at liverpool we wired to hugh's solicitors for an appointment that afternoon and dispatched watkins direct to chesby with the body of his late master. we arrived at victoria about four o'clock, and took a taxi to the offices of courtenay, bellowes, manson and courtenay in a smutted old building in fleet street over against the law courts.
up two nights of stairs we climbed to a dirty door with the firm-name straggling across it. a clerk stepped forward as we entered, but before he could speak a brown figure shot out of an inner office, and wrapped hugh and me in a jovial hug. it was nikka, thinner than we remembered him, but with the same steady eyes and quiet smile. he was abashed by his own enthusiasm and started to apologize.
"i am so glad to see you two," he said, "that i forget it is a time of sadness. yet even so it means gladness for me that i see my friends again.'
"it's gladness for all of us," returned hugh, wringing his hand, with its delicate, sinewy fingers.
"it means something like the old life once more," i added. "that is, if you can come, nikka."
"i'll come," he said simply. "for two years i have been faithful to my fiddle. now, i think, it is time i had a rest."
an elderly gentleman, with gray hair and precise features, emerged from the inner offices and bowed deferentially to hugh.
"i trust your lordship is in good health. if you remember—"
"of course, mr. bellowes," assented hugh. "i remember you very well. this is my friend, mr. nash. mr. zaranko, i take it, you already know. are you at liberty?"
"surely, sir. i expected you. this way, please."
and he ushered us into a room where chairs were clustered about a square table on which reposed a huge, steel-bound box of very heavy, dark oak. mr. bellowes waved his hand toward the box.
"i trust i anticipated your lordship's wishes. i directed the bank to send up the charter chest this afternoon."
"quite right," said hugh, "it will simplify our task. did my uncle leave any will?"
a shadow settled upon mr. bellowes' lined face.
"there was no need, your lordship. the estate is entailed. the shipping bonds, your grandmother's dower, went before the war. the mining shares all have been sold, as well as several smaller blocks of securities. aside from some insurance accruing from your uncle's demise, there is practically nothing—oh, a few government bonds of the war issues, to be sure—outside of the chesby lands."
he wrung his hands nervously.
"oh, mister hugh—i beg your pardon, your lordship—i don't know what we shall have to do. the death duties can scarcely be met. the insurance will help some, but i am afraid we must raise another mortgage at a ruinous rate or else move to break the entail and sell off some of the farms. i warned his late lordship again and again of the harm he was doing, but he would never listen to me."
"poor uncle james has paid a stiff price for his efforts," answered hugh. "i can't find it in my heart to take exception to his extravagances after what happened in new york."
the old lawyer looked at us slyly.
"just what did happen, if i may ask, sir? the reports in the press were—"
he shrugged his shoulders.
"he was murdered by a gang of criminals, who were trying to obtain from him information which he apparently believed furnished a clue to this treasure he had been searching for all his life," returned hugh.
"really, sir?" exclaimed mr. bellowes in surprise.
"why did you suppose he was killed within a few hours of landing in a strange city?" countered hugh.
the solicitor hesitated.
"if your lordship will permit me to speak quite frankly? ah! thank you, sir. i will say, then, that i had fancied i knew your uncle unusually well, and in light of that knowledge i would never have fancied him addicted to—er—" he coughed apologetically—"probably i need not say any more. but at any rate it will not be offensive if i add that in a long course of legal experience i have never heard of a man of his late lordship's position being murdered unless—unless there were circumstances of a character we may describe off-hand as unsavory."
there was a brief silence.
"i infer that is the general supposition?" asked hugh, rousing himself.
"i fear it is, your lordship."
"and it is absolutely untrue!" exclaimed hugh with energy. "i know that! mr. nash knows it! watkins knows it!"
"then why not make the facts known?" suggested mr. bellowes.
"if we did so, we should have a negligible chance of establishing our point, and we should certainly lose whatever slight chance there may be of finding the treasure. i am sure my uncle would have wished us to go after the treasure at any cost."
"the treasure!" mr. bellowes permitted himself a faint smile of amusement. "am i to understand that your lordship has succumbed to this fatal lure?"
"you may understand i am extremely interested in the possibility of finding it," retorted hugh.
"dear, dear!" murmured the aged solicitor, genuinely distressed. "surely, you will listen to reason, sir. this fata morgana—if i may term it so—has exercised an evil influence upon your family time out of mind. your uncle is one of a number of people whose lives have been cursed by its futile spell. i do hope you will permit me to urge you to abandon an attempt which must infallibly dissipate whatever is left of your estate."
