"That is where the wind sits, is it?" retorted Moreas. "Well, it's no business of mine, of course; but, without wishing to be rude, I must say that I didn't think you had it in you. Hadn't you better make a clean breast of it to me, and see what I can do to help you? I'm rather resourceful in such matters."
"Good heavens! man," Max cried, "you don't surely suppose I'm wanting to keep out of the way because I've done anything wrong, do you? If you should——"
"My dear fellow," said Moreas with a deprecatory wave of his hand, "I don't think anything of the kind. I never do. It only makes trouble. You have overrun the constable, I suppose, and want to lie by until the pursuit has ended. Most of us do that at some time or other in our lives."
"I've done nothing of the kind," said Max with warmth. "I don't owe a halfpenny in the world. What's more, I have a considerable sum of money lying to my credit at my bank. No, the sole reason I have for wanting to get away quickly is because to-day I saw somebody connected with my old life. He's looking for me in Rio, and I want to make sure that he shall not find me."
"That is very easily managed."
"How am I to do it, then?"
"Stay here," said Moreas. "They will never think of looking for you in this quarter of the town. Until we leave, you will be as safe here as if you were in the centre of Africa. You don't surely suppose I haven't good and sufficient reasons for living in this hole? Of course I have, and this is one of them. If you think you can make yourself comfortable here, you are welcome to stay. What have you to say to my proposal?"
"That I shall be only too glad to accept your offer," Max replied. "The arrangement will suit me admirably. And now tell me something of the business in which you want my co-operation. You said, I think, that it was connected with diamonds."
"It is very much connected with diamonds," the other answered. "Eight or nine months ago I happened to be travelling in the diamond country, and it so happened that on this particular field there was a half-witted old lunatic who was everybody's butt. He was an extraordinary individual in many ways, and was always spying about for diamonds, and never finding them, in places where no sane man would dream of looking for them. He had theories of his own, he used to say, though there was no evidence that those theories ever turned up trumps. Every now and then he would mouch off by himself into the wilds, be away for a month or six weeks, and when he put in an appearance again, look as near starvation as a man could well do and still live. But according to his own tale he had never brought anything of value back with him. He had just returned from one of these little expeditions when I tumbled across him. His friends in the mining camp were making great game of him. I should say they got more fun out of that poor old lunatic over that journey than they had ever had from him before. He took it well, however.
"'You laugh at my diamonds,' he would cry, when they had gone a little too far with him; 'well, never mind, Señors, mark my words, the time will come when I shall find more diamonds than all the rest of you put together.' Then he would take two or three old pebbles out of his pocket and fall to polishing them as if he expected to improve their value. I wouldn't have lived that old boy's life amongst those men for something. The practical jokes they played upon him would have raised the temper of a mummy.