“Now, my good sir, why waste lies? I’m not going to show you up. No fear. Why should I? It would probably ruin you, and I should stand self-convicted of being in the lowest and most desperate gambling hell in Europe, without being made a sixpence richer by the transaction. Only you didn’t know me, and you thought I didn’t know you; and I thought it would be handier if we were open about one another’s little ways at once before we went any further. Who knows but what we might be partners in some profitable business together?” Onslow put his cue down and faced his host, with hands deep in his trousers pockets. “It’s worth thinking about,” he observed.
Mr. Theodore Shelf stood before the fireplace and drew a handkerchief across his forehead with trembling fingers. “What business do you refer to?” he asked at length.
“None whatever. I’m not a business man. I make discoveries and don’t know how to use them. You are a business man and may be able to see where the money profit comes in. If you can, why then we’ll share the plunder. If you can’t, we’re neither of us worse off than before.”
“But this is vague. What sort of discoveries? Have you found a mine?”
“No, sir; in the present instance a channel!”
“A channel?—I don’t understand you.”
“A deep-water channel leading in to a certain coast, where everybody else supposes there is nothing but shallow water. The Government charts put down the place as partly unsurveyed, but all impossible for navigation. The upgrowth of coral, they say, is turning part of the sea into dry land. In a large measure this is true; but at one point—which I have discovered—a river comes down from the interior, and the scour of this river has cut a deep narrow channel out through the reefs to the deep sea water beyond.”
“Well,” Shelf broke in, “I see no value in that.”
“Wait a minute! In confidence I’ll tell you it is on the West Coast of Florida—on the Mexican Gulf coast. The interior of southern Florida is called the Everglades. It’s partly lake, partly swamp; built up of mangroves, saw-grass, cypress trees, and water; tenanted by snakes, alligators, wild beasts, and a few Seminole Indians. Only one expedition of whites has been across it—or rather only one expedition known to history. But I’ve been there, right into the heart of the Everglades; in fact, I’ve just come from there; and I netted £1000 out of the trip.”