XXIV
The luncheon was not a genial meal. Harry had acquired the disgraceful habit of bringing a book to his meals, and he was utterly absorbed in the volume and left Dick and his visitor to carry on a conversation as though he were not present.
Mr. Puttler, who was a man of wide experience, was neither embarrassed by his magnificent surroundings—for Lord Chelford lived in a princely style, three footmen and a butler waiting upon them—nor did he feel it necessary to live up to the state in which he found himself. He was altogether unaffected, had a fund of anecdotes, and could tell funny stories without apparently enjoying them himself, which is the art of amusement. Only once did Dick interrupt his brother’s reading.
“Leslie is coming to tea,” he said. “She ’phoned over just before lunch.”
Harry Chelford looked up and his face fell.
“That is very unfortunate,” he said. “I had promised myself an uninterrupted afternoon with Fra Hickler. I’ve just had a facsimile edition sent to me from Leipzig. Hickler, you remember, Dick, was a cloistered monk in the days of Elizabeth, our abbey being one of the few that was not interfered with by Henry the Eighth or by Elizabeth either; partly, I think, because our particular order of monks were antagonistic to the Jesuits.…”
Dick listened patiently, and when his brother had exhausted the history of the Black Fathers of Chelfordbury—
“You’ll have to be civil and come to tea, and after that I’ve no doubt Leslie will not object to your going back to Fra Hickler, who was a German, I presume?”
“He was a German,” said Harry gravely. “And the circumstances which brought him to Chelfordbury were rather peculiar.”
“The best German I ever read about”—it was Mr. Puttler who interrupted—“was Robinson Crusoe.”
Dick thought it was a crude jest on the part of his guest, but, if it was so, Mr. Puttler was unconscious of his humour. Harry stared at the “accountant.” He took such statements as these very seriously indeed.
“I am not well acquainted with Robinson Crusoe,” he said, “but surely you are wrong in saying that he was a German? I have always regarded such characters as typically English.”
“He was a German,” said Mr. Puttler firmly, “though few people are aware of the fact. If you look at the first page of the story you’ll see these words: ‘My father was a merchant of Bremen,’ and Bremen’s in Germany, or I’m a Dutchman. And if his father was a German, he was a German, because there was no such thing as naturalization in those days.”
Having dropped his literary thunderbolt, Puttler was prepared to take up the subject which Dick had interrupted by his question.
“The trouble with church music, Mr. Alford, is that it’s a little too sugary. It appeals to the senses. I’ve had many an argument with my brother churchwardens——”
“Are you a churchwarden?” asked Dick, in surprise.
Again the gleam of laughter in the man’s deep-set eyes.
“It’s hard to believe,” he said modestly, “but I am.”
Soon after this, Harry left the table, and was gone five minutes when he returned with a fat volume under his arm.
“You’re right, Mr.——”
“Puttler,” suggested Dick.
“You’re right about Robinson Crusoe. What an extraordinary fact, to think that one has lived all one’s life under such a mistaken impression!”
This evidence of literary skill on the part of the visitor brought a remarkable change in Harry’s attitude. Before, Puttler might have had no existence. He was one with the milkman, the grocer, and the village postman.
He took Puttler affectionately by the arm and led him into the library, and there Dick left them, knowing exactly the course of instruction that Mr. Puttler would receive; for Harry’s first act was to unlock his desk and take out the Diary. He was relieved to have Puttler off his hands for an hour or two. Dick that day was experiencing a sense of unbelievable relief. A great burden had been lifted from his shoulders, and one of his more pressing and secret troubles had been half dissipated.
He ran halfway down the drive to meet Leslie’s car, and leapt on the running-board while the car was moving.
“Practising for a tram-conductor,” he said cheerily. “I’ve decided on my profession, when you arrive at Fossaway Manor, mistress of all these demesnes.”
“When will that be, Dick?” she asked, looking steadily ahead.
“Never, I hope.”
In his lightness of heart he had not kept that usual guard on his tongue, and the words were out before he could stop them. Twice he had been taken off his guard, and he would have given anything to unsay his words.
Apparently she did not attach any great significance to them, for she did not turn her head, sending the car spinning to the broad gravelled place before the old porch. He jumped down when she stopped the machine and helped her alight.
“I have to prepare you for a curious bird,” he said, and described Mr. Puttler with more truth than flattery.
“What is he, Dick?”
“He’s an accountant,” said Dick glibly. “He’s also quite an amusing fellow and full of weird information. I’m going to try a little on you. Do you know that Robinson Crusoe was a German?”
“Why, of course, his father lived in Bremen,” she said, and he was still laughing when he took her into the library.
In the presence of his fiancée Lord Chelford exhibited a nervousness and a gaucherie which might have been understandable if he were meeting her for the first time. He had never quite overcome the novelty of his engagement, and his attitude toward her was one of awe rather than of reverence.
“How do you do, Leslie?”
He had never kissed her in his life; now he held her hand for a fraction of a second and dropped it as though it burnt him.
“Do you know Mr. Tuttler?”
“Puttler,” said the other, and Leslie looked into the melancholy eyes and read something in them that Dick had missed, and possibly Mr. Puttler’s closest associate had not seen.
She did not pay him the poor compliment of feeling sorry for him, though she read in those quick-lighting deeps a craving for woman’s sympathy which nature, by her cruel handiwork, had repelled in advance.
“Glad to know you, Miss Gwyn. I know your brother—Mr. Arthur Gwyn, the solicitor, isn’t it? I thought so.”
“Has Arthur come?” asked Harry.
“No,” said Dick. “We’re going to have tea in the drawing-room. Will you come along, Harry?”
“Surely, surely,” he said hastily. “You’ll excuse me, dear——” It was an effort to employ even so banal an expression of affection.
When they reached the beautiful drawing-room, with its windows open to the terrace, and a riot of gorgeous sulphur chrysanthemums showing above the stone balustrade, they found they were alone. Mr. Puttler had melted away as they were passing through the hall. He explained, afterward, that he wanted to stroll through the gardens, but the girl knew that the man’s uncanny instinct had told him that, of all the people in the world, these two were satisfied best with each other’s company.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
He nodded.
“I didn’t get up till lunch time,” he said. “And you?”
She shook her head.
“No, I couldn’t sleep. Poor Arthur!”
“Did you try beefsteak?” he asked brutally. “Really, the most incongruous company I can imagine is a black eye and Arthur Gwyn!”
“He is awfully shaken,” she said seriously. “I have never known him to be so upset. It was Mr. Gilder.”
“I knew,” said Dick, “or, at least, I guessed. Did you find out the cause of the quarrel?”
She hesitated.
“I don’t know; I think it was something to do with me.”
“What was Gilder doing at your house?”
