"Ask old Baines," said Jack.
Baines was within doors, though Ginger was with me; the dog had been a
terrible nuisance all day, licking my face when I had to lie on my
waistcoat in order to focus those eyes, and while I was digging the huge
hole standing at the brink and whining and howling as though he expected
me to unearth a huge cat for his delectation. As a matter of fact, he
would have run away if a mouse had jumped out. Ginger was not a brave
dog; he was too benevolent to be really brave.
I went and fetched Baines, and asked him who had cut down the tree, and
when and why?
Baines said that he had felled it a year ago at his master's orders.
"What for?" I asked. But Baines did not know that. Only, he said, he
had strict orders not to burn the wood, or even touch it, for some
reason or other.
This seemed rather curious, and I reported to Jack on the wall.
"Great scissors!" said that most ingenious individual; "go and see if
there's a nail in the trunk!"
To my astonishment and delight, there was a nail; I shouted this news to
Jack.
"Oh, hang it all, I'm coming over!" cried Jack; "this is too exciting
for sitting on walls," he added, as he joined me and looked at and felt
the nail for himself. "Where was this tree?" I took Jack and showed
him the big hole in the centre of the garden out of which I had dug the
root.
"Come on," said he; "we must have that root in again! Shove!"
Together we shoved the stump back into its own place, taking care to fit
it into the hole exactly as it had rested there in life, and to keep its
sawn surface level with the earth in order that the sundered portions of
the trunk might be made to stand one upon another and all upon the
parent stump, straight and without tipping forward or backward.
*CHAPTER XLII*
*ALL OVER BUT----*
Then we brought the round thick logs which had formed the trunk, and
which had been sawn into lengths of about four feet, and piled them one
on top of another in their own order, which was obvious and unmistakable
on account of the lessening girth of the trunk as it went higher. We
piled three of these, fitting them one upon the other as they had stood
in life, and the nail was in the fourth, with which we crowned the
edifice, Jack standing upon a step-ladder and I handing up the logs.
"There!" he said, when he had built up the edifice to the height of some
fifteen feet; "there's our tree as it stood in life, wobbly, no doubt,
and insecure; but it will bear the picture though it wouldn't stand much
of north-easter. Hand up the work of art."
We hung up the portrait, and again I lay on the ground here and there
and ogled the hideous thing until I had wooed its eyes to meet my own.
Then we dug together. Jack had thrown all ridiculous fastidiousness to
the winds of heaven, and helped me like a man and a sensible being.
Together we dug, and the hole rapidly grew, and with it grew also our
own excitement and Ginger's, who looked on whining, as before, for the
game that we were to start from our burrow for him to run away from. We
had had no lunch, and the afternoon was fleeting fast; but we dug on.
Now the grave was two feet deep, and now four, now five. I had never
felt so excited as this, even at that supreme moment when my fingers
touched the tin box in the African veldt.
Now the hole was six feet in depth, and Jack's head, when he stood up,
was just below the earth-level. Ginger, in his excitement, pulled
Jack's cap off and laid it on the ground beside him, probably determined
that if we were to disappear altogether, he would preserve at least a
memento of us to swear by.
Six feet and a half, and now my spade (it _was_ mine; I am glad it was
mine), _my_ spade struck against something hard and metallic.
"Hullo!" cried Jack, who heard the sound.
"Only a stone, I'm afraid!" said I, trembling so that I could hardly
raise my spade. Jack stopped work to watch.
"Your first blood!" he said. "Dig again and see; if there are honours,
they shall be yours!"
There _were_ honours. Half impotent with excitement, I dug again.
It was no stone. Trembling, I cleared the clayey soil from the object,
whatever it might be, and revealed a vessel of hardware.
"Pull it out, pull it out, man!" said Jack; "don't stand quaking there!"
I made an effort, and removed the thing and handed it to Jack; I felt
cold and faint with the excitement. I could only just see out of my
eyes sufficiently to recognise that the object I had found was a large
earthen jar, corked and sealed round.
Jack scrambled out of the hole and gave me a hand; I climbed out in a
dream.
"Open it," he said.
"No--you," I gasped. I sat down and watched, only half alive.
