Kitabı oku: «Clutterbuck's Treasure», sayfa 10

CHAPTER XXVIII
WHAT THE ELDER DID WITH STRONG

Jack looked as dejected as I did.

"The only thing I don't understand is," he said presently, "why Strong should have presented the fellow with his revolver. Do you suppose he intended us to find it here, as a sort of mocking message to us that we had failed?"

"More likely he wished to be rid of an awkward piece of evidence in case he was ever collared by us," I said. "If we ever caught him, and he had this thing in his possession, we should easily have proved our accusations against him."

"Of course he found the treasure," said Jack, "or he wouldn't have gone away."

"Of course," I echoed dismally.

"Still," said Henderson, "it would be interesting to hear all about how he found it and where; I'd give another ten roubles to be told all this grimy gentleman knows."

I was not at all certain that it would be an unmixed joy to be taken and shown the pit out of which another fellow had dug the treasure which I had so ardently hoped to make my own. But Jack was evidently anxious on the subject, and curiosity was burning a hole in my resolution as well. I reflected a minute or two.

"Well, ask him if you like," I assented presently; "it will be a painful thing for me, though, I can tell you." More painful than Jack guessed, perhaps; for I was tenfold more anxious to be rich to-day than I had been a few months since in Africa. I had found a new reason, down in Gloucestershire, for wishing to own the treasure, and now all hope of possessing old Clutterbuck's golden hoard had vanished. Painful? It would be torture to be shown the hole in which the treasure, and all my hopes of happiness with it, had rested but a short three weeks since; to be ruthlessly torn from their sanctuary by the bloodstained hands of a double-dyed rascal like James Strong.

"Michail," said Jack, "tell the fellow there is more tea-money to be had if his memory improves."

Michail conveyed this intelligence to his grimy companion, who grinned and scratched his shaggy yellow locks, and spat and made a gesture as though he now abandoned in our favour all previously observed considerations of discretion. Then he bade Michail tell us that for a second ten-rouble note he would tell us the whole history of the pistol, which he had just remembered.

Jack was artful this time, having gained experience upon this artless island. When he had heard the story, he said, he would hand over the tempting-looking red bank-note for ten roubles, which he now carefully removed from his purse and displayed, invitingly held between his fingers.

Then the elder, after looking wolfishly at the note and indulging in a final scratching among his tousled locks, began his tale, which proved to be a sufficiently exciting one.

"It was a lunatic of a Swede," he said, "who had sailed over in a small sailing-boat from Helsingfors, and had moored his craft over there at the Finnish side of the island and come ashore. He couldn't talk a word of anything that anyone could understand in the island, and would not come to the village, but slept on the shore close to his boat; and if anyone came near to have a look at him he stamped and raved and scolded them away again.

"On the morning after the first night I went down to the shore to see what the Swede was about," continued the elder, "that being my duty as elder of the village, and I took with me Kuzmá, my brother-in-law, and Gavril, my brother; for we have no right to admit strangers upon the island without passports. But this fellow had no passport, and threatened me with his fists for demanding one of him.

"So Kuzmá and Gavril and I sat down on the shore to watch what the Swedish lunatic would do.

"He waited, hoping that we would go away; and we waited, to see what he wanted on our island. He did nothing but read letters and look this way and that through the trees, and then down again at his letter, like any lunatic.

"Presently he grew tired of waiting, and stood up and shouted at us to go away. We did not understand his lingo, but that was doubtless the meaning of it, only the man was so angry that he could hardly speak, but only screamed at us and stamped his foot. Kuzmá grew a little frightened and said, 'Shall we go, brothers? This man is mad; it would be wise to preserve our bodies from harm.'

"But I said, 'No. We will pretend to depart, and hide ourselves among the trees; then we shall see but not be seen!' So we departed and hid ourselves where the mad Swede could not see us.

"After a while," continued the elder, "the madman took his letters and a spade, and wandered about among the trees until he came to a certain place, and there he began to dig.

"We desired to know, naturally, why he dug in the earth of our island, and while he was very busy with his digging we came nearer to see what we could see.

"And then, of a sudden, Kuzmá coughed, and that mad Swede looked up and saw us.

