“You met him once two years ago, in Santiago, at the Caf� Venus. He had dinner with us.”

“Oh, one of those naval officers?”

Dick shook his head.

“The civilian. Don’t you remember that big blond fellow — you talked music with him for half an hour while Captain Joyce talked our heads off to prove that the United States should clean Mexico up and out with the mailed fist.”

“Oh, to be sure,” Paula vaguely recollected. “He’d met you somewhere before� South Africa, wasn’t it? Or the Philippines?”

“That’s the chap. South Africa, it was. Evan Graham. Next time we met was on the Times dispatch boat