Kitabı oku: «Clutterbuck's Treasure», sayfa 9

CHAPTER XXV
LAPPED, BUT STILL IN THE RACE

It may strike some of those who read this narrative that, considering the fact that we had (in a cowardly manner, as they may deem it, and with far too much regard for the safety of our skins) surrendered to James Strong not only our invaluable map of the spot to which we were directed by old Clutterbuck's "message from the tomb," but also the copy of that document which we had been prudent enough to make in case of emergency—that, considering these facts, it did not really matter very much whether Strong sailed for England with one day's start of us or one year's; for he now possessed every available clue to the discovery of the treasure, while we had none whatever.

Our game was played out and lost. Strong had won. We might sail for England to-morrow or this day five years, but James Strong would now both possess himself of and retain the hundred thousand pounds for which we had toiled and travelled and suffered, simply because we were ignorant where to look for either the treasure or for him.

Yet this was not the case, for we—Jack and I—had been in this matter craftier than the fox and wiser than the eagle; and each independently of the other, too.

We discovered this on the morning after Strong's checkmate of us, as I lay by our camp fire, when, intending to spring a mine of surprise and delight upon Jack, I started bewailing the shipwreck of our hopes to find the treasure. Strong had stolen from us, with fiendish cunning, both the plan and the copy. I dwelt upon this disastrous fact because I intended presently to send Jack into ecstasies of admiration for my sagacity by informing him that it did not really matter a bit, seeing that I had committed the whole letter to memory, and knew by heart every jot and tittle of plan and instructions.

But Jack spoiled my little game by saying—

"Oh, I don't think you need worry, old man, about the loss of the 'message from the tomb.'"

"Why not?" I asked.

"I know it by heart," he said, "every word of it; and the plan too—I could draw it exactly. Look here!"

This was disappointing, for I really had thought I was going to score for once over my acute one!

However, we praised one another, and came unanimously to the conclusion that any two foxes would have to take a back seat for cunning if he and I were to drop treasure hunting and take to robbing farmyards! And that is how it came about that the loss of our papers was not so serious a disaster for us as it might have been if we had been "other than we were"—i.e. less clever.

So three weeks after Mr. Julius Stavenhagen's departure, or, if you prefer it, Mr. James Strong's, Jack Henderson and I sailed at last from Cape Town; a bad second, of course, but still not without hope that Strong might hitherto have failed to find the treasure when we should have reached the island of Hogland, or Hochland; indeed, it might even prove that, fearing lest we should have remembered the name of the island, he might have hesitated to visit the place at all, in case we should follow and denounce him for the murderer he was.

I did not greatly rely on this last faint hope, however, for Strong was not the kind of man to surrender an undoubted advantage for any consideration of craven expediency. He would rather occupy the island of Hogland, and shoot us if we appeared to disturb him; and that was what we must look out for, supposing that we ever found the island with Strong in possession.

"It would simply amount to a shooting match in that case," said Jack; and I think he just about expressed it.

My leg was quite cured by this time, and my only trouble on the voyage to England was that the Bangor Castle, which is one of the fastest passenger steamers afloat, did not travel quickly enough. I was beginning to consume my soul in anxiety to be even with James Strong for his smart trick upon us, and to be "one point ahead" in the matter of the treasure.

But we reached England in due time, and I journeyed straight up north to Hull, in order to lose not a moment in making arrangements for our departure; while Jack took the train at Paddington for Gloucestershire, binding himself first by a solemn promise to come up north the instant I telegraphed for him.

My faithful old friend had vowed to see me through with this treasure hunt, and declared, moreover, that he considered himself under a solemn obligation to discover James Strong and see him thoroughly well hanged for his misdeeds.

So away went Jack for Gloucestershire, and I travelled northwards to Hull and interviewed without delay the shipowners, Messrs. Wilcox, who, I found, ran a line of regular steamers from this port to St. Petersburg and Cronstadt. And first I inquired, with not a little anxiety as to the reply, whether there really existed in the Gulf of Finland any such island as Hogland. The clerk's answer was encouraging.

"Why, certainly!" he said. "Here, Captain Edwards, you can tell this gentleman all about what he wants to know far better than I can. Captain Edwards has just returned from a trip to Cronstadt, and must have passed this very Hogland a few days since."

"At five forty-five last Sunday afternoon," said the captain, a quiet and most gentlemanly little man, who, I was afterwards to learn, was a pronounced favourite not only with his employers but also with every passenger who had the good luck to take the trip in his fine steamer, the Thomas Wilcox.

"Do passengers ever land there?" was my next question.

