bundle of documents which at first glance Manfred had put aside as being
personal to the owner of Rath Hall. These were lying on the floor amidst
the mass of molten metal that had burnt deep holes in the carpet. Leon
examined the books one by one, opening them and running his nail along
the edge of the pages. The fourth, a weighty ledger, did not open so
easily—did not, indeed, open at all. He carried it to the table and
tried to pull back the cover.
“Now, how does this open?”
The ledger covers were of leather; to all appearance a very ordinary
book, and Leon was anxious not to disturb so artistic a camouflage.
Examining the edge carefully, he saw a place where the edges had been
forced apart. Taking out a knife, he slipped the thin blade into the
aperture. There was a click and the cover sprang up like the lid of a
box.
“And this, I think, is what we are looking for,” said Gonsalez.
The interior of the book had been hollowed out, the edges being left
were gummed tight, and the receptacle thus formed was packed close with
brown papers; brown, except for one, which was written on a large sheet
of foolscap, headed: “Bureau of the Ministry of Colonies, Lisbon.”
Barberton had superimposed upon this long document his Braille writing,
and now one of the mysteries was cleared up.
“Lee said he had never received any important documents,” said Manfred,
“and, of course, he hadn’t, so far as he knew. To him this was merely a
sheet of paper on which Braille characters were inscribed. Read this,
Leon.”
Leon scanned the letter. It was dated “July 21st, 1912,” and bore, in
the lower left-hand corner, the seal of the Portuguese Colonial Office.
He read it through rapidly and at the end looked up with a sigh of
satisfaction.
“And this settles Oberzohn and Co., and robs them of a fortune, the
extent of which I think we shall discover when we read Barberton’s
letter.”
He lit a cigarette and scanned the writing again, whilst Meadows, who
did not understand Leon’s passion for drama, waited with growing
impatience.
“Illustrious Senhor,” began Leon, reading. “I have this day had
the honour of placing before His Excellency the President, and
the Ministers of the Cabinet, your letter dated May 15th, 1912.
By a letter dated January 8th, 1911, the lands marked Ex. 275 on
the Survey Map of the Biskara district, were conceded to you,
Illustrious Senhor, in order to further the cause of science—a
cause which is very dear to the heart of His Excellency the
President. Your further letter, in which you complain,
Illustrious Senhor, that the incursion of prospectors upon your
land is hampering your scientific work, and your request that an
end may be put to these annoyances by the granting to you of an
extension of the concession, so as to give you title to all
minerals found in the aforesaid area, Ex. 275 on the Survey Map
of Biskara, and thus making the intrusion of prospectors
illegal, has been considered by the Council, and the extending
concession is hereby granted, on the following conditions: The
term of the concession shall be for twelve years, as from the
14th day of June, 1912, and shall be renewable by you, your
heirs or nominees, every twelfth year, on payment of a nominal
sum of 1,000 milreis. In the event of the concessionnaire, his
heirs or nominees, failing to apply for a renewal on the 14th
day of June, 1924, the mineral rights of the said area, Ex. 275
on the Survey Map of Biskara, shall be open to claim in
accordance with the laws of Angola——”
Leon sat back.
“Fourteenth of June?” he said, and looked up. “Why, that is next
week—five days! We’ve cut it rather fine, George.”
“Barberton said there were six weeks,” said Manfred. “Obviously he made
the mistake of timing the concession from July 21st—the date of the
letter. He must have been the most honest man in the world; there was no
other reason why he should have communicated with Miss Leicester. He
could have kept quiet and claimed the rights for himself. Go on, Leon.”
“That is about all,” said Leon, glancing at the tail of the letter. “The
rest is more or less flowery and complimentary and has reference to the
scientific work in which Professor Leicester was engaged. Five
days—phew!” he whistled.
“We may now find something in Barberton’s long narrative to give us an
idea of the value of this property.” Manfred turned the numerous pages.
“Do any of you gentlemen write shorthand?”
Meadows went out into the hall and brought back an officer. Waiting
until he had found pencil and paper, Leon began the extraordinary story
of William Barberton—most extraordinary because every word had been
patiently and industriously punched in the Braille characters.
