Page:The Secret of Chimneys - 1987.djvu/26

 beckoned me and whispered some excited jargon about a secret—a gold mine, I thought he said. Shoved an oilskin packet into my hand which he’d always worn next his skin. Well, I didn’t think much of it at the time. It wasn’t until a week afterwards that I opened the packet. Then I was curious, I must confess. I shouldn’t have thought that Dutch Pedro would have had the sense to know a gold mine when he saw it—but there’s no accounting for luck”

“And at the mere thought of gold, your heart beat pitter-pat as always,” interrupted Anthony.

“I was never so disgusted in my life. Gold mine, indeed! I daresay it may have been a gold mine to him, the dirty dog. Do you know what it was? A woman’s letters—yes, a woman’s letters, and an Englishwoman at that. The skunk had been blackmailing her—and he had the impudence to pass on his dirty bag of tricks to me.”

“I like to see your righteous heat, James, but let me point out to you that Dagos will be Dagos. He meant well. You had saved his life, he bequeathed to you a profitable source of raising money—your high-minded British ideals did not enter his horizon.”

“Well, what the hell was I to do with the things? Burn ’em, that’s what I thought at first. And then it occurred to me that there would be that poor dame, not knowing they’d be destroyed, and always living in a quake and a dread lest that Dago should turn up again one day.”

“You’ve more imagination than I gave you credit for, Jimmy,” observed Anthony, lighting a cigarette. “I admit that the case presented more difficulties than were at first apparent. What about just sending them to her by post?”

“Like all women, she’d put no date and no address on most of the letters. There was a kind of address on one—just one word. Chimneys.”

Anthony paused in the act of blowing out his match, and he dropped it with a quick jerk of the wrist as it burned his finger.

“Chimneys?” he said. “That’s rather extraordinary.”

“Why, do you know it?”

“It’s one of the stately homes of England, my dear James. A place where Kings and Queens go for weekends, and diplomatists forgather and diplome.”

“That’s one of the reasons why I’m so glad that you’re