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Tag: French Panama Canal fraud

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 18. Bébé’s Little Present

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 18. Bébé’s Little Present

    It’s hard not to appreciate Fernando, our polyhaemic ex-mule boy, pearl salesman, opportunistic thief, kidnapper and killer, assumed Baron, self-taught financier. He is literate in at least two languages, no doubt through his own efforts. A man of the world, or as Gunter fancies him, a monstrous cannibalistic beetle, Montez is not one to rest in his insidious activity. While Harry is inland continuing his investigations at the worksites along the canal route, Bébé and Montez come to grips figuratively in their own psychopathic self-interested ways. This has unfortunate consequences for both Bébé and Harry.

    Gunter, again through the memory of Montez, revives thoughts of Alice’s long-lost string of pearls. Where could they be? The sleuths among us may already have a good idea—as he planned it. For when their location is revealed the reader will experience gratification at being right—that ‘I knew it!’ moment.

    The reader has eagerly awaited Louise’s first contact with Montez and is not disappointed. We have seen indications of her inner mettle in her dealings with Harry, but a truly independent woman now emerges. Part of creating sensationalism lies in challenging conventions—in this case, literary ones that reflect the patriarchal society. In the latter half of the19th Century strong female characters were coming of age, a reflection of the aspirations of a predominantly female readership.

    It is widely agreed that since the middle of the 19th century, no book can hope for popular success if it does not attract large numbers of women readers, because women were and are the majority of readers in America.

    Tiffany Aldrich MacBain (qtd. in Baym, p. 277)

    Catering for this market were prolific women writers such as Ann S. Stephens (1810-86), whose Malaeska—the first work described as a ‘dime novel’—sold over three hundred thousand copies, and Mary J. Holmes (1825-1907) who wrote over thirty novels with sales exceeding two million books. E.D.E.N Southworth’s (1818-99) comic novel The Hidden Hand (1859, 1888) was one of the most popular books of the time. Her subversive protagonist, the tomboy Capitola Black, presents “a counter image to the sentimental heroine” but remains more of an amusing fantasy than a “vision of reality” (Dobson, pp. 235-6).

    Gunter is at once aware of his competition and sensitive to the demands of his readership. Set against the prevailing feminine ideals of submission and self-sacrifice, his conflicted heroine Louise is a character who will challenge societal mores and elicit the admiration of his female readers.

    Frederick Vincent Theobald (1905)

    Yellow Jack predictably makes its presence felt amongst the cast of characters. From the perspective of a twenty-first century reader, the lack of connection made to the mosquito as a carrier seems striking. There is only one mention of them in the novel, during Harry’s first night in his new accommodation, when he cannot sleep for thoughts of Louise, and blames them for his restlessness. It seems obvious to us that wherever there are diseases such as yellow fever and malaria there are mosquitoes, yet the apparently obvious connection is not made.

    However, it wasn’t until 1897 that Sir Ronald Ross discovered that the Anopheles mosquito was the vector for malaria. In 1898, Dr. Henry Rose Carter, working in Mississippi, and following a theory of transmission earlier proposed by Dr. Carlos Finlay, established the connection between Aëdes aegypti and the spread of Yellow Fever (Parker, p. 267).

    This did not mean the theory was readily accepted. Even in 1905, when American nurses took over the hospital at Ancon Hill, Panama City, they installed mosquito nets over the beds of the ill, only to find that the resident nuns had tied them back with colorful ribbons (Parker, p. 273).

    Speaking of insects, the placebo that Montez feeds Le Fort and Aguilla for their complaints over the dire state of the project, is the upcoming ‘Lottery’. From the outset Montez has always privately anticipated the failure of the Panama Canal attempt. From the beginning he has seen it as ill-conceived and its completion unviable. In this he is hardly alone, it is the primary American opinion. In 1884 the New York Herald predicted:

    It is probable the present company will go into bankruptcy or liquidation within three years and the enterprise be taken up and completed by a new company or a government.

    Parker, p. 143

    In the Canal’s ongoing history of financial struggle, there have been many times when its continuance was on the brink. Montez’ ability now to anticipate when to retreat from dealings in Canal Interoceanic financials, contracts and shares is remarkable. Perhaps, rather than a devious opportunist, he can be seen as merely a lucky beneficiary of circumstance.

    CHAPTER 18

    Bébé’s Little Present

    Some instances of this come under Miss Minturn’s bright eyes the next morning, in the office. Old Aguilla is still smiling, happy and contented, but after a short but excited private conversation with the Baron, who has come in languidly about eleven o’clock, the junior partner appears anxious, distrait, nervous, and uncomfortable.

    “Never mind, my old man,” laughs Montez, looking on Aguilla’s gloomy face. “The Corps Legislatif will surely pass the Lottery Bill, and then all will be well.”

    Reassured by this, Aguilla goes about his business. But a few minutes after, there is a terrible commotion in the office. Bastien Lefort has been admitted to the private office of Baron Montez.

    He is screaming at him so everybody hears: “Mon Dieu! You have come at last! I have been waiting for you! You! You!! who lured me to invest my all in this bubble of extravagance! One hundred thousand francs for this! A million for that! All thrown away! Rascality and fraud! Sacre̕ nom de Dieu! the savings of a lifetime!”

    He shrieks this out so wildly that the clerks run into the private office, thinking him a madman who will per chance attack the Baron.

    Montez, cool and calm, says: “Restrain yourself! Mon cher Lefort, this is nonsense! Are not your dividends paid you regularly?”

    “Yes, my dividends,” groans the man. “But the principal! The Canal will never be built!”

    “Oh, nonsense! The Lottery Bill will pass next month—and then, my boy, then!”

    “But my shares have gone down so much!”

    “Oh, but then, the Lottery Bill, then—wait!”

    “I do not understand,” murmurs Lefort. “I cannot understand!”

    “Of course not. You are not a financier, you are a glove merchant. Leave it to me! Place yourself in my hands—the Lottery Bill—go back to Paris—remain quiet—the Lottery! All will be well!”

    “Oh, but the extravagance—the throwing away of precious gold!” murmurs Lefort undecidedly.

    “You speak to me as if I were one of the directors,” remarks Montez, “when I am but a stockholder like yourself. We are both stockholders! Still, when we are in Paris, we will go to the directors and explain to them things that they do not know; or perhaps you had better remain here, and keep me posted when I go to headquarters in Paris. I will see you again.”

    Dr Cornelius Herz, one of those responsible for [financing the failed canal project], gets on a train to flee France after the collapse of the company. Watercolour drawing by H.S. Robert, ca. 1897. See note.

    And he puts off the broken-down miser with fairy promises, until the old man smiles and says: “Yes! Yes! my dividends —I still receive them! I will still believe!” and so goes away.

    Then Montez devotes himself to his private correspondence, taking great care over one long letter, during the writing of which he sometimes refers to a large black pocketbook that he produces from an inner pocket of his vest, not his coat. This appears to be filled with papers and memoranda. When he has finished with it, he returns it very carefully to his safe vest pocket again.

    All this comes under Louise’s bright eyes, as she is seated at her typewriter in the room behind the private office. The day is hot, and the door has been left open for draught. Miss Minturn has set herself to watch this man she suspects, and now that he is near her, though the keys of her Remington click unceasingly, every sense is alert as to what passes at Montez’ desk.

    A few moments after, she comes face to face with him, and his easy, affable manner interests her as well as astonishes her.

    After finishing his private correspondence, Fernando calls in Miss Minturn, and dictates a few unimportant letters to her; most of them being in response to invitations to dinners and fetes from the resident managers of the Canal as well as a few other local magnates of finance and trade in this town of Panama.

    The last of these finished, as Louise is about to go, he asks her a few questions: how she likes Panama—is she pleasantly located in the house of Martinez, the notary—she boards there, he understands—and hopes she will enjoy herself upon the Isthmus, and that her labors will not be too severe.

    He would, in his quiet offhand way, get a good deal of information from her, were the young lady not en garde; but she simply thanks him for his interest in her comfort, and turns to go.

    Just here a sudden idea seems to enter his head. He calls out after her: “By the by, Miss Minturn, do you known the address of Monsieur Henri Larchmont?”

    “No,” replies the girl, suddenly returning.

    “Ah, I’m sorry. I would have sent him a letter I have for him from his brother Francois in Paris. He intrusted it to me.”

    “Why did you think I knew Mr. Larchmont s address?” asks Louise, hurriedly, her cheeks growing a little red.

    “Oh! ha! ha! My friend Herr Wernig said you and the gentleman were quite companions on the steamer.”

    “Since the steamer, I have not seen him,” says Louise; an intonation in her voice, Fernando does not quite understand.

