He added, "You think—Hanley thinks—the smuggling is on too large a scale to be any illicit producer?"
I nodded.
"Then," he said, "it must be one of our recognized mines."
"Hanley thinks it is a recognized mine, falsifying its production record," I explained.
"If that is so, I will discover it," he said. He spoke with enthusiasm and vigor. "For you I shall treat as what you are—the representative of our most friendly government. The figures of our quicksilver production I shall lay before you in just a few days. Let me fill up your glass, Grant."
The lazy tropics. I really did not doubt his sincerity. But I did doubt his ability to cope with any clever criminal. His enthusiasm for action would wilt like his neckpiece, in Nareda's heat. Unless, perhaps, the knowledge that the smuggler was cheating him as well as the United States—that might spur him.
He added—and now I got a shock wholly unexpected: "If we think that some recognized producer of quicksilver here is cheating us, it should not be difficult to check up on it. Nareda has only one large cinnabar lode being worked. A private individual: that fellow Jacob Spawn—"
"Spawn?" I exclaimed involuntarily.
"Why, yes. Did not he mention it? His mine is no more than ten kilometers from here—back on the southern slope."