To the noisiest and most cosmopolitan of hotels my driver brought me, and as soon as I was settled, I plunged forth to see the town. Before I knew it, I found myself on the marble-studded Prado where the lamps shine as green satin through the trees. I walked leisurely down this most delightful of promenades, watching the fascinating mixtures of browns, blacks and olive-whites who shuffled past me. I repulsed a dozen miserable Chinese vendors of peanuts, successfully negotiated two optimistic guides who leered promises of night life, paused to listen to the army band struggling with “La Bohème,” and then found myself at the Prado Bar. Now, the Prado Bar is the meeting place of the adventurers of the South, so it is not strange that it was here I was destined to see this evening the two men who were to be added to my cast of principals in the tragedy. It may have been a coincidence that Ben Smith was there. But I am inclined to believe that the Russian deliberately chose the scene. I refuse to take his assurance that our meeting was entirely accidental. But I am anticipating my story. After my experience of the yacht, I took the Prado Bar to my bosom as one would a long-lost friend. Do not misunderstand me. The friendship was not at all alcoholic. There were no thirsty Americans clamoring for hard liquors. The Prado Bar is too far from the center of town, just around the corner from the battered Malecon where at night angry waters swirl over the sea wall and splash the proud boulevard. I found the tumult of the waters pleasant music; the bartenders were polite and capable; the bacardi genuine and cheap. And Pancho, the proprietor, with his swarthy face framed in the radiance of his thousand bottles gleaming from the highly polished shelves, hospitably bade me welcome. There were few in the bar at the moment, but they looked my own kind--genteel wanderers, known commonly as tropical tramps. I was about to open conversational negotiations with two likely-looking prospects when someone called my name, and I whirled about to find myself face to face with Ben Smith. “Of all people!” I welcomed him. “The same to you!” And we shook hands warmly. I had not seen Ben Smith in three years. He had been attached to Police Headquarters in Richmond when I covered that institution for the Star. He was responsible for the solution of the Stephenson murder--that strange crime where after many months of inquiry Smith finally discovered that the wealthy bachelor had been done to death by his own brother, one of Richmond’s wealthiest and most respectable citizens. You undoubtedly recall the case, for its ramifications were spread upon the newspapers of the world. Smith gained considerable recognition as a result of this coup, and when the Cuban police created an American department for the benefit of our crooks who wandered down there, Smith was loaned to head the department.