Three times the conductor stopped beside him and suggestively rattled the coins in his box. Three times Bell absent mindedly paid the fare for the zone. But the ride is a long one, and he had had time to realize the hopelessness of any single-handed attack upon the thing he faced long before the end. Then he absently moved through the amazing collection of tropic and near tropic growths that is the Botanical Garden until he came at once to Paula and the Lagoa Rodrico de Freitas. * * * * * It was alive with birds, and they hopped and pecked and squabbled without acrimony within feet of her seated figure. Bell knew that she had been waiting for a long time. He looked quickly at her face. It was quite pale, but entirely tearless. "Here is the message, Senhor Bell," she said quietly, "but I think I have been followed." Bell growled in his throat. "I did not discover it until I reached this spot," she said evenly. "And I did not know what to do. If I left, I would be seized and the message taken--and I think that someone would have waited here for you. So, in part to gain time, and in part because I hoped you might have some resource, I remained." "How many of them?" asked Bell shortly. "Two," she said quietly. She looked at him, her large eyes entirely calm and grave. "Give me the package," said Bell briefly. "They'll be more anxious to get it back than to bother you. And I'll either knock them cold or hold them in a scrap until you get away." She reached in her pocket and handed him a small thick envelope. He stuffed it in the side pocket of his coat. "I will walk away," he observed, "and they'll follow me. Can you arrange to give me some sign that you're safe?" "By the gateway," she told him. "My handkerchief. I shall start as soon as you have vanished. If I am followed, I will drop this handkerchief, as it is. If I am not followed, I will tie a knot. But what can you do?" "I'll do something," said Bell coldly. "Something!" * * * * * She smiled, with the same odd bitterness her father had shown. "My father--shot himself," she said briefly. "I have no particular hope of doing better. But I shall not be Ribiera's slave." She remained quite still. Bell moved away. He hurried. There was thick jungle ahead, a section of the Gardens that is painstakingly preserved untouched and undisturbed, that visitors to the capital of Brazil may observe a typical sample of the virgin interior. He dived into that jungle as if in flight. And very shortly after, two men dived in after him. They hesitated, these men, because your policeman of Rio does not like to injure his uniform, and there are many thorns in jungle growths. But they entered it, having first drawn small glittering weapons. And then from the jungle came silence. * * * * *