“On the face of it, yes. He did not write the abbreviations on the back.”
“Abbreviations!” exclaimed Poritol.
“Please let the matter rest till morning,” said Orme stubbornly. “I have told you just what I would do.”
Poritol opened his mouth, to speak, but Alcatrante silenced him with a frown. “Your word is sufficient, Mr. Orme,” he said. “We will call to-morrow morning. Is ten o’clock too early?”
“Not at all,” said Orme. “Doubtless I shall be able to satisfy you. I merely wish to think it over.”
With a formal bow, Alcatrante turned to the door and departed, Poritol following.
Orme strolled back to his window and stood idly watching the lights of the vessels on the lake. But his mind was not on the unfolded view before him. He was puzzling over this mystery in which he had so suddenly become a factor. Unquestionably, the five-dollar bill held the key to some serious problem.
Surely Alcatrante had not come merely as the friend of Poritol, for the difference in the station of the two South Americans was marked. Poritol was a cheap character—useful, no doubt, in certain kinds of work, but vulgar and unconvincing. He might well be one of those promoters who hang on at the edge of great projects, hoping to pick up a commission here and there. His strongest point was his obvious effort to triumph over his own insignificance, for this effort, by its comic but desperate earnestness, could not but command a certain degree of respect.
Alcatrante, on the other hand, was a name to make statesmen knit their brows. A smooth trouble-maker, he had set Europe by the ears in the matter of unsettled South American loans, dexterously appealing to the much-overworked Monroe Doctrine every time his country was threatened by a French or German or British blockade. But his mind was of no small caliber. He could hold his own not only at his own game of international chess, but in the cultured discussion of polite topics. Orme knew of him as a clever after-dinner speaker, a man who could, when he so desired, please greatly by his personal charm.
No, Alcatrante was no friend of Poritol’s; nor was it likely that, as protector of the interests of his countrymen, he would go so far as to accompany them on their errands unless much was at stake. Perhaps Poritol was Alcatrante’s tool and had bungled some important commission. It occurred to Orme that the secret of the bill might be connected with the negotiation of a big business concession in Alcatrante’s country. “S. R. Evans” might be trying to get control of rubber forests or mines—in the Urinaba Mountains, perhaps, after all.