"but you tell me that the estate is wrecked in any case," replied hugh. "i do not blame you for one instant for being skeptical, mr. bellowes. i felt so, myself, until recent events forced me to the conclusion that there may—notice, please, that i say may—be more to the matter than i had imagined.
"i am anxious to secure your advice, and therefore i propose that mr. nash and i recount for you and mr. zaranko precisely what happened in connection with my uncle's visit to new york."
so we began at the beginning, with the time i found the messenger boy studying the door-card of our apartment, and carried the tale through to lord chesby's death in bellevue. mr. bellowes was visibly shocked.
"i had not supposed such criminals existed any longer," he said. "however, let me draw to your attention the fact that these incidents happened in new york. they could never have happened in england."
"they might have happened anywhere," interjected nikka, speaking for the first time.
we turned to him with startled interest. his face was very serious as he leaned forward over the table.
"in the first place," he continued, "consider this treasure. i have always heard of it as the treasure of the bucoleon, but i believe it is also sometimes referred to as the treasure of andronicus."
"you mean to say, you, too, have heard of it?" exclaimed mr. bellowes.
"yes. it is well-known in the near east. i am a gypsy. my father before me was voivode tzaibidjo, or king, of the balkan gypsies. many tales come to my ears, for, though my people are scattered far and wide and no longer make pretense of being a nation, they still honor those who have been their leaders. i have heard, for instance, a story that a certain tribe of gypsies in constantinople guard the supposed site of the treasure. but i do not vouch for the story.
"i do, however, vouch for the statement that lord chesby is confronting an organized international band of criminals with many gypsy members; and i do not believe that such a band would waste time on any enterprise which they did not have good reason to believe would promise handsome profits."
"you mean to say that such a band could operate in england to-day?" demanded the old lawyer doubtfully.
"they can, and almost certainly they do. crime has increased since the war, remember. the removal of national barriers and the unsettlement of conditions have stimulated it anew. i know something of this band. if it is the one i have heard of we are menaced by the most intelligent combination of thieves, murderers and outlaws that ever acted together."
"what do you know about them?" i asked.
"i have heard that they are doing a great deal of smuggling, and it is in this work that they use the gypsies especially. i have heard, too, of this toutou you speak of. he is usually called toutou lafitte, but he has many other names. he is said to be a combination of blood-thirsty monster and intensely clever strategist. the band have ramifications in all classes of society, and there are few countries they do not reach. i have no doubt, hugh, they made arrangements in your uncle's case with some affiliated criminal organization in america."
"where do you get all this information?" asked hugh curiously.
"i am a gypsy," answered nikka. "we gypsies are really a separate people, and i grieve to say our lower orders constitute a criminal class. as it happens, i am well-known to my people, and many of them come and tell me what they hear."
"why don't you tell this to the police?" demanded mr. bellowes.
"what good would it do? the police would laugh at me—and i should be stabbed some dark night as i came from a concert. no, i can turn my knowledge to better use by aiding lord chesby in his quest."
"it's blame lucky we have nikka to help us!" i exclaimed. "and i'd like to ask him for his candid opinion on the treasure business."
"i don't know," said nikka slowly. "i should not like to raise hugh's hopes, but— put it this way. i should not be surprised if it is true. before we go any farther, let us ascertain the facts we have to go upon."
"that is my idea," agreed hugh. "mr. bellowes, i gathered from watkins that my uncle discussed his discovery with you. did he indicate precisely what it was or where he had found it?"
mr. bellowes joined his fingers tip to tip with meticulous precision. a thoughtful expression possessed his face.
"i might as well admit," he began, "that you have shaken my judgments in the matter. the circumstances narrated are extraordinary. i am not prepared to endorse your conclusions, yet— well, that is by the way, your lordship."
"watkins is correct in his supposition. your uncle did discuss his—ah—fancied discovery with me. aside from the fact that he had made it whilst at chesby—"
"at chesby?" hugh interrupted.
"so i understood. he came in to see me just before he started for constantinople the last time. i should describe him as considerably excited. "by jove, bellowes,' he said, 'do you know, i've found the missing part of the instructions?' i remember i pooh-poohed his claim, and instead of becoming angry, as he usually did, he laughed at me. "oh, you may doubt,' he said, 'but i am going to constantinople, and i shall soon know whether i am correct or not.'
