“Go in the back room of that saloon,” said Wade, “and wait.  I’ll go find out what’s doing and let you know.  You may take two drinks while I am gone—­no more.”

At ten minutes to one o’clock Wade returned.  “Brace up, old chap,” he said.  “The ambulance got there just as I did.  The doctor says he’s dead.  You may have one more drink.  You let me run this thing for you.  You’ve got to skip.  I don’t believe a chair is legally a deadly weapon.  You’ve got to make tracks, that’s all there is to it.”

Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another drink.  “Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his hands?” he said.  “I never could stand—­I never could—­”

“Take one more,” said Wade, “and then come on.  I’ll see you through.”

Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o’clock the next morning Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes, stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East River pier.  The vessel had brought the season’s first cargo of limes from Port Limon, and was homeward bound.  Merriam had his bank balance of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile up as much water as he could between himself and New York.  There was no time for anything more.

From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the discursive skipper from his course.

It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land—­La Paz the Beautiful, a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain.  Here the little steamer stopped to tread water while the captain’s dory took him ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market.  Merriam went too, with his suit case, and remained.

Kalb, the vice-consul, a Graeco-Armenian citizen of the United States, born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries, considered all Americans his brothers and bankers.  He attached himself to Merriam’s elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.

There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had dropped out of the world into the triste Peruvian town.  At Kalb’s introductory:  “Shake hands with ——­,” he had obediently exchanged manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men, rubber men, mahogany men—­anything but men of living tissue.