Hearts of Three | Page 7

I've got one well alone, in ths Huasteca field, that's gushed

27,000 barrels a day for seven months. And it's still doing it. That's the
drop in the bucket we've got piped to market now. And it's twenty -two
gravity, and carries less than two-tenths of one per cent, of sediment.
And there's one gusher sixty miles of pipe to build to it, and pinched
down to the limit of safety, that's pouring cut all over the landscape just
about seventy thousand barrels a day. Of course, all in confidence, you
know. We're doing nicely, and I don't want Tampico Petroleum to
skyrocket."
"Don't you worry about that, my lad. You've got to get your oil piped,
and the Mexican revolution straightened out before ever Tampico
Petroleum soars. You go fishing and forget it." Regan paused, with
finely simulated sudden recollection, and picked up Alvarez Torres'
card with the pencilled note. "Look, who's just been to see me."
Apparently struck with an idea, Regan retained the card a moment.
"Why go fishing for mere trout? After all, it's only recreation. Here's a
thing to go fishing after that there's real recreation in, full-size man's
recreation, and not the Persianpalace recreation of an Adirondack camp,
with ice and servants and electric push-buttons. Your father always was
more than a mite proud of that old family pirate. He claimed to look
like him, and you certainly look like your dad."
"Sir Henry," Francis smiled, reaching for the card. "So am I a mite
proud of the old scoundrel."
He looked up questioningly from the reading of the card.
"He's a plausible cuss," Regan explained. "Claims 'to have been born
right down there on the Mosquito Coast, and to have got the tip from
private papers in his family. Not that I believe a word of it. I haven't
time or interest to get started believing in stuff outside my own field."
"Just the same, Sir Henry died practically a poor man,"
Francis asserted, the lines of the Morgan stubbornness knitting
themselves for a flash on his brows. "And they never did find any of his
buried treasure."

"Good fishing," Regan girded good-humor edly.
"I'd like to meet this Alvarez Torres just the same," the young man
responded.
"Fool's gold," Regan continued. "Though I must admit that the cuss is
most exasperatingly plausible. Why, if I were younger but oh, the devil,
my work's cut out for me here."
"Do you know where I can find him?" Francis was asking the next
moment, all unwittingly putting his neck into the net of tentacles that
Destiny, in the visible incarnation of Thomas Regan, was casting out to
snare him.
The next morning the meeting took place in Regan's office. Senor
Alvarez Torres startled and controlled himself at first sight of Francis'
face. This was not missed by Regan, who grinningly demanded:
"Looks like the old pirate himself, eh?"
"Yes, the resemblance is most striking," Torres lied, or half-lied, for he
did recognize the resemblance to the portraits he had seen of Sir Henry
Morgan; although at the same time under his eyelids he saw the vision
of another and living man who, no less than Francis and Sir Henry,
looked as much like both of them as either looked like the other.
Francis was youth that was not to be denied. Modern maps and ancient
charts were pored over, as well as old documents, handwritten in faded
ink on time-yellowed paper, and at the end of half an hour he
announced that the next fish he caught would be on either the Bull or
the Calf the two islets off the Lagoon of Chiriqui, on one or the other of
which Torres averred the treasure lay.
"I'll catch to-night's train for New Orleans," Francis announced. "That
will just make connection with one of the United Fruit Company's
boats for Colon oh, I had it all looked up before I slept last night."
"But don't charter a schooner at Colon," Torres advised. "Take the

overland trip by horseback to Belen. There's the place to charter, with
unsophisticated native sailors and everything else unsophisticated."
"Listens good!" Francis agreed. "I always wanted to see that country
down there. You'll be ready to catch to- night's train, Senor Torres? ...
Of course, you understand, under the circumstances, I'll be the treasurer
and foot the expenses."
But at a privy glance from Regan, Alvarez Torres lied with swift
efficientness.
"I must join you later, I regret, Mr. Morgan. Some little business that
presses how shall I say? an insignificant little lawsuit that must be
settled first. Not that the sum at issue is important. But it is a family
matter, and therefore gravely important. We Torres have our pride,
which is a silly thing, I acknowledge, in this country, but which with