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THE TICKENCOTE TREASURE
[Illustration: “‘I believe I could take the old tub from the Gib. to
Naples without a compass.’” (Chapter 1.)
_The Tickencote Treasure_] [_Frontispiece_]
THE TICKENCOTE
TREASURE
BY
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
_Author of “A Secret Service,” “The Temptress,”_
_“In White Raiment,” etc._
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1913
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I IN WHICH JOB SEAL BORROWS A FUSEE 7
II WHAT WE SAW AND WHAT WE HEARD 16
III THE MYSTERIOUS MAN 24
IV IN WHICH I EXAMINE THE PARCHMENTS 32
V WITH A STORY TO TELL 39
VI AN EXPERT OPINION 46
VII WHAT WAS WRITTEN IN THE VELLUM BOOK 56
VIII THE SEVEN DEAD MEN 65
IX ONE POINT IS MADE CLEAR 71
X THE GUARDIAN OF THE SECRET 79
XI FORESTALLED 88
XII JOB SEAL MAKES A PROPOSAL 96
XIII A CALL, AND ITS CONSEQUENCE 105
XIV REQUIRES EXPLANATION 114
XV REVEALS SOMETHING OF IMPORTANCE 122
XVI MRS. GRAHAM’S VISITOR 132
XVII THE SELLER OF THE SECRET 139
XVIII THE SILENT MAN’S WARNING 147
XIX THE LADY FROM BAYSWATER 154
XX PHILIP REILLY TELLS A STRANGE STORY 161
XXI WE MAKE A DISCOVERY IN THE MANOR HOUSE 171
XXII BLACK BENNETT 180
XXIII JOB SEAL RELATES HIS ADVENTURES 188
XXIV THE MYSTERY OF MARGARET KNUTTON 195
XXV REVEALS THE DEATH-TRAP 204
XXVI IN WHICH BEN KNUTTON GROWS CONFIDENTIAL 211
XXVII DOROTHY DRUMMOND PREFERS SECRECY 220
XXVIII WE RECEIVE MIDNIGHT VISITORS 228
XXIX DOROTHY MAKES A CONFESSION 237
XXX THE SILENT MAN’S STORY 245
XXXI THE HOUSE AT KILBURN 253
XXXII WHAT WE DISCOVERED AT THE RECORD OFFICE 261
XXXIII WE DECIPHER THE PARCHMENT 270
XXXIV OUR SEARCH AT TICKENCOTE AND ITS RESULTS 278
XXXV THE SPY, AND WHAT HE TOLD US 286
XXXVI “NINE POINTS OF THE LAW” 295
XXXVII CONTAINS THE CONCLUSION 299
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH JOB SEAL BORROWS A FUSEE
IF you are fond of a mystery I believe you will ponder over this curious
narrative just as I have pondered.
Certain persons, having heard rumours of the strange adventures that
once happened to me, have asked me to write them down in detail, so that
they may be printed and given to the world in their proper sequence.
Therefore, in obedience, and in order to set at rest for ever certain
wild and unfounded reports which crept into the papers at the time, I do
so without fear or favour, seeking to conceal no single thing, but
merely to relate what I actually saw with my own eyes and heard with my
own ears.
I read somewhere the other day the sweeping statement, written probably
by one of our superior young gentlemen just down from Oxford, that
Romance is dead. This allegation, however, I make so bold as to
challenge—first, because in my own humble capacity I have actually been
the unwilling actor in one of the most remarkable romances of modern
times; and, secondly, because I believe with that sage old chronicler,
Richard of Cirencester, that the man whose soul is filled with Greek has
a heart of leather.
Fortunately I can lay claim to neither. Apart from my association with
the present chain of curious events I am but an ordinary man, whose name
is Paul Pickering, whose age is thirty-two, and whose profession at the
time the romance befell me was the very prosaic one of a doctor without
regular practice. You will therefore quickly discern that I was not
overburdened either by fame, fortune, or fashionable foibles, and
further that, as _locum tenens_ for country doctors in ill-health or on
holiday, I advertised regularly in the _Lancet_, and was glad enough to
accept the fee of three guineas weekly.
