After what became known in local history as the Battle of Machu Picchu, I decided the time had come to take my leave of Peru. I took the path of least resistance which, when you’re a zillion feet high in the middle of what they call Andy’s Mountain Range, means down to the sea, and the sea to the west was a whole lot closer than the sea to the east. (You know, I never did meet this Andy, who either discovered or owned the mountains; I guess he had enough brains to stay down where the air was still thick enough to breathe.)

Anyway, I soon found myself in Chile, which when the sun was high in the sky was anything but, and I stopped in Santiago long enough to engage in a fine old game dealing with pasteboards, statistical probabilities, and the number 21. I even put back the couple of pounds I’d lost in Peru, courtesy of the Santiago constabularies, who were a pretty serious bunch and just couldn’t see the humor in them three extra aces what slipped out of my sleeve at an inopportune time, and while I wasn’t thrilled with my surroundings for the next five days they saved me the price of fifteen delicious meals, always providing you think moldy bread, brown water, and the occasional salamander or grubworm in one or the other is delicious.

Finally my time in durance vile was up, and as a longtime student of durances I got to say the Santiago calaboose was among the vilest. A team of gendarmes kept walking ten feet behind me, and as you can imagine this put a certain crimp in my style when I was finally freed and looking to negotiate price with one charming lady of quality or another, and finally I figured that their jurisdiction ended at the city line, so I made a beeline to it and crossed it, and found myself with no one to talk to except a herd of lamas, and when the king lama saw some of the lady lamas eyeing me provocatively he started bellowing like a politician at election time and chased me down hill until he ran out of interest and I ran out of hill. I figured at long as he’d chose my direction for me I’d keep walking in it, because there was no question that he knew the lay of the land better than I did.

So I walked, and like all them adventurers say in their books, I existed on a diet of fruits and berries (though I rescued mine from the occasional farmhouse I’d pass by in the dead of night), and once I rescued a beautiful senorita from an evening of boredom because just as things were getting interesting her husband showed up with a shotgun and believe you me nothing was boring for the next few hours, and the next day I found an even prettier senorita to remove the buckshot from my backside in exchange for my not singing any love songs beneath her balcony.

Finally I could smell the salt air of the sea, and I hit the town of Valparaiso, which was exactly like Santiago except for the waterfront and the ships and the buildings and the smell and all them churches and the fact that all the signs said “Welcome to Valparaiso” which none of the signs in Santiago had said.

I wandered down to the waterfront and took a room at the Castille de Oro Hotel, promising to pay them just as soon as I converted the eighty-three dollar bill in my wallet into local cash. They kept asking where my luggage was, even after I explained that us men of the cloth didn’t have much use for worldly goods, and finally, just to ease their minds, I explained that all my steamer trunks were coming in on the next passenger ship, that there’d been some kind of a mix-up whereby a Lucius Jones had wound up with my baggage and I’d wound up with his pretty blonde wife, and that seemed to please everyone.

I mosied along the waterfront, getting the feel of the place (which seemed to go hand in glove with the smell of it), and finally came to something called O’Higgins Street, which sounded a little like home, as I used to go courting Lulubelle O’Higgins in Moline, Illinois back when I was fourteen and her husband was working the night shift. Anyway, I came to a restaurant called The Lascivious Llama, which, it turned out, specialized in dead stuff but hadn’t yet got around to specializing in cooking it none, and when I was done, which was about two mouthfuls after I started, I decided to go out and see if this was the town where I would decide to finally build my tabernacle. Being a sensitive soul what didn’t want to upset the chef by walking out in the middle of a meal, I stuck around until both waiters were in the kitchen before taking my leave and making a mental note to pay them and come back for another try just as soon as they bought a stove.

