“And you can calculate when the second one will strike you. It's a
hundred and eighty-one days to the hour.”
Then he added:
“That was the first one on the dock. Tavor had six months to live.”
The big man broke the cigarette in his fingers and threw the pieces into
the fire. Then he turned abruptly toward me.
“And I know where he wanted to live for those six months. The old dream
was still with him. He wanted that country house in his native county
in England, with the formal garden and the lackeys. The finish didn't
bother him, but he wanted to round out his life with the dream that he
had carried about with him.
“I put him to bed and went down into Broadway, and walked about all
night. Tavor couldn't go back and he had to have a bunch of money.
“It was no good. I couldn't see it. I went back Tavor was up and I sat
him down to a cross examination that would have delighted the soul of a
Philadelphia lawyer.”
Barclay paused.
“It was all at once that I saw it--like you'd snap your fingers. It
was an accident of Charlie's talk... one of those obiter dicta, that
I mentioned a while ago. But I stopped Charlie and went over to the
Metropolitan Library; there I got me an expert--an astronomer chap, as
it happened, reading calculus in French for fun--I gave him a twenty and
I looked him in the eye.
“Now, Professor,' I said, 'this dope's got to be straight stuff, I'm
risking money on it; every word you write has got to be the truth, and
every line and figure that you put on your map has got to be correct
with a capital K.'”
“'Surely,' he said, 'I shall follow Huxley for the text and I shall
check the chart calculations for error.'
“'And there's another thing, professor. You've got to go dumb on this
job, for which I double the twenty.' He looked puzzled, but when he
finally understood me, he said 'Surely' again, and I went back to my
apartment.
“'Charlie,' I said, 'how much money would it take for this English
country life business?'
“His eyes lighted up a little.
“'Well, Barclay, old man,' he replied, 'I've estimated it pretty
carefully a number of times. I could take Eldon's place for six months
with the right to purchase for two thousand dollars paid down; and
I could manage the servants and the living expenses for another four
thousand. I fear I should not be able to get on with a less sum than six
thousand dollars.'
“Then,” he added--he was a child to the last--“perhaps Mr. Hardman will
now be able to advance it; he promised me 'a further per cent',” those
were his words, when the matter was finally concluded.
“Then ten thousand would do?”
“My word,' he said, 'I should go it like a lord on ten thousand. Do you
think Mr. Hardman would consider that sum?'
“'I'm going to try him,' I said, 'I've got some influence in a quarter
that he depends on.'
“And I went out. I went down to my bank and got twenty U. S. bonds of
a thousand each. At five o'clock, the professor had his dope ready--the
text and the chart, neatly folded in a big manilla envelope with a
rubber band around it. And that evening I went up to see old Nute.”
Barclay got another cigarette. There was a queer cynicism in his big
pitted face.
“The church bunch,” he said, “have got a strange conception of the
devil; they think he's always ready to lie down on his friends. That's
a fool notion. The devil couldn't do business if he didn't come across
when you needed him.
“And there's another thing; the old-timers, when they went after their
god for a favor, always began by reciting what they'd done for him....
That was sound dope! I tried it myself on the way up to old Nute's
apartment on Fifth Avenue.
“I went over a lot of things. And whenever I made a point, I rapped it
on the pavement with the ferule of my walking stick; as one would say,
'you owe me for that!'
“You see I was worked up about Tavor. When a man's carried a dream over
all the hell he'd pushed through he ought to have it in the end.”
Barclay paused and flicked the ashes from his cigarette.
“You know the swell apartments on Fifth Avenue; no name, only a number;
every floor a residence, only the elevators connecting them. I found old
Nute in the seventh; and I was bucked the moment I got in.
“The door from the drawing room to the library was open. The Harvard don
was going out, the one Nute had employed to get up his thesis for the
Royal Society of London--I mentioned him a while ago. And I heard his
final remark, flung back at the door. 'What you require, Sir, is
the example case of some new exploration--one that you have yourself
conducted.'
“That bucked me; the devil was on the job!”
Barclay stopped again. He sat for a moment watching the smoke from the
cigarette climb in a blue mist slowly into the beautiful fresco of the
ceiling.
“I told old Nute precisely what I've told you. How I'd backed Tavor for
his last adventure, and where he'd been; all over Central Mongolia and
finally across the Great Sandy Desert of El-Khali. And I told him what
Charlie was after; the theory he started with and his final conclusion
when he made his last push along the old caravan route west from Muscat.
“I went into the details, and the big notion that Tavor had slowly
pieced together; how the gold was mined in the ranges south of Siberia,
carried in green skins to lower Mongolia, melted there and taken for
trade Southwest across the El-Khali to an immense Babylon of Commerce of
which the present Mecca is perhaps a decadent residuum.
