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 up with that crooked little concession hunter called Boynton."

"Stop!" cried the girl.

"For three years now she's been a feeder for that one-lunged climber, that Yankee renegade who's been trying to pose as a Spaniard. They're the team who went down yonder with a cooked up claim on the Cornruche Rubber Treaty territory."

"Stop!" cried the indignant girl, more shrilly. The scene in some way reminded McKinnon of a meeting between a cat and a mastiff. More and more he grew to resent the fact that this fragile and isolated figure should be dragged through such demeaning mires of scurrility. But Ganley was not to be stopped.

"And when they'd wrung their money out of that," he declared, "they dished up a Locombian nitrate claim and drained that dry. And when that was picked clean they wheedled their way into Duran's good graces. And then, to cinch her graft, this woman, this pink-and-white beauty right here before you, married a Santo Domingan half-caste filibuster who'd made a half million out of brandy smuggling and counterfeiting!"