THE TALE OF A COINCIDENCE
“The late Viscount Heatherslie,” said Mr. Crum, tapping the desk before
him like a schoolmaster demanding silence for a lecture, “was a
collector, and at the same time an economist. These you will probably
think are walks in life entirely incompatible one with the other. I will
explain further. Though he lived far within his income, he had the mania
for collection and gratified it. But he did this by making it a rule
never to buy what had a merely temporary or sentimental value, but only
what was likely to be intrinsically marketable. I never knew a man with
a sounder sense of finance or one who, without professional knowledge,
made such use of unprofessional experience. I doubt if he ever struck a
bad bargain in his life. You will to-day reap the benefit of his
judgment. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that you may safely
count on his treasures fetching a sum of not less than one hundred
thousand pounds.”
I gasped in amazement, nearly bouncing from my chair. My excited
shuffling upset a blob of ink from the inkstand before me. With an air
of respectful deprecation Crum began to mop it up methodically, before
answering the questions I fired at him like bullets.
“Great Heavens!” I exclaimed, “the leery old dog! You mean to tell me in
sober earnest that he has amassed all that money by simple grubbing
after curios, when we thought he just roamed around for mere amusement
and love of travel. Where has he stuck them all? Not at Kilberran, I
sincerely hope, or they’re all rotten with mildew by now. And what are
they? Pictures, bronzes, china? Why, neither my mother nor my poor old
dad had an inkling of it. Great Scott! One hundred thousand pounds. Now
really, don’t you think you may be exaggerating, my dear Mr. Crum?”
“I may say that it is not a habit to which I am given, my lord,” he
answered dryly, “but it will not be hard to convince you. The collection
has been valued by more than one expert, and the lowest figure rendered
by these gentlemen was a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, and the
collection has been added to since then.”
“But what in the name of goodness can be worth all that money? Why, it
would take a large gallery to house pictures up to that figure.”
“Certainly. But I may as well explain at once that the whole collection
is within these walls. It is in a large safe in my cellars. It consists
wholly of coins.”
“Coins!” I bawled delightedly, “then I hope the half of them have her
Majesty’s face on them, God bless her. I see what you’re getting at. You
mean the old boy was a miser.”
He drew himself back into his chair with an air of offence.
“I am not given to jest on business matters,” he said in his stateliest
manner. “No; your uncle was simply one of the first numismatists of the
century. His is the finest harvest of ancient coins ever made by any
private individual. If you see fit to turn it to its marketable worth,
you will create an excitement among collectors unparalleled for the last
five decades. And till the catalogues are published, not one of them
will have an idea of the treasures they will find listed there.”
“Well, as far as I am concerned, I don’t mind how soon they’re gratified
and surprised,” said I; “but I should like to have a look at the lot
now, if it’s not seriously inconveniencing you. Can we descend to visit
them?” for I itched to view this astounding hoard with my very own eyes.
“Of course, my lord. It would be only natural that you should wish to
inspect such an important part of your inheritance. But I have something
more to say. It was not in mere zeal for collecting that your uncle had
lately travelled so widely. I have another astonishment in store for
you—not so entirely agreeable, no doubt, but out of the common, I think
I may say absolutely out of the common.”
“Well, as we’re out of the range of coins this time then, I trust it’s
nothing less than banknotes,” I answered. “But for goodness sake what is
it?” I added impatiently, for his self-important deliberation began to
get on my nerves.
He did not suffer himself to be in the slightest degree flurried by my
impatience. His sentences, in fact, seemed to gather a yet more
leisurely accent as he unfolded his tale.
“You must let me tell the thing in my own way, my lord. It will be far
more conclusive than jerking it out at you in scraps. The facts in
sequence were as follows—
“Among the family treasures which have come down the centuries—and I
sincerely wish there had been more of them—was a certain amount of old
coins which have been in the custody of my firm for at least five
generations. They comprised for the most part specimens of the gold and
silver coinage of most European countries during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. Some were of great value. Some were by no means
rare. Evidently one of your ancestors—probably, I should say, Sir John
Dorinecourte, the famous Elizabethan admiral—had the craze of
collection, which has since broken out in your late uncle’s case. At any
rate the box contained moidores, zecchins, pesos, crowns, and every sort
of currency of every known land—known to our ancestors of that time, at
least—to a very considerable amount. The mere bullion, I should say,
would be worth a considerable sum. Among them were, however, a couple of
gold pieces placed apart, and these had no signification placed opposite
them in the catalogue, and bore no sign either on the face or the
reverse in any language known at the present day.”
“It sounds charmingly mysterious, my dear Mr. Crum,” I interrupted.
