, and there was Lucrecia, and he and Pamela
hadn't been married twelve hours. With relief he watched Pamela
scoot away. While she dealt with Sykes-Coddington he could run
down and defer Lucrecia, the public lady. She did business from
an ornate room in the Hotel De Oro, a nomenclature she cele-
brated with a largess of golden teeth.
-It was isolated; it was deluxe; it hung grimly to a cliff above the
sea. Better run down to the hotel. Better anything than have her
burst in here at supper time squawling for her fee. It was a
human error, a linguistic misunderstanding. The kind of thing
one's (male) company might chuckle over while one showed one's
vacation film slides in Duluth. Briefly Farrow had, a year ago, ac-
companied Luerecia to her pleasure chamber where a vigorous
night was enjoyed. Only toward dawn did it register that the
basis of their amour was commercial. While Lucrecia slept he had
gone out a window, fallen down a mountainside, and crawled
torn and battered to a highway.
He rummaged in the money drawer. Enough was here for ev-
erybody. He sought, in the garage, a less conspicuous conveyance.
He settled on a smaller machinea Reno-Simpson 4-4-2 Demi-
Hydro (Modified)and sped briskly down the road.
He hummed a jaunty tune. Could one, he debated, under the
carefree statutes of the Bahamas, locate and divorce (by long. dis-
tance) someone named Mary Smith (no middle initial, no address)
without it infringing on the sanctity of one's presept marriage?
Something like removing one's long underwear while wearing a
frogman's suit, he thought. But this was an age of impossibles.
Just tonight he would substitute entertainingly for a man he had
never seen. Downhill he hurtled toward complication number
four.
The voice was satin-suave but imperious, the words were spaced
and given emphasis like breechblocks on an assembly line. "You
maid take sheets off bed in my room," declaimed Hubert W.
Poundstone to the dapper desk clerk in the lobby of the De Oro. "I
not want sheets changed. Sheets mine," pointing to himself. "U.S.
sheets. Estados Unidos sheets, sabe, Pedro?"
"Yes, certainly," said the clerk, but had then to pick up the
buzzing telephone. His name was not Pedro. Abiding the interrup-
tion, Poundstone, a tall porpoise-shaped man with smooth pink
cheeks, let his hooded eyes drift lazily and arrogantly over the
lobby and its potted plants and human baggage. He saw nothing
worth the oiled turn of his head. He wore an ascot and a blue
blazer with brass buttons and smelled of high-priced Cologne.
Farrow, who had quickly recognized him from the bureau por-
trait, drew closer and leafed through travel brochures.  Pound-
stone's was a familiar attack. He toured countries like a farm
tractor through a garden. Americano, spoken slowly and loudly
enough, should be understandable anywhere in the universe. Or to
people of any intelligence.
'"I  bring  own  sheets  when  I  make  travel,"  he  persisted.  "Sheets
mine personally. You maid put my Estados Unidos sheets in you
laundry. I want back."
"Yes, I understand perfectly, Mr. Poundstone. Our most sincere
apologies. I'll give instructions for"
"Bonos," Poundstone acknowledged, and glided to an open
elevator. Farrow stepped in behind him. He stepped out after
Poundstone on the second floor. He dawdled to inspect a so-so wall
painting while Poundstone strode away to unlock a door on a bal-
cony overlooking the patio swimming pool and the Pacific. Farrow
waited for the door to close and went ~ to look at the number.
Number 16.
He followed the balcony back and around its U to Number 28
where Lucrecia did business. Her window faced, across the patio,
the closed door which Poundstone, back from Hong Kong did
what and why?
His conversation with Lucrecia, a not uncomely dark-eyed lady,
was in Spanish. Reproduction in that tongue would be ostenta-
tious. Bygones were bygones, she smiled glitteringly, counting the
money. Would Farrow, perhaps (she was not occupado now), did
he... ?
Not today, Farrow said politely. But for another category of
service he was ready to settle on her an additional 2000 pesos.
