Part 2

He glanced out at the lawn, bathed in the blue-white rays of a full moon.

“You can see things in the moonlight that never were on land or sea. I understood that his lordship said that the Black Abbot was not to be discussed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then shut up!” said Dick.

Pipe in mouth, he strolled across the hall into the dimly lit library.

The three electroliers that hung from the roof were dark. Only the two green-shaded reading lamps that flanked each side of the desk were alight, and these intensified the gloom. Dick closed the door behind him and lounged over toward the desk, pulling a chair behind him.

Chelford frowned at the sight of his brother.

“Really, Dick,” he said irritably, “I wish to heaven you wouldn’t loaf about the place in shirt and breeches. It looks fearfully bad.”

“It feels fearfully cool,” said Dick, sitting down. “Will your nerves sustain the smell of a bit of honest baccy?”

Lord Chelford moved uncomfortably in his chair. Then, reaching out his hand, he snicked open a gold box and took out a cigarette.

“My pipe against your stinkers for a hundred pounds!” said Dick, with a cheery smile. “Cigarettes I can stand, but scented cigarettes----”

“If you don’t like them, Dick, you can go out,” grumbled his lordship fretfully. And then in his abrupt way: “Did you see this newspaper cutting?”

He pulled the paper from under the crystal weight and Dick skimmed the lines.

“We are getting into the public eye, Harry,” he said, “but there is nothing about me--which is unkind.”

“Don’t be stupid. How did that get into the papers?”

“How does anything get into the papers?” asked Dick lazily. “Our spook is almost as useful as a press agent.”

Harry snapped round on him.

“Can’t you take this seriously? Don’t you see that it is worrying me to death? You know the state of my nerves--you have no sympathy, Dick, you’re just as hard as rock! Everybody seems to hate the sight of you.”

Dick pulled at his pipe glumly.

“That is my unfortunate character. I am afraid I am getting efficient. That is the only way I can account for my unpopularity. It keeps me awake at nights----”

“Don’t fool, for heaven’s sake!”

“I’m serious now,” murmured Dick, closing his eyes: “try me with a hymn!”

Harry Chelford turned away with a gesture of utter weariness, fingered the manuscript at his hand, and gazed from his brother to the door. It was a gesture of dismissal and Dick rose.

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough work for to-night, Harry?” he asked gently. “You look absolutely all in.”

“I never felt better in my life,” said the other emphatically.

Dick slewed round his head to read the printed page from which his elder brother had been copying, and saw at once that his effort was in vain; the book was written in Old German, and Dick’s linguistic abilities ended at a mastery of restaurant French. Lord Chelford put down the book with a sigh and sat back in his padded chair.

“I suppose you think I’m a fool wasting my time on this”--he raised his hand toward the serried shelves--“when I could be having a very amusing time with Leslie?”

Dick nodded.

“Yes, I think you might be more profitably employed out of doors. Really, for a bridegroom-to-be, you’re the worst slacker I’ve ever struck.”

There was a superiority in Harry Chelford’s smile.

“Happily, Leslie knows she is marrying a bookworm and not an athlete,” he said, and, rising, walked over to where Dick was sitting and dropped his hand on his shoulder. “What would you say if I told you that I was halfway to discovering the real Chelford Treasure?”

Dick knew exactly what he would say, but replied diplomatically:

“I should say you were three parts on the way to discovering the philosopher’s stone,” he said.

But his brother was serious. He paced up and down the long library, his hands behind him, his chin on his breast.

“I expected you to say that,” he said. “I should have been rather surprised if you hadn’t. But the Chelford Treasure has an existence, Dick, and somewhere with it is the greatest treasure of all!”

His brother listened patiently. He knew by heart the story of the thousand bars of pure gold, each bar weighing thirty-five pounds. The legend of the Chelford treasure was inseparable from the Chelford estate.

Harry walked quickly to his desk, pulled open a drawer and took out a small vellum-covered book. The pages were yellow with age and covered with writing that had faded to a pale green.

