Hearts of Three | Page 6

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, 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