    “So your comradeship ceased at the gangplank. It often does!” laughs the Baron languidly. Then he continues: “Doubtless it is just as well. Monsieur Henri is rather a gay youth. Besides, I think there is a pretty Miss Jessie Severn in Paris. Eh, mademoiselle!” And would go on, a little banter in his tone, but the girl’s face astonishes him.

    She mutters: “I beg you leave my private affairs alone!” Then for one second there comes over her fair face an awful look—one he has seen before somewhere—a look that opens the pages of his memory.

    “Have you any other letters?”

    “No, not today,” he stammers as she leaves him.

    He thinks: “What was that in her eyes—so like the eyes of the American señora of thirty years ago? But this girl’s eyes are brown, not the blue eyes that I love! Besides, Alicia had blonde hair that I adore! Pooh! Let the past be the past!”

    And he thinks of other blue eyes—those of the present—that he hopes to go back to, and the lovely rebellious face of pretty pouting Jessie Severn, whom he has left in faraway Paris, with a weak guardian even more in his power than ever, who has said, when Montez returns the reluctant beauty shall be his bride.

    He mutters: “When I come back, she is mine, and that must be very soon. I have here a letter!” He looks at the one he has been writing, “but mails are slow. I will send a telegram.”

    Which he does, addressed to Francois Leroy Larchmont, 238 1/2 Boulevard Malesherbes, Paris.

    Then calling a clerk he says: “Cable that on the instant!” and goes to musing again: “I wonder what the woman did with the string of pearls that I never could find? Did Domingo steal them? Ah—but what matters it?”

    Then a smile passes over his face, and he laughs. “This American stenographer is jealous of Jessie Severn! Why? Because this young dandy—this brother of Francois Leroy Larchmont—loves my fiancée. For what reason does he come to the Isthmus? To destroy me so that he can wed her?”

    Then suddenly the undying hate of Corsican blood comes into Montez face, mixed with the drop of inflexible determination descended to him from Morgan’s buccaneer, as he mutters: “I have it! He stays on the Isthmus! Like the man who bought pearls thirty years ago, the man who buys pearls now, remains! I will fix him! Caramba! But I will fix him!”

    He muses a little while over this; then sends for the Chinaman who attends to the real-estate affairs of the firm, and makes some inquiries about certain properties belonging to them in Panama. After hearing the report of the Celestial clerk, a grim smile passes over his face, and he thinks laughingly: “It is not always you can kill two birds with one stone!”

    Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Elysées has been rather exigeant in the last few months. She has reproached her dear Baron several times, with not being as liberal as he used to be. She has complained that his devotion to Mademoiselle Jessie Severn, the ward of his friend Francois Leroy Larchmont, has made him more provident of his pocketbook than was his wont.

    Her hint the evening before, at the theatre, makes him fear that he may have some time, in careless confidence, dropped into her ear secrets that may be dangerous to him in Paris; for he knows the time is approaching when there will be such an explosion about Panama Canal affairs that will make any scandal fatal.

    Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Elysées is returning to Paris. If his coming marriage enrages her—if she can find a higher bidder for any secrets of his that may be of advantage to his enemies, he knows very well she will sell them.

    Meditating on this, he takes Mademoiselle Bébé out for a drive this afternoon, over the savanna, on his return passing near the outskirts of the town a very pretty little villa.

    While they have been approaching this place, the Baron and his fair companion have been engaged in a somewhat acrimonious discussion.

    Mademoiselle has been pouting and chiding: “You come to see me no more! You only remained at the theatre a few minutes last evening! You brought me no jewels from Paris!” Then she has suddenly cried out: “Ah, it is because of that designing young American—the one it is rumored in Paris you are to marry. Do you think your Bébé will let you desert her so easily—mon cher?”

    “Diable! ma petite!” says the Baron grimly, “not while I have any money left.”

    Next he smiles and says: “But you can have many more admirers—this Monsieur Larchmont—he adored you?”

    “Adored me!” cries Bébé; “he adores me still—he worships me!”

    Vintage postcard

    “You have but to speak the word—he will come back to you?”

    “Would not he—if I would let him! But then, Fernando mio, it would break your heart!” babbles Bébé, her vanity destroying the truth. She would go on and lie a little more, did not she suddenly stop and cry:

    “What are you laughing at?” for the Baron can’t keep in a diabolical chuckle.

    “Only my little joke!” murmurs Fernando. But had she known what Fernando’s little joke meant, poor little Bébé would have plucked out her pretty red tongue from between her rows of pearly teeth, rather than have told vainglorious lies, each one of which is a nail in her coffin.

    “You reproach me for not being generous,” grins the Baron, “when I have a present all ready for you.”

    “What, in your pocket?” cries Bébé enthusiastically, about to make sudden investigation for hidden jewels.

    “Oh, no! It is not in my pockets.”

    “Then where is it?”

    “On the mound there!”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Why, that pretty little villa. It is yours, if you wish,” and Fernando points.

    “You will give it to me?”

    “Yes, it will be more pleasant for you than your apartments at the hotel, and more private. You shall have a pony carriage to drive out there.”

    “Oh, you darling!” cries Bébé, clapping her little Parisian gloves together with joy. “Let me look at your new present! Is it furnished?”

    “I think so.”

    There is a little pathway running from the road, and the negro coachman stops his horses at some distance one side of the door.

    Fernando scowls at the lackey but says nothing, and assists Mademoiselle Bébé out. It is but a step.

    The Baron has the keys in his pocket. Entering, they examine a very pretty bijou of a tropic residence, quite handsomely furnished in modern French style, which had been occupied by Monsieur Raymond, one of the engineers of the Panama Canal; but he and all his family have died some weeks before, of yellow fever.

    Montez has no hesitation in entering it. He knows the pathology of the disease too well; that anyone who has once had this scourge and lived, is safe from it forever afterwards. And Fernando, in his early Isthmus days, had passed a few weary weeks recovering from the touch of Yellow Jack.

    “How beautiful!” cries the lady, clapping her hands.

    He says: “Ma chérie, you like this?”

    “It is delightful!”

    “Here you can have your own little parties—here you can invite Monsieur Larchmont to call on you.”

    Then noting reluctance on the lady’s face, the Baron goes on laughingly: “Do not hesitate—I do not mind it! In fact, it will be a favor to me. I would like to meet this gentleman. There are certain facts about his brother, of which I shall ask you to pump him. Your Fernando is not jealous. Is it a little compact between us?”

    “Oh, certainly!” laughs Bébé. “I would do anything for this villa! Monsieur Larchmont shall reveal to me everything you wish to know! Now, mon cher, our little dinner.”

    So he and the lady leave the house, and drive through the streets of Panama to the Plaza, and from there on the road out to La Boca, where, at the Garden of Paradise, with its palms and tropic foliage growing in its miniature glen, Mademoiselle Bébé and Baron Montez have one of Monsieur Clemont’s charming petite repasts with sparkling wine that makes Be̕be̕ very brilliant. Then Fernando murmurs: “It is time for the theatre, ma petite.” And the two return to town, Montez appearing in a very good humor, and Bébé being a mass of smiles of delighted avarice, and of newly acquired wealth.

    The next day Fernando Montez, having made all the arrangements, Mademoiselle de Champs Elysées is installed in the Villa Raymond. There is little or no trouble about servants, the Chinese clerk who attends to the real-estate affairs of the firm has hired them with Celestial astuteness, engaging only those who have passed through the yellow fever, and therefore do not fear it.

    Mademoiselle Bébé enjoys her triumphs at the theatre each evening, and drives out therefrom to the pretty cottage that has as many germs of Yellow Jack and el vomito negro in its cedar walls, as it has crevices to hold them.

    Each day La Champs Elysées expects to see among her admirers at the theatre, Harry Larchmont, for she has written him another pressing letter, begging him to come to see her at the Villa Raymond, and hinting that even without the pearls, he will be very welcome at her side.

    But Harry Larchmont is upon the works of the Canal, poor fellow, on another wild goose chase. For here, though he discovers that there is lots of rascality and swindling in the various contracts of the Canal Interoceanic, still there is nothing that will bring anything definite home to Baron Montez, or to his firm. Nothing by which he, by any peradventure, can wring back from Fernando the fortunes of his brother or Miss Severn.

    He has gone into this affair seriously, and has spent some time making his investigation a thorough one. He has passed twenty-four hours with Winterburn on his Chagres dredger, learning all the machinist can tell him of the workings of the Canal. The dredgers, he notes, are doing their work thoroughly. The American Company is keeping its contract.

    Then he has passed along to the more difficult work, the big mountain cuts. He has pumped the foremen of the various gangs of laborers, drawing information from them, by his pleasant address, and his generous use of cigars, and noting with astonishment that they are doing their work pretty much after antique methods; that if they have any steam drills or modern appliances very few if any are used; that like the Pharaohs of Egypt and Louis Fourteenth of France, the contractors of this nineteenth century achivement depend upon the myriad hands of men.

