Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 57/Number 5/Hatching a Volcano/Chapter 1

ROM where Andrew Brant sat on the comfortable bench shadowed by a huge Poinciana tree with its roof of flaming, scarlet blossoms, looking across the sapphire and jade-tinted waters of Havana Bay, the crumbling battlements of Morro Castle looked exactly like the picture post cards he had seen in New York. The riot of color in the sunset could not have been exaggerated. It was a prettier sunset and background than the best of the lithographer's art could command. It was a thing to call forth rhapsodies and produce a deluge of trite adjectives.

There was one very satisfying thing about the view—it cost nothing; and for that matter neither did the soft breeze that whispered among the palms and banana trees, nor the picturesque parade of the Havanese, afoot and in motor, that wound endlessly along the stone-flagged walks and Acacia-bordered Malecon.

Once the concert started, a trim, uniformed attendant with ferretlike eyes and moustachios black and waxen, would make the rounds and collect cinco centavos from those who preferred to listen to the music from the comfortable and uncrowded benches. And about that time Brant would have urgent business elsewhere and stroll beyond the reserved section.

Cinco centavos would purchase a fairly satisfying cigar, provided one knew where to shop and how to bargain. Tobacco was more essential, more comforting, to a lean stomach than the outpouring of music, however good it might be for the soul.

From the fact that Brant studiously avoided paying a seat tax, which was no more than the price of a subway ticket in New York, used discretion in the purchase of his cigar, and appreciated the beauties of nature because they were complimentary, it is not difficult to surmise that he was, temporarily at least, impoverished in pocket.

Brant was in the springtime of his twenties, robust, American, not unhandsome, presentably garbed, and forever optimistic. Optimism was a quality that seldom deserted him. There were times when it might have been better defined as foolhardy, or again as recklessness; but at all odds it was the relish that added spice to the roast beef of life.

According to the fiction-writer's primer, a politician is forever crooked, a bootlegger rich, a millionaire grasping, and a knight of the buskin lamentably poor. Brant, actor, was not the exception to the rule, proving beyond all argument that a Thespian does not worry about his income tax.

Being of the show-shop clan, he yearned to set foot again in the Vertical City, made popular by brownstone fronts, hall bedrooms, and white lights, where agents could be stalked, engagements ambushed, and contracts snared.

Brant could not walk back to the mummer's Mecca, however sturdy his shoe leather, for a matter of seventy miles of shimmering, blue-green, shark-infested water intervened between the brilliant, stone-flagged Malecon and Key West.

Take it from J. Francis Snell, head of the organization that sailed away from the bleak sky line of Gotham, and in due time landed at the metropolis of the peppery little island with his aggregation of artists, “These Cubans don't appreciate a good, snappy vaudeville show!”

The Snell galaxy of stars twinkled more or less radiantly under canvas, thereby saving house rent; but even that novelty failed to attract. Presumably a tent indicated a circus, and the box-office patrons in the outlying sections insisted upon a menagerie, glittering ladies mounted upon cavorting steeds, trick elephants, and boisterous clowns. Not finding them they put the Cuban blight upon the show.

So Snell and his artists—with one exception—left the wreckage and sailed on a fruit liner for New York, thankful that return passage had been engaged and paid for long in advance.

The exception Was Brant. The night before the scheduled sailing, the engagementless Thespian, enjoying a stroll in the vicinity of the Parque Central and lending an appreciative ear to the concert, stepped across a narrow, dark alleyway and thought for an instant that the whole of La Belle Habana had gone up in a gory blaze of fireworks.

When he awoke, some time before dawn, he found himself alone in a dirty little room with barred windows that looked out across a stretch of moonlit water. Voices reached his ear—a garble of Spanish, English, and ever and again an excited chatter that reminded him of a Chinese laundryman arguing with a patron who had lost his ticket. Shadowy forms slipped along. Presently a boat without lights—a trim, sleek, and silent craft—crept past the window and headed for the open Caribbean.

Brant viewed the scene upon the moonlit stage with a whirling brain and aching head. He realized dimly what had happened to him, but at the moment felt too weak and faint and indifferent to lift his voice. Just why he had been slugged and imprisoned were matters yet to be learned.

