GREEN STONES
He slept right through the morning, dimly heard noon whistles blowing,
and slept again. About two o’clock he awoke, rising out of a deep pit
of utter unconsciousness, with a vague feeling of awful and momentous
things impending.
Then his mind dropped into gear. As in a flash of moving pictures he
saw the last crowded hours— the sinking steamer upheaving in the
water, the night on the cold Gulf, his housebreaking, the excitement
of the stock gamble, and, strangest of all, his midnight encounter
with Eva Morrison and the amazing revelations.
He felt rested; the stiffness had been slept out of him. He jumped out
of bed, having no idea where he was. Peeping through the window blind
he saw an asphalted street in the sun, moving automobiles, palms and
giant cacti, and he found himself ravenous for food.
When he went downstairs he learned that he was at the Hotel Royal in
Pass Christian. It was too late for lunch, but he went out, found a
restaurant, and ate two meals in one. Refreshed and walking in the
sunlight, he came back to a sense of reality, after the phantasmagoria
of unlikely happenings.
That meeting in the lonely bungalow last night seemed now half
incredible. But it was real, and half horrible and half poignantly
sweet. Mystery still involved it, and suffering was bound to come
after it. Morrison was dead, and his daughter would have to be helped,
comforted, looked after. She had said that she had no one in the world
but her father. Well, she would have now what he could do. He could
help her with money, at any rate; and he blessed the luck now that had
led him to play for the fall in Yuma Oil, and even felt softened
toward Carroll for having urged it.
Carroll would have to surrender those photographs, those mementos of
the dead. And explanations were due from him also, in plenty. Lang was
eager to get back to Mobile at once. He wanted to be there before Eva
should return, but the first train was at three forty-five. It was a
fast train, but it went all too slow for his impatience. However, when
he arrived at the Mobile depot and telephoned the Iberville Hotel he
was told that Miss Morrison had not yet returned.
He left a message for her, requesting her to call him up as soon as
she came in; and went up to his own hotel where, he reflected, he was
paying twenty dollars weekly for a room which had lately been of very
little value to him.
At the desk the clerk told him that a gentleman had been twice
inquiring for him that day; in fact, the gentleman was perhaps
somewhere about the lobby at that moment. Lang looked. Only one man
was likely to be seeking him there, and he was not surprised to sight
Carroll seated beside a pillar at some distance, at a strategic point
to observe the desk.
Lang went to him at once. The young adventurer had a new suit of
clothes, and looked very different from the shipwrecked mariner of the
day before. He had lost, or controlled, his resentment, too, for he
rose and gave the physician an affable greeting. Lang did not wish to
quarrel, and he accepted it on the same terms.
“I wanted to see you,” he said immediately. “Those things in the iron
box—photos and such—I think you have them. I want you to give them to
me.”
“Not quite, doctor,” Carroll returned, blandly. “You put it over me
once, but I have a safe-deposit box of my own now.”
“It isn’t for myself. I promised Miss Morrison that I’d get them for
her. They were her father’s, of course.”
Carroll took it without blinking.
“Miss Morrison?” he said, questioningly.
“His daughter. Why,” Lang added, “you’ve seen her. She was the lady
who was with me at the Bayview Hotel, when you came to call me to your
‘yacht.’”
At this Carroll did look startled.
“You say that was Morrison’s daughter? Great heavens! The devil’s in
this whole thing, Lang!”
“That’s what I think. And now, come out with it. Why did you give me
that faked tale about Rockett? What did you want Morrison to tell you
before he died? What was his secret? Were you after his Yuma Oil?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you, all right,” said Carroll. “I meant to, anyway. We
can’t talk here, though.” He looked vaguely about the noisy hotel
lobby.
Lang led him up to his room.
“What has that girl told you?” Carroll asked cautiously.
“Enough for me to check what you say. I’ve got to have the truth this
time, Carroll. You’ve lied to the limit, so far. Suppose I put the
whole matter into the hands of the police?”
“Oh, you couldn’t do that. You’re implicated almost as deep as any of
us, you know. Besides,” he added, without boastfulness, “the bulls
have found me hard to catch before now. But I’ll hand you the straight
goods. I knew I must. There’s only us two left in it now, and we’ve
got to come to an understanding.”
“We’ve got a long way to go. Proceed,” said the doctor.
