“Yes, you will want some detailed information, I expect,” agreed the moving picture man.  “Well, I’m ready to give it to you.  I have already made some arrangements for you.  You will take a steamer to Colon, make your headquarters at the Washington Hotel, and from there start out, when you are ready, to get pictures of the Canal and surrounding country.  I’ll give you letters of introduction, so you will have no trouble in chartering a tug to go through the Canal, and I already have the necessary government permits.”

“Then Joe and I had better be packing up for the trip,” suggested Blake.

“Yes, the sooner the better.  You might call on Mr. Alcando, and ask him when he will be ready.  Here is his address in New York,” and Mr. Hadley handed Blake a card, naming a certain uptown hotel.

A little later, having seen to their baggage, and handed their particular and favorite cameras over to one of the men of the film company, so that he might give them a thorough overhauling, Blake and Joe went to call on their Spanish friend.

“Aren’t you glad to know he isn’t a spy, or anything like that?” asked Joe of his chum.

“Yes, of course I am, and yet—­”

“Still suspicious I see,” laughed Joe.  “Better drop it.”

Blake did not answer.

Inquiry of the hotel clerk gave Blake and Joe the information that Mr. Alcando was in his room, and, being shown to the apartment by a bell-boy, Blake knocked on the door.

“Who’s there?  Wait a moment!” came in rather sharp accents from a voice the moving picture boys recognized as that of Mr. Alcando.

“It is Blake Stewart and Joe Duncan,” said the former lad.  “We have called—­”

“I beg your pardon—­In one moment I shall be with you—­I will let you in!” exclaimed the Spaniard.  The boys could hear him moving about in his apartment, they could hear the rattle of papers, and then the door was opened.

There was no one in the room except the young South American railroad man, but there was the odor of a strong cigar in the apartment, and Blake noticed this with surprise for, some time before, Mr. Alcando had said he did not smoke.

The inference was, then, that he had had a visitor, who was smoking when the boys knocked, but there was no sign of the caller then, except in the aroma of the cigar.

He might have gone into one of the other rooms that opened from the one into which the boys looked, for Mr. Alcando had a suite in the hotel.  And, after all, it was none of the affair of Blake or Joe, if their new friend had had a caller.

“Only,” said Blake to Joe afterward, “why was he in such a hurry to get rid of him, and afraid that we might meet him?”

“I don’t know,” Joe answered.  “It doesn’t worry me.  You are too suspicious.”

“I suppose I am.”

Mr. Alcando welcomed the boys, but said nothing about the delay in opening his door, or about the visitor who must have slipped out hastily.  The Spaniard was glad to see Blake and Joe, and glad to learn that they would soon start for Panama.