āOh, yes, sir,ā he said hastily. āI mean, no, sir. You are in the pink of condition.ā
āNot on your life,ā the young man assured him. āI may not be getting fat, but I am certainly growing soft.... Eh, Parker?ā
āYes, sir. No, sir; no, I mean no, sir. Youāre just the same as when you came home from college three years ago.ā
āAnd took up loafing as a vocation,ā Francis laughed. āParker!ā
Parker was alert attention. His master debated with himself ponderously, as if the problem were of profound importance, rubbing the while the bristly thatch of the small toothbrush moustache he had recently begun to sport on his upper lip.
āParker, Iām going fishing.ā
āYes, sir!ā
āI ordered some rods sent up. Please joint them and let me give them the once over. The idea drifts through my mind that two weeks in the woods is what I need. If I donāt, Iāll surely start laying on flesh and disgrace the whole family tree. You remember Sir Henry?āthe old original Sir Henry, the buccaneer old swashbuckler?ā
āYes, sir; Iāve read of him, sir.ā
Parker had paused in the doorway until such time as the ebbing of his young masterās volubility would permit him to depart on the errand.
āNothing to be proud of, the old pirate.ā
āOh, no, sir,ā Parker protested. āHe was Governor of Jamaica. He died respected.ā
āIt was a mercy he didnāt die hanged,ā Francis laughed. āAs it was, heās the only disgrace in the family that he founded. But what I was going to say is that Iāve looked him up very carefully. He kept his figure and he died lean in the middle, thank God. Itās a good inheritance he passed down. We Morgans never found his treasure; but beyond rubies is the lean-in-the-middle legacy he bequeathed us. Itās what is called a fixed character in the breedāthatās what the profs taught me in the biology course.ā
Parker faded out of the room in the ensuing silence, during which Francis Morgan buried himself in the Panama column and learned that the canal was not expected to be open for traffic for three weeks to come.
A telephone buzzed, and, through the electric nerves of a consummate civilization, Destiny made the first out-reach of its tentacles and contacted with Francis Morgan in the library of the mansion his father had builded on Riverside Drive.
āBut my dear Mrs. Carruthers,ā was his protest into the transmitter. āWhatever it is, it is a mere local flurry. Tampico Petroleum is all right. It is not a gambling proposition. It is legitimate investment. Stay with. Tie to it.... Some Minnesota farmerās come to town and is trying to buy a block or two because it looks as solid as it really is.... What if it is up two points? Donāt sell. Tampico Petroleum is not a lottery or a roulette proposition. Itās bona fide industry. I wish it hadnāt been so almighty big or Iād have financed it all myself.... Listen, please, itās not a flyer. Our present contracts for tanks is over a million. Our railroad and our three pipe-lines are costing more than five millions. Why, weāve a hundred millions in producing wells right now, and our problem is to get it down country to the oil-steamers. This is the sober investment time. A year from now, or two years, and your shares will make government bonds look like something the cat brought in....ā
āYes, yes, please. Never mind how the market goes. Also, please, I didnāt advise you to go in in the first place. I never advised a friend to that. But now that they are in, stick. Itās as solid as the Bank of England.... Yes, Dicky and I divided the spoils last night. Lovely party, though Dickyās got too much temperament for bridge.... Yes, bull luck.... Ha! ha! My temperament? Ha! Ha!... Yes?... Tell Harry Iām off and away for a couple of weeks.... Fishing, troutlets, you know, the springtime and the streams, the rise of sap, the budding and the blossoming and all the rest.... Yes, good-bye, and hold on to Tampico Petroleum. If it goes down, after that Minnesota farmerās bulled it, buy a little more. Iām going to. Itās finding money.... Yes.... Yes, surely.... Itās too good to dare sell on a flyer now, because it maynāt ever again go down.... Of course I know what Iām talking about. Iāve just had eight hoursā sleep, and havenāt had a drink.... Yes, yes.... Good-bye.ā
He pulled the ticker tape into the comfort of his chair and languidly ran over it, noting with mildly growing interest the message it conveyed.
Parker returned with several slender rods, each a glittering gem of artisanship and art. Francis was out of his chair, ticker flung aside and forgotten as with the exultant joy of a boy he examined the toys and, one after another, began trying them, switching them through the air till they made shrill whip-like noises, moving them gently with prudence and precision under the lofty ceiling as he made believe to cast across the floor into some unseen pool of trout-lurking mystery.