“Listen,” he said, and began reading:

“On the fifteenth of the month, the same being the feast day of St. James, came Sir Walter Hythe, Kt., from his cruise in the Spanish seas, for the cost of which I raised first three thousand eight hundred pounds and eight thousand pounds from Bellitti the Lombard, and Sir Walter Hythe brought with him on ten wagons one thousand ingots of gold each of thirty-five pounds weight which he had taken from the two Spanish ships _Esperanza_ and _Escurial_, and 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, to judge by the portents, deeming it wise not to inform my lord Burleigh of the gold because of the Queen’s Majesty and her covetousness. Also he brought the crystal flask of Life Water which was given to Don Cortés by the priest of the Aztec people, a drop of which upon the tongue will revive even the dead, this being sworn to by Fra Pedro of Sevilla. This I shall hide with great care in the secret place where the gold will be stored. To Sir Walter Hythe, Kt., I had given permission that he keep for himself one hundred bars of like weight and this he did, thanking me civilly, and sailed off from Chichester in his ship the _Good Father_ which ship was wrecked on the Kentish coast, Sir Walter Hythe, his shipmaster, and all his company perishing. Such was his terrible misfortune. As for myself, being in some danger because of the part I have taken in promoting the welfare of my true sovereign lady, Mary----”

Lord Chelford looked up and met the steady eyes of his brother.

“The writing ends there,” he said. “I am certain that he was not interrupted by the arrival of Elizabeth’s soldiers to arrest him for his share in the conspiracy to put Mary on the throne. He must have had time to secrete the treasure. Where is the crystal flask?”

“Where rather is the gold?” asked the practical Dick. “If I know anything about Queen Elizabeth, she bagged it! Nobody ever found it--for four hundred years our respected forefathers have been searching for this gold----”

Lord Chelford made an angry gesture.

“Gold--gold--gold! You think of nothing else! Curse the gold! Find it and keep it. It is the flask I want!” His voice sank to a whisper, his face had grown suddenly moist. “Dick, I’m afraid of death. God! You don’t know how afraid! The fear of it haunts me day and night--I sit here counting the hours, wondering at which my spirit will go from me! You’ll laugh--at that--laugh, laugh!”

But Dick Alford’s face was set, unsmiling.

“I do not laugh--but can’t you see, Harry, that such a thing as an elixir of life is preposterous?”

“Why?” Lord Chelford’s eyes were shining. “Why shouldn’t this discovery have been made by the ancient civilizations? Why is it more wonderful than wireless telegraphy or the disintegration of atoms? Thirty years ago flying was regarded as a miracle. The flask--I want the flask of Life Water! The gold--throw it into the road--let the poor devils take it who want it. I want life--do you understand?--life and the end of fear.”

He dropped heavily into his chair and wiped his streaming forehead.

“The end of fear!” he muttered.

Dick listened, his eyes never leaving his brother’s face. And this was to be Leslie Gwyn’s husband. He shivered at the thought.

V

If the Honourable Richard Fallington Alford had been regarded by the compilers of such volumes as being sufficiently important to have his biography enshrined in a popular work of reference, his life’s work, his hobby, and his recreation would be described as “looking after the Chelford estates.” His bailiffs said he knew every blade of grass; the tenant farmers swore he could price a standing crop to the last penny of its worth. He knew Fossaway Manor, its strength and weakness, better than the estate architect--could point out where the foundations were scamped by the Elizabethan builders. He could trace the walls of the old castle which Richard of York had burnt and razed, beheading the fourth earl for his treachery under the great archway, one crumbling pier of which still showed its gray and battered head above the roses that now surrounded it. He gave to the broad lands of Chelford a loyal and passionate devotion which any mistress might envy.

In the chill of an autumnal morning, when mist blanketed the hollows and a pale sun was struggling through thin clouds, he strolled across the park toward the Abbey ruins. There was little of them left. A truncated tower wrecked by lightning; a high, arched space where an oriel window had once flamed; mounds of scattered stones left where Cromwell’s soldiers had overturned them; and, under the carpet of grass, a “feel” of solid pavement.

