An hour later Billy Keogh lounged into the consulate, clean and cool in his linen clothes, and grinning like a pleased shark.
“Guess what?” he said to Johnny, lounging in his hammock.
“Too hot to guess,” said Johnny, lazily.
“Your shoe-store man’s come,” said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue, “with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent as far down as Terra del Fuego. They’re carting his cases over to the custom-house now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have paddled back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won’t there be regalements in the air when he gets onto the joke and has an interview with Mr. Consul? It’ll be worth nine years in the tropics just to witness that one joyful moment.”
Keogh loved to take his mirth easily. He selected a clean place on the matting and lay upon the floor. The walls shook with his enjoyment. Johnny turned half over and blinked.
“Don’t tell me,” he said, “that anybody was fool enough to take that letter seriously.”
“Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!” gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. “Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn’t he take a ship-load of palm-leaf fans to Spitzbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and squinted at the five hundred or so barefooted citizens standing around.”
“Are you telling the truth, Billy?” asked the consul, weakly.
“Am I? You ought to see the buncoed gentleman’s daughter he brought along. Looks! She makes the brick-dust señoritas here look like tar-babies.”
“Go on,” said Johnny, “if you can stop that asinine giggling. I hate to see a grown man make a laughing hyena of himself.”