"Holy Saint Vladimir, equal to the apostles, preserve us from such demons as that Swedish maniac when he caught sight of Kuzmá and me and Gavril! He rushed straight at us like a wild bull, bellowing and shouting, and then—what think you, Mercifulness?—he whipped this very pistol from his pocket and banged one shot at Kuzmá and one at me. Me he missed, by the mercy of the Highest, and thanks, doubtless, to the interposition of my patron saint, Alexander of the Neva; but Kuzmá was struck by a bullet in the arm, and lay yelling on the ground."

The elder here paused in his narrative, which, for me, was about as interesting a tale as ever human lips unfolded, and spat five several times on the earth, crossing himself after each performance of the function. I waited impatiently for him to recommence. Jack's face, which I glanced at, was a study; he too was absorbed by the interest of the tale.

When the elder had finished his semi-religious duties, he continued—

"Gavril," he said, "my brother, to whom may the saints ensure a heavenly kingdom for his behaviour that day,—Gavril, with his staff, whacked the Swede on the head before he had quite killed Kuzmá and me, and knocked him senseless; in which condition Gavril and I put him in his boat and sailed across to Narva, where we gave in our evidence against him in the police court. We showed the pistol, and promised to produce Kuzmá when his arm was well enough to allow him to travel. This is his pistol that you have bought; and that is my tale. It's all I know, and may the holy saints preserve those who are honest folk, and punish the evil doers! If I have pleased your Mercifulness, I will place the ten-rouble note along with the other."

Thus, or to this effect, did the elder wander along, Michail laboriously translating, and then he stopped, having said his say.

"Good Heavens! Peter," said Jack after a pause, "that's a tale well worth ten roubles, I fancy; what say you?"

"Stop a bit," I gasped. "Ask him, Michail, what the Swede got out of the earth? Does he know what the fellow was digging for, and did he find it?"

"He did not give himself time," said the elder. "He flew at us before he had dug for half an hour. As for that which he expected to find, how should a plain fisherman know that? He was mad; what would a madman expect to find growing upon an island, that he could dig up with a spade? Gold and jewels, perhaps!" The elder laughed aloud and spat freely. Jack still withheld the note.

"At anyrate, he found nothing?" he asked.

"Nothing but sand, Mercifulness."

"And what has become of the Swede?" said I. "Was he detained at Narva?"

"Detained at Narva to be tried, Mercifulness," said the elder. "But there is hope that when the police behold Kuzmá's arm, which will be next week, the rascal may journey to Siberia without further trouble."

Jack handed in the ten-rouble note; our friend had certainly earned it; for though, of course, I would not go so far as to say that this elder told the truth (being a Russian that, of course, would be impossible; the only Russian who ever told the truth is dead), yet that his tale was not all lies was proved by the pistol.

Jack thought of a way of obtaining a little supplementary evidence in corroboration.

"Get him to show us where the Swede shot at him," he said, addressing Michail. "It would be interesting to see the mark in the tree made by the bullet fired at the elder."

Strong's latest victim had no objection to giving us this pleasure, and we were conducted to a place in the wood, and shown a tree which had an undoubted bullet mark some seven feet up the trunk.

"Ah! I see," said artful Jack. "So that is where you stood, and Kuzmá here, and the mad Swede came rushing from over there."

"No, not there," said the elder; "your Mercifulness may see, if you will, where the fellow was digging in the ground when we saw him. Heaven! to come all this way to dig!"

CHAPTER XXIX
MUCH DIGGING

The elder's invitation fell out very propitiously with artful Jack's designs, and we were shown the open space among the trees where Strong had commenced his digging operations, which had come to such an untimely end. There was the hole he had dug when interrupted and made to lose at once his temper and his chance of wealth.

There too were the four posts, arranged exactly as in Bechuanaland, in an irregular square. Strong, remembering where the treasure had been found in the first instance, had gone straight to the corresponding corner here, had pulled up the outer post, and begun to dig about its socket. Jack laughed.

"The old fellow wouldn't have been likely to hide it in the same spot twice," he said; "that would be too easy for us!"

