Manchurian Books

" And,
scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, "At a conto [1] only for
each word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum,
and it is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire
document. It gives their true names to true personages; but before
trying to understand it I ought to begin by counting the number of
words it contains, and even when this is done its true meaning may be
missed."
In saying this Torres began to count mentally.
"There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With
nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one
wished, and even live without doing anything! And what would it be,
then, if all the words of this document were paid for at the same
price? It would be necessary to count by hundreds of contos. Ah!
there is quite a fortune here for me to realize if I am not the
greatest of duffers!"
It seemed as though the hands of Torres felt the enormous sum, and
were already closing over the rolls of gold. Suddenly his thoughts
took another turn.


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