Harley and I became seated and Colonel Menendez disposed himself upon a
leather-covered couch, nodding apologetically as he did so.

"My health requires that I should recline for a certain number of hours
every day," he explained. "So you will please forgive me."

"My dear Colonel Menendez," said Harley, "I feel sure that you are
interrupting your siesta in order to discuss the unpleasant business
which finds us in such pleasant surroundings. Allow me once again to
suggest that we postpone this matter until, shall we say, after
dinner?"

"No, no! No, no," protested the Colonel, waving his hand deprecatingly.
"Here is Pedro with coffee and some curacao of a kind which I can
really recommend, although you may be unfamiliar with it."

I was certainly unfamiliar with the liqueur which he insisted we must
taste, and which was contained in a sort of square, opaque bottle
unknown, I think, to English wine merchants. Beyond doubt it was potent
stuff; and some cigars which the Spaniard produced on this occasion and
which were enclosed in little glass cylinders resembling test-tubes and
elaborately sealed, I recognized to be priceless. They convinced me, if
conviction had not visited me already, that Colonel Don Juan Sarmiento
Menendez belonged to that old school of West Indian planters by whom
the tradition of the Golden Americas had been for long preserved in the
Spanish Main.

We discussed indifferent matters for a while, sipping this wonderful
curacao of our host's. The effect created by the Colonel's story faded
entirely, and when, the latter being unable to conceal his drowsiness,