“Teresa Fernandez. As a young man I was—I was a failure, Mr. Tobin.”
“Oh, not so worse, until you just naturally blew up,” was his verdict. “Now, Miss Fernandez, I can’t make your head of black hair grow again, but they’re wearing it short. Against that, you can credit yourself with a large, elegant’s night’s work. You saved my bankroll, twenty thousand dollars. I run a game on the third floor. And you just about saved my wife from being a widow. Sheeny George was working up steam to croak me. It was the yellow streak that held him back just long enough for you to get action.”
“His voice told me so,” shakily replied Teresa. “Oh, Mr. Jerry Tobin, I am going all to pieces. What can I do? You don’t know—you don’t know—I did it to help you—I was so angry—but I never, never want to see a pistol or a knife again, not in all my life. I used to be a happy girl and I never harmed anybody—and I never dreamed of things like this—”
This was too much for battling Jerry Tobin to handle. As he said to himself, it was time to pass the buck. Fingering that iron jaw of his, he issued his instructions.
“Please scramble your stuff into that suitcase, Miss Fernandez, or let me do it for you, seeing as it’s the duds of the late Rubio Sanchez. You are going home with me. This is a job for Mrs. Jerry Tobin, a woman that’s too good for this world. The best bet for you is a mother. Savvey that? Have you got any other clothes?”
“A trunk at the Hotel Las Palmas,” meekly answered Teresa. “What will Mrs. Tobin say? My goodness, I am scared again.”
“You scare easy, don’t you?” he grunted. “I know different. I ’phoned the missus, but I didn’t tell her too much. I never do. You and she will cuddle up like two kittens in a basket. My car is outside. Now let’s make it pronto.”
Teresa obeyed. Discussion seemed absurd. The boss had proclaimed an edict. She had one question to ask.
“That island, Mr. Tobin, where you said my uncle’s ship had gone? You were going to show me with a pencil.”
“Cocos Island? What’s the hurry? I’ll get you there. If I know anything about these treasure-hunting nuts, this locoed uncle of yours will be blasting rock and making the gravel fly from now till the Fourth of July.”