“I can, Halstead. It would be a matter of some hours of writing, that’s all. But why are you asking this? What plan have you in your mind?”
“Well, I’ve got a hunch, sir,” replied Tom Halstead, quietly, “that you’re never going to see the lost papers again. If Anson Dalton found you getting close to him, and knew you could seize the papers, he’d destroy them. It seems to me that our sole game must be to prevent his ever getting those papers to Brazil ahead of a second set that you can just as well write to-night.”
“If we trail him all the time,” replied Powell Seaton, thoughtfully, “we can know whether the fellow succeeds in getting away on a ship to Brazil. He can’t go on that drab boat ahead, can he?”
“The seventy-footer would be quite good enough a boat to make the voyage to Brazil,” Halstead answered. “So would the ‘Restless,’ for that matter. The only trouble would be that neither boat could carry anywhere near enough gasoline for such a voyage.”
“Then Anson Dalton, if he gets away to Brazil, will have to board some regular liner or freighter? Well, as long as we keep 148 him in sight, we’ll know whether he’s doing that.”
“But Dalton will get desperate,” Tom warned his employer. “While holding onto the papers he has succeeded in obtaining, he can make a copy, and he may very likely determine to send the copies to your old enemy, Terrero, by mail. Now, Mr. Seaton, it seems to me that your best hope is to duplicate the missing papers at once, and, if you can’t find in haste a messenger you’ll trust, then you had better send the papers by registered mail to your friends in Rio Janeiro.”
Powell Seaton stared at the young skipper, going deathly pale.
“Captain Halstead, don’t you understand that the possession of such a set of papers, at Rio Janeiro, would mean that the possessor could locate and file a patent to the diamond field, of which no one, save myself, at present knows the exact location? Why, even if the postal authorities do their very best to put the papers in the proper hands, anyone like a dishonest clerk might get the papers in his hands. The temptation would be powerful for anyone who had the papers to locate the mine at once for himself.”
“I understand, fully,” agreed Captain Tom. “But the whole thing has become a desperate 149 case, now, and some desperate chances must be taken if you’re to have a good chance to win out against Terrero and his crooked friends.”
“Then you—you—honestly believe I’d better make out another set of papers and mail them to my friends of the syndicate, at Rio Janeiro?” faltered Mr. Seaton.