She was puzzled. Then quickly she beamed and nodded agree-
ment. Boots and whips?
No, no, Farrow explained. If she could, between now and mid-
evening, defer all engagements and keep a sharp eye on the com-
ings and goings of the senor in Room 16 across the patio, noting,
for example, what visitors came and went. . . ?
In a warm bath in a blue sunken tub he prepared for Pamela's
father. He dried himself and searched for the yellow silk robe, but
could not find it. He was humming as he poured a glass of wine.
The telephone rang. It was Pamela.
"Dolling, where have you been? Didn't Pilar tell you I've been
calling?"
"Didn't see Pilar." He dilated his nostrils to an unpleasant odor.
"She seems to be downstairs cooking something unorthodox. I've
been out for a drive."
"But you know one of us has to be there when father calls.
Hasn't he?"
"Not if Pilar didn't tell you."
"Double-damn. Bad father. Well, then listen. I've almost got
Cecil cornered;, the drunken sod. He's been bar-hopping down the
coast. He left the place I'm in not five minutes ago."
"Where is that?"
"Miles from you. Toward Acapulco. And he's said to be acting
very badly, so I'll have to catch him and bribe him with half the
moon. I wouldn't doubt father might be en route in a rent-a-car,
and I'll try to be there in a jiffy, but meanwhile you be on hand,
and don't forget you're Poundstone."
"From where? Where did he grow up and go to school?"
"Just make something up, it doesn't matter."
"De acuerdo," answered Farrow from the text.
He was enjoying his wine; then he wasn't. He vaulted from his
lounge chair. The affront to his nostrils was not Pilar's cooking.
No, he knew the sour odor. He hurried down the hall and opened
doors -a bedroom, a linen closet, a study-library, then a bedroom
on whose bed rested Griggs's battered suitcase. Clothes were
strewn about. On the floor, moist and crusted, like objects fallen
off an Art League collage, were two discarded socks.
Heavily he sat down. He rose. He continued the length of the
hall and stared down at the swimming pool. The yellow robe lay
over the back of a lawn chair. Beside it, on another, flabby and
maggot-white, reclined Griggs with a drink in his hand. The robe
meant he had been foraging about in their bedroom. And where
else? Had he pocketed the Nassau air tickets? Farrow had not
seen them on the bedside table.
He retraced his steps, closing the doors he had thrown open. In
the study the red telephone on the desk made him think of Lu-
crecia. He stepped inside, closed the door, and, in the swivel chair,
massaged his face while he pondered Griggs, the telephone, and
the desk's scattered papers. He picked up the telephone, then put
it down.  He looked for a telephone book.  There was unopened
mail addressed to Sykes-Coddington, postmarked days and weeks
ago but never forwarded. Complex legal letters choked a basket;
reports of fund dividends, charity solicitations. He pulled open one
drawer, then a second. He skimmed a typewritten letter and
frowned. He read it through from the start. He read others, then
opened other drawers.
He swiveled the leather desk chair and stared at the Pacific. He
looked in the phone book and called Lucrecia who, as it happened,
had some news. He thanked her, replaced the phone, and looked
in the book for a second number. This was an alcoholic retiree
who drank in the Ecija barrooms and inhabited the American col-
ony. Farrow asked him if he knew a minister named Ricketts.
By the pool he had a highball and talked to Griggs.
"Oh, yes, by way of curiosity, the money I gave you this morn-
ing, did you share-and-share-alike with Dewey and Sprague ac-
cording to our motto?"
"Didn't even have any for myself," Griggs confessed. "You know
that little dark arcade near where the cathedral is? Four guys
jumped me and took everything I had."
"Jumped you in broad daylight outside the church?" Farrow
whistled softly.
"Gone before I could get up off the ground."
"Knocked you down, did they?"
Griggs stretched his arms and arched his head back. "Anyway,
I didn't even have the rent money, so I figured I could stay up
here until I get organized."
"Did you bring my stuff too?"
"No, I was going to but it wouldn't fit in the cab."