"Well, they don't get a chance, as a matter of fact," said Captain Edwards; "for we never stop. There is nothing particularly attractive in the island to cause passengers to wish to land and explore it. Stay, though; I have heard of one visitor to the place—in fact, I took him off the island eventually, though it was not I that landed him."

"Not just now—this month?" I blurted. The communication gave me a shock, for it struck me that the passenger referred to could be no other than James Strong, who, if he had already visited and left the island, must have taken the treasure with him.

"Now? Dear, no!" said Edwards. "Four years since, at least—if not five. An old fellow—cracky, I should say. He gave out on board the Rinaldo, tripping from Hull to Cronstadt, that he was in search of an island to bury treasure in, and asked to be landed in Hogland when he passed it. You remember the story, Mr. Adams?"

Mr. Adams laughed, and said he had heard about it.

I laughed too, to hide my deeper emotions. This was delightful confirmation of my best hopes!

"Was he landed there?" I asked. The captain's first words rather staggered me.

"No, he wasn't," he replied. "He couldn't be without permission from the Russian Government. But he went on to St. Petersburg, got his permission, and was landed by the Rinaldo on her return journey. I took him off and brought him home. Dotty, I should say, decidedly. He was in the rarest spirits, and declared that he had tricked his blackguards of heirs, as he called them. They were not going to touch his money, he said, before they had sweated a bit to earn it—just as he had. Nobody believed he had a farthing to leave. He was dressed like a pauper, and disputed his steward's bill."

Nothing could have portrayed my late revered acquaintance more realistically than these words.

"It's sport, I suppose, isn't it?" continued Captain Edwards. "I am told that numbers of wolves, foxes, and game birds of all kinds come over the ice in winter, and some are caught there when the thaw sets in. You might have a pleasant week—lonely, though; only a few fisherfolk and the lighthouse people. The island is five or six miles in length."

I blushed, and declared that sport was—in part, at least—the object of my visit; but that my main idea was to make some investigations in the hope of finding coal and iron, which were supposed to exist in the islands of the Gulf of Finland as on the mainland of Esthonia on the Russian side of the water.

"Oh, I see!" said Captain Edwards. "Well, look out for my old friend's treasure if you get digging. Who knows you mayn't hit upon something that will pay you even better than coal and iron!"

Captain Edwards laughed merrily at his little joke; he did not dream how near he came to touching the truth.

"Get yourself ready in a week," he added, "and I'll take you out. You'll have to get leave, though, before you can land. Try the Russian Consul; he's a sensible chap, and isn't likely to refuse anyone with commercial intentions that might benefit his country."

I thanked Captain Edwards, and left the ship-owners' office to digest what I had heard.

James Strong had apparently not sailed for Hogland from Hull; or, if he had, he had not revealed his intention to land before sailing. If that was the case, then he would not be landed at all—unless, indeed, he relied upon getting permission from the authorities in St. Petersburg to visit the island, and then returning thence to the spot.

After all, thought I, he would scarcely be so rash as to give himself away by announcing who he was, and why he desired to visit the island of Hogland. He would reflect that the first thing we should do on reaching England would be to travel up to Hull and inquire after his movements; and whether our designs upon him should prove to have reference to the treasure or to the welfare of his neck, he would naturally prefer to keep his whereabouts a secret. He would guess that, though we had lost our maps, we might at least remember the name of Hogland, and that it lay somewhere between St. Petersburg and Hull.

CHAPTER XXVI
HOW WE PROSPECTED FOR COAL

I happened to have some distant relatives in Hull, and, partly because I could not as yet make up my mind upon the particular cock-and-bull story that would best serve me with the Russian Consul, and partly because, I suppose, if one possesses very few relatives of any kind the heart warms towards even very distant ones when there is a chance of making or renewing acquaintance with them, I determined to pay them a call.

I was glad afterwards that I did so; for my father's cousin and his people were pleasant folk, and I have since learned to know and value them well. But over and above these good and sufficient domestic reasons there was another. My relative was well acquainted with the Russian Consul, I found, and not only did he offer to introduce me to that official, but even volunteered to go with me and use his good offices in persuading Mr. Oboohofsky to grant my request.

My cousin, moreover, knew something of mining matters, and was somewhat enthusiastic about my idea of coal and iron to be found in paying quantities in Hogland. There were coalfields in Esthonia, he said; why not in the islands off the coast? Why not, indeed? I began to look upon Hogland as a kind of "land of promise," and grew quite in love with my own ridiculous fable of exploiting the place for mineral wealth, though at the same time I was somewhat ashamed of myself for, as it were, taking in my relative in this matter. There might be coal and iron, however, in the place, and if I happened to find any, why, so much the better; my cousin should have the entire profit and exploitation of it for himself.

