“I called him an idiot,” said Señor Alonzo de Mello, “and he grinned precisely like that monkey on the trellis. So away he sailed and that was the last seen of him.”
“What did he do for a crew?” asked Teresa, the deep-water mariner. “And where did he find a captain?”
“He picked up a man called Captain Bradley Duff, and Cartagena was very well pleased to get rid of him. All the vices of the famous Anglo-Saxon race and none of its virtues were visible to the eye. An unsanctified swine of a wind-bag, down at the heel, who had been annoying this coast for some time.”
“Captain Bradley Duff?” said the disgusted Teresa. “He was kicked off the wharf when I was in the Tarragona. He came on board and tried to borrow money from the officers and passengers. Then he got drunk in the smoking-room. And this is the man that my uncle took as captain in his old steamer? You were too soft with Uncle Ramon, my dear sir. He is in his second childhood. You should have locked him in a room and given him some toys to play with. Has anything been heard of this Valkyrie?”
“Yes, she passed through the Canal. I interested myself to find that out, but she is not yet reported as arriving at Buenaventura. I feel some anxiety, for soon she will be overdue.”
“There will be gray hairs in my head if I sit here in his house until he comes back,” cried Teresa, in a sudden gust of anger. “He has gone the good God knows where. May He protect the silliest voyage that a ship ever made! Yes, Señor de Mello, I think I had better stay alone for a while this afternoon and reflect on what I am to do.”
As the good Señor de Mello bowed himself out, it escaped his notice that the little brown monkey was still roosting on the trellis. Teresa, also, was unobservant. She had discovered that the galleon bell had been removed from its framework of Spanish oak. This was more food for speculation. It was fairly easy to fathom, however, for one who knew Señor Ramon Bazán and the history of the sonorous bell of Nuestra Señora del Rosario. It had been his notion to take the bell along in his steamer by way of precaution. Quite sensible of him, thought Teresa, but to be regretted because with the bell still in the patio she might have been told if any catastrophe was about to put an end to her erratic old kinsman.
While Teresa was pondering this odd discovery, the monkey descended to the floor and bethought himself of some urgent business of his own. With a furtive glance at Teresa, who paid no attention, he scuttled into a corner where two green tubs had formerly stood. The cocoanut palms had been carried into the house of Señor de Mello that they might not perish of thirst. The monkey was exceedingly indignant, as his language conveyed, at finding his favorite depositary of loot disturbed.
There was the wide crack in the masonry, however, where he had hidden the fragments into which he had torn the letter purloined from the library desk. Into this crevice he now inserted a paw and found what he so anxiously sought.
It was a briar pipe with an amber bit, the choicest treasure acquired during a long career of zealous burglary. The huge guest of Papa Bazán had forgotten the pipe that night when he had gone away in the dark. A prize beyond compare for the covetous monkey who had found it in the library next morning and had fled to hide it in the safest, surest place he knew!