Hard work in a big practice at Stepney and Poplar had resulted in a bad
touch of influenza with its attendant debility; therefore, when one of
my patients, a sun-tanned old salt named Seal, suggested that I should
go a trip with him up the Mediterranean, I hailed the idea with delight.
Job Seal was quite a chance patient. He called one evening at the
surgery in Commercial Road East, where I was acting as _locum_ for a
doctor named Bidwell, and consulted me about his rheumatism. A big,
deep-chested, thick-set man, with grey hair, reddish uncut beard, big
hands, shaggy brows, and a furrowed face browned by sea and sun; he
spoke in a deep bass, interlarding his conversation with nautical
expressions which were, to me, mostly unintelligible. The liniment I
gave him apparently suited his ailment, for he came again and again,
until one evening he called and declared that I had effected a cure as
marvellous as that of Sequah.
“My boat, the _Thrush_, is layin’ at Fresh Wharf, and I sail on Saturday
for Cardiff, where we take in coal for Leghorn. Now, if you ain’t got
anything better to do, doctor, don’t you sign on why as steward at a bob
a day, and come with me for the round trip?” he suggested. “You told me
the other night that you’re bein’ paid off from here on Saturday. My
boat ain’t exactly a liner, you know, but I daresay you could shake down
comfortable like, and as the trip’ll take a couple o’ months, you’d see
most of the ports up to Smyrna. Besides, this is just the right time o’
year for a blow. It ’ud do you good.”
The suggestion certainly appealed to me. I had never been afloat farther
than Ramsgate by the _Marguerite_, and for years had longed to go abroad
and see those wonderful paradises of the Sunny South of which, like
other people, I had witnessed highly-coloured dissolving views.
Therefore I accepted the bluff old captain’s hospitality, signed the
ship’s papers in a back office off Leadenhall Street, and on Saturday
evening boarded as black, grimy, and forbidding a craft as ever dropped
down the Thames.
Job Seal was right. The _Thrush_ was not by any means a liner, and its
passenger accommodation was restricted. My cabin was very small, very
stuffy, and very dirty; just as might be expected of a Mediterranean
tramp steamer. As the outward cargo was invariably Cardiff steam coal
consigned to the well-known firm of Messrs. Agius, of Naples, and Malta,
there was over everything a layer of fine coal dust, while the faces of
both officers and crew seemed ingrained with black.
The first day out I confess that I did not feel over well. A light
vessel and a choppy sea are never pleasant to a landsman. Nevertheless,
I very soon got my sea legs, and then the voyage down Channel was
pleasant enough. It was the end of June, and the salt breezes were
gratifying after the stuffy back streets of Stepney. Before my advent
Job Seal was in the habit of eating alone in his cabin, because he was
an omnivorous reader, and the chatter of his officers disturbed him. He
welcomed me, however, as a companion. Max Pemberton, Conan Doyle, and
Hyne he swore by, and in one corner of his cabin he had whole stacks of
sixpenny reprints.
The first day out I rather regretted my hasty decision to sail with him,
but ere we sighted Lundy Island and Penarth I was as merry and eager to
smoke as any of the villainous-looking crew.
After four days loading in Cardiff the vessel was an inch deep in coal
dust, and as the heavy-swearing hands in the forecastle began “cleaning
up” we slowly glided out of the Bute Docks to the accompaniment of
shouting, gesticulating, and strong language. At Seal’s suggestion I had
provided myself with certain articles of food to my taste, but as the
grit of coal and the taste of tar were inseparable from the cuisine, and
the cook’s galley the most evil-smelling corner in the whole vessel, I
enjoyed eating least of all. The weather was, however, perfect, even in
the long roll of the Atlantic, and the greater part of each day I spent
with the burly skipper on his bridge, lolling in an old deck-chair
behind a screen of canvas lashed to the rail to keep off the wind. I had
quite a cosy corner to myself, and there I smoked my pipe, breathed the
salt ocean breezes, and yarned with my deep-chested friend.
