“You can believe as much of this as you like. Gold, however, is heavy stuff—no one can carry much over twenty thousand dollars worth. If the chest wasn’t really very heavy, and really was of such incalculable value, it had to contain something more than gold.
“This part of the story is pretty convincing. I’ve investigated, and the legends contain such a wealth of detail concerning the appearance of the chest, how it was guarded, and so on, and the various accounts dovetail so perfectly one with another, that I am personally convinced that the treasure was a reality—at least that such a chest existed on the old ship. When you get into the contents of the chest, however, you find only a maze of conflicting rumors. To me they tend to make the story as a whole even more interesting—and I’ll confess I’d love to know what was in that chest.
“Well, the Arganil broke to pieces off the west coast of Florida, not more than twenty miles from here. That fact can not be doubted. There are accounts of the wreck on official record. And legend has it that through Heaven knows what wickedness and bloodshed and cunning, the two Jason brothers not only managed to get off in the stoutest of the ship’s boats, but that they carried the treasure with them.
“If there were any other members of the crew in the boat with them they were unquestionably murdered. Nothing was ever heard of them again. The two brothers are said to have landed somewhere close to this lagoon.
“But naked treasure breeds murder! It is a strange thing, Killdare, but the naked, yellow metal, as well as glittering jewels, gets home to human wickedness as nothing else in the world can. If that chest had been full of valuable securities, even paper currency, it wouldn’t have left such a red trail from Rio to Florida. Gold and jewels waken a fever of possession out of all proportion to their actual value. When they landed on the shore one of the Jasons neatly murdered the other and made off with the chest.
“The same old yarn—Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus. Killdare, did you know that fratricide is shockingly common? There are three kinds of brothers, and the Jasons were simply one of the three kinds. Sometimes you find brothers that love each other beyond belief, with a self-sacrificing devotion that is beautiful to see. Then you find the great mass of brothers—liking each other fairly well, loyal in a family scrap, fair pals but much closer to other pals that aren’t their brothers. Then you come to this third class, a puzzle to psychologists the world over! Brothers that hate each other like poison snakes.
“Why is it, Killdare? Jealousy? A survival from the beast? These were the kind of brothers that go through life bitter and hating and at swords’ points. And all too often they get to the killing stage.”
“You find it in the beast-world, too,” I commented. “Look at the case of the wolves and the dogs. They are blood-brothers, drop for drop—and they hate each other with a fervor that is simply blood-curdling.”
“True enough. I remember hearing about it. Well, one of the Jasons—the one whose cunning conceived of the whole wickedness to start with—killed the other, disposed of his body, and then through some unknown series of events, concealed the treasure.
“He went away awhile, the old wives say—taking a small portion of the treasure with him. At this point the name of Jason is lost, irremediably, in the mist of the past. But it is true that some two years later a seafaring man, one who had worn earrings and who cursed wickedly as he talked, came back and bought a great colonial home where the treasure was supposed to have been concealed.