At least he couldn't complain that employees around here were ill-treated, Arte thought as he wandered around the twists and turns of el Tigre's vast fortress while trying to get the lay of the land and deposit a few special items where he and Jim might need them. Jim's tactic of concealing an object in putty stuck to the ceiling had been so successful in one of Count Manzeppi's hideouts that they'd decided to use it here too. Designed as the grand residence of a former territorial governor, el Tigre's palace offered lots of such hiding places – and not for any ordinary putty either. Arte just hoped that el Tigre and Ghattina were so used to looking down at others they wouldn't spend a great deal of time looking up.
And speaking of looking down at others . . . .
Arte had not had any luck locating the supposedly captive Dr. Loveless so far. As Gonzaeleez, he could not openly ask about the malevolent midget. He probably shouldn't ask about dungeons either, unless he wanted to wind up in one involuntarily. But he did need to locate el Tigre's jail cells, or whatever sort of place the big man might be using as a prison for his evil little cousin. A gilded cage? An iron oubliette? The United States penitentiary system had never been able to keep Dr. Loveless in captivity for very long. Then again, that system had proven disastrously porous in other ways, as the 'Charles Lane' case revealed. And Emmett Stark. And . . . .
It made Arte almost ill to think about all those other incidents. Might they wind up returning Loveless to the one country and penal system he was virtually guaranteed to escape from? And yet, what other choice did they have?
"Pardone, Señor."
Just in time to wonder if he had unspoken too soon, Arte looked down to see a young errand boy about to tug on his shirt.
"Señor Gonzaleez," the boy panted, apparently having run this way, but without making enough noise for Arte to have noticed him until he spoke, "Señor el Tigre sent me to find you."
A job from the boss-man already? Well, it was too early to hope that Jim might be making contact, perhaps.
"Si?" 'Gonzaleez' asked.
The boy nodded.
"Señor el Tigre wishes me to tell you that dinner is going to be in the purple room at six o'clock tonight, and that you are to be there."
Oho.
"And where is this purple room? Can you show me the way?"
The boy nodded again and led Arte to a large chamber that resembled an interesting cross between a dining salon and another throne room. Lunch that day had been a satisfying communal affair in a more coarse hall for the common denizens of this inner sanctum, who were many in number. Dinner in this room would be a more intimate, formal affair with the king and queen of this criminal realm seated on two magnificent chairs behind a private dining table set on another dais. Beneath the level of 'their majesties,' a perpendicular, rectangular table was already set with ten place settings, one of them evidently for him. But most fascinating of all, at another setting, a pair of cushions had been positioned on the seat, as if a guest sitting in that spot might have trouble being high up enough without them. Well, well, well . . . . Now wasn't that convenient? Of course, he needed to be as sure as possible about exactly who this was convenient for.
"And will you be at the dinner also?" the fake Señor Gonzaleez asked the young boy.
"I, Señor?" The youthful servant seemed astonished. "No! It is for the honored guests of Señor el Tigre!" And not for unwashed peasant servants seemed to be the unspoken end of the sentence. Arte must have been sufficiently flattering to his hosts to be included in such company. And this didn't look to be an affair for children in the making either.
"I only ask," Gonzaleez shrugged, nodding toward the cushioned chair, "because you are the shortest person I have seen here. You are the shortest, yes?"
"No!" the boy protested hotly. "There is-" He started to name someone else, then suddenly clamped his mouth shut as if realizing it would be better to say no more. But the implication of his being small and in need of a booster seat must have stung the youth's pre-teen pride. "I am not the smallest," he muttered with as much insolence as he dared. "You will be at the dinner. You will see."
Arte was looking forward to it.
[WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]
"Remember, you must tell no one," the lovely bar-mistress said to her taberna-keeper boss. "It is the greatest secret! No one must know!"
The gruff man nodded his assent in the dark silence of the taberna before Tequila slipped out and back to the alleyway where James West was waiting.
"Well?" the still unpleasant-smelling bum asked her.
"It is done, Señor West," she nodded. "By tomorrow at noon, the story will be all over Santa Bonita. El Tigre's helpers will be sure to notice."
Tequila was fond of her boss, but she knew his weaknesses well. She and the rest of Enrique's small intelligence network knew, with utter precision, how to use the locality's worst secret keepers as well as its best ones. By this time the next day, word would have come to el Tigre's ears of a priceless ring being smuggled north concealed in a piñata. The ring, supposedly a jewel-encrusted signet brought over by the late kinsman of Napoleon Bonaparte, would be too tempting a target for the bandit chief to resist. Of course, it would also be too tempting for Hector's various lackeys to resist also, especially if they each thought the smuggled object was a carefully guarded secret that only they knew of . . . .
And Jim had spent the past several hours stripping the Wanderer almost bare of chemicals and munitions to make sure those were some very special piñatas indeed. Life for the Tiger was about to get interesting.
That should create enough havoc for Jim and Arte to grab Dr. Loveless from el Tigre's hideout and make their getaway, while Enrique's Mexican Army unit and the resisters among Santa Bonita's populace had a fighting chance to succeed in their own aim. Now to find a way to sneak into the crime lord's citadel, not exactly smelling like a rose himself, and hope that Arte had located the mini-miscreant they sought . . . .