“Now, you aren’t going to tell me that the secret still remains
unfathomed?”
“My lord, my lord,” said the old fellow entreatingly, “you must allow me
to tell you the thing methodically, or not at all. If I’m hurried I
shall forget some detail, and I have given time and effort to memorize
the matter completely.”
I apologized humbly, settling myself back in my chair resignedly to hear
the thing out with no further interruption. Crum continued in his slow,
modulated tones.
“I think that it was the sight of that hoard, when your uncle saw it at
his accession to the title, which first woke in him the craze for
collecting. He no doubt reflected that here was the nucleus of an
exceedingly fine numismatic museum, and from that day he set himself
steadily to add to it, with an increasing knowledge of his subject, of
which you are now reaping the benefit. But those two unknown coins were
always a sore mystery to him. Many a time have I seen him take them
up—he used to visit me two or three times every year to place what he
had possessed himself of in that time with the rest—and turn them over
and over in his fingers wistfully, studying every line and figure as if
there must be some concealed clue which he had missed. But it was only
last year that he gained the trace which put him on the road to success,
and also, as it has unfortunately turned out, to death as well.”
“What!” I shouted, nearly jumping out of my chair. “Do you mean to
say——”
He held up his hand deprecatingly.
“Please, my lord, please restrain your impatience. You shall have every
detail in good time, I assure you. I only mean to say that it was in
pursuit of his intense desire to solve the origin of those coins that he
was travelling in Central America, where he caught the fever which has
been fatal to him. The rest I will tell you as shortly as possible.
“It was last year, as I was saying, that the first trace came to his
hand by the merest accident. His lordship was in Portugal. From there I
got a letter from him on business matters, and at the end—his lordship
was aware that, of course in a modified form, I was interested in his
quest—he remarked, ‘A most extraordinary thing has happened. I have
found a dozen more of the unknown coins, and what is more an ancient
document—no less than a letter written by Sir John Dorinecourte, my
ancestor. I will tell you more on my return.’ It was some three weeks
after that that his lordship came to see me.
“Nearly his first words to me were, ‘Well, Mr. Crum, the mystery of the
coins is pretty well solved, but a greater mystery has arisen on the
ashes of the first. The gold pieces are Mayan.’ The word Mayan, I must
confess, conveyed nothing to me at the time, but he very soon explained
it. The Mayans inhabit—though perhaps your lordship knows as much—the
land of Yucatan to the south of Mexico. They are a wild and savage race,
but there is every reason to believe that centuries ago theirs was a
mighty empire. The coins dated from this extinct civilization of long
ago. And now for the method by which your uncle ascertained as much.
“He was wandering along the side-streets of Lisbon one afternoon, when
he espied a small curio shop. Outside the window were displayed various
articles of furniture, china, etc., for sale, and among these was a
curious cameo brooch which rather took his fancy. He entered to make a
bid for it, and managed to secure it for what he considered a fair
price. He wandered listlessly about the shop, as the woman in charge was
placing it in a box for him, and suddenly came upon a glass-covered box
full of coins. You may imagine his surprise when, among the rows of
copper and silver pieces, he saw staring up at him no less than twelve
gold replicas of these mysterious coins of his own. His astonishment was
great, but he managed to conceal it from the shop-keeper when he asked
her the price she demanded for these ‘medals,’ as he prudently called
them.
“She named one very little higher than their simple worth as bullion,
intimating at the same time that as they did not seem to commemorate any
special event, customers for them had been few. She went on to relate
how she came to possess them. A strange story indeed. With some pride
she told your uncle that her husband was really of noble blood, but sunk
to a narrow pittance beyond the keeping up of his title. Ruined by the
failure of vintage after vintage, he had at last compounded with his
creditors by giving up his landed possessions, and she and he were now
living by the sale of art curios, a good proportion of which she sadly
explained was from their own dwindling inheritance.
“Further inquiry elicited the fact that the ‘medals’ had been discovered
in an ancient box of cedar wood, which had been left to rot and moulder
in an attic of their former mansion, where, wrapped in papers covered
with writing in a foreign tongue, nigh fifty of them had been found
strung together on a slender chain. She pointed out that all of them had
a small hole beside the rim, and your uncle remembered that the same
thing was noticeable in those he possessed himself.
“The first and most natural thing was to inquire for the paper
wrappings, but for some time these could not be discovered, and it was
feared they were lost. However, the next day his lordship received a
message from the woman to the effect that she had found them thrust away
among a heap of similar refuse and that they were at his service if he
chose to purchase them for a small sum. Your uncle did not dally in
returning to the shop, as you may suppose. You may also imagine his
surprise when he found that one of the documents was not only in
English, but absolutely signed by his own ancestor. You shall see the
original, so I will not stop to describe it. It is of the other document
that I wish particularly to speak.