_Chapter XVIII_ _The Story of Mont d’Or_
“DEAR FRIEND JOHNNY,—
“I have such a lot to tell you that I hardly know where to begin. I’ve
struck rich at last, and the dream I’ve often talked over with you has
come true. First of all, let me tell you that I have come upon nearly
£50,000 worth of wrought gold. We’ve been troubled round here with
lions, one of which took away a carrier of mine, and at last I decided
to go out and settle accounts with this fellow. I found him six miles
from the camp and planted a couple of bullets into him without killing
him, and decided to follow up his spoor. It was a mad thing to do,
trailing a wounded lion in the jungle, and I didn’t realize how mad
until we got out of the bush into the hills and I found Mrs. Lion
waiting for me. She nearly got me too. More by accident than anything
else, I managed to shoot her dead at the first shot, and got another pot
at her husband as he was slinking into a cave which was near our tent.
“As I had gone so far, I thought I might as well go the whole hog,
especially as I’d seen two lion cubs playing round the mouth of the
cave, and bringing up my boys, who were scared to death, I crawled in,
to find, as I expected, that the old lion was nearly gone, and a shot
finished him. I had to kill the cubs; they were too young to be left
alone, and too much of a nuisance to bring back to camp. This cave had
been used as a lair for years; it was full of bones, human amongst them.
“But what struck me was the appearance of the roof, which, I was almost
certain, had been cut out by hand. It was like a house, and there was a
cut door in the rock at the back. I made a torch and went through on a
tour of inspection, and you can imagine my surprise when I found myself
in a little room with a line of stone niches or shelves. There were
three lines of them on each side. Standing on these at intervals there
were little statuettes. They were so covered with dust that I thought
they were stone, until I tried to take one down to examine it; then I
knew by its weight that it was gold, as they all were.
“I didn’t want my boys to know about my find, because they are a
treacherous lot, so I took the lightest, after weighing them all with a
spring balance, and made a note where I’d taken it from. You might think
that was enough of a find for one man in a lifetime, but my luck had set
in. I sent the boys back and ordered them to break camp and join me on
top of the Thaba. I called it the Thaba, because it is rather like a
hill I know in Basutoland, and is one of two.
“The camp was moved up that night; it was a better pitch than any we had
had. There was water, plenty of small game, and no mosquitoes. The worst
part of it was the terrific thunderstorms which come up from nowhere,
and until you’ve seen one in this ironstone country you don’t know what
a thunderstorm is like! The hill opposite was slightly smaller than the
one I had taken as a camp, and between was a shallow valley, through
which ran a small shallow river—rapids would be a better word.
“Early the next morning I was looking round through my glasses, and saw
what I thought was a house on the opposite hill. I asked my head-man who
lived there, and he told me that it was once the house of the Star
Chief; and I remembered that somebody told me, down in Mossamedes, that
an astronomer had settled in this neighbourhood and had been murdered by
the natives. I thought I would go over and have a look at the place. The
day being cloudy and not too hot, I took my gun and a couple of boys and
we crossed the river and began climbing the hill. The house was, of
course, in ruins; it had only been a wattle hut at the best of times.
Part of it was covered with vegetation, but out of curiosity I searched
round, hoping to pick up a few things that might be useful to me, more
particularly kettles, for my boys had burnt holes in every one I had. I
found a kettle, and then, turning over a heap of rubbish which I think
must have been his bed, I found a little rusty tin box and broke it open
with my stick. There were a few letters which were so faded that I could
only read a word here and there, and in a green oilskin, a long letter
from the Portuguese Government.”
(It was at this point, either by coincidence or design, that the
narrative continued on the actual paper to which he referred.)
“I speak Portuguese and can read it as easily as English, and the only
thing that worried me about it was that the concession gave Professor
Leicester all rights to my cave. My first idea was to burn it, but then
I began to realize what a scoundrelly business that would be, and I took
the letters out into the sun and tried to find if he had any relations,
hoping that I’d be able to fix it up with them to take at any rate 50
per cent. of my find. There was only one letter that helped me. It was
written in a child’s hand and was evidently from his daughter. It had no
address, but there was the name—‘Mirabelle Leicester.’
