Clutterbuck's Treasure

He couldn't, surely! Why, we could prove our right to the work of art by telegraphing to Kiel, and, if necessary, producing the skipper to witness to our purchase. Besides, he would have to prove his right to the thing before they could justly deliver it over to him.

It must be an act of spite, then, conceived in the simple desire to score one against us.

Of course the picture was found in my portmanteau. Equally, of course, we protested that it was our own, while Strong declared that we had stolen it from him during the voyage to Copenhagen. No less was it to be expected that upon seeing the work of art, both policemen and interpreters smiled grimly, and that one of them observed—

"Was ist aber Dass für ein Teufelskopf!"

In the end, the police took possession of the disputed picture, but allowed us to remain in peace at the hotel. This was, however, Saturday night, so that the examination into the matter of ownership which, we were informed, it would be necessary to hold, could not be brought into court before Monday.

This was very unfortunate, for if Strong should really have devised this little interlude with the sole desire to gain time, in order to reach the treasure-ground in Streatham a day or two before us, he had certainly gained his end.

It was in vain that we assured our captors that we could easily prove our title to the work of art by simply telegraphing to Kiel, to the man from whom we purchased it.

"That will be very good evidence on Monday, supposing that the seller appears in person," said the police. "Meanwhile, we will take care of the work of art, and on Monday you shall speak, and your friend here shall speak, and the plaintiff shall speak, and then we shall see to whom the beautiful picture belongs."

"This gentleman will not wait to hear the case argued," said Jack, indicating Strong; "he will be in England by Monday!"

"Then he will lose the picture," said the man, shrugging his shoulders. "Whoever remains alone to claim it, to him we shall consider that it rightfully belongs."

"You're a nice, audacious blackguard, Strong, I will say!" muttered Jack to our friend, as—accompanied by his little band of interpreter and police, with the picture—Strong left the room; "I warn you, you'd better be out of Streatham by Tuesday, for by all that's certain, we shall have no mercy if we catch you on our side of the water!"

"Don't fret," said Strong; "I shall have the cash by that time, and you may catch me when you can find me."

"Do you really mean to dig, Strong?" I said. "I wish you'd take advice and keep away; we don't want to be the cause of your hanging, but we shall be forced to give you up if we catch you in England; you must know that."

"Well, catch me there, curse you!" said Strong rudely. "You'll have to be a darned sight sharper than you've been yet, either of you, before you touch either me or the money! That's my last word."

"Well, we are off by the next train," said Jack (to my surprise); "so you'll not get the start you expect. You don't suppose we're going to wait for that ridiculous picture, do you?"

Strong looked foxily at Jack for a second or two; but he said nothing, and followed the others from the room.

"Lord!" said Jack, when they had gone, "I don't know whether to laugh or cry; what a mysterious, incomprehensible, snake of a beast it is! What's his game? One thing is clear, either it hasn't struck him (which is improbable), or he has decided against believing, that the picture has anything to do with finding the money."

"So have you, apparently," I said; "for you told him that we were not going to wait for it."

"That was bluff, man; don't you understand? It was said to frighten him from going on by the first train to Streatham; because, don't you see, if he thinks that we are going at once, why, he can't."

"Do you think he's still after the treasure?" I asked.

"That's what I can't make out," replied Jack; "it would be a fearful risk for him to be about the place when we are there too, he knows that well enough; yet I can't help thinking that he has not abandoned all hope of the money. He's such a snake, that's the mischief of it; who's to know what his game is? At anyrate, we must wait and get the picture. It may and may not have a bearing on the search, but we won't risk anything."

"What if he waits too, and claims it?"

"That is not at all likely; he doesn't want the picture. I should say he'll be up at the station for the next Flushing train, and if he doesn't see us there, he'll go on. Perhaps we'd better show up at the station in order to prevent his departure."

We agreed to do this, and having found out that a Flushing train started early on Sunday morning, we both drove to the station, great-coated as though for travelling, and stood about near the train as though intending to board it at any moment.

