Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
plunder would have precipitated a disastrous ending. I would have had to defend it too. I am glad we've removed it even if it is lost. It would have been a danger and a curse."
"Perhaps he is right," the doctor an hour later said, hurriedly, to Mrs. Gould, whom he met in the corridor. "The thing is done, and the shadow of the treasure may do just as well as the substance. Let me try to serve you to the whole extent of my evil reputation. I am off now to play my game of betrayal with Sotillo and keep him off the town."
She put out both her hands impulsively. "Dr. Monygham, you are running a terrible risk," she whispered, averting from his face her eyes full of tears for a short glance at the door of her husband's room. She pressed both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the spot, looking down at her and trying to twist his lips into a smile.
"Oh, I know you will defend my memory," he uttered at last, and ran tottering down the stairs, across the patio, and out of the house. In the street he kept up a great pace with his smart hobbling walk, a case of instruments under his arm. He was known for being loco. Nobody interfered with him. From under the seaward gate, across the dusty, arid plain interspersed with low bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly enormity of the custom-house and the two or three other buildings which at that time constituted
the seaport of Sulaco. Far away to the south groves of palm-trees edged the curve of the harbor shore. The distant peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clear-cut shapes in the steadily deepening blue of
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