ng-room, wakened up, and now appeared
with ruffled hair and still clad in his sleeping-suit. He suggested
refreshments, and sat down to hear what Dunbar had to say.

Peter's face had a queer set look upon it. Where another man might
perhaps have asked questions he showed something of his mother's
reserve, and was never more silent than when a moment of strain
arrived. He began in a mechanical way to make two fresh cups of
coffee, and poured the steaming mixture from the thin saucepan into the
cups. 'The day of reckoning seems to have arrived for Purvis,' he
said; and then lazily, 'poor brute, he had his points.' Purvis was a
common adventurer after all! And he had got close upon two hundred
pounds from him on the plea of having some knowledge of his brother,
which was simply non-existent. He could see the whole thing now. This
cock-and-bull story of the discovery of the missing man was really a
very simple ruse for extorting money, and the last seventy pounds which
he, Peter, had been fool enough to pay him had been wanted to help
Purvis to get away.

'I must search the place thoroughly,' said Dunbar. He finished his
coffee; but the ascertaining whether or not any one was concealed in
the little house or in the outbuildings was a matter of only a few
minutes.

'If he 's got away again,' said Dunbar, 'I 'll eat my hat!'

'Purvis is a slippery customer,' said Ross; 'but he has lived peaceably
and openly for a considerable time. If he is wanted you have only to
ride up to his door and arrest him.'

Dunbar cleared his throat. 'You mind,' he said, 'the story of the
_Rosana_, which I told you on board the Royal Mail Packet, when we were
in the River Plate coming up to Monte Video?'

'I remember,' said Peter briefly. And Ross nodded his head also; every
one in Argentine knew the story of the wreck of the _Rosana_.

'I knew,' said Dunbar, 'that E. W. Smith could not die!'

'Smith being Purvis, I take it,' said Toffy.

'Yes,' said Dunbar, 'or any other alias you please. He is a fair man
now with a beard, isn't he? Well, on board the _Rosana_ he was a
clean-shaven man with dark hair, but you cannot mistake E. W. Smith's
eyes, though I hear his voice is altered.'

'Are you in the police out here?' Peter asked, with a glance at the
commissario to whom he had just handed a cup of coffee.

'No, I 'm not,' answered Dunbar, with his usual economy of speech. 'I
'm from Scotland Yard, and I want E. W. Smith on