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Page 76
She went slowly down, fitting the gloves to her fingers.
Midway of the flight she paused. The voice of the little
cockney, but without the accent, speaking to a Bobby standing
beside the entrance reached her.
"It was Sir Henry Marquis who set the Yard to register all
laundry marks in London. Great C. I. D. Chief, Sir Henry!"
And Lady Muriel remembered that she had removed these gloves in
order to turn the slipping key in Bramwell Winton's safe lock.
X.-The Last Adventure
The talk had run on treasure.
I could not sleep and my friends had dropped in. I had the big
South room on the second floor of the Hotel de Paris. It looks
down on the Casino and the Mediterranean. Perhaps you know it.
Queer friends, you'd say. Every man-jack of them a gambler. But
when one begins to sit about all night with his eyes open, the
devil's a friend.
Barclay was standing before the fire. The others had drifted
out. He's a big man pitted with the smallpox. He made a
gesture, flinging out his hand toward the door.
"That bunch thinks there's a curse on treasure, Sir Henry.
That's one of the oldest notions in the world . . . it's
unlucky."
"But I know where there's a treasure that's not unlucky. At
least it was not unlucky for poor Charlie Tavor. He did not get
it, but there was no curse on it that reached to him. It helped
poor Charlie finish in style. He died like a lord in a big
country house, with a formal garden and a line of lackeys."
Barclay paused.
"Queer chap, Tavor. He was the best all round explorer in the
world. I bar nobody. Charlie Tavor could take a nigger and
cross the poisonous plateau south west of the Libyan desert.
I've backed him. I know . . . but he had no business sense,
anybody could fool him. He found the stock of bar silver on the
west face of the Andes that made old Nute Hardman a quarter of a
million dollars, clear, after the cursed beast had split it a
half dozen ways with a crooked South American government."
Barclay's teeth set and he jerked up his clinched hand.
"It was a damned steal, Sir Henry. A piece of low down, dirty
robbery; and it was like taking candy away from a child . . . .
`Sign here, Mr. Tavor,' and Charlie would scrawl on his fist . .
. . Some people think there's no hell, but what's God Almighty
going to do with Old Nute?"
He flung out his hand again.
"Still the thing didn't dent Charlie. He never missed a step.
`Don't bother, Barclay, old man,' he'd say, `I'll find something
else,' and then he'd go off into this dream he had of coming back
when he'd struck it, to the old home county in England and laying
it over the bunch that had called him `no good.' He never talked
much, but I gathered from odds and ends that he was the black
sheep in a pretty smart flock.
"Then, I'd stake him to a cheap outfit - not much, I've said he
could push through the Libyan desert with a nigger - and he'd
drop out of the world. It wasn't charity. I got my money's
worth. The clay pots he brought me from Yucatan would sell any
day for more cash than I ever advanced him."
Barclay moved a little before the fire. I was listening in a big
chair, my feet extended toward the hearth; a smoking jacket had
replaced my dinner coat.
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