The Great God Gold
by William Le Queux · English · Gutenberg #41199 · 493,538 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Great God Gold
Author: William Le Queux
Release date: October 27, 2012 [eBook #41199]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/41199
Credits: Nick Hodson of London, England
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREAT GOD GOLD ***
The Great God Gold
By William Le Queux
Published by Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press, Boston, USA.
This edition dated 1910.
The Great God Gold, by William Le Queux.
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
THE GREAT GOD GOLD, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
PREFACE.
AN EXPLANATION.
The remarkable secret revealed in the following pages is not purely
fiction.
The discovery, much in the form that I have here presented it, has
actually been made, and its discoverer, a well-known professor at one of
the Universities in the North of Europe, recently placed the
extraordinary statement in my hands.
In consequence, I consulted a number of the first living authorities on
the subject, who most courteously gave me their opinions and to whom I
owe much assistance, while several other Hebrew scholars, less noted,
evinced the greatest curiosity.
Therefore I trust that the reader himself may find this hitherto
unheard-of statement of facts of equal importance and interest.
William Le Queux.
Devonshire Club, London, 1910.
CHAPTER ONE.
INTRODUCES THE STRANGER.
“My name? Why--what does that matter, Doctor? In an hour--perhaps
before--I won’t trouble anybody further.”
“But surely it is your duty, my friend, to let me know your name?”
argued the other. “Even if it be in confidence.”
The dying man slowly shook his head in the negative, moved uneasily, and
stretching forth his thin trembling hand, answered in indifferent
French.
“I regret that I cannot satisfy your curiosity. I have a reason--a--a
strong private reason. Here is my key,” he went on, speaking very
slowly and with great difficulty in a weak voice scarce above a whisper.
“Open my bag, doctor, and;--and you’ll find there a--a big envelope.
Will you give it to me?”
The Doctor, a queer, deformed little man shabbily dressed, with grey
hair and short grey beard, rose from the bedside and with the key
crossed to where a well-worn leather bag lay upon the floor.
As he turned his back upon his nameless patient and knelt beside the
bag, a curious look of craft and cunning overspread his hard, furrowed
countenance. But it was only for a second. Next instant it had
vanished, and given place to that serious expression of sympathy which
his face had previously worn.
He found a large blue, linen-lined envelope which he gave into the white
trembling hands of the stranger.
The prostrate man looked about fifty, his unkempt hair and moustache
just tinged with grey, unshaved, and with white drawn face betraying
long and intense suffering.
Why was he so determined to conceal his name? What secret of his life
had he to hide?
Upon his blanched features was written the history of a curious and
adventurous past. Perhaps he held some strange and amazing secret. He
was eccentric in only one particular--that though he knew himself to be
dying, he would leave no message for any relative; refusing absolutely
and stubbornly to give his name, even to the man who, now at his side,
had befriended him.
The room was a small and not over cleanly one, high up in a fourth-rate
hotel close to the Gare du Nord, in Paris, a room with a single bed, a
threadbare carpet, and a cheap wooden washstand with the grey December
light filtering through lace curtains that hung limp and yellow. The
wallpaper was greasy and faded, and the bed itself the reverse of
inviting.
To Doctor Raymond Diamond the dying man had been an entire stranger
until three days before--a chance acquaintance which adversity had
brought him. Both men were, as a matter of fact, stranded in Paris.
They had, in ascending the narrow stairs of their little hotel, wished
each other “Good-day.” Men who are hard up always form easy
acquaintanceships. The stranger had told him that he was a Dane, from
Copenhagen, but the name, Jules Blanc, which he had given to the
proprietor was certainly not Danish. Indeed, he had admitted to Diamond
that he had not given his real name. He had reasons for withholding it.
He was a mystery, and the Doctor strongly suspected him of having
absconded from his native land, and coming to the end of his resources,
was now in fear of the police.
That he was well educated had been quickly apparent. Though he spoke
French badly it was evident that he had nevertheless travelled
extensively, and had, in his better days, been possessed of considerable
means. He had been in the Near East, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and
Egypt, and appeared to possess an intimate knowledge of those countries.
Yet his luggage had been reduced to that one small bag containing a big
blue envelope and a change of linen.
For two days they had idled about Paris together, both practically
without a _sou_.
