“Just as I thought. Prison work, isn’t it, Monsieur Lemois? Yes—of course it is—I see the tool marks. Made of soup bones. Oh, very good indeed—best I have ever seen. Where did you get this?”
“They were made by the French prisoners in Moscow,” answered Lemois, who had also risen from his seat and was now standing beside him. “But how did you know?” he asked in astonishment. “Most of my visitors, if they look at them at all, think they are Chinese.”
“Because no one, if he can get ivory, makes a thing like this of bone”—and he held it up to our gaze—“and everybody out of jail who has this skill can get ivory. I’ve made a lot myself—never as fine as these—this man must have been an expert. I used to keep from going crazy by doing this sort of thing—that and the old dodge of taming fleas so they’d eat out of my hand. What a pile of good stuff you have here—regular museum”—and with a searching, comprehensive glance he replaced the candle and regained his chair.
I bent forward and touched his elbow.
“We’ve entertained all sorts of people here,” I said with a laugh, “but I think this is the first time we have ever had an out-and-out ticket-of-leave man. Do you mind telling us how it happened?”
“No; but it wouldn’t interest you. Just one of those fool scrapes a fellow gets into when he is chucked out neck and heels into the world.”
Brierley drew his chair closer—so did Louis and Le Blanc.
Herbert glanced toward his friend. “Let them have it, old man. We promise not to set the dogs on you.”
“Thanks. But it wouldn’t be the first time. Well, all right if it won’t bore you. Now let me think”—and he lifted his weather-bronzed face, made richer by the glow of the candles overhead, and began scratching his grizzly beard with his forefinger.
“It was after you left Borneo, Herbert, that I came across two fellows—Englishmen—who told me of some new gold diggings on the west coast, and I was fool enough to join them, working my passage on one of the home-going tramp steamers. Well, we thrashed about for six months and landed on one of the small islands in the Caribbean Sea—the name of which I forget—where we left the ship and hid until she disappeared. The gold fever was well out of us by that time, and, besides, I had gotten tired of scrubbing decks and my two fellow tramps of washing dishes. The port was a regular coaling station and some other craft would come along; if not, we could stay where we were. The climate was warm, bananas were cheap and plenty; we were entirely fit, and—like many another lot of young chaps out for a lark—did not care a tinker’s continental what happened. That, if you think about it, is the high-water mark of happiness—to be perfectly well, strong, twenty-five years of age, and ready for anything that bobs up.