I suggested that, at anyrate, we must not lay ourselves open to suspicion by digging about or even remaining in the neighbourhood of this particular spot, or we should have the whole village coming and digging with us. We must pretend that our curiosity was satisfied by the sight of the scene of the struggle, and that there our interest in this spot ended. We must do a little hunting or fishing for a day or two, and then return unsuspected to our real labours.

So we hired the elder and Gavril, the hero of the broomstick which had overthrown James Strong, and went a-fishing among the tiny islands and rocks that fringed the shores of Hogland itself, and here we spent a day very pleasantly in allaying the suspicions of the elder and in catching some good fish, in weight from one to fifteen pounds, including a few which I believe to have been large lake trout. The water here was scarcely brackish and the fish we caught were all denizens of the fresh water.

But excitement and longing to be up and about so as to discover the hidden treasure, burned like a banked fire within my bosom, and I was feverishly anxious to be ashore once more and at work.

We were out all night, and a cold function indeed it was; and right glad were we that we had brought our flasks to keep us alive and help our circulation to maintain the struggle. It was now that Michail discovered the existence of those flasks, for we had presented both the elder and our interpreter each with a small portion of the contents, and both men had found the English brandy to their taste. The consequence to us was, that when we landed and retired to sleep those two artless Russians stole our flasks and disappeared.

Now this, far from proving, as at first sight it might seem, an unmixed disaster, was, as a matter of fact, the greatest boon that could have happened to us; for though there was not very much of the spirit in our stolen flagons, yet it was strong, and there was enough to keep both men handsomely employed in recovering from its effects for three days.

Those three days of investigation, free from inquisitive observation and possible interference, were exactly what we most desired, and at the very first opportunity we shook off both the elder and Michail, who were already in secret possession of the flasks and quite pleased to be shaken off, and set to work in earnest at our digging.

The area to be investigated was of the same shape as our African treasure-field, but smaller by half, for which mercy I was grateful to destiny; for even half the old area was quite sufficient for the digging of two men, unless they happened to desire to dig themselves into their own graves, which Jack and I certainly did not.

Needless to say, Jack now felt no compunction about taking his turn with the spade, for I might fairly consider myself the only competitor now left "in the running." Poor Clutterbuck murdered; young Strong eaten; James Strong in Siberia, or on the way there—there were none left to contest my claims.

So Jack dug with me, and very hard work he found it, and very stiff he felt at the end of the first profitless day; so that I was able to screw out of him a kind of apology for his want of sympathy with my stiffness at Ngami. We had half intended to set a decoy for wolves, of which there were said to be a few on the island; but we were both too tired for anything of the sort, and preferred to sleep, wrapped in our blankets, over a fire in the forest, as in the African days, only with dark pines waving over our heads, and a sharper air biting at the exposed parts of our persons, instead of strange palmy and ferny trees, and prickly-pears and kei apples, and a soft, hothouse kind of air around us.

On the second day we toiled from morn till dewy eve, but found nothing to repay us, and by that time the surface of our ground was upheaved from end to end to the depth of a spade-head. Then we determined to spend the third day in trying various experiments.

We were full of excellent ideas, but the same thoughts had unfortunately not occurred to old Clutterbuck while hiding his treasure.

First of all, we procured from the village a ball of string; they had plenty there, for the making and mending of nets.

Then we fastened an end to one of the posts and carried a line across diagonally to a second, and from a third across to the fourth, as from A to B and from C to D in the chart—

A      C

     E

   D   B

Where the strings crossed at E, we dug a deep hole and had great hopes for the result. But it seemed that this excellent plan had not occurred to Mr. Clutterbuck; he had not concealed his wealth in accordance with our ingenious geometrical device. Then we went and borrowed a horse and a plough from the fisherfolk, who had a field or two near the village for the growing of their rye and potatoes. And with that plough we turned up every scrap of our acre of land, and began to grow desperate because there was not a vestige of treasure or anything else but sandy soil and a few worms.

Then we sat down to reflect, and gnashed our teeth, and took in vain the name of old Clutterbuck who had beguiled us to this forsaken island to dig for treasure which he had never buried.

"I believe Strong found it, after all," said Jack—"found it in five minutes in the very first hole he made."

