"Look you here, Mr. Berkeley," said he, "we're reasonable men, and
it's no more than fair you should be reasonable too, seeing as how you
are uncomfortably placed. That was took up by Adam Mayle, and he never
meant his son to finger it. 'A damned ungrateful, supercilious whelp,'
says he to me in the lad's own bedroom; yes, in his own bedroom"--for,
as may be imagined, I had started. Here was the explanation of how
Cullen discovered George Glen's business. I hoisted myself up against
the partition as well as I could. How I prayed that Glen would go on!
He was sufficiently garrulous, if only he was not interrupted, and he
was arguing for all of them. "'A damned ungrateful, supercilious
whelp,' he said; 'and George,' said he, as I read out the chart, 'I'd
sooner let the cross rot to pieces in the Sierra Leone mud than fetch
it home for him to have a share of. I've enough for myself and the
girl. I'll not stir a finger,' says he, 'and if it was here now I'd
have it buried with me.' Those were his very words, which he spoke to
me not half an hour after he had driven Cullen from the house, and in
the lad's own bedroom, where we couldn't be overheard."
"But you were overheard," said I, "Cullen Mayle overheard you." Glen
jumped on to his feet, his mouth dropped, he stood staring at me in a
daze, and then he thumped one fist down into the palm of the other.
"By God it's true," he said, "he was in the curtains."
"He was in bed," said I.
"By God it's true," repeated Glen, and he sat down again on the floor.
"So that's how Cullen Mayle found out. I was mightily astonished to
find him at Sierra Leone on the same business as ourselves. But it's
true. I remember there was a noise, and I cried out, 'What's that?'
with a sort of jump, and Adam he says, pleasant like, 'It's the
hangman, George;' but it wasn't, it was Cullen Mayle."
I think that every one laughed as Glen ended, except myself. I could
even at that moment, but be sensible what a strange picture it made;
those two old ruffians sitting over against each other in the bedroom,
and Cullen waked up from his sleep in bed to lie quiet and overhear
them.
"So you see, it isn't reasonable Cullen should have half since his
father never meant him to have any," he continued.
"But without Cullen you would get nothing at all," said I.
"Why not since we have you?"--and then I made a slip--I answered: "But
Cullen Mayle told me where the cross is."
"But Cullen Mayle doesn't know," said Roper, "else would he have gone
hunting to Sierra Leone for it?"
"Told him where to look for the plan, he means." Tortue interrupted
again. This time I could not mistake. He glanced at me with too much
significance. For some reason, he was standing my friend.
"Of course," said I, "where to look for the plan."
So it was a plan they needed, a plan of the spot where Adam Mayle had
buried the cross. Where could that plan be, in what unlikely place
would Adam have hid it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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