Mr.
Garrideb surveyed me with not too friendly
a gaze.
"Need he know?" he asked.
"We usually work together."
"Well, there's no reason it should be
kept a secret. I'll give you the facts as
short as I can make them. If you came from
Kansas I would not need to explain to you
who Alexander Hamilton Garrideb was.
Mr. Garrideb
me miró de una manera no realmente
amable.
"Hace falta que sepa?", preguntó.
"Normalmente trabajamos juntos."
"Bueno, no hay ninguna razón para
guardar el secreto. Le daré los hechos
de la manera más breve posible. Si
viniera de Kansas no sería necesario de explicarle quién era Alexander Hamilton
Garrideb.
He made
his money in real estate, and afterwards in
the wheat pit at Chicago, but he spent it
in buying up as much land as would make one
of your counties, lying along the Arkansas
River, west of Fort Dodge. It's grazing-land
and lumber-land and arable-land and mineralized-land,
and just every sort of land that brings dollars
to the man that owns it.
Ganó su dinero con inmobiliarias
y después con el trigo en Chicago,
pero lo invirtió en campo, tanto que
correspondiera a vuestras counties, situado
a lo largo del Rio Arkansas, al oueste de
Fort Dodge. Es terreno de pasto, terreno forestal,
terreno arable y terreno rico en minerales
y cualquier tipo de terreno que aporta dinero
a la persona que lo posede.
"He had no kith nor kin -- or, if he
had, I never heard of it. But he took a kind
of pride in the queerness of his name. That
was what brought us together. I was in the
law at Topeka, and one day I had a visit from
the old man, and he was tickled to death to
meet another man with his own name. It was
his pet fad, and he was dead set to find out
if there were any more Garridebs in the world.
'Find me another!' said he. I told him I was
a busy man and could not spend my life hiking
round the world in search of Garridebs. 'None
the less,' said he, 'that is just what you
will do if things pan out as I planned them.'
I thought he was joking, but there was a powerful
lot of meaning in the words, as I was soon
to discover.
No tenía hijos --, o, si los tenía,
yo nunca escuché de ellos. Pero en
cierta manera era orgulloso de su nombre
extraño. Era esto lo que nos metió
en contacto. Yo era abogado en Topeka y
un día recibí
una visita del viejo hombre. Le daba mucha
ilusión de encontrar otro hombre
con el mismo nombre. Era su hobby y quería
saber a todo precio si hubiera otro Garrideb
en el mundo. Encuentreme un otro!, me dijo.
Le dije que yo era un hombre ocupado y que
no podía pasar mi tiempo recorriendo
el mundo en busca de Garridebs. No obstante
es exactemente
lo que hará si las cosas van como
yo lo tengo planeado. Yo creía que
estaba bromeando, pero después vi
que sus palabras eran mucho más cargado de sentido de lo que creía.