"My uncle isn't telling all his plans, even to me. I've delivered his orders, and it's getting along toward ten o'clock and you haven't much time if you're to sail on the Santa Maria. I'm to go on the boat myself, and it isn't likely my uncle would leave me alone and unprotected in Central America. He thought you and your friends could look after me a little, both on the boat and until he was able to reach Honduras, but——"
Miss Harris used her lustrous Spanish eyes with telling effect.
"Certainly we will go," broke in Matt, "only it was such a hurry-up order that it rather floored me. I and my pards have been waiting to hear from Mr. Townsend about some work which he was going to do when he got well enough. Perhaps the work has something to do with you?"
Matt was clever at drawing inferences. There might be Spanish blood in Miss Harris' veins—British Honduras was partially peopled with men and women of Spanish descent—and here was a call to Belize. Then, again, Miss Harris had only recently arrived in New Orleans, and it required no great stretch of fancy to imagine that she had sprung, thus suddenly, some line of endeavor for which her uncle had been waiting.
"I am not at liberty to tell you anything more, Motor Matt," said Miss Harris, with another of her bright smiles. "Will you take the Santa Maria?"
"Yes."
A strange glow danced in the girl's expressive eyes.
"That is nice of you," said she. "Here are the tickets. My uncle was so sure you'd go that he got them and secured your stateroom reservations."
Matt took the envelope the girl handed to him and walked down the stairs with her. She bade him good-by at the ladies' entrance, and, as he turned to go back to the office he had a disturbing thought.
If there had been time to secure tickets and cabin reservations, there should have been time for Townsend to give Matt and his chums a little more notice of that trip to Honduras.