“You and your wife teamed with Ferd Baronni to get a cut on all the emeralds mined under your direction?” Jack probed. “That is, you saw to it that a certain percentage of them never went through to company officials?”
Rhodes would make no admission implicating either his wife or the company agent.
However, the Scouts were determined to learn the entire truth. Days later, in Bogota, after the deposed mining engineer had been turned over to company officials, they rejoined Willie and War who assisted in piecing together the full story.
Lounging comfortably in a hotel room, the two Scouts recounted their own unpleasant adventures on the trail.
“Mrs. Rhodes gave us a rough time of it,” War told his friends. “She tried to trick us about the emerald. We knew she turned over a poor imitation of the gem to company officials, but it took Willie to prove it.”
“I remembered that back in Santa Marta she told us she disliked bananas,” Willie related with a chuckle. “I couldn’t figure out why she carried a sack of ’em with her when she left the mine. I tried to take one from the bunch, and she set up an awful yip. That started me to thinking. So, we mashed up the bananas and found the prize emerald!”
“She’d been carrying gems that way for quite a while without being caught,” War added. “We turned the good emerald over to company officials. It’s top grade.”
“What did you learn about Ferd Baronni?” Ken questioned.
“Oh, he’s hooked up with Rhodes,” War answered. “In checking the books, company auditors found a lot of discrepancies. So Baronni’s been fired.”
“We learned too, that it was Baronni who hired that sled-boat operator to try to delay our trip to the mine,” contributed Willie. “He figured a big dose of trouble would discourage us from going on.”