so
much start upon its unknown course. The only relief was a call from the
Spanish instructor who answered Jones' advertisement. He was the
same who had served young Hoff. As the Ad-Visor surmised, his former
employment had been merely the translation of a letter. The letter was
in base Spanish, he said. He didn't remember much of it, but there was
something about a lost gold mine. Yes; there was reference to a map. No;
no geographical names were mentioned, but in several places the capital
letters B. C. seemed to indicate a locality. He hadn't noted the date or
the signature. That was all he could tell.

Doctor Hoff, who had been ramping with impatience over the man's lack of
definite memory, now rushed to the atlas and began to study the maps.

"You needn't trouble," said Average Jones coolly. "You won't find it
there."

"I'll find that B. C. if I have to go over every map in the geography."

"Then you'll have to get a Spanish edition. For a guess, B. C. is Baja
California, the Mexican peninsula of California."

Jones sent a supplementary wire to this effect to Cyrus C. Allen, of the
Cosmic Club, and within a few hours received a reply from that eminent
cartographer, who had been located in a remote part of Connecticut:

"Probably Laguna Salada, not on map. Seventy miles long; four to eight
wide. Between Cocopah and Sierra Gigantica ranges. Country very wild and
arid. Can be reached by water from Yuma, or pack train from Calexico.
White, who has hunted there, says Captain Funcke, Calexico, best guide.

"ALLEN."

Average Jones tossed this over to the father.

"As I figure it," he said, "your son's two friends had this all mapped
out beforehand for him. One went west direct. He was the imbecile who
stopped in Cincinnati and mailed you the bloody shirt to throw you off
the scent. Meantime the colonel took Roderick around by a sea route,
probably New York and New Orleans."

"That'd explain the steamer rug and the seasickness," admitted Doctor
Hoff; "but I don't know what he'd want to go that long way for."

"Simple enough, when you reckon with this colonel person as having
brains in his head. He would foresee a hue and cry as soon as the young
man disappeared. So he cooks up this trip to keep his prey out of touch
with the newspapers for the few days when the news of the disappearance
would be fresh enough to be spread abroad in the Associated Press
dispatches. From New Orleans they'd go on west by train."