PAGE 7
Masters of Arts
by
Keogh strode from the room, white-hot. White paid little attention to his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing beside the greater self-scorn he had escaped.
In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was,the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom- houses turned over to them as a guarantee. The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt.
On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent. Veiling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They overthrew the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the center of the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore from public buildings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory of the “Illustrious Liberator.” His pictures in the government offices were demolished. The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena, but were driven away by the military, which remained faithful to the executive. All the night terror reigned.
The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the next day order was restored and he was still absolute. He issued proclamations denying positively that any negotiation of any kind had been entered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the pink-cheeked Englishman, also declared in placards and in public print that his presence there had no international significance. He was a traveller without guile. In fact (so he stated), he had not even spoken with the president or been in his presence since his arrival.
During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voyage in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of speeding the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had never departed from her perch on the red-tiled roofs.
About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little room where he developed his pictures.
Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim predatory smile on his face.
“Do you know what that is?” he asked, holding up a 4 x 5 photograph mounted on cardboard.
“Snap-shot of a senorita sitting in the sand–alliteration unintentional,” guessed White, lazily.
VVVV “Wrong,” saidKeogh with shining eyes. “It’s a slung-shot. It’s a can of dynamite. It’s a gold mine. It’s a sight-draft on your president man for twenty thousand dollars–yes, sir–twenty thousand this time, and no spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You with your smelly little tubes! I’ve got you skinned to death with a kodak. Take a look at that.”
White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long whistle.
“Jove!” he exclaimed, “but wouldn’t that stir up a row in town if you let it be seen. How in the world did you get it, Billy?”
“You know that high wall around the president man’s back garden? I was up there trying to get a bird’s eye of the town. I happened to notice a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks I, I’ll take a peep through to see how Mr. President’s cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away. They had the table all spread over with documents, and they were hobnobbing over them as thick as two pirates. ‘Twas a nice corner of the garden, all private and shady with palms and orange trees, and they had a pail of champagne set by handy in the grass. I knew then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art. So I raised the machine up to the crack, and pressed the button. Just as I did so them old boys shook hands on the deal–you see they took that way in the picture.”