Fombombo

In Caracas, Thomas Strawbridge called at the American Consulate, from a sense of duty. The consul, a weary, tropic-shot politician from Kentucky, received him with gin, cigars, and a jaded enthusiasm. He glanced at Mr. Strawbridge's business card and inquired if his visitor were one of the Strawbridges of Virginia. The young man replied that he lived in Keokuk, Iowa, and that his father had moved there from somewhere East. Upon this statement the consul ventured the dictum that if any family didn't know they had come from Virginia, they hadn't.

Having exhausted their native states as a topic of conversation, they swung around, in their talk, to the relatively unimportant Venezuela which sweltered outside the consulate in a drowse of endless summer. The two Americans damned the place, with lassitude but thoroughness. They condemned the character of the Venezuelan, his lack of morals, honesty, industry, and initiative. The Venezuelan was too polite; he was cowardly. He had not the God-given Anglo-Saxon instinct for self-government. But the high treason named in this joint bill of complaint was that the Venezuelan was unbusinesslike.

"I'm no tin angel," proceeded Mr. Strawbridge, emphatically, "but you know just as well as I do, Mr. Anderson, that the fellow who pulls slick stuff in a business deal has hit the chutes for the bowwows. Business methods and strict business honesty will win in the long run, Mr. Anderson."

The consul nodded a trifle absent-mindedly at this recommendation of his nation's widely advertised virtue.

"In fact," continued Mr. Strawbridge, with an effect of having begun to recite some sort of creed he could not stop until he reached the end, "in fact, continual aggressive business policies coupled with an incorruptible honesty are bound to land the American exporter flat-footed on the foreign trade. And, moreover, Mr. Anderson--" Strawbridge had the traveling salesman's habit of repeating a companion's name over and over in the course of a conversation, so he would not forget it--"moreover, Mr. Anderson, we American traveling business men have got to set an example to these people down here; show 'em what to do and how to do it. Snap, vim, go, and absolute honesty."

"Yes, ... yes," agreed the consul, still more absently. He was holding Mr. Strawbridge's card in his fingers and apparently studying it. Presently he broke into the homily:

"Speaking of business, how do you find the gun-and-ammunition business in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge?"

"Rotten. I've hardly booked an order since I landed in the country."

The consul lifted his brows.

"Have you booked any at all?"

"Well, no, I haven't," admitted Strawbridge.

The consul smiled faintly and finished off his glass of gin and water.

"I thought perhaps you hadn't."

"What made you think that?"

"No one does who just passes through the country offering them to any and every merchant."

"Why not?"

"Isn't allowed."

Strawbridge stared at his consul--a very honest blue-eyed stare.

"Not allowed? Who doesn't allow it, Mr. Anderson? Why, look here--" he straightened his back as there dawned on him the enormity of this personal infringement of his right to sell firearms whenever and wherever he found a buyer--"why the hell can't I sell rifles and--"

"Forbidden by the Government," interposed Mr. Anderson, patly.

Strawbridge was outraged.

"Now, isn't that a hell of a law! No reason at all, I suppose. Like their custom laws. They don't tax you for what you bring into this God-forsaken country; they tax you for the mistakes you make in saying what you've brought in. They look over your manifest and charge you for the errors you've made in Spanish grammar. Venezuela's correspondence course in the niceties of the Castilian tongue!"

The consul again smiled wearily.

"They have a better reason than that for forbidding rifles--revolutions. You know in this country they stage at least one revolution every forty-eight hours. The minute any Venezuelan gets hold of a gun he steps out and begins to shoot up the Government. If he wings the President, he gets the President's place. It's a very lucrative place, very. It's about the only job in this country worth a cuss. So you see there's a big reason for forbidding the importation of arms into Venezuela."

Mr. Strawbridge drew down his lips in disgust.

"Good Lord! Ain't that rotten! When will this leather-colored crew ever get civilized? Here I am--paid my fare from New York down here just to find out nobody buys firearms in this sizzling hell-hole; can't be trusted with 'em!"

In the pause at this point Mr. Anderson still twirled his guest's card. He glanced toward the front of his consulate, then toward the rear. The two Americans were alone. With his enigmatic smile still wrinkling his tropic-sagged face, the consul said in a slightly lower tone:

"I didn't say no one bought firearms in Venezuela, Mr. Strawbridge. I said they were not allowed to be sold here."

"O-o-oh, I se-e-e!" Mr. Strawbridge's ejaculation curved up and down as enlightenment broke upon him, and he stared fixedly at his consul.

"All I meant to say was that the trade is curtailed as much as possible, in order to prevent bloodshed, suffering, and the crimes of civil war."

Mr. Strawbridge continued his nodding and his absorbed gaze.

"But, still, some of it goes on--of course."

"Naturally," nodded Strawbridge.

"I suppose," continued the consul, reflectively, "that every month sees a considerable number of arms introduced into Venezuela, as far as that goes."

Strawbridge watched his consul as a cat watches a mouse-hole--for something edible to appear.

"Yes?" he murmured interrogatively.

"Well, there you are," finished the consul.

Strawbridge looked his disappointment.

"There I am?" he said in a pained voice. "Well, I must say I am not very far from where you started with me; am I?"

"It seems to me you are somewhat advanced," began the diplomat, philosophically. "You know why you haven't sold anything up to date. You know why you can't approach a Venezuelan casually to sell him guns, as if you were offering him stoves or shoe-polish." The consul was still smiling faintly, and now he drew a scratch-pad toward him and began making aimless marks on it after the fashion of office men. "In fact, to attempt to sell guns at all would be quite against the law, as I have explained, for the reasons I have stated. It's a peculiar and I must say an unfortunate situation."