“Now, let’s hear what you’ve got to say to me?” Hayle began.

“Not here,” Kitwater replied.  “There are too many listeners.  Come down to the harbour.”

So saying he led his companions to the waterside, where he chartered a native boat for an hour’s sail.  Then, when they were out of earshot of the land, he bade Hayle pay attention to what he had to say.

“First and foremost you must understand,” he said, “that it’s all due to Coddy here.  We heard something of it from an old Siamese in Hanoi, but we never put much trust in it.  Then Coddy began to look around, to hunt up some of his fusty records, and after awhile he began to think that there might be something in the story after all.  You see it’s this way:  you know Sengkor-Wat?”

“Sengkor how much?”

“Sengkor-Wat—­the old ruin at the back of Burmah; near the Chinese Border.  Such a place as you never dreamt of.  Tumble-down palaces, temples, and all that sort of thing—­lying out there all alone in the jungle.”

“I’ve seen Amber,” said Hayle, with the air of a man who makes a remark that cannot be lightly turned aside.  “After that I don’t want any more ruined cities.  I’ve got no use for them.”

“No, but you’ve got a use for other things, haven’t you?  You can use rubies as big as pigeon’s eggs, I suppose.  You’ve got a use for sapphires, the like of which mortal man never set eyes on before.”

“That’s certainly so,” Hayle replied.  “But what has this Sengkor-Wat to do with it?”

“Everything in the world,” Kitwater replied.  “That’s where those rubies are, and what’s more, that’s where we are going to find them.”

“Are you joking, or is this sober earnest?”

He looked from Kitwater to Codd.  The little man thus appealed to nodded his head.  He agreed with all his companion said.

“It’s quite true,” said he, after a pause.  “Rubies, sapphires and gold, enough to make us all millionaires times over.”

“Bravo for Sengkor-Wat, then!” said Hayle.  “But how do you know all this?”

“I’ve told you already that Coddy found it out,” Kitwater replied.  “Looking over his old records he discovered something that put him on the track.  Then I happened to remember that, years ago, when I was in Hanoi, an old man had told me a wonderful story about a treasure-chamber in a ruined city in the Burmese jungle.  A Frenchman who visited the place, and had written a book about it, mentions the fact that there is a legend amongst the natives that vast treasure is buried in the ruins, but only one man, so far as we can discover, seems to have taken the trouble to have looked for it.”

“But how big are the ruins?”

“Bigger than London, so Coddy says!”

Coddy nodded his head in confirmation of this fact.  But still Hayle seemed incredulous.

“And are you going to search all that area?  It strikes me that you will be an old man by the time you find the treasure, Kitwater.”