I was strolling down the waterfront when I looked into the window of a bar I was passing and did a double take, because sitting there was the prettiest Oriental lady I ever did see, and this wasn’t the first time I’d seen her neither. I could have mistooken them dark eyes and high cheekbones and long coal-black hair, but not the extra pair of lungs, and I knew right off the bat that if the Scorpion Lady was here in Valparaiso then there was money to be had in Valparaiso, and lots of it, and that meant that my Silent Partner had led me to the right spot on the map, and this was His way to telling me that this would be the right place for my tabernacle, because there wasn’t likely to be any shortage of money for the poor box.

I walked into the bar, went over to her table, and sat down across from her. And it was her, all right; now that I was close up I could see the little gold scorpions on her ring and necklace.

“Howdy, my little exotic flower of the East,” I said, flashing her my Number Three smile (the one that showed all the teeth). “Remember me?”

“I never saw you before in my life,” she said.

“Siam?” I reminded her. “We was almost lovers and sort of partners?”

“You’ve mistaken me for someone else,” she said. “Now please leave me alone.”

“You owned a gambling house, don’t you remember?” I said.

“If you don’t stop bothering me and go away, I will be forced to call for the police,” she said.

“You was gonna teach me all them Oriental love techniques what gets writ up in books no one in the U. S. of A. is allowed you read,” I said, standing up to demonstrate. “We were going to start with–”

“Oh, shut up and sit down, Lucifer,” she said.

“See?” I said triumphantly. “You do remember!”

“What are you doing here, anyway?” she said.

“It’s a long story,” I told her. “But it’s a really good story. Why don’t we go on back to your place and I’ll tell you all about it?”

“You haven’t changed,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” I said. “I’m still the same handsome lovable buck you lost your heart to back in Asia.”

“I was referring to your clothes.”

“I’ll slip out of ‘em the second we hit your bedroom and you’ll never know the difference,” I said.

“You seem to be laboring under a number of delusions,” she said.

“It’d be a lot more fun for both of us, Miss Scorpion Lady, ma’am,” I said, “if you were laboring under just one: me.”

“Is that the way you used to knock them dead in Peoria?” she asked.

“Moline, ma’am,” I said. “A big city like Peoria was just for holidays.”

“I stand corrected.”

“You could lie down corrected any time you want to leave this den of iniquity,” I said.

“I own it,” said the Scorpion Lady.

“You do?”

“Yes.”

“Then I presume the drinks are on the house?” I said, signaling the waiter over.

She sighed. “If I treat you to one drink, will you leave me alone then?”

I began to get the feeling that she wasn’t as glad to see me as I was to see her.

“All right, ma’am,” I said. “You cut me to the quick, but I’ll take one last drink and one last loving look at you, and then I’ll go back to my lonely room at the Castille de Oro.”

“Where?” she shouted.

“The Castille de Oro,” I said. “I know it ain’t no luxury retreat like you’re probably living in, but it suits a humble man of the cloth just fine.”

“Damn it!” she muttered. “I told them the front desk was just for appearances! It’s impossible to get any competent help in this town!”

“I don’t think I follow you at all, Miss Scorpion Lady, honey,” I said.

“Shut up!” she said. “I have to think.”

“If we’re still partners, I could do half of the thinking for you,” I offered. “The hard half.”

She stared long and hard at me, so I poured a little of her beer on my hands and ran ‘em through my hair to slick it down some. Then I guv her another great big smile.

“Don’t do that, Lucifer,” she said, frowning. “It reminds me of the expression on my mastiff’s face just before he tried to breed the hassock.”

“I don’t remember no mastiff back in Siam,” I said.

“Remember that dish you thought was veal?” she said. While I was trying to recall what it tasted like and whether there was any trace of a smile on, she stood up. “All right,” she said. “It will lend verisimilitude.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Come with me, Lucifer,” she said. “I have a job for you.”

“Sounds good to me, ma’am,” I said. “But you should know I don’t do no heavy lifting, and I got to have Sundays off for preaching in my tabernacle once I get around to finally building it.”

“You were made for this job, Lucifer,” she said. “You’ll be preaching every day.”

“Well, that’s right thoughtful of you, ma’am,” I said. “I passed about twenty or thirty churches on my way to the waterfront. Which one are we setting up shop in?”

