one touched his arm. Paula Canalejas. He stared down at her and
managed to smile. It was not a very successful smile. He drew a deep
breath.

"I would like," said Bell wryly, "to think that, when I die, I will
die as well as this man did. But I'm afraid I shan't."

But Paula said:

"The airplane can be heard outside. It seems to be moving on the
surface."

* * * * *

And ten minutes later the plane loomed up out of the mist, queerly
ungainly on the surface of the water. Its motors roared impatiently as
if held in leash. It swung clumsily about, heading off out of sight in
the fog to turn. It came back, sliding along the top of the water with
its wing-tip floats leaving alternate streaks of white foam behind
them. A man stood up in its after cockpit.

Bell crowded to the rail. The man--goggled and masked--held up a
package as if to fling it on board. Bell watched grimly. But he saw
that the pilot checked himself and looked up at the upper deck. Bell
craned his neck. The wireless operator was waving wildly to the
seaplane. He writhed his hands, and held his hand to his head is if
blowing out his brains, and waved the plane away, frantically.

The pilot of the plane sat down. A moment later its motors roared more
thunderously. It is not safe to alight on either land or water when
fog hangs low, but there is little danger in taking off.

The seaplane shot away into the mist, its motors bellowing. The sound
of its going changed subtly. It seemed to rise, and grow more
distant.... It died away.

Bell halted at the top of the companion-ladder and saw the wireless
operator, with a crooked, nervous grin upon his face.

CHAPTER III

Bell saw what he was looking for, out in the throng of traffic that
filled the Avenida do Acre, in Rio. He'd seen it over the heads of the
crowd, which was undersized, as most Brazilian crowds are, and he
managed to get through the perpetual jam on the mosaic sidewalk and
reach the curb.

He stood there and regarded the vehicles filling the broad avenue,
wearing exactly the indifferent, half-amused air of a tourist with no
place in particular to go and a great deal of time in which to go
there. Taxis chuffed past, disputing right of way with private cars
which were engaged in more disputes with other cars, all in the rather
extraordinary bad temper and contentiousness which comes to the
Latin-American when he takes the wheel of an automobile.

As if c