Clutterbuck's Treasure

CHAPTER XXX

I TAKE A STRONG LEAD IN THE RACE

Jack seized the elder by the shoulders and shook him—shook him handsomely and thoroughly till his splendid white moujik-teeth rattled in his head. The elder burst into tears and fell on his knees as soon as Jack let go of him, crossing himself repeatedly and jabbering vociferously. The fox had changed in an instant into a rabbit, and a timid one at that. It was impossible to translate what he said, Michail protested. On being pressed to do so, Michail observed—

"He say his prayers," and I think that must have been about the measure of it; at all events, he was saying nothing about tin boxes.

"Tell him we don't wish to hurt him," said Jack; "but we intend to have that tin box; and if his memory does not improve in the next five minutes, so that he leads us straight to where he has hidden it, something dreadful will happen to him."

This truculent message was given to the elder, who allowed himself but one more minute for the consolation of prayer and then took to his heels for the village, we taking care to keep up with him. Jack's threat seemed to have wonderfully assisted the process of recalling the past, for Alexander led us straight to his own house, into the living room (where his astonished wife and five amazed children were feasting upon black bread and dried fish, their mouths, opened to receive those dainties, remaining open by reason of their surprise), and without hesitation opened a kind of cupboard in the corner in which he kept his three teacups and his two tumblers (one cracked), together with his store of vodka.

From this receptacle, which he opened but a fraction, as though jealous lest we should steal a peep at his teacups, he quickly produced a tin box, the facsimile of that which I had unearthed in far-away Bechuana. The elder crossed himself, spat on the ground, made a droll gesture of surrender to superior force, and banged the box down upon the table.

Then his face assumed a beseechful, maudlin expression, and he said that he had done as the gentleman desired, but if the gentleman considered it worth a gratuity that he should have safely preserved this box until the gentleman came for it, why—

"Tell him to go to the deuce," said Jack; "and wait there till we see what's in it and what isn't. Here, Peter; it's yours—examine."

I opened the box: there was another within it, as before; neither was locked; and as before, inside the inner receptacle was an envelope, and within the envelope a letter; no cheque to bearer, no bank-notes for one hundred thousand pounds.... My disgust and disappointment were too great for words; I could not speak; I could not even swear; I believe I burst into tears.

"Come, come!" said Jack bracingly, "don't give way, old chap; it's just as well there are no diamonds or gold—this elder fellow would have had the lot! Cheer up, man, and read the letter, or I will! I for one don't mind another journey—I haven't travelled half enough yet! Read the letter!"

It was all very well for Jack. The issue was nothing to him (comparatively speaking); to me it was everything—all the world, and the happiness of life!

"I told you how it would be," I raved; "the old rascal meant to swindle us from the beginning. He will keep us travelling from pillar to post in this way till the worms have eaten up his hoardings and his miser's carcass as well. The whole thing's a fraud, Jack, and I am the victim."

"You're better off than the other victims, at all events," said Jack. "Read the letter, man. Don't abuse the old boy till you know he deserves it."

"Confound the letter," I said, "and him too! Read it yourself—I'm sick of the business!"

I was, as my conduct indicates, very angry, very disappointed, and very ridiculous. I have since exonerated Mr. Clutterbuck and apologised to Jack, many a time. I still think, however, that the old man's methods were extremely exasperating; and though ashamed of my loss of temper, I am not in the least surprised that I should have succumbed to my feelings of rage and disappointment.

But there was one thing which I have never regretted in the slightest degree, and that is, that when Michail suddenly laughed out at this point, finding, I suppose, something comical about my words or actions, I laid hold of him by the shoulders from behind, and walked him twice round the room and out at the door, I kicking and he yelling. After this I felt consoled and returned to hear Jack read out the letter.

It was very much like the other.

"The Prize to the Swift," the document began, and continued as follows:—

"Do not despair, you whose energy has proved equal to emergency. Having succeeded up to this point, you are sure to succeed to the end. My treasure is not here. I would never leave it so far from home and at the mercy of prying strangers in a foreign land. How do I know that I am not watched at this moment by jealous eyes from the fishing village a mile away? This box will possibly be dug up after my departure, but I do not dread such an event, since it will add, perhaps, to your trouble in finding it, my most indolent relatives and heirs, and that is a contingency which I hail with joy. That any finder of the box will destroy it, I am not afraid. He will rather keep it by him and sell it to those who come to seek it.

"As for you, my treasure is where it should be, and must ever have been, for I would never trust it elsewhere—in my own country and in my own home. Where else should it be? Return, then, successful pilgrim; seek nearer home. Where my treasure is, there is my heart, or near it. I lie buried in Streatham churchyard; my treasure is not far away from my bones! … Dig, dig, and dig again.