“You’ll see,” she said, heading out the door, and I fell into step behind her.

We hit the waterfront and turned right, and pretty soon we walked into the lobby of the Castille de Oro. There were two guys behind the desk who snapped to attention when they saw us.

“Which of you rented a room to this man?”

“I did,” said the one what did. “We have one room that’s not in use, and I figured a preacher man would give us good cover.”

“You’re fired,” she said. She turned to the other man. “Who hired that fool?”

“I did,” he said uneasily.

“You’re fired, too,” said the Scorpion Lady. “I will not have my orders disobeyed.”

“Ain’t you being a tad harsh on them?” I said.

“Shut up or I’ll fire you too,” she answered.

“You can’t fire me,” I pointed out to her. “You ain’t hired me yet.”

The two men guv her a wide berth and walked out the door.

“Follow me, Lucifer,” she said.

She led me down a hall to a wood-paneled room lined with books in some language what wasn’t English, and had a podium next to the far wall.

“Well?” she said to me.

“You want me to hire on as a librarian?” I said.

“Idiot!” she muttered. She walked over to the podium and patted it with a delicate little hand what probably hadn’t killed more than fifteen or twenty men plus her mastiff. “I want you to preach the word of the Lord right here.”

“What’s the job pay?”

“Why do you care?” she shot back. “You’ll be doing the Lord’s work.” She paused. “Well, your Lord’s, anyway.”

“I still got to eat,” I said.

“We’ll fix all your meals right here. You’ll never have to leave.”

“I got to pay for my room,” I continued.

“Gratis,” she said.

“Gratis to you too, ma’am, but that still don’t tell me how I’m going to pay for the room.”

“It’s yours for no charge.”

“Well, I still need money to–”

“There are perks, Lucifer,” she said.

“Oh?” I said.

She walked me to the doorway and pointed down the hall, where a young redheaded lady with a figure like unto Hedy Lamar was just moseying back and forth, dressed for extremely warm weather.

“That’s one of them,” said the Scorpion Lady.

“One of what, ma’am?” I asked.

“One of the perks.”

“Let me make sure I got this straight, ma’am,” I said. “She’s one of the perks?”

“That’s right.”

“And the Perks ain’t the name of no all-girl band nor women’s soccer team what’s just passing through and spending the night on its way to Santiago?”

“Would I lie to you, Lucifer?” she said.

Based on my previous experience with her, I was tempted to say only when her lips were moving, but then another perk showed up, wearing even less than the first one.

“I accept the job!” I said. In fact, I must have said it pretty enthusiastically, because three more perks stuck their heads and even nicer things out of the doors lining the corridor to see what the commotion was all about.

“Somehow I knew you would,” she said.

“What is this place, besides the Castille de Oro?” I asked.

“Mother McCree’s House of Fallen Flowers,” said the Scorpion Lady.

“Who’s Mother McCree?” I said. “Some local benefactor?”

“I am,” she said.

“Well, now that I think of it, that’s probably a pretty good idea,” I said, “considering you got warrants out for your address over most of Asia and probably half of Europe and America. You wouldn’t want no act of Christian charity ruining your business reputation.”

“I’m delighted to see that you are so understanding, Lucifer,” she said.

“Well, us men of the cloth are like that,” I said. “Always understanding, always forgiving. In fact, I could absolve you right now for any sins you’d like to commit with me in the next couple of hours.”

“I’m afraid I’m quite busy this evening,” she said. “One of my frail flowers has fallen from the path of virtue….”

“No!” I said in shocked tones.

“I’m afraid so. The police want to deport her, and I have to go down to headquarters and plead on her behalf.”

“Would you like me to come along?” I said. “Pleading at police headquarters is one of the very best things I do.”

“No, that won’t be necessary,” she said quickly. “You just stay here, get to learn your way around the place.” She shot me a knowing smile. “I’ll pass the word to the perks.”