“Arthur didn’t tell me,” she replied. “From what he said I gather that Mr. Gilder had been watching Arthur and had followed him somewhere.”
“To the Abbey ruins—yes, that is quite possible. And of course your brother objected to that, naturally. Why are they watching each other?”
“Is Arthur watching Gilder?” she asked in surprise.
“It almost looks like it. Leslie, I want to tell you something that nobody else knows, not even Harry. It may bring a little ease to your mind in the dark hours of the night. Puttler is a detective, a Scotland Yard man.”
She stared at him.
“A detective? Why on earth——?”
“Things have been happening that I don’t very much like,” said Dick. “I’ve been worried nearly sick about them, and though I’m quite capable of dealing with most contingencies, the Lord has ordained that I should take seven hours’ rest in every twenty-four, and there must be somebody awake when I’m asleep.”
“The Black Abbot—is that what is worrying you?”
He bit his lip thoughtfully.
“Yes and no. Some aspects of the Black Abbot’s activities trouble me more than I should like to confess. Leslie, do you believe in the treasure?”
“The Chelford treasure?” she asked, in surprise. “And what do you mean by believing in it? It is true that the gold was brought to Fossaway Manor in olden times, isn’t it?”
“Perfectly true,” said Dick, “and perfectly true, I should imagine, that it was taken away. But do you believe that it has any existence, that it can be found? Suppose one dug up every square inch of the park, pulled down this old house of ours, probed into the bowels of the earth, do you think it is possible that the gold could be found? Because, if you don’t, there are other people who do besides Harry.”
“Do you believe?” she challenged.
He heaved a deep sigh.
“Heaven knows, I’m ready to believe anything! And I thought I should never drag down my lofty intelligence to such deeps. But, Leslie, my dear, I am getting——” He paused for a word.
“Convinced?”
“Not exactly convinced, but shaken in my obstinacy. I’ve become a doubter of my own scepticism, and that’s the worst mental condition a man can reach—or almost the worst,” he added.
“Does Harry know you are a convert?” Her fine eyes twinkled with mischief.
“He suspects me,” said Dick gloomily. “If I thought the money was here——”
She regarded him steadily.
“Would it make a big difference to you, Dick?” she asked.
“Me personally?” He shook his head. “Lord, no! It would make a difference to the——” He paused. “To Harry. I was going to say the estate. The estate, to me, is something distinct from any personality. It stands for the agglomeration of dead men’s efforts, the cumulative sum of all their strivings.”
She looked at him for a long time in wonder. She loved him in this serious mood of his.
“You’ve made rather a fetish of Fossaway Manor and the Chelford estates, haven’t you?”
“Have I?” He was genuinely surprised. “I wonder…” And then he laughed. “It isn’t a bad line for a second son to exalt the estates to which he will never succeed, above the personality of the man who will get it! It makes him rather superior to the real heir. Put my fetish worship down to vanity, for the Lord knows I have my share of that.”
“I doubt it,” she said quietly. “Come out on to the terrace. Your flowers are lovely.”
“ ‘Everything in the garden——’ ” he began, but she checked him with a warning finger.
“If you get banal I shall go in and find Puttler.”
XXV
She leaned on the gray stone balustrade and looked down upon the wind-stirred tresses of great golden chrysanthemums, each as big as a large-sized saucer. They were not all gold; there were deep red blooms and snowy white and flaming orange, and beyond them a huge bed of late-flowering roses; even from this distance, she could catch the delicate fragrance of them.
“It’s a beautiful old place,” she said in a hushed voice. “I don’t wonder that you love it. How long has your family owned this estate, Dick?”
“Eight hundred years,” he said. “The first of the Chelfords sliced off the head of the original owner and stole the property. Successive generations of Chelfords, whose own heads were cut off with monotonous regularity, enclosed a few thousand acres of common land belonging to the people—and there you are!”
She laughed softly.
“You have very few illusions, have you?”
“None,” was his curt reply, and somehow the answer hurt her.
They had to send twice for Harry before he put in an appearance, and he seemed disappointed to find that Puttler was not there.
“That is quite an intelligent fellow, Dick,” he said, delicately spearing a cucumber sandwich. “He has an extraordinary knowledge of history, particularly English history. Unfortunately, he doesn’t read German” [Harry read German as well as he read English, French, or Italian] “but I have persuaded him to take up the study. Have you everything you want, Leslie?”
He had helped her to nothing, and was happy to find that her requirements had been supplied. Only twice he spoke to her: once to ask about Arthur, and the other time when he made an oblique reference to his forthcoming marriage.
“Marriage ceremonies and the pomp of them are a little indelicate, I think. It is a barbarous custom, these veils and bridesmaids and barbaric orange-blossoms. Now in America I am told that it is quite the usual thing to be married in a drawing-room. I’m sure that could be arranged, couldn’t it, Dick? The bishop is quite an obliging old gentleman.”
“Turn Puttler on him: he’s an authority on church ritual,” said Dick.
“The man is an authority on most things,” said Harry, with unaccustomed enthusiasm. “He was telling me that possibly there was some cryptogram in existence which would give a direct clue as to the treasure.” And then, seeing the half smile on the girl’s face, he gave one of his rare boyish laughs. “We are still chasing shadows, Leslie, but it is a very substantial shadow, believe me. Now, Puttler thinks…”
They listened without comment to Puttler’s views, which in this case were neither informative nor particularly brilliant.
“Puttler’s mind apparently runs to dungeons, and there are dungeons to this place,” said Harry vigorously. “I am going to have a look round to-morrow. There are probably secret places under the floor which might be profitably examined.”
“The dungeons, as you call them, are wine cellars,” said Dick ominously; “and if Puttler goes fooling around my port there will be trouble! Besides which, Harry, I don’t suppose there has been a single ancestor of ours who hasn’t dug up the floor of that unfortunate dungeon—one of them in the days of the Regency had the walls stripped, and the beggar never replaced the stone. It cost our father the best part of a thousand pounds to repair the damage done by this old gold-hound!”
Dick noticed that whilst Harry was present the girl’s manner was just a little strained and unreal, and she was nervous, too, started when she was addressed, and was content to listen without including herself in the conversation. It was not until Harry had gone, with a lame apology, back to the library that she became her real self again, and the old Leslie crept forth from its hiding place. Once, whilst he and his brother were discussing the affair of the dungeons, she had walked on to the terrace, and out of the corner of his eye he saw her in profile, a slim, frail-looking girl, with her delicate face and her glorious hair, and in the setting she looked almost ethereal. It was as though some old masterpiece of Botticelli had come to life.
When the door had closed on Harry she came back and sat down with a little grimace.
“Was it very rude of me to go out? Dicky, I can’t work up any interest in the things that really fascinate Harry! Whatever will he talk about when the treasure is found?”
“The treasure? Oh, you mean the gold? He will probably talk about you.”
