Kitabı oku: «The Great God Gold», sayfa 2
Chapter Three
Shows One of the Fragments
“Well,” declared the Doctor, speaking to himself, “even my success in intra-laryngeal operations was not half so interesting as this!”
And again he bent to examine the half-charred fragments before him. Some were in typewriting, one was in a small fine script. One hardly legible was in German, others were in English, interspersed here and there with words which he recognised were in Hebrew character.
In that small bedroom, beneath the rather dim electric light, the deformed little man sat pouring over the folios so dry that they cracked and crumbled when touched.
Much was undecipherable; the greater part had indeed been utterly consumed, but here and there he was enabled to read consecutive sentences, and those he made out utterly staggered him.
Indeed, so full of interest, so curious, and so amazing they would have staggered anybody.
He held in his hands the dead man’s secret – a secret that on the face of it, seemed to be the strangest and at the same time the most unsuspected in all the world.
Suddenly he sat back, and, staring straight across the narrow room, exclaimed aloud:
“Why, there are men in the city this very day who’d give me ten thousand pounds for the remains of these papers! But would I sell them? No – not for ten times that amount! Who knows what this discovery may not be worth?”
He chuckled to himself. Already he felt himself a wealthy man, a man who could dictate his own terms in financial circles – a man who would be welcomed in audience by crowned heads themselves!
He sighed, and the heavy exhalation blew a quantity of fragments of tinder away upon the carpet.
“I wish I hadn’t burned them quite so much,” he said regretfully. “Had I had a newspaper handy I could have lit that instead. Or – or I might easily have delayed their destruction until – until after the end. Yet he seemed quite conscious, up to the very last moment. No wonder he regretted death before the fulfilment of the great work he had commenced – no wonder he contemplated moving to the Grand Hotel at an early date! And yet,” he added, after a pause, “it’s all very intricate, very indistinct, and requires a greater scholar than myself to properly understand and unravel it.”
The chief document, consisting of about ten typewritten pages in English, had been badly burned. It was this which he was now engaged in trying to decipher. At the top left-hand corner the sheets had originally been held together by a paper-fastener, but that corner had been consumed as well as all round the edges. The centre alone of three folios remained readable, even though it had been yellowed by smoke.
“There seem very many references to Israel, to Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, and to the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Yet they seem to convey nothing. Ah!” he sighed, “if only I could reconstruct the context. There are Biblical references, too. I must obtain a Bible.”
So he rose, rang for a waiter, and asked him whether there was such a thing in the hotel as a copy of Holy Writ.
The man, a young German, naturally regarded the visitor as an eccentric person or a religious crank, but he went at once and borrowed a small Bible from the chambermaid – a volume which afterwards proved to contain, between its leaves, small texts of her Sunday-school days, several pressed flowers, and a lock of hair.
A reference given upon one of the crinkled folios was “Ezekiel xxviii, 24.”
Reseating himself after the young German had left, Raymond Diamond hastily turned over the pages of the little well-thumbed Bible and found what proved to be the prophecy of the restoration of Israel.
Another reference in the next line of the half-burnt screed was Ezekiel xl, xli and xlii, no verses being designated.
On turning to these chapters, the doctor found that they contained a description of Ezekiel’s vision of the measuring of the temple.
Continuing, he read the further dimensions of the temple, the size of the chambers for the priests, and the measures of the outer court “to make a separation between the sanctuary and the profane place.”
All this conveyed to the deformed man but little.
That it had some connection with the strange secret was apparent, but in what manner he failed to distinguish.
He had gathered broadly that the dead man’s discovery was an amazing one, and that a strange secret was revealed by those documents when they were intact, but it was all so mystifying, so astounding, that he could scarce give it shape within his own bewildered brain.
The enormous possibilities of the discovery had utterly dumbfounded him – it was a discovery that was unheard of.
In order to present to the reader some idea of the fragments of the dead man’s papers lying upon the table before him, it may be of interest if the present writer gives a photographic representation of one of the badly burned folios.
As will easily be seen, the undestroyed fragment of the document showed but little that was tangible. Of interest, it was true, but the interest was, alas! a well-concealed one. The dead man was a scholar. Of that there was no doubt whatsoever. The doctor had recognised from the first that he was no ordinary person.