Jack put the vessel on the ground and broke it neatly in two pieces.
Inside was a small tin box, hardly larger than the envelope which Jack
drew forth from it after prising it open.
"Another sickening disappointment?" I gasped.
"I don't know," said Jack; "read it, and see."
"I can't," I said; "open it and read it to me; if it's another sell, I
shall curse Clutterbuck and die."
Jack--looking pale and thin--broke the seal of the envelope. I saw the
colour rush back to his face.
"What is it, in Heaven's name?" I said; "don't madden me!"
"All right this time, old boy," cried Jack, handing me the paper with
flashing eyes--"a cheque to bearer."
It was so. A cheque for ninety-seven thousand odd pounds!
I do not know what I did. Jack, who sometimes tells the truth, says
that I deliberately stood on my head on the very top of the pile of
earth we had dug out of the hole, and that Ginger licked my face just as
I had reached the third bar of the National Anthem (performed then
positively for the first time in that position!) and brought me down
with a run. Personally I do not recollect the episode.
The cheque was duly paid, the bank manager gravely smiling as I handed
it to him in his private room. He was, I found, partially in the
secret. He asked for, and I gave him, a short account of my adventures,
when he was kind enough to express the opinion that I deserved the
money.
*CHAPTER XLIII*
*--THE SHOUTING*
That evening Jack and I gave a party. That is, we sent down to old
Baines a box of cigars, a bottle of champagne, and a hamper of
delicacies which--I have since reflected--must have made him very
unwell, if he ate them. We did not forget Ginger; Ginger enjoyed, that
night, a meal which he must, I am sure, have believed to have been
cooked in the Happy Hunting Grounds, and to have been sent specially
from that abode of canine bliss for the comfort of his declining years.
To this day I sometimes see him, when asleep, licking his lips and going
through the action of masticating imaginary food. Well, I believe he
is, at such moments, enjoying once again--in the sweet glades of
remembrance--the ecstasies of that _gala_ banquet.
As for ourselves, Jack invited me and I him to a Gaudeamus, and together
we celebrated the occasion in a manner befitting so glorious a finish to
our wanderings and toil (not that Jack ever did much of the digging!)
and sufferings and disappointments, and so on. Together we fought o'er
again every encounter, whether with Strong, with elephants, with lions,
or with the devils of despair and disappointment, and it was on this
festive occasion that Jack made me promise to write down for your
benefit, my dear reader, the record of our experiences and adventures.
I may say that we drank your health, dear owner of this volume, whoever
you may be, and voted you an excellent fellow for buying, or having
presented to you, the book; and wished you were twins and each had a
copy,--all for your own benefit, you know, because the tale is a jolly
good--but perhaps I had better leave all this for others to say; only I
should just like you to know that we thought of you, as of a wise person
to have possessed yourself of the book, that's all. Well, among other
things that night, absurd things that--in our joy and triumph--we said
and did, we drank Strong's health and wished that he might escape the
hangman's rope; we also breathed a fervent wish that we might never see
the rascal again, and then, in more serious mood, discussed the question
as to whether it was at all likely that we ever should.
We both decided that it was extremely unlikely. He certainly had
audacity enough and--to do him justice--pluck enough for five men; but
when a man knows that he is a murderer, and a double or treble murderer,
and that if his crimes could be brought home to him he must "swing" for
them, he is not likely to haunt those parts of the world where he would
be most in danger. The world is big enough. He would keep away from
us, at anyrate!
"I wonder what he is doing now?" said Jack with a laugh; "and where he
is, and what he would say or do if he knew of to-day's little success,
eh?"
"Well, I'm glad on the whole that he doesn't," I said; and in this
conclusion Jack concurred; for, without being exactly afraid of the
fellow, we had had enough of him, and that's the truth.
