ue discomfort whenever he thought of them. For one thing, why must
a gatherer of news carry mysterious packages into Mexico and leave them
there, sometimes throwing them overboard with a tiny parachute
arrangement, as Cliff had done on the first trip, and flying back
without stopping? Why must a newspaper man bring back certain
mysterious packages, and straightway disappear with them in the car?
That he should confer long and secretly with men of florid complexions
and an accent which hardens its g's and sharpens its s's, might very
plausibly be a part of his gathering of legitimate news of
international import. Though Johnny rather doubted its legitimacy, he
had no doubt whatever of its world-wide importance. Certain nations
were at war--and he was no fool, once he stopped dreaming long enough
to think logically.

Those packages bothered him more than the florid gentlemen, however.
At first he suspected smuggling, or something like that. But
gun-running, that staple form of border lawbreaking, did not fit into
any part of Cliff's activities, though opium might. But when he had
made an excuse for handling one or two of the packages, they routed the
opium theory. They were flat and loosely solid, as packages of paper
would be. Not state documents such as melodramas use to keep the
villains sweating--they did not come in reams, so far as Johnny knew.
He could think of no other papers that would need smuggling into or out
of a country as free as ours where freedom of the press has become a
watchword; yet the idea persisted stubbornly that those were packages
of paper which he had managed to take in his hands.

As a pleasing relief from useless cogitation on the subject, Johnny
took his bank roll from a pocket he had sewed inside his shirt. Like a
miser he fingered the magic paper, counting and recounting, spending it
over and over in anticipatory daydreams. Thirty-two hundred dollars he
counted in bills of large denomination--impressively clean, crisp
bills, some of them--and mentally placed that amount to one side. That
would pay old Sudden, interest and all. What was left he could do with
as he pleased. He counted it again. There were three hundred dollars
left from what Bland had earned--Bland-- What had become of Bland,
anyway? Little runt might be broke again; in fact, it was practically
certain that he would be broke again, though he must have had close to
a hundred dollars when they landed in Los An