The document seemed to be a portion of some statement made by a person as to the curious and unexpected result of certain studies.
He who made the declaration had apparently been a student of the Talmud, and especially the school of the Amoraim, or debaters, who about A.D. 250 expounded the “Mishna.”
Raymond Diamond had long ago read Wunsche, Bacher and Strack, and from them had learned how the Amoraim had expounded the “Mishna,” and how their labours had formed the Gemara, while the united Mishna and Gemara formed the books of the Talmud. By that time, and even earlier, the teachers of Judaism were also working in the schools of Babylonis. Hence the Talmud now exists in two forms – the Palestinian Talmud, or Talmud of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Jehuda compiled the “Mishna” which, in general, sums up the outcome of the activity of the Sopherim, Zugoth and Tannaim, and thus became the canonical book of the oral law.
He was recalling these facts as he sat staring at the half-charred fragments on the table before him.
“The person making the declaration,” he said aloud to himself, “appears to have discovered certain hidden meanings in the ‘Mishna.’ Well – one can read hidden meanings in most writings, I believe, if one wishes. Yet he seems to have come across something which amazed him – some cabalistic message very complicated and ingenious. It caused him great astonishment when he found himself able to – able to what? Ah! that’s the point,” he sighed.
Then, after another long pause, he decided that “nine ch – ” meant “nine chapters,” and that the final lines of the page dealt with some declaration opening with the arrival of the Messiah.
“Yes,” he said in a hard decisive tone, straightening his crooked back as well as he was able. “There is a mystery explained here – a great and most astounding mystery.”
Chapter Four
Concerns a Consultation
Late that same afternoon Raymond Diamond walked up the long muddy by-road which led from Horsford station to the village, about a mile distant.
Horsford was an obscure little place, still quite out-of-the-world, even in these days of trains and motor-cars.
About four miles west of Peterborough on the edge of the fox-hunting country, it was a pleasant little spot consisting of a beautiful old Norman church, with one of the finest towers in England and one long, straggling street mostly of thatched houses.
There were only two large houses – Horsford House, at the top of the hill on the Peterborough side, and the Manor, an old seventeenth-century mansion, half-way down the village.
It was not yet dark when the Doctor, the only arrival by train, turned the corner by the Wheel Inn and entered the village. As he did so, Warr, who combined the business of publican and village butcher, wished him a cheery “Good evenin’, Doctor.”
And as the little man trudged up the long street he was greeted with many such salutes, to all of which he answered mechanically, for he was thinking – thinking deeply.
The fragrant smell of burning wood from the cottages greeted his nostrils – the smell of that quiet little village which for some years had been his home.
He breathed again in that rural peace, as a dozen cows slowly plodded past him.
At last he turned from the main street, up a short, steep hill where, at the end of a small cul-de-sac, stood a long, old-fashioned, two-storied cottage with its dormer-windows peeping forth from the brown thatch. In summer, over the whole front of it spread a wealth of climbing roses, but now, in winter, only the brown leafless branches remained.
In the small, well-kept front garden were a number of well-trimmed evergreens, while an old box-hedge ran around the tiny domain.
As he lifted the latch of the gate, Mrs Diamond, a neat, well-preserved woman in black, threw open the door with a cheery welcome, and a moment later he was in his own old-fashioned little dining-room, warming himself at the fire, which, sending forth a ruddy glow, illuminated the room.
For such a humble home, it was quite a cosy apartment. Upon the old-fashioned oak-dresser at the end were one or two pieces of blue china, and on the oak overmantel were a few odd pieces of Worcester and Delft. On the walls were one or two engravings, while the furniture was of antique pattern and well in keeping with the place.
The doctor possessed artistic tastes, and was also a connoisseur to no small degree. In the days when he had possessed means, he had been fond of hunting for curios or making purchases of old furniture and china, but, alas! in these latter days of his adversity he had experienced even a difficulty in making both ends meet.
“I received your telegram, Raymond dear,” exclaimed Mrs Diamond. “I’m so glad you were successful in finding Aggie’s father. It’s taken a great weight from my mind.”
“And from mine also,” he said with a sigh seated before the fire with his hands outstretched to the flames. “Mullet wants me to take the child over to Paris to see him in a week or so.”
“Why does he not come over here?”
