"That man," he said, "has always been a mystery to me. How old would you take him to be?"
"Oh, forty or so," the boy answered.
"He has looked that age for twenty years, to my knowledge. If I didn't know better, I should believe him to have found the Fountain of Perpetual Youth which Ponce de Leon and so many other of the early Spanish adventurers sailed to the Spanish Main to find."
"But what is he?" asked Stuart, sitting forward and eager in attention.
"Who knows? He is the friend, the personal friend, of nearly every important man in the Caribbean, whether that official be British, French or Dutch; he is also regarded as a witch-master by half the black population. I have met him in the jungles, botanizing—and he is a good botanist—I have seen him suddenly appear as the owner of a sugar plantation, as a seeker for mining concessions, as a merchant, and as a hotel proprietor. I have seen him the owner of a luxurious yacht; I have met him, half-ragged, looking for a job, with every appearance of poverty and misery."
"But," cried the lad in surprise, "what can that all imply? Do you suppose he's just some sort of a conspirator, or swindler, sometimes rich and sometimes poor, according to the hauls he has made?"
"Well," said the botanist, "sometimes I have thought he is the sort of man who would have been a privateer in the old days, a 'gentleman buccaneer.' Maybe he is still, but in a different way. Sometimes, I have thought that he was attached to the Secret Service of some government."
"English?"
"Probably not," the scientist answered, "because he is too English for that. No, he is so English that I thought he must be for some other government and was just playing the English part to throw off suspicion."
"German?"