Biff had no answer to this statement. It was all too true. He and Uncle Charlie had been flown out of China—they had slipped across the border illegally—to Rangoon in Burma and then on to the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, with Chinese Red agents breathing down their necks.

“Any idea what your brother is doing in the Caribbean?” Mr. Brewster asked his wife.

Biff’s mother shook her head. “Not any more than you have, Tom. Have you heard from your uncle, Biff?”

“Only one letter since we got chased out of China,” the boy replied. “That came about a month after I got back home. All he said was that things were too hot for him to operate in the Orient for a while.”

“He is still with the firm of Explorations Unlimited, isn’t he?” Mr. Brewster asked.

“Oh, yes. Uncle Charlie said the company was negotiating a contract that would have him operating in this hemisphere. He didn’t say what kind of operation it was, though.”

“It must be tied in with his wanting you to come to Curaçao, son.”

“Looks that way, Dad. What about it, Mom?” Biff looked hopefully at his mother. She didn’t reply for a few moments. Then she said, “Well, I suppose—”

Mrs. Brewster never finished her sentence. The youngest members of the Brewster family burst into the study.

“Mom! Dad! It’s a cablegram!” eleven-year-old Ted Brewster shouted, waving an envelope over his head.

“Yes! Another one,” Monica, Ted’s twin sister, chimed in.

The twins were five years younger than Biff. Their ambition was sometime, someday to travel “a-lone,” as they emphatically put it. They listened goggle-eyed to tales of the adventures Biff and his father or Biff and Uncle Charlie had shared. On several occasions the twins had gone with their parents and brother to the romantic places where these adventures had taken place. Mrs. Brewster, always present when the twins were voyaging, had taken great care to see that her two youngest were not exposed to the dangers that had accompanied Biff’s far-away adventures. Ted and Monica could hardly wait until they were old enough to take part in them themselves.

“It’s for you this time, Biff,” Ted said. Excitement shone on his young face. His eyes sparkled.

“I’ll 

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