WE FIND THE TREASURE.
"I've a strong sense of the right of property," said Miss Belcher,
sipping her tea.
We had gathered in Dr. Beauregard's deep verandah, at the corner
where it took the late afternoon sunshine. The level rays sparkled
on the silver and delicate Worcester china of the Doctor's tea
equipage, and fell through the open French window into the Doctor's
drawing-room. A wonderful room it was, as everything in the house
was wonderful, a spacious, airy room, furnished in white and gold,
with Dresden figures on the mantelshelf; Venetian mirrors, dainty
water-colours sunk into the panels, cases of rare books (among them,
as I remember, a set of the Cabinet des Fees, bound in rose-coloured
morocco and stamped with the Royal arms of France), stands of music,
and a priceless harpsichord inlaid with ivory. Next to the airiness
of the house, which stood high above reach of the valley mists with
their malaria, what most sharply impressed me, and the ladies in
particular, was its exquisite cleanliness. Yet Dr. Beauregard
assured us that he kept but one servant--the negress Rosa.
At her master's call she had appeared in the verandah above us as we
mounted the last terrace towards the house, and had stood there
watching our ascent with no trace of surprise, or, indeed, of any
emotion whatever, on her black, inscrutable face. Her eyes met mine
as though she had never seen me before. To her care Dr. Beauregard
had given over the still unconscious Glass, and, with a sign to Mr.
Rogers and Mr. Goodfellow to follow her with their burden, she had
led the way through the house to the bedroom at the back.
There, in a bed between spotlessly clean sheets, they had laid the
patient, and been dismissed by her. It was she who, less than ten
minutes later, had brought our tea to us in the verandah, and with
our tea many little plates heaped with small cakes and sweetmeats--
all fresh, as though she had been expecting us for hours, and could
command the resources of a city. I kept a sharp look-out, but of the
strange lady--the lady of the graveyard--I could detect no trace.
Nothing indicated her presence, unless it were the dainty feminine
furniture of the drawing-room.
"I've a strong sense of the right of property," said Miss Belcher,
sipping her tea and touching the oilskin wrapper, which lay in her
lap unopened as Captain Branscome had handed it to her; and so has
Jack Rogers here. You tell me, sir, that you hold Mortallone by
grant, and doubtless you can show your title."
"Willingly, madam." Dr. Beauregard rose, and stepped to the French
window. "You can read Spanish?" he asked, turning there and pausing.
"Not a word", answered Miss Belcher. The Doctor smiled. "It would
impart nothing it you could," said he, with a smile, "for I will own
to you frankly that Mortallone has always been under suspicion of
containing treasure, and in the grant all treasure-trove is expressly
reserved. I cannot say," he added, smiling again, "that I have
strictly observed the clause; but, as between you and me, it legally
disposes of my claim."
"Thank you," said Miss Belcher; "but I don't own an equally tender
conscience towards Governments." Here Mr. Rogers winked at me, for
as a patron of smugglers Miss Belcher enjoyed some reputation, even
for a Cornish landowner. "We will leave Government out of the
question; but as proprietor--lord of the manor, as we should say at
home--you have a right to your share; and that, by English law--which
I suggest we follow--is one-third."
Dr. Beauregard bowed. "I'm infinitely obliged to you, ma'am, and I
make no doubt that what you so generously promise you will as
honourably give--when I claim it. In truth, I have something more
than enough for my needs. There was a time (I will confess) when I
had sold my soul, if I possessed such a thing, for a glimpse of what
lies written on that parchment. But I am old; and old age--"
He broke off the sentence and did not resume it, but went on
presently, with a change of tone: "However, I still keep a sporting
interest in the treasure, which has baffled me all these years, the
more so because I have a shrewd suspicion that it has lain all the
while within a mile or so of where we sit at this moment."
"It does, sir," said Miss Belcher, unfolding the chart and pointing.
Dr. Beauregard adjusted a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses and bent
towards it. The writing was indistinct, and he put out a hand as if
to take hold of the edge of the parchment and steady it. The hand, I
noticed, did not tremble at all.
"Stay a moment, sir." Miss Belcher turned the chart over. "The clue
is given here, upon the back. Listen." And she translated:--
"'Right bank of river a mile and a half up from Gow Creek.
Centre tree in clump of five: branch bearing north and half a
point east: two forks--'"
"My trees!" exclaimed the Doctor. "You remember my halting and
pointing them out to you? Ah, yes, and I, too, remember now that you
appeared to be disconcerted. You recognized them, of course?"
