"A quarter of a mil—Great Caesar!" I gasped. Then the deductive part of my brain began to fit the fragmentary admissions into a probable whole. All summer there had been flying rumors in the West India ports of a revolution brewing in one of the South American republics; an upheaval which was to be financed—in the interests of a great importing corporation—by New York capital. Could it be possible that Van Dyck had foolishly allowed his yacht to be made use of as a money transport?
"You don't mean to say that we have that money on board now?" I protested, when the possible consequences began to make themselves manifest.
"As it happens, we haven't," he replied, quite calmly. "That is why it took the Andromeda so long to make the run from New York to Havana. I was getting rid of the impedimenta."
"But if you've gotten rid of it, why should your crew—"
"That is just the point," he explained patiently. "The thing had to be done quietly, and proper precautions were taken at both ends of the line to keep anybody and everybody from finding out that we were carrying a small fortune between-decks. Still, I am afraid it did leak out. That little black-mustached fellow who turned up at Havana, and again in New Orleans——"
"That reminds me of something that occurred to me no longer ago than this morning's breakfast-time," I broke in; "a thing that I've been meaning to ask you about ever since. Manuel, the mulatto boy who usually serves breakfast, was invisible this morning, and he had a substitute."
"Well?"
"I was going to say that, if I'm not greatly mistaken, you have that same mysterious little man—minus the mustaches—on your payroll at this moment, Bonteck. He is the under-steward who goes by the name of Lequat; he was the man who substituted for Manuel this morning, and he was the man who came to me just now to tell me that you wanted me."
It was now Van Dyck's turn to sit up and take notice and he did both, emphatically.
"That fellow?—In the Andromeda?" he exclaimed.