“We don’t carry forty-quid salooners on this ’ere boat,” remarked Joe
Thorpe, the first mate, when I mentioned casually that the rats gnawed
my boots at night and scampered around my cabin and over my bunk. “When
a passenger comes with us he has to rough it, but he sees a sight more
than if he travelled by the P. and O. or the Orient. You’ll see a lot,
doctor, before you’re back in London.”
His words were prophetic. I did see a lot, as you will gather later on.
Craft and crew were, as I have said, as forbidding as can be well
imagined. The vessel was black, save for a dirty red band around her
funnel, old, ricketty, and much patched. On the second day out from
Cardiff Mike Flanagan, the first engineer, imparted to me the
disconcerting fact that the boilers were in such a state that he feared
to work them at any undue pressure lest we might all take an unwelcome
flight into space. Hence at night, when I lay in my bunk sleepless owing
to the dirty weather in the Bay of Biscay, the jarring of the propeller
caused my medical mind to revert to the instability of those boilers and
the probability of catastrophe. I am not a seafaring man, but I have
often since wondered in what class the _Thrush_ might have been entered
at Lloyd’s.
Day followed day, and after we sighted Finisterre the weather became
delightful again. Seal told me long yarns of his younger days in the
Pacific trade, how he had been wrecked off the Tasmanian coast, and how
on another occasion the steamer on which he sailed was burned at sea.
The dreamy hours passed lazily. We ate together, laughed together, and
at night drank big noggins of rum together. Cape St. Vincent loomed up
in the haze one brilliant evening, and afterwards the great rock of
Gibraltar; then, on entering the Mediterranean, we steered a straight
course for that long, sun-blanched town with the high lighthouse lying
at the foot of the blue Apennines, Leghorn, which port we at last
entered with shrieking siren and flying our dirty red ensign.
But it is not with foreign towns that this narrative concerns. True, I
went ashore with Seal and drank vermouth and seltzer at Nazi’s, but
during the weeks I sailed in company with the big-handed, big-hearted
skipper and his villainous-looking crew we visited many ports in search
of a cargo for London. Naples, Palermo, Smyrna, and Tunis were to me, an
untravelled man, all interesting, while Job Seal was, I discovered, a
most popular man ashore. Shipping agents welcomed him, and he drank
vermouth at their expense; Customs officers were civil, with an eye to
the glass of grog that would follow their inspection; and even British
consuls were agreeable, unbending and joking with him in their private
sanctums.
Yes, Job Seal was a typical Mediterranean skipper, a hard drinker in
port, a hard swearer at sea, and a hard task-master at any time. In bad
weather he put on his pluck with his oilskins. From the bridge he
addressed his men as though speaking to dogs, and woe betide the
unfortunate hand who did not execute an order just to his liking. He
would roar like a bull, and conclude with an interminable cascade of
imprecations until he became red in the face and breathless.
“I’ve done this round trip these nineteen years, doctor,” he explained
to me one night while we were having our grog together, “and I really
believe I could take the old tub from the Gib. to Naples without a
compass.” And then in his deep bass tones he began to yarn as sailors
will yarn, telling tales mostly of adventures ashore in foreign towns,
adventures wherein Mike Flanagan—to whom he always referred as his
“chief”—and alcoholic liquors played leading parts.
After leaving Tunis for Valencia, homeward bound, we experienced bad
weather. The wind howled in the rigging, and the sea ran mountains high,
as it often does in those parts at certain seasons of the year. One
afternoon, attired in the suit of yellow oilskins I had purchased in
Cardiff, I was seated on the bridge, notwithstanding the stiff breeze
and the heavy sea still running, for I preferred that to my stuffy,
tarry cabin with its port-hole screwed down.
Seal, in ponderous sea-boots, black oilskins, and his sou-wester tied
beneath his chin, had been chatting, laughing and pacing the deck, when
of a sudden his quick eye observed something which to my unpractised
vision was indistinguishable. He took his glass from its box, stood
astride, and took steady sight of it.