"'you have been to constantinople before,' i told him, 'but you never obtained any information.' 'i lacked the key,' was his answer. 'to think that all these years nobody ever found it!' i ventured to remind him of a mortgage coming due, which could be extended only at an increased rate, and he replied: 'we'll attend to that without any difficulty. i tell you, bellowes, it's all perfectly plain in the missing half of the instructions.' then he had me get out the charter chest, saying he wished to go over the known half of the instructions to see if there had not been a hint of the hiding-place in that or any of the other old documents."
"was there?" questioned hugh.
"if there was, he did not tell me, your lordship. he went away without any comment, and the next i saw of him was perhaps three weeks later when he returned from constantinople. he was even more excited than he had been when he came up from chesby. "i really think there's something in it,' he said. "i wish you'd have one of your young men send this cable to my nephew. i am going to need some young blood in this. it's there, bellowes, i am persuaded, but we shall have to figure carefully on getting it out.'"
"humph," said hugh. "that's not much to go on. do you know what he did with the missing half of the instructions he said he found?"
"no, sir. he never showed it to me, and so far as i know, he did not have it in his possession when he was here."
"he wouldn't have carried it, or even a copy of it, if he had supposed others had an interest in it," i interposed.
"true," assented hugh. "well, let's have a look at the charter chest."
mr. bellowes went to a safe in the corner, and took from an inner compartment a bunch of heavy keys, some of them comparatively modern, others clumsy and ancient. with these he opened lock after lock along front and sides of the old chest. hugh and i carefully raised the lid. a musty odor floated up to us, such an odor as you find in old books. the chest, itself, was packed with smaller boxes, some of wood and some of iron and steel.
the aged solicitor indicated a massive steel box in one corner.
"that contains the instructions and related documents your lordship," he said, and lifting it to the table top fitted a small key to the lock.
there was a click, and the cover flew back. inside was a wooden lid, which hugh pried up with his thumb-nail, and below that a layer of oiled silk, and below that again more layers of cloth, silk and linen. finally, we came to several framed parchments, with glasses in front and back.
"your uncle did that," explained mr. bellowes. "he was afraid they would be ruined by handling and exposure."
the first frame contained a sheet of parchment, i should say, twelve inches by ten, covered with minute black letter script in a rather corrupt form of mediæval latin.
"that is hugh's instructions," said the solicitor. "i'd advise you not to strain your eyes trying to make out the original. we had a very careful translation prepared, and checked over by scholars at oxford."
he drew out a typewritten sheet of foolscap, and nikka and i read it over hugh's shoulder:
"instructions of hugh, lord of chesby. i, hugh, write this for my son, and it may be, those who come after him.
"in the reign of the emperor andronicus comnenus my father visited constantinople, and the emperor made much of him. at the emperor's request my father aided in the disposition of a certain treasure which andronicus had amassed by confiscating and fining the estates of rebel nobles. none save these two knew the location of the treasure.
"it chanced that my father passed oversea to the holy land to make good his vows to our lady the virgin, and the emperor andronicus was slain by his enemies. the emperor isaac, who succeeded andronicus, sent urgent messages to my father, bidding him visit constantinople that the new emperor might do him honor. and in time my father journeyed again to constantinople, and the emperor would have had him yield the secret of the treasure. but my father would not, because andronicus had obtained from him a solemn oath never to give up the treasure to any save one who would spend it for the bettering of the empire, and the new emperor craved it for his courtiers and courtesans. then the emperor threw my father into prison, and so kept him until messer baldwin of flanders and messer dandolo of venice and the barons of the crusade went against the emperor and smote him down.
"ill-fortune continued to beset the empire, and so my father kept the secret. in god's appointed time he died and passed on the secret to me. now, i, too, see death riding toward me, nor do i fear it, for those i love are in the shadow worlds of hell or purgatory.
"harken, then, my son, and those of your seed who come after us. the lords of constantinople are rotten. their empire dwindles away. the treasure is not for such as they. therefore i say it shall go to augment the fortunes of our house and recompense my father's sufferings.
"take it, he who can. but beware the greeks, for some know of the treasure and the secret will not die.
"in manus tuas, domine."
hugh let fall the typed script, and we all stared reverently at the original parchment under its sheltering glass. there was something inexpressibly poignant about these words carried across the ages from a norman-english baron to his modern descendant.
"is there anything else?" asked hugh. "it's odd, he speaks so impressively of going after the treasure, and yet he offers no hint of how to find it. was the secret always unknown? but no, of course not! there was that chap in henry the fifth's time, and the elizabethan hugh. they knew where it was."
