watched the long line of rickety cabs
backed up against the curb, the two honking auto-busses, the shifting
army of pleasure-seekers along the sidewalks, the noisy saloons round
which the crowds eddied like bees about a hive, and he was once more
appraising the groups closer about him, when through that seething and
bustling mass of humanity he saw Dusty McGlade pushing his way, a Dusty
McGlade on whom the rum of Jamaica and the _mezcal_ of Guatemala and
the _anisado_ of Ecuador had combined with the _pulque_ of Mexico to
set their unmistakable seal.

But three minutes later the two men were seated together above their
"swizzles" and Blake was exploring Dusty's faded memories as busily as
a leather-dip might explore an inebriate's pockets.

"Who 're you looking for, Jim?" suddenly and peevishly demanded the man
in the soiled white duck, as though impatient of the other's
indirections.

Blake smoked for a moment or two before answering.

"I 'm looking for a man called Connie Binhart," he finally confessed,
as he continued to study that ruinous figure in front of him. It
startled him to see what idleness and alcohol and the heat of the
tropics could do to a man once as astute as Dusty McGlade.

"Then why didn't you say so?" complained McGlade, as though impatient
of obliquities that had been altogether too apparent. He had once been
afraid of this man called Blake, he remembered. But time had changed
things, as time has the habit of doing. And most of all, time had
changed Blake himself, had left the old-time Headquarters man oddly
heavy of movement and strangely slow of thought.

"Well, I'm saying it now!" Blake's guttural voice was reminding him.

"Then why did n't you say it an hour ago?" contested McGlade, with his
alcoholic peevish obstinacy.

"Well, let's have it now," placated the patient-eyed Blake. He waited,
with a show of indifference. He even overlooked Dusty's curt laugh of
contempt.

"I can tell you all right, all right--but it won't do you much good!"

"Why not?" And still Blake was bland and patient.

"Because," retorted McGlade, fixing the other man with a lean finger
that was both unclean and unsteady, "_you can't get at him_!"

"You tell me where he is," said Blake, striking a match. "I 'll attend
to the rest of it!"

McGlade slowly and deliberately drank the last of his swizzle. Then he
put down his empty glass and stared pensively and pregnantly into it.

"What's there in it