    One night during his investigation, one long night, cut off by a rainstorm, he has been compelled to pass in a cabin near the great cut of Culebra, with a foreman of one of the gangs.

    This has been with particularly bad physical results as regards himself, for in the same cabin had been carelessly left an open can of nitroglycerine, the fumes of which give headaches such as mortal man cannot endure, but mortal man remembers forever. They are of a peculiar kind—once felt, never forgotten.

    From this journey, Harry has returned to Panama with a downcast heart, knowing that there is lots of rascality in the atmosphere, but feeling that he is grasping at air.

    He is sure of one thing and that is, that any dollars his brother may have put into the Canal Interoceanic are as much lost, from an industrial investment stand point, as if he had thrown his money into the Atlantic Ocean itself.

    So as Larchmont enters the Grand Hotel, immediately on his return, he has about made up his mind, in a half brokenhearted, way, to give up the affair entirely—to devote the great part of his fortune to giving Miss Jessie her inheritance, saving his brother’s name, and—but he will not think of this.

    He meditates wildly: “I must see her! I must try and explain! I cannot go with Louise thinking me what she does!” Then he jeers himself: “She’ll never believe me! No woman would!—and I doubt if any man!” and so goes to the office of the hotel.

    Here he is very affably received by the clerk, who hands him two letters addressed in a French feminine hand he does not know.

    He opens them wonderingly. They are both in the same bold yet dainty chirography, and from Mademoiselle Bébé. The first begs him to come and see her and bring the pearls. The second sings the same tune, but tells him she lives at the Villa Raymond, and she will forgive and love him without the pearls.

    To these he mutters, “Never!” As he turns away from this, for there is a commotion outside. He looks out.

    It is a funeral procession, large and impressive, wending its way to the great Cathedral, for the ceremonials of the Catholic Church, in these South American countries, are ofttimes grand and imposing. Otherwise, this one would create no commotion, for there are a great many funerals about this time, in the town of Panama.

    A man leaning over the side of a bed vomiting, from a broadside entitled ‘Death of Aurelio Caballero due to yellow fever in Veracruz’ (1892), José Guadalupe Posada (Mexico)

    Turning to the clerk, Harry asks: “Who of importance has died lately? Whose death march is that?”

    “Oh, that!” says the clerk, “have you not seen the mortuary placards and heard the news? That is the funeral procession of Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Elysées, of the Theatre. The careless, thoughtless creature went to live in the infected Villa Raymond. She took the yellow fever four days ago, and died this morning.”

    Then the clerk wonders whether Mr. Larchmont has not the yellow fever also, for he has. grown deathly pale, and almost staggers, and is muttering to himself: “Good heavens! if the scorn of that pure American girl had not come between me and her—I should have visited the Villa Raymond—and perchance been in my coffin also.”

    Looking on this procession—the lighted candles and solemn black, the Baron Montez, who acts as chief mourner, smiles to himself, and murmurs: “Bébé’s little present disagreed with her! But that Larchmont—he escaped me!”

    This seems to affect Fernando’s spirits, for he is superstitious, as he says to himself: “Is it a premonition? Will he conquer in the end?”

    So returning from his solemn duties, he seems to be very sad. His spirits have left him.

    So much so that old Aguilla, who has a tender heart, pats him on the shoulder with his fat bourgeois hand, saying: “My poor boy—cheer up! Cheer up! We know how you loved her—but courage, mon brave!”

    Soon after Montez does cheer up, for this very afternoon he hears incidentally that Harry Larchmont is sick, and has been taken to the rooms of one of the clerks in the Pacific Mail, a young American, George Bovee, who had conceived a great affection for him. Though he is not sick of the yellow fever, his exposure in the open cuts of the Canal, full of the miasma from decaying vegetation, has brought to him the malarial fever of Panama, which is sometimes as deadly even as the other.

    At this, the Vadalia Cardinalis’ step grows light, and his smile more baleful, as he says to himself: “I triumph! See how my enemies fall before me!”

    Notes and References

    • mosquitoes and yellow fever in Panama: As late as 1898, US authorities believed yellow fever to be a “filth disease” (Gorgas, p. 18). By 1906 mosquitoes had been eradicated from the Panama Canal Zone by the army physician, William C. Gorgas, through a program of mosquito control.
    • Dr. Cornelius Hertz … [image]: One in a series of satirical caricatures lampooning those implicated in the French Panama Canal scandal, painted by the British artist H.S. Robert. Here Robert depicts the French-American Hertz, a major financer of the project, in a ridiculous fake beard, escaping to England.
    • distrait: distracted or absent-minded
    • exigeant: demanding, hard to please
    • bijou: jewel

    Baym, N. Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820-70 (Urbana: U Illinois P, 1993).

    Dobson, J. “The Hidden Hand: The Subversion of Cultural Ideology in Three Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Women’s Novels”. American Quarterly 38.2, 1986, pp. 223-242.

    Gorgas, W.C., Sanitation in Panama (NY: Appleton, 1915. Available at Internet Archive.

    Parker, M. Hell’s Gorge: The Battle to Build the Panama Canal (London: Arrow Books, 2007).

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 17. Vadalia Cardinalis

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 17. Vadalia Cardinalis

    Vadalia Cardinalis is an insect now known as Rodolia Cardinalis due to an etymological reclassification, though its common name remains the same. It is a name that most know from a childhood rhyme, but Gunter keeps this his little secret, for revealing it would seriously damage the analogy he uses later in the chapter for the Baron and his intentions. Having no access to handy etymological works, Gunter can be reasonably confident that his readers will remain ignorant. The narrator is practically rabid in describing this insect which freed of normal dimensions verges on a creature from science fiction. While quite appropriate to compare Montez to an insect, he does not have the charm of this Australian import. See closing notes for the terrible truth.

    Vedalia Beetle (Wikimedia Commons)

    Baron Montez is back in Panama, hot on the heels of chanteuse Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Élysées. Bébé‘s disaffection with the now truly heart-struck Harry Larchmont, involving a promised string of pearls, leads her to disclose Harry’s presence in Panama to the Baron. The string of pearls serves to revive the reader’s memory of pearls procured by Fernando Montez for the beautiful Alice Ripley all those decades ago. The Baron’s reflections on his own loose lips compel him to consider those of his cher ami next to him in sinister overtones.

    Montez meets with Herr Wernig, and at the close of their discussions the topic of ‘the Lottery’ is raised. Some of Gunter’s readers of the time may have been aware of the significance of this Lottery, but for the modern reader some background is definitely required. In the proposed Lottery, two million bonds would be offered bearing 4 per cent interest at a cost of 360 francs each. These bonds would be redeemable in ninety-nine years for 400 francs. Draws would occur every two months with top prizes in the vicinity of 700,000 francs. The lottery bill would allow the Company to borrow a 720 million francs, 600 for completion of work on the canal and the remainder to be invested in French government securities to guarantee payment on the bonds and to provide cash prizes (Parker, p.183).

    The financial future of the Canal is tenuous—it has always been so. Lotteries are one method De Lesseps has used successfully in the past to gain funds; however, to take place the project had to be considered of national importance and also required an Act of Parliament.

    The new government was reticent to approve a Lottery and delayed a decision.  Well-known engineer Armand Rousseau was commissioned by the Minister of Works to go to Panama and provide a report for the government. Rousseau submitted his report in April, 1886. Although critical of the management of contractors, and the challenges of a canal without locks, the report was largely favorable, based upon the extent of the work completed and the depth of the French commitment, in terms of government backing and the French people’s investment thus far (Parker, pp.163,169). The project had reached a point of no return where the risks of continuing outweighed the prospect of ceasing the undertaking. Despite this, over two and a half years since Rousseau’s report, the Cabinet declined to support the bill to the Chamber of Deputies. Much lobbying, petitions and bribery failed to sway the Cabinet. De Lesseps could not wait any longer and went with another bond issue, but this did not perform well. He was forced to borrow thirty million francs from Crédit Lyonnais and Société Générale so that the company could survive.

    Finally, on the 28th April 1888 due to the support of a hero of the Franco-Prussian war, Charles François Sans-Leroy, the Commission approved the bill by six to five. The company although receiving permission for the lottery, did not garner government backing of the bonds, and so were required to state this in their prospectus (Parker, pp.181-2). The success of the lottery is another matter.

    CHAPTER 17

    VADALIA CARDINALIS

    Then Mademoiselle de Champs Élysées and Harry Larchmont pass on, the crowd gathering about them with hum and chatter and merry voices, and screening them from her view; and the girl, who has thoroughbred pluck, and whose eyes have looked the gentleman very straight in the face, suddenly feels faint, and thinks the sun has gone out of the heavens, for love, trust, and faith in humanity have gone out of her heart also.