"there is another document here which sheds light upon that phase of the mystery," volunteered mr. bellowes, and he sorted an envelope from the mass of documents in the steel box.
from the envelope he drew a heavy sheet of yellowed linen paper inscribed in an angular feminine hand in very faded black ink.
"this was written by the widow of the elizabethan hugh," the old solicitor continued. "her husband, as you may remember, my lord, never returned from one of his voyages. his lady seems to have been a strong-minded person, after the fashion of her royal mistress, indeed. she was in charge of the estate for some years in the minority of her son, and she evidently used her authority."
he spread the paper before us. it was dated "castle chesby, ye 5th septr., 1592," and we read the vigorous strokes with ease:
"forasmuch as yt hath pleased god to sette mee in authoritie in this my deere late husband's place, i have seene fitte to take that roote of evill which hath beene ye bane of oure race fromme oute ye chartar cheste and putte yt where yt may wreak noe more of harmme and sorrowe. i will not have my sonne awasting of hys substaunce and hys life as didde hys deere fathour.
"jane chesby.
"postscriptum. yette will i leave a trase for thatte yt might seeme unfaithfull to ye dead didde i lose thatte whych ys a part of ye house's wealthe."
"what do you make out of that?" i asked in bewilderment.
hugh and mr. bellowes laughed.
"i remember hearing of this, but i never saw it before," said hugh. "jane chesby was a character, by all accounts."
"the tradition," said the solicitor, "is that the 'roote of evill' was the part of the instructions containing the directions to the location of the treasure. at any rate, there is no record of its having been seen since the date of lady jane's minute."
"but the 'trase' she speaks of?" i queried.
"nobody has ever found it—unless lord james did so."
"what is that on the back of the paper?" nikka asked.
"the lady seems also to have been a poetess," said mr. bellowes with a smile. "they are some lines she scrawled, apparently without any reference to the matter on the other side."
nikka turned the paper over. the lines were scrawled, as the lawyer had said, diagonally across the sheet, as if in a moment of abstraction
putte downe ye anciount riddel
in decente, seemelie ordour.
rouse, o ye mystic sybil,
vex hymme who doth endeavour,
nor treate hys efortte tendour.
"a farrago of antique spelling and nonsense," commented hugh. "that gets us no farther."
"still, i suggest we take a copy of it with us," said nikka.
"it won't do any harm," agreed mr. bellowes, and he called a stenographer and directed him to make copies of the two writings.
"this lady jane was a ferocious protestant," pursued hugh reflectively. "it was she who blocked up the old family crypt, saying it was not fit to bury protestant chesbys with the papist lords in a place that had known the rites of the scarlet woman and all that sort of stuff."
"yes," said mr. bellowes, turning from the stenographer, "and if you recall, my lord, she blocked up the crypt so successfully that its exact location has been a mystery ever since." and to us he explained: "it lies somewhere under the extensive ruins of crowden priory, an old monastic establishment which was closely linked with chesby in the middle ages."
hugh rose reluctantly.
"i am afraid we have learned nothing here," he said. "have we exhausted the charter chest?"
"unless you wish to read the brief records of the elizabethan hugh and his ancestor of henry the fifth's time," replied the lawyer. "neither furnishes any concrete information. the one records the suspicion and hampering of the greeks; the other was never allowed about except under escort of janissaries."
"then we have done all we can," said hugh. "we'll take the night train for chesby."
mr. bellowes suspended his work of returning the several documents to their places in the steel box.
"i do hope you will take thought to whatever you do, your lordship," he urged. "as you see, the trail so far is blind, and whatever validity we may attach to your uncle's assertion that he had discovered the clue, it must be manifest that you are helpless until you have learned as much as he did."
"you are quite right," returned hugh, somewhat to the old gentleman's surprise. "but we intend to find out what my uncle discovered. if he did not overrate his achievement, then you may be sure that we shall do everything in our power to obtain the treasure."
"you must admit that common sense can dictate no other course. you say i am ruined as it is. well, then, i can well afford to risk whatever is left on the chance of extricating the estate."
the lawyer wagged his gray head sorrowfully.
"it's a very sad situation for me, mister hugh—beg pardon, your lordship," he sighed. "one way, as you say, it's ruin, to put the facts bluntly. the other way, there'll be terrible danger. well, sir, i wish you and your friends the best of luck, and whatever poor service i can afford you you may rely upon."