"Little tiny cab, eh? Taxicab twelve miles up here? I thought
they cleaned you out."
"They did," Griggs said, "but I was buddies with this particular
cab driver. I'd done him a favor and he drove me up free."
"What kind of favor did you do the taxi driver, Griggs?"
"It's been a long time. I don't remember exactly."
"Good man. That's the true kind of Christianity. You don't keep
score. Maybe you saved him from drowning in the Pacific or took
care of his hospital bills or told his family you'd take them all to
the States."
Griggs turned his head in a grin. "Be as smart as you want to,
old buddy," he cautioned. "Just so you remember where we
stand."
"Oh, I remember, all right."
"I don't even know Pamela-yet-but I've as much claim to
what's here as you have. At least I'm eligible."
"Eligible? Why, you're the John Gilbert of the western tropics. I
just wish, since you don't know her, you'd quite calling her by her
first same. Somehow it degrades her. And the only reason I'm
grilling you, I was worried about my luggage and that wedding
certificate lying around."
"It's safe, old sport. It's with a friend of mine somewhere, all
enveloped and stamped and addressed to the right people in case
anything should happen to me."
Farrow glanced at his watch. "Just don't let it disarrange
your judgment, piggy One dumb remark at that supper table to-
night with her father sitting there and he'll -from what I hear of
him-boot you off that cliff ahead of me."
"A little suspense never hurt anybody," Griggs grinned. "You
know what I've just about decided? Using one of these fancy cars
of hers, I could live up here and have breakfast in the morning
before spinning down for classes at the Alianza."
"Sounds terrific, Griggs, but the house belongs to her father and
he'll be coming in very soon. He's meticulous about some things.
Right now I'd suggest you get up there and take a bath and
shave. You smell bad. Brush your teeth. And find some-clothes
that don't smell."
"Was thinking of doing that." Griggs stood and put on the yel-
low robe.
"You'll find your luggage in the big room down the hall. You'd
thrown it in the room her father uses."
"I thought that big room was Pamela's."
"It was before she married me. We're in a bigger one at this end
of the hall. To narrow your souvenir hunting, I locked the door."
He watched Griggs's departure. He finished his drink. Dusk was
coming. He took a slow stroll on the grounds, passing the six-car
garage and lingering along the balustrade above the waves pound-
ing and sucking at the rocks. Beyond the yacht the orange rim of
the sun disappeared. Time for dressing in the bedroom with
Pamela preparatory to a splendid dinner. Time, nearly, for daddy
and the Hubert Poundstone act.
In the upstairs bedroom -their bedroom -he saw the lights go
on. Griggs, in the yellow bathrobe, prowled about. A bit of looting,
perhaps; anything he might have overlooked before he knew the
room was Farrow's.
Farrow took a bench facing the ocean. It grew dark. What a
pretty little dream. Ricketts was no minister; he was a disbarred
lawyer from Chicago who had fled south from his creditors and
did odd jobs along this coast. Some odd job.
Pamela? Ah, yea, Pamela. Well, Pamela, not a quarter hour
after his own departure from the De Oro (and a half hour before
she telephoned him), had rapped on the door of Room 16 and de-
parted allegro con hot sauce with the real Hubert W. Poundstone
and his U.S. sheets and luggage.
Farrow threw a handful of gravel over the low wall at the sea.
He thought he heard something, but did not. Then he saw the dim
sweeping halos of two headlights making the road turns, coming
up. He watched them grow brighter and now flicker in the vege-
tation. The engine came moaning and the car appeared and cir-
cled to stop at the wide front door. The headlights went off and
the driver dismounted and went inside. Hard to make out that fig-
ure, but he knew who it wasn't. For eleven years, according to
the correspondence upstairs, Pamela's father had been confined to
a New York sanitarium. Farrow lifted his eyes to the lighted up-
stairs window.
Here is how that went. A figure in yellow was in the room. A
second figure, dressed darkly, came into the light. There were
three pistol shots. There was no one in yellow.
