The Mercenaries

If you are honestly curious about pearl fishing conditions in the Marquesas, the possibility of employment on the projected Trans Gobi Desert Railway, or the potentialities of any of the hot tamale republics, go to the Cafe Cambrinus on Wabash Avenue, Chicago. There at the rear of the dining room where the neo-bohemians struggle nightly with their spaghetti and ravioli is a small smoke-filled room that is a clearinghouse for the camp followers of fortune. When you enter the room, and you will have no more chance than the zoological entrant in the famous camel-needle’s eye gymkana of entering the room unless you are approved by Cambrinus, there will be a sudden silence. Then a varying number of eyes will look you over with that detached intensity that comes of a periodic contemplation of death. This inspection is not mere boorishness. If you’re recognized favourably, all right; if you are unknown, all right; Cambrinus has passed on you. After a time the talk picks up again. But one time the door was pushed open, men looked up, glances of recognition shot across the room, a man half rose from one of the card tables, his hand behind him, two men ducked to the floor, there was a roar from the doorway, and what had had its genesis in the Malay Archipelago terminated in the back room of the Cambrinus. But that’s not this.

I came out of the wind scoured nakedness of Wabash Avenue in January into the cosy bar of the Cambrinus and, armed with a smile from Cambrinus himself, passed through the dining room where the waiters were clearing away the debris of the table d’hotes and sweeping out into the little back room. The two men I had seen in the café before were seated at one of the three tables with half empty bottles of an unlabeled beverage known to the initiates as “Kentucky Brew” before them. They nodded and I joined them.

“Smoke?” asked the taller of the two, a gaunt man with a face the color of half-tanned leather, shoving a package of cheap cigarettes across the table.

“It is possible the gentleman would prefer one of these,” smiled the other with a flash of white teeth under a carefully pointed mustache, and pushed a monogrammed cigarette box across to me with a small, well-manicured hand.

“Shouldn’t wonder,” grunted the big man, his adam’s apple rising and falling above his flannel shirt collar. “Can’t taste em myself.” He took one of his own cigarettes and rolled the end between thumb and forefinger until a tiny mound of tobacco piled up on the table before him, then carefully picked up the stringy wad and tucked it under his tongue, lighting the half-cigarette that remained.

“It is droll, that manner of smoking a cigarette, is it not?” smiled the dark little man as he held a match for me. I noted a crossed-cannon monogram on his box as I handed it back to him.

“Artigliere français?” I questioned.

“Mais oui, Monsieur; le soixante-quinze!” he smiled again, his whole face lighting up.

“Say,” broke in the gaunt man, eyeing me thoughtfully; “Artill’ry ain’t your trade, is it?”

“No, takes too much brains,” I said.

“That’s too darn bad. It don’t,” the leather-faced man replied to my answer and observation.

“Why?” said I.

“There’s a good job now.” He rolled the tobacco under his tongue and drew a deep inhalation on his cigarette butt. “For gunners. Peru verstus and against Chile. Two hundred dollars a month—”

“In gold,” smiled the Frenchman, twisting his mustache.

“In gold,” continued the leather-face. “We got the dope from Cambrinus. Artillery officers they want. We saw the consul. He’s fat and important and oily. ‘War with Chile? Reediculous!’ he says. I talked spiggotty to him for awhile and we come to terms. Napoleon here—”

The Frenchman bowed, “Lieutenant Denis Ricaud.”

“Napoleon here—,” continued leather-face unmoved, “and me are officers in the Royal Republican Peruvian Army with tickets to New York.” He tapped his coat pocket. “There we see the Peruvian consul and present papers,” he tapped his pocket again, “and are shipped to Peru via way of the Isthmus. Let’s have a drink.”

He pushed the button under the table and Antonio the squat Sardinian waiter poked his head in the door.

“If you haven’t had one, perhaps you’d try a cognac-benedictine?” asked the leather-faced man. I nodded, thinking. “Tre martell-benedictine, Nino. It’s all right with Cambrinus.”

Antonino nodded and vanished. Ricaud flashed his smile at me, “And you will hear people denounce the absinthe as an evil beverage!”

I was puzzling over the drink leather-face had ordered, for there is only one place in the world where people drink that smooth, insidious, brain-rotting mixture. And I was still puzzling when Antonino returned with the drinks, not in liqueur glasses, but in big full cock-tail containers.

