“It all came through Floyd. He was in South America, he had some kind of job up in the copper mines, and got fired. He was on the beach at some Chilean port when he met up with Morrison. The old professor was out on an expedition. I expect you know he was an eminent exploring guy and book writer. Morrison wanted another white man with him who knew something about prospecting, and he made a deal with Floyd to go with him, on a fifty-fifty basis of any mineral or anything valuable they located.
“They didn’t locate anything for a while. They had a sort of small schooner and coasted down, going ashore every day or so, and sometimes camping for a week, while the old professor explored. It’s an awful country—according to Floyd—all rough islands and narrow channels, and the mountains right down to the sea, rocks and big glaciers, and fog and rain all the time. It was early in the spring; they have their summer down there in the winter, you know.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Lang, dryly. “But what did Morrison locate?”
“Well, it seems he went ashore one morning at the head of a little bay that split right into the hills. There was a valley beyond, and a big glacier coming down like a wall right across the valley. Floyd left him there, and was to come back with the boat to bring him off in the evening.
“He went back around sundown, and found the old man down and out. He’d been climbing up on the rocks and ice, and had fallen and busted several ribs, and was stunned and bruised all up. He had a lot of bits of rock in his sack, stones full of green crystals. You saw some of them in his box the other day. And in his pocket he had a couple of big green stones the size of small potatoes.”
“Floyd went through his pockets while he was insensible?”
“Sure he did. He pocketed one of the big stones, too. He left the other. He was on a half-share basis, you know. Then he got Morrison back on the schooner, and they fixed up his hurts.
“He asked Morrison about the stones when he was better, but the old professor said they were mere crystals that weren’t worth anything. Floyd thought different, though, and spent a good deal of time going ashore by himself and hunting around, but he never could find where Morrison had located them. It might have been anywhere within a mile.
“The old man never seemed to remember that one of the stones was lost. He was too sick, maybe. His ribs didn’t heal very well, and they had to make for Valparaiso, where there were doctors.
“In Valparaiso, Floyd took his green stone to the best jewelers there. It was just as he thought; it was an emerald.”