The Disentanglers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 402 pages of information about The Disentanglers.

The Disentanglers eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 402 pages of information about The Disentanglers.

The cheering was led by Captain Funkal, who waved the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack.  Words cannot do justice to the scene.  Women fainted, strong men wept, enemies embraced each other.  For details we must refer to the files of The Yellow Flag.  A plebiscite to select the winner of the McCabe Prize was organised by that Journal.  The Moas (bred and exhibited by Mr. Jones Harvey) simply romped in, by 1,732,901 votes, the Mylodon being a bad second, thanks to the Irish vote.

Bude telegraphed ‘Victory,’ and Miss McCabe by cable answered ’Bully for us.’

The secret of these lovers was well kept.  None who watches the fascinating Countess of Bude as she moves through the gilded saloons of Mayfair guesses that her hand was once the prize of success in a scientific exploration.  The identity of Jones Harvey remains a puzzle to the learned.  For the rest, a letter in which Jenkins told the story of the Berbalangs was rejected by the Editor of Nature, and has not yet passed even the Literary Committee of the Society for Psychical Research.  The classical authority on the Berbalangs is still the paper by Mr. Skertchley in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. {242}The scientific gentlemen who witnessed the onslaught of the Berbalangs have convinced themselves (except Jenkins) that nothing of the sort occurred in their experience.  The evidence of Captain Funkal is rejected as ‘marine.’

Te-iki-pa decided to remain in New York as custodian of the Moas.  He occasionally obliges by exhibiting a few feats of native conjuring, when his performances are attended by the elite of the city.  He knows that his countrymen hold him in feud, but he is aware that they fear even more than they hate the ex-medicine man of his Maori Majesty.

The generosity of Bude and his Countess heaped rewards on Merton, who vainly protested that his services had not been professional.

The frequent appearance of new American novelists, whose works sell 250,000 copies in their first month, demonstrate that Mr. McCabe’s scheme for raising the level of genius has been as satisfactory as it was original.  Genius is riz.

But who ‘cornered’ the muddy pearls in Cagayan Sulu?

That secret is only known to Lady Bude, her confessor, and the Irish-American agent whom she employed.  For she, as we saw, had got at the nature of poor Jenkins’s project and had acquainted herself with the wonderful properties of the pearls, which she cornered.

As a patriot, she consoles herself for the loss of the other exhibits to her country, by the reflection that Berbalangs would have been the most mischievous of pauper immigrants.  But of all this Bude knows nothing.

XI.  ADVENTURE OF THE MISERLY MARQUIS

I. The Marquis consults Gray and Graham

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The Disentanglers from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.