She turned carelessly toward me, and our eyes met for an instant. Page 29

“I don’t know why a man should be past it at twenty-seven! Besides, Pickering’s friends are strangers to me. But what became of that Irish colleen you used to moon over? Her distinguishing feature, as I remember her photograph, was a short upper lip. You used to force her upon me frequently when we were in Africa.”

“Humph! When I got back to Dublin I found that she had married a brewer’s son,—think of it!”

“Put not your faith in a short upper lip! Her face never inspired any confidence in me.”

“That will do, thank you. I’ll have a bit more of that mayonnaise if the waiter isn’t dead. I think you said your grandfather died in June. A letter advising you of the fact reached you at Naples in October. Has it occurred to you that there was quite an interim there? What, may I ask, was the executor doing all that time? You may be sure he was taking advantage of the opportunity to look for the red, red gold. I suppose you didn’t give him a sound drubbing for not keeping the cables hot with inquiries for you?”

He eyed me in that disdain for my stupidity which I have never suffered from any other man.

“Well, no; to tell the truth, I was thinking of other things during the interview.”

“Your grandfather should have provided a guardian for you, lad. You oughtn’t to be trusted with money. Is that bottle empty? Well, if that person with the fat neck was your friend Pickering, I’d have a care of what’s coming to me. I’d be quite sure that Mr. Pickering hadn’t made away with the old gentleman’s boodle, or that it didn’t get lost on the way from him to me.”

“The time’s running now, and I’m in for the year. My grandfather was a fine old gentleman, and I treated him like a dog. I’m going to do what he directs in that will no matter what the size of the reward may be.”

“Certainly; that’s the eminently proper thing for you to do. But,—but keep your wits about you. If a fellow with that neck can’t find money where money has been known to exist, it must be buried pretty deep. Your grandfather was a trifle eccentric, I judge, but not a fool by any manner of means. The situation appeals to my imagination, Jack. I like the idea of it,—the lost treasure and the whole business. Lord, what a salad that is! Cheer up, comrade! You’re as grim as an owl!”

Whereupon we fell to talking of people and places we had known in other lands.