The Last Adventure
The talk had run on treasure.I could not sleep and my friends had dropped in. I had the bigSouth room on the second floor of the Hotel de Paris. It looksdown on the Casino and the Mediterranean. Perhaps you know it.Queer friends, you'd say. Every man-jack of them a gambler. Butwhen one begins to sit about all night with his eyes open, thedevil's a friend.Barclay was standing before the fire. The others had driftedout. He's a big man pitted with the smallpox. He made agesture, flinging out his hand toward the door."That bunch thinks there's a curse on treasure, Sir Henry.That's one of the oldest notions in the world . . . it'sunlucky.""But I know where there's a treasure that's not unlucky. Atleast it was not unlucky for poor Charlie Tavor. He did not getit, but there was no curse on it that reached to him. It helpedpoor Charlie finish in style. He died like a lord in a bigcountry house, with a formal garden and a line of lackeys."Barclay paused."Queer chap, Tavor. He was the best all round explorer in theworld. I bar nobody. Charlie Tavor could take a nigger andcross the poisonous plateau south west of the Libyan desert.I've backed him. I know . . . but he had no business sense,anybody could fool him. He found the stock of bar silver on thewest face of the Andes that made old Nute Hardman a quarter of amillion dollars, clear, after the cursed beast had split it ahalf dozen ways with a crooked South American government."Barclay's teeth set and he jerked up his clinched hand."It was a damned steal, Sir Henry. A piece of low down, dirtyrobbery; and it was like taking candy away from a child . . . .`Sign here, Mr. Tavor,' and Charlie would scrawl on his fist . .. . Some people think there's no hell, but what's God Almightygoing to do with Old Nute?"He flung out his hand again."Still the thing didn't dent Charlie. He never missed a step.`Don't bother, Barclay, old man,' he'd say, `I'll find somethingelse,' and then he'd go off into this dream he had of coming backwhen he'd struck it, to the old home county in England and layingit over the bunch that had called him `no good.' He never talkedmuch, but I gathered from odds and ends that he was the blacksheep in a pretty smart flock."Then, I'd stake him to a cheap outfit - not much, I've said hecould push through the Libyan desert with a nigger - and he'ddrop out of the world. It wasn't charity. I got my money'sworth. The clay pots he brought me from Yucatan would sell anyday for more cash than I ever advanced him."Barclay moved a little before the fire. I was listening in a bigchair, my feet extended toward the hearth; a smoking jacket hadreplaced my dinner coat."It was five years ago, in London," Barclay went on, "that Ifitted Charlie out for his last adventure. He wanted to land inthe gulf of Pe-chi-li and go into the great desert of the Shamoin Central Mongolia. You'll find the Shamo all dotted out on themaps; but it's faked dope. No white man knows anything about theShamo."It's a trick to lay off these great waste areas and call themelevated plateaus or sunken plateaus. You can't go by the atlas.Where's Kane's Open Polar Sea and Morris K. Jessup's Land?Still, Charlie thought the Shamo might be a low plain, and hethought he might find something in it. You see the great goldcaravans used to cross it, three thousand years ago . . . and asCharlie kept saying, `What's time in the Shamo?'"Well, I bought him a kit of stuff, and he took a P. and O.through the Suez. I got a long letter from Pekin two monthslater; and then Charlie Tavor dropped out of the world. I wentback to America. No word ever came from Charlie. I thought hewas dead. I suppose a white man's life is about the cheapestthing there is northwest of the Yellow River; and Charlie neverhad an escort. A coolie and an old service pistol would aboutfoot up his defenses."And there's every ghastly disease in Mongolia . . . . Stillsome word always came from Tavor inside of a year; a tramp aroundthe Horn would bring in a dirty note, written God knows where,and carried out to the ship by a naked native swimming with thething in his teeth; or some little embassy would send it to me ina big official envelope stamped with enough red wax to make asaint's candle."But the luck failed this time. A year ran on, then two, thenthree and I passed Charlie up. He'd surely `gone west!'"Barclay paused, thrust his hands into the pockets of his dinnerjacket and looked down at me."One night in New York I got a call from the City Hospital. Thetelephone message came in about ten o'clock. I was in Albany; Ifound the message when I got back the following morning and Iwent ever to the hospital."The matron said that they had picked up a man on the North Riverdocks in an epileptic fit and the only name they could find onhim was my New York address. They thought he was going to die,he was cold and stiff for hours, and they had undertaken to reachme in order to identify him. But he did not die. He was up thismorning and she would bring him in."Barclay paused again."She brought in Charlie Tavor! . . . And I nearly screamed whenI saw the man. He was dressed in one of those cheaphand-me-downs that