“I put it in my pocket with the concession and went on searching, but
found nothing more. I was going down the hill towards the valley when it
struck me that perhaps this man had found gold, and the excuse for
getting the concession was a bit of artfulness. I sent a boy back to the
camp for a pick, a hammer and a spade, and when he returned I began to
make a cutting in the side of the hill. There was nothing to guide
me—no outcrop, such as you usually find near a true reef—but I hadn’t
been digging for an hour before I struck the richest bed of conglomerate
I’ve ever seen. I was either dreaming, or my good angel had at last led
me to the one place in the hill where gold could be found. I had
previously sent the boys back to the camp and told them to wait for me,
because, if I did strike metal, I did not want the fact advertised all
over Angola, where they’ve been looking for gold for years.
“Understand, it was not a reef in the ordinary sense of the word, it was
all conglomerate, and the wider I made my cutting, the wider the bed
appeared. I took the pick to another part of the hill and dug again,
with the same result—conglomerate. It was as though nature had thrown
up a huge golden hump on the earth. I covered both cuttings late that
night and went back to camp. (I was stalked by a leopard in the low
bush, but managed to get him.)
“Early next morning, I started off and tried another spot, and with the
same result; first three feet of earth, then about six inches of shale,
and then conglomerate. I tried to work through the bed, thinking that it
might be just a skin, but I was saved much exertion by coming upon a
deep rift in the hill about twenty feet wide at the top and tapering
down to about fifty feet below the ground level. This gave me a section
to work on, and as near as I can judge, the conglomerate bed is
something over fifty feet thick and I’m not so sure that it doesn’t
occur again after an interval of twenty feet or more, for I dug more
shale and had a showing of conglomerate at the very bottom of the
ravine.
“What does this mean, Johnny? It means that we have found a hill of
gold; not solid gold, as in the story-books, but gold that pays ounces
and probably pounds to the ton. How the prospectors have missed it all
these years I can’t understand, unless it is that they’ve made their
cuttings on the north side of the hill, where they have found nothing
but slate and sandstone. The little river in the valley must be feet
deep in alluvial, for I panned the bed and got eight ounces of pure gold
in an hour—and that was by rough and ready methods. I had to be careful
not to make the boys too curious, and I am breaking camp to-morrow, and
I want you to cable or send me £500 to Mossamedes. The statuette I’m
bringing home is worth all that. I would bring more, only I can’t trust
these Angola boys; a lot of them are mission boys and can read
Portuguese, and they’re too friendly with a half-breed called Villa, who
is an agent of Oberzohn & Smitts; the traders and I know these people to
be the most unscrupulous scoundrels on the coast.
“I shall be at Mossamedes about three weeks after you get this letter,
but I don’t want to get back to the coast in a hurry, otherwise people
are going to suspect I have made a strike.”
Leon put the letter down.
“There is the story in a nutshell, gentlemen,” he said. “I don’t, for
one moment, believe that Mr. Barberton showed Villa the letter. It is
more likely that one of the educated natives he speaks about saw it and
reported it to Oberzohn’s agent. Portuguese is the lingua franca of that
part of the coast. Barberton was killed to prevent his meeting the girl
and telling her of his find—incidentally, of warning her to apply for a
renewal of the concession. It wasn’t even necessary that they should
search his belongings to recover the letter, because once they knew of
its existence and the date which Barberton had apparently confounded
with the date the letter was written, their work was simply to present
an application to the Colonial Office at Lisbon. It was quite different
after Barberton was killed, when they learnt or guessed that the letter
was in Mr. Lee’s possession.”
Meadows agreed.
“That was the idea behind Oberzohn’s engagement of Mirabelle Leicester?”
“Exactly, and it was also behind the attack upon Heavytree Farm. To
secure this property they must get her away and keep her hidden either
until it is too late for her to apply for a renewal, or until she has
been bullied or forced into appointing a nominee.”
“Or married,” said Leon briskly. “Did that idea occur to you? Our
tailor-made friend, Monty Newton, may have had matrimonial intentions.
It would have been quite a good stroke of business to secure a wife and
a large and auriferous hill at the same time. This, I think, puts a
period to the ambitions of Herr Doktor Oberzohn.”
He got up from the table and handed the papers to the custody of the
detective, and turned with a quizzical smile to his friend.
“George, do you look forward with any pleasure to a two hundred and
fifty miles’ drive?”
“Are you the chauffeur?” asked George.
“I am the chauffeur,” said Leon cheerfully. “I have driven a car for
many years and I have not been killed yet. It is unlikely that I shall
risk my precious life and yours to-night. Come with me and I promise
never to hit her up above sixty except on the real speedways.”
