XX
The Second Son climbed the fence, though the gate was near enough, and, passing the Abbey ruins, walked briskly toward Fossaway Manor. His way brought him past the wing of the house in which his brother’s library was situated. One of the big leaded windows was open and he caught a glimpse of Harry at his desk, sitting in the half light, his head on his hands, a book before him. Dick sighed and continued on his way.
Thomas, the footman, answered the bell he rang.
“Get me some coffee and biscuits. I shall be working late,” he said.
When the man had gone, he went to his desk and unlocked the post bag that had come up from the station that night and shook out a heap of letters. He sorted them over carefully, and, selecting one, opened it. The letter bore the Royal crest and the plain address “New Scotland Yard,” and was from an old school friend of his:
Dear Dick:
Thank you for your rather extraordinary letter, but I am afraid we can do nothing for you officially. Private detectives, of course, are punk for your purpose, and the best I can do for you is as follows. We have a detective sergeant at headquarters named Puttler—you may have seen his name in connection with the Hatton Garden robbery. He’s a very efficient man and marked for promotion, but rather a weird-looking bird. At the Yard we call him “Monkey Puttler,” though he is universally liked in spite of this unflattering sobriquet. Puttler never takes any kind of holiday, and is generally supposed to spend his spare time in criminal investigation and to sleep in an odd corner of the Yard. He is entitled to six weeks’ holiday leave. Of course, in ordinary circumstances he would never dream of taking six minutes, but I have had a talk with him, and with the complete approval of our chief (it was necessary to tell him what you wanted) Puttler will spend his holiday at Fossaway Manor. As I said before, he is rather a queer-looking creature, a rabid teetotaller, a strong churchman, with violent views on church music. You can rely absolutely upon his discretion. I’ve told him that you will pay him ten pounds a week and all his expenses. I only wish I could let you have him permanently, but I trust that in six weeks your trouble will be cleared up.
Dick put the letter carefully in his inside pocket, and, walking across the hall, went into the library. Lord Chelford heard the door close and looked up.
“Hullo, Dick!” he said, quite amiably. “What is the news?”
Before he answered, Dick Alford walked to the window through which he had seen his brother, pulled it close, and fastened the lock.
“What is wrong?” growled Chelford.
“Our monkish friend has been seen,” he said, “and I think it advisable that your window should be kept closed.”
Harry Chelford’s hand went up to his lips.
“Can’t we do anything with that fellow?” he asked fretfully. “Where are the police? What do we pay them for? It’s monstrous that the countryside should be terrified by… Really, Dick, couldn’t you do something?”
“The police are doing everything that can be done,” Dick replied.
He charged his pipe carefully and lit it with a match which he took from a silver container on Harry’s table.
“I’ve been over to see Leslie,” he said. “Put away that infernal book and talk.”
With evident reluctance Lord Chelford closed the thick tome over which he had been poring and leaned back in his chair with an air of resignation.
“Leslie? I don’t see very much of her,” he said. “She’s a very intelligent girl and knows how busy I am. Not every woman would show so much understanding. Did you see Arthur?”
Dick nodded.
“I had a ’phone message saying that he was coming over in the morning. He wants me to sign some documents in connection with Leslie’s estate—good fellow, Arthur.”
“Very,” said Dick, without a trace of sarcasm in his voice.
“Yes, I owe a lot to Arthur.” Harry looked up through his horn-rimmed spectacles and nodded as he spoke. “I shouldn’t have met Leslie, and certainly I shouldn’t have had any idea of marrying,” he went on naïvely, “but Arthur was very keen to get a husband for her who wasn’t a fortune-hunter. And of course, the money will be useful.”
Dick listened patiently to this disjointed explanation for the forthcoming marriage. He had heard it before in identically the same terms.
“Why do you want to marry money at all?” he asked. “We’re not paupers.”
Harry Chelford shrugged his thin shoulders.
“I suppose we’re not,” he said indifferently. “I never bother about the money side. You’re such a clever old bird, Dick, that I’m spared that. By heavens, I don’t know where I should be if it wasn’t for you. Do you get all you want yourself, Dicky?”
Dick Alford nodded.
“A nice girl,” his brother went on, “and, as I say, a sensible girl. I wish you’d get her over to dinner one night; there are several things I want to talk about to Arthur. There’s the Doncaster estate, for example. I had a letter from somebody the other day, saying that they were willing to pay a very big price for Creethorpes. I don’t see any reason in the world why we shouldn’t sell.”
“But I do,” said Dick, puffing slowly at his pipe. “I also have had the offer, and when I get one that approximates to my eyes as being near the Creethorpes value, we may sell. But the price that has been offered is ludicrous.”