The Doctor, when he had discovered the true state of his friend’s
finances, had explained that he too was “temporarily embarrassed owing
to his many recent investments;” whereat they had both laughed in chorus
and with light hearts spent half the day lazily lolling upon the seats
in the Tuileries Gardens watching the children at play.
It was during those idle hungry hours that the stranger’s remarks
aroused within the Doctor the greatest curiosity. Diamond himself, an
Englishman, had in his student days taken his M.D. at Edinburgh, and was
also a scholar of no mean attainments, yet this Dane’s knowledge of many
occult matters appeared amazingly profound.
Why did he so resolutely refuse to give his name?
On the day the Doctor had met the Dane, his financial resources
consisted of one solitary franc and a twenty-five centime nickel piece.
His newly found friend had less. Hence the food they had had was not
very abundant. The two men, however, brothers in adversity, faced the
hunger problem gaily. It was not the first time that either of them had
been face to face with the streets and starvation, therefore it was no
new experience.
Yet the stranger ever and anon seemed deeply depressed. He knit his
brows, set his teeth hard, and drew deep sighs--sighs over the
might-have-beens of his past. His business in Paris was an important,
an entirely secret one, he had declared. In a few days--in a week at
most--it must be completed.
“And then,” he added with a laugh of confidence, “I shall probably move
on to the Grand.”
That same evening, however, as they were walking up the Rue Lafayette
towards the obscure hotel, the stranger had been suddenly seized with
sharp pains in the region of his heart. Neither man had tasted food for
twenty-four hours, and both were cold and faint.
Diamond, however, took the man’s arm and managed to get him back to his
room. There he examined him carefully, and having diagnosed the case,
recognised the extreme danger, but told the patient nothing decisive.
He saw the proprietor, and from him borrowed three francs. Then he
wrote a prescription which he took round to the big Pharmacie du Nord,
at the corner.
The mixture revived the invalid, but in the night he collapsed again.
At mid-day Diamond obtained a cup of bouillon from a cheap restaurant
near, and brought it to the man who had refused his name. And he had
now sat by the bedside with his fingers upon the patient’s pulse all
through that short gloomy afternoon.
“I’m sorry things are so bad as they are,” the Doctor was saying, as he
handed the invalid the big blue envelope, for he had, an hour before,
told him the truth. “You ought to have had advice long ago.”
The dying man smiled faintly and shook his head.
“I was warned in Stockholm,” he answered in a low tone. “But I didn’t
heed. I--I was a fool.”
The Doctor sighed. What could he say? He had recognised that the poor
fellow was already beyond human aid. He had probably been suffering
from the affection of the heart for the past six or seven years--perhaps
more.
“And you are certain?” asked the ugly little man at last, again taking
the thin, bony hand in his. “Are you quite certain that you wish to
send no message to anybody?”
For a few seconds the prostrate man struggled hard to speak.
“No,” he succeeded in gasping at last. “No message--to--anybody.”
The Doctor pursed his lips at the rebuff. The eccentricity of the
stranger had become more marked in those moments of finality.
His thin, nerveless fingers were fumbling with the bulky envelope, which
seemed to contain a quantity of folded papers.
“Doctor,” he whispered at last, “I--I want to burn--all these--all--
every one of them. Burn them entirely.”
“As you wish, my dear friend,” responded the hunchback, eyeing the
envelope eagerly, and wondering what it might contain. “I’ll put a
match to them in the stove yonder.”
The invalid, by dint of great effort, managed to move himself so that
his eyes could fall upon the little door in the round iron stove, in
which, however, no fire was burning, even though the day was bitterly
cold.
Yet he hesitated, hesitated as though he dared not trust the hungry
little man who had befriended him.
“Do you wish them destroyed?” the Doctor again inquired.
The dying man nodded, at the same moment raising his finger and
motioning that he could not speak.
Diamond waited. He saw that the patient was vainly endeavouring to
articulate some words.
For several moments there was a dead silence.
At last the nameless man spoke again, very softly and indistinctly.
Indeed, the Doctor was compelled to bend low to catch the words:
“Take them,” he said. “Take them--and burn them in the stove. Mind--
destroy every one.”
“Certainly I will,” answered the other. “Give them to me, and you shall
see me burn them. I’ll do so there--before your eyes.”
The man held the envelope in his dying grip. He still hesitated. His
eyes were fixed upon the papers wistfully, as though filled with
poignant regret at a mission unaccomplished.