Manfred nodded.
“We will stop at Oxley and try to get a ’phone call through to
Gloucester,” said Leon. “This line is, of course, out of order. They
would do nothing so stupid as to neglect the elementary precaution of
disconnecting Rath Hall.”
At Oxley the big Spanz pulled up before the dark and silent exterior of
an inn, and Leon, getting down, brought the half-clad landlord to the
door and explained his mission, and also learned that two big cars had
passed through half an hour before, going in the direction of London.
“That was the gang. I wonder how they’ll explain to their paymaster
their second failure?”
His first call was to the house in Curzon Street, but there was no
reply.
“Ring them again,” said Leon. “You left Poiccart there?”
Manfred nodded.
They waited for five minutes; still there was no reply.
“How queer!” said Manfred. “It isn’t like Poiccart to leave the house.
Get Gloucester.”
At this hour of the night the lines are comparatively clear, and in a
very short time he heard the Gloucester operator’s voice, and in a few
seconds later the click that told them they were connected with
Heavytree Farm. Here there was some delay before the call was answered.
It was not Mirabelle Leicester nor her aunt who spoke. Nor did he
recognize the voice of Digby, who had recovered sufficiently to return
to duty.
“Who is that?” asked the voice sharply. “Is that you, sergeant?”
“No, it is Mr. Meadows,” said Leon mendaciously.
“The Scotland Yard gentleman?” It was an eager inquiry. “I’m Constable
Kirk, of the Gloucester Police. My sergeant’s been trying to get in
touch with you, sir.”
“What is the matter?” asked Leon, a cold feeling at his heart.
“I don’t know, sir. About half an hour ago, I was riding past here—I’m
one of the mounted men—and I saw the door wide open and all the lights
on, and when I came in there was nobody up. I woke Miss Goddard and Mr.
Digby, but the young lady was not in the house.”
“Lights everywhere?” asked Leon quickly.
“Yes, sir—in the parlour at any rate.”
“No sign of a struggle?”
“No, sir, but a car passed me three miles from the house and it was
going at a tremendous rate. I think she may have been in that. Mr. Digby
and Miss Goddard have just gone into Gloucester.”
“All right, officer. I am sending Mr. Gonsalez down to see you,” said
Leon, and hung up the receiver.
“What is it?” asked George Manfred, who knew that something was wrong by
his friend’s face.
“They’ve got Mirabelle Leicester after all,” said Leon. “I’m afraid I
shall have to break my promise to you, George. That machine of mine is
going to travel before daybreak!”
_Chapter XIX_ _At Heavytree Farm_
IT had been agreed that, having failed in their attack, and their
energies for the moment being directed to Rath Hall, an immediate return
of the Old Guard to Heavytree Farm was unlikely. This had been Meadows’
view, and Leon and his friend were of the same mind. Only Poiccart, that
master strategist, working surely with a queer knowledge of his enemies’
psychology, had demurred from this reasoning; but as he had not insisted
upon his point of view, Heavytree Farm and its occupants had been left
to the care of the local police and the shaken Digby.
Aunt Alma offered to give up her room to the wounded man, but he would
not hear of this, and took the spare bedroom; an excellent position for
a defender, since it separated Mirabelle’s apartment from the pretty
little room which Aunt Alma used as a study and sleeping-place.
The staff of Heavytree Farm consisted of an ancient cowman, a cook and a
maid, the latter of whom had already given notice and left on the
afternoon of the attack. She had, as she told Mirabelle in all
seriousness, a weak heart.
“And a weak head too!” snapped Alma. “I should not worry about your
heart, my girl, if I were you.”
“I was top of my class at school,” bridled the maid, touched to the raw
by this reflection upon her intelligence.
“It must have been a pretty small class,” retorted Alma.
A new maid had been found, a girl who had been thrilled by the
likelihood that the humdrum of daily labour would be relieved by
exciting events out of the ordinary, and before evening the household
had settled down to normality. Mirabelle was feeling the reaction and
went to bed early that night, waking as the first slant of sunlight
poured through her window. She got up, feeling, she told herself, as
well as she had felt in her life. Pulling back the chintz curtains, she
looked out upon a still world with a sense of happiness and relief
beyond measure. There was nobody in sight. Pools of mist lay in the
hollows, and from one white farmstead, far away on the slope of the
hill, she saw the blue smoke was rising. It was a morning to remember,
and, to catch its spirit the better, she dressed hastily and went down
into the garden. As she walked along the path she heard a window pulled
open and the bandaged head of Mr. Digby appeared.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, miss?” he said with relief, and she laughed.
