Embarrassin’ pause.  Very.  Nobody dared look at anybody else.  At least, I didn’t.  I was waverin’ between a gasp and a snicker, and was nearly chokin’ over it, when Old Hickory clears his throat raspy and menacin’.

“Well, what about it?” he asks snappy.

“Why,” says Megrue, “it seems too good to be true, that’s all.  As I told the boys up at the hotel, if there are any real treasure-hunting bugs around, I want to get a good look at ’em—­especially if they’re from New York.  That’s one on you, eh, Ellins?  Proves you have a few folks in the big town who have bats in their belfries, don’t it?”

That gets an uneasy squirm out of Old Hickory, but he comes right back at him.

“Just why?” he demands.

“Why, great Scott, Ellins,” goes on Megrue enthusiastic, “don’t you know that buried treasure stuff is the stalest kind of tourist bait in use on the whole Florida coast?  The hotel people have been handing that out for the past fifty years.  Wouldn’t think anyone could be still found who’d bite at it, would you?  But it seems they exist.  Every once in a while a new lot of come-ons show up, with their old charts and their nice new shovels, and go to digging.  Why, I was shown a place just north of Little Gasparilla—­Cotton River, they call it—­where the banks have been dug up for miles by these simple-minded nuts.

“Every now and then, too, they circulate that musty tale about an old Spaniard, in Tampa or Fort Myers or somewhere, who whispers deathbed directions about finding a chest of gold buried at the foot of a lone palmetto on some key or other.  And say, they tell me there isn’t a lone tree on this section of the coast that hasn’t been dug up by the roots.  Good old human nature can’t be downed, can it?  You can suppress the green-goods and gold-brick games, but folks will still go to shoveling sand if you mention pirates to ’em.  What I want is to see ’em at it once.”

The harder you jolt Old Hickory, though, the steadier he gets.

“Huh!” says he, smilin’ sarcastic.  “An ambition such as yours ought to be gratified.  Take a good look at us, Megrue.”

“Wha-a-a-at!” gasps Barney, starin’ at him.  “You—­you don’t mean that—­that—­”

“Precisely,” says Old Hickory.  “We are the crack-brained New Yorkers you are so anxious to see.”

Well, when he recovers his breath he does his best to square himself.  He apologizes four different ways, gettin’ in deeper with every turn, until finally he edges towards the stairs and makes his escape.

“At least,” remarks Old Hickory, “I suppose it is something to provide a source of innocent merriment.  I trust we are not overlooking anyone who might wish to be amused.”

Before the evenin’ was over he had his answer.  About eight-thirty out comes a fast motor-boat and ties up alongside without askin’ leave.  Reporters, two of ’em.  They climbs up, grinnin’ and amiable, specially the fat one in the tight-fittin’ Palm Beach suit.  They wanted to know when we was goin’ to start digging and if we’d mind their bringin’ out a movie machine, so one of ’em could get a few hundred feet of film for a picture news service that he represented.