    She notes, in an abstracted way, that Martinez is making some little joke upon the appearance of the French woman: for though he has told his daughters not to look, the old notary’s eyes have devoured the beautiful yet too highly colored picture La Champs Élysées has made.

    After a little the young Martinez ladies suggest going home, and Louise is very glad, and departs with them to her lodgings, carrying her head quite high and haughtily, though she has a heart of lead and iron within her wildly panting bosom.

    But she has left a picture in the eyes of Harry Larchmont that he will never forget! That of a girl with a light straw hat, the ribbons floating in the breeze above her lovely head—a graceful figure posed like a statue of surprise, one little foot advanced from under white floating draperies, the other turned almost as if to fly. A sash of blue shining silk or satin, knotted by a graceful bow about a fairy waist; above it, a bosom that pants wildly for one moment, and then seems to stop its beating, as her hand is wildly pressed upon its agony. But the face! The noble forehead; the true, honest, hazel eyes, which flash a shock of unutterable surprise and scorn for debased mankind, and nostrils panting but defiant; pink cheeks that grow pale even as he looks upon them; rosy lips that become slowly pallid, the lower trembling, the upper curled in exquisite disdain; the mouth half open, as if about to speak—then closed to him forever; and over all this the infinite sadness of a woman’s heart for destroyed belief in what she had considered a noble manhood.

    And his heart stops beating, too, for even as he looks at her comes a sudden rapture, then a chill of horror—rapture, for at this moment he guesses that she loves him; horror, because he knows she will love him no more.

    Turning from this picture of pure womanhood, he sees beside him the woman for whom he has lost all hope of gaining what he now knows has been his hope in life. For the shock of her disdain has told him something a false pride had made him fight against believing; that he, Harry Larchmont of the world of fashion, loves Louise Minturn of the world of work with all his heart and all his soul.

    Though Bébé de Champs Élysées utters her latest piquant drolleries imported from Paris, and tries her best to amuse and allure this handsome young American who strolls by her side, and whom she supposes rich, for he has squandered money on her, she finds him but poor company. He contrives to reply to her, but her flaunting affectations seem more meretricious to him than ever.

    After a little time he excuses himself to Mademoiselle Bébé, and leaves this fascinating siren surrounded by a crowd of gentlemen admirers, for her notoriety, as well as beauty, have given her quite a following of highlife worshippers in this town of Panama.

    As he goes away the band is playing one of the Spanish love songs Louise had sung to him in the moonlight on the Colon’s deck, and he mutters to himself, crushing his hands together, “My dear little sweetheart of the voyage! Fool that I was! I have lost her for a fantasy!” Which is true, for no love of Bébé de Champs Élysées had ever entered Harry Larchmont’s heart.

    He had gone into this affair rather recklessly, simply seeking information that he thought she could give, and for which he was willing to pay. As to its moral sense, he had given it very little consideration. It had simply occurred to him that by it he might destroy his adversary. In New York he would doubtless have hesitated before embarking in a matter that might bring scandal upon his name; but here, in this far-off little place, which has the vices of Paris, without even its slight restraints, he had dismissed this aspect of the affair from his mind, with the trite remark: “When you are in Rome, do as the Romans do!”

    So Baron Montez not being on hand, Harry Larchmont has obtained a passing introduction to this siren of the Boulevards upon her arrival. He has made his approaches to her quite cautiously, and with all the secrecy possible, not wishing to form part of the petite gossip of Panama. Having spent quietly considerable money and considerable time in trying to insinuate himself into her good graces, he has succeeded in gaining perhaps more of Mademoiselle Bébé’s regard than he himself would wish.

    Vintage French postcard

    Her confidences, for he has been compelled to approach the matter very deftly, have been so far only confidences as to what kinds of jewelry she likes most. In fact, a great deal of her conversation has been in regard to the wondrous string of pearls that a merchant has brought from the Isle del Rey, that are, as she expresses it, “dirt cheap!” For this young lady has an eye to business, and knows that the traders of Panama have not as fine diamonds as those of Paris, yet in pearls they sometimes equal, sometimes excel them.

    Her promptings and petitionings have been so persistent, that Harry knows that the gift will probably win from her the information that he wishes, and that when the pearls of Panama adorn Mademoiselle Bébé’s fair neck, she will perchance in a gush of rapture open her pretty lips, and tell him what she knows, if he pumps her deftly.

    So this very Sunday he has this string of pearls in his pocket, having purchased them the evening before, and was about to present them to her. But even while he is arranging a little coup de théâtre that may unloose the siren’s tongue, she has insisted upon his visiting the Battery in her company; for this lady likes to make public display of her conquests, and Larchmont is a very handsome one. Some sense of shame being on him, even in this free-and-easy, out-of-the-way place, Harry has declined her invitation.

    But Bébé’s temperament will not brook denial even in little things; she has turned upon him and said: “Mon ami, are you ashamed to be seen by the side of the woman to whom you express devotion? If I thought that, my handsome Puritan, I should hate you—you have never seen Bébé’s hate.”

    Under these suggestions he has yielded, and been led very much like Bichon, her poodle, in triumph to the Battery of Panama, there to meet what fate had prepared for him.

    But now shame changes this man’s ideas. He mutters to himself: “The cost is too great! I will not win success at the degradation of my manhood! though, Heaven help me! I fear I have already paid the bitter price!”

    From this time on he visits Mademoiselle de Champs Élysées no more.

    But his desertion produces a curious complication, and brings the siren’s undying hate.

    Among the gentlemen who pay their devotions on the Battery this afternoon to Mademoiselle de Champs Élysées, immediately after Harry’s departure, is young Don Diego Alvarez, who has lingered in Panama, waiting for the steamer to carry him to Costa Rica. This fiery young cavalier still hates, with all his Spanish heart, Mr. Harry Sturgis Larchmont. His regard for him has not been increased by his apparent success with the coming celebrity at the theatre. He has learned that Larchmont is a clerk in the Pacific Mail, and sneers at him as such, and laughs to himself: “What will be the effect of my news on the mercenary diva?”

    So he strolls up to her, and enters into conversation, remarking: “I am delighted, Mademoiselle Bébé, to see at least one woman who admires a handsome man, even if he has no other attractions.”

    “You don’t mean me?” laughs the lady in gay unbelief.

    “Certainly, you!”

    “And who is the gentleman? Of course I’ve never seen him yet.”

    “Why, that American, Senor Larchmont.”

    “Oh, Henri,” says the young lady in playful, easy familiarity. “Henri has plenty of other attractions. Besides good looks, he has money!”

    “Money?” sneers the Costa Rican.

    “Yes, money!”

    “But not much money.”

    “He has enough to promise me the great string of pearls that have just come from the islands!”

    “What? This clerk in the Pacific Mail Company, at a beggarly salary, buy the great string of pearls?” scoffs the Costa Rican.

    “This clerk in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company! Whom do you mean?” gasps the fair Bébé, growing pale.

    “The Señor Harry Larchmont.”

    “Impossible!”

    “You can convince yourself of the truth of what I have said, easily enough tomorrow, or this evening, if you are in a hurry,” laughs Don Diego.

    “And he promised me that string of pearls, the misérable! He played with my heart!” gasps the lady, placing her hand where that organ should be, but is not. “A clerk in the Pacific Mail—an accountant—a beggarly scribbler! But I will investigate! Woe to him if it is true!”

    Battery, Panama (1853), George Cooper, Lithograph

    Being a woman of her word, not only in affairs of the heart but in matters of business, this lady makes inquiry and finds that what she feared is true; and would have vented her rage upon Mr. Larchmont had he appeared before her. But Harry keeping aloof, she changes her tune in reference to this gentleman, for she is an inconstant creature, longing most for what she has not. She mutters: “The poor fellow! I frightened him away by my extravagance. I would have forgiven his being a clerk, he is so handsome!”

    But the pearls being still in her head, she thinks she would like to take a look at them; that, perhaps, as Baron Montez is coming, he may be induced to purchase them; and she goes to the shop of Marcus Asch the jeweller near the Cabildo, and asks for the baubles that she will gloat over and admire. But they inform her that the pearls are gone.

    “Gone? Absurd! They were here last Saturday!”

    “Yes, but Señor Larchmont bought them.”

    And perchance if Harry could have seen her then, he would have bought from her with his pearls any revelations of chance words Montez had let fall in the confidences of the champagne glass or petite supper; for Bébé, like Judas, will betray her master for the ten pieces of silver as often as they are laid at her feet.

