The President admitted me at once. In his airy office, with safeguards against eavesdropping, I found him at his desk with a bank of modern instruments before him. "Sit down, Grant." * * * * * He was a heavy-set, flabby man of sixty-odd, this Lowland President. White hair; and an old-fashioned, rolling white mustache of the sort lately come into South American fashion. He sat with a glass of iced drink at his side. His uniform was stiffly white, and ornate with heavy gold braid, but his neckpiece was wilted with perspiration. "Damnable heat, Grant." "Yes, Sir President." "Have a drink." He swung a tinkling glass before me. "Now then, tell me what is your trouble. Smuggling, here in Nareda. I don't believe it." His eyes, incongruously alert with all the rest of him so fat and lazy, twinkled at me. "We of the Nareda Government watch our quicksilver production very closely. The government fee is a third." I might say that the Nareda government collected a third on all the mineral and agricultural products of the country, in exchange for the necessary government concessions. Markes exported this share openly to the world markets, paying the duty exactly like a private corporation. He added, "You think--Hanley thinks--the smuggling is on too large a scale to be any illicit producer?" I nodded. "Then," he said, "it must be one of our recognized mines." "Hanley thinks it is a recognized mine, falsifying its production record," I explained. "If that is so, I will discover it," he said. He spoke with enthusiasm and vigor. "For you I shall treat as what you are--the representative of our most friendly government. The figures of our quicksilver production I shall lay before you in just a few days. Let me fill up your glass, Grant." * * * * * The lazy tropics. I really did not doubt his sincerity. But I did doubt his ability to cope with any clever criminal. His enthusiasm for action would wilt like his neckpiece, in Nareda's heat. Unless, perhaps, the knowledge that the smuggler was cheating him as well as the United States--_that_ might spur him. He added--and now I got a shock wholly unexpected: "If we think that some recognized producer of quicksilver here is cheating us, it should not be difficult to check up on it. Nareda has only one large cinnabar lode being worked. A private individual: that fellow Jacob Spawn--" "Spawn?" I exclaimed involuntarily. "Why, yes. Did not he mention it? His mine is no more than ten kilometers from here--back on the southern slope." "He didn't mention it," I said. "So? That is strange; but he is a secretive Dutchman by nature. He specializes in prying into the other fellow's affairs. Hm-m." He fell into a reverie while I stared at him. Spawn, the big--the only big--quicksilver producer here! * * * * * The President interrupted my startled thoughts. "I hope you did not intimate your real purpose?" "No."