The Great God Gold
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In the years gone by he had mixed with many of the shady characters of the complex world of the City, but now, in his opulence, he had apparently cut himself adrift from them all, and prided himself upon his eminent respectability.
As he sat there that winter’s morning, leaning back in his big leather armchair before the fire, he was dictating a letter to the governors of a great orphanage at Bristol, promising to defray the cost of building a much needed wing of the institution.
Then, having done so, he added to his secretary, a rather smug looking man in black:
“And you might also write a paragraph to-day, Stone, and send it to the Press Association. You know what to say – ‘magnificent gift,’ and all that sort of thing. They’ll send it out to the newspapers.”
“Yes, Sir Felix,” answered the man, making a note in shorthand.
“Let’s see, what else is there? Ah! The Malms Syndicate! Write saying that I withdraw,” he remarked.
His secretary hesitated.
“But that, Sir Felix, means ruin to all three. They are all poor men.”
“That’s just what I intend,” he answered with a smile. “We shall do that business ourselves, as soon as they are out of it.”
So Mr Stone scribbled rapidly a letter in shorthand, which meant the ruin of three honest men, who, believing in the great financier’s promises, had taken upon themselves liabilities which they could not meet.
Such letters are not infrequent. The great philanthropist, whom the world looked up to as a model man, who did his utmost for the benefit of suffering humanity, and who had been rewarded by his Sovereign, collected his wealth by ways that would often not bear investigation. But being a big man, he was able to do things which a little man would fear to do. For were not Challas and Bowen, with their huge operations and big bank balances, above suspicion?
While dictating another letter, the butler, an elderly and pompous person, entered announcing: “Mr Jannaway, Sir Felix.”
“That will be enough for to-day, Stone,” the red-faced man said to the secretary, who rose at once, and followed the servant out of the room.
Next moment the man who had posed on the previous evening as “Captain Wetherton” entered the room, looking smart and spruce in a well-cut suit of blue serge.
“Well, Jim?” exclaimed the financier anxiously, as he rose to meet his visitor. “I’ve been expecting you all the morning. What news – eh?”
“Oh! It’s all right,” answered the man cheerily, flinging himself into an armchair without invitation, apparently quite at home in Challas’s house.
“Found out anything of interest?” inquired Sir Felix, pushing over the big silver cigar-box that stood upon the smoking-table.
“Well – I hardly know,” he answered hesitatingly. “Where’s the girl?”
“In Charlie’s rooms. I’ve had a devil of a scene with her. She’s obdurate.”
“A day’s confinement there will break her spirit, no doubt,” remarked Sir Felix. “Especially if she believes she’ll lose her lover.”
“I don’t know,” he answered dubiously. “She’s got a mind of her own, I can tell you. She’s a regular little spit-fire.”
The red-faced man laughed.
“Well, Jim,” he said. “You ought to know how to manage women, surely. Did my scheme work well?”
“Excellently. She got your ‘wire,’ and went to Earl’s Court at once. I followed and after a little persuasion she fell into the trap. While she was unconscious, I took the latch-key, and at half-past two let myself and old Erich into the house in Pembridge Gardens.”
“Well – did he find anything?”
“Yes. Griffin has taken photographic copies of the burnt papers, before giving them back into Farquhar’s hands, and from his copies of various early manuscripts of Ezekiel and Deuteronomy it’s quite plain that he is making a very careful and complete study.”
“It seems, then, that Griffin’s intention, is to discover the cipher for himself, and leave the ugly little Doctor out in the cold,” Sir Felix remarked with a snap. “But, Jim, this business is ours and nobody else’s. We must crush anybody and everybody, who attempts in any way to decipher that secret record. When the Dane brought it to me at the Ritz, in Paris, I laughed at the idea. Treasure-hunting was never in my line. But,” he added with a smile, “I took care to have a complete copy of his precious document made before I gave it back to him the next morning, and it is now in the safe over yonder. Like to see it?”
Jim Jannaway, the man who had on the previous night represented himself to be “Captain Wetherton,” the friend of Frank Farquhar, expressed eagerness to see it. Therefore the financier rose, and with the gold master-key upon his watch-chain, opened the heavy steel door, and handed his visitor a typed document bound in a dark green cover – a complete copy of the manuscript which Doctor Diamond had partly burned in that obscure hotel at the Gare du Nord.