He drew at his pipe as he stepped out, and the tobacco smelt sweet and wholesome in the cold air.

He was on his way to the home farm, and his errand was a prosaic one. A cow had died in the night, and his cowman had reported symptoms of cattle fever.

The familiar ruins showed up ahead, the half arch, like a huge question mark, arrested his eye and raised again the well-argued problem of restoration. Some day, when the Chelford ship came home, when that coal vein was proved, or when Harry had a rich wife.…

This was an unpleasant thought. His lips curled in a grimace of distaste.

He stopped suddenly.

A figure was walking amongst the ruins--a woman. Her back was toward him and she was obviously unaware of his presence. Something about her figure seemed familiar--Dick turned from the path and walked toward her.

Evidently she did not hear him, for when he spoke she started, uttered a little scream, and turned a frightened face to him.

“Good-morning, Miss Wenner,” he said politely. “You are up and about very early.”

There was no need for him to wonder whether this girl had ever forgiven him for the very painful interview that had preceded her retirement. Recognizing him, her eyes blazed with hate.

“Good-morning, Mr. Alford.” She was civil enough. “I’m staying in the village and I thought I would like to come up and see the old place.”

He nodded gravely.

“You had a similar thought yesterday,” he said, “and tried to see my brother.”

“Well?” defiantly.

“I gave you to understand, Miss Wenner, that we should all be much happier if you never again passed the lodge gates,” he said quietly. “I hate saying this to any woman, but you ought to be the first to recognize how very uncomfortable you make me feel. I thought you would apprehend this.”

“Apprehend” was a stilted word, but he could think of no other.

“Is that so?” The colour had deepened in her face. “Is--that--so!”

“That is so,” he nodded.

She looked at him for a while and her lips curved.

“I’m sorry I’ve annoyed the family chaperon,” she sneered.

He could admire, in a detached way, her wholesome good looks; could even admire her courage. Her wrathful eyes were fixed on his, the break in her voice betrayed the fury she strove to conceal. As for Dick Alford, he felt a brute.

“I’m extremely sorry if you don’t like my calling,” she said, her voice razor-sharp and tremulous, “but I think the least Lord Chelford could have done was to see me, considering I’ve worked for him for three years and after all that has passed between us----”

“The only thing that passed between you, Miss Wenner, was your weekly wages,” said Dick, with maddening calmness.

But now he had taxed her to the limit of endurance.

“He asked me to marry him and I _would_ have married him if you hadn’t put your spoke in!” she said shrilly. “I could get thousands and thousands out of him for breach of promise if I wasn’t a lady! You second sons and hangers-on poisoned his mind against me! You ought to be downright ashamed of yourself, you good-for-nothing, penniless pauper!”

Dick was faintly amused at the redundancy.

“You’ve wrecked and ruined my life,” the pretty virago went on, “with your interference, and after all the work I’ve done! After all them--I mean those hours I’ve spent with his lordship workin’ at the treasure an’ he told me I was the most helpful secretary he’d ever had.…”

He let her talk herself to a sobbing incoherence.

“All this may be true,” he said soothingly, “and probably is. The point is, your presence here is a little--indelicate.”

Seeing her look round over her shoulder as she was talking, he had taken a quick survey of the ruins, expecting to discover that she had a companion. But there was nobody in sight. The ground sloped steeply from where he stood to the little Ravensrill, the broad brook which had for a thousand years marked the boundary of the manor. Unless somebody was concealed behind the fallen masonry she was alone.

“I suppose you want me to clear out now,” she gulped, and he inclined his head.

“I will walk with you to Fontwell Cutting--that is the nearest way to the village,” he said, and she was too much occupied with her manufactured misery to resent his offer.

What had she been doing in the Abbey ruins so early in the morning? He knew that it was useless to ask her.

As they passed down the steep path to the road she spoke over her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t marry him for a million pounds!” she said viciously. “He is going to marry Leslie Gwyn, isn’t he? I wish him joy!”