"If I thought that I would go to Siberia after him," I said, "and screw his neck till he gave it up."

"My dear man, he couldn't take a load of treasure with him to Siberia!" said Jack. "The authorities would have it in a minute."

"It might be all in one cheque," said I; "and he's hidden it—swallowed it, or put it in his boot or something."

"Well, you can't very well follow him to Siberia with a stomach-pump in one hand and your revolver in the other," laughed Jack; "but you may bet, if he had found the stuff he would not have been so quarrelsome; he would have been too pleased with himself to rush straight at these poor peasants and empty his revolver at their heads!"

This seemed true, and we turned our thoughts once more to the invention of devices that might have occurred to the old man for the more ingenious concealment of his treasures. It could scarcely be supposed that the old miser really desired to defeat altogether the ingenuity of his heirs, should they prove to be in possession of a quantum of that commodity; for if it had been his intention to deprive us altogether of the money, he need never have made us his potential heirs. The money must be here—that was as good as certain.

Then we tested other geometrical designs. We counted as many feet towards the middle, from each post in turn, as the old man had lived years, seventy-one; and we dug deeply at each seventy-first foot. We turned up the soil at the spot where fell the only shadow of the day—the shadow of a tall pine whose topmost boughs afforded us a few feet of shade towards evening; but nothing came of it. We tried many other devices, each more deeply ingenious, not to say "far-fetched," than the last; but the third day drooped and faded, and still we were no wiser than before.

That night Michail returned to camp, looking as though he had passed through great tribulation and had been making good resolutions. He slunk in and lay down by the fire, and slept so soundly that no ordinary artillery firing a royal salute at his ear would have disturbed him.

We were sorry to see Michail, for we did not desire his presence here. We wished we had another flask for him.

This wish was redoubled when in the morning, as we dug and delved—toiling and perspiring and almost despairing, though still manfully playing up to the motto of my own family crest: "Dum spiro spero" (which Jack translated "Stick to it, boys, till you're pumped!")—while Michail still slept, the elder appeared suddenly upon the scene. He too bore traces of bacchanalianism, though he did not seem to have suffered so severely from the malady as Michail. The elder was surprised to see us working, and asked us what we were about.

We gathered that this was the meaning of the elder's remark, but until we had kicked Michail into the realms of consciousness in order to translate it for us we could not be certain. Michail awoke at the seventeenth kick, and said he had not been asleep, but had been lying and thinking. He told us what the elder had said, the elder repeating it.

"Tell him that's our business," said Jack surlily—he was disgusted, like myself, with the failure of our labours; "and that he'd better go home to the village and mind his own."

"Oh," said the elder, on hearing this, "certainly I will obey; I had no wish to intrude upon their Mercifulnesses; only I thought their Mercifulnesses might be digging here in order to find a certain tin box with a letter in it which I myself found near this spot some years ago!"

The spade dropped from my hand; Jack's fell also.

"Michail," he said, or gasped; "what does the fellow mean? Where is the tin box and the letter that he found here? Ask him quickly, idiot, or I'll brain you with my spade!"

The elder was not disturbed by our excitement; he said he thought the tin box was somewhere up at the village; he wasn't quite sure!

CHAPTER XXX
I TAKE A STRONG LEAD IN THE RACE

Jack seized the elder by the shoulders and shook him—shook him handsomely and thoroughly till his splendid white moujik-teeth rattled in his head. The elder burst into tears and fell on his knees as soon as Jack let go of him, crossing himself repeatedly and jabbering vociferously. The fox had changed in an instant into a rabbit, and a timid one at that. It was impossible to translate what he said, Michail protested. On being pressed to do so, Michail observed—

"He say his prayers," and I think that must have been about the measure of it; at all events, he was saying nothing about tin boxes.

"Tell him we don't wish to hurt him," said Jack; "but we intend to have that tin box; and if his memory does not improve in the next five minutes, so that he leads us straight to where he has hidden it, something dreadful will happen to him."

