all, when Castro was
eliminated pretty nearly everyone who had stood high with him went, too.
It seems that a number of the old concessionaires played the game on
both sides. This particular group had a man named Vanderdyke on the
anti-Castro side. So, when Mrs. Ralston went, she just quietly sailed by
way of Panama to the other side of the continent, to Peru--they paid her
well--and Vanderdyke took the title role.

"Oh, yes, she and Vanderdyke were very good friends, very, indeed. I
think they must have known each other here in the States. Still they
played their parts well at the time. Since things have settled down in
Venezuela, the concessionaires have found no further use for Vanderdyke
either, and here they are, Vanderdyke and Mrs. Ralston, both in New York
now, with two of the most outrageous schemes of financing ever seen on
Broad Street. They have offices in the same building, they are together
a great deal, and now I hear that the state attorney-general is after
both of them."

With this information and a very meagre report of the Wainwright trip to
the Far East, which had taken in some out-of-the-way places apparently,
I hastened back to Kennedy. He was surrounded by bottles, tubes, jars,
retorts, Bunsen burners, everything in the science and art of chemistry,
I thought.

I didn't like the way he looked. His hand was unsteady, and his eyes
looked badly, but he seemed quite put out when I suggested that he was
working too hard over the case. I was worried about him, but rather than
say anything to offend him I left him for the rest of the afternoon,
only dropping in before dinner to make sure that he would not forget to
eat something. He was then completing his preparations for the evening.
They were of the simplest kind, apparently. In fact, all I could see was
an apparatus which consisted of a rubber funnel, inverted and attached
to a rubber tube which led in turn into a jar about a quarter full of
water. Through the stopper of the jar another tube led to a tank of
oxygen.

There were several jars of various liquids on the table and a number
of chemicals. Among other things was a sort of gourd, encrusted with a
black substance, and in a corner was a box from which sounds issued as
if it contained something alive.

I did not trouble Kennedy with questions, for I was only too glad when
he consented to take a brisk walk and join me in a thick porterhouse.

It was a large party that gathered in Kennedy's