A telephone buzzed. Irritation was swift on his face.
āFor heavenās sake answer it, Parker,ā he commanded. āIf it is some silly stock-gambling female, tell her Iām dead, or drunk, or down with typhoid, or getting married, or anything calamitous.ā
After a momentās dialogue, conducted on Parkerās part, in the discreet and modulated tones that befitted absolutely the cool, chaste, noble dignity of the room, with a āOne moment, sir,ā into the transmitter, he muffled the transmitter with his hand and said:
āItās Mr. Bascom, sir. He wants you.ā
āTell Mr. Bascom to go to hell,ā said Francis, simulating so long a cast, that, had it been in verity a cast, and had it pursued the course his fascinated gaze indicated, it would have gone through the window and most likely startled the gardener outside kneeling over the rose bush he was planting.
āMr. Bascom says itās about the market, sir, and that heād like to talk with you only a moment,ā Parker urged, but so delicately and subduedly as to seem to be merely repeating an immaterial and unnecessary message.
āAll right.ā Francis carefully leaned the rod against a table and went to the āphone.
āHello,ā he said into the telephone. āYes, this is I, Morgan. Shoot, What is it?ā
He listened for a minute, then interrupted irritably: āSellāhell. Nothing of the sort.... Of course, Iām glad to know. Even if it goes up ten points, which it wonāt, hold on to everything. It may be a legitimate rise, and it maynāt ever come down. Itās solid. Itās worth far more than itās listed. I know, if the public doesnāt. A year from now itāll list at two hundred ... that is, if Mexico can cut the revolution stuff.... Whenever it drops youāll have buying orders from me.... Nonsense. Who wants control? Itās purely sporadic ... eh? I beg your pardon. I mean itās merely temporary. Now Iām going off fishing for a fortnight. If it goes down five points, buy. Buy all thatās offered. Say, when a fellowās got a real bona fide property, being bulled is almost as bad as having the bears after one ... yes.... Sure ... yes. Good-bye.ā
And while Francis returned delightedly to his fishing-rods, Destiny, in Thomas Reganās 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 Petroleumās 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:
āTell this Mister Senor Alvarez Torres of Ciodad de Colon that I canāt see him.ā
Five minutes later the clerk was back, this time with a message pencilled on the card. Regan grinned as he read it:
āDear Mr. Regan,
āHonoured Sir:ā
āI 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.
āAlvarez Torres.ā
Regan shook his head, and the clerk was nearly out of the room when his employer suddenly recalled him.
āShow him ināat once.ā
In the interval of being alone, Regan chuckled to himself as he rolled the new idea over in his mind. āThe unlicked cub!ā he muttered through the smoke of the cigar he was lighting. āThinks he can play the lion part old R.H.M. played. A trimming is what he needs, and old Grayhead Thomas R. will see that he gets it.ā
Senor Alvarez Torresā 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.
āBy great effort, and years of research, I have finally won to the clue to the buccaneer gold of Sir Henry Morgan,ā he preambled. āOf course itās on the Mosquito Coast. Iāll tell you now that itās 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 thereāeducated in Paris, howeverāand I know the neighbourhood like a book. A small schoonerāthe outlay is cheap, most very cheapābut the returns, the rewardāthe treasure!ā
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.
āYes,ā Senor Torres quickly admitted, āI am somewhat embarrassedāhow shall I say?āfor immediate funds.ā
āYou need the money,ā 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 master-man 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.
āNow hereās the idea,ā said Regan. āI put no belief whatsoever in your story. But I have a young friendāmy heart is bound up in the boy but he is too much about town, the white lights and the white-lighted ladies, and the restāyou understand?ā And Senor Alvarez Torres bowed as one man of the world to another. āNow, 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.ā
Again Alvarez Torres bowed.
āYou need the money,ā Regan continued. āStrive to interest him. That thousand is for your effort. Succeed in interesting him so that he departs after old Morganās gold, and two thousand more is yours. So thoroughly succeed in interesting him that he remains away three months, two thousand moreāsix months, five thousand. Oh, believe me, I knew his father. We were comrades, partners, IāI might say, almost brothers. I would sacrifice any sum to win his son to manhoodās wholesome path. What do you say? The thousand is yours to begin with. Well?ā
With trembling fingers Senor Alvarez Torres folded and unfolded the check.