and plump--plump as a stuffed olive fished from a
jar of oil, and as shiny; dark-skinned, with a pair of
heavy eyebrows that met over a stub of a nose ending
in a knob; two keen rat eyes, a mouth hidden by a
lump of a mustache black as tar, and a sagging,
flabby chin which slunk into his collar. Next came
a shirt-front soiled and crumpled, and then the rest
of him in a suit of bombazine.

"You designed a lighthouse some months ago for
Mr. Garlicho, of San Juan," he blurted out with
hardly an accent. "I arrived this morning by the
Tampico. My name is Carlos Onativia." And he
laid a thin, elongated piece of cardboard on Mawkum's
desk.

Only the arrival of a South American fresh from
the Republic of Moccador, with a spade designed to
dig up a long-buried treasure could have robbed
Mawkum of his habitual caution of always guarding
plans and estimates from outsiders--a custom which
was really one of the fundamental laws of the office.
The indiscretion was no doubt helped by the discovery
that the owner of the spade spoke English, a
fact which freed him at once of all dependence on
the superior lingual attainments possessed by the
Grandioso in the adjoining room.

Down came the duplicate blue-prints without a
word of protest or any further inquiry, and before I