I thought now it was about time I should assert my rights.  Pushing back my chair, I walked rapidly through my own and Mawkum’s room and held out my hand.

“Ah, Senor, I am delighted to meet you,” I broke out in Spanish. (Here I had Mawkum—­he did not understand a word.) “We have been expecting you; our mutual friend, Mr. Lawton, has given me notice of your coming—­and how is the Senor and his family?” And in a few minutes we three were seated at my desk with Mawkum unrolling plans, making sketches on a pad, figuring the cost of this and that and the other thing; I translating for Mawkum such statements as I thought he ought to know, thus restoring the discipline and dignity of the office —­it never being wise to have more than one head to a concern.

This partial victory was made complete when his ivory-tinted Excellency loosened his waistcoat, dived into his inside pocket and, producing a package of letters tied with a string, the envelopes emblazoned with the arms and seal of the Republic of Moccador, asked if we might be alone.  I immediately answered, both in Spanish and English, that I had no secrets from Senor Mawkum, but this did not prove satisfactory and so Mawkum, with a wink to me, withdrew.

Mawkum gone, the little man—­it is inconceivable how small and withered he was; how yellow, how spidery in many of his motions, especially with his fingers stained with cigarettes, how punctilious, how polite, how soft and insinuating his voice, and how treacherous his smile—­a smile that smiled all alone by itself, while the cunning, glittering eyes recorded an entirely different brain suggestion—­Mawkum gone, I say, the little man examined the door to see that it was tight shut, glanced furtively about the room, resumed his seat, slowly opened the largest and most flaringly decorated envelope and produced a document signed with a name and titles that covered half the page.  Then he began to talk at the rate of fifty words to the second; like the rattle of a ticker in a panic:  of Alvarez, the saviour of his country—­ his friend!—­his partner; of the future of Moccador under his wise and beneficent influence, the Lighthouse being one of the first improvements; of its being given to him to erect because of his loyalty to the cause, and to the part he had taken in overturning that despot, the Tyrant Paramba, who had ruled the republic with a rod of iron.  Now it was all over —­Paramba was living in the swamps, hunted like a dog.  When he was caught—­and they expected it every day—­he would be brought to the capital, San Juan, in chains—­yes, Senor, in chains—­and put to work on the roads, so that everybody could spit upon him—­traitor!  Beast, that he was!  And there would be other lighthouses—­the whole coast was to be as light as day.  Senor Law-ton had said he could speak with perfect confidence—­he was doing so, trusting to the honor of the Grandiose—­the most distinguished —­etc., etc.  And now—­this