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“Am I a lemon?” she asked, abruptly.
“You! do you think you are?”
“One can never know.”
“Have I drawn you?” he inquired.
“Quite immaterial to the question, which is: A lemon or not a lemon?”
“If you could but see yourself at this moment, you would not ask,” he said, looking at her with amused scrutiny.
The lovely face, the blue black hair, the fine figure in the simple pink organdie, the slender ankles, the well-shod feet – a lemon!
“But as I can’t see myself, and have no mirror handy, your testimony is desired,” she insisted. “A lemon or not a lemon?”
“A lemon!” he answered.
“Then you can’t have any objection – ”
“If you bring Miss Erskine in?” he interrupted. “Nay! Nay! Nay! Nay!”
“ – if I take you there for a game of Bridge – shall we go this very evening?”
“If you wish,” he answered.
She laughed. “I don’t wish – and we are growing very silly. Come, tell about your Annapolis trip. You stayed a great while.”
“Something more than three weeks!”
“It’s a queer old town, Annapolis – they call it the ‘Finished City!’ It’s got plenty of landmarks, and relics, but nothing more. If it were not for the State Capitol and Naval Academy, it would be only a lot of ruins, lost in the sand. In midsummer, it’s absolutely dead. No one on the streets, no one in the shops, no one any place. – Deserted – until there’s a fire. Then you should see them come out!”
“That is sufficiently expressed!” laughed Croyden. “But, with the autumn and the Academy in session, the town seemed very much alive. We sampled ‘Cheney’s Best,’ Wegard’s Cakes, and saw the Custard-and-Cream Chapel.”
“You’ve been to Annapolis, sure!” she replied. “There’s only one thing more – did you see Paul Jones?”
He shook his head. “We missed him.”
“Which isn’t surprising. You can’t find him without the aid of a detective or a guide.”
“Then, who ever finds him?”
“No one! – and there is the shame. We accepted the vast labors and the money of our Ambassador to France in locating the remains of America’s first Naval Hero; we sent an Embassy and a warship to bring them back; we received them with honor, orated over them, fired guns over them. And then, when the spectators had departed – assuming they were to be deposited in the crypt of the Chapel – we calmly chucked them away on a couple of trestles, under a stairway in Bancroft Hall, as we would an old broom or a tin can. That’s our way of honoring the only Naval Commander we had in the Revolution. It would have been better, much better, had we left him to rest in the quiet seclusion of his grave in France – lost, save in memory, with the halo of the past and privacy of death around him.”
“And why didn’t we finish the work?” said Croyden. “Why bring him here, with the attendant expense, and then stop, just short of completion? Why didn’t we inter him in the Chapel (though, God save me from burial there), or any place, rather than on trestles under a stairway in a midshipmen’s dormitory?”
“Because the appropriation was exhausted, or because the Act wasn’t worded to include burial, or because the Superintendent didn’t want the bother, or because it was a nuisance to have the remains around – or some other absurd reason. At all events, he is there in the cellar, and he is likely to stay there, till Bancroft Hall is swallowed up by the Bay. The junket to France, the parade, the speeches, the spectacular part are over, so, who cares for the entombment, and the respect due the distinguished dead?”
“I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” he observed, “but it’s hard luck to have one’s bones disturbed, after more than a hundred years of tranquillity, to be conveyed clear across the Atlantic, to be orated over, and sermonized over, and, then, to be flung aside like old junk and forgot. However, we have troubles of our own – I know I have – more real than Paul Jones! He may be glad he’s dead, so he won’t have any to worry over. In fact, it’s a good thing to be dead – one is saved from a heap of worry.”
She looked at him, without replying.
“What’s the use?” he said. “A daily struggle to procure fuel sufficient to keep up the fire.”
“What’s the use of anything! Why not make an end of life, at once?” she asked.
“Sometimes, I’m tempted,” he admitted. “It’s the leap in the dark, and no returning, that restrains, I reckon – and the fact that we must face it alone. Otherwise – ”
She laughed softly. “Otherwise death would have no terrors! You have begged the question, or what amounts to it. But, to return to Annapolis; what else did you see?”
“You have been there?”
“Many times.”
“Then you know what I saw,” he replied. “I had no wonderful adventures. This isn’t the day of the rapier and the mask.”
She half closed her eyes and looked at him through the long lashes.