The context of the half intelligible sentences was there – the context which Professor Griffin was longing to obtain. And moreover, as the man turned over the pages, reading swiftly, he came across a geometrical figure – a plan marked with numbers and corresponding explanations.
“Who made the discovery?” asked Jim Jannaway, late of His Majesty’s Army and now gambler, card-sharper, and swell-mobsman.
“The devil only knows,” laughed Sir Felix. “He says he did himself. The fellow was hard up and I gave him a hundred francs, but I believed the whole thing to be a huge hoax, until I consulted old Erich and he began to puzzle his brains. Then I saw that there might be something in it. My only fear is that Griffin and his friends may get ahead of us. But you’ve done well, Jim. You always do.”
“I do the dirty work of the firm,” laughed the man addressed, removing his cigar from his lips, “and devilish dirty work it is at times.”
“Well, you can’t complain of the pay. Isn’t it better to live as you are, a gentleman of means, than as I found you five years ago, a ‘crook’ who might be arrested at any moment?”
“I don’t complain at all, my dear fellow. Only – ”
“Only what?”
“Well, I really don’t see your object in enticing the girl to Charlie’s rooms. It might be awkward for us.”
Sir Felix laughed, snapping his fingers.
“What? Are you growing afraid?” he asked.
“Not at all, only I can’t see your object.”
“The object is simply to compromise her,” he said grimly. “She’s a confounded pretty girl. I saw her at the theatre with her aunt a week ago, and she was at Lady Ena’s wedding the other day, with her lover, Frank Farquhar. Of that man we must be wary. With his confounded newspapers, he has power,” he added.
“That’s the very reason why I fear we are treading on dangerous ground.”
“Bosh! leave all to me. The girl is in Charlie’s rooms, there let her stay for the present,” answered the man whom the world believed to be a pillar of the church, and a devout philanthropist.
Jim Jannaway saw that this man whom he served – the man who held him in his toils – had some mysterious evil design upon the unfortunate girl. He could not, however, discern exactly what it was. He had ordered him to keep her in that upstairs room, “and break her spirit,” as he put it.
The midnight search of the Professor’s study had revealed that he was in active pursuit of the truth. That meant Sir Felix taking steps to checkmate his efforts. Ever since the first moment it had been known by a chance visit to the hotel while Jules Blanc was lying there dead, that the fragments of the strange document had fallen into Doctor Diamond’s hands, private inquiry agents, employed by Sir Felix, had been silently watching the movements of the deformed Doctor, Frank Farquhar, and his friend, the Professor. All had been reported to the red-faced man sitting there at his ease – the man who controlled financial interests worth millions.
Sir Felix had been convinced by the foreign expert he had consulted that there really was something in the theory of the unknown discovery, and he intended that none should learn the truth except himself. He had Jim Jannaway, the unscrupulous, at his elbow, ready to do any dirty work, or make any risky move which he ordered. In a day Jim could, if he wished, summon up half a dozen of the most dangerous characters in London, pals of his, to assist him, for be it said he always paid well – with Sir Felix’s money, of course.
Against such a combination as Challas and Bowen, though Mr Thomas J. Bowen lived in New York and was seldom in London, no private person could stand. The great firm, with their agents all over the world, gathered confidential information from everywhere, and could plot to crush any one who attempted to carry through a business that was against their interests.
Hence any attempt on the part of Doctor Diamond, or Professor Griffin, to solve the problem in face of the opposition of Sir Felix, was foredoomed to failure, if not to disaster. But alas! both men were in ignorance of the fact that a complete copy of the dead man’s document was in the possession of the man whose hatred of the Jews, his enemies in business, was notorious; and who would therefore go to any length in order to secure, for his own satisfaction, the sacred relics and vessels of Solomon’s Temple – providing they still existed.
Chapter Sixteen
Owen Learns the Truth
When the Professor seated himself at the breakfast-table and the news of Miss Gwen’s absence was broken to him by Laura, the parlour-maid, he started up in surprise.
“Miss Gwen went out late last night instead of going to bed, sir, and took the latch-key,” the girl was compelled to admit.
