age office in the posada, and found to his chagrin that he had
still two hours to wait before the coach arrived. After a vain attempt
to impart cheerful but disparaging criticism of the pueblo and its
people to Senor Mateo and his wife--whose external courtesy had been
visibly increased by a line from Demorest, but whose confidence towards
the stranger had not been extended in the same proportion--he gave it
up, and threw himself lazily on a wooden bench in the veranda, already
hacked with the initials of his countrymen, and drawing a jack-knife
from his pocket, he began to add to that emblazonry the trade-mark of
the Panacea--as a casual advertisement. During its progress, however,
he was struck by the fact that while no one seemed to enter the posada
through the stage office, the number of voices in the adjoining room
seemed to increase, and the ministrations of Mateo and his wife became
more feverishly occupied with their invisible guests. It seemed to
Ezekiel that consequently there must be a second entrance which he had
not seen, and this added to the circumstance that one or two lounging
figures who had been approaching unaccountably disappeared before
reaching the veranda, induced him to rise and examine the locality. A
few paces beyond was an alley, but it appeared to be already blocked by
several cigarette-smoking, short-jacketed men who were leaning against
its walls, and showed no inclination to make way for him. Checked, but
not daunted, Ezekiel coolly returned to the stage office, and taking the
first opportunity when Mateo passed through the rear door, followed him.
As he expected, the innkeeper turned to the left and entered a large
room filled with tobacco smoke and the local habitues of the posada.
But Ezekiel, shrewdly surmising that the private entrance must be in the
opposite direction, turned to the right along the passage until he came
unexpectedly upon the corridor of the usual courtyard, or patio, of
every Mexican hostelry, closed at one end by a low adobe wall, in which
there was a door. The free passage around the corridor was interrupted
by wide partitions, fitted up with tables and benches, like stalls,
opening upon the courtyard where a few stunted fig and orange trees
still grew. As the courtyard seemed to be the only communication between
the passage he had left and the door in the wall, he was about to cross
it, when the voices of two men in the compartment struck his ears.
Although one was