“Ah!” he gasped with difficulty. “To think that this is the end--the
end of a lifetime’s study and struggle! Death defeats me, vanquishes
me--as it has vanquished every other man who has striven to learn the
secret.”
Diamond stood listening in wonder and curiosity. He noticed the dying
man’s reluctance to destroy the papers.
Perhaps he would succumb, and leave them undestroyed! What secret could
they contain?
There was a long silence. The grey light over the thousands of
chimney-pots was fast fading into gloom. The room was darkening.
The patient lay motionless as one dead, yet his dull eyes were still
open. In his hand he still held his treasured envelope.
Again Diamond spoke, but the man with a secret made no reply. He only
raised his wan hand, and shook his head sadly, indicating inability to
speak.
The queer little Doctor bent once more closer to the stranger and saw
that the end was near. He was hoping against hope that the man would
expire before he had strength to order the destruction of those
documents, whatever they were. The mysterious statements of the dying
man had indicated that the papers in question contained some remarkable
secret, and naturally his curiosity had been aroused.
During those three brief days of their acquaintance he had, in vain,
tried to form some conclusion as to who the stranger might be. At first
he had believed him to be a broken-down medical man like himself. But
that surmise had been quickly negatived. He was a professional man
without a doubt, but he had carefully concealed even his profession as
well as his name.
The doctor had re-seated himself in the rickety rush-bottomed chair at
the bedside, and sat in patience for the end, as he had sat beside
hundreds of other dying men and women in the course of his career.
The patient breathed heavily, and again stirring uneasily, cast a
longing look at the glass of lemonade upon the little table near by.
Diamond recognised his wish, and held the tumbler to the man’s parched
lips.
The dying stranger motioned, and the Doctor bent his head until his ear
was near the other’s mouth.
“Doctor,” he managed to whisper after great difficulty, “it’s no use.
There’s no hope! Therefore will you take them to the stove--and--and
burn them--_burn them all_!”
“Certainly I will,” was the Doctor’s reply, rising and slowly taking the
envelope from the prostrate man’s reluctant fingers.
He felt crisp papers within as he turned his back upon the dying man and
bent down to the stove, placing himself between the invalid’s line of
vision and the stove itself.
A moment later, however, he opened the stove-door, placed the envelope
within, and applied a match to it.
Next moment a blood-red light fell across the darkening room upon the
pallid face lying on the pillow.
A pair of dull, anxious, deep-set eyes watched the flames leap up and
quickly die down again, watched the crinkling tinder as the sparks died
out one by one--watched until Diamond stirred up the charred folios in
order that every one should be consumed.
Then he turned slightly in his bed and, stretching forth his hand as
though wishing to speak, drew a long, hard breath.
“And--and so--vanishes all my hope--my life,” the stranger managed to
sob bitterly in a voice almost inaudible.
Again he sighed--a long-drawn sigh. And then--in the room, now almost
dark, reigned a complete silence.
Death had entered there. The man with the secret had passed to that
land which lies beyond human ken.
CHAPTER TWO.
DESCRIBES THE DOCTOR’S DOINGS.
Raymond Diamond’s unfortunate deformity had always been against his
advancement in his profession.
The only son of old Doctor Diamond, a country practitioner of the old
school, in Norfolk, he had had a brilliant career at Edinburgh, and
after some years of changeful life as a _locum tenens_ had bought a
partnership in a practice on the outskirts of Birmingham.
His partner turned out to be a rogue who had misrepresented facts, and
six months afterwards absconded to America. Diamond, however, betrayed
a sharp resourcefulness. He advertised the practice in the _Lancet_,
and when a prospective purchaser came to view it, he hired fourteen or
fifteen men to come into the surgery, one after the other, and pay fees.
Such an impression did this ruse cause upon the newly married medico,
who came from London to investigate, that he bought it at once, and
Diamond netted nearly twice the sum he originally gave for his
partnership.
Finding that his deformity precluded him from forming anything like a
lucrative practice, he accepted a berth as ship’s doctor in the P&O
service, and for some years sailed the Indian and China seas.
Back in London again, he drifted from one suburban practice to another,
doing _locum_ work, and at last built up a semblance of a practice in a
cheap new suburban district down at Catford.
