Gale smiled triumphantly. The sentence which she had left uncompleted and her momentary agitation had not escaped his notice. “Yes, he’s back,” he said, with sarcasm. “Didn’t you know that? I had an idea that you might have seen him.” “Surely you wouldn’t expect him to show his face in San Cristobal, considering the circumstances under which he left,” the girl returned, her blue eyes boldly meeting his searching gaze. “Perhaps not,” Gale rejoined, after a slight pause, during which he did some rapid thinking. “Perhaps I was wrong in assuming that he has returned to Baracoa at all. He disappeared from the ship at San Juan, and I had an idea that he might have come back here.” “Is that why you returned, too?” Virginia demanded scornfully. “Were you lured back by the hope of finding him in Portiforo’s clutches again, and being able to gloat over his fate?” “Certainly not,” the reporter answered emphatically. “I’m not bothering about Hawley at all. I came back here on a matter of business.” Part of his statement was the truth. It was not merely malice which had caused the man to postpone his return to New York and hurry back to San Cristobal as soon as he had discovered that Hawley was missing from the steamer. He had a professional reason for taking this step. He decided that he might have acted somewhat rashly in notifying his office that there was nothing in the weird rumors concerning Felix’s incarceration in El Torro fortress. A certain note which the wife of the missing president of Baracoa had written to the Camera Chap, part of which he had managed to read over the latter’s shoulder, on the promenade deck of the steamship, had opened the reporter’s eyes to the possibility that he might have made a big mistake. He concluded that he had better seek to rectify that mistake by returning to Baracoa and making another attempt to get at the facts concerning Felix. “I am sorry to find that you took me seriously the other day when we had that talk concerning Hawley,” he said to Virginia. “I don’t really wish the fellow any harm. He and I are good friends, now--I suppose he’s told you of the large part I had in getting him set free--and I should regret exceedingly seeing him in trouble again. I am glad to learn that he hasn’t shown up in San Cristobal. I was afraid that he might have shipped from San Juan in a tramp steamer headed this way. But, as you say, it is scarcely likely that he would have done such a rash thing.”