The Three Sentinels Read Online Free PDF Page B

sheath but at least he laid it across his other arm.
    ‘And you can see that I come to pay my respects with not so much as a spanner or a screwdriver. In this heat one is barely decent.’
    His white suit was all dark and transparent with sweat. He was aware that it was due to the last hour of tension as much as to long absence from the fury of the sun, and hoped that no one else
could suspect it.
    ‘Give me your matches and cigarettes!’
    Mat handed them over and was escorted into 97 by the whole guard, curious to see the two powers confront each other.
    Inside its housing of heavy, removable, concrete panels the Christmas Tree emerged from the temporary floor of planks which had been fitted over the well cellar. Its name was apt, for the
branching pipes were decorated by star-like wheels controlling the valves; however, the only tree to which it had any resemblance was a mangrove, since the steel branches themselves sprouted shoots
upwards and downwards. The pattern of quadrilaterals repressed and channelled the pressure of the advancing Andes upon the oil sands thirteen thousand feet below.
    Recovering matches and cigarettes, he returned to the car and a Gateson whose face was white and set with anger.
    The bloody ignorant fools! They’re terrified even with all chokes shut down. They could light a bonfire round it so long as they didn’t cut the tubing. And if they did, I’d
have it under control a couple of hours after they ran away—those of them who weren’t cooked or gassed on the spot.’
    ‘Ah, but no smoking sounded efficient, you see. Now, tell me—suppose you let a monkey loose in there to twiddle any valves he liked, a monkey with my box of matches?’
    ‘He couldn’t do much harm—at least nothing spectacular,’ Gateson replied. ‘But if he twiddled at random and then went down to the casing-head gasoline plant with
your matches, we’d need a new plant.’
    ‘And a new monkey?’
    ‘Quite certainly.’
    ‘Perhaps that’s what they were thinking of.’
    ‘They don’t know any more than …’
    Mat mentally finished the sentence for him. Than you, he was going to say. Lord love a duck, a nasty temper and jealous too! Mr. Gateson’s speciality was evidently minerals rather than
men.
    ‘What were you producing up to the boycott?’
    ‘Nearly a thousand tons a day from 97 and 98. 98A was closed down as soon as we brought it in. From all three we could do six thousand tons a day and go on for a generation, but
what’s the use till London has solved the marketing problems?’
    Good God, and only eighteen months ago it had been just a hobby for a financier like Henry Constantinides—an innocent little field selling the produce of its shallow wells up and down the
Pacific coast as easily as coal, cement or any other bulk commodity! Cabo Desierto was not prepared for the gargantuan vomitings of the Three Sentinels with only a twopenny refinery, two good old
tankers and one new. Henry’s intention was to sell the whole damned field to one of the major oil companies which could afford to keep it on the ice till it was needed. But just what was its
value so long as the boycott lasted?
    They drove down the shallow valley between the first and second ridges where the barren gravel had been redeemed from original sin by the bungalows, lawns and messes of the executive staff, all
angelically set among the flowers and giant shrubs of an equatorial coast. At the end of the avenue of neat company palms a road ran half way up the second ridge to the General Manager’s
house. Mat’s impression was one of magnificent emptiness. That was because the house stood alone in the middle of a terraced garden with windows looking west to the arc of the Pacific and
south over the roofs and greenery towards the Three Sentinels.
    Inside, too, was emptiness. The Company’s excellent furniture was formally arranged. The Company’s houseman greeted him with exactly the right degree of respectful