“Right,” I said. “And look at it this way: if they’re with me, they won’t have time to fall off the path of virtue with no strangers what’s only thinking of their own pleasure.”

“How understanding you are, Lucifer,” she said.

“I’ll bring them spiritual comfort like they ain’t never had before,” I told her.

“I knew I could count on you,” she said.

“It’s the least I can do for them poor fallen flowers,” I said. “I’ll comfort the bejabbers out of ‘em!”

“Try to keep your enthusiasm under control,” she said. “And remember, this is Mother McCree’s House of Fallen Flowers. If any strangers ask about it, be sure to give her the credit.”

“Helps with the donations, huh?” I said knowingly.

“Precisely,” she said. “And now, if you’ll forgive me, I really must be off to the station.”

She walked toward the front door, but along the way she stopped to speak to a couple of more fallen flowers, turned an pointed toward me, and then she was gone.

I was torn between examining my new office or my new parishioners, when suddenly a brunette approached me, wearing naught but her unmentionables.

“Hi, Big Boy,” she said. “You see anything you like?”

“Ma’am,” I said, “I got to tell you that as flowers, fallen and otherwise, go, you got two of the lovelier stems I ever seen–and there ain’t nothing wrong with your petals, neither.”

“So are you going to introduce your stamen to my pistil?” she said with a wink.

This made me back off a few feet, because if a flower had fallen so far that she was toting a pistol in a nice friendly place like this, who knew what she might do with it? But the more I looked at her, the more I could see that she didn’t have enough clothes on to hide no pistol.

“I do believe you’re having fun with me, ma’am,” I said at last.

“That comes later,” she said. “Are you ready for some cross-pollination?”

“I ain’t cross at no one, ma’am,” I said, “and especially not a frail fallen flower like yourself.

She giggled. “Fifi likes you.”

I looked around. “Is Fifi joining us, ma’am?” I asked.

“I am Fifi,” she said.

“And I’m the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, at your service.”

She giggled again. “There are so many of you I should charge double.”

“Just how many of me do you see, ma’am?” I asked, wondering if there was time to get her to an optician before they all closed up shop for the day.

“Cut the talk, Big Boy,” she said. “Time is money.”

“Now ain’t that interesting?” I said. “I always thunk Time was a measurement of how long it takes to get from one place to another.”

Well, I could tell she was a real intellectual what had studied Time and flowers and all kinds of things, and I couldn’t wait to see what we’d talk about next, but just then a trio of the local gendarmes arrived, and they flashed their badges, pinched a couple of fallen flowers on the way in, spotted Fifi, and announced that she was under arrest.

“Now hold on just a doggone minute here!” I said, standing between them and the door. “What’s this here sweet innocent little frail flower done that you think you got a right to come in here and arrest her?”

I thunk two of them was going fall down, they was laughing so hard. The third just limited himself to six or seven guffaws, and finally caught his breath long enough to talk to me.

“This particular frail flower has been selling her favors all over the city,” he said.

“I’m her minister, and I find that difficult to believe,” I told him.

The second I said it I heard a bunch of high-pitched giggles from behind closed doors.

“You’re the minister to all these girls?” he asked.

“That’s right,” I said.

“It must be an exhausting job,” he said.

There was another burst of giggling.

“I’m up to it,” I said.

“I have nothing but admiration for you,” he said. “Many men might be up to the job at the beginning, but I suspect most of them wouldn’t be up to it for long.”
He looked mighty smug, like he’d just said something George Bernard Somebody-or-other, that English writer what ain’t Shakespeare, would want to swipe for one of his plays.

“Take your low humor and your dirty-minded friends elsewhere,” I said. “The women who depend on the Mother McCree House of Fallen Flowers for their sustenance are under the protection of me and the Lord.”

“These flowers have fallen a little farther and a little more often than you think, Reverend,” he said. “Interpol has been trying to get the goods on the Scorpion Lady for years. It will be a real feather in our caps if we can nail her for running the biggest whorehouse in Chile.”

