Constance turned to Gordon. He was gone.

Before she could move, some one seized her.

"Where's Santos?" demanded a hoarse voice in her ear. She looked up
to see Drummond.

She shut her lips tightly, secure in the secret that Ramon was at
the moment or soon would be on the Gulf, out of reach.

Across in the fog she strained her eyes. Was that the familiar
figure of Gordon moving in the dim light?

There he was, now,--with Drummond, the police, and the Secret
Service. It was exactly as she had suspected to herself, and a smile
played over her face.

All was excitement, shouts, muttered imprecations. Constance was the
calmest in the crowd--deaf to even Drummond's "third degree."

They had begun to break open the boxes marked "salt" and "corn."

A loud exclamation above the sharp crunching of the axes escaped
Gordon. "Damn them! They've put one across on us!"

The boxes of "salt" and "corn" contained--salt and corn.

Not a stock of a rifle, not a barrel, not a cartridge was in any of
them as the axes crashed in one case after another.