Part 11 (1/2)
”After he threw us down on the Q. T. survey?”
Griffith coughed and hesitated. ”Well--now--look here, Tommy, you're not the kind to hold a grudge. Anyway, the bridge was turned over to the Coville Construction Company.” He turned quickly to Lord James.
”Say, what's that about his being in the papers? If it's anything to his credit, put me next, won't you? I couldn't pry it out of him with a crow-bar.”
”So you're going to use a Jimmy instead, eh?” countered Blake.
”Right-o, Tammas,” said Lord James. ”We're going to open up the incident out of hand.”
”Lord!” groaned Blake. He rose, flus.h.i.+ng with embarra.s.sment, and swung across, to stare at a blueprint in the far corner of the room.
Lord James flicked the ash from his cigar with his little finger, and smiled at Griffith.
”Tom and I had been knocking around quite a bit, you know,” he began.
”Fetched up in South Africa. American engineers in demand on the Rand.
Tom was asked to manage a mine.”
”He could do it,” commented Griffith. ”Was two years on a low-grade proposition in Colorado--made it pay dividends. Didn't he suit the Rand people?”
”Better than they suited him, I take it. I left for a run home. Week before I arrived a servant looted the family jewels--heirlooms, all that, you know--chap named Hawkins. Thought I'd play Sherlock Holmes.
Learned that my man had booked pa.s.sage for India. Traced him to Calcutta. Lost two months; found he'd doubled back and gone to the Cape. Cape Town, found he'd booked pa.s.sage for England under his last alias--Winthrope. Steamer list also showed names of my friend Lady Bayrose, Miss Leslie, and Tom.”
”Hey?” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Griffith, opening his narrowed eyes a line.
”Same time, learned the steamer had been posted as lost, somewhere between Port Natal and Zanzibar.”
”Crickey!” gasped Griffith. ”Then it was Tom who pulled H. V.'s daughter--Miss Leslie--through that deal! Heard all about it from H. V.
himself, when he took me out to Arizona to look over this Zariba Dam proposition. But he didn't name the man. Well, I'll be--switched! Tommy sure did land in High Society that time!”
”They landed in the primitive, so to speak,--he and Miss Leslie and Hawkins,--when the cyclone flung them ash.o.r.e in the swamps.”
”Hawkins? Didn't you just say--”
”Rather a grim joke, was it not? Every soul aboard drowned except those three--Tom and Miss Leslie and Hawkins, of all men!”
”Bet Tommy shook your family jewels out of his pockets mighty sudden.”
Lord James lost his smile. ”He got them, later on, when the fellow--died.”
”Died? How?”
”Fever--another cyclone.”
”Eh? Well, G.o.d's country is good enough for me. Those tropical holes sure are h.e.l.l. Tommy once wrote me about one of the Central American ports. You. don't ever catch me south of the U. S. This East African proposition, now? Must have been a tough deal even for Tommy.”
”They were doing well enough when I found him, both he and Miss Leslie,--skin clothes, poisoned arrows, house in a tree hollow--all that, y'know.”
”Well, I'll be--! But that's Tommy, for sure. He's got the kind of brains that get there. If he can't buck through a proposition, he'll triangulate around it. Go on.”
”There's not much to tell, I fancy, now that you know he was the man.