Hearts of Three | Page 5

public doesn't. A year from now it'll list at two hundred...
that is, if Mexico can cut the revolution stuff... Whenever it drops you'll

have buying orders from me... Nonsense. Who wants control? It's
purely sporadic ... eh? I beg your pardon. I mean it's merely temporary.
Now I'm going off fishing for a fortnight. If it goes down five points,
buy. Buy all that's offered. Say, when a fellow's got a real bona fide
property, being bulled is almost as bad as having the bears after one...
yes... Sure... yes. Good-bye."
And while Francis returned delightedly to his fishing-rods, Destiny, in
Thomas Regan's down-town private office, was working overtime.
Having arranged with his various brokers to buy, and, through his
divers channels of secret publicity having let slip the cryptic tip that
something was wrong with Tampico Petroleum's concessions from the
Mexican government, Thomas Regan studied a report of his own
oil-expert emissary who had spent two months on the spot spying out
what Tampico Petroleum really had in sight and prospect.
A clerk brought in a card with the information that the visitor was
importunate and foreign. Regan listened, glanced at the card, and said:
"Tell this Mister Senor Alvarez Torres of Ciodad de Colon that I can't
see him."
Five minutes later the clerk was back, this time with a message
pencilled on the card. Regan grinned as he read it:
"Dear Mr. Regan,
"Honoured Sir:
"I have the honour to inform you that I have a tip on the location of the
treasure Sir Henry Morgan buried in old pirate days.
"Alvarez Torres."
Regan shook his head, and the clerk was nearly out of the room when
his employer suddenly recalled him.
"Show him in at once."

In the interval of being alone, Regan chuckled to himself as he rolled
the new idea over in his mind. "The unlicked cub!" he muttered through
the smoke of the cigar he was lighting. "Thinks he can play the lion
part old E.H.M. played. A trimming is what he needs, and old
Grayhead Thomas B. will see that he gets it."
Senor Alvarez Torres' English was as correct as his modish spring suit,
and though the bleached yellow of his skin advertised his
Latin-American origin, and though his black eyes were eloquent of the
mixed lustres of Spanish and Indian long compounded, nevertheless he
was as thoroughly New Yorkish as Thomas Regan could have wished.
"By great effort, and years of research, I have finally won to the clue to
the buccaneer gold of Sir Henry Morgan," he preambled. "Of course it's
on the Mosquito Coast. I'll tell you now that it's not a thousand miles
from the Chiriqui Lagoon, and that Bocas del Toro, within reason, may
be described as the nearest town. I was born there educated in Paris,
however and I know the neighbourhood like a book. A small schooner
the outlay is cheap, most very cheap but the returns, the reward the
treasure!"
Senor Torres paused in eloquent inability to describe more definitely,
and Thomas Regan, hard man used to dealing with hard- men,
proceeded to bore into him and his data like a cross-examining criminal
lawyer.
"Yes," Senor Torres quickly admitted, "I am somewhat embarrassed
how shall I say? for immediate funds."
"You need the money," the stock operator assured him brutally, and he
bowed pained acquiescence.
Much more he admitted under the rapid-fire interrogation. It was true,
he had but recently left Bocas del Toro, but he hoped never again to go
back. And yet he would go back if possibly some arrangement...
But Regan shut him off with the abrupt way of the masterman dealing
with lesser fellow-creatures. He wrote a check, in the name of Alvarez

Torres, and when that gentleman glanced at it he read the figures of a
thousand dollars.
"Now here's the idea," said Regan. "I put no belief whatsoever in your
story. But I have a young friend my heart is bound up in the boy but he
is too much about town, the white lights and the white-lighted ladies,
and the rest you understand?" And Senor Alvarez Torres bowed as one
man of the world to another. "Now, for the good of his health, as well
as his wealth and the saving of his soul, the best thing that could
happen to him is a trip after treasure, adventure, exercise, and... you
readily understand, I am sure."
Again Alvarez Torres bowed.
"You need the money," Regan continued. "Strive to interest him. That
thousand is for your effort. Succeed io interesting him so that he
departs after old Morgan's gold, and two thousand more is yours. So
thoroughly succeed in interesting him that he remains away three
months, two thousand more six months, five thousand. Oh, believe me,
I knew