I asked for information. I demanded confidences. Edgar refused both. I insisted that I might be allowed at least to carry my automatic pistol. “Suppose some one tries to take the treasure from us?” I pointed out.
“No one,” said Edgar severely, “would be such an ass as to imagine we are carrying buried treasure in a suit-case. He will think it contains pajamas.”
“For local color, then,” I begged, “I want to say in my story that I went heavily armed.”
“Say it, then,” snapped Edgar. “But you can’t do it! Not with me, you can’t! How do I know you mightn’t——” He shook his head warily.
It was a day in early October, the haze of Indian summer was in the air, and as we crossed the North River by the Twenty-third Street Ferry the sun flashed upon the white clouds overhead and the tumbling waters below. On each side of us great vessels with the Blue Peter at the fore lay at the wharfs ready to cast off, or were already nosing their way down the channel toward strange and beautiful ports. Lamport and Holt were rolling down to Rio; the Royal Mail’s Magdalena, no longer “white and gold,” was off to Kingston, where once seven pirates swung in chains; the Clyde was on her way to Hayti where the buccaneers came from; the Morro Castle was bound for Havana, which Morgan, king of all the pirates, had once made his own; and the Red D was steaming to Porto Cabello where Sir Francis Drake, as big a buccaneer as any of them, lies entombed in her harbor. And I was setting forth on a buried-treasure expedition on a snub-nosed, flat-bellied, fresh-water ferry-boat, bound for Jersey City! No one will ever know my sense of humiliation. And, when the Italian boy insulted my immaculate tan shoes by pointing at them and saying, “Shine?” I could have slain him. Fancy digging for buried treasure in freshly varnished boots! But Edgar did not mind. To him there was nothing lacking; it was just as it should be. He was deeply engrossed in calculating how many offices were for rent in the Singer Building!
When we reached the other side, he refused to answer any of my eager questions. He would not let me know even for what place on the line he had purchased our tickets, and, as a hint that I should not disturb him, he stuffed into my hands the latest magazines. “At least tell me this,” I demanded. “Have you ever been to this place before to-day?”
“Once,” said Edgar shortly, “last week. That’s when I found out I would need some one with me who could dig.”
“How do you know it’s the right place?” I whispered.
The summer season was over, and of the chair car we were the only occupants; but, before he answered, Edgar looked cautiously round him and out of the window. We had just passed Red Bank.
“Because the map told me,” he answered. “Suppose,” he continued fretfully, “you had a map of New York City with the streets marked on it plainly? Suppose the map said that if you walked to where Broadway and Fifth Avenue meet, you would find the Flatiron Building. Do you think you could find it?”