Now, the longer I live in this world the more I realise that we human
beings are but a poor, blind, helpless lot of creatures; we are best
pleased with ourselves when we have, in reality, little cause for
satisfaction; we imagine ourselves safely out of what is familiarly
termed "the wood," when, as a matter of fact, a very jungle of trouble
lies immediately before us, could we but see it! Here is a case in
point. We were very, very happy that night, and apparently with every
legitimate reason; moreover, when I laid my head upon the pillow at
about twelve o'clock, I imagined that I should awake at eight or so,
ready to step into a new bright world which the sunshine of yesterday's
success should have transformed for me into a very paradise of bliss. I
had every reason to suppose that this would be so. I never for one
moment imagined, for instance, that this might be the last time that I
should lay my head to rest in this world, and that the sleep I now
courted should be an endless one in so far as concerned the usual
awaking to a terrestrial morrow!
And yet this came very near to being the actual and exact state of the
case.
It was, I think, about two or three o'clock in the morning, when some
pleasant dream I was enjoying began to be marred--I remember the feeling
quite well--by a kind of choky sensation, a difficulty in breathing. I
can even recall the fact that some friend--a dream-friend, I mean--made
the heartless remark that prosperity was making me so fat that the
function of getting breath had become a labour to me.
But the sensation became rapidly unpleasant and intolerable, and I awoke
suddenly, sweating and in terror. What had happened to me?
Then I heard Strong's voice, very subdued and soft, but certainly
Strong's voice. Could this be still a part of the dream?
No, it was reality; Strong's voice was a reality; so was a handkerchief
which he had tied over my mouth, gag-wise; so was a candle which he had
lighted in the room, and the light of which revealed the detested face
and ferocious expression of the scoundrel as he bent over me, and hissed
his oaths and threats into my ear.
"Ah, you're awake, are you?" he murmured (I omit the oaths with which he
befouled his language)--"I have you at last, you see, you infernal"--(I
really cannot repeat the names he called me, they were too vile even to
mention), "say your prayers, for you're off this time, to glory!"
I could not speak for the gag upon my mouth. I tried to raise my hands,
but I found the rascal had tied them together at the wrists. I could
hardly breathe, for the bandage was so tightly drawn that I was half
suffocated already.
Strong saw that this was so. He put his hand behind my head and
slightly loosened the handkerchief.
"Now, you whelp of Satan," he said, "get out of bed and show me where
you've hidden the treasure, curse you! I've wasted time enough over it
already. Don't pretend this hundred pounds odd, in your letter-case, is
the lot. Lies won't do, you're off to Kingdom Come in two minutes;
you'd better not go with a lie on your lips! Come,--I saw you find
it,--you'd better be quick!"
I glared at the scoundrel, but did not move. I was thinking hard! Oh
that I could get my hands free and be at him! or my mouth, that I might
shout for Jack--who was in the adjoining bedroom. My heart was almost
bursting with rage and hatred for this man; yet I was absolutely
helpless; I could do nothing.
"What, you won't budge, won't you?" said the scoundrel. His face, at
this crisis, looked exactly what I should imagine the devil to be like:
the very incarnation of hatred and malice and all evil--but I daresay my
own was not, at the moment, a type of innocent beauty and passionless
charm, any more than his!
Strong placed his hand behind my neck a second time, and tightened the
gag. I was suffocating--I kicked and struggled--my heart was bursting,
my brain reeled and swam, my veins swelled--I sweated from head to foot
in my agony and terror, and then--at the critical moment--by God's mercy
an idea occurred to me.
I sprang out of bed and rushed to the wash-hand stand, and, whether by
kicking, or falling over upon them, or pushing with bound hands or with
elbow, I contrived, somehow, before Strong realised my intention, to
send the jug and basin crashing upon the floor with a noise, I suppose,
that would have awakened an army of men a mile away. At the same moment
I lost consciousness, and therefore for the events of the next few
minutes I am indebted to second-hand information.
This is, I understand, what happened.
