gs in the world than cutting an
appointment for good and sufficient reasons. You will get back your
balance when things get normal again. I have no complaint to make anyway.
You have kept up the professional end splendidly until now. What you need
is a good long vacation and I am going to pack you off on one at the
earliest opportunity. Do you want me to meet Captain Annersley for you
tomorrow?" he switched off to ask.

Larry shook his head.

"No, I'll meet him myself, thank you. It is my job. I am not going to
flunk it. If he is Ruth's husband I am going to be the first to shake
hands with him."

CHAPTER XXXIV

IN WHICH TWO MASSEYS MEET IN MEXICO

And while things were moving toward their crisis for Larry and Ruth
another drama was progressing more or less swiftly to its conclusion
down in Vera Cruz. Alan Massey had found his cousin in a wretched,
vermin haunted shack, nursed in haphazard fashion by a slovenly,
ignorant half-breed woman under the ostensible professional care of a
mercenary, incompetent, drunken Mexican doctor who cared little enough
whether the dog of an American lived or died so long as he himself
continued to get the generous checks from a certain newspaper in New
York City. The doctor held the credulity of the men who mailed those
checks in fine contempt and proceeded to feather his nest valiantly
while his good luck continued, going on many a glorious spree at the
paper's expense while Dick Carson went down every day deeper into the
valley of the shadow of death.

With the coming of Alan Massey however a new era began. Alan was apt to
leave transformation of one sort or another in his wake. It was not
merely his money magic though he wielded that magnificently as was his
habit and predilection, spent Mexican dollars with a superb disregard of
their value which won from the natives a respect akin to awe and wrought
miracles wherever the golden flow touched. But there was more than money
magic to Alan Massey's performance in Vera Cruz. There was also the
magic of his dominating, magnetic personality. He was a born master and
every one high or low who crossed his path recognized his rightful
ascendency and hastened to obey his royal will.

His first step was to get the sick man transferred from the filthy hovel
in which he found him to clean, comfortable quarters in an ancient adobe
palace, screened, airy, spacious. The second step was to secure the
services of two competent and high