The Gallery Gods
9781465683588
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
The white painted fruit steamer steamed out between the forts and turned toward the south. She only touched at Bahia del Toro to drop the mail on her downward trip, though on her return toward the north she paused to take on a portion of her cargo. The Stars and Stripes at her masthead fluttered brightly in the golden sunshine of midday, and the same sunshine made the sea seem bluer, and the palms greener and vividly alive. Half a dozen small launches that had clustered about the white ship scattered and made for different points along the waterfront of the city. El Señor Beckwith was seated in a great cane chair on the veranda of the white house that sprawled over the hillside. He looked at the ship and heaved a sigh. It was not a wistful sigh, nor was there pathos concealed anywhere about it. The sigh was a sign of the satisfaction that filled him. He sat at ease, puffing a long black cigar. At his elbow a glass tinkled musically when he moved. His huge frame, now clad in spotless white duck, was eloquent of content. Only his left thumb, bandaged and in splints, gave the slightest sign of discomfort, and he smiled when he felt the incumbrance of the wrappings. It was a souvenir of the incident that caused his sensation of complete satisfaction. Conway had broken that thumb in his last struggle, two weeks before, in New York. Conway was dead. There was a clattering of tiny hoofs. One of the house boys had been down to the wharf to get the New York papers Beckwith had arranged should be sent him. They would contain the details of Conway’s death, and Beckwith drew in a pleasurable breath at the thought of reading them. The little donkey had brought the boy hastily up with his light burden, and now the brown skinned boy came in to Beckwith. The papers were all there, with all their “magazine sections,” their “rotogravure” illustrations, and all the other minor features on which they prided themselves. As the newspapers were handed to him, Beckwith even noticed a gaudily colored comic section. He flicked it carelessly aside. These flimsy bundles of print had been brought four thousand miles for him to enjoy this moment. He would read of the death of Hugh Conway, multimillionaire philanthropist, patron of the arts, and other worthy things to the extent of a reportorial vocabulary, killed in the most open and daring fashion by William Beckwith, now at large. He would read of the letter left pinned to the multimillionaire’s breast in which that same William Beckwith announced his reasons for killing the millionaire, and the precise fashion in which he intended to escape punishment.