Carefully we scrutinised the faces of all who passed and repassed us, about to travel by the express, but we did not see Strong. He had not thought good to journey to England, then; probably Jack's hint that we were intending to travel by the first opportunity had deterred him. Presently, after much bell-ringing and whistling, and loud-voiced invitations, from stentorian German throats, to take our seats, the train slowly began to move forward.

"Well, that's all right," said Jack; "he isn't in there, anyhow."

"Good-morning, gentlemen both," said someone leaning out of a carriage window—the last carriage—just as we were about to turn and depart. "Wish me luck with my digging, won't you? Forty-eight hours' start ought to do me, eh? Well, ta-ta; take care of the picture—it's a beauty, it is!"

Strong bawled out the last sentence or two at the top of his voice from far away down the platform, to the surprise of a few porters and loiterers who gazed at us suspiciously. Jack shook his fist in Strong's direction, a civility which was replied to by that individual by a grimace, and a gesture of the hands—as the train passed round a curve and out of sight—which might have been intended to signify digging, and might not.

Jack burst out laughing; I did not feel mirthful.

"It's all very well," I said, "but I don't like it. He has forty-eight hours' start of us. He may find the treasure in that time, by some fluke."

"He's been too clever for us, Peter, and that's the plain truth," laughed Jack. "Mind you, I don't think he'll find the money, and maybe he doesn't intend to try; but we have been badly scored off, and there's no denying the fact. We must hope it is only spite. I daresay it's that."

But on Monday morning when we turned up at the police court to claim our work of art, the police, finding that Strong had departed without waiting for the case to be heard, exclaimed—"Lieber Gott im Himmel! you were then right!" upon which the interpreter added that he supposed the other Englishman had not waited for the original because the copy which he possessed of it, and which he had shown him, the interpreter, was probably sufficient for him.

"Had he a copy?" asked Jack quickly.

"Certainly," said the man; "a very exact one. Done, he told me, by a clever sailor on the ship which brought him from Russia. He had it painted as a precaution, he said, lest certain persons should steal the original for their own purposes."

The police allowed us to take away our work of art, however, without further difficulties.

"Gad," said Jack, as we left the court, "my opinion of that chap's cuteness strengthens every day! he has intended, all along, to have another dig for the treasure. He expected to gain a day by being set down at Copenhagen; he gave away this picture simply because he didn't require it, having got safely away with the other; this may be only the copy."

"It looks like our old friend," I said moodily; "but one can't tell. Anyhow, we've lost, Jack; it's very sickening after all we've been through"—

"Nonsense, man! the battle isn't lost until it's won. Do you suppose Strong is going to win right off, in a day and a half? Why, there's a fortnight's hard digging in a garden of that size! Don't lose heart so easily, Peter, it doesn't become you."

It was all very well, I thought, for Jack to be sanguine and spirited. He had nothing hanging upon the issue of this matter, excepting the sporting desire to win, and the friendly wish that I—as his chum—should succeed. To me success was absolutely everything!

We caught a train on the Monday evening, and reached Flushing in due course; but the weather was so terribly stormy that the steamers were not running.

This circumstance put the coping-stone to my disgust and depression. It was too bad—too utterly unfortunate. The delay would cost us another twenty-four hours, every second of which time was a clear profit to Strong.

When the weather moderated, and the steamer was advertised to start in the evening, we found that an immense number of passengers had assembled to make the crossing. We obtained berths with difficulty, and at some additional expense. At supper I asked the steward whether his steamer was always crowded in this way.

"Oh dear, no, sir," said my friend; "most of these passengers have been waiting two days and more. We haven't run since the gale began—Sunday night." A moment later, the significance of this statement suddenly occurred to me.

"Why, Jack!" I exclaimed, "then"—

"Yes," said Jack. "Either he's on board now, or else he has seen us, and remained behind on shore; at anyrate there's been no digging done at Streatham."

"Thank God!" I exclaimed. "I was a brute to rave about bad luck, Jack, before I knew."

"Yes," said Jack, smiling; "the winds and waves and all the elements seem to have fought on our side this time, old man! It strikes me we are going to win yet."