“H’m,” he grunted deeply, “that’s durned funny!” and turning to the
helmsman gave an order which caused the man to spin the wheel over, and
slowly the bows of the _Thrush_ swung round in the direction in which he
had been gazing.
“Like to look, doctor?” he asked, at the same time handing me his glass.
I stood up, but the vessel rolling about like a bottle made it difficult
for me to keep my feet, and more especially for me to focus the object.
At last, however, after some effort I saw as I swept the horizon a
curious-looking thing afloat. Indistinct in the grey haze, it looked to
me like two square-built boxes floating high from the water, but close
behind each other. I could not, however, see them well on account of the
haze.
“That’s curious!” I ejaculated. “What do you think they are, captain?”
“Haven’t any idea, doctor. We’re goin’ to inspect ’em presently.” And he
again took sight for a long time, and then replaced his glass in its box
with a puzzled air. “Queer lookin’ craft, anyhow,” he remarked. “They
don’t seem to be flying any signals of distress, either.”
“Where are we now?” I inquired, much interested in the mysterious object
in the distance.
“About midway between Fomentera and Algiers,” was his answer, and then,
impatient to overhaul the craft that had attracted his attention, he
pulled over the brass handle of the electric signals and turned it back
again, causing it to ring thrice. An instant later came the three
answering rings, and a few moments afterwards the long cloud of dense
black smoke whirling from the funnel told us that Mike Flanagan was
about to get all the work out of his boilers that he dared.
Seal roared an order in the howling wind, and a tiny, coal-grimed flag
ran up to the mast-head and fluttered in the breeze, while with eyes
glued to his glass he watched if any response were given to his signal.
But there was none.
News of something unusual had spread among the crew, and a few moments
later the first mate, Thorpe, whose watch had ended an hour before,
sprang up the ladder to the skipper’s side.
“Look, Joe!” exclaimed Seal. “What the dickens do you make out o’ that?”
Thorpe swung his body with the motion of the vessel and took a long look
at the object of mystery.
“Thunder, cap’n!” he cried. “Looks like Noah’s Ark, sir.”
By this time the smutty-faced crew, in their dirty blue trousers and
sea-boots, had emerged from the forecastle and stood gazing in the
direction of the mystery, heedless of the waves that now and then swept
the deck from stem to stern. Some of the men shaded their eyes with
horny hands, and the opinions expressed were both forcible and various.
Job Seal borrowed a fusee from me and lit his foul-smelling pipe, a
habit of his when puzzled. With his blackened clay between his teeth he
talked to Thorpe, while the spray showered in our faces and the vessel
rose and fell in the long trough of the sea.
Again and again he sighted the object which his sea-trained eyes had so
quickly detected, and each time growled in dissatisfaction.
At length, in a voice quite unusual to him, and with all the brown gone
out of his face, he said:—
“There’s something very uncanny about that blessed craft, doctor! I’ve
been afloat these thirty-three years come August, but I never saw such a
tarnation funny thing as that before! I believe it’s the _Flyin’
Dutchman_, as true as I’m here on my own bridge!”
He handed me the binocular again, and steadying myself carefully I
managed to focus it.
Sailors are nothing if not superstitious, and I could see that the
unusual sight had sent a stir of consternation through the ship.
“What do you make her out to be?” roared Seal to the look-out man.
“Never saw such a thing before, sir,” responded the man in oilskins;
“maybe she’s one o’ them secret submarine inventions of the French
what’s come to the surface”—a suggestion which pleased the crew
mightily, and was greeted with a chorus of laughter.
“Submarine be hanged!” exclaimed one old seaman whom I had heard
addressed as Dicky Dunn. “It’s old Noah a-making for Marseilles! Can’t
yer see the big square port in the stern where he lets his bloomin’
pigeons out?”
And so the suggestions went on, and while the _Thrush_ rapidly bore down
with full steam ahead, with the salt spray flying across her bows, the
mystery of our discovery increased.