air who played at cards.

"Now you might try Airedale and Pekinese," Tommy suggested, but this was
lost on the serious little man. Yet he did call in another strangely
sounding tongue, then with a sigh laid the megaphone down, saying:

"They must be stuffies!"

"Dummies, sir, dummies," Tommy corrected. "Nice people don't say
stuffies, ever!"

"Your Tommy does so much cut-upping, eh!" he smiled at me. I had noticed
that when preoccupied or excited the idioms of his various languages got
tumbled into a rather hopeless potpourri.

Quarantine and customs were passed in the leisurely fashion of Cuban
officials, and Monsieur asked to be sent immediately ashore, promising
to return at sundown. There was a man, the secret agent, he explained,
who held important information.

"I'll have the launch for you at Machina wharf, sir," Gates told him,
but he refused to consider this, declaring that he could hire any of the
boatmen thereabout to bring him out.

"He's that considerate, sir," Gates later confided to me. "But I carn't
make head nor tail of him. Bilkins says he went in to lay out his
clothes, and the things he's got stuck in those bags would astonish
you!"

Nearing six o'clock a skiff drew alongside, being propelled by one
oar--a method much in vogue with Havana harbormen--and when Monsieur
came aboard we saw at once evidences of disappointment. His arms hung
listlessly, and his large head drooped forward as if at last its weight
had proven too great for the squat body.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"How do you know there is anything wrong, my boy Jack?"

"You look so killingly happy," Tommy said, joining us.

Monsieur's pale eyes stared for a moment, then blinked several times
before he murmured:

"The man I went to see is dead--murdered, just after he mailed that
report. So I have no information. These police called it suicide because
a knife lay in his hand. Bah! I could place a knife in the hand of any
man I kill!"

"Was he a friend of yours?"

"No. I have never seen him. But he knew something!"

"He evidently knew too much," Tommy suggested.

"You speak true, my boy. It seems to be a dangerous thing here to know
too much of certain matters!"

"Well," I laughed, trying to put a heartiness in my voice and drive away
his depression, "let's go ashore for dinner! Then the Opera--and
afterwards another bite where the high life eats? What-say, Professor?"

As it turned out, however, neither the dinner, n