A GENEROUS OFFER
Lang arrived at Panama, hot and sticky and full of mixed expectations.
He had not delayed a day; he had taken the first steamer for Colon,
with the remaining two thousand dollars from Yuma Oil belted round his
waist. From Colon he had traveled by the Isthmus Railway and his mind
was still dazed with heat and hurry, and the unfamiliar Spanish talk,
and the wild scenery of the Isthmus and the glimpses of the great
engineering work that seemed the sole interest in everybody’s mind.
And he scarcely ventured to foresee what he might be going to meet.
He had not the slightest idea how to find Morrison, but he was told
that he could find anything at the Hotel Tivoli. Taking a taxi at the
landing stage therefore, he was driven to this ornate establishment,
where he found that Morrison’s name was indeed known. He was not at
the hotel, but at Mrs. Leeman’s boarding house, which seemed to be
also a well-known institution. Lang engaged a room, had his baggage
sent for, and requisitioned the Ford again.
It was half an hour’s drive, by what seemed devious ways. He felt
oddly, nervously in suspense. His lips were dry as the car stopped in
front of a huge, rambling bungalow, screened on all sides by a vast
veranda, heavy with vines and gay with great red blossoms.
He went up the walk. A barefooted Jamaican negro was pottering about
some duties at the steps, and he paused to make inquiries. He hardly
understood the queer, clipped half-English accent of the servant, but
just then a white-dressed figure came quickly around the corner of the
house, on the dim veranda. It was Eva.
She stopped short, in silence. As he saw her Lang felt suddenly full
of brimming satisfaction, a pervading, full content, such as he had
never known before in his life. They gazed at each other in silence,
for a single, magnetic instant that seemed full of mysterious
implication. Then Lang, a trifle dazed, saw that Eva was holding out
her hand and greeting him with hurried words that he barely took in.
“I never thought I would see you again,” he stammered awkwardly.
“You haven’t much faith in me.”
“I have far more faith in you than I have in anything else in the
world,” he returned.
She searched his face for a moment, looking almost startled,
hesitated, and then turned quickly, still holding his hand as if to
guide him.
“Come this way and see father. He’ll be so glad you’ve come. We didn’t
look for you for days—the next steamer.”
She conducted him back round the corner of the veranda, and far toward
the rear of the building a big man, dressed in white duck, was sitting
in a steamer chair, a litter of newspapers around him. He looked up
sharply. An immediate look of recognition came over his face, and he
put out a big, bony hand.
It was a very different man from the haggard, unshaven, blind-eyed
Rockett whom the physician had studied with such intentness on the
_Cavite_; but he recognized that big, grim, but not wholly unkindly
countenance, though the piercing gray eyes were, of course, strange to
him.
“Your patient again, doctor!” said the explorer, still with a slight
stammer and thickness in his articulation.
“Not my patient any more, I hope. You seem to have made a recovery,”
said Lang cordially.
“A little shaky, a little t-tongue-tied yet. I was in the—the w-water
half an hour, and it d-didn’t d-do me any good. Better, though, than
when I used to s-study you through my eyeglasses and t-try to size you
up on that damned steamer.”
“So you weren’t unconscious at all. I half suspected it at times,”
Lang exclaimed.
“Oh, partly, partly. I was d-dopy a good d-deal. I must have had”—he
stopped and seemed to collect himself—“some sort of fit or stroke
ashore, when those pirates were—er—cross-questioning me. I didn’t know
about being taken to sea—couldn’t make out where I was. Came to myself
slowly—couldn’t move at first—afraid to try to speak—decided it was
safest to play dead——”
“I think you shouldn’t talk much now,” Lang interposed. “You can tell
me all the story when you’re a bit better.”
“Then when I tried to speak to you at the last, wanting to give a
message to Eva, I couldn’t get the words together. The——”
“Hush!” Eva put in. “I’ll tell it. Father had seen Floyd a few days
before at Biloxi, and knew that he must be hunting him. So he buried
the things hurriedly, for fear of anything happening, and he painted
the negro. He knew that I would catch the idea. It used to be a game
with us, you know—puzzle pictures. Father has been an artist all his
life. Isn’t it strange? He was at the bungalow all the time we were in
Mobile, and we didn’t know it. There had been some mistake about the
dates. He didn’t expect me South till two weeks later—but we’re mixing
the story all up. Of course you know why he sent for you now?”
“Well, I might make a guess,” Lang admitted.