“These are mine altogether in toto,” said the leather-face, pulling out a roll of bills. “Me and Napoleon are now being emolumated at the rate of two hundred dollars per month—”

“Gold!” smiled Ricaud.

“Gold!” calmly finished leather-face. “Say, my name is Graves, Perry Graves.” He looked across the table at me.

“Mine’s Rinaldi, Rinaldi Renaldo,” I said.

“Wop?” asked Graves, lifting his eyebrows and his adam’s apple simultaneously.

“Grandfather was Italian,” I replied.

“Wop, eh,” said Graves unhearingly, then lifted his glass. “Napoleon, and you, Signor Resolvo, I’d like to propose a toast. You say ‘A bas Chile!’ Napoleon. You say ‘Delenda Chile!’ Risotto. I drink ‘To Hell with Chile!’” We all sipped our glasses.

“Down with Chile,” said Graves meditatively, then in an argumentative tone, “They’re not a bad lot, those Chillies!”

“Ever been there?” I asked.

“Nope,” said Graves, “a rotten bad lot those dirty Chillies.”

“Capitain Graves is a propagandiste to himself,” smiled Ricaud, and lit a cigarette.

“We’ll rally round the doughnut. The Peruvian doughnut,” mused Graves, disembowelling another cigarette. “Follow the doughnut, my boys, my brave boys. Vive la doughnut. Up with the Peruvian doughnut and down with the chile concarne. A dirty rotten lot those Chillies!”

“What is the doughnut, mon cher Graves?” asked Ricaud, puzzled.

“Make the world safe for the doughnut, the grand old Peruvian doughnut. Don’t give up the doughnut. Remember the doughnut. Peru expects every doughnut to do his duty,” Graves was chanting in a monotone. “Wrap me in the doughnut, my brave boys. No, it doesn’t sound right. It ain’t got something a slogum ought to have. But those Chillies are a rotten lot!”

“The Capitain is très patriotic, n’est-ce pas? The doughnut is the national symbol of Peru, I take it?” asked Ricaud.

“Never been there. But we’ll show those dirty Chillies they can’t trample on the grand old Peruvian doughnut though, Napoleon!” said Graves, fiercely banging his fist on the table.

“Really, we should know more of the country at whose disposal we have placed our swords,” murmured Ricaud, apologetically. “What I wonder is the flag of Peru?”

“Can’t use the sword myself,” said Graves dourly, raising his glass. “That reminds me of something. Say, you ever been to Italy?”

“Three years,” I replied.

“During the war?” Graves shot a look at me.

“Durante la guerra,” I said.

“Good boy! Ever hear of Il Lupo?”

Who in Italy has not heard of Il Lupo, the Wolf? The Italian ace of aces and second only to the dead Baracca. Any school boy can tell the number of his victories and the story of his combat with Baron Von Hauser, the great Austrian pilot. How he brought Von Hauser back alive to the Italian lines, his gun jammed, his observer dead in the cockpit.

“Is he a brave man?” asked Graves, his face tightening up.

“Of course!” I said.

“Certainment!” said Ricaud, who knew the story as well as I did.

“He is not,” said Graves, quietly the leather mask of his face crinkled into a smile. “I’ll leave it to you Napoleon, and to you, Signor Riposso, if he is a brave man. The war is over—”

“I seem to have heard as much somewheres,” murmured Ricaud.

“The war is over,” calmly proceeded Graves. “Before it, I was a top kicker of field artillery. At the end I was a captain of field artillery, acting pro tempor for the time being. After awhile, they demoted us all to our pre-war rank and I took a discharge. It’s a long tumble from captain to sergeant. You see, I was an officer, but not a gentleman. I could command a battery, but I’ve got a rotten taste in cigarettes. But I wasn’t no worse off than lots of other old non-coms. Some were majors even and lieutenant colonels. Now they’re all non-coms again or out. Napoleon here is a gentleman. You can tell it to look at him. But I ain’t. That ain’t the point of this, and I ain’t kicking if that’s the way they want to run their army.” He raised his glass.

“Down with the Chillies!”

“After the Armistice I rated some leave and got an order of movement good for Italy, and went down through Genoa and Pisa and hit Rome, and a fella said it was good weather in Sicily. That’s where I learned to drink this.” He noted his glass was empty and pushed the button under the table. “Too much of this ain’t good for a man.”

I nodded.