"The only land upon which I or my heirs possess the right of digging is my own garden in Streatham. Dig there, my friend, and success to him who digs wisest and deepest.

"My portrait is part of the spoil for the winner; it was done for me by a pavement artist for two shillings and three pence, but do not throw it away on that account. It is the portrait of your benefactor, and his blessing will go to him who preserves it well."

The letter ended here, without signature or date.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE ELDER MAKES A GOOD BARGAIN, AND

MICHAIL A POOR ONE

"What does he mean?" I growled. "Where's the portrait?"

Jack looked in the boxes, and turned the letter round; there was no sign of a drawing or of anything connected with portraiture.

I walked up to the elder's cupboard and looked in. Besides the teacups and other domestic treasures there was a tin case, in size about one foot by nine inches. I took this without permission from the elder, who had disappeared after Michail. I opened it.

Sure enough, it was a portrait of old Clutterbuck—the vilest that could be conceived, but still recognisable. The old man could never, I should say, have laid claim to good looks; but the "pavement artist" had scarcely done him justice; he had, in fact, represented his client as so repulsively hideous that the lowest criminal would probably have reconsidered his position and turned over a new leaf if informed that he possessed a face like this of poor maligned Clutterbuck.

"By George!" said Jack, "the old chap couldn't have been very vain to bequeath such a thing as that to his heirs. What a terrible specimen he must have been! Was he like this thing?"

"He wasn't as bad as that," I replied. I felt that I had a grievance against the man, and I was not inclined to give him more than the barest justice; but I was bound to admit this much.

"I'm glad to hear it," said Jack; "for if he had been, I think I should have lost my faith in the bonâ fides of his letters and of the whole thing. That pavement artist ought to have been hanged, and his body danced on. What, in Heavens name, did the old man want to leave you a thing like that for? Why couldn't he get himself photographed if he was sentimentally anxious that his heirs should possess his portrait?"

Jack laughed; I could not help joining in. It was really rather funny; and the more one looked at the picture the more one felt inclined to laugh. The artist was evidently not ashamed of his work, for he had painted his name in full at the foot of it, "Thomas Abraham Tibbett," bless him! I know his name well—I read it every day of my life, for his masterpiece hangs over my washstand, and I look at it whenever I feel low in spirits and think that a little T. A. Tibbett will do me good.

"What a merciful dispensation that one can't see his eyes, or, rather, that they are looking downwards and don't follow you about as they do in some portraits that are not by pavement artists," said Jack. "Look at them; there'd be a lifetime of nightmares in a pair of eyes like those, if they happened to be looking up."

I have often thought how true this was, and have rejoiced that the artist of the pavement mistrusted his skill and made the eyes as he did; but for my joy there are more reasons than now appear.

Michail and the elder were outside when we left the house. I think they were conspiring against us; no violence, or anything of that sort—a mere conspiracy of roubles. Michail desired a solatium for the kicks he had received from me; the elder grieved because he had delivered up his tin box, under the influence of fear, without pecuniary equivalent.

Both were sulky and uncommunicative, or perhaps assumed sulkiness for their own ends. The only information that we could obtain from Michail, in reply to our requests that he would inquire of the elder where and how he found the tin boxes, was that Kuzmá was going to sail across to Narva to give evidence against the Swede who had shot him.

"What has that to do with it?" said Jack.

Michail grinned and scratched his head, and said something in Russian to the elder, who did likewise and cleaned up his mouth with the back of his hand besides.

"Well?" said Jack; "go on!"

"The other great lord kicked me in a painful manner!" continued Michail, placing his hand near the afflicted part.

"He will kick you again in a still more painful manner," said Jack, "if you don't explain yourself."

"There is plenty of good vodka at Narva," said Michail, "forty, fifty, or sixty copeks the bottle, or two-forty for a vedro." (A vedro contains, approximately, a gallon.)

"Oh, I see," said Jack. "All right, sonny, you shall be healed, don't fear; and the other fellow too, but ask him about the boxes first!"

"Tea-money first!" said Michail. "Alexander says the little box is worth five roubles and the big one ten. At Narva, if I complained against the merciful gentleman for kicking me, he would be detained and fined. A gallon of vodka and twenty roubles is my price for being kicked by the honourable lord."

"Kicked how many times?" said Jack. "For that sum we shall certainly kick you round the island, my friend. The police at Narva will fine as much for one kick as for thirty. We shall take all our kicks, remember!"

Michail decided not to go to Narva, and to charge me for the original kicking only—the price of which was fixed at a vedro of vodka, to be brought back from Narva by Kuzmá, and one rouble.

As for the elder, we paid him for the tin boxes, for, after all, they were treasure-trove, and might prove to be very much more valuable to us than the price asked.

