JOB SEAL MAKES A PROPOSAL
CAN you, my reader, imagine a more tantalizing position than the one in
which I now found myself? It took a great deal to arouse enthusiasm in
the breast of old Mr. Staffurth, whose interest in the world had seemed
to me as dried up as those musty parchments he was so constantly
examining. But the mystery of it all had certainly awakened him, and he
was as keen as myself to get to the bottom of it—and to the treasure,
of which I had promised him a small portion as repayment for his
services.
Next day I went down to Fresh Wharf and found the _Thrush_, with cranes
creaking over her, looking more grimy and forbidding than ever. As I
went on board the men one and all saluted me, and when I knocked at the
door of the captain’s cabin there came a low gruff growl—
“Well, what is it now?”
I announced who I was, and was of course at once admitted. Job Seal, in
shirt and trousers, had been lying in his bunk smoking, taking his ease
after a full night ashore in company with his “chief.” He had been
reading the paper, and a big glass of brandy and soda at his elbow told
its own tale.
“Come in, come in, doctor,” he cried cheerily, holding out his enormous
hand; “I intended to come over and see you to-night. Well, what’s the
latest news of Old Mystery?”
“As I told you, he’s in the hands of the first specialist in lunacy in
London, and under treatment at a private asylum.”
“Will he get better?”
“Nobody can tell that. The doctor, however, anticipates that he will.”
“Well, I hope by the time I get back from this next trip he’ll have told
you his story. We sail to-morrow on our usual round—Cardiff, Leghorn,
Naples, Valencia, and home. But I don’t suppose we’ll be picking up any
Noah’s Arks this trip—eh?”
“No,” I laughed. “I see that a paragraph has crept into the papers about
our discovery, and it is discredited. One paper heads it ‘A Seaman’s
Yarn.’ I suppose some of the men have been talking about it on shore.”
“Suppose so. One o’ them chaps from the newspapers came aboard yesterday
and began asking all about it, but I blessed him for his
inquisitiveness, and sent him about his business. What the dickens has
it to do with him?”
“Quite right,” I said approvingly. “We ought to keep our knowledge to
ourselves. People can believe or disbelieve, just as they like. If,
however, they saw those bags of gold at the bank, I fancy it would
convince them.”
“Or if they saw Old Mister Mystery with his red velvet jacket and
sword,” he laughed. “Lor’, doctor, I’ll never forget the funny figure
that chap cut when we hauled him out. He was real scared at first,
wasn’t he?”
His words brought back to my memory that never-to-be-forgotten evening
of our discovery. The mystery of how the cumbersome old vessel had got
afloat again was not one of the least connected with it.
The reason of my visit was to tell him the result of my inquiries and
the neat manner in which we had been foiled. Therefore, after some
preliminaries, I explained to him all that I have set down in the
previous chapter. He heard me through, blowing vigorously at his pipe
and grunting, as was his habit. The amount of smoke his pipe emitted was
an index to his thoughts. If pleased, his pipe burned slowly, the smoke
rising in a tiny thin column; but if the contrary, the smoke came forth
from pipe and mouth in clouds. The cabin was now so full that I could
scarcely see across it, and when I arrived at the critical point and
told him how I had been forestalled, he jumped up, exclaiming—
“The son of a gun! He actually sold it for ’arf a quid!”
“He has,” I answered sadly. “If we could only get it back it might be
the means of bringing wealth to all of us.”
“Then you really believe in all this yarn what’s written in the
parchments, doctor?” he asked.
“How can I do otherwise?” I said. “There are signatures and seals.
Besides, I have, I think, sufficiently proved that Bartholomew da
Schorno, whoever he was, lived once at Caldecott Manor, and further,
that the Knuttons were owners of the Manor Farm. You must remember, too,
that Mr. Staffurth is an expert, and not likely to mislead us.”
“Well, doctor,” he said, “the whole thing makes a queer yarn, an’ that’s
a fact. Sometimes I almost feel as though the overhauling of Noah’s Ark
was a dream, only you see we’ve already got about a thousand quid to go
shares in. Now, what I’ve been thinkin’, doctor, is that you’ll want a
fair understandin’ if you’re goin’ to follow this thing up. I’ll be
away, and shall have to leave it all in your hands. Now, I’m a
plain-spoken man—that you know. For my own part, I’m content with the
thousand quid we hauled aboard, and if you like to forego your claim to
the half of it, I’ll forego my claim to whatever you may find ashore.
