“Why, yes,” he said. “I’m glad you spoke of it. I know one girl here, at least, who wants music lessons. She’ll pay well for them, too—four or five dollars an hour.”
“Oh!” gasped Margaret. “Do they pay such prices in California? But they will want something extraordinary.”
“No, you’ll do splendidly,” Elliott assured her. “Then I have to go away myself,—on that hunt for the easy millions I spoke of in Hongkong.”
“And you never told me just what it was,” said Margaret. “But, before you go, I want you to tell me just what it was that those men wanted my father to tell them.”
Elliott reflected. “Yes, I might as well tell you,” he said, slowly. “It is mixed up with my own venture, too. I cut the story short the other day, for fear of hurting you too much.” And for the third time Elliott told the story of the wrecked gold-ship, and of his own efforts in the chase.
“They killed him because he would not tell where the wreck was?” she soliloquized, when he had finished.
“He could not tell them what he knew nothing of.”
“But my father did know where that ship was wrecked,” she said, looking him full in the face.
“What? Impossible!” cried Elliott, staggered.
“He knew where it was wrecked. That man who was in the boat with him—the mate—told him before he died, and gave him the exact position, with the latitude and longitude. My father told me of it. He had planned to go there sometime and see if anything could be recovered from the wreck. I found the map, with the place marked, among his papers. But he thought that no one else knew of it.”