She made a little moue.
“I’m too young to be interesting to Harry, three hundred years too young,” she said. “Now tell me about your detective. I liked what I saw of him. He is to be your little guardian angel? And, Dick, will he have a beat—is that the word? Because, if he has, I do hope he’ll take in Willow House. I’ll even lend him my car.”
“Are you really frightened?”
She thought for a while before she replied.
“I think I am,” she said. “When I was a child the first air raids fascinated me, the second were interesting, but after the third or fourth they became—just air raids. And the Black Abbot—well, he’s very picturesque, Dick, but he’s rather terrifying. Didn’t you tell me that Harry feared him?”
“He does a little.”
“Why, I wonder?”
“Harry is naturally of a nervous temperament,” said Dick. “People are born that way, and it is absurd to talk of ‘cowardice’ where they are concerned. Now I was born without the knowledge of nerves, and I daresay if you saw me chasing the Black Abbot you would think I was terribly brave. As a matter of fact, it is simply because I’ve no imagination.”
“That isn’t true,” she said. “Why do you always belittle yourself?”
“Because I am by nature excessively modest,” he said gravely, and at that moment they caught sight of Mr. Puttler strolling through the long lines of rose trees that ran parallel with the eastern wing. Together they went down the terrace steps and intercepted him.
“It is a lovely place,” said Mr. Puttler, shaking his head in admiration. “I’ve never seen so many roses together in my life, except at Covent Garden Market, and they’re not roses, they’re just merchandise.”
“I’ve told Miss Gwyn that you’re a detective, Puttler.”
Puttler frowned at this.
“You know Miss Gwyn better than I do,” he said good-humouredly. “Speaking for myself, I find that life is much easier to live if you keep your mouth shut. Not,” he added hastily, “that I want to be offensive. That’s only my way of reasoning and my way of talking. There used to be an officer in our division who rose from the rank of plain police constable to superintendent by the simple process of never saying anything to anybody. If he was asked for his opinion on a matter he used to shake his head and say there was much to be said on both sides but he had his own private opinion, and even when he was called into a case he’d say nothing, but listen to what everybody else said and smile. That smile was worth a thousand a year to him.”
They crossed the rose garden and were strolling across the lawn. Under a huge elm Mr. Puttler stopped to continue a story which was fated never to be finished.
“One day the superintendent said to this man, whose name was Carter, ‘Carter,’ he said, ‘I can’t understand——’ ”
Crack!
A bullet snicked past the detective’s face, struck the bole of the tree, and sent the bark splintering. From a clump of rhododendron bushes two hundred yards away floated a pale blue cloud.
“Down on your face!” said Dick hoarsely, and dragged the girl to the ground, only just in time.
Crack!
The second bullet struck a little lower. A splinter of bark hummed past the girl’s ear.
“There’s someone in those bushes who doesn’t like me,” said Mr. Puttler.
Pulling a long-barrelled Browning from his pocket and bending low, he sprinted toward the bushes, zigzagging as he ran.
A third shot rang out and the running man pitched forward on his face and lay still.
XXVI
Dick flew forward to the prostrate figure, and, kneeling by his side, turned him on his back. His eyelids were working spasmodically, but there was no sign of injury, except a bruise on the side of his face which had been caused by his coming violently into contact with the ground. And then Dick saw the man’s right boot. The sole had been ripped off and there was a patch of blood showing on the toe of the sock. At the sound of a rustling skirt Dick turned his head. The girl was coming toward them.
“Go back behind that tree and don’t move,” he shouted authoritatively, but for once she did not obey him.
She was rather pale, but there was no other evidence of fear, as she knelt by his side and began to unfasten the collar of the stricken man.
“He’s stunned. I don’t think it’s anything worse than that,” said Dick. “I thought at first he was finished—look at his boot!”
He was pulling it off gingerly and the operation must have hurt a little, because the detective winced and opened his eyes.
“Hullo! What has happened?” he asked, looking round. “Did that bird shoot me?”
“I don’t think he’s hurt you very much.” Dick was looking at the foot. The bullet had ricochetted, cutting a shallow gash on the man’s instep, but there was no other injury.
“Do you feel fit enough to look after Miss Gwyn?” said Dick.
The detective reached round for the gun he had dropped and humped himself to his feet. Without another word, Dick raced across the grass-land to the bushes, and the girl watched him in terror, expecting every second to hear the fourth and the fatal shot.
After five minutes he emerged from the bushes, holding something in his hand which he was examining curiously as he walked toward them.
“A Lee-Enfield rifle, army pattern,” he said. “I found these shells.”
He put them into the detective’s hand. Puttler examined the exploded cartridges carefully.
“You didn’t see him, of course?” he said.
“No, I think he must have got round to the back of the house. The bushes ran practically from the west wing of Fossaway Manor to the end of the Mound. He might of course be still hidden in the bushes, but the probability is that he made his getaway as soon as he saw you fall,” said Dick. “I think we’d better go inside and I will find you a pair of shoes, unless you have a spare supply.”
They were halfway to the house when they met Lord Chelford.
“Who was that shooting?” he asked irritably. “Dick, I told you that I did not want rabbit shooting or any other kind of shooting within half a mile of the house. It gets on my nerves terribly. Really, I think you must show a little more consideration.”
The girl had opened her lips to explain when Dick caught her eye, and with splendid mendacity she invented a hurried but effective excuse.
“My fault, Harry. I saw a stoat, and I hate stoats.”
The fact that none of them carried a rifle was unnoticed by Harry.
“Well, of course…” He was obviously taken back by her championship. “If that’s the case it can’t be helped. Only in future, Dick, old boy…”
He walked rapidly back to the house.
“Why shouldn’t he be told?” asked Leslie. Then, realizing the foolishness of the question, she was all penitence. “There is no reason why he should be, of course. I was silly to suggest it. But, Dick, who did such a terrible thing? It couldn’t have been an accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident: of that I can assure you,” said Mr. Puttler, nursing his injury. “The first two shots that were fired hit the tree within three inches of each other. Are you going to notify the local police, Mr. Alford?”
Dick thought for a moment, then decided against that course, and to Leslie’s surprise the detective approved.
“I think you’re right,” said Puttler. “Where is the nearest rifle range?”
“About fifteen miles away,” said Dick sardonically. “You needn’t follow that line of thought.”
“I’m not following any line of thought,” said the detective. “I’m only foreseeing possible alibis. I spend my life standing in front of alibis and waving a red flag.”
Through the tan, Dick’s face was gray. He seemed suddenly to have gone old, and Leslie looked at him anxiously.
“Dick, at whom were they shooting?”
“I don’t know that they were shooting at anybody,” he said wearily. “They just loosed off a few rounds to scare us.”
And then he laughed; it was a fierce, hard little laugh, and she winced at the sound of it.
