Hearts of Three 3

Hearts of Three 3

And while Francis returned delightedly to his fishing-rods, Destiny, in

Thomas Regan’s down-town private office, was working overtime. Having

arranged with his various brokers to buy, and, through his divers

channels of secret publicity having let slip the cryptic tip that

something was wrong with Tampico Petroleum’s concessions from the

Mexican government, Thomas Regan studied a report of his own oil-expert

emissary who had spent two months on the spot spying out what Tampico

Petroleum really had in sight and prospect.

 

A clerk brought in a card with the information that the visitor was

importunate and foreign. Regan listened, glanced at the card, and said:

 

“Tell this Mister Senor Alvarez Torres of Ciodad de Colon that I can’t

see him.”

 

Five minutes later the clerk was back, this time with a message

pencilled on the card. Regan grinned as he read it:

 

“_Dear Mr. Regan_,

“_Honoured Sir_:—

 

“_I have the honour to inform you that I have a tip on the location

of the treasure Sir Henry Morgan buried in old pirate days._

 

“_Alvarez Torres._”

 

Regan shook his head, and the clerk was nearly out of the room when his

employer suddenly recalled him.

 

“Show him in—at once.”

 

In the interval of being alone, Regan chuckled to himself as he rolled

the new idea over in his mind. “The unlicked cub!” he muttered through

the smoke of the cigar he was lighting. “Thinks he can play the lion

part old R.H.M. played. A trimming is what he needs, and old Grayhead

Thomas R. will see that he gets it.”

 

Senor Alvarez Torres’ English was as correct as his modish spring suit,

and though the bleached yellow of his skin advertised his Latin-American

origin, and though his black eyes were eloquent of the mixed lustres of

Spanish and Indian long compounded, nevertheless he was as thoroughly

New Yorkish as Thomas Regan could have wished.

 

“By great effort, and years of research, I have finally won to the clue

to the buccaneer gold of Sir Henry Morgan,” he preambled. “Of course

it’s on the Mosquito Coast. I’ll tell you now that it’s not a thousand

miles from the Chiriqui Lagoon, and that Bocas del Toro, within reason,

may be described as the nearest town. I was born there—educated in

Paris, however—and I know the neighbourhood like a book. A small

schooner—the outlay is cheap, most very cheap—but the returns, the

reward—the treasure!”

 

Senor Torres paused in eloquent inability to describe more definitely,

and Thomas Regan, hard man used to dealing with hard men, proceeded to

bore into him and his data like a cross-examining criminal lawyer.

 

“Yes,” Senor Torres quickly admitted, “I am somewhat embarrassed—how

shall I say?—for immediate funds.”

 

“You need the money,” the stock operator assured him brutally, and he

bowed pained acquiescence.

 

Much more he admitted under the rapid-fire interrogation. It was true,

he had but recently left Bocas del Toro, but he hoped never again to go

back. And yet he would go back if possibly some arrangement....

 

But Regan shut him off with the abrupt way of the master-man dealing

with lesser fellow-creatures. He wrote a check, in the name of Alvarez

Torres, and when that gentleman glanced at it he read the figures of a

thousand dollars.

 

“Now here’s the idea,” said Regan. “I put no belief whatsoever in your

story. But I have a young friend—my heart is bound up in the boy but he

is too much about town, the white lights and the white-lighted ladies,

and the rest—you understand?” And Senor Alvarez Torres bowed as one man

of the world to another. “Now, for the good of his health, as well as

his wealth and the saving of his soul, the best thing that could happen

to him is a trip after treasure, adventure, exercise, and ... you

readily understand, I am sure.”

 

Again Alvarez Torres bowed.

 

“You need the money,” Regan continued. “Strive to interest him. That

thousand is for your effort. Succeed in interesting him so that he

departs after old Morgan’s gold, and two thousand more is yours. So

thoroughly succeed in interesting him that he remains away three months,

two thousand more—six months, five thousand. Oh, believe me, I knew his

father. We were comrades, partners, I—I might say, almost brothers. I

would sacrifice any sum to win his son to manhood’s wholesome path. What

do you say? The thousand is yours to begin with. Well?”

 

With trembling fingers Senor Alvarez Torres folded and unfolded the

check.

 

“I ... I accept,” he stammered and faltered in his eagerness. “I ... I

... How shall I say?... I am yours to command.”

