“Don’t worry. Your friends in Panama’ll know you’re all right. It’ll only be a few days. I’ll introduce you to the purser and the doctor, and we’ll get you out of the steerage and make you comfortable. I guess your credit is good for that. You’ll like the old Lake Tahoe.”
Every moment was taking him farther from Panama, and Lang had to submit. Findlay introduced him to the ship’s doctor, who happened to have heard of Lang’s Boston record, and was proud to afford hospitality to a distinguished confrère. Between him and the purser they got together a miscellaneous outfit of fresh clothing for him, and moved him up into the cabin, on credit, and even got him placed at the captain’s table at dinner.
They did what they could for him, and there were pleasant people on board, and the weather was fine, but Lang took no pleasure in any of it. He counted the miles that the ship reeled off day by day, all too slowly. Carroll and Louie must be well on their way to Chile now, he felt certain. Morrison had been sure they could never hit on the location of the emerald deposit, but Lang had thought of something that made him much less certain of that.
It was summer now in Chile, and the glacier must be melting fast. The whole pocket of emerald-bearing rock was likely to be melted out to plain sight, even perhaps to be washed down into the gravel below the ice wall. It could not have been very deep in the glacier, since part of it had washed out already.
Carroll might find the whole treasure ready for the picking up. Perhaps Morrison had thought of this. What would they think of his disappearance? Would Eva still trust him? Would she doubt him? He was afraid to think, and he walked the deck nightly for miles, so that fatigue might bring sleep, and pass another night’s run.
He would have been even still more perturbed if he could have known that Eva Morrison, growing uneasy, had finally telephoned the Hotel Tivoli late the following afternoon. She was informed that Doctor Lang had sent a messenger for his baggage, canceled his room, and had, they thought, left for South America by a steamer very early that morning.
It struck her like a thunderbolt. Morrison, when she told him, swore a single, tremendous oath.
“I did think that man was to be trusted,” he said. “Now, sick or well, we take the Tuesday boat for Valparaiso.”
Arriving at last in longed-for Seattle, Lang had a telegram filed for Panama within fifteen minutes of landing. Naturally, he received no reply, but while waiting, he had Findlay introduce him at a bank which arranged to transfer his Mobile account by wire.
When he had purchased some new clothes and paid the difference between steerage and first-class fare on the Lake Tahoe he had about thirteen hundred dollars left. It was his whole earthly capital, and he was risking it on a rather long shot.