the Germans used to sell in the tropics for apound, three and six, his eyes looked as dead as glass and he wasas white as plaster. How the man managed to keep on his feet Idon't know."I didn't stop for any explanation. I got Tavor into a taxi, andover to my apartment."Barclay moved in his position before the fire."But on the way over a thing happened that some little god playedin for a joke. There was a block just where Thirty-third crossesinto Fifth Avenue, and our taxi pulled up by a limousine."Barclay suddenly thrust out his big pock-marked face."The thing couldn't have happened by itself. Some burlesqueangel put it over when the Old Man wasn't looking. Spread out bnthe tapestry cushions of that limousine was Nute Hardman!"There they were side by side. Not six feet apart; Old Nute in asable-lined coat and Charlie in his hand-me-down, at a pound,three and six."The muscles in Barclay's big jaw tightened."Maybe there is a joker that runs the world, and maybe the devilruns it. Anyhow it's a queer system. Here was Charlie Tavor,straight as a string, down and out. And here was Nute Hardman,so crooked that a fly couldn't light on him and stand level, witheverything that money could buy."I cast it up while the taxi stood there beside the car. Nutewas consul in a South American port that you couldn't spell andcouldn't find on the map. He didn't have two dollars to rubtogether, until Charlie Tavor turned up. There he sat, out ofthe world, forgotten, growing moss and getting ready to rot; andGod Almighty, or the devil, or whatever it is, steered CharlieTavor in to him with the bar silver."He picked Charlie to the bone and cut for the States. And thisdamned crooked luck went right along with him. He was in a bigapartment, now, up on Fifth Avenue and four-flushing toward everypoint of the compass. His last stunt was `patron of science.'He'd gotten into the Geographical Society, and he was layinglines for the Royal Society in London. He had a Harvard donworking over in the Metropolitan library, building him a thesis!"The thing made me ugly. I wanted to have a plain talk with thedevil. He wasn't playing fair. Old Nute couldn't have beenworth the whole run of us; I've legged some myself, and I had aright to be heard. The devil ought to make old Nute split upwith Charlie. True, Charlie belonged in the other camp, but Ididn't. And if I wanted a little favor I felt that the devilought to come across with it . . . I put it up to him, or downto him, as you'd say, while I sat there in that taxi."There was a grim energy in Barclay's face. He was no ordinaryperson."I got Tavor up to my apartment, and a goblet of brandy in him.I never saw anybody look like Tavor as he sat there propped up inthe chair with a lot of cushions around him. It was winter andcold. He had no clothes to speak of, but he did not seem tonotice either the cold outside or the heat in the apartment, asthough, somehow, he couldn't tell the difference."And he was the strangest color that any human being ever was inthe world. I've said that he looked like plaster, and he didlook like it, but he looked like a plaster man with a thin coatof tan colored paint on him."Barclay paused."It's hardly a wonder that no message reached me. The devilcouldn't have got word out of the hell land he'd been in. Lostis no name for it. He'd been all over the Shamo, and the bigSahara's a park to it. He'd been North to the Kangai where theyused to get the gold that the caravans carried across the Shamo,and he'd followed the old trails South to the great wall."It's all a Satan's country. I don't know why God Almightywanted to make a hell hole like the Shamo!"He paused, then he went on."But it wasn't in the Shamo that Tavor got track of the thing hewas after. He said that the age he was trying to get back intowas much more remote than he imagined. It must have been a goodmany thousands of years ago. He couldn't tell; long beforeanything like dependable history at any rate . . . . There musthave been an immense age of great oriental splendor in the Southof Asia and along the East African coast, dying out at about thetime our knowledge of human history begins."Barclay went on, unmoving before the fire."I don't know why we imagine that the legends of a little tribein Syria running back to the fifth or sixth century begins theworld . . . . Anyway, Tavor got the notion, as I have said, ofan age in decay at about the time these legends start in; with atrade moving west."He nosed it all out! God knows how. Of course it was only atheory - only a notion in fact. He hadn't anything to go on thatI could see. But after two years' drifting about in the Shamo,this is how he finally figured it:"Northern Asia traded gold in the west; the mined product wouldbe molded into bricks in lower Mongolia. It was then carriedover land to the southwest coast of Arabia. There was some greatcenter of world commerce low down on the Red Sea about eighthundred miles south of Port Said."Tavor said that when he began to think about the thing thecaravan route was pretty clear to him. Arabia seemed to havebeen connected, in that remote age, with Persia at the Strait ofOrmus, so there was a