The Doctor pulled a wry face, and shrugged his shoulders ominously.
His wife, by her speech, showed herself to be a woman of refinement. She had been the widow of a medical man in Manchester before Diamond had married her. Though it was much against her grain to submit to registration as a foster-mother of children, yet it had been their only course. Raymond Diamond was too ugly to succeed in his profession. The public dislike a deformed doctor.
He told his wife how he had been at the end of his resources in Paris, and how, just at the moment when things had looked blackest, “Red Mullet” had returned. But he made no mention of meeting the stranger, or of the record of the curious secret which, between two pieces of cardboard, now reposed carefully in his breast-pocket.
Its possession held him in a kind of stupor. From what he had been able to gather – or rather from what he imagined the truth to be – he already felt himself an immensely wealthy man. He was, in fact, already planning out his own future.
The dead stranger had said he intended to remove to the Grand Hotel. Diamond’s intention was to go further – to purchase a fine estate somewhere in the grass-country, and in future live the life of a gentleman.
Mrs Diamond noticed her husband’s preoccupied manner, and naturally attributed it to financial embarrassment.
A few moments later the door opened, and a pretty, fair-haired girl, about thirteen, entered, and finding the doctor had returned, rushed towards him and, throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him, saying:
“I had no idea you were back again, dad. I went down the station-path half-way, expecting to meet you.”
“I came by the road, my child,” was the Doctor’s reply as he stroked her long fair hair. “I’ve been to Paris – to see your dad, Aggie,” he added.
“My other dad,” repeated the child reflectively. “I – I hardly remember him. You are my own dear old dad!” And she stroked his cheek with her soft hand.
Aggie was the doctor’s favourite. He was devoted to the daughter of that tall, thin man who was such a cosmopolitan adventurer, the child who was now the eldest of his family, and who had, ever since she had arrived, a wee weakly little thing, always charmed him by her bright intelligence and merry chatter.
She was a distinctly pretty child, neat in her dark-blue frock and white pinafore. In the village school she was head of her class, and Mr Holmes, the popular, good-humoured schoolmaster, had already suggested to the Doctor, and also to Lady Gavin at the Manor, that she should be sent to the Secondary School at Peterborough now that he could teach her no more.
The Doctor drew Aggie upon his knee, and told her of her father’s inquiries and of his suggestion that she should go to Paris to see him.
Paris seemed to the child such a long way off. She had seen it marked upon the wall-maps in school, but to her youthful mind it was only a legendary city.
“I don’t want to leave Horsford, dad,” replied the girl with a slight pout. “I want to remain with you.”
“Not in order to see and know your father?”
“You are my dad – my only dad,” she declared quickly. “I don’t want to see my other dad at all,” she added decisively. “If he wants to see me, why doesn’t he come here?”
“He can’t my dear,” replied the doctor. “But tell me. Have you seen Lady Gavin since I’ve been away?”
“No, dad. Mr Farquhar and his sister have come to stay at the Manor, so she’s always engaged.”
“Frank Farquhar is down here again, eh?” asked Diamond quickly. Then he reflected deeply for a few moments.
He was wondering if Farquhar could help him – if he dare take the young man into his confidence.
Nowadays he was “out of it.” He knew nobody, buried there as he was in that rural solitude.
“Is Sir George at home?” he asked the child, who, like all other children, knew the whole gossip of the village.
“No, dad. He started for Egypt yesterday. Will Chapman told me so.”
The Doctor ate his tea, with his wife and five “daughters” of varying ages, all bright, bonnie children, who looked the picture of good health.
Then, after a wash and putting on another suit, he went out, strolling down the village to where the big old Manor House, with its quaint gables and wide porch, stood far back behind its sloping lawn.
Generations of squires of Horsford had lived and died there, as their tombs in the splendid Norman church almost adjoining testified. It was a house where many of the rooms were panelled, where the entrance-hall was of stone, with a well staircase and a real “priests’ hole” on the first floor.
He ascended the steps, and his ring was answered by a smart Italian man-servant. Yes. Mr Farquhar was at home. Would the doctor kindly step into the library?
Diamond entered that well-known room on the right of the hall – a room lined from floor to ceiling with books in real Chippendale bookcases, and in the centre a big old-fashioned writing-table. Over the fireplace were several ancient manuscripts in neat frames, while beside the blazing fire stood a couple of big saddle-bag chairs.