Forgive me for speakin’ plain, doctor, won’t you?—for it’s no good
a-beating about the bush.”
“Well,” I said, “if you are ready to accept such an agreement, I also am
ready, although I think, captain, that you may be doing an injustice to
yourself.”
But Job Seal did not see it in that light. He was a hard-headed British
skipper, and regarded a safe thousand pounds better than an imaginary
million. For that nobody could blame him. On the one hand I felt regret
at giving up my share of the gold, but on the other it left me open to
share the treasure, if found, with the unknown descendant of the
Wollertons.
So we drew out together an agreement by which I relinquished all claim
to the gold in the bank, and he, on his part, withdrew any claim upon
any treasure discovered by means of the parchments found on board the
_Seahorse_.
I could see that after I had signed the paper Job Seal was greatly
relieved. He was but human, not avaricious, he declared, but urged to
the suggestion by the knowledge that he must be absent, and would be
unable to assist in the search ashore.
And it so happened that for five hundred pounds I bought out my friend
the skipper. Who had the best of the bargain will be seen later in this
curious chapter of exciting events.
I wrote an order to the bank to deliver up the gold at Seal’s order at
any time, and after a final drink shook hands and left.
“I may be over to see you before we sail, doctor,” were his parting
words; “but if not, you’ll see me, all being well, back in London in
about five weeks. Good-bye,” he said, heartily gripping my hand; “and
good luck to you in your search.”
At home in Chelsea I sat calmly reflecting, smoking the while and lazily
turning over the leaves of the old fifteenth-century manuscripts, the
_Decretales Summa_, the _Trithemius_, and others that I had found with
the documents on board the _Seahorse_. They were evidently Bartholomew
da Schorno’s favourite reading, which showed that though he might have
been a fierce sea-dog he was nevertheless a studious man, who preferred
the old writers in their ancient manuscripts to the printed editions.
They smelt musty now, but showed how well and diligently they had been
studied. He must have been a devout Catholic, surely, to have studied
the _Decretales_ of the Friar Henry so assiduously. It was his property,
for on the last leaf of vellum, in faded ink, was written his name:
“Bartholomew da Schorno, Cavaliere di Santo Stefano, Maggio 5, 1579.”
I tried to conjure up what manner of man he was. Probably that giant in
stature whose skeleton had laid heaped in the big saloon of the
_Seahorse_. If so, he had surely been a magnificent successor to the
Crusaders of olden days—a powerful friend and a formidable foe. The
latter he must certainly have been to tackle and capture one of the
Spanish galleons sent against England. But probably no ships ever saw
such fierce and sanguinary frays as those of the Knights of St. Stephen.
Every man on board was a picked fighter, and against them even the
dreaded power of the Barbary pirates was insufficient, for the latter
were gradually crushed, not, however, without enormous bloodshed on both
sides.
The power of the Corsairs at one time was so great that they constantly
landed at points along what is now known as the Corniche road, between
the Var mouth and Genoa, and took whole villages captive, sacking and
burning the houses, and laying desolate great tracts of country.
Thousands of Christians were carried into slavery to North Africa, and a
veritable reign of terror existed along the Mediterranean shore.
It took nearly a hundred years for the Knights of St. Stephen to crush
the robbers, but they did so, owing to their indomitable pluck and hard
and relentless fighting.
I recollected the old Elizabethan portrait of the hard-faced man that
hung upon the panelled wall, but could not believe that that was a
picture of old Bartholomew. No, I pictured him as a merry, round-faced,
easy-going type, tall to notoriety, a giant in strength, a very demon in
war, and a clever and ingenious administrator where his own personal
affairs were concerned.
His independence in his quarrel with the Duke of Ferrara was shown by
the manner in which he sold his estates and shook the dust of the
province from his feet, and his religious fervour by the fact that
although a wealthy man he braved the perils of the sea and of the fight
to aid and release the Christian slaves.
I could only think of him as a grand type of the past, a dandy in dress,
and even in armour, a patrician in his food, and a sad dog where women
were concerned. He was Italian by birth, so it was to be presumed that
he loved easily, and forgot with similar facility.
But reverie would not uplift the veil of mystery that surrounded the
present situation.
Now I, like you, my reader, had read all sorts of stories about hidden
treasure, mostly imaginary, and all in more or less degree exciting.