Even there, however, his ugliness proved much against him, and at last
he was forced to retire into a Northamptonshire village, where he and
his wife eked out a modest living by adopting children upon yearly
payments.
It was not a very creditable means of livelihood, yet the several
children beneath their cottage roof were all well treated and well cared
for. And after all, Raymond Diamond, a brilliant man in many ways, was
only a failure because of his physical shortcomings.
He knew his Paris well. In his younger days he had often been there.
Indeed, he once resided at St. Cloud with an invalid gentleman for close
upon two years. Long years of travel had rendered him a thorough-going
cosmopolitan, even though his lot was now cast in a sleepy country
village.
The reason of his present visit to Paris was in order to interview the
father of one of his adopted daughters, but the man had not kept the
appointment, and by waiting from day to day in hope of finding him, he
had exhausted his slender finances, and he knew that his patient wife
was in a similar condition of penury at home.
He was certainly a strikingly ugly man. His forehead was broad and
bulgy, and his face narrowed to the point of the beard. His head seemed
too large, his arms too long and ungainly, while his face was deeply
furrowed by long years at sea. His mouth, too, was wide and ugly and
when he laughed he displayed an uneven row of teeth much discoloured by
tobacco.
With folded arms, he was standing by the dead stranger, silently
contemplating the white upturned face which showed distinctly in the
fading twilight.
“I wonder who he was?” he exclaimed aloud. “Why did he refuse his name,
and why was he so particular to burn those papers? He was a queer
stick--poor fellow! I suppose they have inquests in France, and I’ll
get something as a witness.”
And he pulled the sheet tenderly across to hide the lifeless visage.
“But,” he added, “perhaps I’ve rendered myself liable because I didn’t
call in a French doctor!”
Then, suddenly arousing himself, he walked softly across to the stove
and, spreading his handkerchief on the floor, raked out all the tinder
into it. To his satisfaction he saw, as he had anticipated, that some
of the papers, closely folded as they were, had only been burned at the
edges.
One of them he opened, and found it covered with typewriting.
“These will, no doubt, prove interesting,” he remarked to himself as he
gathered every particle up into the handkerchief, and very carefully
folded it over to protect it.
The lid of an old cardboard box which he found under the bed he broke
up, and placing one piece above the handkerchief and the other below, he
put the whole into the breast-pocket of his shabby frock-coat.
The stranger’s bag he next examined. It was old, and covered with
labels of first-class hotels--many of them in cities in the Near East
and the Levant. The contents were disappointing, only a couple of
shirts marked with the initials “P.H.”, several dirty collars, a cravat
or two, and a safety razor, together with a few unimportant odds and
ends.
“The proprietor must have these, in lieu of his bill, I suppose,”
Diamond said. “I wonder what ‘P.H.’ stands for? He was a well-read man
without a doubt. By Jove! he took his blow as bravely as any fellow
I’ve seen go under. With a heart like that, it’s a marvel that he lived
so long. If I knew who his relatives were, I’d ‘wire’ to them--
providing I had the money,” he added with a bitter smile.
Then he shrugged his shoulders, and after striking a match to reassure
himself that nothing had been left inside the stove to betray the fact
that papers had been burned there, he turned upon his heel and left the
room.
Below, in his dingy little back room on the first floor, he saw the
proprietor, and told him what had occurred.
The old man grunted in his armchair and ordered the greasy-looking
_valet-de-chambre_ to inform the police, but to first go and search the
dead man’s effects and ascertain if he had left any money.
“Monsieur Blanc was penniless, like myself,” Diamond said. “Neither of
us had eaten all day yesterday.”
“No money to pay his bill!” croaked the old Frenchman, who looked more
like a _concierge_ than a hotel proprietor. “And you are also without
money?” he asked glaring.
“I regret that such is the truth,” was Diamond’s answer with much
politeness. “Has not m’sieur noticed in life that honest men are mostly
poor? Thieves and rogues are usually in funds.”
“Then I must ask you to leave my hotel at once,” said the old man
testily.
The Doctor grinned, and bowed.
“If that is m’sieur’s decision, I can do nothing else but obey,” was his
polite answer.
“You will leave your luggage, of course.”
“M’sieur is quite welcome to all he finds,” was the Doctor’s response,
and with another bow he turned and strode out.
His plan had worked admirably. He had no desire to remain there in the
present circumstances. To be ordered out was certainly better than to
flee.