“You go across from a place called Villa San Giovani on a ferry to Messina, where you can get a train. One way it goes to Palermo. The other way to Catania. It was just which and together with me which way to go. There was quite a crowd of us standing there where the two trains were waiting, and a woman came up to me and smiled and said, ‘You are the American captain, Forbes, going to Taormina?’

“I wasn’t, of course, and a gentleman like Napoleon here would have said how sorry he was but that he was not Captain Forbes, but I don’t know. I saluted and when I looked at her I admitted that I was that captain enroute on the way to nowheres by Taormina, wherever it should be. She was so pleased, but said that she had not expected me for three or four days, and how was dear Dyonisia?

“I’d been out at the Corso Cavalli in Rome and had won money on a dog named Dyonisia that came from behind in the stretch and won the prettiest race you ever saw, so I said without lying any that Dyonisia was never better in her life. And Bianca, how was she, dear girl? Bianca, so far as I knew, was enjoying the best of health. So all this time we were getting into a first class compartment and the Signora, whose name I hadn’t caught, was exclaiming what a funny and lucky thing it was that we had met up. She had known me instantly from Dyonisia’s description. And wasn’t it fine that the war was over and we could all get a little pleasure again, and what a fine part we Americans had played. That was while some of the Europeans still admitted that the United States had been in the war.

“It’s all lemon orchards and orange groves along the right-hand side of the railway, and so pretty that it hurts to look at it. Hills terraced and yellow fruit shining through the green leaves and darker green of olive trees on the hills, and streams on the hills, and streams with wide dry pebbly beds cutting down to the sea and old stone houses, and everything all color. And over on the left-hand side you’ve got the sea, lots bluer than the Bay of Naples, and the coast of Calabria over across is purple like no other place there is. Well, the Signora was just as good to look at as the scenery. Only she was different. Blue-black hair and a face colored like old ivory and eyes like inkwells and full red lips and one of those smiles, you know what they’re like, Signor Riscossa.”

“But what has this most pleasant adventure to do with the valor of the Wolf, Capitain?” asked Ricaud, who had his own ideas about the points of women.

“A whole lot, Napoleon,” continued Graves. “She had those red lips, you know—”

“To the loup! Curse her red lips!” exclaimed Ricaud, impatiently.

“God bless her red lips, Napoleon. And after awhile the little train stopped at a station called Jardini, and she said that this was our getting off place, and that Taormina was the town up on the hill. There was a carriage waiting, and we got in and drove up the pipe elbow road to the little town way up above. I was very gallant and dignified. I’d like to have had you see me, Napoleon.

“That evening we had dinner together, and I’m telling you it wasn’t no short order chow. First a martell-benedictine and then an antipasto di magro of all kind of funny things you couldn’t figure out but that ate great. Then a soup, clear, and after, these little flat fish like baby flounders cooked like those soft-shelled crabs you get at Rousseau’s in New Orleans. Roast young turkey with a funny dressing and the Bronte wine that’s like melted up rubies. They grow the grapes on Aetna and they’re not allowed to ship it out of the country, off the island, you know. For dessert we had these funny crumpily things they call pasticerria and black turkish coffee, with a liqueur called cointreau.

“After the meal, we sat out in the garden under the orange trees, jasmine matted on the walls, and the moon making all the shadows blue-black and her hair dusky and her lips red. Away off you could see the moon on the sea and the snow up on the shoulder of Aetna mountain. Everything white as plaster in the moonlight or purple like the Calabria coast, and away down below the lights of Jardini blinking yellow. It seemed she and her husband didn’t get along so well. He was a flyer up in Istery of Hystery or somewheres, I didn’t care much, with the Wop army of preoccupation, and she was pleased and happy that I had come to cheer her up for a few days. And I was too.

“Well, the next morning we were eating breakfast, or what they call breakfast, rolls, coffee, and oranges, with the sun shining in through the big swinging-door windows, when the door opens and in rushed—an Eyetalian can’t come into a room without rushing, excuse me, Signor Disolvo—a good-looking fellow with a scar across his cheek and a beautiful blue theatrical-looking cape and shining black boots and a sword, crying ‘Carissima!’

“Then he saw me sitting at the breakfast table, and his ‘Carissima!’ ended in a sort of gurgle. His face got white, all except that scar that stood out like a bright red welt.

“‘What is this?’ he said in Eyetalian, and whipped out his sword. Then I placed him. I seen that good-looking, scarred face on the covers of lots of the illustrated magazines. It was the Lupo. The signora was crying among the breakfast dishes, and she was scared. But the Lupo was magnificent. He was doing the dramatic, and he was doing it great. He had anything I ever seen beat.

