“And now, my young friend,” said the patriarchal-looking man in French, as he handed the document to Roddy hardly dry, “I want to give you some little advice. You will go to Mogador, and there you will meet Ben Chaib Benuis, who will bear a letter from me. He will conduct you safely through very unsafe country which is held by our veiled Touaregs, the brigands of the Great Desert. While you are with him you will have safe conduct into the Wad Sus, one of the most inaccessible regions south of the Atlas Mountains.”
“I am much indebted to Your Excellency,” said the young man. “I have had some little experience of mining operations in South America, and up to the present I am glad to say that I have been successful. I hope I may be equally successful in Morocco.”
“You will surely be,” the old man assured him. “Already Ben Chaib Benuis knows where to find the entrance to the workings, and the rest will be quite easy for you. You have only to raise the necessary capital here, in your city of London, and then we go ahead. And may Allah’s blessing ever rest upon you!” concluded the mock-pious old man, who saw in the concession a big profit to himself and to his royal master.
Roddy folded the precious document into four and placed it in the breast pocket of his dark-blue jacket with an expression of thanks and a promise to do his utmost to carry out his part of the contract.
“We have every hope of floating a very important company to carry out the scheme,” said Andrew Barclay enthusiastically, even then in ignorance that the plan given him by the Minister’s predecessor in Marseilles was no longer in his possession. “I saw the beautiful dark emerald which has been only recently taken from one of the mines. It is a glorious stone, finer, they say, than any that have ever come from the Urals into the treasury of the Romanoffs.”
“Emeralds and rubies are the most precious stones of to-day,” Roddy declared. “Diamonds do not count. They are unfashionable in these post-war days of the ruined aristocracy and the blatant profiteer. A big emerald worn as a pendant upon a platinum chain is of far greater notoriety than a diamond tiara. Nobody wears the latter.”
It was eleven o’clock, and His Excellency rang for a cup of black coffee, while Barclay and Roddy each took a glass of French vermouth. Then, when they sat down to chat over their cigarettes, Roddy glanced casually at the morning newspaper, and saw the announcement that the Moorish Minister was in London “upon a matter of international importance concerning the port of Mogador.”
The young fellow smiled. The matter upon which old Mohammed was “doing himself well” at the Ritz concerned his own pocket—the same matter which affects nine-tenths of the foreign political adventurers who visit Paris and London. They make excuses of international “conversations,” but the greed of gain to themselves at the expense of their own country is ever present.
Later, when he walked with Barclay along Piccadilly towards the Circus, the concession safely in his pocket, Roddy turned to his friends and said:
“Do you know, Andrew, I’m not quite easy in my own mind! I fear that somebody might try to do me out of this great stroke of good fortune for which I am indebted to you.”