“It was inscribed on a peculiar yellow-looking fabric, more of the
nature of linen than of paper or parchment, and experts have since
decided that the coloring matter used as ink is the fluid emitted by the
octopus. But the most curious part was the writing, if writing it can
properly be called. It consisted of squares, oblongs, parallels, and
other geometric figures ranged in a sequence which was not easy to
understand, but the chief point of interest was that these figures
resembled in every particular the figures on the coins. His lordship
immediately and willingly paid what was asked for them, took his passage
straightway home to England, and armed with his document paid a visit to
the British Museum to get what expert help he could in translating them.
“It is an extraordinary thing how circumstances dovetail into one
another. No sooner had he entered the department, where he had so often
been before to get light on his coins, than he was greeted with the
following question by Professor Barstock, the head, before he had even
mentioned his errand.
“‘I am particularly pleased to see you, Lord Heatherslie,’ said the
Professor, ‘because information has lately come to hand which I think
will settle the origin of your coins, which we have so often pored over.
Monsieur Lessaution of Paris, the well-known Egyptologist, has
discovered that there is a connecting link between the ancient Egyptian
script and that on the monuments of Yucatan. It seems absurd,
considering that they are divided by five thousand miles of sea, but he
puts his points very plausibly, and I think you should see him.’
“When you have seen the other paper which your uncle discovered—the one
in English—I think you will understand that these words came as a most
astounding confirmation of his suspicion that he was on the right track
at last. He simply opened his bag and spread the mysterious scroll
before Professor Barstock, laying one of the coins beside it.
“You may imagine the astonishment of the latter on seeing not only the
coin with which he was familiar, but the scroll covered with similar
symbols. Nor did he fail to astonish your uncle in his turn. Taking him
to another part of the building he showed him some grey, fibrous-looking
slabs of dried pulp, and they too were covered with the oblong, square,
and parallel figures of the document, only that instead of being raised
they were indented. They were, as Mr. Barstock explained, squeezings,
taken from the temple _facade_ at Chichitza, where M. Lessaution was now
conducting his investigations.
“The Frenchman’s theory was that by comparing the Egyptian symbol with
that in Yucatan, and using the grammar and accidence of the former
language as a guide to the latter, these inscriptions, which have as yet
been undecipherable, would be made clear, and much would be learned
about the Mayan civilization of long ago.
“This was quite enough for your uncle. He decided that he would not wait
for M. Lessaution’s return, which was not expected for another six
months, but would cross the Atlantic and interview him on the spot where
he was conducting his experiments. After reading the letter left by your
ancestor, I can quite understand that to a man of leisure like his
lordship, and a man with a taste for wandering to boot, the fascination
of such a quest would be great. At any rate he sailed for Greytown about
five months ago, and with the exception of a single letter purely on
business matters I have heard no word from him since. You can imagine
that his death has come as a shock.”
“Well,” said I, “I am certainly astonished, but I cannot say I am
greatly moved by your tale, Mr. Crum. It would certainly never have
occurred to _me_ to cross three or four thousand miles of ocean to
interview a foreign _savant_ about a coin or a document. But then, you
see, I am not made that way.”
“Very likely, my lord,” submitted the lawyer, “but you will pardon me if
I say that you have not seen the letter by Admiral Sir John. That sheds
a very curious light on the question, and certainly adds vastly to the
interest one of your family must take in it. But I will show it to you
at your leisure.”
“I am as leisured now as I am likely to be for the rest of time,” said
I, “but before I see the letter I should just like to squint at the
coins, if you are not particularly occupied for the next hour.”
He rose at once and preceded me to the outer office, where a door opened
on to a flight of stone steps. Down these he guided me, ushering me at
last into a broad, whitewashed cellar, wherein not less than
half-a-dozen great safes faced each other from wall to wall. He clicked
a key in the lock of one, and turned a handle. The great door swung back
and showed row upon row of numbered sliding drawers, lined with velvet,
and covered—every square inch of them—with coins of every degree of
dirt, ancientry, and denomination. One drawer alone was nearly empty,
and this held two gold pieces, and placed beside them on the velvet a
sheet of ancient paper, covered with crabbed writing and faint with the
dust of ages. The lawyer took it up and unfolded it carefully, and then
I saw for the first time the screed that sent my uncle speeding across
the ocean at its behest, and which was to leave its mark on my life
also.