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THE UNSPEAKABLE PERK

By Samuel Hopkins Adams





CONTENTS


     I. MR. BEETLE MAN
    II. AT THE KAST
   III. THE BETTER PART OF VALOR
    IV. TWO ON A MOUNTAIN-SIDE
     V. AN UPHOLDER OF TRADITIONS
    VI. FORKED TONGUES
   VII. "THAT WHICH THY SERVANT IS--"
  VIII. LOS YANKIS
    IX. THE BLACK WARNING
     X. THE FOLLY OF PERK
    XI. PRESTO CHANGE!
   XII. THE WOMAN AT THE QUINTA
  XIII. LEFT BEHIND
   XIV. THE YELLOW FLAG





THE UNSPEAKABLE PERK





I

MR. BEETLE MAN


The man sat in a niche of the mountain, busily hating the Caribbean Sea.
It was quite a contract that he had undertaken, for there was a large
expanse of Caribbean Sea in sight to hate; very blue, and still,
and indifferent to human emotions. However, the young man was a good
steadfast hater, and he came there every day to sit in the shade of the
overhanging boulder, where there was a little trickle of cool air down
the <DW72> and a little trickle of cool water from a crevice beneath the
rock, to despise that placid, unimpressionable ocean and all its works
and to wish that it would dry up forthwith, so that he might walk back
to the blessed United States of America. In good plain American, the
young man was pretty homesick.

Two-man's-lengths up the mountain, on the crest of the sturdy hater's
rock, the girl sat, loving the Caribbean Sea. Hers, also, was a large
contract, and she was much newer to it than was the man to his, for she
had only just discovered this vantage-ground by turning accidentally
into a side trail--quite a private little side trail made by her
unsuspected neighbor below--whence one emerges from a sea of verdure
into full view of the sea of azure. For the time, she was content to
rest there in the flow of the breeze and feast her eyes on that broad,
unending blue which blessedly separated her from the United States of
America and certain perplexities and complications comprised therein.
Presently she would resume the trail and return to the city of Caracuna,
somewhere behind her. That is, she would if she could find it, which
was by no means certain. Not that she greatly cared. If she were really
lost, they'd come out and get her. Meantime, all she wished was to
rest mind and body in the contemplation of that restful plain of cool
sapphire, four thousand feet below.

But there was a spirit of mischief abroad upon that mountain <DW72>.
It embodied itself in a puff of wind that stirred gratefully the curls
above the girl's brow. Also, it fanned the neck of the watcher below and
cunningly moved his hat from his side; not more than a few feet, indeed,
but still far enough to transfer it from the shade into the glaring sun
and into the view of the girl above. The owner made no move. If the wind
wanted to blow his new panama into some lower treetop, compelling him to
throw stones, perhaps to its permanent damage, in order to dislodge it,
why, that was just one more cause of offense to pin to his indictment
of irritation against the great island republic of Caracuna. Such is the
temper one gets into after a year in the tropics.

Like as peas are panama hats to the eyes of the inexpert; far more like
than men who live under them. For the girl, it was a direct inference
that this was a hat which she knew intimately; which, indeed, she had
rather maliciously eluded, riot half an hour before. Therefore, she
addressed it familiarly: "Boo!"

The result of this simple monosyllable exceeded her fondest
expectations. There was a sharp exclamation of surprise, followed by a
cry that might have meant dismay or wrath or both, as something metallic
tinkled and slid, presently coming to a stop beside the hat, where it
revealed itself as a pair of enormous, aluminum-mounted brown-green
spectacles. After it, on all fours, scrambled the owner.

Shock number one: It wasn't the man at all! Instead of the black-haired,
flanneled, slender Adonis whom the trouble-maker confidently assumed to
have been under that hat, she beheld a brown