“I am thinking of Harry and his nerves, and the stoat and every damned ridiculous—— I beg your pardon, Leslie; I’m afraid I’m getting rattled.”
She smiled at this.
“Dick, will you say good-bye to Harry for me? I promised my brother I would come home early. No, really, you need not take me. I’m not at all afraid of being held up by armed desperadoes!”
“Neither am I,” said Dick, “but I don’t fancy you overmuch as a driver.”
And in her annoyance at this false accusation she forgot to resist his escort.
By the time he had returned to the house, Puttler had secured a dressing for his foot. The injury was so slight that he could resume his shoes, and pooh-poohed the suggestion that he had better lie up that night.
“It was a narrow escape,” he said, “but I’m rather glad I got that bullet, and that it didn’t go where it was intended.”
Dick looked at him steadily.
“For whom was it intended?” he asked.
Without hesitation came the reply:
“For Miss Leslie Gwyn: I thought you knew that.”
Dick could find no answer, but in his heart of hearts he knew that Puttler was speaking the truth.
XXVII
Mr. Fabrian Gilder, sometime head clerk to the firm of Gwyn & Gwyn, and now a gentleman of leisure, was in one sense a hard man. He did not forgive even slight injuries, and in the past had gone a long way out of his path to get even with those who had the misfortune to affront him. And Arthur Gwyn had offended beyond hope of forgiveness. A few days before, Gilder would have thought it a very simple matter to be revenged upon his enemy; but now the simple process of laying an information and of preferring a charge of forgery was contingent upon four bills which were in his possession being repudiated by the man who was alleged to have backed them.
He could do no more than present those interesting documents, and this he did through his bank. Dick had already made arrangements for their redemption. It was not entirely an act of philanthropy on his part, for he was a business man, and took over from the frankly reluctant Mr. Gwyn the choice of a number of unsalable shares which Dick regarded as having a certain value. The bills, which had been renewed from time to time, were met, and that ended Mr. Gilder’s chance of carrying his threat into execution.
He was the type of man who thrived on opposition. Though it would be true to say that he had fallen in love with Leslie Gwyn the first time he had seen her, which was months before that unpleasant scene at his flat, his desire for her grew as his chance of winning her receded farther and farther into the background.
On the night that Dick had found him examining the ruins of the Abbey, Mr. Gilder had returned to the cut road when he thought the coast was clear and had discovered yet another in quest of the treasure. He had witnessed the interview between the two men and had followed Arthur back to Willow House with no other intention than to offer his help, for a consideration, in discovering this mythical fortune. For Mr. Gilder had heard quite enough that day he surprised his employer with Mary Wenner, to know that somewhere under the Abbey lay either the fortune or its key. He had overtaken Arthur on the drive, and Arthur was in an unpleasant mood: hot with the man at the interruption of his search, smarting under the sting of Dick Alford’s sarcasm.
At first, startled by the unexpected apparition of his head clerk, Arthur had snarled round on him, and there and then discharged him from his service and defied him to do his worst. It was Gilder who had struck the first blow.
When Arthur was in his more unpleasant moods he said things that no self-respecting man could endure, and the black eye which the lawyer nursed was an advertisement of his indiscretion.
Gilder might be a bookmaker, but he was not a thief. At least, “thief” was rather an extravagant description of his duplicity. He went back to London half crazy with rage, but a day in bed restored his mental equilibrium and he sat down to plan how best he could frustrate any plans which his late employer had formed for gaining possession of the treasure. By this time Gilder, too, was convinced; his last doubts removed. He had been sceptical as to the treasure’s existence, but he knew such things had happened, and he had a natural desire to be in any scheme which produced immediately and without great labour a vast, undreamed-of sum.
His cut lip healed in a few hours, though it was still swollen, and toward the evening of the second day after his retirement from the firm of Gwyn & Gwyn, he dressed himself with great care, and, calling a taxi, drove to an address he had once scribbled on his white shirt-cuff.
Mary Wenner occupied a tiny flat, every compartment of which might have been contained in one large-sized room. It was perched on the top floor of an apartment house near Baker Street—37, Cranston Mansions. She enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the Metropolitan Railway and such shunting operations as are carried out in that busy centre, and she was as a rule free from callers; for there were no elevators in the house, and to climb up four steep flights of stairs was something of an undertaking.
Mr. Gilder was not strong for physical exertion and cursed the parsimonious builder who had neglected to put in this easy method of transportation. Nevertheless, he climbed, and presently was ringing at the polished bell of No. 135.
Mary had a daily servant, who was a charwoman in the morning, a parlour-maid in the afternoon, and her own natural self after six, at which hour she left for the night. This aged woman, with her dingy white cap askew, opened the door and took the card in to her mistress, leaving Mr. Gilder on the mat. She came back with an ingratiating smile, and pointed to the room where Mary was to be found.
“This is an unexpected pleasure, Mr. Gilder,” said Miss Wenner conventionally. “I’m sure I never thought that you would be as good as your word. Sit down, won’t you?”
She really was pretty, he observed; in her plain house dress she was prettier than in a more elaborate attire. The flat, though small, was well but not expensively furnished. It left him with the impression that she had bought everything with her own money and he had rather a nice feeling toward her in consequence. For Fabrian Gilder was a queer mixture of Puritan and adventurer. Later, Mary had her flat to thank for certain pleasant developments.
There was only one chair on which he could sit, and this he took.
“You’d like a cup of tea? I’m just going to have mine,” said Miss Wenner. “I’ve been out all day shopping and everything.”
“Are you—er—working?” asked Gilder delicately.
“No, I’m not in business,” replied Miss Wenner, more correctly. Only common people “work”: the gentility “go to business.”
She went out, disappearing into a mysterious cupboard, which had just enough room for a tiny kitchen table and a gas stove, and he heard the rattle of cup against saucer, the plomp! of a gas ring being lighted, and after a while she came back, a little flushed and apologetic.
“Maids are so stupid, aren’t they?” she asked. “You can never trust these common daily people. I had an awfully nice maid but she went away and got married, the stupid child!”
She received very few visitors, she told him. Her “sewing woman” came twice a week. She had a very dear friend—a girl, she hastened to assure him—who spent Tuesday evenings with her and sometimes slept in the flat. But a male visitor was the rarest of phenomena.
“You can’t be too careful,” said Miss Wenner primly. “A girl’s character is her principal asset—don’t you agree Mr. Gilder?”
Mr. Gilder agreed.
“That is what I have always said about my work with Harry—excuse me, I mean Lord Chelford, only we were such awfully good friends that I’ve never dreamt of calling him anything but by his Christian name.”
“And did you call Richard Alford by his Christian name?” asked Mr. Gilder, not without malice.
Her nose went up in the air.