“Well, of course we handed you a ghost story when you came on the
_Cavite_, but we had to tell you something. And then you let us go on
thinking you were Long, so that squares that.
“It all came through Floyd. He was in South America, he had some kind
of job up in the copper mines, and got fired. He was on the beach at
some Chilean port when he met up with Morrison. The old professor was
out on an expedition. I expect you know he was an eminent exploring
guy and book writer. Morrison wanted another white man with him who
knew something about prospecting, and he made a deal with Floyd to go
with him, on a fifty-fifty basis of any mineral or anything valuable
they located.
“They didn’t locate anything for a while. They had a sort of small
schooner and coasted down, going ashore every day or so, and sometimes
camping for a week, while the old professor explored. It’s an awful
country—according to Floyd—all rough islands and narrow channels, and
the mountains right down to the sea, rocks and big glaciers, and fog
and rain all the time. It was early in the spring; they have their
summer down there in the winter, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Lang, dryly. “But what did Morrison locate?”
“Well, it seems he went ashore one morning at the head of a little bay
that split right into the hills. There was a valley beyond, and a big
glacier coming down like a wall right across the valley. Floyd left
him there, and was to come back with the boat to bring him off in the
evening.
“He went back around sundown, and found the old man down and out. He’d
been climbing up on the rocks and ice, and had fallen and busted
several ribs, and was stunned and bruised all up. He had a lot of bits
of rock in his sack, stones full of green crystals. You saw some of
them in his box the other day. And in his pocket he had a couple of
big green stones the size of small potatoes.”
“Floyd went through his pockets while he was insensible?”
“Sure he did. He pocketed one of the big stones, too. He left the
other. He was on a half-share basis, you know. Then he got Morrison
back on the schooner, and they fixed up his hurts.
“He asked Morrison about the stones when he was better, but the old
professor said they were mere crystals that weren’t worth anything.
Floyd thought different, though, and spent a good deal of time going
ashore by himself and hunting around, but he never could find where
Morrison had located them. It might have been anywhere within a mile.
“The old man never seemed to remember that one of the stones was lost.
He was too sick, maybe. His ribs didn’t heal very well, and they had
to make for Valparaiso, where there were doctors.
“In Valparaiso, Floyd took his green stone to the best jewelers there.
It was just as he thought; it was an emerald.”
“Nonsense!” Lang interrupted. “Emeralds don’t come in those sizes.
Why, it would have been worth a fortune.”
“So it would—only it was plumb full of little hairline cracks and
flaws and veins of rock. It wasn’t worth a nickel. The one Morrison
had was the same. But, as I said, it was the size of a little potato.”
“Floyd said that?” Lang inquired.
“No, I saw it myself. Floyd had it with him. It went down in his
pocket with the _Cavite_, I expect. We had two of the best jewelers in
New Orleans look at it, too, and they said the same as the Chilean
ones.
“Floyd kept after Morrison to live up to his agreement, and go back
and clear out the emerald mine between them. But Morrison always
stalled him off, and at last he slipped away and came north before
Floyd knew he was gone.
“Floyd followed him up, of course, and located him here on the coast.
Of course he knew the old man was getting ready to go back to Chile
after the emeralds. Then he ran across Jerry Harding and Louie and me
at New Orleans. We’d all known him before, and we made up a
partnership.”
“Your crowd had been rum running, I take it?” said Lang.
“Jerry owned the _Cavite_,” replied Carroll, after a pause. “He’s in
her at the bottom of the Gulf now, and Floyd, too, and what we used to
do is nobody’s affair.”
“Why didn’t Floyd go back to Chile by himself? He knew the way.”
“He was broke. He hadn’t the money for any sort of vessel. We were
going to sail the _Cavite_ there. Besides, he didn’t know the way.
It’s all a tangle of islands and channels, that Chilean coast. You’d
lose yourself in an hour, unless you’re a good seaman with good
charts. And besides that, if he got to that glacier valley he couldn’t
tell where Morrison dug up the stones. It might have been two or three
miles from the sea. He’d been away all day.
“So you see,” he went on, “that we had to make Morrison talk. We
offered him a third share to go back and guide us. I don’t think
anything could have been squarer. Well—you know about all the rest.