“It’s like this,” Morrison began again, haltingly. “I’m getting better
fast, but the doctor here says I can’t travel for a week, and that I
must avoid exertion for a month. I can guide, but I won’t be much good
else. Eva says you’re temporarily out of medical work. Fate has thrown
you in with us, and you might as well go the rest of the way. I pay
expenses; you’re chief mate, and you get a one-third share of whatever
we find. What do you say?”
“There isn’t any doubt about what I’ll say,” said Lang. “It’s a
remarkably generous proposition. Too generous, I’m afraid, for I don’t
know anything about mining work. But I’ll do my best, and I’ll climb
rocks and chop ice till I drop. I suppose,” he added cautiously, “that
there isn’t any doubt about the genuineness of the emeralds? I could
hardly believe the story.”
“Absolutely none. I had them ex-examined by the best men in
Valparaiso. In fact, the word g-got out that I’d made an emerald
strike, and I had all sorts of fellows after me. When we start again
we’ll have to be secret or we’ll have a fleet trailing us down the
coast.”
“By Jove! we may have some one before us,” Lang exclaimed, suddenly
remembering. “Carroll has all your maps and photos, and he’s
disappeared—Lord knows where.”
“It doesn’t matter. He’ll never find it,” Morrison declared. “It isn’t
where any one would think. It’s a wild, g-glacier——”
He stuttered, and stuck fast.
“It’s a wild, rough coast,” Eva took up his words. “Small mountainous
islands, a steep slope, and a rainy climate. They had trouble to find
anything dry enough to burn for their fires, until they came on an
outcrop of coal right on the coast. There’s a long valley running to
the sea, and a wall of ice right across it, like a great gate—the head
of the glacier that goes away up the mountain to the top, where
there’s a pass. It was the pass that made father stop to examine it.
He thought there might be traces of an ancient seaport—his prehistoric
Chileans, you know.
“The glacier was melting away at the bottom, of course. The valley was
choked with gravel and stones that the glacier had cast out through
years and years. Here he found an old copper knife, and then he found
the emeralds, right at the foot of the ice. They had come out of the
ice.”
“Out of the glacier?” Lang exclaimed.
“It’s my belief,” Morrison broke in again, “that the glacier had
gathered them up with all their surrounding rock and gravel, somewhere
high up the mountain. The ice had torn up an emerald pocket, carried
it down slowly, maybe through centuries, till at last it came near the
bottom, and was washed out by the melting. Streams of water were
flowing out of the glacier wall everywhere.
“Floyd stole the best of the two stones I found. He lied if he said
that he was working on shares with me. I was paying him two hundred
pesos a month, and nothing more. Those emeralds—would—would have——”
He stuck again, and glanced hopelessly at Eva.
“Father means,” the girl assisted, “that they could have been cut to I
don’t know how many hundred carats if they hadn’t been flawed, and
they would have been worth at least twenty thousand dollars apiece. He
didn’t have them examined till after he was out of the hospital at
Valparaiso. He would have gone back then, but he wasn’t strong enough,
and besides he didn’t have the money. He had to go North to get that
oil stock and sell it. He had bought it for thirty dollars a share,
and was told that it would go to one hundred dollars.”
“That reminds me that I have about two thousand dollars from that
stock in my belt now,” said Lang.
“Keep it, for the present,” said Morrison. “Plenty of time. We have a
week here to wait for me. I’ll tell you the whole story of the thing
to-morrow, perhaps, if my tongue loosens up. You must be completely
confused with these snatches and scraps.”
There were many points that Lang wanted badly to have explained, but
he postponed them. Evening was falling, suddenly, darkly, like a
velvet curtain. Over a decorative row of palms in the distance he
caught a glimpse of a fiery red streak of sky above the sea. He had
heard several other men coming up the steps to the house—no doubt Mrs.
Leeman’s boarders. The sudden heavy roar of a steamer approaching the
Canal made the dead, moist air vibrate. It was almost dark on the
shaded veranda.
“Is is far south of Valparaiso?” he asked. “How do we go?”
“A long way—over a thousand miles. It’s between Punta Reale and La
Carolina, about halfway. We must get a comfortable craft; I’m not in
condition for roughing it, this time.”
A gong boomed mellow toned from indoors.
“That’s for dinner,” Eva exclaimed. “We’ll let the rest of the story
and all the plans wait till to-morrow. Doctor Lang will stay and dine
with us, of course. Mrs. Leeman will give you a better dinner than the
Tivoli, and afterward you can telephone for a car to go to the hotel.”
