"With the help of my friends I managed to break jail in Santiago--one devoted fellow is serving there now in my place. But I was too late to catch the _Allianca_. I learned that de Socotra had departed secretly in his yacht for an unknown destination, and I did not require to be told that extreme danger threatened my friend and my master. The captain of a small coasting steamer came to my assistance. He smuggled me aboard and carried me to New Orleans, whence I came here by train. But I was too late! They got him." CHAPTER XIII DE SOCOTRA HIRES T7011 AGAIN It was now two o'clock. Greg said to Estuban, "Come to the corner drug-store with me. I am to receive a report there from the man who is watching de Socotra. He may give us something to go on." This was the substance of Pa Simmons' communication: "An hour ago I took up my place where I could watch the entrance to the Stickney Arms. His nobs, the Spanish gent, come out about one-thirty; there was a taxi waiting for him. He was carried down-town, me following, to a house on East Seventeenth Street near Stuyvesant Square, number 716 it was. He let his cab go and went in there. I drove around the corner, and letting my cab stand there come back and went into a lunch counter that was almost directly across the street, and where I could watch the house. I got my lunch while I waited. He was inside about half an hour. He come out with another fellow. His nobs had a little book in his hand." "What kind of book?" asked Greg eagerly. "A sort of fat note-book, sort of narrowish and thick, with a black cover. It had different colored papers bound up inside it. He was turning over the pages as he come down the steps as if it had just been handed to him inside. So I saw it plain." "What kind of man was with him?" "Another dago, fattish, clean-shaven, elegant dressed, a man with a sleepy kind of look." "Abanez," thought Greg. "Well, the two of them started west on Seventeenth, and I hustled back and got my cab and followed. 'Tain't no cinch, though, to follow two men on foot when you're in a cab. I ran circles round the block so's they wouldn't catch on that I was trailing them. At the Avenue they hailed a bus and rode up on top where I could watch them good. They went into a railway ticket office at Thirtieth Street. I followed them in. I saw Soak-oater buy a ticket to Washington and a parlor-car seat on the six o'clock train this evening. I heard him say to the guy with him: 'Yew-neth,' or some such name says he, 'Yew-neth will telegraph me during the afternoon what time the President will see me to-morrow.' "Well, the two guys parted outside the ticket-office, and Soak-oater led me to a little hotel on Irving Place called--well, I can't say it because it's Spanish, but you know the place. He's in there now, and I'm phoning from across the street."