“I did find some wonderful news, but it wasn’t enough, Mr. Tobin,” replied Rubio, his voice steadied, his demeanor composed.
“I’m here to do what I can for you,” was the gruff response, “but I don’t recommend your living in the Broadway Front. That’s too much to have on my mind.”
“I was in a hotel, before the goose was cooked, Mr. Tobin. I—er—I don’t want to go back there, but I can go somewhere else.”
“We can fix that up later,” said Jerry Tobin, peeling off his coat and shoving back the top of the desk. “I can think better with a pencil and paper. This destroyer kid met your ship off the coast of Costa Rica, Mike tells me. And the voyage was a secret? Going to Buenaventura was all a bluff?”
“My old uncle bluffs in his sleep,” laughed Rubio. “He whispers to himself through a keyhole. But he was never so head over heels in a secret as this time.”
“It makes ’em act that way,” barked Jerry Tobin, making marks with the pencil. “If you hadn’t sort of knocked Mike off his pins by blubbering in the bar-room, perhaps he would have put you wise. Wait a minute and I’ll draw you a rough map. Panama Bay to the coast of Costa Rica and then due west! I’ll put down a dot for an island that has made all kinds of people as dippy as your uncle. An old pirate’s chart and some shovels and dynamite—”
Jerry Tobin broke off abruptly. A turbulent life he must have led, but now he was staring at the open window like a man whose wits were frozen. His seamed, forbidding visage reflected terror, hatred, helplessness. The hard eyes were unwinking.
Teresa Fernandez gazed at him in fixed fascination. She moved not so much as a finger. She heard a voice at the open window, a wicked voice that cut the stillness like a knife.
“Hands up, Jerry, you —— —— I’ve got you cold. Now back yourself over to the safe. Turn around and open her up. Come clean, or I’ll plug you in the back. The whole bankroll! Make it snappy!”
Burly John Tobin may have had some reason to recall that sinister voice. Very cautiously he backed away from the desk with hands rigidly upraised until his heel struck the safe. Then he knelt to fumble with the combination knob. He was working as fast as he could. His face was gray. Sweat bedewed it.