There were no burros actually in the heart of the slum — but only because if anyone had tried to bring an animal that heavy into the place, its hoofs would have gone straight through the rickety flooring. But there were pigs, and there were chickens, and there were certainly goats somewhere out of sight — their presence was unmistakable.

The police threw back curtains — there was hardly a real door in the place — without ceremony. The word had gone ahead of us; we surprised no one in the kind of situation that Professor Cortes had assured me was commonplace down here. People turned blank faces to us or scowled or half-rose with an ingratiating smile and made meaningless gestures of invitation. Children hesitated between watching the strangers and running to hide; they seemed undernourished and all were dirty, but there were few that were visibly sickly or diseased. I saw cases of eczema, rickets, and something else I could not put a name to — six or eight in all out of perhaps a hundred-odd children.

The extent of the slum was tremendous once one was inside. After twenty minutes we were a long way from the outside air, and the surrounding, dimly sensed hatred was beginning to prey on my nerves. We were going down a particularly dark passage, the police flashlights cutting stark blades of white through the thick air, rough-cut slats creaking under our weight — when a woman in a peasant’s rebozo went past us, head down, carrying a basket. Something about the way she walked struck me as familiar; I paused and looked after her. I never forgave myself for that flash of sudden memory.

For Angers noticed it, and turned to follow my gaze. When he saw the woman, he stiffened.

“By God!” he said softly. “That’s Brown’s wife! What would she be doing here — unless he was here, too?”

XIX

Angers had spoken in English; the policemen nearest us at that moment did not take in the sense of his words. He rounded on them with a sudden burst of incredible, untypical rage — I had not thought his shell of self-possession could break down so completely.

“Don’t just stand there!” he exploded. “That’s Brown’s wife! Get her back here!”

It sank in. Two of the officers scrambled into the dimness. There was a cry. In a moment they were coming back, grasping Señora Brown’s arms in strong hands. She struggled, panting, but she was growing old and these police were young and vigorous. Her rebozo fell back around her shoulders.

“So it is you,” said Angers softly. He took one of the flashlights and shone it full into her face, dazzling her. She half-turned her head to escape the glare.

“Donde esta su exposo?” Angers said fiercely.

She gave him a murderous scowl. “No se,” she said flatly. “Noestd aquí.”

I think it was in that instant that she recognized me and remembered who I was; at any rate I suddenly caught a flash of hatred from her dark eyes. I turned away, not wanting to be a party to what happened next.

Angers took out his pistol and slowly slid the safety catch off; the tiny noise it made was very loud in the confined space. “All right,” he said, not taking his eyes from Señora Brown’s face. “Go down the way she came and see if you can find him.”

Obediently the policemen released their grip on Señora Brown’s arms. She rubbed the place where their hands had dug into her flesh, but otherwise did not move. Angers leveled the pistol at her chest; her only response was a sneer.

But when the policemen moved purposefully past Angers and off down the passage, she could not control a shudder of terrified anticipation.

“Angers,” I said softly, “you ought to be ashamed of doing this.”

He didn’t look at me as he replied, his voice cold and thin and drained of all human warmth. “Brown is wanted for murder. You know that. If he’s here, we mustn’t let him get away.”

The woman did not understand what he said, of course — she spoke only Spanish. But her gaze followed the armed police officers as they flung back rickety tin doors and swept the squalid cubbyhole rooms with their spears of light.

They came, a short distance away, to a division of the passage. Angers gestured to Señora Brown to go after them; at first she hesitated, but a meaning jerk of Angers’ pistol persuaded her. She yielded and began to walk.

Helpless, I followed.

At the division of the passage the policemen had paused and were hotly disputing which way to go. Snatching his eyes from his captive for an instant, Angers snapped a command at them. “In the left fork there is no floor!” he said. “Go down the right branch, you fools!”

Indeed, the boards laid between the struts and girders gave out a few paces along the left-hand branch, and beyond was a yawning gap that swallowed up the light of the torches. The policemen nodded and went cautiously up the other passage. I think I was the only one who saw that the woman relaxed a little as they went. I didn’t say anything. Maybe if the police drew a blank, they would give up.

They were half out of sight behind a jutting partition, perhaps thirty or forty feet from us, when Angers again indicated to his captive that she should move to follow them. She went readily enough. Angers fell in behind her, and I was on the point of going after him when something moved in the left-hand fork of the passage, where there was only that open pit instead of a slatted floor.

A huge hand came out of the blackness.

It aimed for the nape of Angers’ neck; if it had struck fair, Angers would have dropped like a pole-axed steer. But it didn’t — maybe the reach was too far, maybe a foot slipped, maybe Angers detected its coming and managed to move aside a precious couple of inches. It struck him only behind the left shoulder.

I had time to think, dispassionately, that Brown had doubtless had the floorboards taken up along that branch of the passage in order to prevent people tracking him down; I had time to think that if he hadn’t been stupid-brave to save his wife from a danger that might have passed her by, he would have lived.

In fact, he died.

Angers turned with the blow; possibly the impact spun him around more quickly than he could have managed by himself. The gun in his hand belched sudden flame, and dust shook down about our heads with the explosion. It was chance, it was reflex, it was the hand of fate, and the bullet destroyed the face of Fats Brown like a drawing being wiped from a slate.

The police started to come back; the woman screamed one long terrible cry that echoed in my head for hours — and I ran.

I found my way to the outer air before the news of what had happened. That was all that saved me from having to join Angers and the police in their bloody retreat. For as soon as what had happened was known, the people of the slum turned on the intruders. When they came out, Angers, deathly pale, was bleeding from a cut across his face; one of the policemen was dragging his right leg as if he could not feel it any longer; all of them were smeared and spattered with filth.

I didn’t ask what had happened to Brown’s wife. I assumed she was with her dead.

The police ignored me. One of them went straight to the two-way radio in his car and called headquarters for reinforcements. Angers, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief, said something about fixing Sigueiras for good this time — for harboring a murderer — and I said something insane about a man being innocent until proved guilty.

He turned his eyes on me. I saw they were quite hard.

“No,” he said. “You’re wrong. Our laws are like the Code Napoleon. The onus is on the accused.”

Faces full of hate came to the entrance of the slum; eyes stared down at us, and children threw more filth that spattered across the clean shining cars. One of the policemen fired three shots, and the faces vanished.