away Paris,
forwarded in a round-about, surreptitious way and intended to reach a
ready market in the wealthiest country in the world, of course, without
paying the usual heavy customs duty--which saving alone would likely
reach well into six figures.

The trio seemed to have finished their discussion, whatever its nature
might have been, for they sauntered down to the edge of the water where
the man in the dungarees proceeded to embark by means of a small boat
that he could leave secured to the mooring rope of the amphibian when he
took off.

"Making off to pick up another cargo, I reckon," Jack ventured. "And so
this is where our friend has his secret hideout at such times when he so
mysteriously disappears from his big show place near Miami? Mighty
interesting, I'd call it and the chances are he's been keeping up this
double play racket for many months, perhaps even for years, for he came
to Florida not long after the war, fishing for tarpon down around the
Ten Thousand Islands where we lay concealed lately."

"But what's the big idea, partner?" Perk wanted to know--"why under the
sun does he play both ends o' this queer game--what's the sense o' his
havin' this wee shack in the wilderness when he could carry on his
racket just as well on the eastern shore?"

"Just because he fancies the idea of keeping his two personalities as
far apart as possible, Perk. Uncle Sam's Coast Guards, revenue officers
and even Secret Service men fairly swarm around Miami most of the year
so they'd be apt to make it more or less unpleasant for the elegant
Oswald Kearns in his society functions if he had his pals dodging in and
out of his princely palace. He prefers to drop over here in this
desolate place instead when he has a lot of business to transact. He's a
wonder, all right, in his double line, Perk, and not to be underrated,
understand."

"Seems that way, partner," grumbled the other quickly adding, "there
goes the Lockheed-Vega spinnin' out o' the lagoon to the open lake so's
to get up enough speed for the take-off. Must be somethin' mighty
special to coax that pilot to risk bein' seen in open daylight. So he
used to fish in them passages 'tween the mangrove islands years ago, did
he, Jack?"

"Sure did, and they told me his guide some years ago down there used to
be a notorious smuggler and gulf-stream pirate, no other than Jim
Alderman, right now in the jug over at Fort Lauderdale on the eastern
shore and waiting to get