 

Five minutes later, as he arose to go, fully instructed in the part he

was to play and with his story of Morgan’s treasure revised to

convincingness by the brass-tack business acumen of the stock-gambler,

he blurted out, almost facetiously, yet even more pathetically:

 

“And the funniest thing about it, Mr. Regan, is that it is true. Your

advised changes in my narrative make it sound more true, but true it is

under it all. I need the money. You are most munificent, and I shall do

my best.... I ... I pride myself that I am an artist. But the real and

solemn truth is that the clue to Morgan’s buried loot is genuine. I have

had access to records inaccessible to the public, which is neither here

nor there, for the men of my own family—they are family records—have had

similar access, and have wasted their lives before me in the futile

search. Yet were they on the right clue—except that their wits made them

miss the spot by twenty miles. It was there in the records. They missed

it, because it was, I think, a deliberate trick, a conundrum, a puzzle,

a disguisement, a maze, which I, and I alone, have penetrated and

solved. The early navigators all played such tricks on the charts they

drew. My Spanish race so hid the Hawaiian Islands by five degrees of

longitude.”

 

All of which was in turn Greek to Thomas Regan, who smiled his

acceptance of listening and with the same smile conveyed his busy

business-man’s tolerant unbelief.

 

Scarcely was Senor Torres gone, when Francis Morgan was shown in.

 

“Just thought I’d drop around for a bit of counsel,” he said, greetings

over. “And to whom but you should I apply, who so closely played the

game with my father? You and he were partners, I understand, on some of

the biggest deals. He always told me to trust your judgment. And, well,

here I am, and I want to go fishing. What’s up with Tampico Petroleum?”

 

“What _is_ up?” Regan countered, with fine simulation of ignorance of

the very thing of moment he was responsible for precipitating. “Tampico

Petroleum?”

 

Francis nodded, dropped into a chair, and lighted a cigarette, while

Regan consulted the ticker.

 

“Tampico Petroleum is up—two points—you should worry,” he opined.

 

“That’s what I say,” Francis concurred. “I should worry. But just the

same, do you think some bunch, onto the inside value of it—and it’s

big—I speak under the rose, you know, I mean in absolute confidence?”

Regan nodded. “It is big. It is right. It is the real thing. It is

legitimate. Now this activity—would you think that somebody, or some

bunch, is trying to get control?”

 

His father’s associate, with the reverend gray of hair thatching his

roof of crooked brain, shook the thatch.

 

“Why,” he amplified, “it may be just a flurry, or it may be a hunch on

the stock public that it’s really good. What do you say?”

 

“Of course it’s good,” was Francis’ warm response. “I’ve got reports,

Regan, so good they’d make your hair stand up. As I tell all my friends,

this is the real legitimate. It’s a damned shame I had to let the public

in on it. It was so big, I just had to. Even all the money my father

left me, couldn’t swing it—I mean, free money, not the stuff tied

up—money to work with.”

 

“Are you short?” the older man queried.

 

“Oh, I’ve got a tidy bit to operate with,” was the airy reply of youth.

 

“You mean...?”

 

“Sure. Just that. If she drops, I’ll buy. It’s finding money.”

 

“Just about how far would you buy?” was the next searching

interrogation, masked by an __EXPRESSION__ of mingled good humor and

approbation.

 

“All I’ve got,” came Francis Morgan’s prompt answer. “I tell you, Regan,

it’s immense.”

 

“I haven’t looked into it to amount to anything, Francis; but I will say

from the little I know that it listens good.”

 

“Listens! I tell you, Regan, it’s the Simon-pure, straight legitimate,

and it’s a shame to have it listed at all. I don’t have to wreck anybody

or anything to pull it across. The world will be better for my shooting

into it I am afraid to say how many hundreds of millions of barrels of

real oil——say, I’ve got one well alone, in the Huasteca field, that’s

gushed 27,000 barrels a day for seven months. And it’s still doing it.

That’s the drop in the bucket we’ve got piped to market now. And it’s

twenty-two gravity, and carries less than two-tenths of one per cent. of

sediment. And there’s one gusher—sixty miles of pipe to build to it, and

pinched down to the limit of safety, that’s pouring out all over the

landscape just about seventy thousand barrels a day.—Of course, all in

confidence, you know. We’re doing nicely, and I don’t want Tampico Petroleum to skyrocket.”