“What were you doing down on Greenberry Point?” she demanded.
“How did you know?” he asked, surprised.
“Oh! very naturally. I was in Annapolis – I saw your name on the register – I inquired – and I had the tale of the camp. No one, however, seemed to think it queer!” laughing.
“Why should they? Camping out is entirely natural,” Croyden answered.
“With the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs?”
“We were in his party!”
“A party which until five days ago he had not joined – at least, so the Superintendent told me, when I dined at his house. He happened to mention your name, found I knew you – and we gossiped. Perhaps we shouldn’t, but we did.”
“What else did he tell you?”
“Nothing! he didn’t seem even to wonder at your being there – ”
“But you did?”
“It’s the small town in me, I suppose – to be curious about other people and their business; and it was most suspicious.”
“What was most suspicious?” he asked.
“Your actions. First, you hire a boat and cross the Bay direct from Hampton to Annapolis. Second, you procure, through Senator Rickrose, a permit from the Secretary of the Navy to camp on Greenberry Point. Third, you actually do camp, there, for nearly, or quite three weeks. Query: – Why? Why go clear to the Western Shore, and choose a comparatively inaccessible and exposed location on United States property, if the idea were only a camp? Why not camp over on Kent Island, or on this coast? Anywhere, within a few miles of Hampton, there are scores of places better adapted than Greenberry Point.”
“You should be a story teller!” he laughed. “Your imagination is marvelous. With a series of premises, you can reach whatever conclusion you wish – you’re not bound by the probabilities.”
“You’re simply obscuring the point,” she insisted. “In this instance, my premises are facts which are not controverted. You admit them to be correct. So, why? Why? – ” She held up her hand. “Don’t answer! I’m not asking for information. I don’t want to be told. I’m simply ‘chaffing of you,’ don’t you know!”
“With just a lingering curiosity, however,” he added.
“A casual curiosity, rather,” she amended.
“Which, some time, I shall gratify. You’ve trailed me down – we were on Greenberry Point for a purpose, but nothing has come of it, yet – and it’s likely a failure.”
“My dear Mr. Croyden, I don’t wish to know. It was a mistake to refer to it. I should simply have forgot what I heard in Annapolis – I’ll forget now, if you will permit.”
“By no means, Miss Carrington. You can’t forget, if you would – and I would not have you, if you could. Moreover, I inherited it along with Clarendon, and, as you were my guide to the place, it’s no more than right that you should know. I think I shall confide in you – no use to protest, it’s got to come!” he added.
“You are determined? – Very well, then, come over to the couch in the corner, where we can sit close and you can whisper.”
He arose, with alacrity. She put out her hand and led him – and he suffered himself to be led.
“Now!” when they were seated, “you may begin. Once upon a time – ” and laughed, softly. “I’ll take this, if you’ve no immediate use for it,” she said, and released her hand from his.
“For the moment,” he said. “I shall want it back, presently, however.”
“Do you, by any chance, get all you want?” she inquired.
“Alas! no! Else I would have kept what I already had.”
She put her hands behind her, and faced around.
“Begin, sir!” she said. “Begin! and try to be serious.”
“Well, – once upon a time – ” Then he stopped. “I’ll go over to the house and get the letter – it will tell you much better than I can. You will wait here, right here, until I return?”
She looked at him, with a tantalizing smile.
“Won’t it be enough, if I am here when you return?” she asked.
When he came out on the piazza the rain had ceased, the clouds were gone, the temperature had fallen, and the stars were shining brightly in a winter sky.
He strode quickly down the walk to the street and crossed it diagonally to his own gates. As he passed under the light, which hung near the entrance, a man walked from the shadow of the Clarendon grounds and accosted him.
“Mr. Croyden, I believe?” he said.
Croyden halted, abruptly, just out of distance.
“Croyden is my name?” he replied, interrogatingly.
“With your permission, I will accompany you to your house – to which I assume you are bound – for a few moments’ private conversation.”
“Concerning what?” Croyden demanded.
“Concerning a matter of business.”
“My business or yours?”
“Both!” said the man, with a smile.
Croyden eyed him suspiciously. He was about thirty years of age, tall and slender, was well dressed, in dark clothes, a light weight top-coat, and a derby hat. His face was ordinary, however, and Croyden had no recollection of ever having seen it – certainly not in Hampton.