This little matter being satisfactorily settled, Alexander the elder deigned to inform us how he came by the property.

This, he said, was a very simple matter. He had had the things five years, keeping them because he felt sure someone would arrive one day to find them. Five years ago an old Englishman had come on the island, all alone, to seek rare flowers and plants, as he informed everyone through a pilot at the lighthouse, since departed, who spoke English.

The elder had watched the old man's botanical researches, and saw him collect a number of roots of "brusnika and other rubbish," and saw him also plant four posts in the wood, digging holes for each and putting them in and piling earth to keep them steady. Then he had dug a fifth hole, somewhere near, and buried these boxes in it, laughing and jabbering to himself, said the elder, like a madman. The rest was very simple. Old Clutterbuck sailed away in the English steamer that stopped to pick him up, and the elder quickly went and dug up the boxes, hoping to find cash, but discovering nothing more valuable than a letter he could not read. He had thought of destroying both this and "the picture of the devil," as he called old Clutterbuck's portrait, but had taken the wiser course of preserving both in case someone to whom they were not valueless should come to find them.

When Strong arrived and commenced his digging operations, the elder hoped that his opportunity had dawned; but Strong proved to be a madman with whom it was impossible to enter into negotiations.

The rest, of course, we knew.

Were we really on the road to success at last? At all events, Jack and I had the grace to admit that we had enjoyed fairly good luck after all, supposing that the letter was actually the passport to wealth which it purported to be. If the elder had destroyed it we should never have got any farther than Hogland in our researches! As for the picture, he might have done what he liked with that, we thought; though, since it seemed to be the desire of the testator that we should keep it, we piously determined to do so.

So that here we were with our object attained, or attained so far as it was possible to attain it, and with another week or so on our hands to be spent on this island before the steamer could be expected to return and fetch us away. What was to be done, and how should the time be spent?

There was fishing, and there was wandering about with our shot guns, in hopes of picking up a few grouse or other game which might be met with in the moorland and woods which covered the island. But the elder made a tempting suggestion which we caught at, though we did not anticipate much result from his idea.

There were three wolves on the island, he said, half-starved and rather savage. They lived here because they could not return to the mainland, whence they had come in the days of ice, last February or March. If we liked to pay for a sheep, he would kill one and lay it down as a decoy. On the third night, if we passed the hours of darkness in a tree over the spot, we should probably have an opportunity of shooting the brutes, and a good thing too; and it was in consideration of this fact that the elder would let us have a sheep for a merely nominal sum—fifteen roubles.

We agreed to pay this sum, so the sheep fell a victim, and was laid to rest not in but upon the earth beneath a tree.

Meanwhile the wounded Kuzmá was about to sail for the mainland in order to bring up his bandaged arm in testimony against James Strong, and the question arose whether Jack and I were not bound to accompany him in order to do what we could to ensure a fair trial to a fellow-countryman in distress.

He had done his best to murder us more than once, true. He had also foully done to death his own cousin, the younger Clutterbuck; and he had only failed to shoot down three innocent Russian peasants because one of the three had had the cleverness to knock him on the head before his purpose was half accomplished.

Yet, for all his crimes, we felt compunction about allowing him to pass, friendless and helpless, into the hands of those who are ever ready, as Englishmen (who know nothing about it) invariably believe, to draft their victims away to Siberia whether guilty or innocent. He deserved "Siberia," whatever that name may imply, as thoroughly as any rascal; but, somehow, though neither of us would have moved a finger to save his neck had it been in danger at the hands of an English hangman, yet we felt inexplicably averse to permitting Russians to have the twisting of it.

Why this was so I do not attempt to explain—it is a psychological problem which I leave to other heads to solve; all I know, is that it was only the sturdy good sense of Jack Henderson that prevented me from stepping on board his fishing-lugger with Kuzmá, and another peasant, and sailing away to Narva to make a quixotic fool of myself in defence of the indefensible James Strong.

CHAPTER XXXII

WE RECEIVE A TERRIBLE SHOCK

As it was, we contented ourselves with sending a letter to the British Consul there (supposing that there existed such a functionary), exhorting him to use his influence to obtain a fair trial for the rogue called James Strong, and to see that he was not sent to Siberia without good and sufficient cause shown.

"Great Jupiter!" said Jack, when he had read over my letter. "Why, man, we have evidence enough to send the fellow to Siberia, or to the next world for that matter, half a dozen times over!"

So we had, of course.

"And I'll tell you what, Peter!" continued Jack, "it will serve us well right, when we've got the rascal out of his scrape by our confounded meddling, if he turns up just in time to snatch the treasure out of your fingers at the very last minute. What'll you do if he shows up at Streatham and claims the right to dig with you, neck and neck for the last lap?"

