oration.

He added, "You think--Hanley thinks--the smuggling is on too large a
scale to be any illicit producer?"

I nodded.

"Then," he said, "it must be one of our recognized mines."

"Hanley thinks it is a recognized mine, falsifying its production
record," I explained.

"If that is so, I will discover it," he said. He spoke with enthusiasm
and vigor. "For you I shall treat as what you are--the representative
of our most friendly government. The figures of our quicksilver
production I shall lay before you in just a few days. Let me fill up
your glass, Grant."

* * * * *

The lazy tropics. I really did not doubt his sincerity. But I did doubt
his ability to cope with any clever criminal. His enthusiasm for action
would wilt like his neckpiece, in Nareda's heat. Unless, perhaps, the
knowledge that the smuggler was cheating him as well as the United
States--_that_ might spur him.

He added--and now I got a shock wholly unexpected: "If we think that
some recognized producer of quicksilver here is cheating us, it should
not be difficult to check up on it. Nareda has only one large cinnabar
lode being worked. A private individual: that fellow Jacob Spawn--"

"Spawn?" I exclaimed involuntarily.

"Why, yes. Did not he mention it? His mine is no more than ten
kilometers from here--back on the southern slope."

"He didn't mention it," I said.

"So? That is strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He
specializes in prying into the other fellow's affairs. Hm-m."

He fell into a reverie while I stared at him. Spawn, the big--the only
big--quicksilver producer here!

* * * * *

The President interrupted my startled thoughts. "I hope you did not
intimate your real purpose?"

"No."

We both turned at the sound of an opening door. Markes called, "Ah, come
in Perona! Are you alone? Good! Close that slide. Here is Chief Hanley's
representative." He introduced us all in a breath. "This is interesting,
Perona. Damnably interesting. We're being cheated, what? It looks that
way. Sit down, Perona."

This was Greko Perona. Nareda's Minister of Internal Affairs. Spawn had
mentioned him to me. A South American. A man in his fifties. Thin and
darkly saturnine, with iron-gray hair, carefully plastered to cover his
half-bald head. He sat listening to the President's harangue, twirling
the upturned waxen ends of his artificially black mustache. A wave o