The Black Abbot
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.