The Black Abbot
settlement had better be in Mr. Gwyn’s hands. I did not hear any more
because Mr. Alford told me to get out. Miss Wenner, who used to be his
lordship’s secretary, came down from London yesterday, but Mr. Alford
has given orders that she is not to be admitted. His lordship did not
see her.…
Mr. Fabrian Gilder’s spy reported other minor matters which were less
interesting. He read the letter again, put it in his pocket, and was
busy at his desk for five minutes.
He came back to find his employer leaning over his desk, his head
between his hands, and laid a slip of paper before him.
“What is this?” asked Gwyn, startled.
“A six-months’ bill for seven thousand pounds. I’ve put an extra
thousand in for luck,” said Gilder coolly.
Gwyn read the document quickly. It was a bill, and required only his
signature and that of Harry, Earl of Chelford, to make it convertible
into solid cash.
“I dare not do it--I simply dare not do it!”
“Why tell him it’s a bill at all?” asked Gilder. “You can get him by
himself, spin a yarn--you have a fertile imagination--but I suggest to
you that you tell him you need his signature to release some of your
sister’s property and once his name is on the back of the bill----”
Arthur Gwyn looked up sharply. Was it a coincidence that this excuse
should be suggested? There was nothing in the head clerk’s face to
suggest otherwise.
“But when it comes due?” he asked irresolutely, as he turned the
document over and over in his hands.
“In six months’ time he’ll be married, and if things aren’t better
with you, he’ll either have to meet the bill or hush the matter up.”
The eyes of the two men met.
“You’re on the edge of ruin, my young friend,” said Gilder, “and I’m
rather concerned. If you go down, my livelihood disappears.”
How true this was, Arthur learnt one bitter day.
“You make a deuced sight more out of it than I do,” he grumbled as he
wrote the name of a bank across the face of the bill.
“I spend less than you, and when I get money I know how to keep it.”
“You might even raise the sum yourself,” said his employer, with a
feeble attempt at jocularity.
“I might,” said Gilder grimly, “but, as I said before, I know how to
take care of my own, and lending money to you is not my notion of a
good investment.”
He had been out of the room only a few minutes when he came back, and
closing the door carefully behind him:
“Do you know a Miss Wenner?” he asked.
Mr. Gwyn frowned.
“Yes. What does she want?”
“She says she must see you on an urgent personal matter. Is she one of
your--friends?”
Arthur shook his head.
“N-no--I have met her. She was Chelford’s secretary. Can’t you find
out what she wants?”
“I’ve tried, but it is a matter personal to you. Do you want to see
her?--I can easily stall her.”
Arthur thought for a while. She might have something important to tell
him.
“Ask her to come in,” he said.
A few minutes later Mary Wenner came into the room and greeted him
with a familiar nod.
“Well, my dear, this is an unexpected pleasure. You are getting
prettier every time I see you.”
She accepted the flattery as her right, and sat on the edge of his
desk.
“I’ve been down to Fossaway, Arthur,” she said.
“Silly girl,” he smiled. “But I thought that affair was all over and
done with. You’ve got to be good, Mary. Chelford is going to marry my
sister.”
“Isn’t that grand! And I’m not surprised. I saw you working when I was
at Fossaway.”
She slipped down from the desk and dropped both her hands on his
shoulders.
“Arthur, I’m tired of stenogging! And I want like sin to get back on
that cold-blooded hound Dick Alford. I’ve been fired out once for
proposing to a man--I’m going to take a second chance. We’ve been good
pals, Arthur.”
He murmured something in his alarm.
“Listen--don’t turn down a good thing. You can marry me and I’ll bring
you a bigger dowry than your sister will take to Harry Chelford.”
He stared at her.
“You?… Dowry?” he stammered.
She nodded slowly.
“Marry me, and I’ll take you to the place where you can lay your hands
on fifteen tons of Spanish gold--the Chelford treasure! Two and a half
million pounds!”
VIII
Fifteen tons of gold! Two and a half millions sterling!
Arthur Gwyn stared at the girl incredulously. But she was making no
idle statement, and that she at least believed what she said was clear
from her flushed face and shining eyes. For a second he was
speechless.
“Fifteen tons of gold?” He frowned and smiled at the same time.
“You’re mad, Mary!”
“Mad, am I?” She nodded vigorously. “Oh, indeed, I daresay you think
so, but you won’t be thinking that very long! I have found the
Chelford treasure, I tell you.”
He sat down heavily in his chair, his startled eyes still fixed upon
hers. He was for the moment inarticulate.
“Rubbish!” he managed to say at last. “There is no Chelford treasure!
Living so long in the same house with Harry Chelford has made you as
mad as he!”
She walked slowly to the desk, and, with her palms on the ledge, leant
down over him.
“You think that, do you?” she asked in a steady voice. “I was three
years Lord Chelford’s secretary, and it’s true I had this treasure
stuff dinned into me from morning till night. The sight of a
black-lettered book makes me ill even now, and the plans of Fossaway
Manor that I’ve studied--well, I don’t like to think of them! I’ve
lived with this treasure for three years, Arthur, and there have been
times when I could have screamed when it was mentioned. I got so that
I came to like Dick Alford, just because he never spoke to me about
it. And then one day there came a bundle of plans from London--Harry
had a standing order with an old bookseller to send him anything he
could find about Chelfordbury or Fossaway Manor. Harry had gone up to
town that morning and I had no other work to do, so I went through
these dusty old sheets to index them. And on the third sheet I found
something that made me open my eyes.”