Treasure exists, it seems, mostly on islands the exact latitude and
longitude of which is a secret, or else in caves in Guatemala or beneath
the earth in Mexico—all far afield. But here I had tangible proof of a
treasure deposited in rural England in the days of Good Queen Bess at
some spot between the port of Yarmouth and the village of Caldecott.
Therefore, if you had been in my place, would you not have searched for
that mysterious Mr. Purvis who bought the missing document from a
half-drunken labourer for half a sovereign?
I carefully reviewed the situation, and after due consideration could
only hope for one thing—namely, that the purchaser of that parchment,
finding it useless to him, might sell it to one or other of the London
booksellers who deal in manuscripts—Quaritch, Maggs, Tregaskis, Bumpas,
Dobell, and the others. The market for such things as codexes and
interesting documents on vellum is limited, and in the hands of very few
dealers; therefore, I later on wrote a letter to all of them from the
list given me by Mr. Staffurth, saying that, if any document answering
to the description which I gave should be offered for sale, they were
commissioned to purchase it at any price up to fifty pounds.
This was, I thought, a step in the right direction. Mr. Purvis, when he
found that the document he had purchased was useless, would probably
dispose of it at a profit, and if he did so through any of the
recognized channels, it must certainly fall into my hands.
Job Seal did not call, but three days later I received a much-smeared
post-card, sent from Cardiff, regretting that he had not been able to
wish me good-bye as he had intended. He ended by an inquiry after Old
Mister Mystery, and asking me to send any important news to him at the
Poste Restante at Leghorn.
A fortnight went by. I went one day to Ealing to see the Mysterious Man,
but he was just the same, and knew me not. The weather was still hot in
London, those blazing days when the very pavements seem aglow, but old
Mr. Staffurth, whenever I called upon him, still sat in his back parlour
poring over the codexes and valuable manuscripts submitted to him. Often
I consulted him, but, like me, he could see no way by which we could
advance farther. Things were at an absolute deadlock.
I believe that he rather blamed me for my settlement with Seal, feeling
that, after all, the continued existence of the treasure was still
uncertain, for it might have been discovered and carried away years ago.
Still, towards me he was always the same courteous, low-spoken, if
dry-as-dust old gentleman.
I went ever in search of the man who called himself Purvis, but although
there were many persons of that name in the _London Directory_ I was
unable to discover the identical one who had tempted the drunken
labourer with half a sovereign.
After three weeks of going hither and thither it became necessary to
reflect upon matters more material, and, compelled to work at my
profession for a living, I became _locum tenens_ for a doctor who had a
dispensary in the Walworth Road, near Camberwell Gate. Probably that
part of London is well known to you, the great wide thoroughfare that is
one of the main arteries of South London, but dull, grey, and
overcrowded; a depressing place for a man who like myself had so
recently come from weeks of the open sea and sunshine.
I still bore the bronze of the sun and salt upon my cheeks, according to
the remarks of my friends, but although well in health and with an
appetite like the proverbial horse, my mind was full of the mystery of
the _Seahorse_ and the ingenious purchase of the missing parchment.
The practice in the Walworth Road was a big and a poor one. The majority
of the patients were hoarse-voiced costermongers from East Street and
its purlieus, seamstresses, labourers, and factory hands. There is
nothing mean in “the Road” itself, as it is called in the neighbourhood,
but alas! many of the streets that run off it towards the Old Kent Road
are full of squalid poverty.
It was not my duty to be at the dispensary at night, the night calls
being attended to by a medical friend of the man whose practice I was
taking charge of; therefore at ten o’clock each night the boy closed the
door, put out the red light, and I took the omnibus for Chelsea.
One night just as the last patient, a garrulous old man with gout, had
taken his departure and the cheap American timepiece on the mantelshelf
was chiming ten, the signal for Siddons, the boy, to turn off the gas in
the red lamp, I heard voices in the shop that had been turned into a
waiting-room. It was after hours, and Siddons had his orders, therefore
I did not anticipate that he would disobey them. But he did, for he
entered, saying:—
“There’s a lady just come, sir. Must see you, sir—very urgent, she
says.”
“Do you know her?”
“No, sir—stranger,” replied the sharp Cockney youth.
I groaned within myself, and announced my readiness to see her. She
entered, and as she did so and our eyes met I rose to my feet,
open-mouthed, utterly dumb.