At Queenborough Station, in the morning, we scrutinised every passenger that landed from the Princess Clementine. There were many pale, sea-sick, travel-worn people that came ashore to take train to London; but we were both certain that Strong was not among them. Neither did he alight at Victoria. There was no doubt about it; for once Strong's cleverness had been over-trumped by the forces of nature!

CHAPTER XXXIX

DIGGING AGAIN

Jack was determined to see me through with my treasure hunting, now—as we hoped—at its last stage, and came with me to Streatham without even a flying visit to his Gloucestershire home; which was good of old Jack.

Arrived at Streatham, we put up at the best hotel we could find, and lost no time in walking down to old Clutterbuck's house in the lower town. The place looked gloomy and forbidding, and we rang at the garden gate—the only entrance—with a feeling that our trouble was not quite over yet, and that in all probability the old man would have exerted his eccentric ingenuity to the uttermost in order to make the last stage of our search at least as difficult and toilsome as any, in spite of the seemingly simple instructions of the letter, which were merely to go and dig in his own garden at Streatham, and find what we should find.

As a matter of fact, we encountered one difficulty before getting farther than the garden gate—the outside of it, I mean; for an old caretaker answered the ring, and, opening the door an inch or two, but without removing the chain which secured it, peeped out and asked us what we wanted.

I said that we had authority from its late master to take possession of the house and garden.

The old fellow produced from his pocket an envelope, from which he drew a scrap of paper.

"Is your name William Clutterbuck?" he asked.

"He's dead," I replied.

"James Strong?" he continued.

"Oh, hang it, no! not that blackguard," said Jack. "It's all right, old gentleman; this is Mr. Clutterbuck's heir."

The old caretaker took no notice of this remark.

"Charles Strong?" he continued, unmoved.

"He's dead too," I said.

"Ellis?" said the old fellow, doubling up his paper and preparing to return the envelope into his pocket.

"No," said I, "but"—

"Then you don't come in here," concluded the man, banging the door in our faces and double-locking it.

The old caretaker's arbitrary action nonplussed me for the moment.

"But my name is down in the will together with those you have read out," I cried through the panels. Jack stood and laughed. I heard the old man stumping towards the house. I shrieked out a repetition of my last appeal. He paused and spoke. An errand boy stopped to look on, and whistled "D'isy, D'isy, give me your answer do," so loudly that I could scarcely hear the reply.

"No, it ain't," shouted the old fellow back again. "For I copied these down from it myself, and there wasn't another. And what's more, this 'ere door don't git opened to no one else but these four, and if yer wants to git into the garden, yer'll 'ave to climb the wall and see what yer'll git from the dawg. He's loose in here—speak, Ginger!"

Ginger spoke, and the utterance was certainly alarming. Ginger's voice was a deep bass, and it seemed to say—unless my imagination gave it a meaning which it did not really possess—that it was as well for those outside that there was a wall between them and Ginger. It was ridiculous; but it was extremely aggravating also.

"But my name was added afterwards," I pleaded, while Ginger barked and Jack laughed, and the errand boy, interested, stopped whistling to hear the reply. This was not encouraging.

"Garn!" said the rude old man; "I know what I knows; you go and git yer 'air cut, and come back and show me the will."

"I can do that easily enough," I shouted, "and the lawyer who drew it up too, so you'd better save trouble and let me in at once."

"You find me a lawyer and a will as gives more than four names, and in you may walk," said the heroic caretaker; "and till then you can take yourself off or do the other thing—but out you stay!"

This was evidently the ultimatum, for the old fellow could be heard stumping up towards the house. The dog Ginger remained and continued his observations in the same tone until we retired. The errand boy remembered an engagement and departed, disappointed with us, no doubt. We ought, of course, to have scaled that wall and been eaten by Ginger in order adequately to perform our duty to that errand boy; but we had other views, and went and called on the lawyer, Steggins.

That good fellow was sincerely glad to see me, I believe, and to hear that I was the successful competitor up to this point. We told him—in skeleton form—of our adventures, promising him a detailed account if he would dine with us at the hotel, which he gladly undertook to do. Then we told him of our difficulties with the old caretaker, who had received his instructions, evidently, before my name had been added to the will. Steggins laughed.

