Pape, despite her allegedly mystic instructions, interrupted: “Don’t want you to tell me! Won’t hear it!”
“Why-Not Pape,” her eyes flashed open, “you’re a—At least, you might be said to be mulish, the way you stick to a point.”
“Did granddad’s spirit dictate that?” he enquired mildly.
“No. That’s thrown in on my own account. It is ridiculous for you to be risking life and limb, reputation, money and comfort, for something whose very nature you don’t know.”
“But I do know for what I’m risking all those little things.”
“For what, then?”
“For you.”
The pause that ensued may be utilized for the admission that Pape was not as superior to curiosity as his stand would suggest. Indeed, he had speculated, so far as his intelligence and knowledge would take him, over the exact nature of the hidden hoard. He had heard of gold and jewels buried by eccentrics of little faith in modern banks and presumed that something such was deposited in the missing crock. Once Jane had said that the buried treasure was “bigger than Central Park itself.” Just now she had declared the desperation of their hunt due to fear lest their enemies “destroy” it. Destroy what was bigger than Central Park itself? She had added a new and confusing touch to the mystery.
“I set out to give you the common or garden variety of service,” he explained his stand. “That’s a kind that don’t need to understand, that digs ditches and wages wars and wins women. Don’t load me down with knowledge now. Let me go all the way to trail’s-end—the crock—just trusting that it will lead me to you.”
He bent that she should not miss his promising smile—twilight was mixing with starlight by now.