Consolidated Mines Syndicate.
To be called for.

The letters of the words were topped by a faint and blurry purple line, showing that the heavy envelope had undergone troubles by being rolled into a typewriter.

"Excuse me," said Trask. He tore it open just as the bar-boy appeared with a tray decorated with stone ginger jars and glasses. The letter read:

Trask, smiling broadly, put the letter into his pocket.

"That must be good news, sir. Hope it is. Shall we go out on the big veranda for our nip? Cooler out there."

"What? Yes, certainly," said Trask, reminded of where he was as he looked up to see the bar-boy standing beside him and Wilkins waiting. In spite of the fact that the letter was ample proof that Miss Locke was gone, it had put his head in a whirl. At least she hadn't forgotten. He followed Wilkins.

"You look quite bucked up now," said Wilkins, as he pulled out a chair beside a marble-topped table.

"I do feel better," admitted Trask. "Just the same, I'm bitterly disappointed. No doubt I'm ungrateful, but I've played in rotten luck."

"You expected to meet the Lockes?" suggested Wilkins. "Too bad."

"Yes," said Trask, and taking a glass from the bar-boy, sat down.

"Here's luck and a long stay, sir," said Wilkins.

"Thanks." But Trask was rather listless and tired, frankly bored by the clerk. He stared out over the sickle curve of the bay along the Cavite shore, where a line of white beach made a barrier between the water and the green jungle. The red-roofed buildings of Cavite lay out on the end of the sickle like a clutter of bleached bones cast up by the tide.

The bay lay like a great shining shield before him, blazing with millions of mirrors that danced on the shoulders of the sleek and lazy swells, lifting in the sun-dazzle from the entrance, some twenty-five miles away.

Trask looked at his watch. It was well after one, the hour when men take shelter from the sun in cafés to talk over prolonged tiffins and wait for the heat of mid-day to wane.

A hush had fallen over the city, like the lull which precedes the breaking of a typhoon, a panting sort of hush. Heat waves rose from the bare expanse of the Luneta like siroccos from the nether regions, and the palm trees of the Malecon Drive, seen through the shimmering air, appeared to dance like souls in torture.

Beyond the Luneta the tawny walls of the city fairly cracked with the heat, and over them could be seen the sea of roofs of the intra-mural section, the heart of Manila, inside its ancient bastions. Spires rose from the ruck of low buildings like dead trees denuded of their branches. Down the bay a streamer of smoke hung over the Bataan hills, the last vestige of the outward-bound Taming, a sort of farewell pennant left behind to tell that she was driving jauntily toward Hong Kong.

"It'll be cooler in an hour," ventured Wilkins.

"If you'll order a rig for me," said Trask, "I'll roll down to the customs house and see about my baggage."

"How about tiffin, sir?"

"Good idea. I'll have it with you. Never mind the rig now. By the way, I heard some gossip coming down. Did you ever hear of a man named Dinshaw? A sailor?"

"Looney Dinshaw? Raw-ther! He's a joke."

"How a joke?"

"Oh, the poor old blighter, he sells pictures which he paints himself. They're pictures of an island he says he was wrecked on, that's full of gold. Comes up here and sells 'em to trippers."

"But the island?" persisted Trask. "There was a Swede yarning with the skipper, but they wouldn't let me hear."

"Dinshaw's loco," said Wilkins. "Lost his ship on this island three or four years ago. It's somewhere up the north coast. He was taken off by a Jap fisher crew blown down from the Rykukus. He lost his ship right enough, and his mind with it. To hear him talk you'd think it was solid gold."

"Solid gold is what I'm hunting for when I'm working," said Trask with a smile. "I'd like to look into this business."

"There's plenty who's looked into it, sir, but they can't get anything but babble out of the old fellow. He thinks everybody wants to cheat him."

"Where can I find him?"

"In the Sailors' Home, kept by Prayerful Jones in Calle San Fernando, a charity place for sailors on the beach. I say, you're not serious?"

"Indeed I am. Not that I expect to find a solid gold island, but if it's off the coast of Luzon it might give me a lead to something up in the mountains. The Igorrotes find some gold up in the rivers and I've heard the rocks were mighty heavy. May be iron pyrites, or it may be the real thing."

"I can have him up here," suggested Wilkins. "Just drop a word over the 'phone to Prayerful Jones. Nobody need know what it's about. I'll hint he may sell a picture."

"Shoot!" said Trask. "I've got a month to kill, and some money to gamble on my own hook. I may take a flyer on it, if I can get anything definite out of this Dinshaw."

"You'll have half the waterfront on your heels if you let it out that you're taking Dinshaw to his island. Plenty would go if he'd tell 'em where it is, but they want to skin him."

"Then we'll keep it mum! Hello! Who's coming?"

He heard the rattle of hoofs and looked across the Luneta to see a victoria whirl out of Bagumbayan Drive. It was occupied by a man in a pongee suit and a young woman in white with a blue parasol which rose above the rig like a porcelain minaret.

"The Lockes!" cried Wilkins.

"Hush!" said Trask. "Don't say a word about me. I'll surprise 'em!" He picked up a copy of the Cablenews from the table and hid himself behind its ample pages.

"We'll stick right here until the next boat," he heard Locke saying as the victoria stopped. "I'd like to see somebody pry me loose from this porch."

Trask looked over the top of his paper to see Marjorie Locke, in duck skirt and linen coat, climb down from the victoria. Her hair was as yellow as her wide-brimmed "sailor" and her eyes as blue as her parasol. She was laughing gaily as she mounted the stoop.

"You missed the boat!" exclaimed Wilkins, as he came out.

"Missed it forty miles!" said Locke, taking off his floppy Bangkok hat and using a handkerchief on his face as though it were a blotter. His nose was peeled from sunburn, but his round and rubicund face fairly oozed good humour.

"Your luggage—I sent it, sir," said Wilkins.

"Hang the luggage! I'll have a soda bath right away. I've got the prickly heat so bad I feel like a human pincushion!"

"Yes, sir," said Wilkins.

"Be game, Dad! You always told me you liked the tropics."

"So I do—at home in the winter