“I’m not in the habit of discussing business with strangers, at night, nor of taking them to my house,” he answered, brusquely. “If you have anything to say to me, say it now, and be brief. I’ve no time to waste.”
“Some one may hear us,” the man objected.
“Let them – I’ve no objection.”
“Pardon me, but I think, in this matter, you would have objection.”
“You’ll say it quickly, and here, or not at all,” snapped Croyden.
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s scarcely a subject to be discussed on the street,” he observed, “but, if I must, I must. Did you ever hear of Robert Parmenter? Oh! I see that you have! Well, the business concerns a certain letter – need I be more explicit?”
“If you wish to make your business intelligible.”
The fellow shrugged his shoulders again.
“As you wish,” he said, “though it only consumes time, and I was under the impression that you were in a hurry. However: To repeat – the business concerns a letter, which has to do with a certain treasure buried long ago, on Greenberry Point, by the said Robert Parmenter. Do I make myself plain, now, sir?”
“Your language is entirely intelligible – though I cannot answer for the facts recited.”
The man smiled imperturbably, and went on:
“The letter in question having come into your possession recently, you, with two companions, spent three weeks encamped on Greenberry Point, ostensibly for your health, or the night air, or anything else that would deceive the Naval authorities. During which time, you dug up the entire Point, dragged the waters immediately adjoining – and then departed, very strangely choosing for it a time of storm and change of weather. My language is intelligible, thus far?”
Croyden nodded – rather amused. Evidently, the thieves had managed to communicate with a confederate, and this was a hold-up. They assumed he had been successful.
“Therefore, it is entirely reasonable to suppose that your search was not ineffectual. In plain words, you have recovered the treasure.”
The man paused, waiting for an answer.
Croyden only smiled, and waited, too.
“Very good! – we will proceed,” said the stranger. “The jewels were found on Government land. It makes no difference whether recovered on the Point or on the Bay – the law covering treasure trove, I am informed, doesn’t apply. The Government is entitled to the entire find, it being the owner in fee of the land.”
“You talk like a lawyer!” said Croyden.
The stranger bowed. “I have devoted my spare moments to the study of the law – ”
“And how to avoid it,” Croyden interjected.
The other bowed again.
“And also how to prevent others from avoiding it,” he replied, suggestively. “Let us take up that phase, if it please you.”
“And if it doesn’t please?” asked Croyden, suppressing an inclination to laugh.
“Then let us take it up, any way – unless you wish to forfeit your find to the Government.”
“Proceed!” said Croyden. “We are arriving, now, at the pith of the matter. What do you offer?”
“We want an equal divide. We will take Parmenter’s estimate and multiply it by two, though jewels have appreciated more than that in valuation. Fifty thousand pounds is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which will total, according to the calculation, half a million dollars, – one half of which amount you pay us as our share.”
“Your share! Why don’t you call it properly – blackmail?” Croyden demanded.
“As you wish!” the other replied, airily. “If you prefer blackmail to share, it will not hinder the contract – seeing that it is quite as illegal on your part as on ours. Share merely sounds a little better but either obtains the same end. So, suit yourself. Call it what you will – but pay.”
“Pay – or what?”
“Pay – or lose everything!” was the answer. “If you are not familiar with the law covering the subject under discussion, let me enlighten you.”
“Thunder! how you do roll it out!” laughed Croyden. “Get on! man, get on!”
“I was endeavoring to state the matter succinctly,” the stranger replied, refusing to be hurried or flustered. “The Common Law and the practice of the Treasury Department provide, that all treasure found on Government land or within navigable waters, is Government property. If declared by the finder, immediately, he shall be paid such reward as the Secretary may determine. If he does not declare, and is informed on, the informer gets the reward. You will observe that, under the law, you have forfeited the jewels – I fancy I do not need to draw further deductions.”
“No! – it’s quite unnecessary,” Croyden remarked. “Your fellow thieves went into that phase (good word, I like it!) rather fully, down on Greenberry Point. Unluckily, they fell into the hands of the police, almost immediately, and we have not been able to continue the conversation.”
“I have the honor to continue the conversation – and, in the interim, you have found the treasure. So, Parmenter’s letter won’t be essential – the facts, circumstances, your own and Mr. Macloud’s testimony, will be sufficient to prove the Government’s case. Then, as you are aware, it’s pay or go to prison for larceny.”