direct overland route . . . . That putanother notion into Tavor's head; these treasure caravans musthave crossed the immense Sandy Desert of El-Khali. And thisnotion developed another; if one were seeking the wreck of anyone of these treasure caravans he would be more likely to find itin the El-Khali than in the Shamo."Barclay moved away from the fire, got a chair and sat down. Hewas across the hearth from me. He looked about the room and atthe curtained windows that shut out the blue night."You can't sleep," he went on, "so I might just as well tell youthis. A good deal of it is what the lawyers called dicta . . .obiter dicta; when the judge gets to putting in stuff on the side. . . but it's a long time 'til daylight."He had taken a small chair and he sat straight in it after themanner of a big man."You see the treasure carried south across the Shamo would be`gold wheat' (dust, we'd call it), packed in green skins . . .you couldn't find that. But the caravans crossing the El-Khaliwould carry this gold in bricks for the great west trade. Now agold brick is indestructible; you can't think of anything thatwould last forever like a gold brick. 'Nothing would disturb it,water and sun are alike without effect on it . . . ."That was Tavor's notion, and he went right after it. Most of uswould have slacked out after two years in the hell hole of'Central Mongolia. But not Charlie Tavor. He got down to Arabiasomehow; God knows, I never asked him, - and he went right oninto the Great Sandy Desert of Roba El Khali. The oldest caravanroute known runs straight across the desert from Muscat to Mecca.It's a thousand miles across - but you can strike the line of itnearly four hundred miles west in a hundred miles travel by goingdue South from the coast between fifty and fifty-five degrees."You'll find this old caravan route drawn on the map, a deadstraight line across the thirty-third parallel. But the man thatput it on there never traveled over it. He doesn't know whetherit is a sunken plateau, or an elevated plateau, or what the devilit is that this old route runs across. And he doesn't know whatthe earth's like in the great basin of the El-Khali; maybe it'ssand and maybe it's something else."Barclay stopped and looked queerly at me."The Doctor Cooks have put a lot of stuff over on us. The factis, there's six million square miles of the earth's surface thatnobody knows anything about."He got a package of American cigarettes out of his pocket,selected one and lighted it with a fragment of the box thrustinto the fire."That's where Tavor was the last year. When the ambulance pickedhim up, he'd crawled around the Horn in a Siamese tramp."He paused."Great people, the English; no fag-out to them. Look how Scottwent on in the Antarctic with his feet frozen . . . It's in theblood; it was in Tavor."I sat there that winter night in my room in New York while hetold me all about it."It was morning when he finished - the milk wagons were on thestreet, - and then, he added, quite simply, as though it were amatter of no importance"'But I can't go back, Barclays old man; my tramping's over.That was no fit I had on the dock.'"He looked at me with his dead eyes in his tan-colored plasterface. You've heard of the hemp-chewers and the betel-chewers;well, all that's baby-food to a thing they've got in the Shamo.It's a shredded root, bitter like cactus, and when you chew it,you don't get tired and you don't get hot . . . you go on and youdon't know what the temperature is. Then some day, all at once,you go down, cold all over like a dead man . . . that time youdon't die, but the next time . . . "Barclay snapped his fingers without adding the word.'"And you can calculate when the second one will strike you. It'sa hundred and eighty-one days to the hour."Then he added:"That was the first one on the dock. Tavor had six months tolive."The big man broke the cigarette in his fingers and threw thepieces into the fire. Then he turned abruptly toward me."And I know where he wanted to live for those six months. Theold dream was still with him. He wanted that country house inhis native county in England, with the formal garden and thelackeys. The finish didn't bother him, but he wanted to roundout his life with the dream that he had carried about with him."I put him to bed and went down into Broadway, and walked aboutall night. Tavor couldn't go back and he had to have a bunch ofmoney."It was no good. I couldn't see it. I went back Tavor was upand I sat him down to a cross examination that would havedelighted the soul of a Philadelphia lawyer."Barclay paused."It was all at once that I saw it - like you'd snap your fingers.It was an accident of Charlie's talk . . . one of those obiterdicta, that I mentioned a while ago. But I stopped Charlie andwent over to the Metropolitan Library; there I got me an expert -an astronomer chap, as it happened, reading calculus in Frenchfor fun - I gave him a twenty and I looked him in the eye."Now, Professor,' I said, `this dope's got to be straight stuff,I'm risking money on it; every word you write has got to be thetruth, and every line and figure that you put on your map has gotto be correct