“There is nothing more terrible in sight than a big spider,” she said,
and pointed to a big flat fellow, who was already spinning his web
between the tall hollyhocks. And the first of the bees was abroad.
“If anybody had come last night I shouldn’t have heard them,” he
confessed. “I slept like a dead man.” He touched his head gingerly. “It
smarts, but the ache is gone,” he said, not loth to discuss his
infirmities. “The doctor said I had a narrow escape; he thought there
was a fracture. Would you like me to make you some tea, miss, or shall I
call the servant?”
She shook her head, but he had already disappeared, and came seeking her
in the garden ten minutes later, with a cup of tea in his hand. He told
her for the second time that he was a police pensioner and had been in
the employ of Gonsalez for three years. The Three paid well, and had,
she learned to her surprise, considerable private resources.
“Does it pay them—this private detective business?”
“Lord bless your heart, no, miss!” He scoffed at the idea. “They are
very rich men. I thought everybody knew that. They say Mr. Gonsalez was
worth a million even before the war.”
This was astonishing news.
“But why do they do this”—she hesitated—“this sort of thing?”
“It is a hobby, miss,” said the man vaguely. “Some people run
race-horses, some own yachts—these gentlemen get a lot of pleasure out
of their work and they pay well,” he added.
Men in the regular employ of the Three Just Men not only received a good
wage, but frequently a bonus which could only be described as colossal.
Once, after they had rounded up and destroyed a gang of Spanish bank
robbers, they had distributed £1,000 to every man who was actively
employed.
He hinted rather than stated that this money had formed part of the loot
which the Three had recovered, and did not seem to think that there was
anything improper in this distribution of illicit gains.
“After all, miss,” he said philosophically, “when you collect money like
that, it’s impossible to give it back to the people it came from. This
Diego had been holding up banks for years, and banks are not like
people—they don’t feel the loss of money.”
“That’s a thoroughly immoral view,” said Mirabelle, intent upon her
flower-picking.
“It may be, miss,” agreed Digby, who had evidently been one of the
recipients of bounty, and took a complacent and a tolerant view. “But a
thousand pounds is a lot of money.”
The day passed without event. From the early evening papers that came
from Gloucester she learned of the fire at Oberzohn’s, and did not
connect the disaster with anything but an accident. She was not sorry.
The fire had licked out one ugly chapter from the past. Incidentally it
had destroyed a crude painting which was, to Dr. Oberzohn, more precious
than any that Leonardo had painted or Raphael conceived, but this she
did not know.
It was just before the dinner hour that there came the first unusual
incident of the day. Mirabelle was standing by the garden gate, intent
upon the glories of the evening sky, which was piled high with red and
slate-coloured cumuli. The glass was falling and a wet night was
promised. But the loveliness of that lavish colouring held her. And then
she became dimly aware that a man was coming towards the house from the
direction of Gloucester. He walked in the middle of the road slowly, as
though he, too, were admiring the view and there was no need to hurry.
His hands were behind him, his soft felt hat at the back of his head. A
stocky-looking man, but his face was curiously familiar. He turned his
unsmiling eyes in her direction, and, looking again at his strong
features, at the tiny grey-black moustache under his aquiline nose, she
was certain she had seen him before. Perhaps she had passed him in the
street, and had retained a subconscious mental picture of him.
He slowed his step until, when he came abreast of her, he stopped.
“This is Heavytree Lane?” he asked, in a deep, musical voice.
“No—the lane is the first break in the hedge,” she smiled. “I’m afraid
it isn’t much of a road—generally it is ankle-deep in mud.”
He looked past her to the house; his eyes ranged the windows, dropped
for a moment upon a climbing clematis, and came back to her.
“I don’t know Gloucestershire very well,” he said, and added: “You have
a very nice house.”
“Yes,” she said in surprise.
“And a garden.” And then, innocently: “Do you grow onions?”
She stared at him and laughed.
“I think we do—I am not sure. My aunt looks after the kitchen garden.”
His sad eyes wandered over the house again.
“It is a very nice place,” he said, and, lifting his hat, went on.