Kitabı oku: «Clutterbuck's Treasure», sayfa 14

CHAPTER XXXIX
DIGGING AGAIN

Jack was determined to see me through with my treasure hunting, now—as we hoped—at its last stage, and came with me to Streatham without even a flying visit to his Gloucestershire home; which was good of old Jack.

Arrived at Streatham, we put up at the best hotel we could find, and lost no time in walking down to old Clutterbuck's house in the lower town. The place looked gloomy and forbidding, and we rang at the garden gate—the only entrance—with a feeling that our trouble was not quite over yet, and that in all probability the old man would have exerted his eccentric ingenuity to the uttermost in order to make the last stage of our search at least as difficult and toilsome as any, in spite of the seemingly simple instructions of the letter, which were merely to go and dig in his own garden at Streatham, and find what we should find.

As a matter of fact, we encountered one difficulty before getting farther than the garden gate—the outside of it, I mean; for an old caretaker answered the ring, and, opening the door an inch or two, but without removing the chain which secured it, peeped out and asked us what we wanted.

I said that we had authority from its late master to take possession of the house and garden.

The old fellow produced from his pocket an envelope, from which he drew a scrap of paper.

"Is your name William Clutterbuck?" he asked.

"He's dead," I replied.

"James Strong?" he continued.

"Oh, hang it, no! not that blackguard," said Jack. "It's all right, old gentleman; this is Mr. Clutterbuck's heir."

The old caretaker took no notice of this remark.

"Charles Strong?" he continued, unmoved.

"He's dead too," I said.

"Ellis?" said the old fellow, doubling up his paper and preparing to return the envelope into his pocket.

"No," said I, "but"—

"Then you don't come in here," concluded the man, banging the door in our faces and double-locking it.

The old caretaker's arbitrary action nonplussed me for the moment.

"But my name is down in the will together with those you have read out," I cried through the panels. Jack stood and laughed. I heard the old man stumping towards the house. I shrieked out a repetition of my last appeal. He paused and spoke. An errand boy stopped to look on, and whistled "D'isy, D'isy, give me your answer do," so loudly that I could scarcely hear the reply.

"No, it ain't," shouted the old fellow back again. "For I copied these down from it myself, and there wasn't another. And what's more, this 'ere door don't git opened to no one else but these four, and if yer wants to git into the garden, yer'll 'ave to climb the wall and see what yer'll git from the dawg. He's loose in here—speak, Ginger!"

Ginger spoke, and the utterance was certainly alarming. Ginger's voice was a deep bass, and it seemed to say—unless my imagination gave it a meaning which it did not really possess—that it was as well for those outside that there was a wall between them and Ginger. It was ridiculous; but it was extremely aggravating also.

"But my name was added afterwards," I pleaded, while Ginger barked and Jack laughed, and the errand boy, interested, stopped whistling to hear the reply. This was not encouraging.

"Garn!" said the rude old man; "I know what I knows; you go and git yer 'air cut, and come back and show me the will."

"I can do that easily enough," I shouted, "and the lawyer who drew it up too, so you'd better save trouble and let me in at once."

"You find me a lawyer and a will as gives more than four names, and in you may walk," said the heroic caretaker; "and till then you can take yourself off or do the other thing—but out you stay!"

This was evidently the ultimatum, for the old fellow could be heard stumping up towards the house. The dog Ginger remained and continued his observations in the same tone until we retired. The errand boy remembered an engagement and departed, disappointed with us, no doubt. We ought, of course, to have scaled that wall and been eaten by Ginger in order adequately to perform our duty to that errand boy; but we had other views, and went and called on the lawyer, Steggins.

That good fellow was sincerely glad to see me, I believe, and to hear that I was the successful competitor up to this point. We told him—in skeleton form—of our adventures, promising him a detailed account if he would dine with us at the hotel, which he gladly undertook to do. Then we told him of our difficulties with the old caretaker, who had received his instructions, evidently, before my name had been added to the will. Steggins laughed.

"What, old Baines?" he said. "I'll soon put that right; we are old friends, he and I. But I'm afraid this other gentleman, Mr.–er"—

"Henderson," interposed that worthy.

"Mr. Henderson cannot take any part with yourself in the digging operations; the instructions are so clear that only the successful competitor is to be allowed in the house or garden until the treasure has been found. Otherwise, you see, all the rest might have remained at home, and still have been in at the death, so to speak. They might simply wait till the report went about that you were busy digging in the garden, and would then come and take a hand on equal terms with you, who had had all the trouble."