Farrow left the bench and crossed damp grass and caliche to the
front screen door. He punched the chime and pushed open the
screen as Sykes-Coddington walked leisurely down the stairs.
"Did I hear shots?" Farrow asked.
"Yes, three," Sykes-Coddington said cheerily. He strained in the
darkness to see his questioner. "Ah, Farrow. Good fellow. Just in
time for a drink." He led the way into an adjoining room with a
bar. "Know a chap named Griggs by any chance? Afraid I just
killed him by mistake. Thought he was someone named Pound-
stone before I checked his I.D. Soda? No loss, I wouldn't guess
Griggs. Bloody sneak. Ruined my favorite silk bathrobe. Stealing
money out of the bureau drawers -money scattered everywhere.
Where on earth does Pam get these people?"
He handed Farrow a drink as the phone rang.
"Ah, yes, Pamela," he said into the phone. "Cecil here. . . At
the airport, are you? . . . I know you are, dear, I hear the bloody
planes... Won't tell me where you're going? Well, I'll find out
and be along . . . Me? Nothing much. Just sitting here enjoying a
drink with a very pleasant young chap named Farrow.
"Hello? Hello, Pamela... " He listened hard at the phone,
- looked at it, shook it in his hand, smiled, and put it down. "Not
very complimentary. I mentioned your name and she hung up."
"I'm supposed to be dead, that's why. She recruited me to stand
in for Poundstone to impress her father."
'"Her father? Man's an invalid, bedridden. Couldn't walk three
feet. Why on earth should she want you dead? What have you
done to poor Pamela?"
"I think the idea was to get you jailed for murdering me, wasn't
it?"
"Yes, she keeps trying to do that kind of thing. Hare-brained,
muddling female. Do my best to keep her off balance. Led her
London detectives to believe I'd fly in at eight tonight. Gave them
the slip and came early, as Fishwick. Thought sure I'd surprise
them. Too bad. She's gone again. Well. Another time."
"You won't give her a divorce? Is that it?"
"Not for Poundstone. Bloody fortune-hunting swine. Never have
laid eyes on the man, that's the problem. No photographs extant
except one she's said to carry around. I don't mind. Gives added
zest. You see, Pam, on film location in the Orient, had a mad
fling with him and, back home, passed him off as her half brother
adrift in the East needing something to do. I put him, by mail, in
our Hong Kong office. Not only embezzled me blind but cheated
my best customers. Gave my whole name and operation such a
black eye it's cost me a couple of million. I'm not poor. I'm in-
terested in what oafish clog-dance she led you."
Farrow told him everything. The "cleric" Ricketts, Griggs, Lu-
crecia, and Poundstone were included. The Englishman laughed
outrageously, slapping his leg, spilling part of his drink. "Had a
go at her, did you? Don't look sheepish. Everyone does. And so
you found out about Ricketts, and how your marriage was bogus,
and her father wasn't coming, and she'd bolted with Poundstone,
and so you offered up Griggs as a substitute Poundstone."
He laughed again. He poured fresh drinks. "Shouldn't laugh,
should I? Grubby business for you. Apologize. Yes, I see their
scheme now. Through her gumshoes she ascertains I'm due in,
hunting for Poundstone. She picks you up and rigs the fake mar-
riage, grooms you as Hubert's surrogate. I arrive, you mistake me
for her father, say, 'Good evening, I'm Poundstone,' and I blast
you through the middle and go to jail forever. Whereupon Hubert
moves in up here. Too complex for Pam to have thought up. I sus-
pect Poundstone hatched it from the shadows."
"Except Griggs got me mad enough to go into that bar where I
happened to meet you. I told her about talking to you, so she
could hardly go on presuming you'd mistake me for Poundstone.
She eloped with the airplane tickets but must have stopped
somewhere en route to collect him. I beat her to the De Oro and
discovered him."
