“Most fortunate for me,” said the girl sweetly.  “Mr. Perkins scuttled away like one of his own little wretched beetles.  When I see him again—­”

“Again?  Oh, well, if he’s a friend of yours, accourse he’d awtuv stood by—­”

“He isn’t!” she declared, with unnecessary vehemence.

“Don’t you be too hard on him, miss,” argued her escort.  “Seems to me he did a pretty good job for you, and stuck to it until he found some one else to take it up.”

“Then why didn’t he stand by you?”

“Oh, I don’t carry any ‘Help-wanted’ signs on me.  You know, miss, you can’t size up a man in this country like he was at home.  Now, me, I’d have natcherly hammered that Von Plaanden gink all to heh —­heh—­hash.  But did I do it?  I did not.  You see, I got a little mining concession out here in the mountains, and if I was to get into any diplomatic mix-up and bring in the police, it’d be bad for my business, besides maybe getting me a couple of tons of bracelets around my pretty little ankles.  Like as not your friend, Professor Lamps, has got an equally good reason for keeping the peace.”

“Do you mean that this man will make trouble for you over this?”

“Not as things stand.  So long as nothing was done—­no arrests or anything like that—­he’ll be glad to forget it, when he sobers up.  I’ll forget it, too, and maybe, miss, it wouldn’t be any harm to anybody if you did a turn at forgetting, yourself.”

But neither by the venturesome Miss Polly nor by her athlete servitor was the episode to be so readily dismissed.  Late that afternoon, when the Brewster party were sitting about iced fruit drinks amid the dingy and soiled elegance of the Kast’s one private parlor, Mr. Sherwen’s card arrived, followed shortly by Mr. Sherwen’s immaculate self, creaseless except for one furrow of the brow.

“How you are going to get out of here I really don’t know,” he said.

“Why should we hurry?” inquired Miss Brewster.  “I don’t find Caracuna so uninteresting.”

“Never since I came here has it been so charming,” said the legation representative, with a smiling bow.  “But, much as your party adds to the landscape, I’m not at all sure that this city is the most healthful spot for you at present.”

“You mean the plague?” asked Mr. Brewster.

“Not quite so loud, please.  ‘Healthful,’ as I used it, was, in part, a figure of speech.  Something is brewing hereabout.”

“Not a revolution?” cried Miss Polly, with eyes alight.  “Oh, do brew a revolution for me!  I should so adore to see one!”

“Possibly you may, though I hardly think it.  Some readjustment of foreign relations, at most.  The Dutch blockade is, perhaps, only a beginning.  However, it’s sufficient to keep you bottled up, though if we could get word to them, I dare say they would let a yacht go out.”

“Senator Richland, of the Committee on Foreign Relations, is an old friend of my family,” said Carroll, in his measured tones.  “A cable—­”