with a capital K.'""'Surely,' he said, `I shall follow Huxley for the text and Ishall check the chart calculations for error.'"'And there's another thing, professor. You've got to go dumb onthis job, for which I double the twenty.' He looked puzzled, butwhen he finally understood me, he said `Surely' again, and I wentback to my apartment."'Charlie,' I said, `how much money would it take for thisEnglish country life business?'"His eyes lighted up a little."Well, Barclay, old man,' he replied, `I've estimated it prettycarefully a number of times. I could take Eldon's place for sixmonths with the right to purchase for two thousand dollars paiddown; and I could manage the servants and the living expenses foranother four thousand. I fear I should not be able to get onwith a less sum than six thousand dollars.'"Then he added - he was a child to the last - 'perhaps Mr.Hardman will now be able to advance it; he promised me "a furtherper cent" those were his words, when the matter was (finallyconcluded.'"Then ten thousand would do?'"My word,' he said, `I should go it like a lord on ten thousand.Do you think Mr. Hardman would consider that sum?'"I'm going to try him,' I said, `I've got some influence in aquarter that he depends on.'"And I went out. I went down to my bank and got twenty U. S.bonds of a thousand each. At five o'clock, the professor had hisdope ready - the text and the chart, neatly folded in a bigmanilla envelope with a rubber band around it. And that eveningI went up to see old Nute."Barclay got another cigarette. There was a queer cynicism in hisbig pitted face."The church bunch," he said, "have got a strange conception ofthe devil; they think he's always ready to lie down on hisfriends. That's a fool notion. The devil couldn't do businessif he didn't come across when you needed him."And there's another thing; the old-timers, when they went aftertheir god for a favor, always began by reciting what they'd donefor him . . . . That was sound dope! I tried it myself on theway up to old Nute's apartment on Fifth Avenue."I went over a lot of things. And whenever I made a point, Irapped it on the pavement with the ferule of my walking stick; asone would say, `you owe me for that!'"You see I was worked up about Tavor. When a man's carried adream over all the hell he'd pushed through he ought to have itin the end."Barclay paused and flicked the ashes from his cigarette."You know the swell apartments on Fifth Avenue; no name, only anumber; every floor a residence, only the elevators connectingthem. I found old Nute in the seventh; and I was bucked themoment I got in."The door from the drawing room to the library was open. TheHarvard don was going out, the one Nute had employed to get uphis thesis for the Royal Society of London - I mentioned him awhile ago. And I heard his final remark, flung back at the door.`What you require, Sir, is the example case of some newexploration - one that you have yourself conducted.'"That bucked me; the devil was on the job!"Barclay stopped again. He sat for a moment watching the smokefrom the cigarette climb in a blue mist slowly into the beautifulfresco of the ceiling."I told old Nute precisely what I've told you. How I'd backedTavor for his last adventure, and where he'd been; all overCentral Mongolia and finally across the Great Sandy Desert ofEl-Khali. And I told him what Charlie was after; the theory hestarted with and his final conclusion when he made his last pushalong the old caravan route west from Muscat."I went into the details, and the big notion that Tavor hadslowly pieced together; how the gold was mined in the rangessouth of Siberia, carried in green skins to lower Mongolia,melted there and taken for trade Southwest across the El-Khali toan immense Babylon of Commerce of which the present Mecca isperhaps a decadent residuum."I put it all in; the accessibility of this desert from the coaston three sides, how the old caravan route parallels thethirty-third meridian and how Charlie struck it four hundredmiles out into the desert in a hundred miles travel due south inlongitude between 50 and 55 degrees; all the details of Tavor'shunt for the wreck of one of these treasure caravans."Old Nute looked at me with his little hard eyes slipping about."'And he didn't find it?' he said."I didn't answer that. I went ahead and told him how I foundTavor and the shape he was in, and then I added, `I'm not anexplorer, and Charlie can't go back.'"Old Nute's thick neck shot out at that."'Then he did find it?' he said."'Now look here, Nute,' I said, `you're not trading with Tavor onthis deal. You're trading with me and I'm just as slick as youare. You'll get no chance to slip under on this. You forget allI've told you just as though it had nothing to do with what I'mgoing to tell you, and I'll come to the point.'"