Jack is a lightish sleeper. He was dreaming, he says, of a cricket
match in which he once took part at "Lords," playing for his school
against the M.C.C. in the great annual function held, as a rule, on the
first two days of the holidays. Jack was batting, it appears, to
Strong's bowling. Dream-bowling is sometimes very difficult to play by
dream-batsmen. It depends very much upon whether the batsman has dined
judiciously or the reverse. Jack had assisted at a banquet, as has been
shown; and Strong's bowling was giving him a lot of trouble. Strong had
sent down four balls, of which the slowest, Jack declared, could have
given points to a flash of buttered lightning. One of them killed the
wicket-keeper; and another, being a wide, lamed short-slip for life; no
one knew what became of the other two balls, they were never caught
sight of at all. Then Strong sent down the fifth, and Jack--though he
saw nothing of it--slogged at it for all he was worth. The
wicket-keeper, it seems, just before he died, had assured Jack that
Clutterbuck's treasure would be lost to us for ever, and that Strong was
to be declared the legitimate proprietor of the same, by special rule
just passed by the committee of the M.C.C., unless he contrived to make
four runs in this over. So that it was absolutely necessary, Jack
explained, to hit this fifth ball to the boundary.
By some fluke Jack caught the ball full; he did not see it; he admits
having shut his eyes; Strong's face was more than he could stand up to.
He lashed out at it blindly, and sent it flying, at the rate of a
million miles an hour, over Strong's head, straight for the pavilion
seats.
That marvellous fellow, Strong--the dream-Strong--rushed after it, and
careered so fast (at the rate, in fact, of a million and one miles per
hour) that he was just able to leap into the air at the very pavilion
rail and touch the ball.
He could not hold it, however, and, losing his balance--owing to the
great pace at which he had travelled--he flew head over heels clean
through the glass windows of the pavilion, and alighted upon the
luncheon-table, which fell with a frightful crash.
This crash was my little contribution to Jack's dream; it was the
overthrow of my jug and basin, and the tumult of it roused Jack in an
instant. He sprang from his bed, wide awake, and seeing that a light
burned in my room, and hearing--as he thought--some sound there, pushed
the door open and entered, full of wonder and some alarm.
He was just in time to see a figure disappearing out of the door, and
without stopping to help me--indeed, he declares that he didn't notice
me lying there in the corner!--sprang away after the man at the door,
believing that it was I, and that I had gone suddenly and mysteriously
mad.
Things went propitiously. Several people rushed into my room, wakened
and startled by the crash of china and the sound of feet scudding down
the passage; and one of them speedily removed the bandage from my mouth
and the cord from my wrists. I think this saved my life. Indeed, I was
already half dead, and even when released I did not for some minutes
recover consciousness.
Meanwhile, Jack had scudded after Strong without knowing whom he
pursued.
Strong made for the outer hall, intending to escape from the hotel; but
delay at the front door, which he found locked, enabled Jack to run him
to earth.
Strong fished out a revolver and pointed it at Jack's head, but Jack
luckily dashed it aside, and it fell upon the marble floor of the
entrance hall, exploding as it did so, with a startlingly loud report,
which effectually roused those few people sleeping in the hotel whose
slumbers had survived the upsetting of my jug and basin.
Then Jack, recognising Strong at last, fell upon the scoundrel and
administered the grandest possible thrashing and kicking that you can
imagine. That thrashing of Strong, Jack always says, did him a heap of
good, and made a new and self-respecting man of him again; for he had
lost of late some of his self-respect by reason of Strong's indisputable
cleverness in Copenhagen and Bremen, where he had scored heavily against
us.
When, however, he had "scarcely begun," as he says, the process of
kicking and punching the wretched man, the performance was interrupted
by an inrush of frightened people, who had heard a pistol-shot and were
rushing downstairs to see what was the matter.
So that there was no difficulty about securing Strong; and that arch
scoundrel was presently led upstairs to my room, bound tightly at the
wrists, in order that I might testify to his identity as set forth by
Jack.
Well, there was little doubt about that, and as little trouble in
getting the midnight burglar transferred from the hotel to the police
cell. He had been caught red-handed. My money and my letter-case, with
my own cards in one of the pockets, were found in his possession, two
hundred pounds in notes, the bulk of Clutterbuck's cheque had of course
been deposited by me in the bank. It was as clear a case of burglary as
ever delighted policeman's ears, and the constable, summoned to remove
Strong, looked as pleased as one who has come, unexpectedly, into a good
thing.
