“Step in there and tell me all about it. I have a friend who would like to hear it too. You will agree when you meet him—”
The boys entered the compact cabin, then stopped short in amazement. Mr. Stannart’s friend was smiling, too, but in a way that was anything but pleasant. For both Biff and Kamuka had seen that fixed smile before.
The man who awaited them in the cabin was Nicholas Serbot!
CHAPTER XX
The Tables Turn
Gripped by utter astonishment, Biff could only stare from Serbot to Stannart. When he found his voice, he blurted out accusingly:
“You two must have been working together from the very start!”
“Not quite,” declared Mr. Stannart dryly, “although I must say that Mr. Serbot and I have continually operated along similar lines. However, it wasn’t until after your father told the Ajax Corporation about Lew Kirby and his wonderful mine that I even heard of Nicholas Serbot.”
“And I,” rejoined Serbot, with his same fixed smile, “had never heard of the Ajax Mining Corporation.”
“Despite the fact that your father was impressed by Kirby’s story,” Stannart told Biff, “Ajax still had to investigate it. Kirby had samples of gold that might have come from many places, and his map could have meant nothing. It was necessary to obtain some reports from the upper region of the Rio Negro. I learned that certain European interests were checking on the same story.”
“And I,” added Serbot, “happened to represent some of those interests.”