This seemed true. It was annoying, however, that I was not to have the benefit of Jack's help in my last dig. As I told Jack, I had particularly wished him to have half the work of digging.

"And half the fun of being worried by Ginger!" added Jack; "thanks awfully, Peter. It will be rather fun to stand outside and hear you 'Good-dogging' Ginger, and presently your squalls when he lays hold of you!"

"Ginger's all right," laughed Steggins. "He's almost as old as his master, and hasn't a tooth in his head; besides, he's the friendliest of animals, and wouldn't injure a baby."

"His voice doesn't sound like it," I said. "Jack grew quite pale when he heard it." Jack shinned me under the table for this, I am sorry to say. He is a vindictive and un-Christian-like person, is Jack, when his pride is touched.

"Ginger's voice is his fortune," said Steggins; "it always has been; he's the finest dog for the other side of a wall that ever I saw."

I may say that presently, when Steggins had taken me down and introduced me to Baines and Ginger as the bonâ fide heir-at-law, I found that Ginger was quite as benevolent a being as Steggins had described him. He was a St. Bernard, of enormous size and the very mildest of manners, and his voice was a complete fraud, for whereas it threatened gore and thunder, its real purport and intent were nothing more shocking than small beer or milk and water. For all he knew, I might have been a murderous desperado, but he took to me at sight, like David to Jonathan.

Old Baines, too, was polite enough on his own side of the wall, and showed me over the house and garden. He was surprised when I asked for spades, but produced one nevertheless; however, when he had watched me turn over the first few sods of turf, he retired muttering into the house, and I could see plainly enough that the new proprietor was, in his opinion, about to prove a disappointing master, inasmuch as he was harmlessly but hopelessly mad.

The garden measured sixty-three yards by forty-eight, and on that first morning of my solitary digging I ardently wished, with all my heart, that it had been one-quarter the size. For to dig up a garden of this area, and dig it deeply too, as the latest instructions suggested, and all by oneself, was a task involving more trouble than is agreeable, or ever has been, to the present scribe, who is no lover of monotonous drudgery.

There were a few trees here and there, but not a flower-bed in the place; the whole area was roughly covered with turf upon which coarse grass had been allowed to grow throughout the summer, which grass I was obliged to mow down with a scythe before I could proceed in any comfort with my digging.

Jack did not desert me, though he might not assist me on my own side of the wall. He remained at the hotel, where I lunched and dined with him daily; and during these meals we consulted upon my labours and the direction these should take; and sometimes Jack would come and carry on a conversation from the top of the wall, upon which he climbed when none were by to see. Ginger used to look up and wag his tail affectionately upon the stranger appearing in that unorthodox fashion within the domains he was kept to watch over. If Jack had been a burglar, Ginger could not have looked up more lovingly at him as he sat on the wall and gave the dog bits of biscuit.

Several days passed, and the late Mr. Clutterbuck's garden now resembled a ploughed field; but never a glint of gold had I struck yet, nor a glimmer of diamonds, nor the pale crisp delight of a bank-note or cheque.

Mr. Baines knew nothing, he protested, about anything whatsoever; he merely thought me a madman, and considered it the safer way to leave me entirely alone. I questioned him, now and again, as to whether he had ever observed the late lamented, whom he had served as factotum in life, employed in digging or in taking measurements in the garden; but to all these inquiries Mr. Baines gave answers courteously but plainly pointing to one and the same conclusion—namely, that though old Clutterbuck had been undoubtedly a "skinflint" (as he picturesquely described the parsimonious character of the deceased), yet he had always shown himself a sane skinflint, and therefore unlike the gentleman who now took his place as master of the establishment. By which Mr. Baines meant to infer that old Clutterbuck neither took measurements nor dug in the garden, and that I—who did both—must therefore be mad. He did not say so in as many words, but he made it pretty clear that this was his meaning.

There was no assistance to be got out of old Baines.

CHAPTER XL
JACK PROVES HIMSELF A GENIUS

After all, it was only natural that "the testator," desiring to give his heirs as much trouble as possible, should scarcely confide his secret to one who would probably reveal it, afterwards, to the first that offered him half a crown for the information.

