“Haw-haw!” he yapped. “Jolly good! Too awfully horribly priceless! What? What?”
“Quite,” the Saint concurred modestly.
“I fear,” said Lapping, “that you will hardly find your million dollars in Baycombe.”
The Saint put his hands on the tablecloth and studied his finger-nails with a gentle smile.
“You depress me, Sir Michael,” he remarked. “And I was feeling very optimistic. I was told that there were a million dollars to be picked up here, and one can hardly disbelieve the word of a dying man, especially when one has tried to save his life. It was at a place called Ayer Pahit, in the Malay States. He’d taken to the jungle—they’d hunted him through every town in the Peninsular, ever since they located him settling down in Singapore to enjoy an unjust share of the loot—and one of their Malay trackers had caught him and stuck a kris in him. I found him just before he passed out, and he told me most of the story. . . . But I’m boring you.”
“Not a bit, dear old sprout, not a bit!” rejoined Algy eagerly, and he was supported by a chorus of curiosity.
The Saint shook his head.
“But I’m quite certain I shall bore you if I go on,” he stated obstinately. “Now suppose I’d been talking about Brazil—did you know there was a village behind an almost impassable range of hills covered with thick poisonous jungle where some descendants of Cortes’ crowd still live? They’re gradually being absorbed into the native stock—Mayas—by intermarriage, but they still wear swords and talk good Castilian. They could hardly believe my rifle. I remember . . .”
And it was impossible to wheedle him back to any further discussion of his million dollars.
He made his excuses as soon after coffee as was decently possible, and spoke last to Patricia.