He was a good-looking young man in a Panama hat and his manner seemed to take it for granted that Billy knew who he was.
"They want us to pay duty on our trunks," he explained, "and we want to leave them in bond. We'll be here only until to-night, when we're going on down the coast to Santo Domingo. But we don't speak French, and we can't make them understand that."
"You don't need to speak any language to give a man ten dollars," said Billy.
"Oh!" exclaimed the man in the Panama. "I was afraid if I tried that they might arrest us."
"They may arrest you if you don't," said Billy.
Acting both as interpreter and disbursing agent, Billy satisfied the demands of his fellow employees of the government, and his fellow countrymen he directed to the Hotel Ducrot.
As some one was sure to take their money, he thought it might as well go to his mother-in-law elect. The young man in the Panama expressed the deepest gratitude, and Billy, assuring him he would see him later, continued to the power-house, still wondering where he had seen him before.
At the power-house he found seated at his desk a large, bearded stranger whose derby hat and ready-to-wear clothes showed that he also had but just arrived on the Prinz der Nederlanden.
"You William Barlow?" demanded the stranger. "I understand you been threatening, unless you get your pay raised, to commit sabotage on these works?"
"Who the devil are you?" inquired Billy.