At the end of the fourth day I was very tired and rather depressed. I had measured the garden from end to end and across, and dug down at every spot where, according to carefully thought out calculations, stretched strings would cross one another; I tried every dodge I could think of or that Jack could suggest. I gazed a dozen times at the old portrait, and could suck no inspiration from it; indeed, as regards that work of art, I had quite decided ere this that the thing was no more than a sickly joke on the part of its grim old original. I took Clutterbuck's age and measured it out in feet, and dug at the end of the seventy-first, and in inches, and diagonally in yards, starting each from the house, and the two first from the centre. I pulled up the old stump of a cut-down tree and looked inside the hole it left behind. I think I really tried nearly every device that the mind of man could conceive, but nothing had as yet come of my labours excepting fatigue and depression and stiffness.

Then, one day, on returning to the hotel, weary and cross by reason of repeated failure, I found Jack studying the portrait of old Clutterbuck, which annoyed me still more; for I was angry with the miser and his detestable expedients for keeping his money out of the hands of honest persons who had worked for it and fairly earned it.

"Look here, Peter," said Jack, smiling, "here's fun for you; see what I have found on the back of this work of art—read it for yourself!" He passed the portrait over to me.

I took it with, I am afraid, a growl of ill-temper, and read the words he had pointed out to me. They were written very faintly and in pencil on the back of the portrait, at a spot where the paper had become loose under the beading, and ran as follows—it was a doggerel rhyme, and this fact annoyed me still more in my ridiculously furious state of mind at the moment:—

 
"If you'd save yourself some trouble,
Dig at three foot six, and double!"
 

"What does it mean?" said Jack.

"Oh, take the confounded thing and chuck it into the fire!" I said sulkily.

"Well, but what does it mean, if it means anything?" Jack insisted. "You've got to take tips if you can get them, you know; so make the most of this, though it does seem to convey a rather unpleasant meaning. As I understand it, you have to dig to a depth of seven feet—that is, double three foot six, and"—

"What!" said I hotly, "dig over the whole garden to a depth of seven feet? I'll see the old skinflint"—

"Don't swear," said Jack, though I had not sworn; "but keep cool and help me to think this matter out. Now look here: he said, 'Dig at seven feet in order to save yourself trouble,' or words to that effect. Now, I can't help thinking he meant this for a tip; for if it meant that you were to dig over the whole garden to a depth of seven feet, what trouble would you save yourself by doing that? What the old boy meant was, find the right spot, and then dig down seven feet."

"Yes," I said, laughing mockingly and throwing the portrait on the table, "find the right spot; that's just the crux! If you'll kindly find the spot for me, I'll dig to any depth you like—sink an artesian well, if you please; but where the dickens is the spot?"

"You are angry and disinclined to speak like a sensible creature," said Jack. "Have your dinner, and then perhaps you'll be in a fit mood to listen to an idea which has struck me."

This rather sobered me.

"Have you really an idea?" I asked, flushing.

"Yes," said Jack, "I have; but I'm not going to tell you till you've dined. A full man is a less dangerous being than an empty one; you might fall upon me and rend me now, if you thought my idea absurd, as you very likely may."

Entreaties broke like little waves upon the shingle of Jack's obstinacy. I said I was sorry for being rude and angry; I begged to hear his last new idea. Jack's only reply was—

"Dinner's at eight; you'd better change those digging clothes and make yourself look like a decent Christian, if you can."

Jack was perfectly right. Dinner made a wonderful difference in the view I took of things in general; it always does. After dinner, armed with his pipe, sitting over an early fire in our private sitting-room, Jack dismounted from his high horse and admitted me into his confidence.

"I daresay you won't think anything of it," he said; "but it was the portrait of old Clutterbuck that set me dreaming."

"What!" I said, jumping to my feet and seizing a dessert knife, "you don't mean to say, after all my digging, that the money's hidden in it?"

"Why, man, no! I never thought of that," said Jack. "However, open the back carefully and see, if you like."

I did so; I ripped the back off and looked in the space between it and the canvas upon which the odious caricature was painted. An earwig ran out, but there was no treasure. I threw the thing back upon the table, and the knife with it.

"Don't fret," said Jack; "that's not what I meant at all. What I did mean is this: do you suppose that any sane man—and you cannot say that old Clutterbuck was anything else—would any man who was not insane take the trouble to carry a picture to the Gulf of Finland and bury it there for his heirs to find—an odious misrepresentation of his features too—unless there were some object to gain by so doing? In a word, what I can't understand is how both you and I should hitherto have accepted the ridiculous fact without suspicion."

"But we did suspect," I cried. "We said at the time that the thing was about as idiotic as it could be; but when one's right to benefit by a will depends on the sanity of the testator, one doesn't like to air one's opinion that he was mad, even though one may think so."

