to their baking in the mud ovens under the orange-trees, or to the
interminable combing of their long, straight hair; the men to their
cigarettes and gossip in the cantinas.

Goodwin sat on Keogh's doorstep, and read his telegram. It was from
Bob Englehart, an American, who lived in San Mateo, the capital city
of Anchuria, eighty miles in the interior. Englehart was a gold
miner, an ardent revolutionist and "good people." That he was a man
of resource and imagination was proven by the telegram he had sent.
It had had been his task to send a confidential message to his friend
in Coralio. This could not have been accomplished in either Spanish
or English, for the eye politic in Anchuria was an active one. But
Englehart was a diplomatist. There existed but one code upon which
he might make requisition with promise of safety--the great and
potent code of Slang. So, here is the message that slipped,
unconstrued, through the fingers of curious officials, and came
to the eye of Goodwin:

"His Nibs skedaddled yesterday per jack-rabbit line with all the
coin in the kitty and the bundle of muslin he's spoony about. The
boodle is six figures short. Our crowd in good shape, but we need
the spondulicks. You collar it. The main guy and the dry goods
are headed for the briny. You to know what to do.

BOB."

This screed, remarkable as it was, had no mystery for Goodwin.
He was the most successful of the small advance-guard of speculative
Americans that had invaded Anchuria, and he had not reached that
enviable pinnacle without having well exercised the arts of foresight