“‘Who are you, you son of a dog?’ he said to me. Funny how that expression is international, ain’t it, among all countries?

“‘Captain Perry Graves, at your service,’ I said. It was a funny situation, the dashing, handsome, knock em dead Wolf full of righteous wrath, and opposite him old Perry Graves, as homely as you see him now. I didn’t look like the side of a triangle, but there was something about me she liked, I guess.

“‘Will you give me the satisfaction of a gentleman?’ he snapped out.

“‘Certainly,’ I said, bowing.

“‘Here and now?’ he said.

“‘Surely,’ I said, and bowed again.

“‘You have a sword?’ he asked, in a sweet tone.

“‘Excuse me a minute,’ I said, and went and got my bag and my belt and gun.

“‘You have a sword?’ he asked, when I came back.

“‘No,’ said I.

“‘I will get you one,’ says he, in his best Lupo manner.

“‘I don’t wish a sword,’ I said.

“‘You won’t fight me? You dirty dog. I’ll cut you down!’”

Graves’s face was as hard as his voice was soft.

“‘I will fight you here and now,’ I said to him. ‘You have a pistol, so have I. We will stand facing each other across the table with our left hands touching.’ The table wasn’t four feet across. ‘The Signora will count one, two, three. We will start firing at the count of three. Firing across the table.’

“Then the control of the situation shifted from the handsome Lupo to Perry Graves. Cause just as sure as it was that he would kill me with a sword was the fact that if he killed me at that three foot range with his gun I would take him with me. He knew it too, and he started to sweat. That was the only sign. Big drops of sweat on his forehead. He unbuckled his cape and took out his gun. It was one of those little 7.65 mm. pretty ugly, short little gats.

“We faced across the table and rested our hands on the board, I remember my fingers were in a coffee cup, our right hands with the pistols were below the edge. My big forty-five made a big handful. The Signora was still crying. The Lupo said to her, ‘Count, you slut!’ She was sobbing hysterically.

“‘Emeglio!’ called the Lupo. A servant came to the door, his face scared and white. ‘Stand at the end of the table,’ commanded the Wolf, ‘and count slowly and clearly. Una-Dua-Tre!’

“The servant stood at the end of the table. I didn’t watch the Wolf’s eyes like he did mine. I looked at his wrist where his hand disappeared under the table.

“‘Una!’ said the waiter. I watched the Lupo’s hand.

“‘Dua!’ and his hand shot up. He’d broken under the strain and was going to fire and try and get me before the signal. My old gat belched out and a big forty-five bullet tore his out of his hand as it went off. You see, he hadn’t never heard of shooting from the hip.

“The Signora jumped up, screaming, and threw her arms around him. His face was burning red with shame, and his hand was quivering from the sting of the smash. I shoved my gun into the holster and got my musette bag and started for the door, but stopped at the table and drank my coffee standing. It was cold, but I like my coffee in the morning. There wasn’t another word said. She was clinging to his neck and crying, and he was standing there, red and ashamed. I walked to the door and opened it, and looked back, and her eye flickered at me over his shoulder. Maybe it was a wink, maybe not. I shut the door and walked out of the courtyard down the road to Jardini. Wolf, hell no, he was a coyote. A coyote, Napoleon, is a wolf that is not a wolf. Now do you think he was a brave man, Signor Disporto?”

I said nothing. I was thinking of how this leather-faced old adventurer had matched his courage against admittedly one of the most fearless men in Europe.

“It is a question of standards,” said Ricaud, as the fresh glasses arrived. “Lupo is brave, of course. The adventure of Von Hauser is proof. Also, mon capitain, he is Latin. That you cannot understand, for you have courage without imagination. It is a gift from God, monsieur.” Ricaud smiled, shaking his head sadly. “I wish I have it. I have died a thousand times, and I am not a coward. I will die many more before I am buried, but it is, what you call it, Graves, my trade. We go now to a little war. Perhaps a joke war, eh? But one dies as dead in Chile as on Montfaucon. I envy you, Graves, you are American.

“Signor Rinaldi, I like you to drink with me to Capitain Perry Graves, who is so brave he makes the bravest flyer in your country look like a coward!” He laughed, and raised his glass.

“Aw, say, Napoleon!” broke in Graves, embarrassedly, “Let’s change that to ‘Vive la doughnut!’”