'Sold the Nickel Trust?' Margaret was quite as much surprised as Lady Maud had been.
'Yes. I wasn't made to do one thing long, I suppose. If I were, I should still be a cow-boy. Just now, I'm here to go to Parsifal, and since you say those tunes are out of that opera, I daresay I'm going to like it very much.'
'It's all very uncanny,' Margaret said thoughtfully. 'I wonder who those two men were, and what became of the one who disappeared.'
'I've a strong impression that I saw him in New York the other day,' Van Torp answered. 'If I'm right, he's made money—doing quite well, I should think. It wouldn't surprise me to hear he'd got together a million or so.'
'Really? What is he doing? Your stories grow more and more interesting!'
'If he's the fellow we used to call Levi Longlegs on the ranch, he's a Russian now. I'm not perfectly sure, for he had no hair on his face then, and now he has a beard like a French sapper. But the eyes and the nose and the voice and the accent are the same, and the age would about correspond. Handsome man, I suppose you'd call him. His name is Kralinsky just at present, and he's found a whole mine of rubies somewhere.' [{143}]
'Really? I love rubies. They are my favourite stones.'
'Are they? That's funny. I've got an uncut one in my pocket now, if you'd like to see it. I believe it comes from Kralinsky's mine, too, though I got it through a friend of yours, two or three days ago.'
'A friend of mine?'
He was poking his large fingers into one of the pockets of his waistcoat in search of the stone.