se to those phony bills of lading of yours,
and those doped-up clearance papers, and those cases of carbines you
've got down your hold labeled bridge equipment, and that nitro and
giant-caps, and that hundred thousand rounds of smokeless you 're
running down there as phonograph records!"

Tankred continued to smoke.

"You ever stop to wonder," he finally inquired, "if it ain't kind o'
flirtin' with danger knowin' so much about me and my freightin'
business?"

"No, you 're doing the coquetting in this case, I guess!"

"Then I ain't standin' for no rivals--not on this coast!"

The two men, so dissimilar in aspect and yet so alike in their
accidental attitudes of an uncouth belligerency, sat staring at each
other.

"You 're going to take me to Guayaquil," repeated Blake.

"That's where you 're dead wrong," was the calmly insolent rejoinder.
"I ain't even _goin'_ to Guayaquil."

"I say you are."

Tankred's smile translated his earlier deliberateness into open
contempt.

"You seem to forget that this here town you 're heefin' about lies a
good thirty-five miles up the Guayas River. And if I 'm gun-runnin'
for Alfaro, as you say, I naturally ain't navigatin' streams where they
'd be able to pick me off the bridge-deck with a fishin'-pole!"

"But you 're going to get as close to Guayaquil as you can, and you
know it."

"Do I?" said the man with the up-tilted cigar.

"Look here, Pip," said Blake, leaning closer over the table towards
him. "I don't give a tinker's dam about Alfaro and his two-cent
revolution. I 'm not sitting up worrying over him or his junta or how
he gets his ammunition. But I want to get into Guayaquil, and this is
the only way I can do it!"

For the first time Tankred turned and studied him.

"What d' you want to get into Guayaquil for?" he finally demanded.
Blake knew that nothing was to be gained by beating about the bush.

"There's a man I want down there, and I 'm going down to get him!"

"Who is he?"

"That's my business," retorted Blake.

"And gettin' into Guayaquil's your business!" Tankred snorted back.

"All I 'm going to say is he 's a man from up North--and he 's not in
your line of business, and never was and never will be!"

"How do I know that?"

"You 'll have my word for it!"

Tankred swung round on him.

"D' you realize you 'll have to sneak ashore in a _lancha_ and pass a
double line o' patrol? And then crawl into a town that's reekin' with
yellow-jack,