The old man pursed his thin lips. His daughter was not in the habit of going out on midnight escapades.
“Late last night Miss Gwen received a telegram, sir,” the girl added. “It seemed to excite her very much; she dressed at once, and went out.”
The Professor rose from the table without eating, and went to the study to think.
Upon the blotting-pad lay a sheet of ruled manuscript paper. He stared at it in horror as though he saw an apparition, for there upon the paper, scrawled boldly in blue chalk, were the mystic figures:
255.19.7
They danced before his eyes, as he stood staring at them. How came they there, in his own study? What could they mean?
He looked around bewildered. Nothing was out of place – nothing disturbed. Those puzzling figures had been written there by some unseen hand.
During his wakeful hours that long night he had applied Hebrew letters of those numerical values to the array of figures. But the result was chaotic. It was some mystic sign. But what, he could not determine.
He had found them on that scrap of paper cast aside at the Bodleian Library, and now again they appeared in the privacy of his own study, to puzzle and confound him.
Through the next hour he waited, from moment to moment, in the expectation of a telegram from Gwen explaining her absence and assuring him of her safety. But, alas! none came. Therefore, he put on his boots and overcoat and went round to the police-station, where the inspector on duty received him most courteously, and took a minute description of the missing young lady, a statement which, half an hour later, had been received over the telegraph at every police-station throughout the Metropolitan area.
He had taken the precaution to place one of Gwen’s photographs in his pocket, and this he handed to the inspector.
“Well do our very best, Professor, of course,” the officer assured him. “But young ladies are often very erratic, you know. We have hundreds of girls reported missing, but they usually turn up again the next day, or a couple of days later. Their absence is nearly always voluntary, and usually attributable to the one cause, love!”
“But my daughter’s lover is in Denmark,” the Professor protested.
“That is what you have been led to believe,” remarked the inspector with an incredulous smile. “Girls are very cunning, I have two myself, sir.”
“But you will help me, will you not?” urged the old gentleman earnestly.
“No effort shall be spared to discover your daughter, sir,” answered the rosy, clean-shaven man seated at his desk. “I’ll report the matter to our superintendent at once. Do you,” he added, “happen to know what dress she was wearing? I will want a close description of it, also the laundry mark on her underlinen. Your servants will, no doubt, be able to supply the latter. Perhaps I’d better step round with you and see them.”
So the inspector at once accompanied the Professor back to Pembridge Gardens, and there was shown some of the girl’s clothes with the laundry mark upon them. Afterwards he left, leaving the old man in the highest state of apprehension.
He put aside all thought of the inquiry upon which he had been engaged. His sole thought was for the safety of his child.
Meanwhile Jim Jannaway and Sir Felix Challas were still in deep consultation in the privacy of that quiet, sombre study in Berkeley Square.
“Erich left for Paris by the nine o’clock service this morning,” Jim was saying. “He wants to consult some early manuscript in the National Library, he says.”
“He’s a decidedly clever old fossil,” declared the Baronet, knocking the ash off his cigar, “and I’m convinced he’s on the right track. If we can only keep these other people off, mislead them, or put them on a false scent, we shall win.”
“Erich has done that already,” laughed the other. “He’s been down to Oxford and pretended to study certain manuscripts, knowing well that Griffin’s researches must lead him there. By putting Griffin on a false scent he’s simply tangling him up. Oh! yes, I agree, Erich Haupt is a wary old bird.”
“Then he is now making investigations in various quarters with the sole object of misleading Griffin, eh?” laughed Sir Felix. “Really, it’s quite comical.”
“Yes, and he lets drop just sufficient information to excite the curiosity of the officiate of the various libraries and place them on the qui vive. He does that, so that they shall inform Griffin.”
“Excellent!” declared the Baronet. “As soon as he returns from Paris I must see him. I wonder if the secret record really does exist? If it does, then, by Jove! I’ll hold the key to the whole Jewish religion. But one thing is quite evident, my dear Jim, we must crush out all this opposition with a firm, relentless hand. You understand?”
“I quite follow,” remarked the great financier’s unscrupulous “cat’s-paw.”
And they continued the discussion of the present rather insecure situation.