"Oh, come," I said, "that's quite a different thing! I should let him hang in England, fast enough, but it's unpleasant to think of Russians stringing the poor beggar up far away from friends and country!"

Doubtless Jack agreed with me, for he took no steps to prevent the despatch of my letter. But it has since struck me that it is, after all, very doubtful whether the proximity of "friends and country" would have comforted Strong much if he had had the rope round his neck, even an English rope.

What with fishing all day and sitting shivering in pine trees all night (like a couple of frozen-out sedge-warblers, as Jack picturesquely expressed it), we contrived to pass away the time for the best part of a week, and then Kuzmá arrived, having prepared for us a surprise which for absolute breathless unexpectedness undoubtedly broke the record in so far as my own limited experience went, or Henderson's either!

Michail came running up to the moor where Jack and I were busily engaged in trying to induce a covey of grouse to allow us within range of our guns, and imparted the exciting information that Kuzmá's boat was in sight.

At the news Jack and I gladly conceded the honours of war to our covey of grouse and hastened down to the shore to see Kuzmá's boat, for it had come to this, that we were so very hard up for excitement on this island that we would have gone miles to see anything or nothing.

"There are three men on board," said Jack, as the boat came nearer, running straight for the shore before a fresh breeze. "I suppose they've brought a police officer along to make inquiries on the spot."

"I hope he won't ask us to go to Narva as witnesses!" I laughed. "That would be a bad look-out for poor Strong, Jack, eh?"

Jack was gazing at the boat as it neared the land; I gazed too, watching the jolly little craft cut the water into an endless V as it flew scudding towards us, as though rejoiced at the prospect of getting home.

"Peter," said Jack presently, "look at the fellow in the bows; he's got his head round this way. If I were not absolutely certain that such a thing were impossible, I should say it was James Strong."

"What?" I shrieked, "which? where?" I stared at the man; it was Strong, there could not be a doubt of it—there was no mistaking his face, even at this distance.

"Good gracious! Jack, what are we to do?" I said, trembling at the knees like any coward. "Heaven help us, what will happen now?" I added. My nerve seemed to have taken to itself wings at the sight of James Strong!

"Why, what's the matter, man?" said Jack. "It's a mystery to me how the fellow happens to be in that boat, but you may take your oath that he's pretty harmless as far as we are concerned; he won't catch us napping again, if we have to watch him all day and night till the steamer comes!"

I recovered presently, and called myself many evil names for yielding to a craven instinct at sight of this ill-omened person. I was not really afraid of the fellow; it was the unexpected that upset me—it always does.

As a matter of fact, there was little to be afraid of in the wretched man. It was not the James Strong whom we had known in Africa that landed among us that afternoon in Hogland. It was a poor, broken-spirited, hopeless creature that raised his arms with a cry of despair at seeing us, and hid his face and trembled and refused to leave the boat when Kuzmá and others beached it and ran it, with him still seated in the bows, up the shore. I felt quite sorry for the terrified wretch.

"Well, James Strong," said Jack, "this is an unexpected meeting, after all that has passed! How come you here, pray?"

"I didn't expect to find you on the island," said Strong. "Oh, curse my luck!" he added, in a wailing tone which changed into one of sudden ferocity as his eye fell upon Jack, who was laughing at him.

"Yes, it is poor luck for you, I admit," said the latter, "but, if it is any comfort for you to know it, you would have been too late in any case, for we have got all there was to find."

"I don't believe a word of it," said Strong.

"And what's more," continued Jack, ignoring Strong's remark, "the elder had it all the while, and would have given it to you if you hadn't shot at him. So you see what comes of evil temper, James Strong. Now, if you had not shot poor Clutterbuck, and tried to murder my friend and me, you might have followed us to England, and perhaps, even yet, have robbed us of our possessions. As it is, you see, if you come to England you will certainly hang!"

James Strong swore one of his vile oaths and spluttered there was no proof. Who was going to believe our lies? It was much more probable that we had shot Clutterbuck than he, and any jury of Englishmen would see that the whole yarn was a foul conspiracy. Then he changed his tone and whimpered, and said he had passed a miserable fortnight in the Russian prison in Narva, and beseeched us, if we were men and Englishmen, to help him escape to England and thence anywhere we pleased. The Narva police would be after him by to-morrow for a certainty, even if these Russian fiends did not carry him back and deliver him up.

"Tell us your story, with as few lies as you can put into it," said Jack, "and we'll think what's best to be done with you."

CHAPTER XXXIII

HOW STRONG ESCAPED FROM PRISON

"You're such an infernal blackguard, you see, Strong," continued Jack, with engaging candour, "that one must be very careful in dealing with a man like yourself. It seems to me that it's Siberia or the gibbet, my friend; and upon my word, I don't quite know which to advise in your best interests. Tell us what happened at Narva."