“I will convey your kind message,” he said ironically, an indiscreet rejoinder, for it roused the devil in her.

“Mind he doesn’t lose her, that’s all!” she screamed. “I know! Everybody knows! You want her money too--the Second Son’s in love with her--that’s a nice lookout for Harry Chelford!”

He sat swinging his legs over the edge of the bluff, watching her till she was out of sight.

Everybody knew that he loved Leslie Gwyn! And only at that moment he knew it himself!

VI

In all the City of London there was perhaps no office more elegant than that in which Mr. Arthur Gwyn spent his leisurely business hours. It was a large room, panelled in white wood, with pink-shaded wall brackets of frosted silver. Its floor was covered with a deep rose carpet into which the feet sank as into an old lawn; and such furnishing as the room held was of the most costly description. Visitors and clients who had business with this dainty lawyer were warned not to smoke in his sacred presence. The windows were doubled to keep out the noises of Holborn; there were exterior sun blinds to exclude the fugitive rays of pale sunlight which occasionally bathed the City; and long velvet curtains, in harmony with the carpet, to shut out the horrid world that roared and palpitated outside Mr. Gwyn’s exquisite chamber. In this room was a faint aroma of roses--he was partial to the more expensive varieties of perfume, and had a standing order with the best of the Grasse houses.

He was a fair man with an unblemished skin and a small yellow moustache; a credit to his hosier and shirtmaker. His wasp-waisted morning coat fitted him without the suspicion of a wrinkle; his gray waistcoat, the severe dark trousers with the thinnest of white stripes, the patent shoes, the exact cravat, were all parts of a sartorial symmetry.

Mr. Gwyn seldom appeared in the courts. His head clerk, a gray-haired man of fifty, who was generally supposed by Mr. Gwyn’s brother solicitors to be the brains of the business, prepared most of the briefs, interviewed the majority of clients, leaving to his employer the most important.

On a bright morning in the early days of September, Mr. Gwyn’s big Rolls glided noiselessly to the sidewalk, the youthful footman seated by the side of the driver sprang out and opened the door, and Arthur Gwyn stepped daintily forth. There was a small white rose in his buttonhole, and the passer-by who saw him, noting the perfect shine of his silk hat, the glitter of his patent shoes, and the ebony stick that he carried in his gloved hand, thought he was a bridegroom stopping on his way to church.

He entered the tiny electric lift and was whisked up to the first floor. A porter opened his door with a little bow and Arthur walked in, followed by the servitor, who took his hat, gloves, and cane, and disappeared with them to an inner room. Mr. Gwyn sat down at his desk, glanced at the letters that had been left opened for his inspection and pushed them aside. He pressed an onyx bell-push twice, and in a few seconds his hard-faced managing clerk came in, carrying a wad of papers in his hand.

“Close the door, Gilder. What are these?”

Gilder threw the papers on the polished table.

“Mostly writs,” he said curtly.

“For me?”

Gilder nodded and Arthur Gwyn turned over the papers idly.

“There is going to be trouble if they give judgment against you for some of these,” said Gilder. “Up to now, I’ve managed to keep them out of court, but there are at least three of these which must be paid. I haven’t had a chance to speak to you since I came back from my holidays. Did you lose much at Goodwood?”

“Eight or nine thousand,” said Arthur Gwyn lightly. “It may have been more or less.”

“That means you don’t know because you haven’t paid,” said Gilder bluntly.

“I paid a few--the more pressing,” the other hastened to assure him. “What are these?”

He fingered the writs again with his beautifully manicured hand.

“One of them is very serious indeed,” said Gilder, picking it out from the rest. “The trustees of the Wellman estate are suing you for three thousand pounds--the loan you had from Wellman.”

“Can’t you fix them?”

Gilder shook his head.

“I can’t fix trustees--you know that. This is going to look ugly if it comes into court.”

Arthur Gwyn shrugged his shoulders.