Sir George Gavin, Baronet, posed to the world as a literary man, though he had risen from the humble trade of a compositor to become owner of a number of popular newspapers. He knew nothing about literature and cared less. He left all such matters to the editors and writers whom he paid – clever men who earned for him the magnificent income which he now enjoyed. Upon the cover of one of his periodicals it was stated that he was editor. But as a matter of fact he hardly ever saw the magazine in question, except perhaps upon the railway bookstalls. His sole thought was the handsome return its publication produced. And, like so many other men in our England to-day, he had simply “paid up” and received his baronetcy among the Birthday honours, just as he had received his membership of the Carlton.
Diamond had not long to wait, for in a few moments the door opened, and there entered a smart-looking, dark-haired young man in a blue serge suit.
“Hulloa, Doc! How are you?” he exclaimed. “I’m back again, you see – just down for a day or two to see my sister. And how has Horsford been progressing during my absence – eh?” he laughed.
Frank Farquhar, Lady Gavin’s younger brother, occupied an important position in the journalistic concern of which Sir George was the head. He was recognised by journalistic London as one of its smartest young men. His career at Oxford had been exceptionally brilliant, and he had already distinguished himself as special correspondent in the Boer and Russo-Japanese campaigns before Sir George Gavin had invited him to join his staff.
Tall, lithe, well set-up, with a dark, rather acquiline face, a small dark moustache, and a pair of sharp, intelligent eyes, he was alert, quick of movement, and altogether a “live” journalist.
The two men seated themselves on either side of the fireplace, and Farquhar, having offered his visitor a cigar, settled himself to listen to Diamond’s story.
“I’ve come to you,” the Doctor explained, “because I believe that you, and perhaps Sir George also, can help me. Don’t think that I want any financial assistance,” he laughed. “Not at all. I want to put before you a matter which is unheard of, and which I am certain will astound even you – a journalist.”
“Well, Doc,” remarked the young man with a smile, “it takes a lot to surprise us in Fleet Street, you know.”
“This will. Listen.” And then, having extracted a promise of silence, Diamond related to the young man the whole story of the dead stranger, and the curious document that had been only half-consumed.
When the Doctor explained that the papers had not been wholly burned, Frank Farquhar rose quickly in pretence of obtaining an ash-tray, but in reality in order to conceal the strange expression which at that, moment overspread his countenance.
Then, a few seconds later, he returned to his chair apparently quite unmoved and unconcerned. Truth to tell, however, the statement made by the dwarfed and deformed man before him had caused him to tighten his lips and hold his breath.
Was it possible that he held certain secret knowledge of which the Doctor was ignorant, and which he could turn to advantage?
He remained silent, with a smile of incredulity playing about his mouth.
The truth was this. Within his heart he had already formed a fixed intention that the dead man’s secret – the most remarkable secret of the age – should be his, and his alone!
Chapter Five
Spreads the Net
The deformed man existed in a whirl of excitement. He already felt himself rich beyond his wildest dreams. He built castles in the air like a child, and smiled contentedly when rich people – some of the hunting crowd – passed him by unrecognised.
During the three days that followed, Frank Farquhar held several consultations with him – long earnest talks sometimes at the Manor or else while walking across that heath-land around the district known to the followers to hounds as the Horsford Hanglands.
The villagers who saw them together made no comment. As was well known, the little Doctor and Lady Gavin’s clever young brother were friends.
Diamond had enjoined the strictest secrecy, but Farquhar, as a keen man of business and determined to put his knowledge to the best advantage, had already exchanged several telegrams with some person in London, and was now delaying matters with Diamond until he obtained a decided reply.
On the fourth day, just after breakfast, Burton, the grave old butler, handed the young man a telegram which caused him to smile with satisfaction. He crushed it into his pocket and, seizing his hat, walked along to the Doctor’s cottage. Then the pair took a slow stroll up the short, steep hill on to the Peterborough road, through the damp mists of the winter’s morning. Away across the meadows on the left, hounds were in full cry, a pretty sight, but neither noticed the incident.