"Yes, we recognized them," Miss Belcher admitted. But let me
finish:--"
"'Right fork, four feet. Red cave under hill, four hundred and
seventy-five yards from foot of tree, N.N.W. The stones here,
under rock four spans, left side'"
"--Which means, I suppose, that the cave lies some way up the face of
the rock, and can only be seen by climbing out upon the right fork of
the tree; and that the stones--that is to say, the jewels--are hidden
under a rock to the left; which rock either measures four spans or
lies, four spans within the entrance of the cave."
"I know of no such cave, ma'am," said Dr. Beauregard, bending his
brows. "Though, to be sure, the cliff is of a reddish colour
thereabouts, due to a drip of water and the growth of some small
fungus."
"I was a fool," said Captain Branscome, "to leave the tools in the
gig. If we go back to fetch them, sunset will be upon us before we
get to work."
The Doctor rose, with a smile.
"You might have guessed, sir, that I am not unprovided with spades
and picks, or with ropes and a ladder, which also I foresee we shall
need. Come; if you have drunk your tea, I will ask you to follow me
into the house--the ladies included--and choose your outfit."
They went in after him. I was in the act of following--I had, in
fact, taken a couple of steps towards the French window--when a
slight shiver seemed to run through my hair, and I stood still.
"Little boy!"
The words came in a whisper from the end of the verandah. I stole
back, and, leaning well across the rail, peered around the corner of
the house.
"Little boy!" whispered the voice again, and I saw the little lady of
the graveyard. She was standing close back against the
side-boarding, her body almost flattened against it. "Come," she
whispered, beckoning with a timid glance over her shoulder towards
the rear of the house.
I looked at her for a second or two, and shook my head.
"But you must come," she insisted, still in a whisper, and took a
step or two as if to entice me after her. Then she halted, and,
seeing that I made no motion to follow, came tip-toeing back.
"If you do not come," she said, "he will kill you! He will
sar-tain-ly kill you all!"
She nodded vehemently, and so, after another glance to right and
left, beckoned to me once again. Her face was white, almost as her
muslin frock, and something in it persuaded me to climb over the
verandah-rail and follow her.
About thirty yards from the corner of the house stood a clump of
odorous laurels, the scent of which we had been inhaling while we sat
at tea. For these she broke away at a run, nor looked back until she
was well within their shadow and I had overtaken her.
"Good boy!" she said, nodding again and smiling at me with her
desperately anxious face. "I would wish--I would very much wish--to
kiss you. But you mus' not come a-near"--she sighed--"it is not
healthy. Only you come with me. I dream of you, sometimes, all las'
night. 'What a pity!' I dream, 'and you so pe-ritty boy!'
Now you come with me, and I take you away so he never find you."
The woman was evidently mad.
"Please tell me what you have to say," I urged, "and let me go back.
They will be missing me in a minute or so."
"If they miss you, it is no matter now. He will kill them all, he is
so strong . . . as he killed all those others . . . you remember?
See, now, pe-ritty boy, what I have done for you, to save you from
him! He shut me up, in his other house--he has another house away up
in the woods, beyond where we met." She waved a hand towards the
hills. "But I break out, and come here to save you. He would kill
me also, if he knew."
Mad though I believed her, I was growing pretty thoroughly
frightened, remembering the graveyard under the trees. "You forget
my friends," said I, speaking very simply, as to a child. "If he
means to kill them, I ought to carry them warning."
"He will not kill them till to-night," she answered, shaking her
head. "It is always at night-time, when they are at supper. There
is no hurry, little boy; but he will sar-tain-ly kill them, all the
same."
I turned my head, preparing to run, for I heard Captain Branscome's
voice in the verandah, calling my name.
"They are starting after the treasure. I must go," I stammered.
She drew close, and laid a hand on my arm. Again a dreadful odour
was wafted under my nostrils--an odour as of tuberoses, and I know
not what of corruption--and, as before in the graveyard, it turned me
both sick and giddy.
"They will not find it," she said, nodding with an air of childish
triumph. "Shall I tell you why? _I_ have hidden it!" Here she fell
back on her old litany. "He would kill me if he knew . . . I hid
it--oh, years ago! But come, and I will show you; and you shall take
a great deal--yes, as much as you can carry--if only you will go
away, and never be rash again."
A second time I heard Captain Branscome's voice calling to me,
demanding to know where I had disappeared.
