Torres did not hesitate. Dipping into his pocket, he laid a handful of the jewels on the table. Enrico glanced at the Queen, who merely waited expectantly.
“More,” said Enrico.
And three more of the beautiful uncut stones Torres added to the others on the table.
“Would you search me like a common pickpocket?” he demanded in frantic indignation, turning both trousers’ pockets emptily inside out.
“Me,” said Francis.
“I insist,” said Henry.
“Oh, all very well,” Francis conceded. “Then we’ll do it together. We can throw him farther off the steps.”
Acting as one, they clutched Torres by collar and trousers and started in a propulsive rush for the door.
All others in the room ran to the windows to behold Torres’ exit; but Enrico, quickest of all, gained a window first. And, afterward, into the middle of the room, the Queen scooped the gems from the table into both her hands, and gave the double handful to Leoncia, saying:
“From Francis and me to you and Henry——your wedding present.”
Yi Poon, having left the crone by the beach and crept back to peer at the house from the bushes, chuckled gratifiedly to himself when he saw the rich caballero thrown off the steps with such a will as to be sent sprawling far out into the gravel. But Yi Poon was too clever to let on that he had seen. Hurrying away, he was half down the hill ere overtaken by Torres on his horse.
The celestial addressed him humbly, and Torres, in his general rage, lifted his riding whip savagely to slash him across the face. But Yi Poon did not quail.
“The Senorita Leoncia,” he said quickly, and arrested the blow. “I have great secret.” Torres waited, the whip still lifted as a threat. “You like ‘m some other man marry that very nice Senorita Leoncia?”
Torres dropped the whip to his side.
“Go on,” he commanded harshly. “What is the secret?”
“You no want ‘m other man marry that Senorita Leoncia?”
“Suppose I don’t?”
“Then, suppose you have secret, you can stop other man.”
“Well, what is it? Spit it out.”
“But first,” Yi Poon shook his head, “you pay me six hundred dollars gold. Then I tell you secret.”
“I’ll pay you,” Torres said readily, although without the slightest thought of keeping his word. “You tell me first, then, if no lie, I’ll pay you.—See!”
From his breast pocket he drew a wallet bulging with paper bills; and Yi Poon, uneasily acquiescing, led him down the road to the crone on the beach.
“This old woman,” he explained, “she no lie. She sick woman. Pretty soon she die. She is afraid. She talk to priest along Colon. Priest say she must tell secret, or die and go to hell. So she no lie.”
“Well, if she doesn’t lie, what is it she must tell?”
“You pay me?”
“Sure. Six hundred gold.”
“Well, she born Cadiz in old country. She number one servant, number one baby nurse. One time she take job with English family that come traveling in her country. Long time she work with that family. She go back along England. Then, bime by——you know Spanish blood very hot——she get very mad. That family have one little baby girl. She steal little baby girl and run away to Panama. That little baby girl Senor Solano he adopt just the same his own daughter. He have plenty sons and no daughter. So that little baby girl he make his daughter. But that old woman she no tell what name belong little girl’s family. That family very high blood, very rich, everybody in England know that family. That family’s name ‘Morgan.’ You know that name? In Colon comes San Antonio men who say Senor Solano’s daughter marry English Gringo named Morgan. That Gringo Morgan the Senorita Leoncia’s brother.”
“Ah!” said Torres with maleficent delight.
“You pay me now six hundred gold,” said Yi Poon.
“Thank you for the fool you are,” said Torres with untold mockery in his voice. “You will learn better perhaps some day the business of selling secrets. Secrets are not shoes or mahogany timber. A secret told is no more than a whisper in the air. It comes. It goes. It is gone. It is a ghost. Who has seen it? You can claim back shoes or mahogany timber. You can never claim back a secret when you have told it.”
“We talk of ghosts, you and I,” said Yi Poon calmly. “And the ghosts are gone. I have told you no secret. You have dreamed a dream. When you tell men they will ask you who told you. And you will say, ‘Yi Poon.’ But Yi Poon will say, ‘No.’ And they will say, ‘Ghosts,’ and laugh at you.”
Yi Poon, feeling the other yield to his superior subtlety of thought, deliberately paused.
“We have talked whispers,” he resumed after a few seconds. “You speak true when you say whispers are ghosts. When I sell secrets I do not sell ghosts. I sell shoes. I sell mahogany timber. My proofs are what I sell. They are solid. On the scales they will weigh weight. You can tear the paper of them, which is legal paper of record, on which they are written. Some of them, not paper, you can bite with your teeth and break your teeth upon. For the whispers are already gone like morning mists. I have proofs. You will pay me six hundred gold for the proofs, or men will laugh at you for lending your ears to ghosts.”
“All right,” Torres capitulated, convinced. “Show me the proofs that I can tear and bite.”
“Pay me the six hundred gold.”
“When you have shown me the proofs.”
“The proofs you can tear and bite are yours after you have put the six hundred gold into my hand. You promise. A promise is a whisper, a ghost. I do not do business with ghost money. You pay me real money I can tear or bite.”
And in the end Torres surrendered, paying in advance for what did satisfy him when he had examined the documents, the old letters, the baby locket and the baby trinkets. And Torres not only assured Yi Poon that he was satisfied, but paid him in advance, on the latter’s insistence, an additional hundred gold to execute a commission for him.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom which connected their bedrooms, clad in fresh underlinen and shaving with safety razors, Henry and Francis were singing:
“Back to back against the mainmast,