Still, I would not promise to dig very deep for it; that would depend upon the depth at which old Clutterbuck had buried his money-boxes; I should go no deeper than that!

The Russian Consul was a practical person, and did not feel so enthusiastic about my mining schemes as I had hoped he would. He wanted to know why on earth I had thought of going to the Gulf of Finland for coal; whereupon I trotted out my Esthonian coalfields—knowledge culled from some physical geography book, and, by some inscrutably mysterious process of mind, remembered where most other items of knowledge were clean gone out.

Then he asked, why particularly Hogland? And it was at this point of the conversation that I showed a readiness of resource and a nice appreciation of difficult situations, otherwise "corners," and of how to get out of them, which, if I could only act at all times up to the "form" of that morning in September, would undoubtedly lead me into very high places in the diplomatic and political world.

I pointed out to the Russian Consul that for purposes of coaling the Baltic fleet a fuel-producing island like Hogland, in mid-channel on the direct line from Cronstadt to everywhere else, would be an unspeakable boon to the nation. At present most of the coal used by Russian warships came from Hull and other English and Welsh ports But what if the Baltic were blocked in time of war?

The Russian Consul did not burst into tears, and, while thanking Heaven for this revelation of the terrible possibilities of the future, entreat me, with streaming eyes, to go to Hogland and find a little coal for his imperial master's warships; but he laughed, and said that the English were wonderful people, and seemed to be for ever prepared to take a great deal of trouble all over the world on the chance of very small results, and added that he hoped, if I found my coal, that I would make him a director of the company started to work it and would present him with a few shares.

I promised that if I found coal I would let him know, but we have never corresponded.

However, thanks to the good offices of my cousin, who was quite intimate with the Consul, and my own obvious enthusiasm, which he did not for a moment suspect to be founded on any more substantial basis than coal—and extremely problematical coal at that—Mr. Consul Oboohofsky granted my request for permission to land at Hogland, and countersigned my passport to that effect with the words—"Bon pour l'île de Hochland;" and Jack Henderson's also.

This matter being satisfactorily arranged, and there being still four days to pass before a start could be made, I ran down to Gloucestershire and spent that time with Jack and his sister, who is one of the sweetest girls that ever—but no, I think I will not enter into that matter in this place; if I have anything more to say about the Hendersons and their family circle I shall say it later on.

Enough that on the Saturday following Jack and I returned to Hull and took ship on board the Thomas Wilcox, whose captain had special permission from his owners to land us on the island of Hogland. I confess that I left the shores of England feeling depressed and miserable, and disinclined to go and dig for treasure or anything else, and that I looked long and sadly back at the dull shores of the Humber and wondered whereabouts exactly lay Gloucestershire, and what the good folks at Henderson Court were doing just at this moment, and especially Gladys—there I go again!

The North Sea is a cruel, ruthless body of water, and a stumbling-block to passengers. I had travelled to the Cape and back, and scarcely felt inconvenience; but here, one day out from England, I was treated to such a pitching and a rolling and a tumbling that my very soul refused comfort, and I lay and wished I was dead like any novice upon shipboard; and so did Jack, which was a great consolation to me, and did me more good than all the ministrations of the benevolent chief steward and the encouragement of kind Captain Edwards.

But all was forgotten and forgiven when Copenhagen was reached and the historical castle of Elsinore, one of the ugliest fastnesses, I should say, that ever mason put together for the joint accommodation of long-dead, disreputable kings, exemplary living monarchs, and respectable ghosts.

We passed Elsinore at midnight, and I did think that—as we had paid a good sum of money for our passages, and had stayed up and yawned for an hour beyond our usual sea-time for retiring—there might have been some little spiritual manifestation for our benefit. But Hamlet's father is, I suppose, laid by this time; or the rebuilt castle, upon whose battlements he used to walk, is not to his taste (in which case he is the ghost of a wise and discriminating spirit!), for he never appeared to us; and we were obliged to retire to bed baffled and disappointed, resolved to pen a complaint to the Psychical Research authorities, who ought to see that passengers viâ Elsinore are not disappointed in this way.

And so on into the Baltic, and past many islands belonging to Denmark and Sweden, and with distant glimpses of a most uninteresting-looking mainland; and presently the Gulf of Finland was reached, and our pulses began to beat once more with the old ardour of treasure hunting—a sensation we had almost forgotten since the agitating days of the Ngami search, and the many exciting adventures and crises through which we had passed in the last three months.

