'Is it? Yes! No, it isn't,' said Peter, going over to the window. 'But I 'll tell you who it is, though! It's Dunbar, and he 's got a commissario of police with him! Now, what in the name of wonder do they want here?' The two riders dismounted at the gate and came up the little path through the garden to the door. They walked stiffly, as though they had ridden for a long time, and their horses, tethered by the gate, looked used up and tired. Dunbar hardly paused to shake hands. 'Look here,' he said, 'E. W. Smith is here, and he 's wanted!' CHAPTER XV 'First of all,' said Peter, 'who is E. W. Smith, and why the dickens should you imagine he is here?' Dunbar gave him a quick look. 'Is any one here?' he asked. 'No one but Ross and Christopherson and myself,' said Peter. 'Purvis was here, but he started for Buenos Ayres last night, and I have no idea where he is now. I saw the train start from the station at Taco, but he was not in it.' 'Purvis is in a tight place,' said Dunbar dryly. Ross, hearing voices in the drawing-room, wakened up, and now appeared with ruffled hair and still clad in his sleeping-suit. He suggested refreshments, and sat down to hear what Dunbar had to say. Peter's face had a queer set look upon it. Where another man might perhaps have asked questions he showed something of his mother's reserve, and was never more silent than when a moment of strain arrived. He began in a mechanical way to make two fresh cups of coffee, and poured the steaming mixture from the thin saucepan into the cups. 'The day of reckoning seems to have arrived for Purvis,' he said; and then lazily, 'poor brute, he had his points.' Purvis was a common adventurer after all! And he had got close upon two hundred pounds from him on the plea of having some knowledge of his brother, which was simply non-existent. He could see the whole thing now. This cock-and-bull story of the discovery of the missing man was really a very simple ruse for extorting money, and the last seventy pounds which he, Peter, had been fool enough to pay him had been wanted to help Purvis to get away. 'I must search the place thoroughly,' said Dunbar. He finished his coffee; but the ascertaining whether or not any one was concealed in the little house or in the outbuildings was a matter of only a few minutes. 'If he 's got away again,' said Dunbar, 'I 'll eat my hat!' 'Purvis is a slippery customer,' said Ross; 'but he has lived peaceably and openly for a considerable time. If he is wanted you have only to ride up to his door and arrest him.' Dunbar cleared his throat. 'You mind,' he said, 'the story of the _Rosana_, which I told you on board the Royal Mail Packet, when we were in the River Plate coming up to Monte Video?' 'I remember,' said Peter briefly. And Ross nodded his head also; every one in Argentine knew the story of the wreck of the _Rosana_. 'I knew,' said Dunbar, 'that E. W. Smith could not die!'