"Then there really are Sunshine Islands?" He sounded as if he had never really believed that there were any Sunshine Islands.
Bert looked at him in surprise. "Of course!" he said. "The special representative is a white man—James Pitts. He has had charge of King Pete's business affairs. He was on the islands when King Pete died, and then, just as he was ready to leave, the radicals, Sons of Sunshine, they call themselves, you know, locked him up. But he had sent Ka-kee-ta with a lot of important papers to a lawyer in Honolulu, and the lawyer brought him here. Pitts managed to escape and has just arrived. We were glad to see him, for we had so many contradictory messages from him and about him, that we scarcely knew what to think. I suppose they were sent by the radicals."
Joe stared at him before he drew a long breath, and turned away. "Mr. Kingley," he said impulsively, "I beg your pardon!"
"I should think you would," Mr. Kingley told him gruffly.
"All we have to do now," went on Bert, still rather overfull of importance, "is to find Queen Teresa, and then we can settle everything up. Mr. Marvin thought perhaps—" He looked suggestively at Mr. Kingley, who hurriedly shook his head and fairly bellowed his reply.
"No, I don't! I don't know where she is! You go right back and tell Mr. Marvin I don't know! This is all very interesting and very romantic, but it doesn't do my work. If there is nothing I can do for you, I would suggest that I have the morning mail to look over. Send in Miss Jenson," he curtly told the boy who ran in to answer his buzzer.
Joe, stalking out behind the others, could not refrain from a last word. He would have choked if he had not spoken. "You mean Mr. Gray, don't you?" He grinned sarcastically. "The Gazette should be told of the arrival of James Pitts, special representative of the Sunshine Islands, whose queen was found in the basement of the Evergreen."
Mr. Kingley regarded him with cold eyes. "Will you kindly shut the door behind you?" he said so frostily that any thermometer would have registered his temperature as far, far below zero.