he glimpsed highlights of Tom's career. He
had fought in some sort of foreign troubles in Armenia. He had been an
officer in the Chinese army, and it was a certainty that the trade he
later drove in the China Seas was illicit. He had been caught running
arms into Cuba. It seemed he had always been running something somewhere
that it ought not to have been run. And he had never outgrown it. One
letter, on crinkly tissue paper, showed that as late as the
Japanese-Russian War he had been caught running coal into Port Arthur
and been taken to the prize court at Sasebo, where his steamer was
confiscated and he remained a prisoner until the end of the war.

Frederick smiled as he read a paragraph: "_How do you prosper? Let me
know any time a few thousands will help you_." He looked at the date,
April 18, 1883, and opened another packet. "_May 5th_," 1883, was the
dated sheet he drew out. "_Five thousand will put me on my feet again.
If you can, and love me, send it along pronto--that's Spanish for
rush_."

He glanced again at the two dates. It was evident that somewhere between
April 18th and May 5th Tom had come a cropper. With a smile, half
bitter, Frederick skimmed on through the correspondence: "_There's a
wreck on Midway Island. A fortune in it, salvage you know. Auction in
two days. Cable me four thousand_." The last he examined, ran: "_A deal
I can swing with a little cash. It's big, I tell you. It's so big I
don't dare tell you_." He remembered that deal--a Latin-American
revolution. He had sent the cash, and Tom had swung it, and himself as
well, into a prison cell and a death sentence.

Tom had meant well, there was no denying that. And he had always
religiously forwarded his I O U's. Frederick musingly weighed the packet
of them in his hand, as though to determine if any relation existed
between the weight of paper and the sums of money represented on it.

He put the drawer back in the cabinet and passed out. Glancing in at the
big chair he saw Polly just tiptoeing from the room. Tom's head lay
back, and his breathing was softly heavy, the sickness pronouncedly
apparent on his relaxed face.

V

"I have worked hard," Frederick explained to Polly that evening on the
veranda, unaware that when a man explains it is a sign his situation is
growing parlous. "I have done what came to my hand--how creditably it is
for others to say. And I have been paid for it. I have taken care of
others and taken care of myself.