    But Larchmont does not receive her note. He has gone away, along the line of the Canal, towards Aspinwall.

    “Mon Dieu! Impossible!” she screams; and then going away, mutters: “Malediction! if he has given them to another!” but sends the gentleman who has bought the pearls a most affectionate note.

    So she grows very angry and thinks to herself: “What other one has received what were bought for me? I will punish this traitor!”

    That afternoon Baron Montez arrives in Panama.

    This gentleman is apparently quite happy and contented as he drives up from the railroad station in company with his partner and Herr Wernig, and enters his office, hardly noting that there is a bright-eyed girl who looks up from her work in the room behind the private office with curious interest at him. His years have been successful ones, and though there are two gray locks upon his temples, his eyes are as bright as of yore, and his intellect as vivacious, though tempered by contact with other brilliant minds.

    He gets through his business rather quickly in his office, saying to Aguilla, who would be effusive, “Tomorrow, mon ami. Tonight my comrade Herr Wernig and I will talk over old times.”

    So the two go away together to the Grand Hotel, where Montez has the finest apartments and is received by Schuber the proprietor with much deference and many bows; for though the Baron has been careful never to have his name upon the directory of the Panama Canal, still he is known to be in very close touch to its management and control.

    After dinner the two stroll up to the theatre where Mademoiselle Bébé is waiting for her cher ami, with many evidences of petulant affection, one of them being a revelation of “l’affair Larchmont.”

    First greetings being over, this little poseuse affects a jealousy she does not feel. She pouts and mutters, “You came not to Panama, Fernando mio, as soon as you promised.” Then her eyes flash from absinthe or some other French passion, and she cries, “Ah! It is that little minx of the Boulevard Malesherbes! But I’ll teach her when I go back!”

    “I pray you not to mention that young lady’s name!” says the Baron, looking at her rather curiously.

    “Tut! Tut! What do I care for those savage eyes of yours, Monsieur le Baron?” laughs the lady. “I can have other admirers!” As she easily can; for even now she makes a most alluring appearance, her costume de theatre being such as to display beauties of the figure as well as the face; of which Bébé de Champs Élysées has many, though most of them are of the “Robert le Diable” enchantress order.

    But Montez not answering her, she babbles on, “You don’t believe me! You have not yet heard of the handsome young American whose eyes are as bright and big as your friend Herr Wernig’s, though mon Henri’s are straight, not crooked.”

    “Mon Henri’s,” mutters the Baron, giving her an under glance.

    “Yes, mon Henri, who is wild with love for me. So wild, he offered me a great string of pearls worth a fortune. But for your sake, ingrate, I repulsed him!”

    “Ha, ah! ma chère! That means, you want a string of pearls!” laughs Fernando, who knows this lady’s tricks and manners very well.

    “I do!” answers Bébé, “but not from him! Had I wished them from him, they would have been mine! I think, from certain hints of his, he wanted some revelation from me. A revealing of some of your careless remarks over supper table and champagne glass, of your connection in business with his brother, Monsieur Francois Larchmont.”

    “Larchmont!” cries Montez. “Oh, it is that younger brother who has come here to the Isthmus?”

    “Certainement!”

    This suggestion makes Fernando very serious. Though Montez is a great man, like most great men he has a weakness. A drop of blood from a Gascon adventurer in his polyhaema veins, makes his tongue over a champagne glass sometimes throw away careless hints of things it were wiser not to speak of. This is especially his nature when he has been triumphant; and he has been triumphant so many times over the careless trust of Francois Leroy Larchmont, that he fears he may have dropped some suggestion that the lady beside him might under duress, or lured by gold, betray. And did she but know it, poor laughing méchante Bébé’s tongue has been doing some industrious work on her sepulchre just now.

    Baron Montez looks at her curiously, then as she stands babbling to him, waiting for her cue at the side scene, puts off this short-skirted, white-shouldered siren with a few careless words; and shortly after, leading his Fidus Achates, Herr Wernig, from the theatre, plies him with some very pertinent questions about the young American, as they stroll towards the Plaza.

    After getting his answers, Fernando gives a chuckle and ejaculates  “Parbleu! This young bantam has come to fight me on my own dunghill!”

    Rudolph Valentino (1895-1926), late 1910s (public domain; Wikimedia Commons)

    Then he listens in an abstracted way as Herr Wernig goes on in further explanation: “You wrote me about him. I watched him carefully. He is supposed to be a clerk in the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s office, but he does as he pleases. He also had quite a flirtation on the Colon coming out, with that pretty stenographer in your office.”

    “Oh, yes,” remarks Montez, “the girl I saw this afternoon. I remember I told our agents in New York to engage one. I thought an American would be less dangerous than a French one to our confidential communications. Personally, I always write my own letters of importance, but poor Aguilla is not good with his pen, and requires a correspondent.”

    “Poor Aguilla? Rich Aguilla! He’s your partner,” laughs the German.

    Here from out Montez’ white teeth issues a contemptuous “Bah!” and Herr Wernig, after a pause of thought, gives a little giggle.

    “As to the young lady stenographer, I will ask her some questions in the morning. You say she was épris with this Larchmont?” murmers Fernando, puffing his cigarette very slowly.

    “Oh, very much, but there has been some trouble. She has not spoken to him since they left the steamer. I saw her cut him very directly on the Battery last Sunday, when he was walking with Mademoiselle Be̕be̕, for whom I understand he bought the big pearls, but did not deliver them.”

    Into this Montez suddenly cuts: “You leave tomorrow morning?”

    “Yes, by a quick steamer to St. Thomas, and then to Paris.”

    “Of course! to add your weight, Wernig, to the Lottery Bill that is to permit the Canal here to make one last big gasp before it”—here Fernando lowers his voice—“dies.”

    “Certainly!”

    “You need have no fear. The bill will go through the Corps Législatif. Then a spark of life, but after a little time there will be an end of the ditch. However, it is very important that this Lottery Bill pass, for you and for me. By it we will get the moneys due us from the Panama Canal Company, which are at present delinquent. After that no more contracts for me!”

    “For me also!” laughs the German. “Don’t you think I have seen this as well as you?”

    “Ah, you have come here to clean up—so you need not return?”

    “Yes, I have done so pretty effectually.”

    “I am here to clean up also, and very thoroughly. If the Lottery Bill did not go through, work would stop here at once, and there are some in this dirty little town who would call themselves my dupes, and perhaps wish my blood—the blood of poor, scapegoat Montez—the innocent blood! But in two months I shall be safely out of all this, so vive la loterie!”

    “I wonder you did not remain in Paris till the bill passed!” says Wernig inquisitively.

    “That was impossible!” returns Fernando. “Besides”— here he whispers to the German who bursts into a guffaw and cries, “What! The Franco-American!”

    “Yes! He is doing the buying; he is at my suggestion making himself amenable to French law. But you leave tomorrow morning for Colon,” continues the Baron. “I must bid you adieu tonight. I am not an early riser.”

    Then the two go into some more private confidences, but as Montez bids Wernig goodnight, he whispers these curious words: “In a month you will see me in Paris. In a week or two I shall be away from here, and leave nothing behind me—nothing!”

    Then looking around, he waves his hand with foreign gesticulation, and laughs: “I will have eaten them all up—I have such a big appetite!”

    And the German seizes his hand and chuckles: “And so have I, my brother!”

    So after a farewell glass of wine at the Café Bethancourt, these two part, with many expressions of mutual esteem, and many foreign embraces, and even kisses, they so adore each other; though Wernig has made up his mind to eat Montez, and Montez has made up his mind to devour Wernig.

    Far away Australia, among other wondrous birds, beasts, fishes, and reptiles, has given birth to a most marvellous insect—the Vadalia Cardinalis! Its appetite is phenomenal, its voracity beyond description. Though not destructive to vegetable life, were it large enough, it would eat the entire animal world.

    There is also a lazy lower order of insect that lives dreamily upon the leaves of the orange trees of California, known by the name of the Cottony Scale. Its form of life is so low that it seems more a white incrustation on the beautiful plants than an insect who lives upon their leaves and life.

    Into the orange orchard, dying from myriads of Cottony Scale, the planter lets loose a few Vadalia Cardinali. These prey upon and eat up the lazy white Cottony Scale with incredible rapidity, and the beautiful plants, bereft of what is drawing their life away, survive and nourish. But after the Vadalia Cardinali have eaten up all the Cottony Scale insects in the orange plantation, with incredible voracity they fall upon and devour each other, and the survivors again devour. Each hour they become fewer and fewer, until there are but two Vadalia Cardinali left. And these two battle and fight with each other till one is victorious and destroys and devours his opponent. And from that orchard that once was white with myriads of Cottony Scale glistening in the tropical sun, and here and there a red spot of Vadalia Cardinali, but one insect crawls away, seeking for further prey for his all devouring jaws—one Vadalia Cardinalis!