`Forget it?' he said."'Yes,' I said, `forget it. I'm not going to put you on to whatCharlie knows, with any strings to it, or with any pointers thatyou can run down without us. I've told you all about Tavor's bighunt through the Shamo and the El-Khali for a purpose of my ownand not for the purpose of enabling you to locate the thing thatCharlie Tavor knows about.'"Hardman's voice went down into a low note. `What does he know?'he said."I looked him squarely in the little reptilian eyes. `He knowswhere there is a treasure in gold equal in our money to threehundred thousand dollars!'"Old Nute's little eyes focused into his nose an instant. Thenhe took a chance at me."'What's the country like?'"I went on as though I didn't see the drift."'Tavor says this area of the earth's surface is a great plainpractically level, sloping gradually on one side and risinggradually on the other.'"'Sand?' said Nute."'No,' I replied, 'Tavor says that contrary to the common notion,this plain is not covered with sand, it's a kind of chalkdeposit.'"'Hard to get to?'"Old Nute shot the query in with a little quick duck of his head."I went straight on with the answer."'Tavor says it's about a five or six days' journey from a seacoast town.'"'Hard traveling?'"'No, Tavor says you can get within two miles of the placewithout any difficulty whatever - he says anybody can do it. Theonly difficulties are on the last two miles. But up to the lasttwo miles, it's a holiday journey for a middle-aged woman.'"Old Nute grunted. He put his fat hands together over hiswaistcoat and twiddled his thumbs."`Well,'; he said, 'what's in your mind about it?'"We were now up to the trade and I Stated the terms."'It's like this,' I said, 'Tavor's down and out. He's got onlysix months to live. Fifth Avenue piled full of gold won't do himany good if he's got to wait for it. What he wants is a littlemoney quick!'"Old Nute's eyes squinted."'How much money?' he said."'Well,' I said, 'Tavor will turn his map over to you for tenthousand dollars . . . Death's crowding him.'."Old Nute's fat fingers began to drum on his waistcoat."How do I know the gold's there and the map's straight?'"'Did you ever know Tavor to lie?' I said."'No,' he said, 'Tavor's not a liar; but I am a business man, Mr.Barclay, and in business we do not go on verbal assurances, nomatter how unquestioned.'"'That's right,' I replied, `I'm a business man, too; that's whyI came instead of sending Tavor . . . . you found out he wasn't abusiness man in the first deal.'"Then I took my `shooting irons' out of my pocket and laid themon the table."There,' I said, `are twenty, one-thousand United States bonds,not registered,' and I put my hand on one of the big Manilaenvelopes.; `and here,' I said, `is an accurate description ofthe place where this treasure lies and a map of the route to it,'and I put my hand on the other."'Now,' I went on, `I believe every word of this thing. CharlesTavor is the best all-round explorer in the world. I've knownhim a lifetime and what he says goes with me. We'll put up thisbunch of stuff with a stakeholder for the term of a year, and ifthe gold isn't there and if the map showing the route to it isn'tcorrect and if every word I've said about it isn't precisely thetruth, you take down my bonds and keep them.'"Old Nute got up and walked about the room. I knew what he wasthinking. `Here's another one of them - there's all kinds.'"But it hooked him. We wrote out the terms and put the stuff upwith old Commodore Harris - the straightest sport in America.Nute had the right to copy the map, and the text and a year toverify it. And I took the ten thousand back to Charlie Tavor."Barclay got up and went over to the window. He drew back theheavy tapestry curtains. It wars morning; the blue dawn wasbeginning to illumine Monaco and the polished arc of the sea. Hestood looking down into it, holding the curtain in his hand."I give the devil his due for that, Sir Henry," he said."Charlie Tavor got his dream at the end; he died like a gentlemanin his English country house with the formal garden and thelackeys.""And the other man got the treasure?" I said. Barclay repliedwithout moving."No, he didn't get it.""Then you lost your bonds?""No, I didn't lose them; Commodore Harris handed them back to meon the last day of the year."I sat up in my big lounge chair."Didn't Hardman make a fight for them; if he didn't find thetreasure - didn't he squeal?"Barclay turned about, drawing the curtain close behind him."And be laughed out of the high-brow bunch that he was trying toget into? . . . I said old Nute was a crook, but I didn't sayhe was a fool."I turned around in the chair."I don't understand this thing, Barclay. If the treasure wasthere, and you gave Hardman a correct map of the route to it, andit lay on a practically level plain, and he could get within twomiles of it without difficulty in four or five days' travel froma sea coast town, why couldn't he get it? Was it all the truth?""It was every word precisely the truth," he said."Then why couldn't he get it?"Barclay looked down at me; his big pitted face was illumined witha cynical smile."Well, Sir Henry," he said, "'the trouble is with those last twomiles. They're water . . . straight down. The level plain isthe bed of the Atlantic ocean and that gold is in the hold of theTitanic."
zpostcode
Recruit
weather
mreligion
Yellowpages
sport
constellation
shopping
name
game
directory
literature
Word
tour
furnish
Lottery
tftnews
lyrics
News
digital
car
dir
Edu
Finance