“Him!” she said contemptuously. “I don’t take any more notice of him than I do of any of the other upper servants! He’s educated and all that—went to Eton and Harrow” (even Mr. Gilder winced at this) “but you judge a man by his manners and not by his education. There’s no doubt at all that Dick Alford has the manners of a pig!”
She said this with feeling and no little vehemence. Mr. Gilder, who knew something of the circumstances, understood and almost sympathized.
“I was going to say that down at Fossaway I often felt that it wasn’t right to be in that big house with no lady there except the housekeeper, who of course is a servant, and—— Oh! here you are, Gladys!”
XXVIII
She rose as Gladys brought in the tea tray and laid it carefully on the table. Gladys was sixty, toothless, and more or less chinless. She wore most of her hair in a bun, which overflowed, drooping over her neck in picturesque confusion. Gladys had the smile of one who enjoyed the privilege of entertaining a visitor. She smiled at the girl, smiled at Mr. Gilder, and smiled herself out of the room. Fabrian Gilder thought he had never seen a more ghastly exhibition.
“You’re a good friend of Gwyn’s, aren’t you?” he asked, as he sipped his tea.
She dropped her eyes in maidenly embarrassment.
“We are rather good friends, but no more. We may be something closer—who knows? He has always behaved like a perfect gentleman and treated me like a lady. I must say that for Arthur. But he’s a little trying; don’t you find him so?” she asked, with a girlish naïveté that was a little overdone.
“I have left him,” said Mr. Gilder briefly. “He and I disagreed over a question of policy and I retired. In fact, we had a very bad row and came to blows—I tell you this because you’ll probably learn the facts from him sooner or later.”
Mary was shocked; and when Mary was shocked she covered her rather generous mouth with her two small white hands.
“You don’t tell me!” she said in a hushed voice. “Blows! Is that it?” She nodded her head to his lip.
“That’s it,” said Gilder shortly.
“Blows!” repeated Mary Wenner. “How perfectly disgusting and vulgar!”
“I wanted to talk to you about Arthur Gwyn,” Gilder broke in upon her horrified wonder. “We’re not good friends, but that doesn’t mean I bear him any malice. But, naturally, as we are parted, I don’t feel called upon to protect him and stand between him and his dupes”—he emphasized the last word—“as I have done in the past. You know him as well as I do,” he went on, as she was about to speak. “You know his vanity; you know how perfectly unreliable and insincere he is; you know, too, that he’d get out of any promise he ever made, even if it was in black and white.”
He was watching her narrowly all the time he spoke, and now he saw her eyebrows arch.
“Indeed?” she said coldly. “I don’t know anything about the law, but I can’t see how a gentleman, or a common man for the matter of that, could get out of—what is the expression—legal obligations?”
“Then you don’t know Arthur Gwyn as well as I do,” he said. “But that is beside the point. I haven’t come here to blackguard him or to make him look smaller in your eyes. Not that I could,” he said, anticipating her protest a little ambiguously. “But I believe in a girl having a square deal, especially a working girl who may have nobody in the world to look after her interests. And I tell you that that fellow couldn’t go straight if he was fired from a gun. Now, what about the Chelford treasure?”
At the words she sat bolt upright, and a look of blank astonishment came to her face.
“Do you know?” she gasped.
“Of course I know! You’re going to help him find the gold, and in return——” He paused.
That was exactly what he had come to find out. What obligation had Arthur undertaken in return for the information she would give him? And he was pretty sure of his ground. He knew the girl; had had some dealings with her when she was with Chelford; and since he lived on his knowledge of human beings, he had analyzed her with more or less accuracy. He knew her vanity, her ambition; had heard something of her summary discharge from Fossaway Manor. There was only one reward that Arthur Gwyn could offer.
“He has promised to marry you,” he said, and he was not altogether drawing a bow at a venture.
“Did he tell you that?” she said, with a little catch in her voice. “I hope you don’t think, Mr. Gilder, that I’ve thrown myself at his head? That I wouldn’t do for the best man in the world.” She looked at him thoughtfully, and added: “Old or young. I trust Arthur as a gentleman to fulfil any promise he has made. I am going to do something for him that will make all the difference in the world——”
“When is he going to marry you? After the treasure is discovered, I suppose?”
She nodded.
“He will have to marry me then,” she said.
“I realize that. You’re a girl that has to make her way in the world without influence, and possibly without friends.” Mr. Gilder knew he was on the right tack here. “He can offer you a position and you can offer him money. After all, that is exactly what his sister is doing, and nobody thinks any worse of her for that.”
“Exactly,” murmured Miss Wenner, who had never seen the matter in that light before.
“The point I want to make is this,” he went on: “What bond has he given you?”
“His word of honour,” said Miss Wenner dramatically.
“I daresay. But what valuable bond has he given you?”
“I’ll show you.”
She went into the next room, which was evidently her bedroom, and, returning with her bag, placed it on her knee, opened the flap, and took out, amongst other things, a slip of paper, which she passed across to Mr. Gilder. He read it at a glance, noted the careful emendation which Arthur had made, and passed it back.
“That is valueless,” he said, and her face fell. “What is to prevent his going to Chelford and striking a bargain with him? Where do you come in then? Besides, this is what is known in law as a promise under duress—that is to say, under compulsion. If he is acting in the interests of his client, he can plead that he had to make this promise in order to secure information which you were illegally withholding.”
She stared at him.
“It’s not illegal to know and not to tell?”
He nodded.
“To know of the existence of hidden treasure and to withhold your information is a crime in some countries, and I daresay it is in England. But that’s beside the point. Where do you come in, Miss Wenner?”
She bit her lip thoughtfully.
“I never saw it in that way,” she confessed. “What can I do, Mr. Gilder?”
He felt inclined to offer the obvious solution, “Get him to marry you first,” but changed his mind. Mary Wenner married would be a useless ally.
At the back of his mind he was certain that this rather vulgar girl—for he had a nice and finicking taste in the matter of women—had discovered the Chelford millions. If he had not had this belief he would not have made his call. He believed that by some accident, or by reason of her close association with Harry Chelford, she had unveiled the mystery of the lost gold; and his object now was to discover how far his theory was justified by facts.
“Is there no way of making that agreement more binding, Mr. Gilder?” she asked. “You’re a lawyer—couldn’t you draw up something he wouldn’t wriggle out of? Naturally, I’m too much of a lady to want any man to marry me, if he doesn’t want to marry me. If he just hinted as much I should tell him to go—I should simply say, ‘Oh, very well, I’m not at all anxious to marry, thank you very much.’ I think a girl who throws herself at a man’s head is despicable, don’t you, Mr. Gilder?”
He did not answer this query.
“I could draw you up an agreement that would be legally binding, but I doubt if even that would help you. Why trust him at all?” he asked bluntly.
