But Johnny knew that he had meant what he said, every word of it. And he was for it from the start. But where was the money for repairing the aqueduct? That was the rub.
“All we need,” Johnny had smiled back, “is to find the ‘Rope of Gold’.”
“Johnny,” the old Professor had spoken again, his voice grown husky, “sometimes when one sees the need, he is tempted to believe in fables, even in pots of gold at the foot of the rainbow. Do you see that massive pile of stone way up yonder, built by the only real emperor the island ever knew?”
Johnny had looked away at the distant Citadel, the massive fortress which was so near now, down whose side the rope ladder dangled.
“Johnny,” the Professor had grown quite excited, “this emperor of theirs, Christophe, was apprenticed as a boy to a stone mason. They say that as an old man, and a very rich emperor, who owned a third of the plantations, he went many times to work alone on those walls at night. And they say that he built boxes and boxes of gold into the twenty foot walls, together with mortar and stone. Men often have dug for it, but they never found the place. Possibly,” he had ended rather wearily, “there was no gold. But there should be. We need it. Christophe, when at his best, had wonderful dreams regarding the future of his people. Those people need the gold as never before.”
“I wonder,” Johnny now thought to himself as he looked away at the massive wall where the rope ladder still dangled and where a pale light gleamed from the lower window, “I wonder how much of that ancient tale was true?”
As he looked up and up until his eye reached the very crest of the crumbling fortress, he fancied he saw a figure moving there. It suggested the ghost of the emperor still laying stones in the wall.
“But that,” he told himself stoutly, “is pure fancy. So, too, are the tales the natives tell of the ghost emperor who returns from time to time to work once more at night repairing the walls to hide his treasure. I wonder—”
He broke short off. A dark figure had appeared at the upper opening from which the rope ladder dangled.
One breathless moment, as if looking for some movement far or near, listening for a sound, the figure of a native huddled there on the giant window ledge.