“I put it all in; the accessibility of this desert from the coast
on three sides, how the old caravan route parallels the thirty-third
meridian and how Charlie struck it four hundred miles out into the
desert in a hundred miles travel due south in longitude between 50 and
55 degrees; all the details of Tavor's hunt for the wreck of one of
these treasure caravans.
“Old Nute looked at me with his little hard eyes slipping about.
“'And he didn't find it?' he said.
“I didn't answer that. I went ahead and told him how I found Tavor and
the shape he was in, and then I added, 'I'm not an explorer, and Charlie
can't go back.'
“Old Nute's thick neck shot out at that.
“'Then he did find it?' he said.
“'Now look here, Nute,' I said, 'you're not trading with Tavor on this
deal. You're trading with me and I'm just as slick as you are. You'll
get no chance to slip under on this. You forget all I've told you just
as though it had nothing to do with what I'm going to tell you, and I'll
come to the point.'
“'Forget it?' he said.
“'Yes,' I said, 'forget it. I'm not going to put you on to what Charlie
knows, with any strings to it, or with any pointers that you can run
down without us. I've told you all about Tavor's big hunt through the
Shamo and the El-Khali for a purpose of my own and not for the purpose
of enabling you to locate the thing that Charlie Tavor knows about.'
“Hardman's voice went down into a low note. 'What does he know?' he
said.
“I looked him squarely in the little reptilian eyes. 'He knows where
there is a treasure in gold equal in our money to three hundred thousand
dollars!'
“Old Nute's little eyes focused into his nose an instant. Then he took a
chance at me.
“'What's the country like?'
“I went on as though I didn't see the drift.
“'Tavor says this area of the earth's surface is a great plain
practically level, sloping gradually on one side and rising gradually on
the other.'
“'Sand?' said Nute.
“'No,' I replied, 'Tavor says that contrary to the common notion, this
plain is not covered with sand, it's a kind of chalk deposit.'
“'Hard to get to?'
“Old Nute shot the query in with a little quick duck of his head.
“I went straight on with the answer.
“'Tavor says it's about a five or six days' journey from a sea coast
town.'
“'Hard traveling?'
“'No, Tavor says you can get within two miles of the place without any
difficulty whatever--he says anybody can do it. The only difficulties
are on the last two miles. But up to the last two miles, it's a holiday
journey for a middle-aged woman.'
“Old Nute grunted. He put his fat hands together over his waistcoat and
twiddled his thumbs.
“'Well,'; he said, 'what's in your mind about it?'
“We were now up to the trade and I stated the terms.
“'It's like this,' I said, 'Tavor's down and out. He's got only six
months to live. Fifth Avenue piled full of gold won't do him any good if
he's got to wait for it. What he wants is a little money quick!'
“Old Nute's eyes squinted.
“'How much money?' he said.
“'Well,' I said, 'Tavor will turn his map over to you for ten thousand
dollars... Death's crowding him.'
“Old Nute's fat fingers began to drum on his waistcoat.
“'How do I know the gold's there and the map's straight?'
“'Did you ever know Tavor to lie?' I said.
“'No,' he said, 'Tavor's not a liar; but I am a business man, Mr.
Barclay, and in business we do not go on verbal assurances, no matter
how unquestioned.'
“'That's right,' I replied, 'I'm a business man, too; that's why I came
instead of sending Tavor.... you found out he wasn't a business man in
the first deal.'
“Then I took my 'shooting irons' out of my pocket and laid them on the
table.
“There,' I said, 'are twenty, one-thousand United States bonds, not
registered,' and I put my hand on one of the big manilla envelopes;
'and here,' I said, 'is an accurate description of the place where this
treasure lies and a map of the route to it,' and I put my hand on the
other.
“'Now,' I went on, 'I believe every word of this thing. Charles Tavor is
the best all-round explorer in the world. I've known him a lifetime
and what he says goes with me. We'll put up this bunch of stuff with a
stakeholder for the term of a year, and if the gold isn't there and if
the map showing the route to it isn't correct and if every word I've
said about it isn't precisely the truth, you take down my bonds and keep
them.'
“Old Nute got up and walked about the room. I knew what he was thinking.
'Here's another one of them--there's all kinds.'
“But it hooked him. We wrote out the terms and put the stuff up with old
Commodore Harris--the straightest sport in America. Nute had the right
to copy the map, and the text and a year to verify it. And I took the
ten thousand back to Charlie Tavor.”
Barclay got up and went over to the window. He drew back the heavy
tapestry curtains. It was morning; the blue dawn was beginning to
illumine Monaco and the polished arc of the sea. He stood looking down
into it, holding the curtain in his hand.
“I give the devil his due for that, Sir Henry,” he said. “Charlie
Tavor got his dream at the end; he died like a gentleman in his English
country house with the formal garden and the lackeys.”
“And the other man got the treasure?” I said. Barclay replied without
moving.
“No, he didn't get it.”
“Then you lost your bonds?”
“No, I didn't lose them; Commodore Harris handed them back to me on the
last day of the year.”