"What, old Baines?" he said. "I'll soon put that right; we are old friends, he and I. But I'm afraid this other gentleman, Mr.–er"—

"Henderson," interposed that worthy.

"Mr. Henderson cannot take any part with yourself in the digging operations; the instructions are so clear that only the successful competitor is to be allowed in the house or garden until the treasure has been found. Otherwise, you see, all the rest might have remained at home, and still have been in at the death, so to speak. They might simply wait till the report went about that you were busy digging in the garden, and would then come and take a hand on equal terms with you, who had had all the trouble."

This seemed true. It was annoying, however, that I was not to have the benefit of Jack's help in my last dig. As I told Jack, I had particularly wished him to have half the work of digging.

"And half the fun of being worried by Ginger!" added Jack; "thanks awfully, Peter. It will be rather fun to stand outside and hear you 'Good-dogging' Ginger, and presently your squalls when he lays hold of you!"

"Ginger's all right," laughed Steggins. "He's almost as old as his master, and hasn't a tooth in his head; besides, he's the friendliest of animals, and wouldn't injure a baby."

"His voice doesn't sound like it," I said. "Jack grew quite pale when he heard it." Jack shinned me under the table for this, I am sorry to say. He is a vindictive and un-Christian-like person, is Jack, when his pride is touched.

"Ginger's voice is his fortune," said Steggins; "it always has been; he's the finest dog for the other side of a wall that ever I saw."

I may say that presently, when Steggins had taken me down and introduced me to Baines and Ginger as the bonâ fide heir-at-law, I found that Ginger was quite as benevolent a being as Steggins had described him. He was a St. Bernard, of enormous size and the very mildest of manners, and his voice was a complete fraud, for whereas it threatened gore and thunder, its real purport and intent were nothing more shocking than small beer or milk and water. For all he knew, I might have been a murderous desperado, but he took to me at sight, like David to Jonathan.

Old Baines, too, was polite enough on his own side of the wall, and showed me over the house and garden. He was surprised when I asked for spades, but produced one nevertheless; however, when he had watched me turn over the first few sods of turf, he retired muttering into the house, and I could see plainly enough that the new proprietor was, in his opinion, about to prove a disappointing master, inasmuch as he was harmlessly but hopelessly mad.

The garden measured sixty-three yards by forty-eight, and on that first morning of my solitary digging I ardently wished, with all my heart, that it had been one-quarter the size. For to dig up a garden of this area, and dig it deeply too, as the latest instructions suggested, and all by oneself, was a task involving more trouble than is agreeable, or ever has been, to the present scribe, who is no lover of monotonous drudgery.

There were a few trees here and there, but not a flower-bed in the place; the whole area was roughly covered with turf upon which coarse grass had been allowed to grow throughout the summer, which grass I was obliged to mow down with a scythe before I could proceed in any comfort with my digging.

Jack did not desert me, though he might not assist me on my own side of the wall. He remained at the hotel, where I lunched and dined with him daily; and during these meals we consulted upon my labours and the direction these should take; and sometimes Jack would come and carry on a conversation from the top of the wall, upon which he climbed when none were by to see. Ginger used to look up and wag his tail affectionately upon the stranger appearing in that unorthodox fashion within the domains he was kept to watch over. If Jack had been a burglar, Ginger could not have looked up more lovingly at him as he sat on the wall and gave the dog bits of biscuit.

Several days passed, and the late Mr. Clutterbuck's garden now resembled a ploughed field; but never a glint of gold had I struck yet, nor a glimmer of diamonds, nor the pale crisp delight of a bank-note or cheque.

