“Won’t do it,” he told himself shortly. “That would double his chances of defeating us. If he didn’t tie us up in Belize, he’d wire New York and his entire pack would be upon us. As it is he can’t get off a word before he reaches New York. That gives us a fighting chance.”
“Looks as if Providence was kind in sending him to us,” he added.
He turned and hurried forward to prepare his stateroom for the Unwilling Guest, and there was a smile on his face.
* * * * * * * *
“It really isn’t necessary to tell all you know.” Kennedy said this in a friendly drawl, as he sat beside Johnny on the forward deck. Madge Kennedy was there too. Johnny had persuaded the old man to come along with him on the North Star. “The passage,” he had argued, “will cost you nothing. Captain Jorgensen is coming back for that cargo of cocoanuts and chicle. He’ll be glad to bring you down. You may be able to help me a lot in disposing of the fruit. Anyway, the trip will do you good.”
So here they were, three good pals, an old man, a young man and a girl.
Johnny did not reply to Kennedy’s remark about not telling all you know.
“I told a man once the location of a mahogany tract I meant to buy,” Kennedy went on. “It was good mahogany, some of it six feet through, five thousand feet to the tree. I told that man and he went before me and bought it. I talked too much then. I’ve learned better.”
“That Unwilling Guest of yours,” he drawled after a time, “that President of the Fruit Company, has been on board twenty-four hours and has never showed his head out of his stateroom. Even pays the steward to bring his meals to him. That right?”
Johnny nodded.