“There is one very material hypothesis, which you assume as a fact, but which is, unfortunately, not a fact,” said Croyden. “We did not find the treasure.”
The man laughed, good-humoredly.
“Naturally!” he replied. “We don’t ask you to acknowledge the finding – just pay over the quarter of a million and we will forget everything.”
“My good man, I’m speaking the truth!” Croyden answered. “Maybe it’s difficult for you to recognize, but it’s the truth, none the less. I only wish I had the treasure – I think I’d be quite willing to share it, even with a blackmailer!”
The man laughed, again.
“I trust it will give no offence if I say I don’t believe you.”
“You can believe what you damn please!” Croyden retorted.
And, without more ado, he turned his back and went up the path to Clarendon.
XII
I COULD TELL SOME THINGS
When Croyden had got Parmenter’s letter from the secret drawer in the escritoire, he rang the old-fashioned pull-bell for Moses. It was only a little after nine, and, though he did not require the negro to remain in attendance until he retired, he fancied the kitchen fire still held him.
And he was not mistaken. In a moment Moses appeared – his eyes heavy with the sleep from which he had been aroused.
“Survent, marster!” he said, bowing from the doorway.
“Moses, did you ever shoot a pistol?” Croyden asked.
“Fur de Lawd, seh! Hit’s bin so long sence I dun hit, I t’ink I’se gun-shy, seh.”
“But you have done it?”
“Yass, seh, I has don hit.”
“And you could do it again, if necessary?”
“I speck so, seh – leas’wise, I kin try – dough I’se mons’us unsuttin, seh, mons’us unsuttin!”
“Uncertain of what – your shooting or your hitting?”
“My hittin’, seh.”
“Well, we’re all of us somewhat uncertain in that line. At least you know enough not to point the revolver toward yourself.”
“Hi! – I sut’n’y does! seh, I sut’n’y does!” said the negro, with a broad grin.
“There is a revolver, yonder, on the table,” said Croyden, indicating one of those they used on Greenberry Point. “It’s a self-cocker – you simply pull the trigger and the action does the rest. You understand?”
“Yass, seh, I onderstands,” said Moses.
“Bring it here,” Croyden ordered.
Moses’ fingers closed around the butt, a bit timorously, and he carried it to his master.
“I’ll show you the action,” said Croyden. “Here, is the ejector,” throwing the chamber out, “it holds six shots, you see: but you never put a cartridge under the firing-pin, because, if anything strikes the trigger, it’s likely to be discharged.”
“Yass, seh!”
Croyden loaded it, closed the cylinder, and passed it over to Moses, who took it with a little more assurance. He was harkening back thirty years, and more.
“What do yo warn me to do, seh?” he asked.
“I want you to sit down, here, while I’m away, and if any one tries to get in this house, to-night, you’re to shoot him. I’m going over to Captain Carrington’s – I’ll be back by eleven o’clock. It isn’t likely you will be disturbed; if you are, one shot will frighten him off, even if you don’t hit him, and I’ll hear the shot, and come back at once. You understand?”
“Yass, seh! – I’m to shoot anyone what tries to get in.”
“Not exactly!” laughed Croyden. “You’re to shoot anyone who tries to break in. For Heaven’s sake! don’t shoot me, when I return, or any one else who comes legitimately. Be sure he is an intruder, then bang away.”
“Sut’n’y, seh! I onderstands. I’se dub’us bout hittin’, but I kin bang away right nuf. Does yo’ spose any one will try to git in, seh?”
“No, I don’t!” Croyden smiled – “but you be ready for them, Moses, be ready for them. It’s just as well to provide against contingencies.”
“Yass, seh!” as Croyden went out and the front door closed behind him, “but dem ’tingencies is monty dang’ous t’ings to fools wid. I don’ likes hit, dat’s whar I don’.”
Croyden found Miss Carrington just where he had left her – a quick return to the sofa having been synchronous with his appearance in the hall.
“I had a mind not to wait here,” she said; “you were an inordinately long time, Mr. Croyden.”
“I was!” he replied, sitting down beside her. “I was, and I admit it – but it can be explained.”
“I’m listening!” she smiled.
“Before you listen to me, listen to Robert Parmenter, deceased!” said he, and gave her the letter.