Sir Felix Challas wore his mask with marvellous cleverness. The world – the people who read of him in the newspapers – never suspected that the man whose name so often headed subscription lists for charitable objects, and whose handsome donation was the signal for a hundred others, was an unscrupulous schemer. His had been the hand that, by clever financial juggling in which some other person was always the principal, had brought ruin to thousands of happy homes. He had, indeed, if the truth were told, climbed to the pedestal of notoriety and esteem, over the bodies of the men, both capitalists and workmen, he had, with such innate cunning, contrived to ruin.
The strange story told by that shabby Dane as he sat in the gorgeous room of the Grand Hotel in Paris, had attracted him from the very first. Here was a chance of getting the better of his natural enemies, the Jews. Ah! how he hated them! Yes. He would search, and if he found any of those sacred relics, his intention was to laugh in the face of the whole Hebrew community and hold the discovery up to the derision of the Christians.
What mattered it to him that the Dane had died in penury in that obscure hotel near the Gare du Nord? His secret agent, who had watched the poor fellow from the moment he left the Grand Hotel, had informed Sir Felix of the man’s tragic end, but he had only smiled with evident satisfaction. The agent had ascertained that the present document had not been found among the dead man’s possessions, hence the Baronet believed that the man, before his death, had destroyed it. It was a blow to him when he discovered that certain fragments of it had been carefully preserved by Doctor Diamond. It meant that opposition had arisen – a very serious opposition which he must forcibly crush down.
“Charlie returns from Brussels to-day, doesn’t he?” the Baronet was asking.
“Yes. He ought to be back in his rooms by now. And he’ll find the girl there. I’ve left him definite instructions how to act.”
“The girl must be sworn to silence,” Sir Felix said with heavy brow. “She must assist us. We must compel her.”
Jim Jannaway nodded. From instructions given by the man before him his eyes had already been opened, and ten minutes later he left the house, the Baronet’s last words being:
“Remember, Jim, there’s millions in this business. We mustn’t lose it for the sake of that chit of a girl, however innocent and pretty she may be. Understand that!”
An hour previously Gwen Griffin, struggling slowly back to consciousness, found that, straight before her, was a square window over which was drawn a smoke-blackened, brown holland blind. The gas was still burning, although the grey wintry day had dawned some hours ago.
She was lying upon the bed in a fairly big room, still dressed, but with her clothes torn, as they had been in the desperate struggle of the previous night. Slowly and painfully she rose, and as she slipped off the bed she felt her limbs so weak and trembling that she could scarcely stand.
She caught sight of her dishevelled self in the long mirror of the wardrobe, and her own reflection startled her. All the horrors of that struggle crowded upon her. She put up her hands and pushed her thick dark hair from her white fevered brow.
“Where am I?” she cried aloud. “What will dad think?”
She staggered to the door, but found it locked and bolted from the outside. Then she went to the window and pulling aside the blind judged by the light that it must be about eleven o’clock in the morning. She tried to open the window but the sashes had been screwed together. The outlook was upon a blank wall.
Before the glass she rearranged her disordered dress, and sinking upon the side of the bed tried to recollect all that had occurred. But her head throbbed, her throat burned, and all the past seemed uncertain and indistinct.
The only fact which stood out clear in her mind as she sat there, inert and helpless, was the bitter truth which the man had spoken. The scoundrel who had represented himself to be “Captain Wetherton,” the friend of her lover, had showed himself in his true colours. He had brought her there for one dastardly purpose alone – to ruin her in Frank’s esteem.
She wondered what had really occurred – and while wondering, and dreading, she burst into a flood of bitter tears.
At one moment she made up her mind to batter down the door, or smash the window. But if she did that, she would, she feared, bring forth that man now so hateful to her.
She detested him. No. Rather would she starve and die there than ever look upon his blackguardly face again. The fellow was a coward, a vile scoundrel who had taken advantage of her eagerness to meet her lover, and had matched his brute strength against hers.
What should she do? How could she ever face Frank again?
She must have been carried there and placed upon that bed. She must, too, have lain for fully twelve hours in blank unconsciousness.
What had she done, she wondered, that this shameful trick should be played upon her? Alas! she had read accounts in the newspapers of how young girls had been decoyed and betrayed in our great world of London. Ah! it was no new thing she knew. Yet how long, she asked herself, was her imprisonment to continue? How long before she would be able at least to reassure her father of her safety?
