“I think not,” said Don Pedro quietly, and facing the pseudo-American bravely.  “I never forget faces, and yours is a noticeable one.  When you first spoke I fancied that I remembered your voice.  All that business with the chair was to get close to you, so that I could see the scar on your right temple.  It is still there, I notice.  Also, I dropped my cigarette case and forced you to pick it up, so that, when you stretched your arm, I might see what mark was on your left wrist.  It is a serpent encircling the sun, which Lola Farjados induced you to have tattooed when you were in Lima thirty years ago.  Your eyes are blue and full of light, and as you were twenty when I knew you, the lapse of years has made you fifty—­your present age.”

“Shucks!” said Hervey coolly, and sat down to smoke.

Don Pedro turned to Archie and Braddock.

“Mr. Hope!  Professor!” he remarked, “if you remember the description I gave of Gustav Vasa, I appeal to you to see if it does not exactly fit this man?”

“It does,” said Archie unhesitatingly, “although I cannot see the tattooed left wrist to which you refer.”

Hervey, still smoking, made no offer to show the symbol, but Braddock unexpectedly came to the assistance of Don Pedro.

“The man is Vasa right enough,” he remarked abruptly.  “Whether he is Swedish or American I cannot say.  But he is the same man I met when I was in Lima thirty years ago, after the war.”

Hervey slowly turned his blue eyes on the scientist with a twinkle in their depths.

“So you recognized me?” he observed, with his Yankee drawl.

“I recognized you at the moment I hired you to take The Diver to Malta to bring back that mummy,” retorted Braddock, “but it didn’t suit my book to let on.  Didn’t you recognize me?”

“Wal, no,” said Hervey, his drawl more pronounced than ever.  “I haven’t got the memory for faces that you and the Don here seem to possess.  Huh!” He wheeled his chair and faced Braddock squarely.  “I’d have thought you wiser not to back up the Don, sir.”

Braddock’s little eyes sparkled.

“I am not afraid of you,” said he with great contempt.  “I never did anything for which you could get money out of me for, Captain Hervey or Gustav Vasa, or whatever your name might be.”

“You were always a mighty spry man,” assented the skipper coolly, “but spry men, I take it, make mistakes from being too almighty smart.”

Braddock shrugged his shoulders, and Don Pedro intervened.

“This is all beside the point,” he remarked angrily.  “Captain Hervey, do you deny that you are Gustav Vasa in the face of this evidence?”

Hervey drew up the left sleeve of his reefer jacket, and showed on his bared wrist the symbol of the sun and the encircling serpent.

“Is that enough?” he drawled, “or do you want to look at this?” and he turned his head to reveal his scarred right temple.