ch can be turned to account for lighting a
card party.

STRAKER. [calling after them] Don't none of you go fooling with that
car, d'ye hear?

MENDOZA. No fear, Monsieur le Chauffeur. The first one we captured cured
us of that.

STRAKER. [interested] What did it do?

MENDOZA. It carried three brave comrades of ours, who did not know how
to stop it, into Granada, and capsized them opposite the police station.
Since then we never touch one without sending for the chauffeur. Shall
we chat at our ease?

TANNER. By all means.

Tanner, Mendoza, and Straker sit down on the turf by the fire. Mendoza
delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the right to sit on
the squared stone block is the appanage, by sitting on the ground like
his guests, and using the stone only as a support for his back.

MENDOZA. It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until
to-morrow. In fact, you have arrived out of office hours. However, if
you would prefer to settle the question of ransom at once, I am at your
service.

TANNER. To-morrow will do for me. I am rich enough to pay anything in
reason.

MENDOZA. [respectfully, much struck by this admission] You are a
remarkable man, sir. Our guests usually describe themselves as miserably
poor.

TANNER. Pooh! Miserably poor people don't own motor cars.

MENDOZA. Precisely what we say to them.

TANNER. Treat us well: we shall not prove ungrateful.

STRAKER. No prickly pears and broiled rabbits, you know. Don't tell me
you can't do us a bit better than that if you like.

MENDOZA. Wine, kids, milk, cheese and bread can be procured for ready
money.

STRAKER. [graciously] Now you're talking.

TANNER. Are you all Socialists here, may I ask?

MENDOZA. [repudiating this humiliating misconception] Oh no, no, no:
nothing of the kind, I assure you. We naturally have modern views as to
the justice of the existing distribution of wealth: otherwise we should
lose our self-respect. But nothing that you could take exception to,
except two or three faddists.

TANNER. I had no intention of suggesting anything discreditable. In
fact, I am a bit of a Socialist myself.

STRAKER. [drily] Most rich men are, I notice.

MENDOZA. Quite so. It has reached us, I admit. It is in the air of the
century.

STRAKER. Socialism must be looking up a bit if your chaps are taking to
it.

MENDOZA. That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to philosophers
and honest men can never exerci