So he walked gaily down the stairs, and a few minutes later was
strolling airily down the Rue Lafayette, in the direction of the Opera.
The hotel proprietor and the _valet-de-chambre_ quickly searched the
dead man’s room, but beyond the bag and its contents found nothing.
Afterwards they informed the police.
Meanwhile Raymond Diamond walked on, undecided how to act. He had
already reached the Place de l’Opera, now bright beneath its many
electric lamps, before he had made up his mind. He would go once again
in search of little Aggie’s father, the man who owed him money.
Therefore he turned into the narrow Rue des Petit-Champs, and half-way
down entered a house, passed the _concierge_, and ascended to a flat on
the second floor.
Fully twenty times he had called there before, but the place was shut,
as its owner, an Englishman, was absent somewhere in the Midi. When,
however, he rang, he heard movement within.
His heart leapt for joy, for when the door opened there stood Mr
Mullet, a tall, thin, red-haired man with a long pale face and a
reddish, bristly moustache, who, the moment he recognised his visitor,
stretched forth his hand in welcome.
“Come in, Doctor,” he cried cheerily. “I got back only this morning,
and the _concierge_ gave me your card. I expected, however, you’d grown
tired of waiting, and returned to England. How’s my little Aggie?”
“She grows a bonnie girl, Mr Mullet--quite a bonnie girl,” answered the
ugly little man. “Gets on wonderfully well at school. And Lady Gavin,
at the Manor, takes quite an interest in her.”
“That’s right. I’m glad to hear it--very glad. Though I’m a bit of a
rover, Doctor, I’m always thinking of the child you know. Why--she must
be nearly thirteen now.”
“Nearly. It’s fully six years since I took her off your hands.”
“Fully.”
And the two men sat down in the rather comfortable room of the tall,
cadaverous-looking man, a mining engineer, whose adventures would have
filled a volume.
David Mullet, or “Red Mullet” as his friends called him on account of
the colour of his hair, offered the Doctor a good cigar from his case,
poured out two glasses of brandy and soda, and after a chat took out two
notes of a thousand francs from the pocket-book he carried and handed
them to his visitor, receiving a receipt in return.
“I’ve been a long time paying, I’m afraid, Doctor,” laughed the man
airily. “But you know what kind of fellow I am! Sometimes I’m flush of
money, and at others devilish hard up.”
“I’m hard up, or I wouldn’t press for this.”
“My dear Doctor, it’s been owing for two years. And I’m very glad to
get out of your debt.”
“Well, Mr Mullet,” Diamond said, “eighty pounds is a lot to me just
now. I haven’t had a square meal for days, and to tell the truth I’ve
just been ordered out of my hotel.”
“My dear fellow, that’s happened to me dozens of times,” laughed the
other. “I never feel sorry for the proprietor. I only regret that I
can’t give tips to the servants. I suppose you’ll go back home--eh?”
“To-night, or by the first service in the morning.”
“By Jove, I’d like to see my little Aggie. I wonder,” exclaimed the
man, “I wonder if I could manage to get across?”
“It isn’t far,” urged the Doctor.
But “Red Mullet” hesitated. He had a cause to hesitate. There was a
hidden reason why for the past three years he had not put foot on
English soil.
He shook his head sadly as he recognised that discretion was the better
part of valour. He was too wary a man to run his neck into a noose.
“No,” he said, “I think that in a few weeks I’ll ask you to bring little
Aggie over here to see me. You won’t mind the trip--eh?”
“Not at all,” was the reply. “Aggie will hardly know her father, I
expect. She looks upon me as her parent.”
“That was what we arranged, Doctor. She was to take your name, and you
were to bring her up as your own daughter. I have a reason for that.”
“So you told me six years ago.”
“Red Mullet” nodded, and stretched out his long legs lazily as he
contemplated the smoke of his cigar ascending to the ceiling.
Recollections of his child had struck a sympathetic chord in his memory.
There were incidents in his life that he would fain have forgotten.
One of them was now recalled.
Quickly, however, the shadow passed, and his brow cleared. He became
the same easy-going, humorous man he always had been, possessing a merry
_bonhomie_ and a fund of stories regarding his own amusing experiences
in various out-of-the-way corners of the world.
At last the Doctor, with eighty pounds in his pocket, rose and wished
his friend adieu.
