Hearts of Three | Page 6

his father. We were comrades, partners, I might say, almost
brothers. I would sacrifice any sum to win his son to manhood's
wholesome path. What do you say? The thousand is yours to begin
with. Well?"
With trembling fingers Senor Alvarez Torres folded and unfolded the
check.
"I... I accept," he stammered and faltered in his eagerness. "I... I... How
shall I say? ... I am yours to command."
Five minutes later, as he arose to go, fully instructed in the part he was
to play and with his story of Morgan's treasure revised to
convincingness by the brass-tack business acumen of the stock-gambler,
he blurted out, almost facetiously, yet even more pathetically:
"And the funniest thing about it, Mr. Regan, is that it is true. Your
advised changes in my narrative make it sound more true, but true it is
under it all. I need the money. You are most munificent, and I shall do

my best... I... I pride myself that I am an artist. But the real and solemn
truth is that the clue to Morgan's buried loot is genuine. I have had
access to records inaccessible to the public, which is neither here nor
there, for the men of my own family they are family records have had
similar access, and have wasted their lives before me in the futile
search. Yet were they on the right clue except that their wits made them
miss the spot by twenty miles. It was there in the records. They missed
it, because it was, I think, a deliberate trick, a conundrum, a puzzle, a
disguisement, a maze, which I, and I alone, have penetrated and solved.
The early navigators all played such tricks on the charts they drew. My
Spanish race so hid the Hawaiian Islands by five degrees of longitude."
All of which was in turn Greek to Thomas Regan, who smiled his
acceptance of listening and with the same smile conveyed his busy
business-man's tolerant unbelief.
Scarcely was Senor Torres gone, when Francis Morgan was shown in.
"Just thought I'd drop around for a bit of counsel," he said, greetings
over. "And to whom but you should I apply, who so closely played the
game with my father? You and he were partners, I understand, on some
of the biggest deals. He always told me to trust your judgment. And,
well, here I am, and I want to go fishing. What's up with Tampico
Petroleum?"
"What is up?" Regan countered, with fine simulation of ignorance of
the very thing of moment he was responsible for precipitating.
"Tampico Petroleum?"
Francis nodded, dropped into a chair, and lighted a cigarette, while
Regan consulted the ticker.
"Tampico Petroleum is up two points you should worry," he opined.
"That's what I say," Francis concurred. "I should worry. But just the
same, do you think some bunch, onto the inside value of it and it's big I
speak under the rose, you know, I mean in absolute confidence?"
Regan nodded. "It is big. It is right. It is the real thing. It is legitimate.

Now this activity would you think that somebody, or some bunch, is
trying to get control?"
His father's associate, with the reverend gray of hair thatching his roof
of crooked brain, shook the thatch.
"Why," he amplified, "it may be just a flurry, or it may be a hunch on
the stock public that it's really good. What do you say?"
"Of course it's good," was Francis' warm response. "I've got reports,
Regan, so good they'd make your hair stand up. As I tell all my friends,
this is the real legitimate. It's a damned shame I had to let the public in
on it. It was so big, I just had to. Even all the money my father left me,
couldn't swing it I mean, free money, not the stuff tied up money to
work with."
"Are you short?" the older man queried.
"Oh, I've got a tidy bit to operate with," was the airy reply of youth.
"You mean...?"
"Sure. Just that. If she drops, I'll buy. It's finding money."
"Just about how far would you buy?" was the next searching
interrogation, masked by an expression of mingled good humor and
approbation.
"All I've got," came Francis Morgan's prompt answer. "I tell you,
Regan, it's immense."
"I haven't looked into it to amount to anything, Francis; but I will say
from the little I know that it listens good."
"Listens! I teil you, Regan, it's the Simon-pure, straight legitimate, and
it's a shame to have it listed at all. I don't have to wreck anybody or
anything to pull it across. The world will be better for my shooting into
it I am afraid to say how many hundreds of millions of barrels of real
oil say,