Free Out Of The Past by Patricia Wentworth

wretched last night, and I felt it was all my fault. But there isn’t any need—there really isn’t. Everything can be arranged. Suppose we talk it over a little.”
    He pulled up a chair and sat down, whilst she watched him between hope and doubt.
    “You won’t publish those letters?”
    “Darling, do you suppose I want to? It’s just that I’ve got to have the money. If there is any other way of getting it, I’ll be only too thankful. You don’t suppose I want to upset you, do you? We can have a comfortable talk and settle the whole thing provided you are willing.”
    He saw the tears come up in her eyes and went on in a hurry.
    “Now, my dear, I don’t want you to say anything—I just want you to listen. It was all very sketchy yesterday, and I think perhaps you got a wrong impression of what I was asking you to do. To begin with, there isn’t any question of your parting with capital—I know you’ve got strict views about that—because I’m really only asking for a loan. I’m afraid I wasn’t quite frank with you last night. The whole thing is very confidential, and if the least word of it got out, we should be sunk. So I employed a little camouflage. But thinking it over in the night—I couldn’t sleep, you know, so there was plenty of time—I realized that I had no right to keep you in the dark.”
    Esther’s soft brown eyes remained fixed upon his face. He certainly had her attention. What he would have liked to know was whether he had her belief. He wasn’t so sure. He made haste to go on.
    “That story I told you about Cardozo wanting to buy a horse ranch—”
    “It’s not true?”
    He laughed.
    “Only partly. He does want to buy a ranch, and he will probably want me to come in with him, but—well, he hasn’t got the money. Or at least—look here, I’m going to tell you the whole thing, only it’s a top number one secret. You mustn’t breathe a word to a soul—you’ll see why in a minute. Here it comes. Somewhere back in the last century a relation of Cardozo’s, a great-uncle or something, came by a considerable treasure—and it’s no good asking me how, because Felipe is rather inclined to draw a veil over that part of it. There was quite a lot of stuff buried up and down the coast and islands of the Spanish Main in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and a good deal of it has never been found. My guess is that old Cardozo tumbled on a cache. He had his own reasons for keeping quiet about it. He got the stuff away anyhow, and he got it to Rio. And a week later he was picked up with a knife between his shoulders in a back street. And that was that. His affairs were in a bad way. His house was sold to pay his debts, and there wasn’t very much left. His next of kin was a young nephew. When he came of age, the family lawyer handed him a sealed envelope which had been deposited with the firm only a day or two before his uncle’s death. It told young Cardozo about the treasure and where it was hidden.”
    Esther Field was remembering all the stories she had ever heard about buried treasure, from the romantic kind over which she had pored in youth, to the more sordid variety which cropped up every now and then in the police court or the newspapers, hand to hand, so to speak, with the gold brick and the confidence trick. Her feelings must have shown in her face.
    Alan laughed.
    “You think it sounds phoney, and so it does. But it isn’t. I’ve worked with Felipe for three years, and he’s as straight as a die. Let me go on telling you about it. Old Cardozo got away with the stuff and got it to Rio, and when he got it there he buried it again—somewhere in his house or garden. It was an old family place, and if he hadn’t been bumped off when he was, he could have cleared all his debts and revived the ancient glories. Well, he told his nephew where the stuff was, but the house had been sold—there was no way of getting at it. It has changed hands twice since then at a