THE INSURGENCE of CHAN SANTA CRUZ

BOOK SEVEN: THE SECOND of the BOOKS of CHANGE

CHAPTER TWELVE

When the train reached Toronto, Arthur Conan-Doyle informed Dr. Navarette that he had determined to postpone continuation of his journey to Montreal, so that he might visit the Falls. "It would be sin... pure sin... to have been so close to one of the natural wonders of the world, and to fail to avail myself of such opportunity. As if a traveler in Egypt were to pass by the Sphinx or Great Pyramid..."

"There are also pyramids in Mexico, the equal of any Pharaoh's tomb," Navarette pointed out. "Perhaps you'll come to my country when all this..." he spat... "has been sorted out. Be that as it may, I am delighted that I will have the privilege of your company for another day or two."

"Better yet," the author advised, "once I made my determination known, Mr. Burns wired ahead and engaged the lease of a touring car for the journey to Niagara, and I would be gratified if you would accompany us to the Falls."

"I welcome your initiative!" the Jackal said... although the truth was that, while considering the Englishman a harmless, rather diverting sort, he actively disliked Mr. Burns with a perhaps instinctual ferocity... "on the condition that I pay my share of the hiring cost and, also, help with the driving."

"You've operated a motorcar before?" Burns asked, with a raised eyebrow.

"Indeed, and under conditions of great urgency," answered the Mexican, leaving them to conclude that such was in the course of medical emergencies as doctors are always hurrying to, and not in battle, with bullets flying past one's ear.

The rented automobile was a nearly new Owen Seven-Seater with a deep, comfortably fabricated coach wherein two men could stretch their legs in relative ease behind the driver with a compartment behind the seats for either luggage or other passengers. With Burns and Navarette taking turns at the wheel, the Lafayette Hotel, situated across the street from the Clifton, nearer the Falls and the International Bridge, was achieved at the hour of a twilight made prosaic by the great red and purple clouds extending wraithlike fingers of fog across the roaring chasm... intimating one of those storms, blowing down from the West, that they had outraced over the last quarter of their journey. In only two days, the temperature had fallen a full fifty degrees Fahrenheit and, at the station, the talk had been of freezing rain ahead, quite possibly snow!

"Conan-Doyle drives, or alleges to," said the detective, his spirits lifted by the journey, "but ran his touring car into a ditch at Hindhead. Nearly crushed him! This Owen, by the way, is of the same model that the National Erectors' Association provided to have those McNamara brothers transported in, from Los Angeles all the way to Indiana for trial."

"The labor bosses accused of blowing up that newspaper with one of their infernal machines?"

"The very scoundrels! Couple o'paddies... has Arthur told you of his dislike for the Irish and Germans?"

"To be accurate," the author replied, "they despise us equally so, or more, perhaps. The difference is that most Englishmen and nearly all Americans can't understand why they hate us and, so, refuse to believe in the imminence of mortal peril." And, with Navarette ensconced on the fourth floor of the Lafayette and his companions, for the lateness of their arrival on the second... but with a partial view of the Falls... all repaired to the Clifton for the evening meal.

"I regret to have to inform you," the Jackal related to Burns and Doyle over a splendid dinner of roasted turkey with a condiment of chestnuts simmered in maple sap (for which Canada was justly famous) "that the supervisor of the hospital to which I am making my application has called me to his residence for an interview this very evening, meaning that I shall not be able to tour the Falls until tomorrow morning, weather permitting..."

"Deucedly odd," remarked the creator of Holmes.

"Dr. Wilde has some repute for eccentricity," said "Navarette", lowering his voice. "Withal, he is recognized as a genius in his field."

"And that would be..." inquired Doyle.

"Administration."

"I don't recall your having mentioned the charity that sponsors this hospital," Burns broke in with, to his English companion, rather more determination than discretion. The sudden tactlessness was echoed in the coolness of the Campecheño's reply.

"That would be the Eminent Order of Freemen," the Jackal responded, as he'd rehearsed. "A sort of gentlemen's society, though I am not familiar with such groups in Canada. As long as they do not hold my origin or religion... like almost all of my countrymen, I am a baptised Catholic, though not always an inerrant one... against me, I shall gladly comply with any of their orthodoxies. Good positions are scarce in Mexico at the moment," he added, with a sardonic smile for the benefit of the American detective.

"Why don't you take the Owen?" Burns suggested. "Arthur and I can take a ramble back and forth on the bridge... they call it the Honeymoon Bridge, by the way, though I suspect that there will not be so many April brides about in weather as this... and I should think your Administrator Wilde would be properly impressed when you drove up in such a fine vehicle. You might even invite him out for a spin around the town... did you notice how quiet the Owen becomes with the top down and windows shut. The very place in which to hold confidential interviews! When were you planning to meet this fellow?"

"At nine..."

"Then you ought to be on your way," Burns suggested. "Only wait here, with Doyle, for the moment while I remove one of my bags from the trunk."

The American was back within ten minutes, wearing a broad smile. "All ready to go! Just give us a knock if you're back before midnight, and I'll take possession of the crank and the hiring papers. Make an impression upon this fellow!"

"According to our Doctor's notebook," said Doyle, when the Mexican had departed, "there is a Wilhelm Knieff in this very hotel, on the third floor and, next his name, our visitor from the south has appended the word "Wilde" in parenthesis."

"Indeed. While in Toronto, I contacted some local boys, and they've taken the room next to Herr Knieff... or Dr. Wilde, if you will... and made some small alterations to the decor."

"Peep-holes?"

"Something of that sort. Either Dr. Navarette will circle the block and park inconspicuously or he'll have taken my suggestion about the confidentiality of the Owen and sent a message to Herr Knieff to join him in an outing. Unfortunately, the Owen is not so confidential as our Latin fellow believes."