“You got the wrong idea,” I told him. “The Scorpion Lady herself hired me to bring the power and the glory to these poor downtrodden women.”

“And you’ve never touched one of them?” he said.

I raised my right hand. “As God is my witness, I ain’t never touched a one of ‘em in the whole time I been employed here.” And while I was invoking my Silent Partner, I also thanked Him for not requiring me to answer that question the next morning.

He shrugged. “Well, you can’t say you haven’t been warned.” He turned to his partners. “Okay, let’s take her in.”

They drug poor little Fifi off. Just as she reached the door she turned and shot me a great big smile, and flashed some of the girls one of them V-for-victory signs the way politicians do right before they lose an election. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was so all-fired victorious about getting tossed in the calaboose, but I didn’t have no time to worry about it, because it struck me that there were dozens of demure young ladies in need of both clothing and comforting.

But before I could do anything about it, a middle-aged man with dark eyes and some kind of accent walked in the door and said he had a donation for the Mother McCree House of Fallen Flowers, and handed me a package what was maybe a foot on each side. I thanked him and stuck it behind the counter of the desk.

He moseyed back out into the night, and then three more men came in, and each of ‘em announced that he’d be making his donation in private to a particular fallen flower, and off they went with the flowers of their choosing, and suddenly the place was bustling with private and public donaters, and the interesting thing was that the public donaters always brought a neatly-wrapped package which I figured contained food or champagne, or, if they was really thoughtful, ladies’ clothes for chilly nights, but the private donators all knew which of the frail flowers they wanted to make their donation to and they was an exceptionally shy lot because none of them wanted to do it in public.

The Scorpion Lady wandered in around midnight, and plumped herself down in an easy chair.

“How did it go?” I asked.

“I failed,” she said without much show of remorse. “Poor Mitzi is already on a ship bound for Malaya.”

“While you was gone, they came by and arrested poor innocent little Fifi,” I said.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I saw her there.”

“Are you gonna be able to get her off the hook so she can come back here?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I doubt it, Lucifer. I’ll try, of course, but it’s my guess that she’ll be on the next boat to Hong Kong.”

“Boy, when the police in these here parts label you an undesirable they don’t waste no time doing something about it,” I said.

“We just have to put up with it,” she said.

“But your Home for Fallen Flowers must be emptying out at record speed,” I said.

“I have four more moving in tomorrow,” said the Dragon Lady.

“You sure got your ear to the ground to be able to hear that many flowers falling,” I said admiringly.

“One does what one can,” she said. “And now,” she added, getting to her feet, “I think I’ll take a hot bath before retiring to my bed.”

“I hate to think of you getting lonely all by yourself in that tub, Scorpion Lady sweetie,” I said.

“Why don’t you avail yourself of one of the perks I mention earlier?”

“They’re getting deported almost faster than I can avail myself,” I replied.

“Then there’s no time to waste, is there?”

But then I got to thinking about it, and I realized that there wasn’t an endless supply of fallen flowers, and somebody had to do something to make sure that these poor frail critters weren’t all shipped off to godless lands, so instead of introducing myself to the rest of the young ladies and helping them easy the terrible tension they must have felt living alone in strange surroundings, I decided that the thing to do was go right down to the police station and plead their case for ‘em.

I walked in and asked to speak to the head man. They told me that would be Captain Miguel Rodriguez, and they ushered me into this large office, where I found this gray-haired guy with a captain’s uniform sitting behind a desk.

“Howdy,” I said. “I’m the Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones, here on a mission of mercy.”

“I gave at the office,” he said.

“This is the office,” I pointed out.

“I gave at home,” he amended.

“I ain’t after no donation, Captain Rodriquez,” I assured him.

“Oh?” he said, leaning forward.

“No, sir,” I said. “I’m after something bigger.”

“How many tickets do I have to buy?” he asked.

“Don’t go understanding me so fast,” I said. “I’m here to plead for the young ladies from Mother McCree’s House of Fallen Flowers.”

