32:03That is how this chapter and this book came to be written.
32:07Everyone who goes to any theater in the United States may have read among the advertisements on the program an oddly worded one which begins, Conrad, Conrad, Conrad, and which goes on to say that, In accepting the presidency of the Honduras National Lottery Company, Louisiana State Lottery Company, I shall not surrender the presidency of the Gulf Coast Ice and Manufacturing Company of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
32:38Therefore, address all proposals for supplies, machinery, etc., as well as all business communications to Paul Conrad, Puerto Cortez, Honduras, care Central American Express, Fort Tampa City, Florida, USA.
32:58You have probably read this advertisement often and enjoyed the naive manner in which Mr. Conrad asks for correspondence on different subjects, especially on that relating to all business communications, and how at the same time he has so described his whereabouts that no letter so addressed would ever reach his faraway home in Puerto Cortez, but would be promptly stopped at Tampa, as he means that they should.
33:27After my anonymous friend had told me of Puerto Cortez, I read of it on the program with keener interest, and Puerto Cortez became to me a harbor of much mysterious moment, of a certain dark significance, and of possible adventure.
33:44I remembered all that the lottery had been before the days of its banishment, and all that it had dared to be when, as a corporation legally chartered by the state of Louisiana, it had put its chain and collar upon legislatures and senators, judges and editors, when it had silenced the voice of the church and the pulpit by great gifts of money to charities and hospitals, so giving out in a lump sum with one hand what it had taken from the people in dollars and half dollars, five hundred and six hundred fold with the other.
