The Hand in the Dark
on the clock, which was verging on twenty minutes past seven, and she
feared the relation of her old friend's experience might make them late
at the Weynes. But at that moment Tufnell approached his mistress and
caught her eye. A slight shade of annoyance crossed her brow as she
listened to something he communicated in a low voice, and she turned to
her guests.
"I must ask you to excuse me for a few moments," she said.
She rose from her place and left the room. As the door closed behind her
the ladies turned eagerly to Musard.
"Now, please, tell us about the ruby," said several in unison.
The explorer glanced at the eager faces looking towards him.
"Very well, I will tell you the story," he said quietly, but with
visible reluctance.
CHAPTER IV
"It was before the war. Many strange things have happened in the world
before the Boche broke loose with his dream of 'Deutschland ueber Alles.'
I had been to Melville Island trying to match a pearl for the Devonshire
necklace, and I went from the pearl fisheries to New Zealand, led there
by rumours of the discovery of some wonderful black pearls. It was,
however, a wild-goose chase. These rumours generally are. One of the
experts of the New Zealand Fishery Department had been exploring the
Haurakai Gulf, and returned to Auckland with a number of black pearls,
which he had found in an oyster-bed on one of the Barrier Islands. He
thought his fortune was made, though, being a fishery expert, he ought
to have known better. They were black pearls right enough, but they came
from edible oysters, and were valueless as jewels--not worth a shilling
each.
"I put up at the Royal hotel, Auckland, waiting for a ship to take me
back to England. I had arranged to return round the Cape, to look at a
parcel of diamonds which were expected to arrive at Capetown from the
fields in about six weeks' time. The day before I was due to sail, a
rough-looking man named Moynglass, a miner, came to the hotel to see me.
He had heard of me as a mining expert, and he had a business proposition
which he wanted to place before me.
"He told me he and four others had just returned to Auckland after
putting in six weeks among the volcanic beaches of the North Island,
searching--'fossicking,' he called it--for fine gold. These black sand
volcanic beaches are common in parts of New Zealand. The black sand is
derived from the crystals of magnetic iron, and there is frequently a
fair amount of fine gold mingled with them. By the continued action of
the surf the heavier materials, gold, and ironstone sand, are mingled
together between high and low water mark, and what appears as a stratum
of black sand is found on the surface or buried under the ordinary sand.
The gold is usually very fine, and the trouble of sifting and collecting
it is great. A man works for wages, and hard-earned wages at that, who
goes in for this kind of mining. But your true miner is ever an
adventurer and a gambler, and gold thus won is dearer to his heart than
gold which might be earned with less effort and more regularity in the
form of sovereigns. You see, there is always the chance of a big find.
"Moynglass and his party had met with fair success along the beaches,
but they wanted more than that. Moynglass was anxious to trace the fine
gold to its source, and find a fortune. He believed, like most miners,
that this fine gold is carried along the beds of the larger rivers and
distributed by the action of the sea along the different beaches where
it is found. His theory was that if the drift of the gold sands could be
traced to their source, a great quartz reef would be found which would
make the discoverers wealthy men. But he and his mates knew nothing
about geology, and they wanted somebody to go with them who could chart
the course, and lead them to the launching point of the gold.
"I had heard this theory before, and was not impressed by it. I should
probably have turned down Moynglass's proposition if, in the course of
his conversation, he had not produced a sample of ruby quartz from his
pocket and showed it to me. He said he had found it while exploring one
of the rivers of the Urewera country. I examined the quartz attentively.
It was emery rock, and imbedded in the pale green mass were ruby
crystals, and true Oriental rubies at that. I realized the valuable
nature of the discovery, and questioned the man closely as to where he
had obtained the ruby rock, but he became instantly suspicious, and
guarded in his replies. If I joined his party--well and good: he would
show me the spot, and we would share and share alike, but he would tell
me nothing otherwise.
"I decided to go, and the terms were agreed upon. We set out from
Auckland, the five of us, a week later. We went by coastal steamer to a
little port in the Bay of Plenty, and there we plunged into the Urewera
Mountains. My companions thought of nothing but the search for the
source of the golden sands, but I was interested only in the ruby rock.
There lay the fortune, if I could find it. I carried the specimen of
corundum in my waistcoat pocket.
"The river we were ascending to its source was called the Araheoa. It
was a rushing, noisy torrent, winding along a deep and narrow gorge,
which in places almost met overhead. Some patches of olivine and
serpentine encouraged me to think that we should find a heavy belt of
the rock somewhere along the upper part of the valley, but my hopes were
not realized. Day after day passed, and I found no more of it. When my
companions washed the sands of likely stretches of river beach for fine
gold, I examined the waste for corundum crystals, but I found no signs
of them.
"We followed the river until we reached an inaccessible mountain gorge
which seemed to bar our further progress. But, by diverting our course
some miles to the northward, we were able to ascend to the upper reaches
of the river, and, here, to my delight, I found the banks and rapids
studded with great green masses of olivine rocks.