When he had his stroke, or whatever it was, we tried every way to
bring him to. At last we pinned all our hopes to the great Chicago
specialist, Doctor Robert Long, and got him aboard!”
“Long couldn’t have done a bit more than I did,” said Lang
abstractedly, thinking hard. “But now Floyd and Morrison are both
gone—the only men who knew anything of the place. There’s no chance of
finding it. The game is up, it seems to me.”
“Ah, that’s the very point!” cried Carroll. “I knew, as soon as I set
eyes on them, what those photos and pictures in the iron box must be.
I’ve gone over them all. There’s a series of photos of the coast, the
glacier valley—water-color drawings, too—and a couple of sketch maps.
I’m no sailor, but I know I can find my way there; and if I once get
to that valley, I’ll find the emerald mine, if I have to turn over all
the ground with my bare hands. It can’t be far, after all, and the old
professor did no blasting nor digging.”
“Carroll,” said the surgeon, “so far you’ve told me nothing but lies.
This yarn is the wildest-sounding of all. I’m damned if I believe a
word of it!”
“Good God!” Carroll cried. “Can’t you recognize truth when you see it?
Of course I told you a crooked yarn. We couldn’t have let out the
truth then, could we? But now it’s different. There’s just you and me
left in it. I’ve got the maps and prints. You’ve got the money, and
half of that is coming to me, you know very well. It’ll take five or
six thousand dollars to fit out our expedition. I’ve got less than two
hundred dollars in the world. Neither of us can do anything alone.
Why, man, in a case like this you’d make a partnership with the devil,
wouldn’t you?”
“Well, that’s as it may be,” said Lang. “But you’re making one great
mistake. That money in my trust box isn’t mine. It belongs to Miss
Morrison. If there’s anything in this emerald story, it belongs to
her, too. I have absolutely nothing to do with the whole thing. Go and
talk to her about it.”
“I don’t talk to any woman about such a thing!” Carroll ejaculated,
staring. “Are you clear crazy, Lang, or are you trying to put another
bluff over me? Look here, if that stone of Floyd’s had been perfect it
would have been worth fifty thousand dollars. Emeralds come high; they
rank next to diamonds. We’ve been studying up about them. Most all the
emeralds of the world come from the west coast of South America.
There’s an enormous mine in Colombia. I’ve got all the right dope.
Morrison hit on a pocket, or deposit. Those bits of rock were what
they call emerald matrix. There’s dead sure to be plenty more where
those big stones came from, and good ones, too. It wouldn’t take many
of that size to make a million dollars.”
Carroll’s olive face was deeply flushed. His eyes positively glowed
with earnestness, and his hands trembled. Lang was secretly impressed
and less incredulous than he appeared. It was impossible that any one
could so feign emotion.
“I tell you that I’ve got nothing to do with it,” he said again. “It’s
all in Miss Morrison’s hands.”
Exasperated, baffled, evidently believing not a word of it, Carroll
looked at him.
“Give the girl the price of the oil stock,” he said. “Half the money.
That’s all that’s really coming to her, anyway. We’ll use the rest for
the trip. Oh, give her a share, if you want to. Let her have a third
of what we find. I won’t do it for less. If you won’t meet me on that
you’ll never see any of those papers of Morrison’s again. I’ll raise
the money somehow myself.
“Look here, do you know Louie’s ashore? Yes, he is. He’s in Mobile
now. I saw him myself. He came ashore in the motor launch—the only man
in it. I told him the emerald game was up. But if you go back on me
I’ll call him in. Now I don’t want to do any crooked work. I’ll share
with you fifty-fifty, or thirds all around with the girl, but if not,
then I swear I’ll have the whole thing, crooked or straight!”
Lang shook his head. “I can’t bargain. The police will make you give
up those photos, you know, if it comes to that. Maybe Miss Morrison——”
The bell of his room telephone interrupted him. He went to its stand
and took the receiver. The clerk at the Iberville was calling. Miss
Morrison had just come in, and left word that she would be glad to see
Doctor Lang.
He hung up, delighted, impatient.
“I can’t make any sort of deal with you,” he said to Carroll. “I’ll
put it before Miss Morrison if you like. You’d better think it over
and let me hear to-morrow. Now I’ve got to go out.”
They went downstairs together and parted at the hotel entrance. Lang
felt Carroll’s eyes following him as he went up the street.