“You don’t have to negotiate with me,” he said. “That Oriental villainess is their…shall we say…business manager?”

“But you keep chuckin’ ‘em on boats and shipping ‘em out of here,” I said.

“It’s my duty to clean up Valparaiso,” he said, “and that’s what I intend to do.”

“Let’s talk man to man, Miguel,” I said. “You don’t mind if I call you Miguel, do you?”

“Call me Captain Rodriguez,” he said.

“Let’s talk man to man, Captain Rodriguez,” I said. “These frail flowers are bringing in donations to the cause every two or three minutes. I’m sure the Scorpion Lady would be happy to pay you ten or even fifteen percent of them donations if you’d just stop shipping all these poor girls off to other countries.”

“You’re wasting my time, Padre,” he said.

“That’s Reverend,” I corrected him.

“Whatever the hell you are, leave police business to the police. This interview is over.”

Well, I’d done my best, and I’d have let it go at the, the Lord being the understanding critter that He is, but on my way out the door I saw Fifi being led off to the docks, and I knew they were deporting her even before the Scorpion Lady could argue in her defense, and that got my good Christian blood boiling, so instead of going back to the Castille de Oro I walked across the street to the Church of the Ascension where I found some local church ladies’ club in progress, and I asked if they’d mind if a visiting man of the cloth spoke to ‘em, and they seemed flattered as all get-out.

I got up there, and pointed out that every person deserves a second chance, especially them that publicly admitted their past indiscretions by living in Mother MaCree’s Home for Fallen Flowers, and there was an enormous injustice going on, because unbeknownst to all the good, God-fearing populace the police force was deporting these poor, sweet, penniless girls at a rate of maybe two a day, forcing them to seek asylum in strange countries what they’ve never been to before.

I explained and I ranted and I roared and I demanded justice, and before long the outraged ladies of the church marched across the street and started tearing the jail apart. They released all the women prisoners, since it’s harder to tell a fallen flower from the outside than you might think, and then they refused to leave until they got a written promise from Captain Rodriguez that he was all through deporting the residents of Mother McCree’s.

I went back to the hotel, and figgered the least I could do was make a donation to the nice ladies of the church, so I grabbed a few of the boxes what was behind the front desk and carted them back to the church with my compliments.

Then I returned to the Castille de Oro, woke the Scorpion Lady, and told her the good news.

“Fool!” she screamed. “You’ve ruined everything!”

“You’re letting your joy get the better of you,” I told her. “Anyone who didn’t know you would think you were mad.”

“Idiot!” she yelled.

“What’s the matter, my love?” I said. “Have I done something to upset you?”

“Of all the gin joints in all the world, why did you have to choose mine?” she snapped. “Why couldn’t you have just kept on walking?”

She pulled a suitcase out from under the bed, went to her closet, and started throwing her clothes in it. She’d just about finished when a squad of police came to the door.

“Madame,” said the leader, “I regret to inform you that you are under arrest.”

“For running a bawdy house?” I said. “I already explained to your Captain Rodriguez that this is a house for fallen flowers.”

“For smuggling,” he answered. “And Captain Rodriguez is already in jail.”

“Smuggling?” I said, as they cuffed the Scorpion Lady. “What in tarnation are you talking about?”

“It was a fiendishly clever operation, run in tandem with a bawdy house,” explained the officer. “We never minded the bawdy house. In fact, the police of Valparaiso were among its best customers. But it was just a front. The real business was smuggling jewelry and contraband out of South America.” He smiled at the Scorpion Lady. “She was the mastermind, of course, but she required a confederate, and that was Captain Rodriguez. She would run the Home for Fallen Women–”

“Fallen Flowers,” I corrected him.

“Whatever,” he said. “And he would arrest each willing confederate and ship her off to the country where the contraband had been purchased. The women, who were each allowed to leave with a single bag or package, were actually the delivery agents. And we never would have discovered this foul scheme if it weren’t for you, Reverend Jones!”