Mr. Baines knew nothing, he protested, about anything whatsoever; he merely thought me a madman, and considered it the safer way to leave me entirely alone. I questioned him, now and again, as to whether he had ever observed the late lamented, whom he had served as factotum in life, employed in digging or in taking measurements in the garden; but to all these inquiries Mr. Baines gave answers courteously but plainly pointing to one and the same conclusion—namely, that though old Clutterbuck had been undoubtedly a "skinflint" (as he picturesquely described the parsimonious character of the deceased), yet he had always shown himself a sane skinflint, and therefore unlike the gentleman who now took his place as master of the establishment. By which Mr. Baines meant to infer that old Clutterbuck neither took measurements nor dug in the garden, and that I—who did both—must therefore be mad. He did not say so in as many words, but he made it pretty clear that this was his meaning.

There was no assistance to be got out of old Baines.

CHAPTER XL

JACK PROVES HIMSELF A GENIUS

After all, it was only natural that "the testator," desiring to give his heirs as much trouble as possible, should scarcely confide his secret to one who would probably reveal it, afterwards, to the first that offered him half a crown for the information.

At the end of the fourth day I was very tired and rather depressed. I had measured the garden from end to end and across, and dug down at every spot where, according to carefully thought out calculations, stretched strings would cross one another; I tried every dodge I could think of or that Jack could suggest. I gazed a dozen times at the old portrait, and could suck no inspiration from it; indeed, as regards that work of art, I had quite decided ere this that the thing was no more than a sickly joke on the part of its grim old original. I took Clutterbuck's age and measured it out in feet, and dug at the end of the seventy-first, and in inches, and diagonally in yards, starting each from the house, and the two first from the centre. I pulled up the old stump of a cut-down tree and looked inside the hole it left behind. I think I really tried nearly every device that the mind of man could conceive, but nothing had as yet come of my labours excepting fatigue and depression and stiffness.

Then, one day, on returning to the hotel, weary and cross by reason of repeated failure, I found Jack studying the portrait of old Clutterbuck, which annoyed me still more; for I was angry with the miser and his detestable expedients for keeping his money out of the hands of honest persons who had worked for it and fairly earned it.

"Look here, Peter," said Jack, smiling, "here's fun for you; see what I have found on the back of this work of art—read it for yourself!" He passed the portrait over to me.

I took it with, I am afraid, a growl of ill-temper, and read the words he had pointed out to me. They were written very faintly and in pencil on the back of the portrait, at a spot where the paper had become loose under the beading, and ran as follows—it was a doggerel rhyme, and this fact annoyed me still more in my ridiculously furious state of mind at the moment:—

"If you'd save yourself some trouble,Dig at three foot six, and double!"

"What does it mean?" said Jack.

"Oh, take the confounded thing and chuck it into the fire!" I said sulkily.

"Well, but what does it mean, if it means anything?" Jack insisted. "You've got to take tips if you can get them, you know; so make the most of this, though it does seem to convey a rather unpleasant meaning. As I understand it, you have to dig to a depth of seven feet—that is, double three foot six, and"—

"What!" said I hotly, "dig over the whole garden to a depth of seven feet? I'll see the old skinflint"—

"Don't swear," said Jack, though I had not sworn; "but keep cool and help me to think this matter out. Now look here: he said, 'Dig at seven feet in order to save yourself trouble,' or words to that effect. Now, I can't help thinking he meant this for a tip; for if it meant that you were to dig over the whole garden to a depth of seven feet, what trouble would you save yourself by doing that? What the old boy meant was, find the right spot, and then dig down seven feet."

"Yes," I said, laughing mockingly and throwing the portrait on the table, "find the right spot; that's just the crux! If you'll kindly find the spot for me, I'll dig to any depth you like—sink an artesian well, if you please; but where the dickens is the spot?"

"You are angry and disinclined to speak like a sensible creature," said Jack. "Have your dinner, and then perhaps you'll be in a fit mood to listen to an idea which has struck me."

This rather sobered me.

"Have you really an idea?" I asked, flushing.

"Yes," said Jack, "I have; but I'm not going to tell you till you've dined. A full man is a less dangerous being than an empty one; you might fall upon me and rend me now, if you thought my idea absurd, as you very likely may."

Entreaties broke like little waves upon the shingle of Jack's obstinacy. I said I was sorry for being rude and angry; I begged to hear his last new idea. Jack's only reply was—