The glare of the big arc-lights flooded the broad, white plaza when Dick
crossed it on his way to the Hotel Magellan. The inhabitants of Santa
Brigida had finished their evening meal and, as was their custom, were
taking the air and listening to the military band. They were of many
shades of color and different styles of dress, for dark-skinned peons in
plain white cotton, chattering negroes, and grave, blue-clad Chinamen
mingled with the citizens who claimed to spring from European stock.
These, however, for the most part, were by no means white, and though
some derived their sallow skin from Andalusian and Catalan ancestors,
others showed traces of Carib origin.
The men were marked by Southern grace; the younger women had a dark,
languorous beauty, and although their dress was, as a rule, an out of
date copy of Parisian modes, their color taste was good, and the creamy
white and soft yellow became them well. A number of the men wore white
duck, with black or red sashes and Panama hats, but some had Spanish
cloaks and Mexican sombreros.
Flat-topped houses, colored white and pink and lemon, with almost
unbroken fronts, ran round the square. A few had green lattices and
handsome iron gates to the arched entrances that ran like a tunnel
through the house, but many showed no opening except a narrow slit of
barred window. Santa Brigida was old, and the part near the plaza had
been built four hundred years ago.
Dick glanced carelessly at the crowd as he crossed the square. He liked
the music, and there was something interesting and exotic in the play of
moving color, but his mind was on his work and he wondered whether he
would find a man he wanted at the hotel. One could enter it by a Moorish
arch that harmonized with the Eastern style of its front; but this had
been added, and he went in by the older tunnel and across the patio to
the open-fronted American bar that occupied a space between the balcony
pillars.
He did not find his man, and after ordering some wine, lighted a
cigarette and looked about while he waited to see if the fellow would
come in. One or two steamship officers occupied a table close by, a
Frenchman was talking excitedly to a handsome Spanish half-breed, and a
fat, red-faced German with spectacles sat opposite a big glass of
pale-colored beer. Dick was not interested in these, but his glance grew
keener as it rested on a Spaniard, who had a contract at the irrigation
works, sitting with one of Fuller's storekeepers at the other end of the
room. Though there was no reason the Spaniard should not meet the man in
town, Dick wondered what they were talking about, particularly since they
had chosen a table away from everybody else.