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Updated: July 15, 2025
He looked through the glass again, but could not see that the air was any thicker. The lamp still burned brightly. He turned away, and beheld a man, in an old cap and apron, at the further end of the palm-house he was in, doing something to a plant. Thorpe noted the fact that he felt no surprise in seeing that it was Gafferson.
"Well, as nearly as I can figure it out, he works for one of the men that's at the head of this rubber company. It appears that he happened to show this man he's a man of title, by the way a letter I wrote to him last spring, when I got back to Mexico and so in that way this man, when he wanted me to come over, just told Gafferson to cable to me."
He was conscious of annoyance with this moon-faced, dawdling Gafferson, who had been afforded such a splendid chance of profiting by an old acquaintanceship it might even be called, as things went in Honduras, a friendship and who had so clumsily failed to rise to the situation.
It was clear enough that, when he returned to Mexico, Tavender had written to Gafferson, explaining the unexpected pressure of business which had taken up all his time in England. Probably he had been idiot enough to relate what he of course regarded as the most wonderful piece of good news how the worthless concession he had been deluded into buying had been bought back from him.
The telegram of the idiot Kervick would bring the police down upon him like a pack of beagles. The beliefs and surmises of the idiot Gafferson would furnish them with the key to everything. He would have his letter from Tavender to show to the detectives and the Government's smart lawyers would ferret out the rest.
Thorpe stopped short, and stared at her, the while the suggestions stirred by the sound of this name slowly shaped themselves. "Gafferson?" he asked her, with a blank countenance. "My new head-gardener," she explained. "He was at Hadlow, and after poor old Lady Plowden died why, surely you remember him there. You spoke about him you'd known him somewhere in the West Indies, wasn't it?"
From what he had learned and surmised, it was not difficult to put the pieces of the puzzle together. This ridiculous old fool, he remembered now, had reproached himself, when he was in England before, for his uncivil neglect of his brother-in-law. By some absurd chance, this damned brother-in-law happened to be Gafferson.
You'd rather be doing this, eh? than making your pile in logwood and mahogany out there, or floating a gold mine?" Gafferson answered quite simply: "I wasn't the kind to ever make a pile.
You snooze in bed, and you send Gafferson Gafferson! the mud-head of the earth! to meet your Tavender, and loaf about with him in London, and bring him down by a slow train to your place in the evening. My God! You've only got two clear days left to do the whole thing in and you don't even come up to town to get ready for them!
A profoundly tender desire for her happiness was in complete possession. Already the notion of doing anything to wound or grieve her appeared incredible to him. "Well, Gafferson," he heard himself saying, in one of the more reserved tones of his patriarchal manner. He had halted close to the inattentive man, and stood looking down upon him. His glance was at once tolerant and watchful.
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