CHAPTER SEVEN

Money Maze

E new administration of Anchuria entered its duties and privileges with enthusiasm. Its ct was to send an agent to Coralio with imperaorders to recover, if possible, the sum of y ravished from the treasury by the ill-fated lores.

onel Emilio Falcon, the private secretary of Lothe new president, was despatched from the cappon this important mission.

e position of private secretary to a tropical presis a responsible one. He must be a diplomat, a ruler of men, a body-guard to his chief, and a er-out of plots and nascent revolutions. Often he power behind the throne, the dictator of pol

man of Castilian courtesy and debonnaire manners, came to Coralio with the task before him of striking upon the cold trail of the lost money. There he conferred with the military authorities, who had received instructions to co-operate with him in the search.

Colonel Falcon established his headquarters in one of the rooms of the Casa Morena. Here for a week he held informal sittings - much as if he were a kind of unified grand jury—and summoned before him afl those whose testimony might illumine the financial tragedy that had accompanied the less momentous one of the late president's death.

Two or three who were thus examined, among whom was the barber Estebán, declared that they had identified the body of the president before its burial.

"Of a truth," testified Estebán before the mighty secretary, "it was he, the president. Consider!how could I shave a man and not see his face? He sent for me to shave him in a small house. He had a

to be no talk.

་ཅམ་

པས Pབཔལ་ ཨམས བཨམས ཡས་༦

But I am a Liberal-I am de

I to my country—and I spake of these things to r Goodwin."

t is known," said Colonel Falcon, smoothly,

the late President took with him an American er valise, containing a large amount of money. you see that?"

De veras-no," Estebán answered. "The light e little house was but a small lamp by which I I scarcely see to shave the President. Such a there may have been, but I did not see it. No. in the room was a young lady-a señorita of beauty—that I could see even in so small a But the money, señor, or the thing in which it carried that I did not see.

Le comandante and other officers gave testimony they had been awakened and alarmed by the of a pistol-shot in the Hotel de los Estranjeros. ying thither to protect the peace and dignity of

6

the room when they entered it. But of the valise of money they saw nothing.

Madame Timotea Ortiz, the proprietress of the hotel in which the game of Fox-in-the-Morning had been played out, told of the coming of the two guests

to her house.

"To my house they came," said she-"one señor, not quite old, and one señorita of sufficient handsomeness. They desired not to eat or to drink — not even of my aguardiente, which is the best. To their rooms they ascended-Numero Nueve and Numero Diez. Later came Señor Goodwin, who ascended to speak with them. Then I heard a great noise like that of a canon, and they said that the pobre Presidente had shot himself. Está bueno. I saw nothing of money or of the thing you call veliz that you say he carried it in."

Colonel Falcon soon came to the reasonable conclusion that if anyone in Coralio could furnish a clue to the vanished money, Frank Goodwin must be the

h in respect to either his honesty or his courage. en the private secretary of His Excellency hesitated have this rubber prince and mahogany baron ed before him as a common citizen of Anchuria. So sent Goodwin a flowery epistle, each word-petal oping with honey, requesting the favour of an inview. Goodwin replied with an invitation to dinat his own house.

Before the hour named the American walked over the Casa Morena, and greeted his guest frankly friendly. Then the two strolled, in the cool of afternoon, to Goodwin's home in the environs. The American left Colonel Falcon in a big, cool, dowed room with a floor of inlaid and polished ods that any millionaire in the States would have ied, excusing himself for a few minutes. He ssed a patio, shaded with deftly arranged awnings I plants, and entered a long room looking upon the in the opposite wing of the house. The broad