one thing. I really did want to learn
how to take moving pictures, though it was to be a blind as to my
real purpose. And, as I say, the railroad company did not want to
really destroy the dam. After we had put the Canal out of business
long enough for us to have amassed a fortune we would have been
content to see it operated. We simply wanted to destroy public
confidence in it for a time."

"The worst kind of destruction," murmured Captain Wiltsey. "Take
him away, and guard him well," he ordered the soldiers. "We will
look further into this plot to-morrow."

But when to-morrow came there was no Mr. Alcando. He had managed
to escape in the night from his frail prison, and whither he had
gone no one knew.

But that he had spoken the truth was evident. A further
investigation showed that it would have been impossible to have
seriously damaged the dam by the amount of dynamite hidden. But,
as Captain Wiltsey said, the destruction of public confidence
would have been a serious matter.

"And so it was Alcando, all along," observed Blake, a few days
later, following an unsuccessful search for the Spaniard.

"Yes, our suspicions of him were justified," remarked Blake. "It's
a lucky thing for us that we did save his life, mean as he was. It
wouldn't have been any joke to be suspected of trying to blow up
the dam."

"No, indeed," agreed Blake. "And suspicion might easily have
fallen on us. It was a clever trick. Once we had the Government
permission to go all over with our cameras, and Alcando, as a
pupil, could go with us, he could have done almost anything he
wanted. But the plot failed."

"Lucky it did," remarked Joe. "I guess they'll get after that
railroad man next."

But the stockholder who was instrumental in forming the plot, like
Alcando, disappeared. That they did not suffer for their parts in
the affair, as they should have, was rumored later, when both of
them were seen in a European capital, well supplied with money.
How they got it no one knew.

The Brazilian Railroad, however, repudiated the attempt to damage
the Canal, even apparently, laying all the blame on the two men
who had disappeared. But from then on more stringent regulations
were adopted about admitting strangers to vital parts of the
Canal.

"But we're through," commented Blake one day, when he and Joe had
filmed the last views of the big waterway. "That Alcando was a
'slick' one, though."

"Indeed he was," agreed Joe. "The idea of ca