"Well," remarked Thorpe, with slow emphasis, "I won't allow you to suffer that way by me. I'll buy it back from you at the same price you paid for it."Tavender, beginning to tremble, jerked himself upright in his chair, and stared through his spectacles at his astounding host. "You say"--he gasped--"you say you'll buy it back!""Certainly," said Thorpe. "That's what I said.""I--I never heard of such a thing!" the other faltered with increasing agitation. "No--you can't mean it.
It isn't common sense!"
"It's common decency," replied the big man, in his most commanding manner. "It's life and death to you--and it doesn't matter a flea-bite to me. So, since you came to grief through me, why shouldn't I do the fair thing, and put you back on your legs again?"Tavender, staring now at those shrunken legs of his, breathed heavily. The thing overwhelmed him.
Once or twice he lifted his head and essayed to speak, but no speech came to his thin lips. He moistened them eventually with a long deliberate pull at his glass.
"This much ought to be understood, however," Thorpe resumed, reflecting upon his words as he went along. "If I'm to buy back a dead horse, like that, it's only reasonable that there should be conditions. I suppose you've seen by this time that even if this concession of ours was recognized by the Government there wouldn't be any money in it to speak of. I didn't realize that two years ago, any more than you did, but it's plain enough now.
The trade has proved it. A property of rubber trees has no real value--so long as there's a wilderness of rubber trees all round that's everybody's property.
How can a man pay even the interest on his purchase money, supposing he's bought a rubber plantation, when he has to compete with people who've paid no purchase money at all, but just get out as much as they like from the free forest?
You must know that that is so."
Tavender nodded eloquently. "Oh yes, I know that is so.
You can prove it by me."
Thorpe grinned a little. "As it happens, that aint what Ineed to have you prove," he said, dryly. "Now WE know that a rubber property is no good--but London doesn't know it.
Everybody here thinks that it's a great business to own rubber trees. Why, man alive, do you know"--the audacity of the example it had occurred to him to cite brought a gratified twinkle to his eyes as he went on--"do you know that a man here last year actually sold a rubber plantation for four hundred thousand pounds--two millions of dollars!
Not in cash, of course, but in shares that he could do something with--and before he's done with it, I'm told, he's going to make twice that amount of money out of it.
That'll show you what London is like."
"Yes--I suppose they do those things," remarked Tavender, vaguely.
"Well--my point is that perhaps I can do something or other with this concession of yours here. I may even be able to get my money back on it. At any rate I'll take my chances on it--so that at least you shan't lose anything by it. Of course, if you'd rather try and put it on the market yourself, why go ahead!" There was a wistful pathos in the way Tavender shook his head.
"Big money doesn't mean anything to me any more,"he said, wearily. "I'm too old and I'm too tired.
Why--four--five--yes, half a dozen times I've had enough money to last me comfortably all my life--and every time I've used it as bait to catch bigger money with, and lost it all.
I don't do that any more! I've got something the matter with me internally that takes the nerve all out of me.
The doctors don't agree about it, but whatever its name is I've got it for keeps. Probably I shan't live very long"--Thorpe recalled that the old man had always taken a gloomy view of his health after the third glass--"and if you want to pay me the nineteen thousand dollars, or whatever it is, why I shall say 'God bless you,' and be more than contented."
"Oh, there's something more to it than that," observed Thorpe, with an added element of business-like briskness in his tone.
"If I let you out in this way--something, of course, you could never have dreamed would happen--you must do some things for me. I should want you, for example, to go back to Mexico at once. Of course, I'd pay your expenses out. Or say, I'd give you a round four thousand pounds to cover that and some other things too.
You wouldn't object to that, would you?"
The man who, two hours before, had confronted existence with the change of his last five-pound note in his pocket, did not hesitate now. "Oh no, that would be all right,"with reviving animation, he declared. He helped himself again from the cut-glass decanter. "What would you want me to do there?""Oh, a report on the concession for a starter," Thorpe answered, with careful indifference. "I suppose they still know your name as an authority. I could make that all right anyway.
But one thing I ought to speak of--it might be rather important--I wouldn't like to have you mention to anybody that the concession has at any time been yours.
That might tend to weaken the value of your report, don't you see? Let it be supposed that the concession has been my property from the start. You catch my point, don't you? There never was any such thing as a transfer of it to you. It's always been mine!"Tavender gave his benefactor a purblind sort of wink.
"Always belonged to you? Why of course it did,"he said cheerfully.
The other breathed a cautious prolonged sigh of relief "You'd better light a fresh one, hadn't you?" he asked, observing with a kind of contemptuous tolerance the old man's efforts to ignite a cigar which had more than once unrolled like a carpenter's shaving in his unaccustomed fingers, and was now shapelessly defiant of both draught and suction.
Tavender laughed to himself silently as he took a new cigar, and puffed at the match held by his companion. The air of innocence and long-suffering meekness was falling rapidly away from him. He put his shabby boots out confidently to the fender and made gestures with his glass as he talked.
