FullReads

“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.”

I sat up in my big lounge chair.

“Didn’t Hardman make a fight for them; if he didn’t find the treasure – didn’t he squeal?”

Barclay turned about, drawing the curtain close behind him.

“And be laughed out of the high-brow bunch that he was trying to get into? . . . I said old Nute was a crook, but I didn’t say he was a fool.”

I turned around in the chair.

“I don’t understand this thing, Barclay. If the treasure was there, and you gave Hardman a correct map of the route to it, and it lay on a practically level plain, and he could get within two miles of it without difficulty in four or five days’ travel from a sea coast town, why couldn’t he get it? Was it all the truth?”

“It was every word precisely the truth,” he said.

“Then why couldn’t he get it?”

Barclay looked down at me; his big pitted face was illumined with a cynical smile.

“Well, Sir Henry,” he said, “‘the trouble is with those last two miles. They’re water . . . straight down. The level plain is the bed of the Atlantic ocean and that gold is in the hold of the Titanic.”