Pedro took the bottle and prepared to knock its neck off.
“Hold!” cried Rafael. “You were paid to be honest.”
“By a man who was not himself honest,” came the retort. “The stuff is contraband. It has never paid duty. The old man was in possession of smuggled goods. Let us now gratefully and with clear conscience invest ourselves in its possession. We will confiscate it. We will destroy it.”
Not waiting for the bottle to pass, Ignacio and Rafael unwrapped fresh ones and broke off the necks.
“Three stars—most excellent,” Pedro Zurita orated in a pause, pointing to the trade mark. “You see, all Gringo whiskey is good. One star shows that it is very good; two stars that it is excellent; three stars that it is superb, the best, and better than beyond that. Ah, I know. The Gringos are strong on strong drink. No pulque for them.”
“And four stars?” queried Ignacio, his voice husky from the liquor, the moisture glistening in his eyes.
“Four stars? Friend Ignacio, four stars would be either sudden death or translation into paradise.”
In not many minutes, Rafael, his arm around another gendarme, was calling him brother and proclaiming that it took little to make men happy here below.
“The old man was a fool, three times a fool, and thrice that,” volunteered Augustino, a sullen-faced gendarme, who for the first time gave tongue to speech.
“Viva Augustino!” cheered Rafael. “The three stars have worked a miracle. Behold! Have they not unlocked Augustino’s mouth?”
“And thrice times thrice again was the old man a fool!” Augustino bellowed fiercely. “The very drink of the gods was his, all his, and he has been five days alone with it on the road from Bocas del Toro, and never taken one little sip. Such fools as he should be stretched out naked on an ant-heap, say I.”
“The old man was a rogue,” quoth Pedro. “And when he comes back to-morrow for his three stars I shall arrest him for a smuggler. It will be a feather in all our caps.”
“If we destroy the evidence—thus?” queried Augustino, knocking off another neck.
“We will save the evidence—thus!” Pedro replied, smashing an empty bottle on the stone flags. “Listen, comrades. The box was very heavy—we are all agreed. It fell. The bottles broke. The liquor ran out, and so were we made aware of the contraband. The box and the broken bottles will be evidence sufficient.”