A Thorn in the Bush by Frank Herbert Page A

when she first arrived in San Juan in 1937).
    The detailed information about Hoblitt did not surprise Don Jaime. Through her many tenants and employees, Mrs. Ross ran a first class spy system—almost as good as Don Jaime’s own. And he knew that an absolute requirement for anyone working in Mrs. Ross’s immediate household was the ability to relay every bit of gossip heard in the market square. Serena, the current maid, shone above all others in this capacity—a two-legged recording device who chattered endlessly at her work, telling everything she saw or heard, spicing it all with local superstitions.
    “Do you think this Hoblitt is a good painter?” ventured Don Jaime.
    Mrs. Ross dismissed Francis Hoblitt’s work with one word: “Modern!”
    Don Jaime scowled, thinking now about St. Louis, a name he had just heard in connection with Hoblitt. Don Jaime knew that St. Louis was a place name in América del Norte, very likely a large city. His knowledge of geography went little beyond awareness that Mexico City (called simply “Mexico” in the local idiom) lay somewhere vaguely eastward—not as far as the Gulf, but nonetheless a boring trip in his twelve-year-old chauffeur-driven Buick. He knew that Guadalajara lay northward up the superhighway, and that the Pacific Ocean billowed endlessly off in the west. América del Norte—that bottomless source of rich tourists—remained a geography book picture: a green, yellow, brown and pink blob occupying an immense frozen area north of the Rio Grande—which was a Mexican river.
    Perhaps it is evil to come from St. Louis, thought Don Jaime. A breeding ground of gangsters, possibly.
    He said: “You know St. Louis?”
    “I’ve never been there.”
    Mrs. Ross resigned herself to a few moments of diversionary questioning, but she resolved not to be put off. This business of Hoblitt and Paulita Romera could become tragic, she told herself.
    Don Jaime pursed his lips. “St. Louis, then, is not near to Fairbanks?” Don Jaime had been told the fiction that Mrs. Ross came from Fairbanks, Alaska, a locale he had hopelessly misplaced. He thought of Alaska as being somewhere eastward, fronting on the Atlantic Ocean, and close by the capital of América del Norte, which was a city called New York.
    “It’s at least three thousand miles from Fairbanks!” snapped Mrs. Ross.
    Three thousand miles! An incomprehensible distance having something to do with kilometers. Don Jaime put it out of his mind.
    “Perhaps it would serve if I detailed Beto to keep watch on this Señor Hoblitt,” said Don Jaime. By Beto he meant his nephew, Roberto García y Machado, a mustachioed braggart and police chief of San Juan.
    Mrs. Ross had never reconciled herself to Mexican political nepotism. She scowled. “You know very well, Jaime, that Beto would be off drunk somewhere when anything serious happened, and he would show up later full of stupid excuses. This is much too critical for Beto.”
    “But what do you expect me to do?”
    “Trump up some charge against Señor Hoblitt, throw him in jail and have him deported. It’s really very simple.”
    “Very simple!” Don Jaime threw up his hands.
    “If you wish me to handle this myself, I shall!”
    “Oh, no! No … no …” Don Jaime, instantly sobered, shook his head.
    The last tourist that Emma Ross had handled herself had landed in the Guadalajara hospital, the innocent victim of a street riot, it was said, although it had been dark at the time and the only witnesses were a dozen or so tenant farmers from Mrs. Ross’s lands. There had followed a sharply worded note to Don Jaime from Don Tomás Norillega, minister in charge at the Dirección General de Turismo in Mexico City. The note’s substance had been: “See that such things are not repeated. They frighten away the tourists!”
    “No,” said Don Jaime. “We will work out something.”
    “I’m sure you will.”
    Don Jaime turned to look out at the lake through the slatted