"Depend upon it, the old boy was no madder than you or I," said Jack gravely. "I am beginning to think that he was very sane indeed, and that he has managed the whole of this business with consummate skill—always bearing in mind his expressed desire to make his heirs sweat for their money. Now listen here. I have been thinking while you did your hard labour in the garden, and I am now perfectly convinced that the old fox did not bury his precious piece of rubbish because he valued it or thought his heir would. Quite the contrary. He knew that it was extremely likely that his heir—probably James Strong, as he supposed at the time—would chuck the portrait in the fire with a curse at the memory of the original. And why, think you, did he take the trouble to have this picture painted and to bury it and solemnly bequeath it to his heir if he suspected that the finder would burn it?"

"It beats me," said I. "Go on."

"Because he knew that the portrait was indispensable, or nearly so, to the finding of the treasure," said Jack mysteriously. "See here. He hates Strong and the rest, and knows they hate him. Therefore he makes his portrait indispensable in the hope that they will destroy it, and with it their chance of finding his money."

"Very well," said I, "let us admit all that; but how can the portrait be indispensable to, or have any connection with, the finding of the hidden treasure?"

"That's what we have to learn," said Jack; "but I have evolved a theory on that point also."

I laughed.

"Upon my life, Jack, it's too funny," I said. "You are as ingenious as Machiavelli himself; but how are you going to connect that awful daub with the buried treasure? You can't do it; I defy you!"

"Well, I'll tell you, anyhow; it may be as ridiculous as you suppose, and it may not," said Jack. "You see the eyes of the awful personage in the picture: look here, I hold the portrait thus. Now get in front of the thing and try if you can find a place where the eyes focus you; you'll have to lie down on the carpet."

Still amused, but interested nevertheless, I lay down along the carpet, as desired, and presently found a spot where the eyes certainly seemed to gaze at me.

"Well," I said, "what then? They are to gaze at the spot where the money lies hidden? Is that it?"

"That's just exactly it," said Jack, flushing a little.

CHAPTER XLI
THE EXCITEMENT BECOMES INTENSE

"But, man alive," said I, "where's the picture going to hang, or be held, in order to point out the spot?"

"That's what we've to find out," said Jack. "If my theory is right, the old boy will have prepared a place for it to hang. Are there trees, or nails in the wall?"

"There are trees, certainly," said I; "I don't know about the nails. And am I to dig a seven-foot hole wherever the confounded picture will hang?"

"Yes, you are," said Jack imperturbably, "and you know it. And now you had better go to bed; partly because you'll require some rest for these seven-foot holes, but chiefly because you are in such an evil humour to-night that I'm blessed if I will endure your society any longer!"

And so to bed I went.

That night I dreamed a great many wonderful dreams, and in each and all of them I was digging and for ever digging, and the treasure was still unfound or, when found, snatched from me! In one of my dreams, I remember, I fancied that I had hit upon the right tack, when of a sudden three huge Mahatmas bore silently down upon me from the world of spirits and demanded of me what I sought.

They looked out upon me with piercing black eyes let into cavernous sockets framed in dead-white faces, and they flapped their sable mantles over me and frightened me.

"Oh, sirs," I said, "I am seeking for buried treasure; I am within an ace of finding it and yet have not found it. Help me, I beseech you, to light upon it, and you shall do with me as you will!"

"Treasure is vanity, vanity, vanity!" cried one of the Mahatmas.

"Gold is dross, dross, dross!" wailed a second.

"Nevertheless, I will show you where to find it!" sang the third, in a mournful monotone. "Come!"

I dreamed that I followed the Mahatma back, earthwards, and we alighted in Clutterbuck's garden. He did but turn over one spadeful of earth, and there lay revealed a sack of glittering gold pieces. Instantly the two other Mahatmas flew shrieking to the treasure and fought for it, tearing the black mantles from one another's shoulders. But the third slew them both from behind, and, seizing the sack of gold, fled over land and sea, I, shrieking, after him.

But just as I was overtaking him he turned, and I saw his face—it was James Strong. At the same moment he cried aloud, and said: "For treasure I have sinned and murdered, and lo! I have bartered my soul in vain—for see what this gold of yours is!"

With the words he poured the gold out of the sack's mouth, and behold! it was ashes, and they fell hissing into the sea.

In another of my dreams I was busily digging, while the dog Ginger watched my efforts. Suddenly I turned up a sod in which lay a piece of bread, and in the bread was folded a cheque for one hundred thousand pounds; but even as I read the figures, and was about to cry aloud for joy, the dog snatched both bread and paper from my hand, and swallowed them.

