For in Valencia
even every commercial salesman, from the moment he gives up his passport
on the steamer until the police permit him to depart, is suspected,
shadowed, and begirt with spies.
I believe that during my brief visit I enjoyed the distinction of
occupying the undivided attention of three: a common or garden
Government spy, from whom no guilty man escapes, a Walker-Keefe spy, and
the spy of the Nitrate Company. The spy of the Nitrate Company is
generally a man you meet at the legations and clubs. He plays bridge and
is dignified with the title of "agent." The Walker-Keefe spy is
ostensibly a travelling salesman or hotel runner. The Government spy is
just a spy--a scowling, important little beast in a white duck suit and
a diamond ring. The limit of his intelligence is to follow you into a
cigar store and note what cigar you buy, and in what kind of money you
pay for it.
The reason for it all was the three-cornered fight which then was being
waged by the Government, the Nitrate Trust, and the Walker-Keefe crowd
for the possession of the nitrate beds. Valencia is so near to the
equator, and so far from New York, that there are few who studied the
intricate story of that disgraceful struggle, which, I hasten to add,
with the fear of libel before my eyes, I do not intend to tell now.
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