“Me?” I said, over the sound of the Scorpion Lady gnashing her teeth.

“If you hadn’t delivered those packages containing drugs and stolen jewels to the good ladies of the Church of the Ascension, the plot would have gone unnoticed for who knows how long?”

“I guess I did break it up, didn’t I?” I said. “Do I get a medal for this?”

“I am afraid that if we pin it on you, we shall have to do it in your prison cell. I regret to inform you that you are under arrest too.”

“What for?” I demanded.

“I will let the magistrate explain it all to you,” he said apologetically. “And now all that remains is to bring the two of you back to headquarters and lock you up.”

“Me and the Scorpion Lady are old friends,” I said. “I don’t suppose you could lock us in the same cell while we’re straightening out this little misunderstanding.”

The Scorpion Lady walked over to me and spit in my eye.

“Well, maybe not, then,” I said.

So they carted us off to jail, and I didn’t see the Scorpion Lady no more, but I was across the aisle from Captain Rodriguez, who slept about four hours a day and cursed me for the other twenty. The food could have been better, but at least Valparaiso never had to worry about being overrun by rats and other rodents as long as the jailhouse had a chef what specialized in ‘em.

I cooled my heels for close to two weeks, and then finally the jailer came by one morning and shaved me and guv me a haircut and a clean set of prison duds, and told me to get ready, that I’d be seeing the judge that afternoon, and sure enough, right after a meal of dried something on what wasn’t rice, they unlocked my door and marched me into the courtroom, where I was brung before the bench.

“Good afternoon, Doctor Jones,” said the judge, who seemed like a kindly-looking old geezer–or maybe he was a young geezer who’d had to eat the jailhouse food a little too often. “I am Chief Magistrate Ramon Valenzuela.”

“Howdy, Ramon,” I said. “I’m pleased to–”

“Call me Chief Magistrate, please,” he interrupted me.

“Sure thing, Chief Magistrate,” I said. “I keep forgetting what a formal country you run here.”

“Have you any idea why you were brought before me today?” he asked.

“The kitchen is running out of rats?” I guessed.

“You have been implicated in the running of a house of prostitution,” he said.

“That’s a lie!” I said. “I didn’t even know they was prostitutes.”

“I find that difficult to believe,” he said.

“Well, when you get right down to it, so do I,” I said. “You’d be surprised how them flowers can dazzle you with their innocent smiles.”

“I shall have to take your word for it.”

“But even so, I had nothing to do with running the place.”

“You were employed there, were you not?” he asked.

“Yeah, but as a preacher.”

“In a brothel?”

“Nobody told me it was a brothel.”

“You seem so sincere I am almost inclined to believe you, Doctor Jones,” he said. “But that in no way alters the fact that you were consorting with a known international criminal who goes by the sobriquet of the Scorpion Lady.”

“Another false accusation,” I said. “I kept asking her to consort with me, and she kept turning me down.”

The folks in the gallery started laughing at that one, and the judge had to warn ‘em to keep quiet.

“The fact remains that you worked in a bawdy house and associated with a notorious criminal,” continued the judge. “Even if I were inclined to believe you, you do not strike me as the kind of person we want setting up shop here in Valparaiso.”

“That suits me fine,” I said. “I’ll just go back to one of the other countries I been to lately.”

“Those were my thoughts precisely,” said the judge. “So I looked into the matter to see which one might be willing to take you back.” He shook his head and made a kind of “tsk-tsk-tsk” sound. “You’ve been a busy boy, Doctor Jones.”

“Well, you know how it is,” I said.

“I had no idea how it is,” he replied. “But I do now. I made inquiries of the government of Brazil. It seems that you were complicit in the theft of the jewels known as the Pebbles of God, to say nothing of stealing and making ransom demands for a famous race horse.”

“That was none of my doing,” I said. “I was as innocent as Phar Cry.”

“As who?” he asked.

“The horse.”

“It appears that you were also wanted for hunting jaguars out of season.”

“I never shot no jaguars,” I said. “I just wore them.”

