Severed Key Read Online Free PDF Page B

Force, which was non-existent, by the way. The Air Force, I mean—not Santa Isobel.”
    “One of those banana republics in the Caribbean, isn’t it?” Chester asked.
    “You know perfectly well that it is. And the man in the uniform was Raul Sandovar who ruled Santa Isobel with an iron hand for almost twenty years.”
    “Sandovar!” Simon repeated. “You never told me that you knew him.”
    “I haven’t told you everything about myself, Simon, dear. Not nearly everything. And I didn’t know him well. It was after Max, that jealous director, took a shot at me and left me partially crippled for life—unless Chester’s batting practice machine does the trick—that I met Raul Sandovar. I was in a sanitorium at the time. He visited me—in full uniform, bearing gifts, flowers and cheer. He was charming!”
    “I heard he was a bloody butcher who climbed to power over the corpses of his opposition,” Chester remarked, “and stayed in power as long as he did by using the same methods.”
    Hannah smiled. “Nobody’s perfect,” she said. “Sandovar only did unto others first what they were about to do unto him. And in those days, my friend, beautiful actresses weren’t political scientists. When an attentive male showered us with loot, we demurely accepted.”
    “Demure! I can’t picture you ever having been demure!”
    “Thank you,” Hannah said. “And remember, I told you that I was an actress. But you can take my word for it. This face in the news photo, with the moustache added, is the face of Raul Sandovar. Look at those equine nostrils!”
    “You’re forgetting one thing,” Simon remarked, over the last fragments of the chicken leg. “—Raul Sandovar was assassinated over fifteen years ago.”
    The observation brought a moment of quiet contemplation, and then Hannah, as if having won a silent argument with herself, began to reminisce aloud. “It was in nineteen twenty-eight—in the autumn of the year—when Max stormed into my house waving that ugly Luger. It was in the spring when Raul visited me at the sanitorium. He was a bachelor then and he remained a bachelor for about five more years before they held that fantastic state wedding in Santa Isobel. I think one of the Roosevelt boys attended as an official emissary and squirted the seltzer bottle on some general. No, that was a mayor in France. Well, anyway, Raul was married in nineteen thirty-four. It was years before he had a legitimate heir. There was even gossip that he would divorce his wife and marry a Spanish noblewoman. After the Spanish Civil War there were a lot of them available. Then—yes, it was the year Hitler invaded Denmark and Prince Valdemar fell fighting off the Nazi vandals with his sword that Raul finally had a son. That would make him just about the right age to fit this handsome male in the photograph. The Sandovars held their age beautifully. I was told that Raul didn’t look a day over thirty-five the day he was shot.”
    Chester shook his head in awe. “Fantastic!” he said. “Hannah, you didn’t even draw a breath!”
    Fascinated, Simon asked: “What was the son’s name?”
    “Juan,” Hannah recalled. “Juan Sebastian Maria—oh, you know how those things go. The poor child’s half-grown before they get through the christening ceremony.”
    “Say, I remember something about that,” Chester said. “When Sandovar was shot in a junta coup, his widow and son fled to Switzerland with about a hundred million dollars.”
    “At least that,” Hannah said dryly, “and by this time it’s probably tripled. The Spanish are good at money matters. Only we Americans give everything away—as if our resources were unlimited and the corrupt governments we’ve supported on a global scale would rise to our defence in an hour of need. Naivety is a national characteristic—like tea-drinking among the English—but much worse on the nervous system.”
    “Johnny Sands,” Simon murmured half-aloud.
    “What did you