Part 7

Fossaway Park was enclosed in a large-meshed wire net fence, which offered no obstacle to any person who wished to surmount it; but the stranger had evidently not reconnoitred the ground very thoroughly, for Dick heard the clang of the wire as some heavy object struck against it, a curse, and presently he could discern a figure climbing over the wide mesh and drop into the road.

For a few seconds it was out of sight, and then he saw it again, silhouetted against the white of the road. Nearer and nearer it came.

“Good-evening, Mr. Gilder,” said Dick politely. “Are you seeing the sights of Chelfordbury?”

Gilder started violently and almost dropped the heavy stick he was carrying.

“Hullo!” he stammered. “Who the dickens are you?”

A beam of light shot suddenly from his hand and focussed the questioner.

“Oh, you!” said Gilder, taking a long breath. “Gosh! you scared me! I was just admiring your old ruins by moonlight. They’re rather fine.”

“On behalf of the ruins, I thank you,” said Dick, with elaborate courtesy. “Any nice things that you can say about Chelford Abbey are deeply appreciated by its present owner.”

The man was disconcerted and obviously ill at ease.

“I left my car in the field; I thought it might get in the way of traffic----” he began.

“The traffic around here between ten and midnight is not very numerous,” said Dick; “but if you have the illusion that Red Farm is your property, it is quite understandable that your car should be parked there. What is the game, Gilder?”

He was conscious that the man’s eyes were peering at him.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘game.’ Is it unlawful to admire a moonlight view?”

“It is unlawful to trespass on my brother’s property,” said Dick. “May I repeat my question: What is the game?”

“I don’t understand you. Do you mind letting me get through that gate? I am going home.”

Dick Alford descended from the gate slowly and pushed it open.

“You are a suspicious character, Gilder.”

The man snapped round at him.

“What the devil do you mean?”

“Just what I say. You are a suspicious character. It is very suspicious to find you loafing around Fossaway Park at this hour of the night, particularly after certain things which have happened recently.”

“Do you think I am the Black Abbot?” sneered the man, and Dick’s chuckle came from the darkness.

“There are many interesting possibilities about you, Gilder. What did you expect to find in the Abbey?”

“I tell you I was merely admiring the view by moonlight. If that is an offence you can bring me before a bench of magistrates.”

Dick, his hands in his pockets, stood watching the man as he switched on the lights of the car and started it.

“The place to admire the ruins is from the crest of the hill, not from the ruin itself,” he said. “If you had been a normal admirer you would never have been out of sight. May I also suggest that it wasn’t necessary to switch off your lights or to hide your car--the best view of the Abbey is from the upper road. Gilder, you had better be careful.”

“Is that a threat?”

“It is a warning,” said Dick. “And a man as clever as you would not lightly despise such a warning. By the way, my solicitors are starting an action to-morrow to set aside your agreement with Farmer Leonard. I am hoping that you will not involve yourself in the expense of defending the action.”

“That is a matter that I shall discuss with your lawyers,” said Gilder, as he started the car.

Dick watched the machine as it waddled over the furrows and turned on to the road, and followed it out, closing the gate behind it.

“Do you know anything about racing, Gilder?”

Gilder turned with a jerk. Was this man privy to his secrets?

“I know a little--why?”

“Do you know what a warning-off notice is?”

Gilder stared at him open-mouthed.

“Yes, it is a notice issued by the Jockey Club warning people off Newmarket Heath.”

“Splendid!” said Dick. “Will you take a warning-off notice from me? I warn you off Willow House and all that is contained therein!”

“And if I don’t accept the warning?”

“You’ll be sorry, as I’ve remarked before,” said Dick.

Gilder jammed in his clutch and the car jerked forward with a whine, and soon its tail lights had disappeared round the end of the road.

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.

XXI

There was a sign of dawn in the sky. The air was sweet and pure and he drew great breaths of nature’s champagne before he lit his pipe and strolled noiselessly along the lawn, keeping parallel with the face of the house.

He had never felt less sleepy, and he was debating in his mind whether he should take a cold bath and go on with some work that he had left unfinished on the previous day, when he saw, only for a second, a pin point of light in the distance. It was a white, star-like flicker that dawned and disappeared almost instantly.

“If that isn’t a flash lamp I’m a Dutchman,” he muttered, went back into his room, and, taking down a shotgun, slipped a handful of cartridges into the pocket of his dinner jacket.

There had been a number of poaching affrays in the neighbourhood, and the unknown poachers were a desperate gang who had never hesitated to shoot. Dick felt it best to be on the safe side, and, with the gun under his arm and two shells rammed home into the breech, he strolled across to where he had seen the light.

It is a fact that Dick Alford had no constitutional objection to poachers. His views on the subject had shocked many a hoary-headed country justice, for Dick held to the line that it was pardonable for any man to “shoot for the cooking pot,” and to him poaching was a mild joke.