As we drew hourly nearer to our island, my excitement grew positively painful. I was oppressed with a kind of horror that we should find Strong waiting to be taken off, with a smile of triumph upon his face and a cheque for one hundred thousand pounds securely buttoned up in his breast pocket!

Captain Edwards, who proved a good and kind friend to us throughout, strongly recommended us to take with us to Hogland a sailor—one whom he could easily spare us, since he was now within a twelve hours' run of his destination—of Russian nationality, who could speak English. He had more than one such "hand" on board, and we arranged with a certain Michail Andreyef to land with us and act as our interpreter—a post which that gentleman, having ascertained that no work of any kind would be involved in the situation, accepted with alacrity at a moderate wage; and remarkably useful he proved to us in our sojourn in that lonely island.

I do not think that Michail, good man, would have landed with us if he had known that there was no drinking shop on the island; but he found out our flasks after a day or two, and these no doubt afforded him some little consolation, though, of course, the contents did not last him long, and he was only drunk three days on the entire proceeds. And now here, at last, was Hogland itself—our Eldorado, as we hoped, if only James Strong had not already landed and ruined our prospects!

How I stared at it, and wondered and wondered whether the fateful tin box that contained old Clutterbuck's cheque lay somewhere within its soil, peacefully slumbering until the right man came along to unearth the treasure! And oh! how I wished it might prove that Strong had neither arrived nor forestalled me!

CHAPTER XXVII
ELDORADO OR—HOGLAND

The island looked bare and desolate enough from the point of view of the deck of our steamer, long and rather narrow at each end, but bulging in the middle to a width of several miles; covered with pine forests and patches of moorland, and with a high backbone of tree-clad hills running down the middle from end to end. It was exceedingly like the old man's map as we remembered it, and the first sight of it so whetted my enthusiasm and treasure-ardour that I could scarcely contain my joy when we steamed into view of it.

Jack and I, nevertheless, made the most of the bird's-eye prospect of the island which we now obtained; for we knew well that such a survey of the place might be exceedingly useful to us in our subsequent investigations. We saw the spot which appeared to us to answer to that described in our lost maps as the grave of Clutterbuck's Treasure, and we noted the best way to get to it, which was by the seashore to the left from the lighthouse.

The keepers of that most useful building must have been surprised indeed to see a large British steamer stop within half a mile of the hungry-looking rocks upon which their house and tower were erected; for though such vessels passed daily, none ever stayed. Three men, two women, and several children came out in a hurried way and stood staring like startled rabbits at us and our proceedings before bolting back to their holes as the boat approached into which we had transferred ourselves and our luggage, guns, spades, and provisions.

So far as these good folk were concerned, we might as well have had no passport at all; and as for the "bon pour Hochland" of the Consul, if we had written across the document any such legend as, for instance, "Herrings at tenpence a dozen," it would have served the purpose equally well. For the lighthouse keeper, after having studied the passports wrong way up, and scratched his head for inspiration, and spat on the ground in true Muscovite protest against the incomprehensible, and having crossed himself in case there should be anything appertaining to the evil eye or the police (which he regarded as amounting to much the same thing) about the proceedings, gave it up as a bad job, and inquired of our interpreter, Michail, what on earth we had come for.

I fancy Michail indulged in some pleasantry at our expense, for the two women and three men and seven children, standing gaping around us, all burst out laughing at the same moment, and the conversation among them "became general."

Presently, however, Michail informed us that it was all right, and that we might remain if we pleased. He said a small offering to the lighthouse keeper, for "tea," would be acceptable, and this we cheerfully provided, with the result that that gentleman and all his following were our sworn friends for life, in the hope of more tea-money some other day.

We were offered quarters in the wooden houses in which these good people lived; but when we entered their abode and learned that we should be expected to herd in one suffocatingly hot room, together with every person whom we had yet seen, and perhaps others to whom we had not yet been introduced, and to sleep on straw upon the floor, or on sheepskins upon the top of a huge brick stove which occupied half the room, we explained to Michail that we had other engagements. There were several reasons for this decision besides those given—some crawly ones and some jumpy. We saw a number of the former on the walls, and had already begun to suspect the presence of the latter nearer still to our persons.

Michail might come back and sleep here, we told him, after he had accompanied us to the small fishing village where we desired to make a few inquiries.

This seemed to please Michail, who, we concluded, had some good reason for liking the poor dumb animals on the wall better than we did. I suppose there is good in most things, if one can only discern it through the evil.

