The Inca Emerald

CHAPTER IThe Beginning. It was a bushmaster which started the Quest of the Emerald- and only a possible bushmaster at that. One May evening in Cornwall Big Jim Donegan the lumber-king sat in the misty moonlight with his slippered feet on the rail of the veranda of the great house in which he lived alone. He was puffing away at a corn-cob pipe as placidly as if he did not have more millions than Cornwall has hills- which is saying something for Cornwall has twenty-seven of the latter. Along the gravel walk which wound its way for nearly half a mile to the entrance of the estate came the sound of a dragging footstep. A moment later from out of the shadows stepped a man over six feet in height a little stooped and who wore a shiny frock-coat surmounted by a somewhat battered silk hat. The stranger had a long clean-shaven lantern-jawed face. His nose jutted out like a huge beak a magnificent domineering nose which however did not seem in accord with his abstracted blue eyes and his precise voice.