“Why, he’s up there at Tegucigalpa himself,” said Aiken. “Didn’t you know that? He’s up at the capital, visiting Alvarez. He came in through this port about two weeks ago.” “Joseph Fiske is fighting in a Hondurian revolution?” I exclaimed. “Certainly not!” cried Aiken. “He’s here on a pleasure trip; partly pleasure, partly business. He came here on his yacht. You can see her from the window, lying to the left of the buoy. Fiske has nothing to do with this row. I don’t suppose he knows there’s a revolution going on.” I resented this pretended lack of interest on the part of the Wall Street banker. I condemned it as a piece of absurd affectation. “Don’t you believe it!” I said. “No matter how many millions a man has, he doesn’t stand to lose $500,000 without taking an interest in it.” “Oh, but he doesn’t know about _that_,” said Aiken. “He doesn’t know the ins and outs of the story--what I’ve been telling you. That’s on the inside--that’s cafe scandal. That side of it would never reach him. I suppose Joe Fiske is president of a _dozen_ steamship lines, and all he does is to lend his name to this one, and preside at board meetings. The company’s lawyers tell him whatever they think he ought to know. They probably say they’re having trouble down here owing to one of the local revolutions, and that Garcia is trying to blackmail them.” “Then you don’t think Fiske came down here about this?” I asked. “About this?” repeated Aiken, in a tone of such contempt that I disliked him intensely. For the last half hour Aiken had been jumping unfeelingly on all my ideals and illusions. “No,” he went on. “He came here on his yacht on a pleasure trip around the West India Islands, and he rode in from here to look over the Copan Silver Mines. Alvarez is terribly keen to get rid of him. He’s afraid the revolutionists will catch him and hold him for ransom. He’d bring a good price,” Aiken added, reflectively. “It’s enough to make a man turn brigand. And his daughter, too. She’d bring a good price.” “His daughter!” I exclaimed. Aiken squeezed the tips of his fingers together, and kissed them, tossing the imaginary kiss up toward the roof. Then he drank what was left of his rum and water at a gulp and lifted the empty glass high in the air. “To the daughter,” he said. It was no concern of mine, but I resented his actions exceedingly. I think I was annoyed that he should have seen the young lady while I had not. I also resented his toasting her before a stranger. I knew he could not have met her, and his pretence of enthusiasm made him appear quite ridiculous. He looked at me mournfully, shaking his head as though it were impossible for him to give me an idea of her. “Why they say,” he exclaimed, “that when she rides along the trail, the native women kneel beside it.