Barclay was standing before the fire. The others had drifted out. He's a big man pitted with the smallpox. He made a gesture, flinging out his hand toward the door.
“That bunch thinks there's a curse on treasure, Sir Henry. That's one of the oldest notions in the world... it's unlucky.”
“But I know where there's a treasure that's not unlucky. At least it was not unlucky for poor Charlie Tavor. He did not get it, but there was no curse on it that reached to him. It helped poor Charlie finish in style. He died like a lord in a big country house, with a formal garden and a line of lackeys.”
Barclay paused.
“Queer chap, Tavor. He was the best all round explorer in the world. I bar nobody. Charlie Tavor could take a nigger and cross the poisonous plateau south west of the Libyan desert. I've backed him. I know... but he had no business sense, anybody could fool him. He found the stock of bar silver on the west face of the Andes that made old Nute Hardman a quarter of a million dollars, clear, after the cursed beast had split it a half dozen ways with a crooked South American government.”
Barclay's teeth set and he jerked up his clinched hand.
“It was a damned steal, Sir Henry. A piece of low down, dirty robbery; and it was like taking candy away from a child.... 'Sign here, Mr. Tavor,' and Charlie would scrawl on his fist.. .. Some people think there's no hell, but what's God Almighty going to do with Old Nute?”
He flung out his hand again.
“Still the thing didn't dent Charlie. He never missed a step. 'Don't bother, Barclay, old man,' he'd say, 'I'll find something else,' and then he'd go off into this dream he had of coming back when he'd struck it, to the old home county in England and laying it over the bunch that had called him 'no good.' He never talked much, but I gathered from odds and ends that he was the black sheep in a pretty smart flock.
“Then, I'd stake him to a cheap outfit—not much, I've said he could push through the Libyan desert with a nigger—and he'd drop out of the world. It wasn't charity. I got my money's worth. The clay pots he brought me from Yucatan would sell any day for more cash than I ever advanced him.”