She put a finger to her lips, smiling. "Such treasure you never did
see. . . . Even Rosa does not know. . . . Come, little boy!"
She pushed her way through the laurels, and I followed her. The edge
of the shrubbery overhung the dry bed of a torrent, in the cleft of
which, when we had lowered ourselves over the edge, we were
completely hidden from the house. From the edge a slope of loose
stones ran down to the bottom of the cleft, where a thin stream of
water trickled. The stones slid with me, but not dangerously; and as
we scurried down--I in my thick boots, she in her diminutive
dancing-shoes--I heard Plinny's voice join with Captain Branscome's
in calling my name. But by this time I was committed to the
adventure, and by-and-by they desisted, supposing (as Plinny told me
later) that I had taken French leave again, and run off to be first
at the clump of trees.
We might not climb the slope directly in face of us; for, by so doing
(even if it had been accessible, which I doubt), we should have
emerged into view. We therefore bent our way to the right up the
bottom of the gorge, to a narrow tongue of rock dividing it, in the
shelter of which we mounted the rough stairway of the torrent bed
from one flat rock to another until we stepped out upon a shallow
plateau where the contour of the hills shut off the house and its
terraces. We stood, as I judged, upon the reverse or northern side
of that ridge which to the south and west overlooked the valley of
the treasure. Above the plateau a stone-strewn scarp of earth led to
the forest, which reached to the very summit of the ridge; and
towards the summit, after pausing for a second or two to pant and
catch her breath, my strange guide continued her climb.
"What is your name, little boy?"
I told her, and she repeated it once or twice, to get it by heart.
"You may call me 'Metta," she said. "_He_ calls me 'Metta always,
when he is pleased with me, and that is almost every day. He is kind
to me; oh, yes, very kind--though terrible, of course. . . . Keep on
my left hand, Harry Brooks; so the breeze here will not blow from me
to you."
I drew up in a kind of giddiness, for that dreadful scent of death
had touched me again. She, too, halted with a little cry of dismay,
and a feeble motion of the hands, as if to wring them.
"Ah, you must keep wide of me. . . . That is my suffering, Harry
Brooks. I cannot bend over a flower but it withers, and the
butterflies die if they come near my breath . . . and that, too, is
_his_ doing. He would be kind to me, he said, and would een-oculate
me; yes, that is his word--een-oculate me, so that no poison could
ever harm me. He knows the secrets of all the plants, and why people
die of disease. Months at a time he used to leave me alone with
Rosa, and go to Havana, to the hospitals; and there he would study
till his body was wasted away with work; but at the end he would come
back, bringing visitors. Oh, many visitors! for he was rich, and the
house had room for all. There were singers--he loves music--and men
who played all day at cards, and women who made me jealous. But he
would only laugh and say, 'Wait, little one.' So I waited, and in
the end they all died. Rosa said it was the yellow fever; but no."
She held up both hands, and made pretence to pour something from an
imaginary bottle into an imaginary glass. "He can kill with one tiny
drop. In his study he keeps a machine which makes water into ice.
Rosa would carry round the ice with little glasses of curacoa, after
the coffee was served; and all would say: 'What wonders are these?
Ice in Mortallone!' and would drink his health. But _he_ never
touched the ice. You tell that to your friends, little boy. But it
will not save them: for he will find some other way."
As we went up the woods these awful confidences poured from her like
childish prattle, interrupted only by little ripples of laughter,
half shy, half silly, and altogether horrible to hear. I hung back,
divided between the impulse to tear myself away and the fearful
fascination of listening--between the urgent need to find and warn my
friends, and the forlorn hope to extract from her something that
might save them. The toil of the climb had bathed me in sweat, and
yet I shivered.
I halted. We were close under the summit of the ridge, and had
reached a passing clearing where, between the trees, as I turned
about, I could see the whole gorge in shadow at my feet, the sunlight
warm on its upper eastern slopes, and beyond these the sea. In half
an hour--in twenty minutes, maybe--I might reach the valley there
below, and at least cry my warning. I faced round again to my
companion.
She had vanished.
My mouth grew dry of a sudden. Was she a ghost? And her prattling
talk--the voice yet singing in my brain--
"Little boy! Little boy!"
I parted the tall ferns. Beyond them a small hand beckoned, and,
following it, I came face to face with a wall of naked rock from
which she lifted aside the creepers over a deep cleft--a cleft wide
enough to admit a man's body if he turned sideways and stooped a
little.
