n' unless I'm away off in my guess, she was a Curtiss-Robin ship--a big
crate in the bargain."

"They need them big in their line of business," Jack went on
significantly. "A full cargo of wet goods is pretty heavy, you know,
Perk."

"You said it, partner," assented the other, grinning amiably and yet
with a shade of Yankee cunning. "An' what's more to the p'int the guy
handlin' the stick was no slouch at his job, b'lieve me. I wonder now
could he have been that Oscar Gleeb we been hearin' so much about since
comin' down here,--got an idea he might abeen, ain't you, Boss?"

"Just as like as not," Jack told him.

"Huh! Some go as far as to say he used to be a Boche pilot in that fuss
across the big water," continued Perk, reflectively, as though certain
memories of the long-ago had awakened in his brain--recollections that
breathed of action, staccato machine-gun fire, exploding shells, and the
terrible odor of gas that had poisoned so many of his former mates.

"Yes, they said there wasn't any doubt about that," Jack asserted.
"After the war was over and he couldn't find work in his home country,
he managed to get to America and has cut quite a figure in flying
circles. I reckon he was tempted by the big money in the smuggling game
to take a job with this combine along the coast and has been fetching
heaps of cargoes ashore from vessels anchored far out on the gulf, or
even across from Bimini or Santa Fe Beach near Havana over in Cuba."

"By jinks!" ejaculated Perk, "that there's the place we learned they was
shippin' Chinks over to Florida from, ain't it Jack, boy?"

"Just what it was," admitted the other. "It seems that this big combine,
made up of rich American sporting men, with a mixture of Cubans and
adventurers from all nations, doubles up in crashing Uncle Sam's coast
gates with aliens, as well as hard stuff in bottles and barrels."

"Me, I'm jest awonderin'?" continued Perk, "whether it could a'happened
that this same Oscar Gleeb an' me ever hit it up and had an air duel
tryin' to strafe each other when flyin' across No-Man's-Land over there.
Kinder like to meet up with him so we could run over our scraps an' see
if one o' us sent t'other down in a blazin' coffin. It'd be funny if it
turned out that way."

"Queer things do happen sometimes," agreed Jack, yawning. "This warm
day's made me feel a bit lazy but as soon as we get a move on all that
will slip away like fog under the morning sun."

"I say,