The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene

side of the river with hands and legs tied with wire, but his might well have been one of those skeletons which remained for years undiscovered after they had been tossed from planes into the Chaco wastes.
           Nearly three years after his first meeting with Charley Fortnum Doctor Plarr was drawn into a conversation about him by Sir Henry Belfrage, the British Ambassador—a successor to the man who had given the Honorary Consul so much trouble with the maté report. It was one of the periodic cocktail parties for the British colony, and Doctor Plarr, who happened to be in the capital on a visit to his mother, attended it with her. He knew nobody there by more than sight—at best a nodding acquaintance. There was Buller, the manager of the Bank of London and South America, Fisher, the Secretary of The Anglo-Argentinian Society, and an old gentleman called Forage who spent all his days at the Hurlingham Club. The Representative of the British Council was, of course, there too—his name for some Freudian reason Plarr always forgot—a pale frightened little man with a bald head who came to the party in charge of a visiting poet. The poet had a high-pitched voice and an air of being consciously out of place under the chandeliers. "How soon can we get away?" he was heard to shriek. And again, "Too much water with the whisky." It was the only voice in the room which carried any distance above the low continuous din like that of an aeroplane engine, and one naturally expected it to cry something more relevant, like "Fasten your seatbelts."
           Doctor Plarr thought Belfrage was only interested in making polite conversation when they found themselves alone together between a gilt-legged sofa and a Louis Quinze chair. They were far enough away from the hubbub around the buffet to hear themselves speak. He could see his mother firmly wedged in and gesticulating at a priest with a canap6. She was always happy with priests, and so he felt relieved of responsibility.
           "I think you know our Consul up there?" Sir Henry Belfrage said. He always referred to the northern province as "up there" as though he wanted to emphasize the vast length of the Paraná River winding its slow way down from those distant frontiers so far from the southern civilization of the Rio de la Plata.
           "Charley Fortnum? Oh yes, I do see him occasionally. But I haven't for some months. I've been busy—a lot of sickness."
           "You know—in a job like this—one always inherits a few 'difficulties' with a new post. Strictly between ourselves the Consul up there is one of them."
           "Really?" Doctor Plarr replied with caution, "I would have thought... " though he had no idea how he would finish the sentence if it were required of him.
           "There's nothing for him to do up there. I mean as far as we are concerned. Now and then I ask him to make a report on something—for the sake of appearances. I don't want him to think he's forgotten. He was useful once to one of my predecessors. Some young fool who got mixed up with the guerrillas and tried to do a Castro against the General in Paraguay. As far as I can see from the files we've paid for half his telephone bills and most of his stationery ever since."
           "Didn't he once help with some royals too? Guiding them round the rums?" - "There was something of that sort," Sir Henry Belfrage said. "Very minor royals as far as I remember. I oughtn't to say it, of course, but royalty can cause us an awful lot of trouble. Once we had to ship a polo pony... you have no idea of the complications 'that' involved, and it was during the meat embargo too." He meditated a while. "At least Fortnum could try a little harder to get on with the English colony up there."
           "As far as I know there are only three of us within fifty miles. The fellows with camps seldom come to the city."
           "Then it shouldn't be difficult for him. You