"I was anxious to examine these rocks, which extended up the mountain
side, and my companions agreed with me that it was advisable to leave
the bed of the river for the spur of the mountains where the river
apparently took its rise. We crossed the stream, and commenced a gradual
but oblique ascent of the spur. But after climbing for some hours we
found our further progress stopped by a wide and deep gully, a sinister
place, full of masses of dark green rocks. At the foot of one of the
largest of these rocks we came across a large hole descending almost
perpendicularly into the earth.
"We lit our lamps and descended. After some scrambling we found
ourselves on a landing-place, from which another low passage of an
easier gradient led into a large cave in the solid rock.
"The surface underneath our feet was covered with a dust so fine that it
slipped from beneath us like sand, and rose in thick clouds about us.
The cave was high enough to walk upright in, and seemed to run a great
distance, with many lateral passages and smaller recesses off the
principal chamber. Moynglass entered one of these passages and
disappeared from view. A few moments afterwards we heard him, in a very
excited voice, calling us to follow him.
"We proceeded stooping, in Indian file, down the passage, and found
Moynglass in a smaller cave at the end of it, staring intently at
something which was at first difficult to see in the gloom. Then, by the
light of our lamps, we made out a sapling sticking up between two rocks,
with a withered human hand impaled on it by a rusty sheath knife.
"As I was examining it, one of my companions, who had been exploring the
cave, gave a cry of astonishment which caused me to look round. In a
corner of the cave, revealed by his lamp, lay two skeletons side by
side. The hand of one skeleton was missing, and in the eye of the other
there gleamed a large uncut ruby. We examined the skeletons and searched
the cave, but found nothing to throw any light on the mystery or reveal
any clue of identity. There was not a vestige of food or clothing around
the remains, and not a scrap of writing--only the two crumbling
skeletons, the sapling, the sheath knife, and the ruby.
"What had brought about such a tragedy in the dim recesses of that
prehistoric cave? Who could say? Perhaps the men had been prospecting
together, and one had found the ruby and hidden in the cave, where his
companion had found him and cut off his right hand with some primitive
idea of making his vengeance fit the crime. Then, perhaps, they had been
unable to escape from the cave, and had died together of thirst and
hunger. But what is the use of speculating? The secret must ever remain
hidden in the cave where the skeletons still lie."
Musard stopped abruptly, and sat staring straight in front of him. His
strange eyes had a fixed look, as if gazing into the distance. His brown
hand rested lightly on the white tablecloth, and the great ruby on his
little finger gleamed fitfully in the light.
"You haven't told us all the story yet," said Phil Heredith quietly.
The other looked doubtfully at the ring of intent faces regarding him.
"I left that part untold for a good reason," he admitted. "It is--well,
I thought it a little bit too horrible to relate."
"Oh, do tell us," said the lady journalist enthusiastically. "We are all
dying to hear it. It is such an unusual and exciting story that it would
be cruel to leave us in suspense about the end."
"Very well, then," said Musard, as the other ladies chorused their
approval. "We left the cave, and Moynglass, who considered himself the
leader of the expedition, put the ruby in his pocket. That night we
camped at a wild desolate spot, not far from the edge of a cliff about
two hundred feet high, at the foot of which the bitter sulphurous waters
of the river flowed into a chasm. In the morning we found Moynglass
lying dead in his blanket, with the rusty sheath knife he had brought
away from the cave sticking in his breast. The ruby was gone, and, so,
also, was the eldest member of our party--an elderly dark-faced Irishman
named Doyne, who, the previous day, had angrily disputed Moynglass's
right to carry the ruby.
"We searched for Doyne all that day, but could find no trace of him. The
next day we tracked across a glacier-like expanse littered with large
blocks of sandstone. It was a grim spot. A horrible, stony, treeless
waste which might have been the birthplace of the earth and the scene of
Creation--a tableland between great mountains, full of masses of
rhodonite contorted into grotesque shapes of stone images; a place where
our lightest whispers came shouting back out of the profound stillness
from the huge castellated black rocks bristling on the edge of a
precipice which slit the valley from end to end.
"It was there we found Doyne, staggering along the lip of the gorge. He
had gone mad in the solitude, and was wandering along bareheaded,
tossing his arms in the air as he walked. When I saw him I thought of
Cain trying to escape from the wrath of God after killing Abel. He saw
us as soon as we saw him, and started to run. We set out in pursuit, but
he fled with great speed, leaping from rock to rock like a mountain
goat. He was getting away from us when he slipped and fell into the
chasm with a loud cry. We found a path down the precipice and descended,
and discovered him at the foot, battered to death, with the ruby
clutched in his hand. That ended the expedition. The others insisted on
returning to the coast without delay, and when we arrived there they
gladly sold their shares in the ruby to me."
There was rather a long silence when the explorer had finished his
narration. The long hand of the clock on the mantelpiece was creeping