Appleby flushed a little. "I have never been in it, though I think I was
meant for a soldier."
"One can't always be what he was meant for," said Harding, with a little
dry smile. "It's a general belief among young men in my country that
they were specially designed for millionaires, but only a few of them
get there. Got any dollars?"
Appleby made a calculation. "Taking the rate at 4.80, I have about one
hundred and twenty."
He had expected his companion to show signs of astonishment at his
rashness, but Harding nodded. "I began with five but I was younger than
you are," he said. "Business pays best yonder. What are you strongest
at?"
"I can ride and shoot a little, which is what seems most likely to
further my intentions, and speak Spanish reasonably well. These, I
surmise, are very doubtful advantages, but I have no liking for business
whatever. Is there anything to be made out of horses or cattle?"
"Oh yes," said Harding dryly. "There are men who make a good deal, but
you want ten or fifteen thousand dollars to begin with, anyway. It's
only a big ranch that pays. Quite sure you wouldn't like to try your
hand at business? I could introduce you to one or two men if you came
out to Glenwood and stayed a week with me."
Appleby felt that the keen blue eyes were quietly scrutinizing him.
"No," he said. "There is a fact I must mention which I also think would
prevent you wishing to entertain me. A business man hiring anybody would
have questions to ask, and I left the old country suddenly. I am not
sure that a charge of manslaughter has not been brought against me by
this time."
Harding did not seem in the least astonished; in fact, his very
impassiveness had its humorous aspect, as Appleby recognized.
"Did you kill the man?" he asked.
"No," said Appleby, "I did not even attempt it; though in the face of
circumstances I think nobody would believe me. Still, that's a story I
can't go into, though it seemed the correct thing to mention it to you."
Harding nodded gravely. "The straight road is the shortest one, though
it's quite often steep," he said. "Now, I had a notion you had some
difficulty of that kind."
"I don't know that there is anything in my appearance which especially
suggests the criminal."
"Well," said Harding, with a little laugh, "you didn't seem quite sure
of your own name when you told it me; but I've handled a good many men
in my time, and found out how to grade them before I began. I wasn't
very often wrong. Now, it seemed to me there was no particular meanness
about you, and homicide isn't thought such a serious thing in my
country, when it's necessary. Before I was your age I had to hold on to
all I had in the world with the pistol one night down in New Mexico--and
I held on."
His face grew a trifle grim, but Appleby was glancing out towards the
saffron glare of sunset on the ocean's rim. "I want to live in the open,
and see what the life men lead outside your cities is like," he said.
"There is nobody to worry about me, and I don't mind the risks. Can you
suggest anything with a chance of dollars in it a little outside the
beaten track?"
"You speak Spanish?"
"I was born at Gibraltar, and lived in Spain until I was ten years old."
"Well," said Harding, "as it happens, I can suggest something that might
suit you, though I would rather, in spite of what you told me, have
found you a business opportunity. The men who play the game will want
good nerves, but there are dollars in it for the right ones. It's
running arms to Cuba."
A little gleam crept into Appleby's eyes, and he flung up his head. "I
think," he said quietly, "that is the very thing I would have wished
for."
"Then," said Harding, "I'll give you a letter to some friends of mine in
Texas."
He went away by and by, and Appleby decided that the cost of his saloon
passage had been a good investment. Still, he wondered what Harding
could have to do with such a risky business as he surmised the smuggling
of arms into Cuba must be, until he strolled round the deck with his
daughter in the moonlight that evening.
"I think you have made a useful friend to-day," she said.
Appleby looked at her with a little astonishment, and the girl smiled
when he said, "I don't understand."
"I mean Cyrus P. Harding. There are quite a number of men with dollars
anxious to be on good terms with him."
"What have I done to please him?"
"You wouldn't come to Glenwood," and the girl laughed again. "No, I
don't mean that exactly, but I need not explain. Cyrus P. Harding never
did a mean thing in his life, you see."
Appleby smiled at her. "So one would surmise. In my country we rather
believe in heredity."
"Pshaw!" said the girl. "There really isn't much in compliments when
they're served out all round. But if you are going to Cuba I may see you
there."
"Will you be in Cuba?"
Nettie Harding nodded. "My father has no end of dollars there--in tobacco
and sugar."
"I wonder if one could ask what induced Mr. Harding to invest money in
such an unsettled country as Cuba is just now?"
Nettie Harding looked up at him confidentially. "It's a thing I wouldn't
tell everybody, and if I did I shouldn't be believed," she said. "Well,
Cyrus Harding can see ever so far ahead, and I never knew him mistaken
yet. Some day something will happen in Cuba that will give us an excuse
for turning the Spaniards out and straightening things up. They need
it."
"But if the thing doesn't happen?"
Nettie Harding laughed. "Then I shouldn't wonder if he and a few other
men made it."
Some of her companions joined them, and she said nothing more to
Appleby; but they met again that evening, and she induced him to promise
that he would spend at least one day at Glenwood, while when they
disembarked in New York Harding walked down the gangway with his hand on
Appleby's shoulder as though on excellent terms with him. He also kept
him in conversation during the Customs searching, and when a little
unobtrusive man sauntered by said to the officer, "Can't you go through
this gentleman's baggage next? He is coming to Glenwood with me."
The unobtrusive man drew a little nearer, glancing at Appleby, and then
touched Harding's shoulder.
"Is that gentleman a friend of yours, Mr. Harding?" he asked.
"Of course," said Harding. "He is staying with me. We have business on
hand we couldn't fix up at sea."
Appleby caught his warning glance, and stood very still with his heart
thumping, apparently gazing at something across the shed, go that the
man could only see the back of his head.
"In that case, I guess I'm wasting time," said the man, who laughed.
"Still, you understand we have to take precautions, Mr. Harding."
He went away, and Appleby turned to Harding with a little flush in his
face as he asked, "Who is that man?"
"That," said Harding, with a dry smile, "is one of the smartest of our
New York detectives."
They reached his house at Glenwood that afternoon, and Appleby spent two
pleasant days there. On the third he left for New York, and Nettie
Harding smiled as she shook hands with him.
"I wonder whether we shall see you in Cuba?" she said.
"It will not be my fault if you do not," said Appleby. "I am heavily
indebted to you and your father."
As it happened, he afterwards saw Nettie Harding in Cuba, and paid his
debt; for Appleby, who had gone out under a cloud that Tony's sweetheart
might retain her faith in him, was one of the men who do not take the
kindness that is offered them and immediately forget.