"David wrote me nothing of this," he said. "From his letter I learned that he was coming with friends. He did not tell me who these friends were." "Well, there's every reason why I should be frank with you--as I expect you to be frank with me." "You are still suspicious. What can I do, or say? I tell you, I don't know where David is." "Do you know where he was when he disappeared from Bogota three years ago?" "No." "Strange! A man with all your interests at stake in this puzzle--surely you must have reached some conclusion?" "I tell you, I have not," he replied sharply. "I know nothing, absolutely nothing." "You admit you have a theory--let's call it that--a theory that fits the facts so far as you know them?" "That's your deduction," sneered the other. "But, I'm right?" "Possibly," Raoul answered, turning again to the papers that littered his writing table. "That's all I want," declared Leighton with satisfaction. "Now, we will plan our campaign." Raoul, engrossed in a large, musty document which he had spread before him, greeted the proposal with a shrug of his shoulders. General Herran, impatient at the apparently futile and--to him--incomprehensible discussion, consumed innumerable cigarettes, while Leighton, with the air of one for whom waiting is an enjoyment, settled himself comfortably in a capacious rocking-chair. The ensuing silence was rudely broken. There was a vigorous pounding upon the outer door, followed by the abrupt and noisy entrance into the house of some one from the street. Whoever it was, this late visitor stood little upon ceremony. But Leighton and General Herran had no difficulty in recognizing the nervous shuffle of feet along the stone corridor, the thump of the heavy walking-stick, accompanied by grunts of dissatisfaction and suppressed wrath. When Doctor Miranda finally bolted into the room, fanning himself as usual--although fans were a decidedly uncomfortable superfluity in the chilly night air of Bogota--they were, in a way, prepared for him. "He is gone! He is lost--that leetle fellow! There is one more lost of them!" he shouted, repeating his disjointed English in staccato Spanish, as soon as he caught sight of his two friends. Leighton and Herran exchanged amazed glances at this enigmatic bit of intelligence, while Raoul, preoccupied and restless though he was, could not restrain a grin at the unconventional being who had rolled his way, unannounced, into his house. "What do you mean?" demanded Leighton. "I tell you, he is lost, that leetle schoolmaster!" Miranda exploded. "Andrew Parmelee lost? Impossible!" "You are an estupido," retorted the Doctor angrily. "I say he is lost. Before my eyes he disappear. I never lie, I never mistake."