Hazards (28 page)
“I am afraid that if we pin it on you, we shall have to do it in your prison cell. I regret to inform you that you are under arrest too.”
“What for?” I demanded.
“I will let the magistrate explain it all to you,” he said apologetically. “And now all that remains is to bring the two of you back to headquarters and lock you up.”
“Me and the Scorpion Lady are old friends,” I said. “I don’t suppose you could lock us in the same cell while we’re straightening out this little misunderstanding.”
The Scorpion Lady walked over to me and spit in my eye.
“Well, maybe not, then,” I said.
So they carted us off to jail, and I didn’t see the Scorpion Lady no more, but I was across the aisle from Captain Rodriguez, who slept about four hours a day and cursed me for the other twenty. The food could have been better, but at least Valparaiso never had to worry about being overrun by rats and other rodents as long as the jailhouse had a chef what specialized in ’em.
I cooled my heels for close to two weeks, and then finally the jailer came by one morning and shaved me and guv me a haircut and a clean set of prison duds, and told me to get ready, that I’d be seeing the judge that afternoon, and sure enough, right after a meal of dried something on what wasn’t rice, they unlocked my door and marched me into the courtroom, where I was brung before the bench.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Jones,” said the judge, who seemed like a kindly-looking old geezer—or maybe he was a young geezer who’d had to eat the jailhouse food a little too often. “I am Chief Magistrate Ramon Valenzuela.”
“Howdy, Ramon,” I said. “I’m pleased to—”
“Call me Chief Magistrate, please,” he interrupted me.
“Sure thing, Chief Magistrate,” I said. “I keep forgetting what a formal country you run here.”
“Have you any idea why you were brought before me today?” he asked.
“The kitchen is running out of rats?” I guessed.
“You have been implicated in the running of a house of prostitution,” he said.
“That’s a lie!” I said. “I didn’t even know they
was
prostitutes.”
“I find that difficult to believe,” he said.
“Well, when you get right down to it, so do I,” I said. “You’d be surprised how them flowers can dazzle you with their innocent smiles.”
“I shall have to take your word for it.”
“But even so, I had nothing to do with running the place.”
“You were employed there, were you not?” he asked.
“Yeah, but as a preacher.”
“In a brothel?”
“Nobody told me it was a brothel.”
“You seem so sincere I am almost inclined to believe you, Doctor Jones,” he said. “But that in no way alters the fact that you were consorting with a known international criminal who goes by the sobriquet of the Scorpion Lady.”
“Another false accusation,” I said. “I kept asking her to consort with me, and she kept turning me down.”
The folks in the gallery started laughing at that one, and the judge had to warn ’em to keep quiet.
“The fact remains that you worked in a bawdy house and associated with a notorious criminal,” continued the judge. “Even if I were inclined to believe you, you do not strike me as the kind of person we want setting up shop here in Valparaiso.”
“That suits me fine,” I said. “I’ll just go back to one of the other countries I been to lately.”
“Those were my thoughts precisely,” said the judge. “So I looked into the matter to see which one might be willing to take you back.” He shook his head and made a kind of “tsk-tsk-tsk” sound. “You’ve been a busy boy, Doctor Jones.”
“Well, you know how it is,” I said.
“I had no idea how it is,” he replied. “But I do now. I made inquiries of the government of Brazil. It seems that you were complicit in the theft of the jewels known as the Pebbles of God, to say nothing of stealing and making ransom demands for a famous race horse.”
“That was none of my doing,” I said. “I was as innocent as Phar Cry.”
“As
who
?” he asked.
“The horse.”
“It appears that you were also wanted for hunting jaguars out of season.”
“I never shot no jaguars,” I said. “I just wore them.”
“You wore jaguarskin coats?” he asked. “In the tropical jungle?”
“The heads, mostly,” I said. I looked at his face. “I guess that’ll take some explaining.”
“The government of Brazil doesn’t wish to hear your explanations,” said the judge. “Next on my list was the government of Equador, which has issued a warrant for your arrest for participating in crimes against Nature with a mysterious Doctor Mirbeau.”
“Was the Island of Annoyed Souls in Equador?” I said.
He ignored my question and kept right on talking. “The nation of San Palmero has issued an arrest warrant in your name for overthrowing the president and robbing the treasury.”
“Which president was that?” I asked. “They got so many of ’em.”
“The nation of Columbia claims that you stole the world’s most valuable postage stamp,” said the judge.
“Erich von Horst stole it,” I said. “I just kind of mailed it for him.”
“Argentina wants you for disrupting a religious retreat, as well as creating and leading an army on behalf of German war criminals.”
“Now I can explain that,” I said.
“I should love to hear it.”
“First, it wasn’t no army,” I said. “It was me and six street cleaners, and it ain’t our fault we conquered a whole country without firing a shot. And the religious retreat was actually a lost continent what I discovered, though I guess it ain’t as lost as it was.”
“What a cogent explanation,” he said. “Moving right along, I find that the nation of Uruguay wants to question you for possible complicity in the disappearance of Colonels Marcos and Garcia.”
“Which government of Uruguay?” I asked.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, there’s the old one, that I secretly conquered, and the new one, that probably ain’t tooken office yet.”
The judge sighed heavily. “Bolivia wants to question you about conspiring with a pair of known international criminals, a Major Theodore Dobbins, late of His Majesty’s armed forces, and an Australian named Rupert Cornwall.” He looked up from the list he’d been reading. “You
do
have the most interesting friends, Doctor Jones.”
“Is that everything?” I asked.
“If only it were,” he replied. “It seems that our neighbor to the north, Peru, wants to question you about allegedly fomenting a religious war in the forgotten city of Machu Picchu.” He paused and stared at me. “I am aware that Americans are known for their energy and industry, but isn’t this carrying it just a little too far?”
“A series of easily explained misunderstandings, nothing more.”
“I find you a most fascinating man, Doctor Jones,” he said.
“Yeah?”
He nodded his head emphatically. “So much so, in fact, that I went back even further in your records. It would appear you have been forbidden ever to return to North America, Africa, Asia and Europe.”
I just knew what was coming next.
“I have come to the conclusion that the authorities on those continents knew what they were doing.” He suddenly looked troubled. “I have nothing against the continent of Australia,” he continued. “Indeed, I find their constitution exemplary, and I have personally never met an Australian I didn’t like. They seem like a God-fearing, law-abiding, happy, decent people. I almost hate what I am about to do to them.” He paused and stared at me. “Doctor Jones, I have conferred with all the governments I mentioned, and it is our unanimous decision that you are forthwith barred from the continent of South America. You will be placed on a ship heading west into the Pacific later this evening, and never allowed to return.”
They marched me back to my cell while they were doing the paperwork for my release, and the judge came by for a minute on his way home.
“You are quite the most remarkable man I have ever met,” he said.
“Thanks, I guess,” I replied.
“I hope you turn over a new leaf and behave yourself in Australia,” he said. “That is the last habitable land mass in the world that hasn’t yet barred you from its surface. If they should fall in line with all the others, where else can you go? I mean,
The Man Without a Country
was bad enough—but the Man Without a Continent?”
Then he was gone, and in another couple of hours so was I, heading west across the Pacific to points unknown. Over the next five years I had my share of adventures there, what with naked pagan goddesses and tribal wars and hunting in the Outfront or whatever they call it, and no matter what General MacArthur and General Tojo say I wasn’t responsible for Pearl Harbor, and I got every intention of telling you my side of the story, plus everything else I experienced during the next few years, but I been writing for a couple of hours now and its time to go renew my artistic sensibilities with an understanding lady of quality.
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