The house and surrounding trees obstructed his view, but a five-minutes’ walk brought him through a thin plantation to the Priory fields. Now he saw, unless his judgment was at fault, that the light must have come from the direction of the Abbey ruins. He stood for ten minutes in the shadow of a wood, but no light showed. And then, as his foot was raised to walk forward, he saw it again--just a momentary flicker, and this time there was no doubt that it came from the Abbey. No intelligent poacher would waste five minutes on that part of the estate, though there were trout in the Ravensrill, and the burrows of a few hares in its banks.

He moved forward steadily up the slope of the Mound and soon he could distinguish the chaos of stone and crumbling walls. The intruder was no expert burglar, for again the light flickered. Was it Gilder, he wondered, as he followed the course of the little river. Had that sinister man returned to admire the view of the Abbey by moonlight? The east was turning gray; the cold morning wind had freshened; but though he wore only a thin dinner suit, Dick did not feel the cold. Stealthily he climbed to the top of the Mound, pausing to take observation.

Again the light, this time not fifty yards away, and he could make out the figure of a man moving slowly amidst the broken walls. He was searching the ground diligently.

“Lost anything?” asked Dick.

The visitor spun round with a startled cry.

“Hullo! Who are you?” he asked hoarsely, and Dick recognized the voice.

It was Arthur Gwyn!

A painful and embarrassing moment for Arthur Gwyn!

“Hullo!” he said awkwardly. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“Were you looking for an opiate?” asked Dick politely. “You should have come up to the house; my brother has a small drug store, and we might have been able to find you something for your insomnia.”

“Don’t be amusing,” growled Arthur, thrown off his balance. “What I meant was, I couldn’t sleep so I came out for a walk. This place interests me.”

“I never knew you were an archæologist before, and a midnight archæologist at that! The country simply swarms with ’em!” said the ironical young man. “Or perhaps you’re a moth hunter? Or did you come out to hear the nightingale? It’s rather late in the season.”

“See here, Alford, I don’t want you to get funny at my expense. I tell you I came out for a walk. You’re not going to suggest I’m trespassing, are you? If it comes to that, what are _you_ doing here?”

He heard Dick chuckle and went hot under the collar.

“I am attached to the estate: I thought you knew that,” said Dick at last; “and one of my jobs is to challenge suspicious-looking individuals at whatever hour they show themselves or their flash lamps.”

“Oh, you saw the light, did you? I thought somebody would.” Arthur was himself again. “The truth is, Dick, I had a horrible dream that woke me up. I dreamt I saw that wretched Black Abbot, and the dream was so vivid that I resolved to come along and have a look at the place. It was on the edge of the cutting that he was last seen.”

“Oh, a ghost-hunter!” murmured Dick. “That of course explains everything. You came armed, I see? Very wise!”

Arthur had been praying that this objectionable man would not notice the steel crowbar he carried, but the eyes of the other were peculiarly sharp, and there was just enough dawn light to reveal the nature of the instrument he carried.

“You didn’t see the Black Abbot, I suppose?” said Dick, in his polite conversational way. “No? I shouldn’t imagine you would. It’s rather late for him. Our family ghosts keep early hours. They are a respectable lot, and the Abbot, as you probably know, was a highly respectable and even a religious man, though not, I believe, untouched by the horrid voice of scandal.”

He was walking by Arthur’s side to the cut road as he spoke, and the light was not good enough for him to see the dull flush that came to that good-looking man’s face, but he could guess it.

“I don’t want to quarrel with you, Alford, but I have the greatest objection to your being sarcastic at my expense. I don’t know why I should explain anything to you, but you’ve been a good friend of mine to-night and I’m telling you the truth. And really, it’s hardly playing the game to doubt my word.”

Dick said nothing to this, but poised himself watchfully on the edge of the cut, until the ruffled man had disappeared from sight. What was the meaning of all this? he wondered. What attraction had the Abbey ruins for these strangely assorted people? First Mary Wenner, then Gilder, and now Arthur Gwyn. What was there about these ancient stones which would bring the fastidious lawyer from his bed to make an early-morning search? He knew Arthur rather well, much better in fact than he guessed. He hated discomfort of all sorts, but here he was, at four o’clock in the morning, absurdly but suitably attired in a golf suit of irreproachable pattern, a crowbar in one hand and an electric torch in the other, turning over the rubbish of the Abbey and seeking--what? The treasure!

Not till that moment did the solution flash upon Dick Alford, and he was so overcome that he sat down on the nearest sandstone block and laughed till the tears came into his eyes.

The treasure! Harry had infected these prosaic people with his obsession. But how? Obviously, Mary Wenner was the connecting link. There was a time, he remembered, when she was an enthusiastic seconder to Harry’s efforts, and believed as implicitly in the existence of this mythical gold as did her employer. Arthur was a friend of hers: he had heard them “Arthur” and “Mary” each other; and, through Arthur, Gilder must have come into the knowledge. So that was the explanation! And the Chelford treasure was obviously the windfall that Arthur Gwyn expected.