I let go of him and headed for the Bugatti on my own, to get there quicker. It was lighter out here, there were street-lights beyond the grounds shining in, and Torres’ driver must have seen me coming. He had the car-door open and was out on the running-board firing away before I could close in. I didn’t feel anything, and thought I was crazy for a minute, I wasn’t wearing any bullet-proof vest. Then I remembered the blanks I’d put in his gun the night before; they’d seen me do it, but maybe they’d forgotten in their excitement to tell him; and he’d been drugged at the time.
I held my fire and closed in on him. By that time he was down on both knees already and his gun had gone over his shoulder. “Señor, señor, you must be the Devil! The bullets won’t go near you—!”
“I am the Devil!” I told him. “In! You’re driving us to Santa Marta!”
Savinas came tottering up, at his last gasp by now, and got in the back seat. “Stay down on the floor,” I warned him. I crowded in next to the palsied driver. “Now aim at that front gate, and never mind waiting for them to open it — this thing has steel fenders!”
The gate burst in two with a terrific clang just as a crowd came spilling out the front steps, peppering away at us and yelling, “He got away! Stop him!”
There wasn’t any chase; nothing in the country could have even kept that Bugatti in sight once it got going.
I turned around after a while and said, “You’re alive, anyway. Why don’t you chuck it all and come back to the States with me?”
He was a game old man, all right. “President I am!” he said, “And President I stay! It will all be over before the sun comes up.”
We got to Santa Marta an hour before midnight, and routed the loyal regiment out of its barracks. I hung around just long enough to make sure what kind of a reception he’d get, and hear him give his orders. I needn’t have worried. They yelled their heads off for him, and started back at a double-quick trot then and there, breathing smoke and flame.
“Get in, Stiff,” the old fellow beamed, his good arm around my shoulder. “We go back now and watch the — how you say — mopping up.”
“You can drop me off at the airfield on the way,” I said. “I got a seat coming to me on the Pan-American, may as well use it now as any other time.”
“But Stiff,” he argued, “I will make you my chief of police, I will name streets after you and put up statues of you — the country is yours!”
“You don’t need me any more,” I said. “You’ll be all right now. I’m homesick, I guess. I’m going back to Chicago, where it’s peaceful.”