“Do you know, Doctor,” exclaimed the young man as soon as they got beyond the village, “I’ve been thinking very seriously over the affair, and I’ve come to the conclusion that unless we put it before some great Hebrew scholar we shall never get down to the truth. The whole basis of the secret is the Hebrew language, without a doubt. What can we do alone – you and I?”
The little Doctor shook his head dubiously.
“I admit that neither of us is sufficiently well versed in Jewish history properly to understand the references which are given in the fragments which remain to us,” he said. “Yet if we go to a scholar, explain our views, and show him the documents, should we not be giving away what is evidently a most valuable secret?”
“No. I hardly think that,” answered the shrewd young man. “Before putting it to any scholar we should first make terms with him, so that he may not go behind our backs and profit upon the information.”
“You can’t do that!” declared Diamond.
“Among scholars there are a good many honourable men,” replied Frank Farquhar, with a glance of cunning. “If we proposed to deal with City sharks, it would be quite a different matter.”
“Then to whom do you propose we should submit the documents for expert opinion?” inquired the deformed man, as he trudged along at his side.
“I know a man up in London whom I implicitly trust, and who will treat the whole matter in strictest confidence,” was the other’s reply. “We can do nothing further down here. I’m going up to town this afternoon, and if you like I’ll call and see him.”
The Doctor hesitated. He recognised in the young man’s suggestion a desire to obtain his precious fragments and submit them to an expert. Most deformed men are gifted with unusually shrewd intelligence, and Raymond Diamond was certainly no exception. He smiled within himself at Frank Farquhar’s artless proposal.
“Who is the man?” he asked, as though half-inclined to adopt the suggestion.
“I know two men. One is named Segal – a professor who writes for our papers; an exceedingly clever chap, who’d be certain to make out something more from the puzzle than we ever can hope to do. I also know Professor Griffin.”
“I shall not allow the papers out of my possession.”
“Or all that remains of them, you mean,” laughed the young man uneasily. “Why, of course not. That would be foolish.”
“Foolish in our mutual interests,” Diamond went on. “You are interested with myself, Mr Farquhar, in whatever profits may accrue from the affair.”
“Then if our interests are to be mutual, Doctor, why not entrust the further investigation to me?” suggested the wily young man. “I hope you know me sufficiently well to have confidence in my honesty.”
The Doctor cast a sharp look at the little young fellow at his side.
“Why, of course, Mr Farquhar,” he laughed. “As I’ve already said, you possess facilities for investigating the affair which I do not. If what I suspect be true, we have, in our hands, the solution of a problem which will startle the world. I have sought your assistance, and I’m prepared to give you – well, shall we say fifteen per cent, interest on whatever the secret may realise?”
“It may, after all, be only historical knowledge,” laughed young Farquhar. “How can you reduce that into ‘the best and brightest?’ Still, I accept. Fifteen per cent is to be my share of whatever profit may accrue. Good! I only wish Sir George were home from Egypt. He would, no doubt, give us assistance.”
The Doctor purposely disregarded this last remark. He held more than a suspicion that young Farquhar intended to “freeze him out.”
“When are you going up to town?” he asked.
“This afternoon. I shall see my man in the morning, and I feel sure that if I put the problem before him he’ll be able, before long, to give us some tangible solution,” was Frank’s reply. “When I act, I act promptly, you know.”
The Doctor was undecided. He knew quite well that young Farquhar was acquainted with all sorts of writers and scholars, and that possibly among them were men who were experts in Hebrew, and in the history of the House of Israel.
He reflected. If the young man were content with fifteen per cent, what had he further to fear?
Therefore, after some further persuasion on Frank’s part, he promised to write out an agreement upon a fifteen per cent, basis, and submit the fragments to the young man’s friend.
They returned to the village, and the Doctor promised to call upon him at noon with an agreement written out.
This he did, and in the library at the Manor Frank appended his signature, receiving in return the precious fragments carefully preserved between the two pieces of cardboard.
When the deformed man had left, Frank Farquhar lit a cigarette, and stretching his legs as he sat in the armchair, laughed aloud in triumph.
“Now if I tie down old Griffin the secret will be mine,” he remarked aloud. “I’ve already ‘wired’ to Gwen, so she’ll expect me at eight, and no doubt tell her father.”