    Such an insect is Baron Montez of Panama. He has already eaten up and destroyed outside stockholders and investors in Panama securities—the weaklings, the Cottony Scales—such as Francois Leroy Larchmont and Bastien Lefort. Having devoured the Cottony Scales, he is now about to eat his own breed—his partner Aguilla, his old chum Wernig, his early companion Domingo the ex-pirate, who has invested his savings under Montez’ advice, and half a hundred other cronies of his, who have assisted in his work of despoiling the lower order of animal life. He will be the only Vadalia Cardinalis, who will leave his own particular plantation on the orange farm called the Canal Interoceanic.

    Perchance he would be wiser, perchance he would have less care, perchance he would be more successful, if he let a few others save himself have a little of the pickings of his schemes; for even Cottony Scale bugs writhe in anguish sometimes, and some of the men he is about to devour are Vadalia Cardinali, ferocious, implacable, and cunning. For instance, Domingo the ex-pirate, and Aguilla, who has swindled many in his time in his honest bourgeois way. But to eat all is Montez’ nature; he is a Vadalia Cardinalis.

    Notes and References

    • Vadalia Cardinalis /Rodolia cardinalis: common name ‘ladybird beetle’, ‘ladybug’. See influentialpoints.com and Rice Univ. Insect Biolog Blog, ‘Invasive, Sex-Crazed Cannibals‘.
    • meretricious: alluring by a show of flashy or vulgar attractions; tawdry, based on pretense, deception, or insincerity. Pertaining to or characteristic of a prostitute. [Latin meretrīcius of, pertaining to prostitutes, derivative of meretrīx prostitute, from mere-, stem of merēre to earn] thefreedictionary.com
    • méchante: Nasty, villain, wicked, vicious,evil.
    • Fidus Achates: faithful friend or companion—Latin, literally: faithful Achates, the name of the faithful companion of Aeneas in Virgil’s Aeneid. Collins Dictionary
    • Parbleu!: For God’s sake!, By Jove!
    • épris: love
    • Corps Legislatif: French Legislative body

    Parker, M. Hell’s Gorge: The Battle to Build the Panama Canal (London: Arrow Books, 2007).

    Snyder, W.E. et al. “Nutritional Benefits of Cannibalism for the Lady Beetle Harmonia axyridis (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) When Prey Quality is Poor“. Environmental Entomology, Volume 29, Issue 6, 1 December 2000, Pages 1173–1179. Available Oxford Academic.

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour

  • A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 16. The Duplicate Tintype

    A.C. Gunter’s Baron Montez: 16. The Duplicate Tintype

    Settling into life in ‘Little Paris’, Louise is about to embark on another journey: one of discovery. Whereas Harry will struggle to gain any ground through his dedicated efforts, evidence of Montez’s treachery will almost fall into her lap.

    Readers will remember, in Chapter Three, George Ripley proudly showing Fernando Montez a tintype image of his wife taken in Sans Francisco, and Alice Ripley remarking that a copy had been sent to her daughter, Mary. Old objects pass through time in a way that human beings may not. Wayward, long-forgotten, they may gather dust, wear, tarnish, but still exist as an embodiment of a particular time. So it is with the tintype.

    It is well to consider how Louise Minturn, granddaughter of George and Alice Ripley, came to be placed where she is. Miss Work, her former employer, who learning of a stenographer’s position for which she thinks Louise suitable above all others, arranges an interview. Louise, with only a stray thought of her missing grandparents lost those decades ago in Panama, and none of the deadly threat of yellow fever, accepts the job and its outstanding salary of sixty dollars a week. Then her multiple coincidental meetings and ongoing involvement with Harry Larchmont lead to the chance revelation that they share, not only a destination, but a common foe in Baron Montez, her new employer.

    And it is Harry, not Louise herself, who arranges her accommodation with Silas Winterburn and his portentous ‘collection of curiosities’. Such coincidences might strain credulity unless one were to believe in the strength of subconscious intuition, of a cosmic consciousness capable of leading a trusting soul where they need to go. Or otherwise, the careful planning of an author wanting to surprise his reader with a familiar found object and create degrees of pathos at the same time. Significantly, revelation of the contents of the powder case glimpsed in the previous chapter, has been delayed.

    Bastien Lefort resurfaces, virtually apoplectic at the extravagances he has witnessed in the building of the Canal Interoceanic. It does not seem to me extraordinary, however, that the Director-General’s house is luxurious, nor indeed that he is paid a startling salary—such incentives are required to entice someone of sufficient experience to risk their lives in the disease-ridden Panama. Were Lefort to look about some more, he would find examples of extreme waste: tons and tons of unsuitable equipment, never used, rusting by the canal (Parker, p.140). The narrator has already alluded to some surface indicators of corruption.

    ‘Boneyard of the Old French Machinery’ (McKinlay, 1912)

    Describing the failure of the French attempt, United States Member of Congress Duncan E. McKinlay wrote:

    … of the enormous sum of money raised by the French Canal Company, one-third was wasted, one-third grafted and one-third probably used in actual work.

    It seemed as if anyone who had any sort of influence might sell that influence to the Panama company for some kind of a consideration. On the Isthmus today they will show you a storehouse containing about half a ship’s cargo of snow shovels which a manufacturing company in France succeeded in selling to the French Panama Company, no doubt in return for the influence they might be able to give in assisting in the sale of the French Panama Company’s stocks. Of course, one can easily see the ridiculous side of the purchase of half a cargo of snow shovels to be used in the tropics.

    The Panama Canal (1912)

    At the lowest level, pilfering was rife and the bribing of inspectors charged with estimating excavation costs common. Countless avenues existed for defrauding company funds, right up to the French banks and financial institutions who took generous cuts for processing the funding (Parker, p.140). Lefort would have been only one of eight hundred thousand investors. Thus far US$280 million dollars had been spent, and the French Panama Canal Company (Universelle du Canal Interocéanique) had liabilities many times that again (Parker, p.185). At the time, not only is the Panama Canal the largest engineering project ever undertaken on Earth, but also the greatest financial investment in human history.

    Up to this point the novel has been aggregating material, essential background data for the reader on characters and events. From here on, the story cascades, uncovering and re-animating relics from the past. The chapter concludes once again in a conflict between Louise’s jealous desire for Harry versus the easy charm he wields over other females, this time in pursuit of the information he needs to nail Montez.

    CHAPTER 16

    THE DUPLICATE TINTYPE

    The next morning Miss Minturn, having American business methods in her mind, makes her appearance, after an early breakfast, at the office of Montez, Aguilla et Cie., on the Calle de Paez, but finds that it is not open, and is told by a negro boy who is in charge of it, that if she will call at eleven o’clock, they will be ready for business.

    Consequently, though somewhat astonished, the young lady takes a walk about town, and going towards the bay, finds herself in the market of Panama, where a number of negro women and mulattoes are doing a thriving business in yuccas, frijolis, beef cut in long strips (tassajo), fruits, and fish.

    Tempted by some of the beautiful fruit of the Isthmus, Louise buys an orange, and walks nonchalantly, eating it, towards the end of the railroad track which runs out on the wharf into the bay. Nearing this, she sees a building that is now almost in ruins, carelessly deciphers on it the words “Pacific House,” and suddenly gives a start. This is the place from which the last letter of Alice Ripley had been written to her daughter in the far away United States.

    It brings the epistle home to her; Montez comes into her mind she wonders, and: “Can it be true—the wild accusations that the American has made against him? If he has ruined one friend in Paris, may he not have destroyed another frank, trusting soul upon the Isthmus?”

    Filled with these thoughts, the girl strolls slowly down the wharf, to see a figure that appears familiar to her. It is that of the second-cabin passenger on board the Colon, Bastien Lefort.

    The old man is sitting looking over the beautiful waters of the bay, which, as the tide is in, are now rippling at his feet. His eyes have a dreamy, far off expression, and he is muttering as if brokenhearted, words that come to Miss Minturn something like this:

    “Five hundred thousand francs! Sapriste!—for the residence of the Director General! Seven hundred and fifty thousand francs! Mon Dieu!—for his country palace! Millions for luxury, the pigs—the swine—but little for work!”

    Then to her astonishment, the man suddenly becomes very animated, for he utters a snarling, shrieking “Sacré! What shall I do? The savings of a life!” and goes dancing and muttering up the wharf in a semi-demented, semi-paralyzed manner.fc

    But the beauties of the scene bring back her thoughts to it. It is fairyland!—and a fairyland she had never seen before, for no stage picture was ever so beautiful. The dainty islands of Flamenco, Perico, Tobaguilla, and in the distance faraway Toboga, rise before her from blue water, green—eternal green!

