after all. He thought it could be done. . . .

I said with professional gravity that given a few perfectly quiet nights
(rare on that coast) it could certainly be done.

Mr. Mills was not afraid of the elements. It was the highly inconvenient
zeal of the French custom-house people that had to be dealt with in some
way.

"Heavens!" I cried, astonished. "You can't bribe the French Customs.
This isn't a South-American republic."

"Is it a republic?" he murmured, very absorbed in smoking his wooden
pipe.

"Well, isn't it?"

He murmured again, "Oh, so little." At this I laughed, and a faintly
humorous expression passed over Mills' face. No. Bribes were out of the
question, he admitted. But there were many legitimist sympathies in
Paris. A proper person could set them in motion and a mere hint from
high quarters to the officials on the spot not to worry over-much about
that wreck. . . .

What was most amusing was the cool, reasonable tone of this amazing
project. Mr. Blunt sat by very detached, his eyes roamed here and there
all over the cafe; and it was while looking upward at the pink foot of a
fleshy and very much foreshortened goddess of some sort depicted on the
ceiling in an enormous composition in the Italian style that he let fall
casually the words, "She will manage it for you quite easily."

"Every Carlist agent in Bayonne assured me of that," said Mr. Mills. "I
would have gone straight to Paris only I was told she had fled here for a
rest; tired, discontented. Not a very encouraging report."

"These flights are well known," muttered Mr. Blunt. "You shall see her
all right."

"Yes. They told me that you . . . "

I broke in: "You mean to say that you expect a woman to arrange that sort
of thing for you?"

"A trifle, for her," Mr. Blunt remarked indifferently. "At that sort of
thing women are best. They have less scruples."

"More audacity," interjected Mr. Mills almost in a whisper.

Mr. Blunt kept quiet for a moment, then: "You see," he addressed me in a
most refined tone, "a mere man may suddenly find himself being kicked
down the stairs."

I don't know why I should have felt shocked by that statement. It could
not be because it was untrue. The other did not give me time to offer
any remark. He inquired with extreme politeness what did I know of South
American republics? I confessed that I knew very little of them.
Wandering about the Gulf of Mexico I had a look-in here and the