“Nonsense!” Lang interrupted. “Emeralds don’t come in those sizes. Why, it would have been worth a fortune.”
“So it would—only it was plumb full of little hairline cracks and flaws and veins of rock. It wasn’t worth a nickel. The one Morrison had was the same. But, as I said, it was the size of a little potato.”
“Floyd said that?” Lang inquired.
“No, I saw it myself. Floyd had it with him. It went down in his pocket with the Cavite, I expect. We had two of the best jewelers in New Orleans look at it, too, and they said the same as the Chilean ones.
“Floyd kept after Morrison to live up to his agreement, and go back and clear out the emerald mine between them. But Morrison always stalled him off, and at last he slipped away and came north before Floyd knew he was gone.
“Floyd followed him up, of course, and located him here on the coast. Of course he knew the old man was getting ready to go back to Chile after the emeralds. Then he ran across Jerry Harding and Louie and me at New Orleans. We’d all known him before, and we made up a partnership.”
“Your crowd had been rum running, I take it?” said Lang.
“Jerry owned the Cavite,” replied Carroll, after a pause. “He’s in her at the bottom of the Gulf now, and Floyd, too, and what we used to do is nobody’s affair.”
“Why didn’t Floyd go back to Chile by himself? He knew the way.”
“He was broke. He hadn’t the money for any sort of vessel. We were going to sail the Cavite there. Besides, he didn’t know the way. It’s all a tangle of islands and channels, that Chilean coast. You’d lose yourself in an hour, unless you’re a good seaman with good charts. And besides that, if he got to that glacier valley he couldn’t tell where Morrison dug up the stones. It might have been two or three miles from the sea. He’d been away all day.