    To the south, blue water;—though this seems to her west, for the points of the compass are wondrously changed here, to those not knowing them.

    Panama City, View Taken from Mount Ancon (1885), wood engraved print, anon.

    To the east, the coast running away to the far-off tower of deserted old Panama, and back of it green savannas and mountains that rise from it, islands in an emerald sea. To the north, the old gray ramparts of the city. But the sun is coming up upon this scene of beauty, and warned by its heat, the girl leaves the wharf and returns to the town of Panama, to make her appearance at the office of Montez, Aguilla et Cie.

    Here she is received by the junior partner Aguilla, who is an old, pleasant, round-faced, honest-mannered Frenchman, one of the bourgeois class, who had been taught in his youth to save pennies, but now, in this era of extravagance, runs his business quite liberally.

    “Ah,” he says, “Miss Minturn!” speaking to her in French, to which she replies in the same language. “I had received advices of your leaving New York from our correspondents, Flandreau & Company, who have forwarded to me your contract. Your duties here will not be difficult, nor unpleasant, I hope. You will chiefly take my dictation, and forward my letters, doing any other correspondence that may be entrusted to you. An American stenographer was engaged, at the suggestion of my partner, the Baron Fernando Montez.” The old gentleman speaks with great reverence of his titled associate. “He thought an American would have less interest in discovering any of our confidential transactions, and would be more difficult of approach than any one we could employ here. Your engagement, Miss Minturn, is a tribute to the respect my partner and I feel for the business honor of the United States.”

    Then the old gentleman chuckles in a theatrical way: “Voilà Remington!” and shows her, in an adjoining office, a newly imported typewriter.

    “It came with you, on the same steamer,” he laughs.

    “Oh, I brought mine with me also!” says the girl.

    “Ah, that will be convenient, if one gets out of order. Besides,” here a sudden idea strikes this gentleman, “I occupy a villa belonging to Baron Montez, on the Island of Toboga. We will have this sent there. I have often correspondence that requires attention on Sundays. Sometimes I will ask you to make a picnic to Toboga, on a bright day, where you will be pleasantly received by my wife who lives there. Thus we can save a delay of twenty four hours in our correspondence.”

    A few minutes afterwards, Miss Minturn’s own machine, which has been sent from his house by the notary, arrives, and the young lady finds herself at her old occupation again, and playing upon the well-remembered but perhaps not well-beloved keys.

    She is delighted to find she has a room to herself. It is immediately behind the private office of Monsieur Aguilla. The large general offices, three or four of them, are occupied by numerous clerks who go about business in a French way, with a good deal of excited jabber and volubility.

    Miss Minturn’s first day’s correspondence is chiefly with the Panama Canal Co. Everything with that institution is done by letter. However, there are some outside epistles, one to the agent of the railroad at Colon, and another addressed to Domingo Florez, Porto Bello, State of Panama, enclosing a draft upon the Railroad Company at Colon, for the sum of fifty dollars.

    “You can keep that form of letter,” remarks Aguilla, after dictating it, “as you will have to send a similar one every month to the old man, as it contains his remittance—his dividend on his Panama stock.”

    Then the old gentleman looks with quick, eager eyes at the deft hands of the young lady, as they fly over the keyboard.

    He laughs as he goes away, and says:

    “You are like an artist on the piano. I feel quite proud of our firm! We have the only stenographer and typewriter on the Isthmus!”

    Antique postcard showing a Smith Premier No. 4

    This sets the girl to thinking. She the only stenographer in Panama—what could have put it into their heads? But the remark of Aguilla satisfies her on this point. They fear that their affairs would not be as private in the hands of someone who knew more about the state of business on the Isthmus—someone who perhaps might find it to his interest to disclose some of their contracts with the Panama Canal Company—one or two of the letters to that concern having made Miss Minturn open her bright American eyes, and wonder with her bright American mind, if there is not jobbery and rascality contained between their rather ambiguous lines.

    But this is none of her business, and getting through with her work, Louise soon becomes interested in the movements of her fellow clerks, a few of whom are now introduced to her by the head of the house.

    Most of these are young Frenchmen; although there are a few Spaniards and Chilians, there are no Americans among them. But, curiously enough, there is a Chinaman! He has charge of the accounts of the various laborers hired upon certain excavation contracts that the firm is engaged upon, and also carries accounts with several Chinese stores and booths scattered along the works of the Canal, between here and Colon.

    Two of the clerks, however, interest her. They are both great dandies, one of them a young Parisian named Massol, and the other a Marseillais named D’Albert. These two young gentlemen are apparently well up in the office and have good salaries, as they stroll off to the Bethancourt for lunch, while the bulk of the employees are perfectly content with the more democratic and less expensive La Cascada, which is more convenient to the Calle de Paez.

    Noting the employees going away, the young lady steps into Monsieur Aguilla’s private room, and says: “What must I do now?”

    “Why, do what the rest of them have done. Run away to your breakfast!”

    “Will I have time?” asks the girl, astonished, recollections of the rush of Nassau Street coming to her.

    “Oh, certainly! There will be nothing for you to do till half-past two—say three o’clock. I will be here at three. Perhaps I may have a few letters.”

    So the girl trips away quite lightly, though the sun is warm, wondering to herself: “Sixty dollars a week for this! At this rate I would have earned six hundred dollars a week at Miss Work’s.”

    But she soon discovers that the heat is such that one cannot labor as vigorously in Panama as in New York.

    When she gets home and has a déjeuner a la fourchette, she is very glad to escape from the sun, and under the cool veranda lounge out a couple of hours in a hammock siesta. It does not take long for old Sol to destroy even Anglo-Saxon activity in this land of the Equator.

    So the week runs along, and grows heavy to her, for by this time she has become very anxious to see the bright face of Harry Larchmont. She has, however, heard about him several times from the loquacious clerks, D’Albert and Massol, the former of whom questions her regarding the young American. He remarks one day: “Mademoiselle, you came by the same steamer with Monsieur Larchmont, the new clerk of the Pacific Mail Company?”

    “Yes,” replies the girl, “why do you ask?”

    “Why? Because he is the most wonderful clerk in the world. His salary, I have inquired and discovered, is one hundred and fifty dollars a month. He spends one hundred and fifty dollars in a night. Now, if he were rich, he might be a clerk in other lands, but nobody who is rich would ever come down here to slave.”

    Then he suddenly strikes his head, and says: “Mon Dieu! perhaps he is an embezzler! Perhaps he has fled from the United States!” for there are several of these gentry upon the Isthmus.

    The girl answers, with indignant eyes: “Embezzler! What do you mean? Mr. Larchmont is a member of one of the richest families of the United States!”

    “Oh, indeed! And mademoiselle is angry!” replies the young man. Then he bows to her mockingly, and remarks suggestively: “Monsieur Larchmont is also one of the handsomest men in the United States!”

    Watching them as they go to breakfast, Louise notes with flaming eyes and indignant face D’Albert and Massol emit sly giggles, and indulge in shrugs of shoulders, and slight pokes in each other’s Gallic ribs.

    Going off to her own afternoon intermission she smites her pretty hands together nervously, once or twice, and murmurs: “Yes, handsome! God help me! Too handsome for my happiness!” Then she says suddenly: “What a fool he is! Could he not have seen it was Miss Severn made me angry?”

    So the time is heavy on her fair hands. Silas Winterburn has already gone back to his dredger on the Chagres, and Mrs. Winterburn devotes herself chiefly to her child and rummaging in her husband’s museum in the daytime, and listening to the music of the young ladies at night; for this is almost the only recreation that Louise has found.

    According to Spanish custom, young ladies cannot go out by themselves, and old Martinez does not seem to ever think of taking his daughters to evening amusements.

    “If they would only go to the theatre,” thinks Miss Minturn, “I could perhaps invite myself to go with them. There I might see him! What shall I do to pass the coming nights that are even now so long?”

    And she has thoughts of writing a novel, or poetry, or some other wild literary thing that young ladies when driven by ennui, resort to, to bring despair upon publishers.

    So Saturday arrives, and Louise imagines she will have a Sunday holiday, and thinks of doing the Cathedral. But before leaving the office for the afternoon, a large mail comes in, and Aguilla taking it in his hands says:

    “Behold our Sunday work! Make up a little picnic. Ask one of your young lady friends, the Martinez, I believe you live with, or someone else, to come with you to Toboga. Run down tomorrow. I have had the new typewriter sent there. You will have a little office all to yourself in my villa. Come and pass the day with us, and take a two hours’ dictation from me. The Ancon goes down every morning, and you will enjoy the trip, I think. The expense, of course, will be mine.”

