The Three Sentinels Read Online Free Page B

the only hope of stability in these backward countries where governments change once a month.’
    ‘Sir Dave has a point there,’ Henry said, ‘but unfortunately they threw the Union delegates into the sea.’
    He did not sound as if he thought it unfortunate. Mat at once tried to divert an argument which could end with both men putting the blame for it on him.
    ‘Has there been any communist influence?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course!’ Sir Dave bubbled, ‘they are largely responsible.’
    Henry’s silky voice murmured that to those less familiar with the international labour movement evidence was lacking.
    ‘That is not at all what I hear from private sources,’ said Sir Dave, ignoring his Managing Director and turning to Mat. ‘But the Union assures me that they know how to deal
with this wildcat strike if we turn a blind eye, give ’em a free hand and afterwards increase the pay packet.’
    Mat smiled politely and remarked that in his time the field was always on the boil but on the whole a happy family.
    ‘Which is why I want you,’ Henry replied. ‘Can you recover that feeling?’
    ‘I can try. But your present General Manager?’
    ‘Birenfield lost his nerve. Or his wife did. Resigned and cleared out.’
    ‘Who’s in command at the moment?’
    ‘Gateson, the Field Manager. Afraid of nothing when it’s a technical question, but no knack of handling men.’
    ‘Birenfield and Gateson were on the right track,’ Sir Dave insisted. ‘The men are only foreigners. Some of ’em as black as my hat! On the other hand, Colonel Darlow, a
Company which is a model employer with—ah—prominent figures on its Board cannot risk open bloodshed and unfavourable publicity.’
    Steady now! When the Chairman of the Compañía Petrolífera Cabo Desierto had been inspired by heaven and Henry Constantinides to drop the end of all misery into one’s
lap it wouldn’t do to tell him that he stank. And, anyway, not a quarter of the story had come out yet. The Company, too, had a case. It was exasperating to have so housed and contented your
men that they refused to leave.
    ‘What would the Board offer?’
    ‘Ten thousand and a year’s contract.’
    ‘Anything afterwards?’
    ‘A directorship,’ said Sir Dave, ‘would not be beyond the bounds of possibility.’
    Lord, and half an hour before he could only remember that he was an unwanted fifty-two and that anyone could see his suit was old.
    ‘I’d prefer it to be well within them.’
    ‘Frankly I doubt if it would be,’ Henry said, again cutting through Dave Gunner’s evasions. ‘You’re not a business man, Mat. You never were. Don’t regret it!
You’ve had a lot of fun by not being. Take your ten thousand and another ten—the accountants can cook it to be tax free—if you set the oil flowing and don’t get us in Dutch
with the Government! Your lawyer and ours will have to put that into some sort of form, but we both know what I mean.’
    ‘When do you want me to leave?’
    ‘Early next week if you can. Fly to Barranquilla and then on down the coast. You’ve no attachments?’
    None. For the past two years he had bitterly congratulated himself that there were none. But now the implication of that kindly enquiry shattered the unison of his personal flourish of trumpets.
Good God, he couldn’t even produce an illegitimate daughter, say, to whom half his salary should be paid! His life had been rich in meetings and partings and good fellowship; but all the
scattered men and women for whom he had deep affection, probably returned, seemed at any given moment to be absent in time or place.
    ‘No,’ he answered casually, ‘no attachments.’

Chapter Three
    It was in a sense a home-coming, though Mat was far from feeling any spiritual honeysuckle round the door. The first sight of Cabo Desierto was more like the dream of early
youth, familiar surely to every man, in which he finds himself, with all his adult experience, confusedly doing his best at