"Naturally he can't take it," Val assured her hotly. "Pirate's Haven is ours. This looks to me like blackmail. He'll threaten to stir up a lot of trouble unless we buy him off." Mr. LeFleur nodded. "That is perhaps the motive behind it all." "Well," Val forced a laugh, "then he loses. We haven't the money to buy him off." "Neither have you the money to fight a case through the courts, Mr. Valerius," answered the lawyer soberly. "But there is some chance, there must be!" urged Ricky. "I submitted the full case to Mr. John Stanton yesterday--Mr. Stanton is our local authority on cases of this type. He has informed me that there is a single ray of hope. Frankly, I find this claimant a dubious person, but a shrewd one. He knows that he has the advantage now, but should we gain the upper hand, we could, I believe, rid ourselves of him. Our chance lies in the past. This was first a French and then a Spanish colony. Under both rules the law of primogeniture sometimes held force. That is, an estate passed to the eldest son of a family. Your estate was such a one. In fact, we possess in this very office old charters and papers which state that the property was entailed after the European custom. If that were so, the courts might declare that the elder of the twins born in 1788 was the sole owner of Pirate's Haven. "But which of the twin brothers was the elder? You will say at once, Richard. But your rival will say Roderick. And there is no proof. For in the spring, two months after the birth of the boys, most of the family papers were destroyed in the great fire which almost wiped out the city and burned the Ralestone town house. There is no birth record in existence. I appealed to your brother to return to me these papers which Miles Ralestone took north with him after the war. You returned them today but there was nothing in them of any value to this case. "However, if you can find such proof, that Richard Ralestone was the elder and thus the legal heir under the laws of Spain, then we shall have a solid fact upon which to base our fight." "There is such a proof," began Ricky slowly. "What? Where?" demanded Mr. LeFleur. "Don't you remember, Val," she turned to him, "what Rupert said about the Luck last night--that the names of the heirs were engraved upon its blade? We'll have to find the Luck! We'll just have to!" "But Roderick took the Luck with him. And if it's still in existence, this rival will have it now," her brother reminded her. "Yes, of course, I was forgetting--" her voice trailed off into silence and Val stared at her with a dropped jaw. Such a quick change of manner was totally unlike Ricky. "Yes," she repeated slowly and distinctly, "I guess we're the losers--"