All this dreaming went to prove that I was far more interested and influenced by Jack's rather brilliant idea than I had chosen to show; his suggestion was on my mind and had "murdered sleep," quiet, solid sleep, such as I usually indulged in. Consequently, I was up very early on the following morning in order to set about putting the new idea to a trial. I hurried through breakfast, and was out of the hotel and busy at work in the garden before Jack was dressed.

First I tried the trees.

There was a willow, a fine tree with two big branches, almost as large as the parent stem, about ten feet from the ground. There was no excrescence from this tree small enough to hang the picture upon, and I passed on to the next, a poplar. Here, at about five feet from the earth, there was a twig from which the picture might be got to hang in a lopsided kind of way; but the twig was evidently a young shoot, and had probably sprung into existence since the picture had been taken to Hogland and buried, so that I spared myself a seven-foot dig beneath that poplar.

Then there was a lime, a small one, near the end of the garden; and into the trunk of this tree, on the wall side, I discovered that a nail had been knocked. I grew hot and cold at the sight, for I thought I had "struck oil" at last.

But, alas! when I had hung the picture by its little ring to this nail, and tried to get my face where the eyes would be fixed upon it, I found that the portrait glared at a spot about half-way down the brick wall, and not at any place on the ground whereinto a man might sink a spade.

There were no more trees, and I now turned my attention to the wall itself, and looked for nails up and down, and from end to end. I found one, to my delight, and having hung up the portrait, was engaged in the occupation of lying on my stomach and wooing the stony glare of old Clutterbuck's lack-lustre eyes, when Jack mounted the wall just above it, and nearly fell off again for laughing at the ridiculous spectacle which he said I presented. However, I focussed the eyes, and planted a stick in the exact spot.

"It's the only nail in the garden, Jack," I cried excitedly. "I do believe we've hit off the place at last!"

"Good!" said Jack grimly; "now dig for all you're worth!"

I did dig. I dug that seven-foot hole as though at the bottom of it some terrible earthworm had seized by the throat all that I held most dear in the world. Never were seven feet of earth displaced in quicker time by human energy.

But there was nothing there.

"Dig another three-foot-six!" said Jack from the wall. "The rhyme may mean 'Three foot six, and double that besides'—that is, ten feet six in all."

Breathless, despondent, stiff, half dead with fatigue, I dug on till the water was up to the top of my boots; it was of no use.

"I won't dig another inch!" I groaned; "not to-day, at all events."

"Come out then, and consult," said Jack. Even he seemed dejected with the last failure.

I came out, dead beat.

"Are there no more nails in the wall, anywhere?" he asked.

"Not one," said I. "I couldn't dig again to-day if there were!"

"Have you tried the trees?"

"Yes; there's nothing to hang the confounded thing from on any of them."

"I see the cut-up trunk of a felled tree against the shed, over there. When was that one cut down?"

I didn't know.

"Ask old Baines," said Jack.

Baines was within doors, though Ginger was with me; the dog had been a terrible nuisance all day, licking my face when I had to lie on my waistcoat in order to focus those eyes, and while I was digging the huge hole standing at the brink and whining and howling as though he expected me to unearth a huge cat for his delectation. As a matter of fact, he would have run away if a mouse had jumped out. Ginger was not a brave dog; he was too benevolent to be really brave.

I went and fetched Baines, and asked him who had cut down the tree, and when and why?

Baines said that he had felled it a year ago at his master's orders.

"What for?" I asked. But Baines did not know that. Only, he said, he had strict orders not to burn the wood, or even touch it, for some reason or other.

This seemed rather curious, and I reported to Jack on the wall.

"Great scissors!" said that most ingenious individual; "go and see if there's a nail in the trunk!"

To my astonishment and delight, there was a nail; I shouted this news to Jack.

"Oh, hang it all, I'm coming over!" cried Jack; "this is too exciting for sitting on walls," he added, as he joined me and looked at and felt the nail for himself. "Where was this tree?" I took Jack and showed him the big hole in the centre of the garden out of which I had dug the root.

"Come on," said he; "we must have that root in again! Shove!"

Together we shoved the stump back into its own place, taking care to fit it into the hole exactly as it had rested there in life, and to keep its sawn surface level with the earth in order that the sundered portions of the trunk might be made to stand one upon another and all upon the parent stump, straight and without tipping forward or backward.