    “Thank you,” replies the young lady, “I shall be delighted to come,” as in truth she is; for she knows it will be a pleasant excursion, having heard of the beauties of Toboga Island from other people besides her employer.

    So she asks Mrs. Winterburn if she will not go with her, thinking she will be more protection, and perchance needs more recreation than the voluble Spanish girls, who seem to find their life in Panama a pleasant one, notwithstanding there is a dearth of suitors, as old Martinez has no great dot to bestow upon his numerous progeny.

    Thus it comes to pass that Miss Minturn and the wife of the engineer, one bright Sunday morning, run down through the limpid waters of the bay, upon the steamboat which lands them amid the palms, plantains, and cocoanuts of Toboga Island, which is very fair—fair as when George Ripley looked upon it in 1856, though now slightly more modern.

    They tramp up the little hill, and over the same walk that Fernando had skipped down that 15th day of April, and come to the villa of Baron Montez of Panama, which has been greatly enlarged from the bamboo and palm-thatched cottage of its early days.

     Seated on a veranda overlooking the bay. Louise finds the genial Frenchman and his family, and they make her at home, and treat her very kindly; and after a pleasant lunch, she takes half an hour’s dictation from the business man.

    “Now,” he says, “I think you can write all these letters and have time to return to Panama this afternoon!”

    He leads her into quite a large room which had once been used as a bedchamber, but which has been made into a temporary office, for there is a bureau, chest of drawers, and washstand in it. In this has been set up the typewriter.

    Working rapidly, Louise finishes the letters in less time than she had expected.

    As she hands them to Aguilla, he remarks: “Have this paper put away in the bureau. Make everything permanent for yourself. This dictation has been a great success! I am a day ahead in my week’s work. We will have more of these Sunday dictations.”

    “Very well,” answers the young lady, “I will put the paper and envelopes in the drawers of the bureau.”

    “Yes, I believe it is empty,” he replies. “I don’t think the room has been occupied for a long time, though my partner slept in it years ago, before even the Canal.”

    So he leaves Mrs. Winterburn and Miss Minturn together, for the girl is putting on her wraps.

    Susie says suddenly: “I will put away the paper for you, so we will have more time to catch the boat.”

    “Thank you, I think the top drawer will be all I want,” answers Louise, by this time engaged with her hat strings.

    “What a pretty picture!” suddenly exclaims the matron, from the depths of the bureau.

    “Indeed?” says the young lady nonchalantly.

    “Yes, I reckon she must have been some sweetheart of the Baron’s,” laughs the lady. “It’s quite your facial expression. Look!” and she thrusts the picture under the girl’s vision.

    And suddenly Louise’s eyes grow great with startled surprise, and stare at a portrait! For it is the counterpart of the one she showed Harry Larchmont that day upon the Colon—the one even now she is carrying in her pocketbook.

    She gasps—she almost staggers!

    “Why, what’s the matter, dearie?” cries Mrs. Winterburn.

    “Nothing, but a great surprise! Something that I may want,” says the girl suddenly, a kind of horror coming into her eyes,—“want you to bear witness to. See!” She has opened the pocketbook. “Compare these two—the one found in this deserted room—in the unused bureau—it is the duplicate! It is the picture of Alice Ripley, who disappeared on the Isthmus over thirty years ago!”

    And she holding them before the astonished woman’s face, Mrs. Winterburn says, also growing pale: “Oh, goodness gracious! They are just the same! She was a relative of yours?”

    ”Yes, she was my mother’s mother,” whispers Louise. “She and her husband were robbed here of a fortune which should have been mine—at all events, it disappeared. This picture I am justified in keeping! But say nothing of it—not even to your husband.”

    “Why, Silas can help you in the matter! He knows everything about the old Isthmus in those days!” gasps Mrs. Winterburn.

    “Until I tell you—not a word to him! I must consider.”

    The girl’s hand is laid warningly upon the woman’s arm, as Aguilla coming in, says: “Hurry, my dear young lady, or you will miss the boat!”

    “Yes,” answers Louise. “Thank you for your hospitality!” and goes down the path falteringly, leaning upon Mrs. Winterburn’s arm.

    So falteringly that Aguilla remarks to his wife: “Is sickness coming upon that poor child so soon? See, even now she looks pale—her limbs tremble. Can the yellow fever have found even her youth and beauty?” and sighs, turning away his face, for he has seen many a young face go down before Yellow Jack in this town of Panama.

    But as they approach the landing, Louise starts and gives a jeering laugh, for Mrs. Winterburn has whispered to her: “Do you think he is the murderer?”

    “He? Who?”

    “Why, Aguilla, the man in the house.”

    “No!” cries the girl. “He is as kind-hearted a Frenchman as the sun ever shone on! He has an honest heart! Though I think there is another who is not so scrupulous! But for God’s sake, keep silent! My future depends upon your promise!”

    “Very well!” says the lady, “though I’d like to have told my husband!”

    “I’ll tell him if necessary,” answers Louise.

    Then they board the steamer, which ploughs its way back over the blue water to Panama, making the trip in about an hour; and all this time Miss Minturn is in a brown study no flight of flying fish attracts her, no big shark draws her gaze—her eyes look out on the blue water but see it not.

    She is thinking: “He divined! He knew! I’ll tell Harry Larchmont! I’ll beg his pardon! I’ll tell him what a fool I was! I’ll ask his aid, and if Montez is guilty, I’ll help him throw the villain down!”

    Now she becomes desperately anxious to see this man she has turned her back upon. She throws away mock modesty. Excitement gives force to her character.

    Soon after they reach her home in Panama, Martinez says: “You are not tired; your eyes are very bright; your face has plenty of color, Señorita Luisa; why not take a walk with me and my daughters, on the Battery? Everybody goes there on Sunday afternoons, to hear the band play. It costs nothing.”

    “Willingly!” cries the girl, for sudden thought has come to her: “If everybody goes to hear the band play, Harry Larchmont will be there!” She can speak to him. She can apologize and ask his advice and aid.

    So they all stroll off to the Battery, which is but a step for them, and climbing up on the old ramparts, that have the city prison beneath them, they see the town in its glory—the white dresses of the ladies, the gay colors of the negroes, the fashions of Paris displayed in ancient setting of rare beauty; blue water on one side, the old town on the other; underneath, prisoners wearing out their lives in sepulchral heat; and overhead, gay Panama.

    The crowd is brilliant as a butterfly and light and airy as the blowing breeze. The military band is playing, and the scene is radiant with French color and French vivacity, but it has tender Spanish music, for the band is South American, and Spanish music always brings love to young girls’ hearts.

    Postcard, 1900

    So there are tears in Louise’s brown eyes, and she is looking anxiously for Harry Larchmont, when suddenly there is even more than the usual French buzz about her, and she sees a beautiful woman in the latest mode of Paris, sweeping with bold eyes and flaunting step, and brazen look through the assemblage. The eyes of all are turned upon her, and she is laughing and flirting her parasol about her, and crying: “Bichon! Viens ici! Bichon! Vite!” to a French poodle that has been shaved in artistic manner, and is led by a maid beside her. She is talking to a gentleman whose form the girl recognizes and starts as she sees his face, for it is Harry Larchmont, and he has shut off all admirers from this lady’s side, and is talking to her, making play with his eyes, as if he loved her.

    Then there is a whisper in the girl’s ears. It is that of old Martinez the notary, who knows everybody and says: “Turn away your heads, girls! It is that awful French actress—that fearful Mademoiselle Bébé de Champs Élysées, the heroine of a hundred loves, the chère amie of Baron Montez, the financier.”

    But Miss Minturn does not turn away her head! She looks straight at the gentleman, who on seeing her is about to speak, but as her eyes gaze at him, his eyes droop, abashed, a flush of shame runs over his cheeks, that for one moment have become pale, and his lips tremble a little, though they force themselves to try to speak, as Louise Ripley Minturn, the stenographer of Seventeenth Street, New York, cuts Harry Sturgis Larchmont, of fashion and Fifth Avenue, dead—dead as the yellow fever!

    Notes and References

    • frijolis: Mexican cooking bean.
    • Sapriste: ‘heavens’, ‘by Jove’.
    • déjeuner a la fourchette: luncheon or light meal.
    • Viens ici: come here.
    • Viens vite: come quick.

    McKinnlay, D.E., The Panama Canal (San Francisco: Whitaker & Ray-Wiggin Co., 1912). gutenburg.org copy.

    Mills, J. Saxon, The Panama Canal: A history and description of the enterprise (London & NY: T. Nelson and Sons, 1913). gutenburg.org copy.

    Parker, M. Hell’s Gorge: The Battle to Build the Panama Canal (London: Arrow Books, 2007).

    This edition © 2021 Furin Chime, Brian Armour