couple of fools. If you had allowed me to send you the messages
awaiting transmission here to you, you would not have sent me such a
confession of guilt as you have just done. You had better leave Opeki
at once or hide in the hills. I am afraid I have placed you in a
somewhat compromising position with the company, which is unfortunate,
especially as, if I am not mistaken, they owe you some back pay. You
should have been wiser in your day, and bought Y.C.C. stock when it was
down to five cents, as 'yours truly' did. You are not, Stedman, as
bright a boy as some. And as for your friend, the war-correspondent,
he has queered himself for life. You see, my dear Stedman, after I had
sent off your first message, and demands for further details came
pouring in, and I could not get you at the wire to supply them, I took
the liberty of sending some on myself."

"Great Heavens!" gasped Gordon.

Stedman grew very white under his tan, and the perspiration rolled on
his cheeks.

"Your message was so general in its nature, that it allowed my
imagination full play, and I sent on what I thought would please the
papers, and, what was much more important to me, would advertise the
Y.C.C. stock. This I have been doing while waiting for material from
you. Not having a clear idea of the dimensions or population of Opeki,
it is possible that I have done you and your newspaper friend some
injustice. I killed off about a hundred American residents, two
hundred English, because I do not like the English, and a hundred
French. I blew up old Ollypybus and his palace with dynamite, and
shelled the city, destroying some hundred thousand dollars' worth of
property, and then I waited anxiously for your friend to substantiate
what I had said. This he has most unkindly failed to do. I am very
sorry, but much more so for him than for myself, for I, my dear friend,
have cabled on to a man in San Francisco, who is one of the directors
of the Y.C.C., to sell all my stock, which he has done at one hundred
and two, and he is keeping the money until I come. And I leave Octavia
this afternoon to reap my just reward. I am in about twenty thousand
dollars on your little war, and I feel grateful. So much so that I
will inform you that the ship of war Kaiser has arrived at San
Francisco, for which port she sailed directly from Opeki. Her captain
has explained the real situation, and offered to make every amend for
the accidental indignity shown