"How can that be?" inquired Doyle.

"You'll see!" the American winked. "Science is making discoveries that even poor old Sherlock... were he to be disinterred from the grave you've set him down into… would applaud. And now..."

"Now?" echoed Doyle.

"Now... we wait!"

They returned to their suite on the fourth floor, and... within twenty minutes... a young fellow with a black cap over straw-coloured hair knocked. Burns allowed him entry and explained that the Englishman was a part of the team, whereupon the young man recited his message.

"Knieff's gone. This boy came to him, just as you said he might, and the Hun packed up a little bag such as the swells carry round and hurried downstairs. Archie followed him down the service stairs and through the kitchen, and saw him get into that big Owen seven-seater, just as you said would be hanging around. He let 'em go... just as you asked, if you don't mind my asking..."

"You did well, Conard. One of you watch the front, another keep an eye out back, and the rest of you stay up in the room. Well," Burns said, "the trap is baited, and the rats are closing in on their cheese."

But, for once, the sovereign of literary detection was quite baffled. "Bill, you've just allowed Knieff and this Mexican to drive off in the very Owen that you hired. They're out of reach!"

"Maybe not," opined the detective. "Patience!"

He cleaned his revolver and smoked while Doyle lay on his bed, tried to read an account of violence in the American mining towns of Pennsylvania, gave up, sighed and stared at the clock on the mantel, willing its hands to move faster. At half past ten, there came a knock, and young Conard slipped in, only to announce, "...they're back. Parked the Owen up Clifton Hill, on the north side of the railroad tracks... that would be Victoria Street. Anything else?" he asked, hopefully.

"Thank you. Wait... does the German's room overlook that part of Victoria street?"

"No, sir."

"Keep our fellow under watch. If someone comes up to his room, don't risk coming down here yourself, have a boy from the desk come up. We'll hope that there's been enough villainy done for the night." And, when Conard was gone and... five minutes later... Navarette knocked upon the door of the suite, Burns whispered: "Put on your face!" and admitted their newly-found friend.

"Splendidly!" the Doctor said, anticipating their question. "Oh, he's eccentric... you should have seen his place... "but the man knows his business. Except for the fact that there is such a surplus of Mexican doctors in exile that Dr. Wilde really should have offered me a lower stipend, but who was I to dispute. Eh? And the Owen... I think I could have sold him one on the spot. Or two! Wouldn't let me leave until I'd driven him over the border and back... put the customs people on edge, we did! Hope you enjoyed your walk..."

"More than you can imagine!" Burns replied.

The man who passed himself off as "Navarette" retired ten minutes later, and the detective and writer of detective stories endured another hour... dozing, waiting; Burns with his cigarettes and Doyle, his book and pipe... before a furtive knock announced the presence of the indomitable Conard. "Light's out, nothing moving. Starting to rain, though..."

"Can he see the motorcar from his window?"

"Not a chance."

"Then I must be on my way."

William Burns, accompanied by Conard, climbed Clifton Hill past the far grander hotel of sleeping diplomats, entered the parked Owen, removed the cushions and some paneling from the rear seat and, then, an apparatus from beneath the seat consisting of some cylinders, an electric generator and an array of magnets, through which a thin filament remained poised. Bringing it back to the second floor of the Lafayette, he attached the amplification horn from a Gramophone and cranked the device backward, until the filament disappeared, then set it moving forward again. "Unlike Edison's device, the Poulsen recorder does not require amplification during the recording phase... thus it may be placed in a small, confined location, like beneath the rear seat of the Owen Motor Car I arranged to have for us, here." The two men then fell silent, listening to the words that emerged from the device... like voices from the Otherworld... until the wire filament ceased its revelations.

The first of many drops of cold, nearly freezing rain had begun battering against their window, but Doyle removed a handkerchief and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "I suppose you should be calling Jenkins and Jones," he nodded, "although I've quite forgotten which man represents the constabulary."

"Jones, that would be, Marion Jones. Peter Jenkins is from our side of the border, the office in Buffalo. Try and get some rest... it'll be two hours, maybe three before they are here and the warrants are in order. Even so, what we are doing won't be quite proper. Do hope the fellow is a sound sleeper."

"Evildoers usually are," opined Doyle.

It was not until the dreadful hour of four in the morning that Constable Jones, RCMP and Agent Peter Jennings were in place for the rain had wholly changed over to one of those late spring blizzards that vex the Great Lakes... listening with hats in hand and outrage upon their faces to the voices on the thin, metal wire.

"That remark about the gold is the cruelest touch," the Constable glowered. "Can you wind it back so I can hear it again, once more, before we do what it is that we have to do?"

"Certainly," said William Burns. "Arthur..."

"It is as I suspected from the map and the notes that we observed on the train, though even the more fiendish. For a sum of money... millions of pesos... secured in secret accounts throughout Germany and the Hapsburg Empire... Huerta will lease nine Mexican ports to the Huns for a term of twenty years. Five on the Atlantic side, three on the Pacific besides, of course, Magdalena Bay. The payment is to be made in gold which, of course, appreciates during wartime... I'll lay my money down that the bloody German knows exactly the day and hour that their war shall start, or at least knows someone who does."

"And you say we cannot hold either of them for this?" scowled Jennings.

"Not for long, since what they are doing is not against the laws of Canada," the Constable acknowledged. "Best we can do is have them deported... that might be the worse for the Mexican if his President's situation is as desperate as the papers say. Might even see him cry for asylum... a Canadian jail's no picnic, but it's better than the wall Carranza or Villa or whichever of those blighters prevails has in mind for him."

"What is the hour that all will be ready on both sides of the border, and we may strike?" the impatient Jennings asked.

William Burns snuffed out the cigarette between his fingers. "Dawn!"

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