Few men were less given to dreaming than James Carbhoy. Usually he had no spare time on his hands for such a pastime. Dreams? Well, perhaps he occasionally let imagination run riot amidst seas of amazing figures, but that was all. All other dreams left him cold. Now it was different.
He was reclining in an old-fashioned rocker chair outside the front door of his prison. The air of the valley was soft and balmy, the sun was setting, and a wealth of ever-changing colors tinted the distant mountain-tops; a wonderful sense of peace and security reigned everywhere. So, somehow, he found himself dreaming.
He filled the chair almost to overflowing and reveled in its comfort, just as he reveled in the comfort even of his prison. His hands were clasped behind his iron-gray head, and he drank deeply of the pleasant, perfumed air. His captivity had already exceeded three weeks, and the first irritation of it had long since passed, leaving in its place a philosophic resignation characteristic of the man. He no longer strove seriously to solve the problem of his detention. During the first days of his captivity he had thought hard, and the contemplation of possible disaster to many enterprises resulting from this enforced absence had troubled him seriously, but as the days wore on and no word came from his captors his resignation quietly set in, and gradually a pleasant peace reigned in place of stormy feelings.
James Carbhoy possessed a considerable humor for a man who spent his life in multiplying, subtracting and adding numerals which represented the sum of his gains and losses in currency, and perhaps it was this which so largely helped him. His temperament should undoubtedly have been at once harsh, sternly unyielding and bitterly avaricious. In reality it was none of these things. It was his lot to cause money to make money, and the work of it was something in the nature of an amusement. He was warm-hearted and human; he loved battle and the spirit of competition. Then, too, he possessed a deplorable love for the knavery of modern financial methods. This was the underlying temperament which governed all his actions, and a warm, human kindliness saved him from many of the pitfalls into which such a temperament might well have trapped him.
As he sat there basking in the evening sunlight he felt that on the whole he rather owed his captors a debt of gratitude for introducing him to a side of life which otherwise he might never have come into contact with. He knew at the same time that such a feeling was just as absurd as that the spirit of fierce resentment had so easily died down within him. All his interests were dependent upon his own efforts for success, and here he was shut up, a prisoner, with these very affairs, for all he knew, going completely to the dogs.
His conflicting feelings made him smile, and here it was that his humor served him. After all, what did it matter? He knew that some one had bested him. It was not the first time in his life that he had been bested. Not by any means. But always in such cases he had ultimately made up the leeway and gained on the reach. Well, he supposed he would do so again. So he rested content and submitted to the pleasant surroundings of his captivity.
There was one feature of his position, however, which he seriously did resent. It was a feature which even his humor could not help him to endure with complacency. It was the simple presence of a Chinaman near him. He cordially detested Chinamen—so much so that, in all his great financial undertakings, he did not possess one cent of interest in any Chinese enterprise.
Hip-Lee was maddeningly ubiquitous. There was no escape from him. If the millionaire's fellow prisoner, the pretty teamstress, entered his room to wait on him—and their captors seemed to have forced such service upon her—Hip-Lee was her shadow. If he himself elected to go for a walk through the valley—a freedom accorded him from the first—there was not a moment but what a glance over his shoulder would have revealed the lurking, silent, furtive figure in its blue smock, watchful of his every movement, while apparently occupied in anything but that peculiar form of pastime. James Carbhoy resented this surveillance bitterly. Nor did he doubt that beneath that simple blue smock a long knife was concealed, and, probably, a desire for murder.
However, nothing of this was concerning him now. The hour was the hour of peace. The perfection of the scene he was gazing upon had cast its spell about him, and he was dreaming—really dreaming of nothing. The joy of living was upon him, and, for the time being, nothing else mattered.
In the midst of his dreaming the sound of a footstep coming round the angle of the building to his right roused him to full alertness. He glanced round quickly and withdrew his hands from behind his head. Mechanically he drew his cigar-case from an inner pocket and selected a cigar. But he was expectant and curious, his feelings inspired by his knowledge that Hip-Lee always moved soundlessly.