“You wore jaguarskin coats?” he asked. “In the tropical jungle?”

“The heads, mostly,” I said. I looked at his face. “I guess that’ll take some explaining.”

“The government of Brazil doesn’t wish to hear your explanations,” said the judge. “Next on my list was the government of Equador, which has issued a warrant for your arrest for participating in crimes against Nature with a mysterious Doctor Mirbeau.”

“Was the Island of Annoyed Souls in Equador?” I said.

“The nation of San Palmero has issued an arrest warrant in your name for overthrowing the president and robbing the treasury.”

“Which president was that?” I asked. “They got so many of ‘em.”

“The nation of Columbia claims that you stole the world’s most valuable postage stamp,” said the judge.

“Erich von Horst stole it,” I said. “I just kind of mailed it for him.”

“Argentina wants you for disrupting a religious retreat, as well as creating and leading an army on behalf of German war criminals.”

“Now I can explain that,” I said.

“I should love to hear it.”

“First, it wasn’t no army,” I said. “It was me and six street cleaners, and it ain’t our fault we conquered a whole country without firing a shot. And the religious retreat was actually a lost continent what I discovered, though I guess it ain’t as lost as it was.”

“What a cogent explanation,” he said. “Moving right along, I find that the nation of Uruguay wants to question you for possible complicity in the disappearance of Colonels Marcos and Garcia.”

“Which government of Uruguay?” I asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, there’s the old one, that I secretly conquered, and the new one, that probably ain’t tooken office yet.”

The judge sighed heavily. “Bolivia wants to question you about conspiring with a pair of known international criminals, a Major Theodore Dobbins, late of His Majesty’s armed forces, and an Australian named Rupert Cornwall.” He looked up from the list he’d been reading. “You do have the most interesting friends, Doctor Jones.”

“Is that everything?” I asked.

“If only it were,” he replied. “It seems that our neighbor to the north, Peru, wants to question you about allegedly fomenting a religious war in the forgotten city of Machu Picchu.” He paused and stared at me. “I am aware that Americans are known for their energy and industry, but isn’t this carrying it just a little too far?”

“A series of easily-explained misunderstandings, nothing more.”

“I find you a most fascinating man, Doctor Jones,” he said.

“Yeah?”

He nodded his head emphatically. “So much so, in fact, that I went back even further in your records. It would appear you have been forbidden ever to return to North America, Africa, Asia and Europe.”

I just knew what was coming next.

“I have come to the conclusion that the authorities on those continents knew what they were doing.” He suddenly looked troubled. “I have nothing against the continent of Australia,” he continued. “Indeed, I find their constitution exemplary, and I have personally never met an Australian I didn’t like. They seem like a God-fearing, law-abiding, happy, decent people. I almost hate what I am about to do to them.” He paused and stared at me. “Doctor Jones, I have conferred with all the governments I mentioned, and it is our unanimous decision that you are forthwith barred from the continent of South America. You will be placed on a ship heading west into the Pacific later this evening, and are never allowed to return.”

They marched me back to my cell while they were doing the paperwork for my release, and the judge came by for a minute on his way home.

“You are quite the most remarkable man I have ever met,” he said.

“Thanks, I guess,” I replied.

“I hope you turn over a new leaf and behave yourself in Australia,” he said. “That is the last habitable land mass in the world that hasn’t yet barred you from its surface. If they should fall in line with all the others, where else can you go? I mean, The Man Without a Country was bad enough–but the Man Without a Continent?”

Then he was gone, and in another couple of hours so was I, headed west across the Pacific to points unknown. Over the next five years I had my share of adventures there, what with naked pagan goddesses and tribal wars and hunting in the Outfront or whatever they call it, and no matter what General MacArthur and General Tojo say I wasn’t responsible for Pearl Harbor, and I got every intention of telling you my side of the story, plus everything else I experienced in the next few years, but I been writing for a couple of hours now and its time to go renew my artistic sensibilities with an understanding lady of quality.