“What was it?” asked Arthur carelessly.
She looked at him with a quiet smile.
“A lot has to happen before I tell you that,” she said. “Arthur, if I
give you this, or your share of this, will you marry me?”
Arthur looked at her steadily.
“If you can put me next to a million, or half a million,” he said
slowly, “I would marry you if you were the plainest woman on the face
of the earth! Instead of being the bonniest, prettiest little
angel----”
“You can keep that stuff for later,” she said practically.
She opened her handbag and took out a paper, and he watched with
fascinated interest. If he expected the secret of the Chelford
treasure to be laid before him in writing, he was to be disappointed.
“I’m not much of a lawyer,” said Mary, as she smoothed out the paper
and laid it on his blotting-pad, “but I think this is binding on both
sides.”
He took up the paper with a wry face and read it.
In consideration of receiving one half of the Chelford treasure, I,
Arthur Gwyn, of Willow House, Chelfordbury, Sussex, agree to bind
myself to Mary Agnes Wenner in the holy bonds of matrimony within one
month of the treasure being found and divided.
“Is that in order?” she asked, watching his face.
He put the paper down.
“My dear girl----” he began, in his suavest manner.
“Listen, Arthur.” She perched herself on the edge of the desk. “This
is the time for ‘yes’s’ and ‘no’s,’ for ‘I will’s’ and ‘I won’t’s’!
I’m not in love with you and you’re not in love with me. But I want a
home and a position. I may not be a lady, but I am ladylike, and I
have lived long enough with swagger people to make no mistakes. Is it
yes or is it no?”
Arthur looked at the paper again.
“Does it strike you,” he said, “that the Chelford treasure is not
yours or mine to divide? That it belongs to Harry Chelford, his heirs
and his successors?”
“It is treasure trove,” she said startlingly. “I know the law of the
country, because I’ve talked this thing over with Harry times without
number. Treasure found hidden after hundreds of years has to be
divided between the State and the finder.”
He shook his head with a smile.
“Our Mary is a lawyer!” he bantered. “You’re wrong, my dear. That is
only the case if the owner of the money cannot be found. In the
present instance there is no doubt whatever that the treasure would
belong to Chelford.”
He saw her face fall and went on:
“I don’t know that that is going to seriously inconvenience us,” he
said, looking her straight in the eyes. “You cannot lose what you
never had, eh?”
She drew a deep sigh of relief.
“It is Harry’s, I suppose, but after the way he has treated me, and
all that I’ve done for him----”
“Yes, yes,” he said soothingly. “We needn’t worry about Harry. The
only question is, have you found the treasure?”
She nodded.
“You’ve actually seen it?”
“No,” she hesitated, “I haven’t seen it. I hadn’t time. But I saw the
boxes through the grating. The door was locked, and I was so excited
that I had to come out and walk around. And then Dick Alford saw me.”
Arthur was puzzled. He knew this girl well enough; they had been good
friends in the days when she was Chelford’s secretary, and she had
been a most useful agent of his.
“Now, let’s get down to brass tacks,” he said brusquely. “Where did
you see this treasure and when?”
“I’ll tell you when. I saw it two days ago,” she said, to his
surprise, for he had thought she was talking about some experience she
had had when she was an inmate of Fossaway Manor.
“Two days ago?” he gasped.
“Two days ago,” she affirmed. “And as to where, well, there’s another
matter to be settled before we get as far as that, Arthur. Will you
sign that agreement?”
He looked at the paper again. His training in the law, his natural
instincts against putting his name under any document which bound him,
urged him to temporize.
“It is yes or no,” she said, as though she read his mind. “I’m not
going to fool around with you unless you mean business. I’ll take it
to Harry, and maybe, if I put him in possession of this gold, he’ll do
the right thing by me.”
And, seeing that he made no move, she took up the paper, folded it
determinedly, and put it in her little satchel.
“What’s the hurry?” he said, in alarm. “Mary, you’re mad to expect me
to take a big decision like this without giving the matter a moment’s
thought. Don’t you realize what you’re asking me to do? You’re
proposing an act of sheer robbery and you’re asking me to become an
accomplice. After all----” He shrugged his shoulders.
“If your conscience is hurting you,” she said, “we’ll leave it. I’m
not the sort of girl who’d throw herself at any man’s head. I’ll take
it along to Harry and see if his conscience is busy.”
She turned to go, but before she reached the door he had intercepted
her.
“Don’t be silly and don’t be unreasonable.” He was more than a little
agitated. “It’s a big thing you’re asking----”
“It’s a big thing I’m giving,” she said impatiently. “Two million and
a half pounds--there’s nothing mean about that.”
He took her by the arm and forcibly drew her back.
“Sit down and don’t be a fool,” he said. “I’ve told you already I’ll
marry you to-morrow, and I’ll go farther and say that there never was
a time when money was sweeter to me than it is at the moment.”
“Will you sign that note?”
He skimmed it through quickly, making sure that he was under no
obligation if the treasure did not materialize, and, picking up a pen,
he made a little correction, she watching suspiciously, and signed
with a flourish.
“What is that you’ve put into the paper?” she demanded.
“An exit for Arthur Gwyn,” he said with a whimsical smile. “The
document reads ‘In consideration of receiving on behalf of my client