With his face pressed against the bars, Brant saw two men emerge from the shadows beyond. They passed below his window, talking volubly and loudly.

“A dozen monkeys gone!” one of the men declared. “Hope Korry gets through all right.”

“Oh, he'll get through one way or another,” the other responded. “The revenue cutter'll never be able to follow him; and he'll hide back in the shallow water if he's chased. Trust Korry to outwit them fool government guys.”

“I'd 'a' waited over a couple of nights.” The first man was speaking again. “The cutter's reported to be laying for him. There's some leaks on this end that ought to be plugged. The revenuers are gettin' too much inside dope.”

“Huh, between them and the hijackers this monkey runnin' is gettin' risky. Well, it ain't none of our affair,” the other man went on. “I'm willin' to take a little less and work on this end of the line.”

The men passed on beyond earshot. Brant was about to shout to them, to demand his instant release, but thought better of it. If they were responsible for his present predicament, they might take unkindly to the fact that he was awake, that he had viewed certain developments and overheard remarks.

Brant was in no mood or condition to bring about a second encounter. The conversation he had listened to seemed without meaning to his muddled brain. Fifteen monkeys! Revenue cutter! He couldn't connect the two. The mention of a revenue cutter brought to mind smuggling; and no doubt something of that nature was afoot. But monkeys! Surely they were not contraband.

All sounds beyond his window died away. The peaceful calm of a tropical night succeeded the busy and mysterious scene of a moment before.

After a period given over to deliberate reflection, Brant felt his way along the wall of the room, seeking some means of escape. He found a door at last, but it was locked. The effort he made in tugging at the knob was too much for him. He felt sick and weak, and presently he wilted, toppling across a cot. It was softer than the stone floor. He stretched out upon it and closed his eyes.

It was broad daylight when he again awoke and took notice of things about him. The hot sun streamed through the barred window and painted vertical lines on the opposite wall. Brant rolled off the cot and made for the door. This time, much to his surprise, it opened readily, and he stepped out into a wide patio.

He glared defiantly and rather amazedly about him. No one was within sight. The patio was empty; the doors that opened from it were closed. He had a debt to pay and meant to return it with interest. Just at the moment he felt in a mood for fighting; but there was no one to give battle; no one to answer questions. It was a strange, unaccountable state of affairs, he reasoned when, after surveying the scene, he passed through an unlocked gate into a side street that ran along the water front.

His clothes, once clean and immaculate, were torn and soiled. His hat was missing, and there was a very tender, bruised spot on the back of his head—the fuse that had set off the fireworks of the night before.

It was not until he had gone through his pockets and found them plucked clean, that one of the mysteries was solved. Robbery had been the motive for the attack upon him; but why his assailants had taken the trouble to lock him in a room afterward and later permit him to walk away unchallenged were matters to arouse speculation.

A diminutive Cuban policeman, with a revolver strapped about his waist, strolled around the corner and glanced suspiciously at Brant; but at that moment, on the point of relating his troubles, the former member of the Snell organization glanced seaward and relieved himself of certain sulphuric remarks that may, or may not, have shocked the minion of the law.

Slipping past Morro Castle, gleaming white in the morning sun, a big fruit liner plowed majestically through the amethyst bay, her high bow pointed toward New York. Dismally, Brant watched it; he almost fancied he could make out the forms of his player companions lining the rails.

With a shrug, ignoring the officer, Brant plodded along the street, his mind filled with varied emotions. By the time he reached the modest la casa de huespedes where he had lodgings, and explained the circumstances of the past night to a sympathetic el patrona and changed into clean clothes, Brant was in better spirits.

He seldom cried over hard luck, for such was the familiar bugaboo of all mountebanks. His twelve dollars were gone, along with his steamer ticket. But other dollars could be garnered, and other steamers would be sailing.

A few hours later he had talked himself into an engagement. Doing cabaret work, even in the smartest of Havana restaurants, was distinctly out of his line; but the modest remuneration supplied him with food, and the novelty of the work furnished amusement as well as diversion.