"The commonly accepted story goes," said Brice, taking no heed of the sneer, "that practically the whole issue of 1804 dollars went toward the payment of the Louisiana Purchase money, when Uncle Sam paid Napoleon Bonaparte's government a trifle less than $15,000,000 (or under four cents an acre) for the richest part of the whole United States. Payment was made in half a dozen different forms,—in settlement of anti-French claims and in installment notes, and so forth. But something between a million and two million dollars of it is said to have been paid in silver."
"Are you a schoolmaster, Mr. Brice?" queried Milo, who seemed unable to avoid sneering in futile fashion at the man who was dominating his wavering willpower.
"No, Mr. Standish," coolly replied the other. "I am Gavin
Brice, of the United States Secret Service."
Standish's bearded jaw dropped. He glanced furtively about him, like a trapped rat. Gavin continued, authoritatively:
"You've nothing to fear from me, as long as you play straight. And I'm here to see that you shall. Two hours ago, I was for renouncing my life-work and throwing over my job. Never mind why. I've changed my mind, now. I'm in this thing to the finish. With Hade out of the game, I can see my way through."
"But—"
"Now I'll finish the yarn you were so gradually leading up to with those schoolboy questions of yours. French statesmen claimed, last year, that something over a million dollars of the Louisiana purchase money was never paid to France. That was money, in the form of silver dollars, which went by sea. In skirting the Florida coast—probably on the way from some mint or treasury in the South—one or more of the treasure ships parted from their man-o'-war escorts in a hurricane, and went aground on the southeastern Florida reefs. The black pirate, Caesar, and his cutthroats did the rest.
"This was no petty haul, such as Caesar was accustomed to, and it seems to have taken his breath away. He and his crew carried it into Caesar's Estuary—not Caesar's Creek—an inlet, among the mangrove swamps. They took it there by night, and sank it in shallow water, under the bank. There they planned to have it until it might be safe to divide it and to scatter to Europe or to some place where they could live in safety and in splendor. Only a small picked crew of Caesar's knew the hiding place. And, by some odd coincidence, every man of them died of prussic acid poisoning, at a booze-feast that Caesar invited them to, at his shack down on Caesar's creek, a month later. Then, almost at once afterward, as you've probably heard, Caesar himself had the bad luck to die with extreme suddenness.
"The secret was lost. Dozens of pirates and of wreckers—ancestors of the conchs—knew about the treasure. But none of them could find it.
"There was a rumor that Caesar had written instructions about it, on the flyleaf of a jeweled prayer book that was part of some ship's loot. But his heirs sold or hocked the prayer-book, at St. Augustine or Kingston or Havana, before this story reached them. None of them could have read it, anyhow. Then, last year, Rodney Hade happened upon that book, (with the jewels all pried out of the cover, long ago), in a negro cabin on Shirley Street, at Nassau, after hunting for it, off and on, for years. The Government had been hunting for it, too, but he got to it a week ahead of us. That was how we found who had it. And that is why we decided to watch him …. Do you want me to keep on prattling about these things, to convince you I'm what I say I am? Or have you had enough?