Page 385 - nostromo-a-tale-of-the-seaboard

CHAPTER THREE

IRECTLY they were alone, the colonel’s severe official
Dmanner changed. He rose and approached the doctor.
His eyes shone with rapacity and hope; he became confi-
dential. ‘The silver might have been indeed put on board the
lighter, but it was not conceivable that it should have been
taken out to sea.’ The doctor, watching every word, nodded
slightly, smoking with apparent relish the cigar which So-
tillo had offered him as a sign of his friendly intentions. The
doctor’s manner of cold detachment from the rest of the
Europeans led Sotillo on, till, from conjecture to conjecture,
he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this was a putup
job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold of that
immense treasure all to himself. The doctor, observant and
self-possessed, muttered, ‘He is very capable of that.’
Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement,
amusement, and indignation, ‘You said that of Charles
Gould!’ Disgust, and even some suspicion, crept into his
tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans, there appeared
to be something dubious about the doctor’s personality.
‘What on earth made you say that to this watch-stealing
scoundrel?’ he asked. ‘What’s the object of an infernal lie of
that sort? That confounded pick-pocket was quite capable
of believing you.’
He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent in the

Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard