Hearts of Three | Page 5

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 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