At five o’clock Sir George’s red “Mercedes” came round to the front of the house to take Frank into Peterborough, and half an hour later he was in the “up-Scotsman” speeding towards King’s Cross, bearing with him the secret which he felt confident was to set the whole world by the ears.
He dropped his bag at his rooms in Half Moon Street, had a wash and a snack to eat at his club, the New Universities, round in St. James’s Street, and then drove in a taxi-cab to a large, rather comfortable house in Pembridge Gardens, that turning exactly opposite Notting Hill Gate Station.
Standing behind the neat maid-servant who opened the door was a tall, dark-haired, handsome girl not yet twenty, slim, narrow-waisted, and essentially dainty and refined.
“Why, Frank!” she cried, rushing towards him. “What’s all this excitement. I’m so interested. Dad has been most impatient to see you. After your letter the day before yesterday, he’s been expecting you almost every hour.”
“Well, the fact is, Gwen, I couldn’t get the business through,” he said with a laugh. “We had terms to arrange – and all that.”
“Terms of what?” asked the girl, as he linked his arm in hers and they walked together into the long, well-furnished dining-room.
“I’ll tell you all about it presently, dear,” he replied.
“About the secret?” she asked anxiously. “Dad showed me your letter. It is really intensely interesting – if what you suspect be actually the truth.”
“Interesting!” he echoed. “I should rather think it is. It’s a thing that will startle the whole civilised world in a few days. And the curious and most romantic point is that we can’t find out who was the original holder of the information. He died in Paris, refusing to give his real name, or any account of himself. But there,” he added, “I’ll tell you all about it later on. How is my darling?”
And he bent until their lips met in a long, fervent caress.
Her arms were entwined about his neck, for she loved him with the whole strength of her being, and her choice was looked upon with entire favour by her father. Frank Farquhar was a rising man, the adopted candidate for a Yorkshire borough, while from his interest in Sir George Gavin’s successful publications he derived a very handsome income for a man of his years.
“I’ve been longing for your return, dearest,” she murmured in his ear as he kissed her. “It seems ages ago since you left town.”
“Only a month. I went first to Perthshire, where I had to speak at some Primrose League meetings. Then I had business in both Newcastle and Manchester, and afterwards I went to Horsford to see my sister. I was due to stay there another fortnight, but this strange discovery brings me up to consult your father.”
“He’s upstairs in the study. We’d better go up at once. He’s dying to see you,” declared the bright-eyed girl, who wore a big black silk bow in her hair. She possessed a sweet innocent face, a pale soft countenance indicative of purity of soul. The pair were, indeed, well matched, each devoted to the other; he full of admiration of her beauty and her talents, and she proud of his brilliant success in journalism and literature.
At the throat of her white silk blouse she wore a curious antique brooch, an old engraved sapphire which Sir Charles Gaylor, a friend of Dr Griffin, had some years ago brought from the excavation he had made in the mound of Nebi-Yunus, near Layard’s researches in the vicinity of Nineveh. The rich blue gleamed in the gaslight, catching Frank’s eye as he ascended the stair, and he remarked that she was wearing what she termed her “lucky brooch,” a gem which had no doubt adorned some maiden’s breast in the days of Sennacherib or Esarhaddon.
The first-floor front room, which in all other houses in Pembridge Gardens was the drawing-room, had in the house of Professor Griffin been converted into the study – a big apartment lined with books which, for the most part, were of “a dry-as-dust” character.
As they entered, the Professor, a short, stout, grey-haired man in round steel-framed spectacles, raised himself from his armchair, where he had been engrossed in an article in a German review.
“Ah! my dear Farquhar!” he cried excitedly. “Gwen told me that you were on your way – but there, you are such a very erratic fellow that I never know when to expect you.”
“I generally turn up when least expected,” laughed the young man, with a side-glance at the girl.
“Well, well,” exclaimed the man in spectacles; “now what is all this you’ve written to me about? What ‘cock-and-bull’ story have you got hold of now – eh?”
“I briefly explained in my letter,” he answered. “Isn’t it very remarkable? What’s your opinion?”
“Ah! you journalists!” exclaimed the old professor reprovingly. “You’ve a lot to answer for to the unsuspecting public.”
“I admit that,” laughed Frank. “But do you really dismiss the matter as a ‘cock-and-bull’ story?”
“That is how I regard it at the moment – without having been shown anything.”