She dropped her eyes at this.
“Who—or rather whom—could I trust?” she asked, and took an invisible crumb off her dress. “This is such an awful world, and men are so very deceitful, Mr. Gilder. The young ones are the worst, of course, but they haven’t experience. I do think that a man isn’t in the prime of life till he’s about forty-five.” She waited. “Or fifty. He’s sort of settled down and sowed his wild oats, and he doesn’t want to go out at nights and all that. And I’ll admit that Arthur is flighty. I wouldn’t tell it to anybody but you, but he tried to kiss me any number of times, and he once said the most terrible thing to me at Fossaway Manor. I said to him: ‘Arthur, you seem to forget that you’re speaking to a lady,’ and he just curled up and died, if you understand me. I don’t mean that he actually perished——”
“I understand what you mean,” said Gilder, and went on to make his most startling revelation. “Now, listen, Miss Wenner. You’re a sensible girl and I can talk to you as I could talk to very few people.”
This cliché of intensive flattery, which so seldom fails even when employed upon intelligent people, produced in Miss Wenner the strained attentiveness which was called for.
“Suppose I tell you,” said Fabrian Gilder darkly, “that Gwyn is already trying to anticipate your discovery?”
“I beg your pardon?” Mary Wenner was not very strong on the more flowery expressions of speech.
“Suppose he’s trying to get ahead of you—trying to find the gold without your assistance?”
“He wouldn’t dare!” she gasped.
Mr. Gilder nodded very slowly, very deliberately.
“He has already tried,” he said. “Two nights ago I was watching him, suspecting his plan. He went at three o’clock in the morning to the ruins of Chelford Abbey, and he took with him a crowbar.…”
Whilst he was speaking, the red in her face deepened and the wide-opened eyes grew brighter.
“The hound!” she breathed. “The twisting, double-faced monkey!”
It was not a ladylike expression, but for the moment she was superior to shame.
“The dirty, thieving, twisting sneak! To the Abbey—with a crowbar! I’ll take my oath on a Bible that I never breathed a word of where it was hid—I mean hidden. Let him go with his crowbar—ha-ha!” She laughed shrilly, but gave no other evidence of supreme amusement. “I’ll crowbar him! Let him search and scrape and dig and see what he can find.”
He tried to soothe her, but for the moment her soul was breaking in tumultuous waves upon the muddy flats of Arthur’s duplicity.
“He has deceived me! I don’t mean in an unladylike way—I mean—you know what I mean, Mr. Gilder? I trusted that man. I gave him all my heart.” The sob came naturally, but it was largely due to intensified annoyance. “I gave him all that a woman could give a man—information I mean, Mr. Gilder. I don’t want you to get any wrong ideas about me, because I’ve always behaved like a lady, and nobody can point their fingers of scorn at me.”
She grew calm after a while.
“Who can you trust?” she asked bitterly. “Who—can—you—trust?”
“You can trust me.” Fabrian Gilder’s voice was very gentle, almost pleading.
He was rather a good-looking man, she observed; his gray hair gave him distinction.
“You wouldn’t want a legal document from me.…”
“Yes, I would,” she said obstinately. “I don’t trust men.”
“You shall have any document you wish. I will even go as far as compromising myself hopelessly.”
She coughed.
“I don’t think I should go quite as far as that,” she said, misunderstanding him.
“I mean that I would take the risk of detection without safeguarding myself as Arthur Gwyn has done.”
She dabbed her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief.
“Of course, Mr. Gilder—I don’t know you very well, but I’m not going to say that I don’t like you. I’ve always said to Agatha—my Tuesday friend, as I call her—‘Mr. Gilder’s a perfect gentleman.’ In fact, I’m—Mr. Gilder, what is your Christian name?”
“Fabrian,” he said.
She lingered tenderly over the word and smiled, a wistful sideways smile.
“I should call you Fabe, I suppose? It’s a perfectly lovely name.… As I was saying, I don’t want to throw myself at any man’s head.”
“Let us go down to-night.”
Her face changed.
“To the Abbey—to-night?”
He nodded.
“My car will get us down in an hour and a half, and we can wait till it’s dark; and unless there’s a lot of digging to be done——”
“There is no digging,” she said. “But to-night?”
“Why not?” he demanded. “My cottage is less than a mile from the Abbey. If the gold is there and reachable, we could get away with enough to make us rich for life.”
She pondered this, and then:
“I know you’ll think it horrid of me, Mr. Gilder—Fabe—that does sound familiar, doesn’t it?—but I would like something in black and white.”
There and then Mr. Fabrian Gilder produced a document that was enough, as he observed jocularly, to hang him, and, reading it, even Mary Wenner, with her keen instinct for safeguards, was impressed. He wrote the agreement with his own fountain pen, on paper which he provided, and he had brought along that pen in his pocket with a view to such a contingency. It was a new pen, filled with an ink that he had purchased at a novelty store in Wardour Street, and which was guaranteed to fade within six hours of writing.
Miss Wenner read it through, folded it, and put it into her bag, and disappeared into her bedroom. She came back with the bag, but he guessed that the agreement was disposed in some safe place.
“Now, Fabe, what time do you want to start?”
“At nine-thirty?” he suggested, and she nodded.
“And don’t trouble to bring a crowbar,” she said a little viciously, as she remembered Arthur Gwyn’s rank treachery. “I’ll carry all the tools we want in my bag.”
XXIX
The weather had changed that afternoon. Big black clouds had come up from the west; a steady drizzle of rain had set in when Fabrian Gilder brought his car to the rendezvous in Marylebone Road. He had pulled up the hood, and, as a matter of precaution, he had cleared out every portable thing from the tonneau. If there was gold he must find room for it, and he made a careful calculation as to the weight he could carry on each journey.
He was surprised at himself that he had accepted as a fact so readily that there was gold to be taken. From the girl he learned for the first time the extent of the treasure. He had inquired casually of his garage man the amount of strain the back axle would stand. That was unnecessary, for he had once driven four fairly heavy men a considerable journey. Supposing they weighted 170 pounds, that would be the equivalent of twenty bars of gold.
It was nearly ten before the girl appeared. She was wearing a long raincoat and stepped into the seat by his side with a voluble apology.
“I nearly didn’t come,” she said. “I only just remembered after you’d gone that awful Black Abbot.”
He was a little amused.
“You don’t believe in that kind of hokum, do you?” he asked, as the car went swiftly down Baker Street.
“I don’t know.” She was dubious. “He did appear once or twice when I was at the Manor, but we used to believe that these were villagers’ stories. According to the newspapers, they’ve seen more of him lately—ugh!” She shivered.
He tapped his pocket significantly with his hand.
“I’ve got something here that’s mighty bad for abbots black or white!” he said. “Don’t you worry, little girl.”
