“I’m not an archaeologist, and I’ll be satisfied with what’s there,” he said. “I’ll be back with all the machinery necessary to get it out, and all the men that are needed — armed, if they have to be — to chase those head-hunters away. Before long, the head-hunters’ll probably have been scared so far off into the hills that you won’t have any trouble getting back into your frog cave. I’ll get along all right until then. I’ve still got that prospecting concession for this river — remember?”
5
“It was, literally, like an answer to prayer,” said Professor Humphrey Nestor piously. “As you know, Mr Tombs — I’m sure I must have mentioned it — I was scheduled to stop over to deliver a special lecture on Inca mythology at the University of Miami. So I had asked Michigan to forward my mail for a few days in care of the President. That is how I happened to receive this letter from the executors of this rich uncle from whom I frankly never expected to inherit so much as an old encyclopedia.”
He handed Simon the unfolded letter. It was nicely typed on a letterhead purporting to be that of a firm of New York attorneys, and informed Professor Humphrey Nestor that they were holding at his disposal a legacy of fifty thousand dollars from the estate of Hannibal Nestor, deceased, and would appreciate his instructions regarding delivery of the same.
Simon glanced at it and handed it back with a smile of congratulation. Nobody could esteem the value of an efficiently faked document higher than he.
“That’s simply wonderful,” he said whole-heartedly.
“Naturally,” said the Professor, “all I could think of was to get the money as quickly as possible and return here while we were still hot on the scent, as you might say, of those golden frogs.”
“Naturally.”
“Getting the money was only a matter of formality. Then I wired Alice, and took the next plane back here after my lecture. Of course, by that time you had already left on your ill-fated trip. No doubt you can imagine my feelings when she was forced to tell me the whole story. It would be impossible for me to forgive the bargain she made with you if I did not realize how altruistic although misguided her motives were. But both of us will always bear on our souls the burden of the death of poor faithful Loro.”
He bowed his head, and a subdued Alice, becomingly garbed in black, meekly followed suit.
“Don’t blame yourselves too much,” said the Saint. “I’ve already told her—”
The Professor raised his hand.
“Let us not discuss it,” he said. “All I ask, for my own satisfaction and peace of mind, is that you should permit me to reimburse you for your loss. Call it conscience money, or blood money, as you will. And let us consider that iniquitous compact ended, as if it had never been made.”
He took another piece of paper from his pocket and held it out to the Saint. Simon took it, and saw that it was a cashier’s cheque for ten thousand dollars which his practised eye told him was certainly not forged.
“If you put it that way, Professor,” he said, respectfully, “I hardly see how I can refuse.”
“I understand you will not be a loser, in any event. May I ask what you are proposing to do about your lucky find?”
“I haven’t had time to do anything much yet,” said the Saint. “In fact, for the present I’m keeping it right under my hat, and as you know I’ve asked Alice to do the same. I don’t want some local hotshots getting wind of it and maybe pulling some fast legal shenanigans before everything’s sewn up. I have got an attorney forming a local corporation, which will have quite a nominal capital, most of which I’ll put up myself — about a hundred grand. For operating capital, I’ll get a loan from some Texas oil men I know; in that way, the value of the original stock will skyrocket much faster as soon as we get going, and I can take a nice capital gain instead of paying a ninety per cent income tax.”
The Professor nodded.
“Alice tells me she had some misunderstanding with you about the legal and moral rights to your mining claim. She was absolutely wrong, of course—”
“I know it now,” Alice said contritely. “I was very stupid, and I apologize.”
“But,” said the Professor, “we do have a friendly interest in your venture. Your opening up of the country should eventually make it possible for us to get back to our frogs again — if they are still there. And I do claim that we contributed something, however indirectly, to your good fortune. Here I am, Mr Tombs, with what is left of this legacy, and very little knowledge of financial matters. I would like to invest something that would bring in a good return and enable me to continue my researches. Alice and I have been so close to this, and we have the best reasons to believe in it. I would like to ask you — not as a right, but as a favour — if you would consider letting us in on the ground floor.”
“How much would you want to invest?” Simon asked in a businesslike manner.
The Professor looked appealingly at Alice. She opened her purse, and then a billfold from it, and took out five cashier’s cheques, each made out simply to Bearer. It was the most liquid and compact way she had been able to think of to carry her retirement fund. She put one of them back, and handed Simon the other four. Each of them was made out for five thousand dollars.
“I told him we could speculate this much,” she said.
Simon looked at them judicially.
“I was only a little peeved because I thought Alice was jumping the gun,” he said. “When you put it this way, I couldn’t be mean enough to refuse. But I can’t take all this — it would be against a foolish principle of mine.”
He gave her back two of the cheques and put the other two away in his wallet.
“I’ll give you a receipt,” he said.
He fetched a sheet of paper and wrote on it:
Received from Professor Humphrey Nestor, and Alice Nestor, the sum of $10,000 (Ten Thousand Dollars) in return for which I promise to issue them stock to the same par value in the Golden Frog Mining Corporation, as soon as it is available.
Probably, he reflected, a smart lawyer could prove that such an indefinite promise was not even fraudulent. Not that the Saint intended to wait around even another twelve hours to find out.
“Will that do?” he asked.
They looked pathetically grateful and yet somewhat disappointed, so that he rather regretted the quixotic impulse that had compelled him to refuse half their money. But he felt that he had been well repaid for the time he had spent preparing that elegant “licence” for himself. As for the preliminary trip over the river, on which his Navy friend had flown him from Coco Solo and helped him dump several sackfuls of carefully salted rock, the plane and the gas had been unwittingly supplied by Uncle Sam, and the trip had been purely a joyride. The Nestors, he thought, should be taught a lesson to be more circumspect about working a routine with so many transparent fabrications in it, but they had certainly put on a first-class production, and the Saint did not want to be too cruel.