For a full hour she sat in bitter tears, alone, disconsolate, and full of grave apprehension, until of a sudden she heard a footstep outside the door.
She held her breath. Horror! It was that man again.
The bolts were withdrawn, the door opened, and on the threshold stood a man, much taller, thinner and slightly older than the false “Captain Wetherton,” a pale-faced man she had never seen before.
“Hullo!” he asked, looking her straight in the face. “How are you this morning, my dear? You haven’t had any breakfast, I suppose?”
“I want none, sir,” was her haughty reply. “I only wish to leave this place. I was entrapped here last night.”
“Unfortunately, my dear girl, I know nothing about last night,” replied the man. “I returned from the Continent only this morning. These happen to be my chambers, and I find they now contain a very charming tenant!”
She looked at him with her big eyes.
“I hope, sir, you do not intend to add further in suit to that which I have already received here,” she said in a voice of bitter reproach, holding her torn silk blouse together with her hand.
He noticed the state of her dress, and saw what a fierce struggle must have taken place between her and Jim Jannaway.
“My dear girl,” he said in a reassuring tone, “providing you are reasonable, and don’t create a scene, my intention is to treat you with the deference due to every lady.”
“Is that your promise?” asked the girl in breathless eagerness.
“It is my promise – but upon one condition,” said the man in a slow voice. And then she detected in his closely set eyes a strange look that she had not hitherto noticed.
She asked him his condition, to which he replied in a few hard concise words, a smile playing upon his lips.
But the instant she heard him she fell wildly at his feet, and taking his hand in her trembling grasp, begged of him to show her mercy.
But the man only laughed – a laugh that was ominous in itself.
Chapter Seventeen
Contains an Expert Theory
Frank Farquhar had been at the Hotel Angleterre in Copenhagen, the hotel with the prettiest winter-garden in Europe, for four days.
They had been four days of constant activity. As guide, he had the resident correspondent of the morning newspapers of which he was one of the directors, and he had already satisfied himself that, in the Danish capital, there was but one first-class Hebrew scholar, namely Professor Axel Anderson, of the Royal University.
Copenhagen he found a bright pleasant little city full of life and movement, the shops gay and the streets thronged by well-dressed people. In ignorance of what had befallen Gwen, he was thoroughly enjoying himself, even though he saw that his visit could have no satisfactory result as far as the quest for the authorship of the mysterious document was concerned.
One morning he had called by appointment upon Professor Anderson at his pleasant house in the Norrevoldgade and sat down to chat. The Professor, a well-preserved, rather stout man of about forty-five, with a fair beard, spoke English quite well.
“As far as I am aware,” he said, “there are only two professors of Hebrew in Denmark beside myself. They are close personal friends of mine, and I feel sure that neither of them entertains any unusual theory concerning the Book of Ezekiel, or they would have consulted me. Of course, we have a good many scholars come to Copenhagen to study the Northern and Oriental codices in the Royal Library here. Hence I have become acquainted with many of the chief professors of Hebrew. Have you consulted Professor Griffin in London? He is one of the first authorities upon the matter in which you are interested.”
“Yes, I happen to know him,” responded the young man.
“And what is his opinion?”
“A negative one.”
“Ah! Then most probably this typewritten manuscript you tell me about was some baseless theory of an irresponsible crank. I would accept Griffin’s opinion before that of anybody else. There is only one other man of perhaps equal knowledge – old Erich Haupt, of Leipzig. He is a great Hebrew authority, as well as a recognised expert in cryptography.”
“What is your opinion broadly upon the matter?” Farquhar asked.
“Well, candidly, I believe the theory to be without foundation,” answered the Danish scholar. “I do not believe in the existence of a cipher in the Hebrew scriptures. There is nothing cryptic about the sacred record. As regards the vessels of gold and silver from Solomon’s temple, they were restored by Cyrus. It is true that an ancient Talmudic tradition exists to the effect that the Ark of the Covenant, together with the pot of manna, the flask of anointing oil and Aaron’s staff that budded are still hidden beneath the temple mount at Jerusalem. And my opinion is that your half-destroyed document is simply based upon this ancient tradition with which every Jew in Christendom is acquainted.”