“No, Fabe,” she said meekly.
Very delicately he suggested that she might call him by the Christian name his parents had given him. There was no diminutive, he explained, and excused his correction by telling her that there was a possibility that she might address him and he would not know to whom she was speaking.
“I don’t believe in long engagements, do you?” She went off at a tangent.
“No, I don’t. They should be short—and sweet!”
They both laughed together, and were in excellent humour by the time they reached the deserted streets of Dorking.
“I only have one anxiety,” he told her. “Mr. Richard Alford has got a habit of prowling round at odd hours. On a night like this he’ll hardly leave his comfortable apartment.”
“Comfortable apartment!” she scoffed. “Why, he’s only got a tiny little office, and his bedroom’s not much bigger than mine. I simply detest the man. He gives himself more airs in a day than dear Harry gives himself in ten years—you don’t mind me saying ‘dear Harry?’ You’re not jealous, are you?”
He assured her he was not at all jealous.
“I should have married Harry if it hadn’t been for him. Harry was simply crazy about me, but Dick hated me—how that man hated me! Mind you, I’ve always snubbed him when he got a little too fresh. I don’t say that he was chasing me—I hate girls who think every man is after them—but he was certainly very attentive once or twice. After lunch or dinner he’d get up and open the door for me, and that’s a thing that Harry never did. But of course I saw through it. It was all deceit and artfulness.”
She chattered at rare intervals, except during the five miles of driving rain that forced its way under the cover and lashed her face.
“It’s a horrible night,” she complained.
“On the contrary, it’s one of the best nights I could have chosen even if I had the ordering of the weather,” said Mr. Gilder.
When they reached the secondary road that led to Chelfordbury he proceeded with greater caution, extinguishing the flaming headlamps and relying upon the two small lights that were placed on the front mudguard. He knew the road so well that there was no danger of mishap; his chief anxiety was that he should not, by the reflected rays of the bigger headlights, be recognized.
A mile from Fossaway Manor he switched out the remaining two lights, for he had a shrewd idea that this section of the road was visible from Lord Chelford’s house. To the nervous girl riding at his side, it seemed that they were in imminent danger every minute of colliding with one of the telegraph posts which ran along the side of the road. Happily she was not aware that the smaller lamps had been extinguished.
“Don’t worry,” he assured her. “I know every inch of this road; I’ve driven up it a hundred times. My cottage lies just beyond Willow House.”
The car, which had been moving silently and smoothly, began to slow as it went up the hill that led to Fontwell Cutting. He switched off the engine, and, jamming on the brakes, got out and opened the gate into Red Farm field. Then, walking alongside the car, he released the brakes and guided it to the place where Dick had found the machine a few nights before.
“Here we are,” he said.
He took her arm; she was shivering, and when she spoke he heard the chatter of her teeth.
“I wish I hadn’t come,” she said, started, and pointed into the dark. “What is that over there?” she whispered fearfully.
“A pollard willow,” he said. “Really, there’s nothing to be afraid of—Mary.”
“I don’t know about that,” she quavered. “Don’t let go of my arm, will you? Have you got a pistol?”
He assured her that he had.
Through the little gate, which he knew was unlocked, up the steep and slippery slope, and immediately ahead of them in the darkness were the solemn ruins.
“I’d rather not show a light,” he said in a low voice. “That was how Gwyn was discovered. Do you know your way?”
“If I can see the tower,” she suggested.
Stooping down to get an artificial skyline, he saw the bulk of the ruined tower and guided her forward. Once she stumbled over a heap of stones and would have screamed if his hand had not covered her mouth.
“For God’s sake, be careful!” he urged. “Now, how do we get to the vault?”
“Wait.” She released his arm and went toward the wall of the tower. He saw her once more, when she was groping her way round. Presently she whispered: “Come along.”
He followed her and reaching out her hand she took his.
“There’s a step down,” she whispered.
They were going into the tower, although he did not remember having seen any opening. He heard a rusty squeak.…
“It’s very narrow; you’ll have to squeeze through.”
The opening, he judged, was about a foot wide, and he had some trouble to pass the obstacle.
“It’s a big corner stone,” she said, in a low voice. “It swings round and opens like a door. It’s the way the old Abbot used to go out when he carried on with Lady Chelford—you’ve heard that bit of scandal, I suppose?”
The “bit of scandal” was some eight hundred years old and was news to him.
“If you’ve got a lamp you can put it on.”
He pulled out his torch and turned the switch. They were in a tiny stone chamber at the top of a circular flight of moss-grown stairs. Above was a vaulted roof, which seemed to be cut out of one piece of stone, as it might well be, for the interior measurements of the tower could not have been much more than four by five. The thickness of the walls he could judge; they had been built in the days when walls had other functions than to support a roof.
“Come along.” She led the way, stepping gingerly on the slithery moss.
He counted twenty-five steps, and then they were in a large stone chamber, so weatherworn that it seemed to be a natural cave. Walls and roof had lost their symmetry, and only the square of it told him that it was the work of man’s hands.
“Have you got the key?”
He nodded. Many years before, Gwyn & Gwyn had defended a famous burglar and had secured his acquittal on a technical error in the indictment. In reward he had presented to his lawyer a key which he claimed would open any door, big or small. It was a curious contrivance, consisting of a steel rod into the end of which strangely shaped projections could be screwed. Arthur had given it to his head clerk as a souvenir, having no interest in such matters himself, and rather scandalized that the firm was engaged in so discreditable a business as defending a burglar. This souvenir had now become an instrument of providence.
“Here is the place.” She still spoke in a whisper, though it was hardly likely they could be overheard.
In each corner of the room, facing them as they turned from the foot of the stairs, was a small, narrow door, deeply recessed. They reminded Mr. Gilder of the cell doors in Dartmoor, and there was a further likeness in another respect. Near the top of the left-hand door was a tiny iron grille, consisting of three rusted bars.
“Look!” she whispered.
He flashed the light of the lamp inside, where a deep, narrow cavern showed, along two sides of which ran a stone bench, and on the bench were innumerable cylinders of significant shape. He inspected the nearest; there was a curious seal at one end.
Fabrian Gilder’s heart beat faster. The girl’s hand that held his arm tightly was trembling.
“I’m so frightened,” she whimpered.
“What are you frightened about?”
“I’m so afraid of that awful Black Abbot.” She was on the verge of hysterical breakdown. He must work quickly.
He was fitting one of the accessories to the rod, and he pushed it in the big keyhole and turned. There was a grind and a click, but when he pulled the door it was fast. Again he tried, fitting another steel accessory, and on the third attempt the key turned with a horrible squeak, and he pulled the door open.
As he did so, the girl gripped his arm frenziedly.
“Look! Oh, my God! Look!” she screamed, and he turned.
