ade a critical
inspection of the apartment. Kay could see him wagging his grizzled
head approvingly as she came to the door and looked in.

"Where those fellow _El Mono_, he put my boss's clothes?" Pablo
demanded.

"'_El Mono_?' Whom do you mean, Pablo?"

"_El Mono_--the monkey. He wear long tail to the coat; all the time he
look like mebbeso somebody in the house she's goin' die pretty queeck."

"Oh, you mean Murray, the butler."

Pablo was too ludicrous, and Kay sat down on the edge of the porch and
laughed until she wept. Then, as Pablo still stood truculently in the
doorway, waiting an answer to his query, she called to Murray, who had
rushed to the aid of the potato baron, and asked him if he had found
any clothing in the room, and, if so, what he had done with it.

"I spotted and pressed them all, Miss Kay, and hung them in the
clothes-press of the room next door."

"I go get," growled Pablo, and did so; whereupon the artful Murray took
advantage of his absence to dart over to the royal chamber and remove
the potato baron's effects.

"I don't like that blackamoor, Miss Kay," _El Mono_ confided to the
girl. "I feel assured he is a desperate vagabond to whom murder and
pillage are mere pastimes. Please order him out of the garden. He
pays no attention to me whatsoever."

"Leave him severely alone," Kay advised. "I will find a way to handle
him."

Pablo returned presently, with two suits of clothing, a soft
white-linen shirt, a black necktie, a pair of low-cut brown shoes, and
a pair of brown socks. These articles he laid out on the bed. Then he
made another trip to the other room, and returned bearing an armful of
framed portraits of the entire Noriaga and Farrel dynasty, which he
proceeded to hang in a row on the wall at the foot of the bed. Lastly,
he removed a rather fancy spread from the bed and substituted therefor
an ancient silk crazy-quilt that had been made by Don Mike's
grandmother. Things were now as they used to be, and Pablo was
satisfied.

When he came out, Kay had gone in to dinner; so he returned to his own
_casa_ and squatted against the wall, with his glance fixed upon the
point in the palm avenue where it dipped over the edge of the mesa.

VII

At seven o'clock, dinner being over, Kay excused herself to the family
and Mr. Okada, passed out through the patio gate, and sought a bench
which she had noticed under a catalpa tree outside the wall. From this
seat, she