is as honorable as he is wealthy. For my part, I do not understand how
he came to place such confidence in the 'Yankee' doctor, who had to me
the air of an adventurer; but he took him to his home, made him a
member of his family, and before I left Acapulco, I heard that Don
Miguel had given him for a wife his only daughter, a beautiful girl,
who could have had her choice of the proudest young bloods in this
region."
It may be imagined with what interest Mr. Burton listened to the story
thus unconsciously revealed by the chatty Mexican. He at once, as by
prescience, saw his man in this fortunate Dr. Seltzer, who had
registered his name Mr., not Dr., on the passenger-list, and which name
was among those that the detective had selected as suspicious.
(I interrupted my friend's narrative here to explain the matter of the
bank-notes which he had exchanged for specie with a passenger, but
found that Mr. Burton already knew all about them.)
Edging gradually into the conversation, Mr. Burton, with his tact and
experience, was not long in drawing from the group a description of the
personal appearance of Dr. Seltzer, along with all the facts and
conjectures relating to his history since his connection with Don
Miguel. Everything he heard made "assurance doubly sure;" and there was
no time to be lost in deciding upon the course to be pursued in this
unexpected doubling of the chase. To get off at Acapulco was a matter
of course; but what to do with the remainder of his party he could not
at first determine. He knew that I would be eager to accompany him; yet
he feared that, in some way, should we all land and take rooms at any
of the hotels, the wily Doctor Seltzer, doubtless always on the alert,
might perceive some cause for alarm, and secure safety by flight. To go
alone, under an assumed name, in the character of a scientific explorer
of mines, seemed to him the surest and most discreet method of nearing
the game; and to this resolve he had come before he sought us out to
announce his intention of stopping at Acapulco, while leaving us to
pursue our voyage without him.
CHAPTER VI.
AT LAST--AT LAST.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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