“For fifteen years I was the ruling power behind old Sancho Benavides, the Royal High Thumbscrew of the republic.  You’ve seen his picture in the papers—­a mushy black man with whiskers like the notes on a Swiss music-box cylinder, and a scroll in his right hand like the ones they write births on in the family Bible.  Well, that chocolate potentate used to be the biggest item of interest anywhere between the colour line and the parallels of latitude.  It was three throws, horses, whether he was to wind up in the Hall of Fame or the Bureau of Combustibles.  He’d have been sure called the Roosevelt of the Southern Continent if it hadn’t been that Grover Cleveland was President at the time.  He’d hold office a couple of terms, then he’d sit out for a hand—­always after appointing his own successor for the interims.

“But it was not Benavides, the Liberator, who was making all this fame for himself.  Not him.  It was Judson Tate.  Benavides was only the chip over the bug.  I gave him the tip when to declare war and increase import duties and wear his state trousers.  But that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you.  How did I get to be It?  I’ll tell you.  Because I’m the most gifted talker that ever made vocal sounds since Adam first opened his eyes, pushed aside the smelling-salts, and asked:  ‘Where am I?’

“As you observe, I am about the ugliest man you ever saw outside the gallery of photographs of the New England early Christian Scientists.  So, at an early age, I perceived that what I lacked in looks I must make up in eloquence.  That I’ve done.  I get what I go after.  As the back-stop and still small voice of old Benavides I made all the great historical powers-behind-the-throne, such as Talleyrand, Mrs. de Pompadour, and Loeb, look as small as the minority report of a Duma.  I could talk nations into or out of debt, harangue armies to sleep on the battlefield, reduce insurrections, inflammations, taxes, appropriations or surpluses with a few words, and call up the dogs of war or the dove of peace with the same bird-like whistle.  Beauty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and Grecian profiles in other men were never in my way.  When people first look at me they shudder.  Unless they are in the last stages of angina pectoris they are mine in ten minutes after I begin to talk.  Women and men—­I win ’em as they come.  Now, you wouldn’t think women would fancy a man with a face like mine, would you?”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Tate,” said I.  “History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.  There seems—­”

“Pardon me,” interrupted Judson Tate, “but you don’t quite understand.  You have yet to hear my story.

“Fergus McMahan was a friend of mine in the capital.  For a handsome man I’ll admit he was the duty-free merchandise.  He had blond curls and laughing blue eyes and was featured regular.  They said he was a ringer for the statue they call Herr Mees, the god of speech and eloquence resting in some museum at Rome.  Some German anarchist, I suppose.  They are always resting and talking.