“There is nothing ugly about a loan----”

“You were Wellman’s lawyer,” interrupted Gilder. “And he was not capable of managing his affairs. I tell you that will look ugly, and the Law Society will be asking questions. You’ll have to raise money to settle this case out of court.”

“What are the others?” asked Arthur Gwyn sulkily.

“There’s one for twelve hundred pounds, furniture supplied to Willow House, and another from the vendor of Willow House for balance of purchase money unpaid.”

Arthur Gwyn leaned back in his chair, took out a gold toothpick and chewed it.

“What is the full amount?”

“About six thousand pounds,” said Gilder, gathering up the writs. “Can’t you raise it?”

His employer shook his head.

“A bill?”

“Who is going to back it?” asked the lawyer, looking up.

Gilder scratched his chin.

“What about Lord Chelford?” he asked.

VII

Arthur Gwyn laughed softly.

“And what do you imagine Chelford would say if I went to him with such a proposal? You seem to forget, my dear fellow, that to Chelford I am the brother of a young lady who on her twenty-fifth birthday inherits the greater part of a million pounds. I’m not only the brother, but I am her trustee. Besides which, I am managing his mother’s estate. What would he think if I tried? Chelford’s a fool, but he’s not such a fool as that, and I would remind you that all his business affairs are in the hands of the Second Son.”

“You mean Alford--why do you call him that?”

“He’s always been known as the Second Son since he was a child,” said the other impatiently. “He is a shrewd devil, never forget that, Gilder. I don’t know whether or not he suspects that I’m a fake, and that Leslie’s fortune is a myth, but there have been times when he has asked some deucedly uncomfortable questions.”

“Is the fortune a myth?” asked Gilder, and his companion looked at him slyly.

“You ought to know, my friend,” he said. “We have been living on it for eight years! The croupiers of Monte Carlo have raked into their treasury quite a lot of it--various bookmakers I could mention have built handsome villas out of it. A myth? It wasn’t a myth ten years ago. It was two hundred thousand pounds short of a myth! But to-day----”

He spread out his hands and eyed the writs with a whimsical smile.

“What do you expect to get from Chelford?” asked Gilder. “He has no money.”

Mr. Gwyn chuckled.

“You may be sure that before I went to the expense and trouble of buying--or nearly buying--a house adjoining Chelford’s place, and before I took the trouble to bring Leslie and him into touch, I took the elementary precaution of sizing up his position. He is comparatively poor, because that brother of his will sell none of the estates. He has the family obsession--their motto is ‘Hold Fast.’ Harry Chelford is realizable at a quarter of a million--apart from the buried treasure.”

They both laughed at this.

“You’ve been lucky up to a point,” said Gilder seriously. “It was luck to inherit his legal business----”

A clerk came in with some letters to sign at this moment, and, after he was gone:

“Does your sister still think she is an heiress?” asked Gilder.

“She has that illusion,” replied the other coolly. “Of course she thinks so! You don’t imagine Leslie would lend herself to that kind of ramp, do you?”

He took a pen from the silver tray before him, dipped it into the ink, and, drawing a sheet of paper toward him, scribbled down the figures.

“Six thousand pounds is a lot of money,” he said. “I lost three times that amount when Black Satin was beaten a short head in the Drayton Handicap. The only thing to do is to rush the wedding.”

“What about the Yorkshire property?” suggested the managing clerk.

Arthur Gwyn made a little grimace.

“I put a man in to buy it. I could have made twenty thousand profit on that. There’s coal in abundance; that I have proved. But the Second Son was on the job, damn him!”

There was a long silence.

“What are you going to do?” asked Gilder.

“I don’t know. I’m at my wits’ end.” Arthur Gwyn threw down the pen. “The position is exquisite torture to a man of my sensibility. Can’t you suggest anything?”

“Give me five minutes,” said Gilder, and went out.

As Gilder was making his way to his own office, a clerk handed him a letter. It was addressed to him personally, in an illiterate hand. Behind the door of his office bureau, he opened the envelope.

The letter began without any preliminary: