at Quito, andPaloma nursing me (she must have packed that gold chip in my trunk),until they found out I was a man without a mind, and the railroad sent meback to Nebraska. At any rate, that’s what Seth writes me. Of myself, Idon’t know. But Sarah here knows. She corresponded with the railroadbefore they shipped me and all that.”
Mrs. Jones nodded affirmation of his words, sighed and evidencedunmistakable signs of eagerness to go.
“I ain’t been able to work since,” her husband continued. “And I ain’tbeen able to figure out how to get back that big nugget. Sarah’s gotmoney of her own, and she won’t let go a penny—”
“He won’t get down to _that_ country no more!” she broke forth.
“But, Sarah, Vahna’s dead—you know that,” Julian Jones protested.
“I don’t know anything about anything,” she answered decisively, “exceptthat _that_ country is no place for a married man.”
Her lips snapped together, and she fixed an unseeing stare across towhere the afternoon sun was beginning to glow into sunset. I gazed for amoment at her face, white, plump, tiny, and implacable, and gave her up.
“How do you account for such a mass of gold being there?” I queried ofJulian Jones. “A solid-gold meteor that fell out of the sky?”
“Not for a moment.” He shook his head. “ It was carried there by theIndians.”
“Up a mountain like that—and such enormous weight and size!” I objected.
“Just as easy,” he smiled. “I used to be stumped by that propositionmyself, after I got my memory back. Now how in Sam Hill—’ I used tobegin, and then spend hours figuring at it. And then when I got theanswer I felt downright idiotic, it was that easy.” He paused, thenannounced: “They didn’t.”
“But you just—said they did.”
“They did and they didn’t,” was his enigmatic reply. “Of course theynever carried that monster nugget up there. What they did was to carryup its contents.”
He waited until he saw enlightenment dawn in my face.
“And then of course melted all the gold, or welded it, or smelted it, allinto one piece. You know the first Spaniards down there, under a leadernamed Pizarro, were a gang of robbers and cut-throats. They went throughthe country like the hoof-and-mouth disease, and killed the Indians offlike cattle. You see, the Indians had lots of gold. Well, what theSpaniards didn’t get, the surviving Indians hid away in that one bigchunk on top the mountain, and it’s been waiting there ever since forme—and for you, if you want to go in on it.”
And here, by the Lagoon of the Palace of Fine Arts, ended my acquaintancewith Julian Jones. On my agreeing to finance the adventure, he promisedto call on me at my hotel next morning with the letters of Seth Mannersand the railroad, and conclude arrangements. But he did not call. Thatevening I telephoned his hotel and was informed by the clerk that Mr.Julian Jones and wife had departed in the early afternoon, with theirbaggage.
Can Mrs. Jones have rushed him back and hidden him away in Nebraska? Iremember that as we said good-bye, there was that in her smile thatrecalled the vulpine complacency of Mona Lisa, the Wise.
THE END
Kohala, Hawaii, _May_ 5, 1916.