Standing at the foot of the stairs was a figure in black, his face hidden under a long cowl. Two eyes they saw, gleaming feverishly upon them. Terrible, menacing, the Black Abbot was coldly surveying them!
XXX
With an oath, Gilder whipped a pistol from his pocket, but in doing so the beam of his lamp fell for a second. When he brought it up again, pistol extended, the figure had vanished.
“Don’t go, don’t go!” she shrieked, gripping his arm. “Oh, Mr. Gilder! Oh, Fabrian—don’t leave me!”
He thrust her aside and ran to the foot of the winding stairs and went cautiously up. He heard the sobbing breath of the girl coming behind him.
“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me in the dark!” she sobbed.
Higher, higher, cautious, watchful, but no sign of a black habit. The little room above was as they had left it; the tiny slit of a door was open.
Brushing past him, the girl stumbled and staggered into the open air and collapsed on to her knees.
“Take me away! Take me away!” she raved. “I wish I had never come!”
Gilder turned with a curse and swung the stone door close, then, half-carrying, half-dragging her, beside himself with fury, in which was mingled no little fear, he brought her to the road and to the car.
The rain was pouring down. He pushed back the hood of the car savagely, so that the full force of the storm should beat upon her—he dare not allow himself to be burdened with a fainting girl. He would take her back to her flat and leave her—there would be plenty of time for him to return and investigate those cylinders.
As for the Black Abbot… he breathed a little more quickly when he thought of that terrifying appearance. Whoever it was—and that it was human he did not doubt—would live to regret this night’s interference.
By the time they reached Horsham, the girl, drenched to the skin, cold and shivering, had got back a little of her balance. Her teeth were chattering, but not with fear. She was inclined to be garrulous, but he answered in monosyllables or not at all.
“I wonder I didn’t die,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything so perfectly horribly ghastly! Did you see the way his eyes glared? They looked as if they were alight, didn’t they, Fabe?”
“Fabrian,” he snapped.
“I never saw anything like it, not even in the pictures,” said Miss Wenner. “Couldn’t we have the hood up, Fabe—Fabrian?”
He stopped the car with a jerk, pulled up the hood and fastened it.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m taking you home. We’ll make another attempt to-morrow night. By the way, how did you get that stone corner piece to turn?”
“I can’t tell you that, Fabrian,” she said firmly and truly. “That’s my only hold over you.”
“Don’t be stupid. You used a bodkin or something, didn’t you? I noticed there was a space between two stones which looked to be artificial.”
“A pair of scissors,” she said. “There’s an iron catch inside that slit—I only found it by accident.”
He knew all he wanted to know now; could dispense with her for the rest of the night, forever, as it happened. He declined her invitation to come upstairs for a drink, and no sooner was she out of sight than he was flying back into Sussex.
Halfway between Dorking and Leatherhead, his gasoline gave out, and he had to wait on the charity of a passing motorist, and it was not a night when traffic was very thick. At last he found a good Samaritan who gave him enough to take the machine to the nearest filling station, and at Dorking, with his tank replenished and a few extra tins against emergency, he went on confidently.
Two o’clock showed on the illuminated dial of his watch when he backed the car into the field and mounted the slope to the ruins. From here onward he moved noiselessly, one step at a time, stopping every few paces to listen. But there was no sign or sound of the cowled figure.
He found the corner of the tower, with his penknife pressed back the catch, and, pulling at the rough stone, the edges of which crumbled in his hand, he opened the door.
Stopping only to examine the upper chamber, he went slowly down the stairs, his pistol in one hand, his lamp in the other. There was no sign of the intruder, but——
The door of the treasure house was closed. He pulled, and it swung open. Flashing his lamp into the long, narrow cell, he saw something that sent the blood from his face. The “ingots” had disappeared, every one of them! Neither the bench to the left nor right held a single cylinder. Beads of perspiration were running down his face as he turned, and it would have been death to any human spook who opposed him, for his heart was bitter against whosoever it was had checked his enterprise.
He made another inspection of the underground chamber. Unlike its fellow, the second door in the opposite corner of the room was solid. Neither peephole nor grating gave a view into the room it guarded. He guessed that behind the nail-studded portal was a room similar to that in which the cylinders had been stored. Trying his key on the lock, he could produce no result. He put his shoulder to the oaken face but the door did not budge by so much as a fraction of an inch.
Before this room the flooring consisted of a long slab of stone that ran without a break to the centre of the apartment, and was the exact width of the narrow doorway. Had this any significance? Kneeling, he examined the stone carefully. It was different from the rest of the paving. The broken stones that formed the floor of the room were worn smooth by the passage of generations of men; this oblong strip was rough-dressed, more like the underside of a paving stone than its chiselled surface. He stamped on one end and felt it give ever so slightly; stamped on the other end and had a like experience. In the middle ran a staple, balancing the stone, and beneath there was a hollow space. Some day or night he would come along and conduct a more careful inspection.…
He came into the upper room to confront a more urgent problem. Just as he was about to extinguish his lamp preparatory to passing through the opening, he saw the stone move. Before he could spring forward it had thudded into its place. From somewhere outside he heard an unearthly chuckle of laughter.
Trapped! He pushed at the door, but it was inflexible. Inch by inch he examined its surface. There must be an opening somewhere, he thought. He remembered the story of the amorous Abbot and his clandestine excursions. It was certain that a means existed for opening the door from the inside.
He searched the wall; nothing appeared. And then it occurred to him to send his light slowly along the floor, which was made up of broken flagstones. One, smaller than the others, attracted his attention, because it lay at a truer level than the rest, and he tugged at its end, and, with great effort, pulled it up. Beneath he saw a great iron ring, so rusted that it was almost razor-thin. With his handkerchief he gripped it and pulled. It gave a little, and, as it did, he saw the door move. Again he strained at the handle and slowly it came up; although the door had moved only an inch he knew it was clear of the invisible catch which held it. Running to the stone, he pressed with all his might. It swung open and he came staggering out into the eerie light of dawn.
The storm had passed; overhead, the stars were shining in the paling sky. Far away to his left a wisp of smoke curled up from the twisted chimneys of Fossaway Manor. Fabrian Gilder wiped his hot face and strove to overcome the bitterness of his defeat. And then, at his feet, he saw something and, stooping with a cry, picked it up. It was one of the cylinders, heavy and laden, that had been dropped by those who had cleared the vault. It was not heavy enough for gold. He knew that at once. The cover was of lead. He tore away the seal, expecting to find an opening, but the cylinder had been sealed at both ends. He carried it quickly down the slope, and in the shelter of the cut road he took out his knife and slit the thin lead end, and pulled out a tightly rolled sheet of parchment. He opened it and stared. It was an ancient missal, beautifully painted and, as a work of art, priceless, but a poor substitute for thirty-five pounds weight of solid gold!