Twelve months have passed.
The days have slipped away rapidly since that well-remembered morning
when I stood beside Professor Stewart and watched him, peering through
his glasses, decipher those puzzling hieroglyphics which Sanehat had
penned two thousand years before.
No doubt you read the newspapers and, of course, have seen the
interesting results of the excavations made and still being continued by
the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the auspices of the Egyptian
Government, with whom Mr Fryer, as the late Arnold Edgecumbe's
executor, came to a mutual arrangement.
Professor Stewart has, for some months past, been out at the Temple of
Denderah, that cyclopean pile which Cleopatra built for herself, and
though from time to time vague reports have found their way into the
papers of important discoveries close to that famous edifice, yet, truth
to tell, we are endeavouring to keep the actual extent of the
discoveries as private as possible for the present. All I can say is
that ancient jewels, worth many thousands of pounds, taken from the spot
have already reached London--jewels, ornaments, and heart scarabs which
once adorned the person of Egypt's most gorgeous queen.
But it is of my own sweet-faced queen that I think the most--she who
sits here in silent love beside me at Upton End as I now pen these final
lines. We have already been man and wife for eight months, and, after a
delightful honeymoon spent beside the Nile, during which we paid a
visit, of course, to Cleopatra's temple, where Professor Stewart was
superintending operations, have returned home and settled down in peace
and happiness--a rural bliss, perfect and entire, that will last always.
The hated name of Harvey Shaw is never mentioned between us. And little
wonder, indeed. Within a month after his flight from Lydford, two men,
one a foreigner, called at night at a lonely cottage near Hexworthy, far
away on wild Dartmoor, and asked to see the tenant, a gentleman who had
recently taken the place furnished.
The broad-speaking, old Devon housekeeper went upstairs to inform her
master of his visitors, but she found the door locked. Shaw, for it was
he, had recognised the voice of Victor Tramu, and knew instantly that he
had at last been run to earth.
The second visitor, a well-known officer from New Scotland Yard, rushed
upstairs and called upon the accused to open the door, but on doing so
they heard the report of a revolver, and, bursting in, found the
assassin of poor Guy Nicholson lying shot through the head and quite
dead.
It appeared, too, that on the day following Harford's flight Ridgehill
Manor was found by the police to be tenantless, and Earnshaw and his
clever wife have not yet been found. The police, however, are confident
that, possessing only slight funds, they must be heard of again ere long
at their old game of passing forged notes to Continental money-changers.
Asta, instead of existing upon the charity of a criminal and unwittingly
exchanging forged notes for genuine ones and gold, as she had done so
many times, is now wealthy in her own right, while Mr Fryer has
received a very handsome legacy as executor. Cardew, fond of adventure,
got six months' leave to assist in the excavations in Egypt, and
recently, on his return, has been here at Upton End on a visit, and has
told us much of interest concerning what has of late been found there.
And as evidence of the genuineness of that half-faded record--penned by
the trusted general of Cleopatra whom she afterwards desired to kill in
order to protect her secret of her treasure, and preserved for so long
in that bronze cylinder--there stand before me with the gold statuette
of Osiris beneath domes of glass upon a side-table in the library
wherein I am this evening writing, a canopic jar of alabaster and four
ancient golden goblets varying from seven to ten inches in height
thickly encrusted with magnificent rubies, sapphires and emeralds--the
actual cups which once held the wine drunk at those gorgeous
bacchanalian feasts which the great queen gave to Antony, over whom she
exercised that fatal fascination.
They represent but a specimen of what has already been recovered and is
later on to be divided between the Egyptian Government, the British
Museum and Asta herself. Though we are extremely careful to conceal the
real facts from the papers, extensive works of examination are at this
moment in progress, for it seems that the queen's enormous wealth was
buried hurriedly beneath stones in a watercourse which has ages ago
dried up. The action of the water scattered the loose gems, as, from
the sifting of the sand each day, precious stones, cut and uncut, are
now being recovered.
Never in these our modern days of progress and discovery has such a
flutter of excitement been caused in archaeological circles, and
certainly never has such a magnificent and authentic treasure, the lost
million of Cleopatra, been located.
Arnold Edgecumbe, always attracted to the study of Egyptian archaeology,
had devoted the last seventeen years of his broken life to studies in
Upper Egypt, and, truly, the discovery he made in the tomb of Merenptah
has resulted in the recovery of great numbers of the gems and ornaments
actually worn by Cleopatra herself.
Every national museum in Europe has eagerly offered to purchase
specimens, hence the estate of the late Arnold Edgecumbe, the man so
cruelly misjudged and hunted down by the investing public, will be
greatly enriched by the remarkable discovery, which, on that evening of
his death, he predicted to me would astound this our prosaic modern
world.
Often have I congratulated myself upon my narrow escape from a sudden
end on that night in the old French inn, for surely the cunning
ingenuity and truly devilish resourcefulness of Asta's foster-father
from the moment when he so successfully cast the blame of fraud upon his
friend Arnold Edgecumbe and caused him to flee to Egypt until that night
when he so nearly succeeded in taking the young girl's life, showed him
to be a veritable master-criminal.
But the days of darkness, insecurity and despair are happily over. The
clouds have parted, and the sunshine of happiness now falls upon the
dear, sweet girl who, eight months ago, knelt beside me at the altar of
that grey, square-spired village church which, here as we sit in the
summer sunset, we can see peeping beyond the old elm avenue across the
park.
"Yes, my darling, I am at last truly happy," she whispers softly in my
ear, bending over to kiss me in reply to a question. "So happy that I
cannot adequately describe what I feel amid this perfect peace."
And so, with her sweet lingering caress upon my lips, a kiss more full
of love and holy passion than ever Cleopatra gave Antony beside the
Nile, I embrace her with all the tenderness of my affection, with all
the strength of my very soul, and while so doing conclude this my
strange personal narrative, and write--
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The End.