Cabello. Is he"--the pen hesitated and
then again moved swiftly--"unhurt?"

He drew another blank toward him and addressing it to McKildrick,
wrote: "Why is Forrester in Curacao? Cable him return. Keep him on
job, or lose yours."

For a moment Mr. Forrester sat studying the two messages, then he
raised his eyes.

"I have half a mind," he said, "to order him home. I would, if he
weren't doing so well down there." With an effort to eliminate from
his voice any accent of fatherly pride, Mr. Forrester asked coldly:
"McKildrick reports that he is doing well, doesn't he?"

The third vice-president nodded affirmatively.

"If he comes back here," argued Mr. Forrester, "he'll do nothing but
race his car, and he'll learn nothing of the business. And then,
again," he added doubtfully, "while he's down there I don't want him
to learn too much of the business, not this Pino Vega end of it, or he
might want to take a hand, and that might embarrass us. Perhaps I had
better cable him, too."

He looked inquiringly at the third vice-president, but that gentleman
refused to be drawn.

"He isn't _my_ son," he remarked.

"I am not speaking of him as my son," snapped Mr. Forrester warmly.
"Speaking of him, not as my son, but as an employee of the company,
what would _you_ do with him?"

"I'd cable him to mind his own business," answered Sam Caldwell.

For the fraction of a second, under levelled eyebrows, Mr. Forrester
stared at young Mr. Caldwell, and then, as a sign that the interview
was at an end, swung in his swivel chair and picked up his letters.
Over his shoulder he said, "Cable him that."

* * * * *

While Roddy in Willemstad was slumbering under his mosquito-net, and
Sam Caldwell in New York was concocting a cablegram, which, he
calculated, would put Roddy in his proper place, but which, instead,
put him in a very bad temper, Captain Codman, at Casa Blanca, had
just finished relating his marvelous tale.

It was the story of how young Forrester, without letters of
introduction, without credentials, had that morning walked into the
consulate and announced that, without asking advice, he intended to
liberate the Lion of Valencia.

Upon the members of the Rojas household the marvelous tale had a
widely different effect.

To understand why this should be so it is necessary to know something
of the three women who formed the Rojas household.

Senora Rojas was an American. When she was