Cleigh smiled.
"A pretty case, Cunningham, but it won't hold water. It is inevitable that
Eisenfeldt gets the rug and the paintings, and you are made comfortable
for the rest of your days. A shabby business, and you shall rue it."
"My word?"
"I don't believe in it any longer," returned Cleigh.
Cunningham appealed to Jane.
"Give me the whole story, then I'll tell you what I believe," she said.
"You may be telling the truth."
What a queer idea--wanting his word believed! Why should it matter to him
whether they believed in the honour of his word or not, when he held the
whip hand and could act as he pleased? The poor thing! And as that phrase
was uttered in thought, the glamour of him was dissipated; she saw
Cunningham as he was, a poor benighted thing, half boy, half demon, a
thing desperately running away from his hurt and lashing out at friends
and enemies alike on the way.
"Tell your story--all of it."
Cunningham began: "About a year ago the best friend I had--perhaps the only friend I
had--died. He left me his chart and papers. The atoll is known, but
uncharted, because it is far outside the routes. I have no actual proofs
that there will be shell in the lagoon; I have only my friend's word--the
word of a man as honest as sunshine. Where this shell lies there is never
any law. Some pearl thiever may have fallen upon the shell since my friend
discovered it."
"In that case," said Cleigh, "I lose?"
"Frankly, yes! All financial ventures are attended by certain risks."
"Money? Why didn't you come to me for that?"
"What! To you?"
Cunningham's astonishment was perfect.
"Yes. There was a time when I would have staked a good deal on your
word."
Cunningham rested his elbows on the table and clutched his hair--a
despairing gesture.
"No use! I can't get it to you! I can't make you people understand! It
isn't the pearls, it's the game; it's all the things that go toward the
pearls. I want to put over a game no man ever played before."
Jane began to find herself again drawn toward him, but no longer with the
feeling of unsettled mystery. She knew now why he drew her. He was the
male of the species to which she belonged--the out-trailer, the hater of
humdrum, of dull orbits and of routine. The thrilling years he had
spent--business! This was the adventure of which he had always dreamed,
and since it would never arrive as a sequence, he had proceeded to
dramatize it! He was Tom Sawyer grown up; and for a raft on the
Mississippi substitute a seagoing yacht. There was then in this
matter-of-fact world such a man, and he sat across the table from her!