“What does he do next? Why, of course he gets ready to go back to Zanzibar or some such port and hire a craft to go to look for his wreck. If he thinks he’s safe, he may lie low for awhile; or, if he hasn’t the capital for the thing, he will have to hunt up some ruffians to finance him. But if he thinks that he’s in any danger of being forestalled, he’ll make haste. If by bad luck he reads of Bennett’s being picked up, it’ll galvanize him; and as like as not he’s sailing up the channel this minute, while we’re sitting here drinking lager, doing nothing—because we don’t know anything!”
“Yes, but how are we going to find out anything,—where the wreck is, for example?” demanded Elliott.
“Why, from this same mate, Burke, if we can catch him. He’s the source of knowledge. He knows very well where it is; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to lie about it. First of all, we’ve got to catch that mate, and when we’ve got him, we’ll induce him to tell us what he knows. Do you remember how Casal used to interrogate prisoners in Venezuela, Hawke? We’ve got to get on his trail right away, and meanwhile see that he doesn’t collar the cash before we know it.”
“It’ll be a long, wide trail,” Hawke remarked.
“No. There’s only one hemisphere for Burke, and only one spot in it, and that’s somewhere between Madagascar and the African coast. He won’t go far from that if he can help it, and wherever he goes he’s bound to come back. And he’ll have to come in his own ship, for there aren’t any steamers plying to his island. He’ll have to hire or buy a small craft on the East African coast, and there are only three ports that will serve.”
Henninger sipped his beer, and meditated in silence for a little.
“My idea would be something like this. Three of us will go to South Africa at once; we pick up Sullivan in New York, of course. One of us will post himself in each of those three ports,—Lorenzo Marques, Mozambique, and Zanzibar, watching every boat that comes in, every stranger that lands, and everything that goes on along the waterfront. If Burke turns up, our man will have to use his own judgment as to how to get hold of him,—bribe him or kidnap him, or anything, but keep him there at any cost till the rest of us can come. Meanwhile the fourth one of us will go to Bombay, and try to find out where Burke went and what he did. He might possibly be there yet; anyway, he must have left some trace at the consulate or the shipping-offices.”
“At any rate,” said Elliott, “it appears fairly certain that no one knows anything about this ton of yellow metal but ourselves and the mate, Burke. Then there’s no danger of outside interference.”
“It’s a fair race to Madagascar!” Hawke exclaimed.
“It’s a race,” said Henninger, shrugging his shoulders, “but I don’t know about its fairness. We’re heavily handicapped at the start. Why we’re wasting time here, I don’t know.” He stood up suddenly, frowning, impatient.