"'Sit down close here,' he said. 'I'm glad you came. You did me a good turn once and I haven't forgot it. Few good turns I've had in my life. Not so many but what I can remember the lot.' The night nurse had approached quietly and was standing on the other side of the bed. All at once he saw her. 'Hey, you!' he said. 'Grease off out of this! Stand over there on the other side of the room where I can watch you!' When she had gone he rose from his pillow and looked cautiously around the room. The beds on either side of him were empty. There was a patient in the one across the aisle, but he was sleeping. Killorain watched him for a moment to make sure of this. Then he motioned me with his finger to come still closer. 'Listen!' he said. 'I've cut more throats in my time than you might think.' Sounds a bit stagey, doesn't it? But these were his exact words. Nothing remarkable about them, of course. Throat-cutting is still a fairly thriving business. I waited for him to go on. He again looked up and down the room, and then asked me to hand him the coat which was lying across the foot of the bed. It was the same coat he had been wearing in May, when he came to the boarding house.
"'When they brought me here,' he said, 'they took my clothes, and I've had some trouble getting this back.' The attendant had told me as much. The old man had raised the very devil of a row until it was found. He asked me to rip open the lining of the right sleeve and to give him the paper I would find there. It was a soiled, greasy sheet of foolscap, pasted on a piece of cloth. 'Once,' he went on, 'you gave me two shillings for car fare to Rush-cutters' Bay. It probably wasn't any hardship on you, but never mind about that. You said I could pay it back if I'd a mind to. Well, I'm going to pay it back with a bit of interest. I'm going to give you this paper, and it's as good as three million pound notes of the Bank of England.'
"I thought, of course, that he was completely off his chump, and the fear that I would think so was uppermost in his mind. He kept repeating that he was old and worn out, but that his mind was clear. 'Don't you think I'm balmy,' he said. 'I know what I'm talking about as well as I know I'm going to die before morning.' He gave me a circumstantial account of the whole affair. I have outlined it briefly. There were many other interesting facts, but it is not worth while to speak of them here. As he talked, the conviction grew upon me that he was perfectly sane and was telling the truth. He went over the chart with me. It had been made by Alvarez, the scholar of the party, he said. There had been a good deal of quarreling and fighting later for the possession of it.
"Before I left him he made me promise that I would go to Pinaki. He wouldn't rest easy in his grave, he said, unless he knew that I was looking for the treasure. 'It's there, and it will always be there if you're bloody fool enough to think I'm queer. It ain't likely I'd lie to you on my deathbed.' Rest easy in his grave! There was an odd glimpse into his mind. He wasn't worrying about his crimes, and there were enough of them, according to his own confession. It was the thought of the gold lying forever forgotten which worried him. He could rest quietly if he knew before he died that some one else was fighting and throat-cutting over it. I asked him why he hadn't gone back for it himself. He told me that of the fifty-three years since it had been buried he had spent forty in prison and the rest of the time he was trying to earn or steal the money to buy a schooner. I told him that I would come back to see him the following day. 'You needn't bother,' he said. 'I'm finished.' And it was true. He died three hours later.
"I tried to forget the incident, but it was one of those things which refuse to be forgotten. It was always in the back of my head. I decided to check up Killorain's story where I could. I made inquiries in Peru, and found that the gold had actually been stolen. The dates and circumstances coincided with his account. A friend in the customs at Cooktown confirmed for me the story of four shipwrecked sailors who landed in February, eighteen sixty, from a ship called the Bosun Bird. I had a small piece of property on the outskirts of Cooktown which I had bought years ago. With the money realized from the sale of it I took passage for Tahiti on my way to Pinaki.
"That voyage was the longest one I have ever made. By that time the thought of those seven chests of gold, all in thirty-kilo ingots, was with me twenty-four hours out of the twenty-four. Yes, even at night. I slept very little, and when I did it was to dream of hunting for the treasure; of finding it. I became suspicious of a villainous-looking old man who was traveling third class. I thought he might be Brown or Luke Barrett. Perhaps they were not dead, after all. At Papeete I told no one of my purpose there, with the exception of one governmental official. If the treasure should be found the French government would have a claim to certain percentage on uncoined gold, and I meant to be aboveboard in my dealings with it. This official was sworn to secrecy, but the business leaked out eventually and created a great deal of excitement. I was immensely annoyed, of course, for I had guarded the secret as well as old Killorain ever had. However, I had in my pocket all the necessary papers, drawn up accurately, witnessed, signed, and sealed. I went on with my preparations, and finally, in February, nineteen thirteen, I was put ashore from a small cutter, not four hundred yards from where we are sitting.
"I started the search before the cutter was two miles on the return voyage. For two months I slept in the open—had no time to build a house—and ate tinned food which I had brought with me. Killorain's chart was of but little use. It made reference to trees which had long since rotted away or had been cut down by the natives of Nukatavake. The marks which I found corresponded precisely with those on the chart, but several of the most important ones were missing."
The treasure hunter rose. "Well," he said, "there's the end of the story. You know the rest of it."
"But I don't know the rest at all!" I said. "You have left out the most interesting part. Tell me something of your life here."
"You have seen three days of it. It has gone on for seven years in the same way."