or--is that it?"

"Yes, that is it."

"H'm! One can see," Ricardo said with hidden venom, "that you are a
gentleman; but all that gentlemanly fancifulness is apt to turn sour on
a plain man's stomach. However--you'll have to pardon me."

He put his fingers into his mouth and let out a whistle which seemed to
drive a thin, sharp shaft of air solidly against one's nearest ear-drum.
Though he greatly enjoyed Heyst's involuntary grimace, he sat perfectly
stolid waiting for the effect of the call.

It brought Pedro in with an extraordinary, uncouth, primeval
impetuosity. The door flew open with a clatter, and the wild figure it
disclosed seemed anxious to devastate the room in leaps and bounds;
but Ricardo raised his open palm, and the creature came in quietly.
His enormous half-closed paws swung to and fro a little in front of his
bowed trunk as he walked. Ricardo looked on truculently.

"You go to the boat--understand? Go now!"

The little red eyes of the tame monster blinked with painful attention
in the mass of hair.

"Well? Why don't you get? Forgot human speech, eh? Don't you know any
longer what a boat is?"

"Si--boat," the creature stammered out doubtfully.

"Well, go there--the boat at the jetty. March off to it and sit there,
lie down there, do anything but go to sleep there--till you hear my
call, and then fly here. Them's your orders. March! Get, vamos! No, not
that way--out through the front door. No sulks!"

Pedro obeyed with uncouth alacrity. When he had gone, the gleam of
pitiless savagery went out of Ricardo's yellow eyes, and his physiognomy
took on, for the first time that evening, the expression of a domestic
cat which is being noticed.

"You can watch him right into the bushes, if you like. Too dark, eh? Why
not go with him to the very spot, then?"

Heyst made a gesture of vague protest.

"There's nothing to assure me that he will stay there. I have no doubt
of his going, but it's an act without guarantee."

"There you are!" Ricardo shrugged his shoulders philosophically. "Can't
be helped. Short of shooting our Pedro, nobody can make absolutely sure
of his staying in the same place longer than he has a mind to; but I
tell you, he lives in holy terror of my temper. That's why I put on my
sudden-death air when I talk to him. And yet I wouldn't shoot him--not
I, unless in such a fit of rage as would make a man shoot his favourite
dog. Look here, sir! This deal is on the square. I didn't tip