“Have you provided a chauffeur, Doctor?”
“I have—likewise an armoured sheet-steel closet for him to sit in while chauffeuring.”
“Don't forget the oil and gasoline,” Webster cautioned him quizzically.
“How about that loan to the provisional government?” Ricardo demanded pointedly.
Webster did not hesitate. After all, what was money to him now? Moreover, he was between the devil and the deep sea, as it were. Billy had gone away, his hopes raised high, already a millionaire after the fashion of mining men, who are ever ready to count their chicks before they are hatched, provided only they see the eggs. Besides, there was Dolores. Full well Webster realized that Billy, tossed back once more into the jaws of the well-known wolf of poverty, would not have the courage upon his return to Sobrante to ask Dolores to share his poverty with him; should the revolution fail, Ricardo Ruey would be an outcast, a hunted man with a price on his head, and in no position to care for his sister, even should he survive long enough to know he had a sister. Webster thought of her—so sweet, so winsome, so brave and trusting, so worthy of all that the world might hold for her of sweetness and comfort. She would be alone in the world if he, John Stuart Webster, failed her now—more than ever she needed a man's strength and affection to help her navigate the tide-rips of life, for life to a woman, alone and unprotected and dependent upon her labour for the bread she must eat, must contain, at best, a full measure of terror and despair and loneliness. He pictured her through a grim processional of years of skimping and petty sacrifices—and all because he, John Stuart Webster, had hesitated to lend a dreamer and an idealist a paltry forty thousand dollars without security.
No, there was no alternative. As they say in Mexico, Ricardo had him tiron, meaning there was no escape. If his friendship for Billy was worth a sou, it was worth forty thousand dollars; if his silent, unrequited love for Dolores Ruey was worthy of her, no sacrifice on his part could be too great, provided it guaranteed her happiness.
“Ruined again,” he sighed. “This is only another of those numerous occasions when the tail goes with the hide. How soon do you want the money?”
Ricardo Luiz Ruey leaned forward and gazed very earnestly at John Stuart Webster. “Do you really trust me that much, my friend?” he asked feelingly. “Remember, I am asking you for forty thousand dollars on faith.”
“Old sport,” John Stuart Webster answered, “you went overboard in Buenaventura harbour and took a chance among those big, liver-coloured, hammerheaded sharks. And you did that because you had a cause you thought worth dying for. I never knew a man who had a cause that was worth dying for who would even espouse a cause worth swindling for. You win—only I want you to understand one thing, Ricardo: I'm not doing this for the sake of saving that mining concession the Sarros government gave my friend Geary. I'm above doing a thing like this for money—for myself. It seems to me I must do it to guarantee the happiness of two people I love: my friend Geary and the girl he's going to marry. I reject your promissory note and your promise of a deed of gift for that concession, and accept only your gratitude. There are no strings to this loan, because it isn't a loan at all. It's a bet. If you lose, I'll help you get out of the country and absolve you of any indebtedness to me. We'll just make a new book and start making bets all over again, Rick. However, if you should win, I know you'll reimburse me from the national treasury.”
“And you do not desire a bonus?”