Lang did not hesitate to accept, and Mrs. Leeman, a plump and
obviously prospering Los Angeles widow, made him welcome. There were
three other boarders besides the Morrisons—two young American
engineers from the harbor, and the second officer of an American
steamer in port, who always spent his days ashore at this house.
The dinner was good, an attempt at American cooking in the tropics,
and every one was jovial. Lang felt in tremendous spirits; the future
suddenly had turned rainbow colored again. He astonished himself with
his own hilarity, and even Morrison released a somewhat saturnine and
stammering vein of chaff. Eva said little, laughed, looked happy, and
her beauty had come back as vividly as when he first knew her.
Afterward the men went out to the veranda to smoke, and Lang became
involved in argument with Findlay, the American officer, as to the
effect, on white constitutions, of prolonged living in the tropics. It
was cut short, however, by Findlay’s departure. His ship sailed that
night, and his leave was over. Morrison also, by medical orders, had
to go to bed at nine o’clock, and Lang assisted him to his bedroom,
and, returning, telephoned to the hotel for a taxi to be sent
immediately.
Eva presently came out of her father’s room, and walked outdoors with
him as he waited. It was hot and cloudy; spicy, musky scents seemed to
hover in the air. Away in the city a band was playing faintly.
“Your father has placed a great confidence in me,” he said. “I’m going
to try to deserve it.”
“He took my word for you. But he’s a good judge of men besides. I
think all’s going to be well now. If he says there are emeralds, there
will be emeralds. He’s never wrong.”
“And you’ll be rich and I’ll be rich and we’ll all be rich together.
What difference will it make, I wonder?”
“Much, to my father. He’ll have proper funds for his work, for the
first time.”
“And much to me. Never did I need it more.”
“And nothing at all to me,” she returned. “There’s your car.”
“Good-by, till to-morrow.”
The car roared up; he took her hand. He might have kissed it; in that
Spanish country it would have been courtesy. The car flashed a
blinding glare over them as it wheeled.
“Come early and lunch with us,” she cried.
He waved his hand back at her as he got into the car, noticing that
the side curtains were closed, and the machine exploded into motion
again and panted down the dark street.
It was insufferably hot in that closed interior. Lang spoke to the
driver, dimly silhouetted against the windshield, but got only a shake
of the head. He resolved to endure it for the short ride to the
hotel—too jubilant, besides, to care much about small inconveniences.
The rickety little flivver rattled and pounded, mostly through dark or
ill-lighted ways. It seemed to take a long time to reach the hotel. He
spoke again to the chauffeur, who seemed to understand no English; and
then the taxi slowed down and stopped. The door was opened, and a man
pushed darkly inside.
“What the——” ejaculated Lang, amazed at this intrusion.
The driver left his seat and came quickly to the other door. In dismay
Lang recollected the two thousand dollars in his belt. He carried no
weapon, and as he still hesitated, a strap dropped neatly over his
head and shoulders and drew tight, pinioning his arms firmly to his
side.
“Got him, Louie? Hold him a minute,” said a voice he recognized.
Too late, Lang kicked out and struggled desperately. There was no room
for defense. In the darkness of that hot little compartment, sweat
streaming down all three of them, they forced him back, down on the
cushions, and Louie sat down firmly on his chest. Half smothered, Lang
let out a tremendous yell for help.
“Cheese that!” Carroll commanded. “There ain’t a cop within a mile,
anyway. You damn’ fool, we’ve had our eyes on you ever since you
struck Panama. I know the old professor’s handed you all the dope.
What do you say, now? Come in with us, share alike, or——”
“Or what? Damn you, Carroll! What do you take me for?” Lang spluttered
indignantly, too angry to be frightened. “You’re out of it. Why can’t
you drop the thing?”
In answer he felt a cloth dropped across his face, then after a
gurgling sound he smelled a most familiar odor—the scent of
chloroform. He flung his head back, turned it from side to side, threw
off the drugged towel. It is not easy to chloroform a man against his
will, and he struggled so violently that Carroll let go, cast an
impatient word to his assistant, and busied himself with something
taken from his pocket.
The cloth had fallen off and Lang breathed deeply, gathering his
forces. It was only ten seconds. Carroll turned back, picked up Lang’s
defenseless arm, and he felt a penetrating prick.
“A hypodermic!” he thought, with dismay.
He shrieked again at the top of his voice, but he felt the numb
influence of the drug passing through his veins, deadening his will to
live. In spite of his resolution he grew limp; the sense of struggle
blurred, grew dreamy. Consciousness passed out of him.