She clapped her hands at my astonishment. "You like my bower?" she
asked gleefully. "Ah, but wait, and I will show you wonders! No one
knows of it, not even Rosa."
She wriggled her way through the cleft. I peered in, and went after
her cautiously, expecting, as the curtain of creepers fell behind me,
to find myself in a dark cave or grotto. Dark it was, to be sure,
but not utterly dark; and to my amazement, as my eyes grew accustomed
to the gloom, the faint light came from ahead of me and seemed to
strike upwards from the bowels of the earth.
"Do not be afraid, little boy! But hold your head low; and look to
your feet now, for it is steep hereabouts."
Steep indeed it was. A kind of shaft, floored for the most part with
slippery earth, but here and there with an irregular stairway of
rock; and still at the lower end of the tunnel shone a faint light.
I would have given worlds by this time to retrace my steps. A slight
draught, blowing up the tunnel from my companion to me, bore the
odour of death upwards under my nostrils; but this, while it dizzied
and sickened me, seemed to clog my feet and take away all will to
escape. I had nearly swooned, indeed, when my feet encountered level
earth again, and she put out a hand to steady me.
"Is--is--this the end?"
"It goes down--down, little boy; but we need not follow it.
See, there is light, to the left of you; light, and fresh air,
_and_ my pretty bower."
I turned as her hand guided me. A puff of wind blew on my cheek,
cold and infinitely pure. I stood blinking in a short gallery that
ended suddenly in blue sky, and, staggering forward, I cast myself
down on the brink.
It was as though I lay on the sill of a great open window. Below
me--far below--waved great masses of forest, and beyond these--far
beyond--shone the blue sea. I cannot say to what depth the cliff
fell away below me. It was more than sheer--it was undercut.
I lay as one suspended over the void.
"But see, pe-ritty boy! did I not promise you wonders?"
As I faced around to the darkness of the gallery, she held aloft
something which, for the moment, I mistook for a great green snake
with lines of fire running from scale to scale and sparkling as she
waved it before me. I rolled over upon my elbow and stared. It was
a rope of emeralds.
She flung an end over one shoulder and looped it low over her breast;
then, passing the other end about her neck, she brought it forward
over the same shoulder and let it dangle. It reached almost to her
feet.
"Does it become me, little boy?" She made me a mock curtsey that set
the gems dancing with fire. "Come and choose, then!" She put out
both hands to the darkness by the wall, and a whole cascade of jewels
came sliding down and poured themselves with a rush about her feet
and across the floor of the gallery. She laughed and thrust her
hands again into the heap.
"All these I found--I myself--and carried up here from the darkness.
Take what you will, little boy, and run back to your ship.
Is it diamonds you will choose, or rubies, or--see here--this chain
of pearls? I do not like pearls, for my part; they mean sorrow.
But--see here, again!--there were boxes and boxes, all heaped to the
brim, and long robes sown all over with pearls. Take what you like--
_he_ will not know. He gives me diamonds sometimes. I adored them
in the old days, in opera. And he remembers and gives me a stone
from time to time, to keep me amused. I laugh to myself, then, when
I think of the store I keep, here in my bower. And he so clever!
But he does not guess. Ah, child, if I had had but these to wear
when I used to sing Eurydice!"
She held out two handfuls of diamonds, and began to sing in a high,
cracked voice, while she let them rain through her fingers.
"But listen!" I cried suddenly.
She ceased at once, and stood with her face half turned to the
darkness behind her, her arms rigid at her sides, the gems dropping
as her hand slowly unclasped them. Below, where the tunnel ran down
into darkness, a voice hailed--
"'Metta! Is that 'Metta?"
It was the voice of Dr. Beauregard. The poor creature gazed at me
helplessly and ran for the stairway. But her feet sank in the loose
heap of jewels; she stumbled; and, as she picked herself up, I saw
that she was too late; for already a light shone up from the tunnel
below, and before she could gain the exit the Doctor stood there,
lifting a torch, in the light of which I saw Mr. Rogers close behind
his shoulder.
"'Metta!"
I do not think he would have hurt her. But as the torch flared in
her face and lit up the shining heap of jewels, she threw up both
hands and doubled back screaming. I believed that she called to me
to hide. I put out a hand to catch her by the skirt, seeing that she
ran madly; but the thin muslin tore in my clutch.
"'Metta!"
On the ledge, against the sky, the voice seemed to overtake and
steady her for a second; but too late. With a choking cry, she put
out both hands against the void, and toppled forward; and in the
entrance was nothing but the blue, empty sky.