He found a new suit of clothes on a chair, which he now recollected having bought ready-made on the previous afternoon. They were very good clothes and fitted well, and in the trousers pocket he found a thick wad of bills. Each of the partners had taken a hundred dollars, and the rest of the money was in a sealed package in the hotel safe.
In the dining-room he found Henninger and Hawke finishing breakfast, though it was nearly eleven o’clock. Hawke looked wearied and nervous, with the rags of yesterday’s excitement still clinging about him, but Henninger was as fresh, as neat, and as unmoved as ever. A few other late breakfasters at the other end of the room looked at the trio with curiosity, for the report of their coup, greatly magnified in the telling, had gone abroad; and the negro waiter served them with exaggerated respect.
In the lobby Elliott bought himself the best cigar he had ever smoked, luxuriating in the novel sense of riches, which was like a sudden relief from pain. He had never felt so wealthy in his life. The money had come with such incredible ease; the sum looked almost inexhaustible; and beyond it was the great treasure to be fished up from the African seas.
There were too many people in the lobby for private conversation, and they returned to Henninger’s room.
“First of all, I vote we send Bennett a hundred dollars. I kept it out for him when I sealed the money last night,” said Henninger. “I’ll wire him what we’ve done, and then I’ll wire Sullivan. I don’t know that we told you, Elliott, where Sullivan is. He’s in Washington, attending to a case for us. We were all in South America last winter, and we’ve got a claim against the Venezuelan government for damages and confiscation of property, and so forth, for two millions.”
“Two what?” exclaimed Elliott.
“Two millions. We thought we might get a few thousands out of it. Anyway, Sullivan has been trying to get our case taken up at Washington, but we’ll drop all that and tell him to meet us in New York.”
“I’d like very much to look up that Madagascar channel on the largest map there is,” Hawke broke in, “and see what we can make of it.”
He voiced a common desire. Every one wanted to look at it, and they went down to the Public Library and obtained a gigantic atlas. They propped it up on a table and put their heads together over the map of East Africa. The steamer route from Delagoa Bay to Zanzibar and Suez was marked in red, and at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel it passed through a tangle of little islands and reefs.
“Comoro, Mohilla, Mayotta, St. Lazarus Bank,” read Hawke, under his breath. “It must be one of these.”