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‘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 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 Señor 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 Señor 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?’