“Oh, this is the letter – do you mean that I am to read it?”
“If you please!” he answered.
She read it through without a single word of comment – an amazing thing in a woman, who, when her curiosity is aroused, can ask more questions to the minute than can be answered in a month. When she had finished, she turned back and read portions of it again, especially the direction as to finding the treasure, and the postscript bequests by the Duvals.
At last, she dropped the letter in her lap and looked up at Croyden.
“A most remarkable document!” she said. “Most extraordinary in its ordinariness, and most ordinary in its extraordinariness. And you searched, carefully, for three weeks and found – nothing?”
“We did,” he replied. “Now, I’ll tell you about it.”
“First, tell me where you obtained this letter?”
“I found it by accident – in a secret compartment of an escritoire at Clarendon,” he answered.
She nodded.
“Now you may tell me about it?” she said, and settled back to listen.
“This is the tale of Parmenter’s treasure – and how we did not find it!” he laughed.
Then he proceeded to narrate, briefly, the details – from the finding of the letter to the present moment, dwelling particularly on the episode of the theft of their wallets, the first and second coming of the thieves to the Point, their capture and subsequent release, together with the occurrence of this evening, when he was approached, by the well-dressed stranger, at Clarendon’s gates.
And, once again, marvelous to relate, Miss Carrington did not interrupt, through the entire course of the narrative. Nor did she break the silence for a time after he had concluded, staring thoughtfully, the while, down into the grate, where a smouldering back log glowed fitfully.
“What do you intend to do, as to the treasure?” she asked, slowly.
“Give it up!” he replied. “What else is there to do?”
“And what about this stranger?”
“He must give it up!” laughed Croyden. “He has no recourse. In the words of the game, popular hereabout, he is playing a bobtail!”
“But he doesn’t know it’s a bobtail. He is convinced you found the treasure,” she objected.
“Let him make whatever trouble he can, it won’t bother me, in the least.”
“He is not acting alone,” she persisted. “He has confederates – they may attack Clarendon, in an effort to capture the treasure.”
“My dear child! this is the twentieth century, not the seventeenth!” he laughed. “We don’t ‘stand-by to repel boarders,’ these days.”
“Pirate’s gold breeds pirate’s ways!” she answered.
He stared at her, in surprise.
“Rather queer! – I’ve heard those same words before, in this connection.”
“Community of minds.”
“Is it a quotation?” he asked.
“Possibly – though I don’t recall it. Suppose you are attacked and tortured till you reveal where you’ve hidden the jewels?” she insisted.
“I cannot suppose them so unreasonable!” he laughed, again. “However, I put Moses on guard – with a big revolver and orders to fire at anyone molesting the house. If we hear a fusillade we’ll know it’s he shooting up the neighborhood.”
“Then the same idea did suggest itself to you!”
“Only to the extent of searching for the jewels – I regarded that as vaguely possible, but there isn’t the slightest danger of any one being tortured.”
“You know best, I suppose,” she said – “but you’ve had your warning – and pirate’s gold breeds pirate’s ways. You’ve given up all hope of finding the treasure – abandoned jewels worth – how many dollars?”
“Possibly half a million,” he filled in.
“Without a further search? Oh! Mr. Croyden!”
“If you can suggest what to do – anything which hasn’t been done, I shall be only too glad to consider it.”
“You say you dug up the entire Point for a hundred yards inland?”
“We did.”
“And dredged the Bay for a hundred yards?”
“Yes.”
She puckered her brows in thought. He regarded her with an amused smile.
“I don’t see what you’re to do, except to do it all over again,” she announced – “Now, don’t laugh! It may sound foolish, but many a thing has been found on a second seeking – and this, surely, is worth a second, or a third, or even many seekings.”
“If there were any assurance of ultimate success, it would pay to spend a lifetime hunting. The two essentials, however, are wanting: the extreme tip of Greenberry Point in 1720, and the beech-trees. We made the best guess at their location. More than that, the zone of exploration embraced every possible extreme of territory – yet, we failed. It will make nothing for success to try again.”
“But it is somewhere!” she reflected.
“Somewhere, in the Bay! – It’s shoal water, for three or four hundred feet around the Point, with a rock bottom. The Point itself has been eaten into by the Bay, down to this rock. Parmenter’s chest disappeared with the land in which it was buried, and no man will find it now, except by accident.”