Oh, yes,
I'll keep out, right enough; it isn't my affair.

By the way, after the quarantine and with the policeman locked in the
furnace room, a pearl necklace and a diamond bracelet were stolen! Just
ten of us to divide the suspicion! Upon my word, Hal, it's the queerest
situation I ever heard of. Which of us did it? I make a guess that not
a few of us are fools, but which is the knave? The worst of it is, I am
the only unaccredited member of the household!

This is more scandal than I ever wrote in my life. Lay it to
circumscribed environment, and the lack of twenty miles over the
pampa before breakfast. We have all been vaccinated, and the officious
gentlemen from the board of health have taken their grins and their
formaldehyde and gone. Ye gods, how we cough!

The Carlton order will go through all right, I think. Phoned him this
morning. If it does, old man, we will take a month in September and
explore the Mercator property.

Do you know, Hal, I have been thinking lately that you and I stick too
close to the grind. Business is right enough, but what's the use of
spending one's best years succeeding in everything except the things
that are worth while? I'll be thirty sooner than I care to say, and--oh,
well, you won't understand. You'll sit down there, with the Southern
Cross and the rest of the infernal astronomical galaxy looking down on
you, and the Indians chanting in the village, and you will think I have
grown sentimental. I have not. You and I down there have been looking at
the world through the reverse end of the glass. It's a bully old world,
Hal, and this is God's part of it.

Burn this letter after you read it; I suspect it is covered with germs.
Well, happy days, old man.

Yours, Tom

P.S. By the way, can't you spare some of the Indian pottery you picked
up at Callao? I told Mrs. Wilson about it, and she was immensely
interested. Send it to this address. Can you get it to the next
steamer?--T.

FROM MAXWELL REED TO RICHARD BURTON BAGLEY, UNIVERSITY CLUB, NEW YORK.

Dear Dick:

Enclosed find my check for five hundred, as per wager. Possibly you were
within your rights in protecting your bet in the manner you chose, but
while I do not wish to be offensive, your reporters are damnably so.

Yours, Maxwell Reed

FROM OFFICER FLANNIGAN TO MRS. MAGGIE FLANNIGAN, ERIN STREET.

Dear Maggie:

As soon as you receive this, go down to Mac and tell him the story as I
tell you hear. Tell him I was