We found that Strong had--under an assumed name, of course--actually
slept for three nights within a room or two of us! He had taken care to
remain invisible at all such times as we spent within the hotel,
however; but had kept a watch upon our actions, and had even--as he
declared--watched me find the treasure,--peeping over the wall at a spot
where his face was well hidden by the branch of a spreading tree. He
probably concluded that I should have the entire proceeds of the cheque
with me in the hotel. It was just as well that I took the precaution to
bank the money, however; for had he found it, he would have got clear
away without awaking me. As it was, he deliberately awoke me in order
to compel me, by the torture of suffocation, to point out where I had
hidden my property.
There is not much more to tell. The magistrate committed our rascal for
trial at the Croydon sessions, and in due time he was sentenced by the
court to a term of hard labour. Jack and I consulted earnestly as to
whether we ought to reveal the miscreant's criminal acts in Bechuana and
in Narva; but we decided that it would be useless to attempt to prove
the major offence of murder; we were without evidence of any kind; and,
after all, so long as the fellow was safe within stone walls and under
many locks and keys at Millbank or Portland or at Dartmoor, or wherever
it might be, it would be out of his power to commit further mischief.
Did he intend to murder me in the hotel, I wonder? Jack says he thinks
not; but then Jack did not feel the torture of that gag, and the horror
of imminent suffocation as I did; and I am certain that, whether Strong
intended it or not, I should have died then and there, if my good friend
had not rushed in and released me in the nick of time.
I suppose there are not many, even among the convicts in Dartmoor, so
utterly evil and cruel in disposition as this man James Strong, and I am
glad that I may here take leave of him--in these pages at least--for
good and all. I daresay the reader is as glad to be rid of him as I am.
I humbly hope and pray that I may never meet him again in this world.
And now at length I was able to enter into peaceful possession of my
hard-earned inheritance of Clutterbuck's treasure. I had worked and
suffered much for it, and I think on the whole that I deserved it. Of
course, money earned by regular daily toil is, in a way, more worthily
obtained; but since destiny placed in my way the opportunity to make my
fortune, as it were, by a single sustained effort, the only condition
being that I should possess the necessary pluck and perseverance to
continue that effort right up to the goal, Success, why, I am not
troubled with any compunctions as to the comparative shortness of the
road which, in my case, led to wealth and prosperity. Nevertheless,
feeling that I should better enjoy my prosperity if I were assured of
the well-being of those (always excepting James Strong) whom my own
success had, in a manner, disappointed of expected benefit, I sought
out, through Steggins, the relatives of the murdered Clutterbuck, who--I
found--had been a widower. He had left two children in poor
circumstances, and the future of these youngsters I shall make it my
business to secure. They are living in comfort with a sister of their
dead father, and will never know, I hope, but that their parent perished
through an accidental fall into an African nullah.
Ellis, the cousin, a meek person, who refused from the first to take
part in the treasure hunt, though one of the five potential heirs of the
old man, was, I found, fairly well-to-do, and declined with thanks my
offer to make him a small allowance.
As for myself--well, you have probably had enough of me by this time.
But I will just mention this much: that the little affair down in
Gloucestershire to which I have once or twice made slight allusion ended
in accordance with my dearest hopes; and that Jack and I are now even
more than school and college chums, being united by a tie whose name is
Gladys, and who is certainly one of the sweetest-- But no! I will not
go into that. She suits me excellently, and that, after all, is the
main thing!
We live in Gloucestershire, near Henderson Court, in a house that was
once a farmhouse but which has been glorified for our benefit by Jack,
who is its owner.
Jack and I have not many elephants and lions, or even ibex and elands,
about the premises; in fact, I do not remember to have shot a single
one. But we have plenty of rabbits and not a few partridges, and
occasionally a pheasant or two. As for our ".500 Expresses," they are
hanging ready on the wall in case any of the above-mentioned types of
the larger animals should come down into Gloucestershire; so that we are
all right.
Ginger came to the wedding. He _would_ come into church with the rest
of us, and he sat between two school children and behaved shockingly;
for he nosed all the hymn-books off the pew in about half a minute, and
howled aloud when I told Gladys that with all my worldly goods I her
endowed.
Jack said afterwards that there spoke the spirit of old Clutterbuck, who
was doubtless present in the form of Ginger, and who hated to hear me
make over his property in this way without forcing Gladys to do a single
day's work for it.
_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._