This truculent message was given to the elder, who allowed himself but one more minute for the consolation of prayer and then took to his heels for the village, we taking care to keep up with him. Jack's threat seemed to have wonderfully assisted the process of recalling the past, for Alexander led us straight to his own house, into the living room (where his astonished wife and five amazed children were feasting upon black bread and dried fish, their mouths, opened to receive those dainties, remaining open by reason of their surprise), and without hesitation opened a kind of cupboard in the corner in which he kept his three teacups and his two tumblers (one cracked), together with his store of vodka.

From this receptacle, which he opened but a fraction, as though jealous lest we should steal a peep at his teacups, he quickly produced a tin box, the facsimile of that which I had unearthed in far-away Bechuana. The elder crossed himself, spat on the ground, made a droll gesture of surrender to superior force, and banged the box down upon the table.

Then his face assumed a beseechful, maudlin expression, and he said that he had done as the gentleman desired, but if the gentleman considered it worth a gratuity that he should have safely preserved this box until the gentleman came for it, why—

"Tell him to go to the deuce," said Jack; "and wait there till we see what's in it and what isn't. Here, Peter; it's yours—examine."

I opened the box: there was another within it, as before; neither was locked; and as before, inside the inner receptacle was an envelope, and within the envelope a letter; no cheque to bearer, no bank-notes for one hundred thousand pounds.... My disgust and disappointment were too great for words; I could not speak; I could not even swear; I believe I burst into tears.

"Come, come!" said Jack bracingly, "don't give way, old chap; it's just as well there are no diamonds or gold—this elder fellow would have had the lot! Cheer up, man, and read the letter, or I will! I for one don't mind another journey—I haven't travelled half enough yet! Read the letter!"

It was all very well for Jack. The issue was nothing to him (comparatively speaking); to me it was everything—all the world, and the happiness of life!

"I told you how it would be," I raved; "the old rascal meant to swindle us from the beginning. He will keep us travelling from pillar to post in this way till the worms have eaten up his hoardings and his miser's carcass as well. The whole thing's a fraud, Jack, and I am the victim."

"You're better off than the other victims, at all events," said Jack. "Read the letter, man. Don't abuse the old boy till you know he deserves it."

"Confound the letter," I said, "and him too! Read it yourself—I'm sick of the business!"

I was, as my conduct indicates, very angry, very disappointed, and very ridiculous. I have since exonerated Mr. Clutterbuck and apologised to Jack, many a time. I still think, however, that the old man's methods were extremely exasperating; and though ashamed of my loss of temper, I am not in the least surprised that I should have succumbed to my feelings of rage and disappointment.

But there was one thing which I have never regretted in the slightest degree, and that is, that when Michail suddenly laughed out at this point, finding, I suppose, something comical about my words or actions, I laid hold of him by the shoulders from behind, and walked him twice round the room and out at the door, I kicking and he yelling. After this I felt consoled and returned to hear Jack read out the letter.

It was very much like the other.

"The Prize to the Swift," the document began, and continued as follows:—

"Do not despair, you whose energy has proved equal to emergency. Having succeeded up to this point, you are sure to succeed to the end. My treasure is not here. I would never leave it so far from home and at the mercy of prying strangers in a foreign land. How do I know that I am not watched at this moment by jealous eyes from the fishing village a mile away? This box will possibly be dug up after my departure, but I do not dread such an event, since it will add, perhaps, to your trouble in finding it, my most indolent relatives and heirs, and that is a contingency which I hail with joy. That any finder of the box will destroy it, I am not afraid. He will rather keep it by him and sell it to those who come to seek it.

"As for you, my treasure is where it should be, and must ever have been, for I would never trust it elsewhere—in my own country and in my own home. Where else should it be? Return, then, successful pilgrim; seek nearer home. Where my treasure is, there is my heart, or near it. I lie buried in Streatham churchyard; my treasure is not far away from my bones! … Dig, dig, and dig again.

"The only land upon which I or my heirs possess the right of digging is my own garden in Streatham. Dig there, my friend, and success to him who digs wisest and deepest.

"My portrait is part of the spoil for the winner; it was done for me by a pavement artist for two shillings and three pence, but do not throw it away on that account. It is the portrait of your benefactor, and his blessing will go to him who preserves it well."

The letter ended here, without signature or date.