“A hundred and twenty thousand pounds?” murmured Lord Chelford, shaking his head disparagingly. “I don’t see how you can improve on that, Dick.”
“We can try,” said Dick.
His eyes were roaming the desk, and after a while he saw a book which was seldom far away from his brother’s hand, and, getting up, he reached over and took it, Chelford watching with a triumphant smile.
“It’s got you, has it, old man?” he asked. “I thought it would sooner or later. You’re too sensible to dismiss the Chelford treasure as a myth.”
Dick turned the old pages covered with pale writing: the diary of that lord of Chelford who had suffered for his disloyalty at the hands of the common headman.
The idea had come to him in the middle of the previous night, and all that day the old diary had come in and out of his mind at odd and incongruous moments. Whilst it was not true that he had been won over to his brother’s faith in the existence of the treasure, his curiosity had been piqued by a vague recollection of one line in the diary. He turned it up now and read:
These ingots he shall put away in the safe place if yet the weather be dry and the drought continue, though rain is near at hand.…
“I am only wondering,” he said, as he handed back the book, “what effect the drought had upon the hiding place; why rain would have spoilt his plan, as apparently it would.”
“Ha-ha!” said his lordship, almost boisterously. “The poison is working, Richard! You will become as ardent a treasure-hunter as I. Shall I tell you where the gold was hidden?” He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his eyes gleaming. “In a cave, or an underground chamber of some kind. There are three references in this diary to a chesil.” He turned the pages rapidly. “Listen, here is one,” he said, and read:
“This day Tom Goodman brought me the chesil from Brighthelmstone.…”
“Which is Brighton, I presume?” asked Dick.
His brother nodded, turning the pages.
“Here is another reference,” he said.
“The new chesil has come. I have left it near the place and those dull wights who see it will know little of its value to me.”
Dick smiled.
“It must have been something remarkable in the way of chesils,” he said. “It doesn’t mention its size or its shape?”
“Nowhere; I have searched the diary for that.”
There came a tap at the door; it was Thomas.
“Will you have your coffee here, sir?”
“No, put it in my room.”
“Are you working to-night, Dick?” asked Chelford.
“After you’ve gone to bed, Harry,” said Dick, with a laugh, “and I think it is about time you went. One of these days you’ll have a breakdown and I’ll have to call in your pet abomination.”
“Ugh!” shivered Chelford. “Never bring a doctor into this house—I loathe them!”
He got up, stretched himself with a yawn, and Dick followed him out of the room.
“I shall sleep well to-night,” said his lordship, pushing back his long black hair with a characteristic gesture. “If I’d only known of that stuff before!”
“What stuff is this?” asked Dick good-humouredly.
Never a day passed that some new patent medicine did not come into the house, some cure-all, accompanied by pages of closely printed literature. Lord Chelford’s patent-medicine habit was a vicious circle. The literature of one cure-all revealed symptoms of which he had never been conscious before. No sooner had he settled upon a miraculous nostrum than it was superseded by one even more dazzling in its promises.
Dick followed him up the stairs into the long room where he spent the few hours he could tear himself away from his library. A four-poster bed, an old dressing chest, a deep closet in which his scanty wardrobe hung, and a very long table, the surface of which was literally covered with bottles and small boxes, comprised the furniture of his room, with the exception of a battered armchair before the fireplace. There must have been more than a hundred boxes and packages on the table. Some of these came in consequence of standing orders given years before and never countermanded: these had never been opened. There were cures for asthma, for bronchitis, for rheumatism, marvellous liniments, amazing sleep-inducers, nerve tonics—every disease to which the human system is liable had its antidote in that collection.
By the side of his bed on a small table was a jug of hot water and a glass. Chelford opened a tin chosen from the medley of bottles and boxes, took out two small white pellets and dropped them into a glass, covering them with water. He stirred them till they were dissolved, Dick watching, half amused, half pitiful.
“Ah!” Chelford put down the glass. “That’s the stuff! No drugs, Dick—just a mixture of natural elements that bring rest to the tired brain and sleep to weary eyes!”
“I guess you’re quoting the label,” said Dick, with a laugh. “Even cocaine is a natural element. And there’s nothing nearer to nature than morphia. You’re an old goop, Harry, and if I had my way I’d take all these infernal bottles and dump them into the round pond.”
“I should probably be dead in a month,” said Harry with a smile, as he began to undress, “and you’d have to stand your trial for wilful murder!”
Dick closed the door behind him, waited till he heard the bolt shot home, then went downstairs to his own room. His coffee was waiting and he began his three-hour task: the opening and answering of letters, the examination of leaflets and the inspection of bills. There were checks to be signed, envelopes to be addressed, and it was nearly three o’clock before he rose stiffly, and, pushing open the door of the French windows, walked out upon the lawn.