for the
ranch house, he believed it was either Von Arnheim or Morales coming
to report.

Muller was a sycophant, the type of man eager to curry favor with
those in authority. He decided he would gain the ear of the great
Calomares first. That would detract somewhat from the glory of the
other when he arrived. Turning he darted for the ranch.

Meantime, Jack was making his way ahead more slowly. While not
attempting to hide, he was on unfamiliar ground and felt that it
behooved him to follow implicitly the directions given by Roy Stone
and make no mistakes.

Passing through the grove, Jack came in sight of the ranch. He paused
in astonishment. Roy Stone's description of the great house had
prepared him in a measure. Yet he was astounded. Here, indeed, was a
palace in the wilderness.

The mansion stood on a slight elevation with a lawn in front sloping
down to the trees from which Jack had emerged. In design it was like a
country house of the ancient Roman aristocracy. The walls were of
vari-colored brick with inlaid designs representing formal flowers.
Two stories in height, with towers at the corners rising another two
stories higher, the building was in two wings or sections, joined in
front by a marble-tiled walk, roofed and pillared, but with the sides
open. Inside, between these two wings, Roy Stone had told Jack, was an
open court.

Nerving himself to the ordeal, and pulling down his hat to obscure his
features, Jack crossed the lawn and started mounting the wide flight
of stone steps flanked by crouching stone lions. He reached the marble
tiles of the walk above and then, despite his anxiety to gain the left
wing and the tower where his father was confined, he involuntarily
paused.

The scene before him was one of the strangest to be found on the North
American continent--this marble courtyard, with its overhanging
balcony around the sides and rear and its splashing fountain and pool
in the center, the whole illuminated by the soft glow of electric
lights cunningly concealed along the edges of the balcony like
footlights on the lip of a stage.

But it was not this alone which held Jack's gaze riveted and caused a
smothered cry of surprise to burst from his lips. Involuntarily he
stepped from the shelter of a pillar behind which he had been
standing.

For approaching along the balcony of the left wing, Jack saw the
loved figure of his father engrossed in conversation with a small,
dark man of patricia