“That girl,” said Mr. Harman after a moment’s silence, “she seems pretty gone on you.”
Davis laughed.
“Ain’t you gone on her?”
Davis laughed again. Then he opened a locker and helped himself to a drink.
Harman’s morals, as I have hinted before, were the least conspicuous part of his mental make-up, but he was not without sentiment of a sort. At sing-songs he had been known to sniff over “The Blind Boy,” a favourite song of his, and though his ideal of female beauty leant towards sloe-black eyes and apple-red cheeks (shiny or not didn’t matter), beauty in distress appealed to him.
The cold-blooded blackguardliness of Davis almost shocked him for a moment—making a girl love him like that just to use her as a spy on her family! The upright man in the soul of Billy Harman, the upright man who had never yet managed somehow to get on his feet, humped his back and tried to rise, but he had half a million dollars on top of him. He moved in his chair uneasily, and refilled his pipe. But all he said was: “Tell us about them gold bars.”
Davis told. A peon runner had come in that afternoon with a chit for Pereira saying that the mules, eight in number, bearing the stuff, would reach Buenodiaz by night-time of the following day.
“The stuff will be shipped to-morrow night, then?” said Harman.
“Well, you don’t think they’d go leaving it on the beach,” replied Davis.
“Didn’t you get out of her what ship they were taking it off on?” asked Harman.