"But she still nourished the possibility I just might show up in
the gloom and shoot the first chap I saw," the other said. "That I
did. Fatuous Poundstone. Doesn't he realize I could have him in
prison for embezzlement even if I were in jail?"
"Why haven't you?"
"I'm a sporting man," Sykes-Coddington said. "So what's for you
now, Farrow? Back to bedbug, book, and candle?"
Farrow gestured limply. "What else?"
"No, I think you ought to be better compensated for your trou-
bles. But for our accidental meeting it could be you on that floor
upstairs instead of your sneak thief, Griggs. Let me think. I've
never seen Poundstone. You have. Might have a job for you if
you're interested. And I'd pay well."
Where the Buunjak feeds its crocodiles to the Niastomiz; where
the giant nasturtiums and orange trumpet flowers strive among
the lilishwa bushes beneath the creeper-choked branches of the
cedar and wattle and gibbet tree; where night excites the lion's
roar and cry of hyrax and hyena, the bark of African cricket and
scream of parrot, the chatter of the colobus monkey, shrill of spur-
fowl, croak of frog, and ting-tang of the bell bird where these
sights, sounds, rot odors, and cloudbursts interlace, Farrow, in the
bar of the New Day Hotel, had a drink. The drink was pink gin.
Rain pounded the iron roof and gurgled on the sodden ground
outside. He listened and his right eyebrow twitched. He sought to
make sense of the past year's disorder: there were planes and
ships and dugouts on the Amazon; mosquito netting and customs
sheds and snowmobiles across Greenland; skin rashes, quinine
pills, berserk elephants, Land Rovers bogged down in malarious
swamps, and six thousand games of gin rummy. What had he
started out to do?
The door opened and Sykes-Coddington bent in from the
downpour. He shook out his drenched mackintosh and stamped
his gumboots on the bare wood floor. He had been off at a tele-
phone somewhere. "Uwee? Uwee! Ever hear that? Kikuyu war
cry." He joined Farrow and signaled the native barman.
"Onto something," he said. "Couple passed through Kimogu on
the run. Man fits Poundstone's description. Pamela they were cer-
tain of. For the last fourteen months, twice a night, her first film
has been the only one available to their cinema. Whole town's
seen it eight-hundred-and-fifty-odd times. Lizard Man Meets the
Purple Fungus. Love it. Love Pamela. Swarmed around her,
cooked up some posho and caterpillar; drums and dances. She
chartered an aircraft near there. Connecting flight north out of
Ubendi. Ever seen Sweden?"
Farrow's eye twitched. He never had.
"That's where they're headed. We'll catch up with them in
Stockholm."
"We never seem to get any closer," Farrow said.
"Thought you knew by now, old boy," the Englishman said.
"Don't think I really want to catch them until they're ready for it.
Killed that one blighter Griggs. One's enough. No, I've decided
to just walk them down."
"Walk them down?"
Cecil Sykes-Coddington lifted his gin. "Always amazes me how
little Americans know about their own country. Never heard of
how they used to catch the wild mustang? Nuisance animals, real-
ly,  not  good  for  much.  Led  good  horses  astray.  Not  very  in-
telligent. Stuck to their own small preserve of twenty or thirty
square miles, wouldn't leave it. So relays of horsemen simply fol-
lowed them in circles at a steady, unending walk, walking
twenty-four hours a day, giving the poor beasts no rest until they
pulled up from sheer exhaustion. Then it was easy."
"Walking Hubert down," Farrow said. "Are we getting a relay?"
"Don't need any. We have trains and planes and telephones and
ample money. Imagine Pam and Poundstone dashing through air-
ports, creeping down alleys, hiding in doorways, slipping incognito
into back street hotels like your Esplendido, and never getting a
decent night's sleep without snapping awake a dozen times a
night to what they think is my footstep in the hall. Drive them
wacky."
"So," proposed Farrow. "We walk them down, we exhaust them.
They're sick, underweight, dirty, half deranged, and by then they
hate each other's guts. What then?"
"Ah, what then?" Cecil Sykes-Coddington smiled.