Michail inquired, at our request, whether anyone had landed here lately, within the last month or so; upon which the lighthouse keeper informed us that the last stranger who had visited the island, so far as he knew, was a madman from England, or Germany, or other foreign parts, where everyone, he was told, was more or less mad. This English lunatic had landed here a few years ago; he had gone and hidden himself in the woods for a week, alone, sleeping, he believed, at the village at the other end of the island, and passing his time counting the trees in the forest, or doing something equally insane. After a week he had returned, and had been taken on board by a steamboat.

"No one else, this month?" we insisted.

"Certainly not," said the man; why should anyone come to the island if he could live on the mainland, where there were drink-shops?

This was unanswerable, and quite delightful too, though how it happened that we had contrived to arrive before the wide-awake Mr. James Strong was more than I, or Jack either, could imagine.

"Perhaps he was wrecked, and drowned on the way here," I suggested.

Jack dissented. That would not be "playing the game," he said; Mr. Strong was born to be hanged; of that there could be no possible doubt whatever. Perhaps he would arrive while we were still on the island! Michail must keep a lookout, and come and warn us if anyone landed. We had no particular desire to be bombarded again by Mr. James Strong.

As an additional precaution we promised the lighthouse keeper the sum of ten roubles, which is about equal to one pound, if he refused to allow any other person to land, and were comforted by that individual's assurance that he would refuse admittance to the Tsar of England himself for such a sum of money as that.

Then we went to the fishing village in order to glean any information that the inhabitants might have to dispense at their end of the island; but to all our questions as to whether any person had landed on the island within the last month, the "elder," or head man of the village, to whom we applied, declared that he knew nothing and cared nothing about anybody or anything; and that, when it was necessary, he also saw nothing and heard nothing.

"Ask him, Michail, if a rouble would refresh his memory as to anything he may have seen or heard," suggested Jack.

The head man said he did not know; it might.

Then he took the rouble, and declared that no one had been near the island for years.

This was very satisfactory, and we added a second rouble in the joy of our hearts; at which evidence of our generosity Alexander, the elder, crossed himself and prayed aloud for the welfare of our souls. Then he said he had some articles for sale which might be useful to us if we intended to try a little sport on the island, and produced—to our surprise—an English-looking revolver. I was about to take it from his hand, when Jack snatched the weapon from me.

"Why, great skittles! Peter," he cried. "Look at it! Look at it, man; look at it! What do you see?" Jack burst out laughing, and then suddenly grew grave. I took the weapon from him to examine it, surprised at his excitement.

"It's loaded," I said, "in four chambers."

"Yes; but look at it well!" he cried. "Don't you know it, man?"

I looked again, and the weapon almost dropped from my hand. It was my own revolver, not a doubt of it—my own name was scratched along the lower side of the barrel. It was the same that Strong had choked with lead, that I had afterwards presented to Clutterbuck, that Strong had stolen from that unfortunate fellow, and with which he had murdered his companion; the same with which he had attacked ourselves on the road to Vryburg, at our last encounter with the rascal, and a bullet from which had taken a bit out of my shin-bone.

For a moment or two I was too bewildered to collect my thoughts. Jack brought me to my senses.

"Well," he said, "what do you make of it?"

"I make of it that we are too late," I groaned. "The rogue has been too quick for us, confound him!"

"Yes," said Jack, "that's what I'm thinking too. But how did this fellow get hold of the pistol?"

It was a question to which I could find no reply.

"Ask him where he got the pistol from," said Jack to Michail; and our interpreter put the question as desired.

The reply was that the pistol was for sale; would we buy it? The elder knew nothing about the antecedents of the weapon, but it was his property, and for sale.

"Ask him if he will remember anything about its history if we buy it," said Jack.

The elder was of opinion that he might remember a little for ten roubles.

This sum was instantly transferred, and our friend presently informed us, through Michail, that the weapon had belonged to a Swedish person who had come over from the coast of Finland, from Helsingfors, in a sailing boat about three weeks ago, and who had made him a present of it. That was all he had to say. The Swede had departed a fortnight ago.

At this reply my heart sank lower than before, for here was the confirmation of my worst fears. All was lost—that much was obvious. James Strong had been too smart for us. He had travelled viâSweden and crossed from Stockholm to Helsingfors, sailing over to Hogland from that port—absolutely the simplest, and at the same time the most artful, course he could pursue, seeing that he was unwilling to travel direct from Hull by reason of the obvious publicity of such a proceeding.

All was lost—that was now certain. I was a pauper again. The only consolation was that, so far as I could see, I could not have done anything to circumvent Strong. He had had too long a start.