Then he walked to a _brasserie_ in the Avenue de l’Opera, where he dined
well, concluding his meal with coffee and a liqueur, and at nine o’clock
he left the Gare du Nord for Calais and London.
The reason of his sudden flight from Paris was the fear of having
contravened the law by not calling in a French medical man when he knew
that the case of the mysterious Blanc was hopeless. Detention would
mean trouble and much expense. Therefore he deemed it best to get
across to England at the earliest possible moment.
At six o’clock next morning he found himself in a small hotel called the
Norfolk in Surrey Street, Strand, where he had on one or two occasions
stayed. The waiter having brought up his breakfast, he locked the door
and, going to the table, he took from his pocket the packet of charred
paper and broken tinder which he had abstracted from the stove in Paris.
With infinite care he opened the handkerchief and spread it out. The
tinder had broken into tiny fragments and some had been reduced to black
powder, while the half-charred paper split as he attempted to open it.
He had switched on the light, for the London dawn had not yet spread.
Then, seating himself at the table, he proceeded to examine and decipher
the remains of the papers which the dying man believed he had entirely
destroyed.
For some time he could make nothing of the lines of written words, which
had neither beginning nor end.
Suddenly, however, he held his breath. He sat erect, statuesque, his
dark eyes staring at the paper.
Then he re-read the written lines eagerly.
“Great Heavens! How strange!” he cried. “How utterly astounding! That
man who refused his name had learned the greatest and most important
secret this modern world of ours contains! And it is in my
hands--_mine_! My God! Is it true--is it really true what this man
alleges?”
He paused and again re-read the smoke-blackened, half-burned pages. For
some moments he sat with his mouth open in utter astonishment. He could
scarcely believe his own eyes.
“His secret--his amazing secret, one unheard of--is mine!” he gasped,
glancing around the room, as though half-fearful lest he had been
overheard. “I shall be a rich man--one of the richest in all Europe!
Before six months is out the whole world will be at the feet of Raymond
Diamond!”
CHAPTER THREE.
SHOWS ONE OF THE FRAGMENTS.
“Well,” declared the Doctor, speaking to himself, “even my success in
intra-laryngeal operations was not half so interesting as this!”
And again he bent to examine the half-charred fragments before him.
Some were in typewriting, one was in a small fine script. One hardly
legible was in German, others were in English, interspersed here and
there with words which he recognised were in Hebrew character.
In that small bedroom, beneath the rather dim electric light, the
deformed little man sat pouring over the folios so dry that they cracked
and crumbled when touched.
Much was undecipherable; the greater part had indeed been utterly
consumed, but here and there he was enabled to read consecutive
sentences, and those he made out utterly staggered him.
Indeed, so full of interest, so curious, and so amazing they would have
staggered anybody.
He held in his hands the dead man’s secret--a secret that on the face of
it, seemed to be the strangest and at the same time the most unsuspected
in all the world.
Suddenly he sat back, and, staring straight across the narrow room,
exclaimed aloud:
“Why, there are men in the city this very day who’d give me ten thousand
pounds for the remains of these papers! But would I sell them? No--not
for ten times that amount! Who knows what this discovery may not be
worth?”
He chuckled to himself. Already he felt himself a wealthy man, a man
who could dictate his own terms in financial circles--a man who would be
welcomed in audience by crowned heads themselves!
He sighed, and the heavy exhalation blew a quantity of fragments of
tinder away upon the carpet.
“I wish I hadn’t burned them quite so much,” he said regretfully. “Had
I had a newspaper handy I could have lit that instead. Or--or I might
easily have delayed their destruction until--until after the end. Yet
he seemed quite conscious, up to the very last moment. No wonder he
regretted death before the fulfilment of the great work he had
commenced--no wonder he contemplated moving to the Grand Hotel at an
early date! And yet,” he added, after a pause, “it’s all very
intricate, very indistinct, and requires a greater scholar than myself
to properly understand and unravel it.”
The chief document, consisting of about ten typewritten pages in
English, had been badly burned. It was this which he was now engaged in
trying to decipher. At the top left-hand corner the sheets had
originally been held together by a paper-fastener, but that corner had
been consumed as well as all round the edges. The centre alone of three
folios remained readable, even though it had been yellowed by smoke.
“There seem very many references to Israel, to Nebuchadnezzar, King of
Babylon, and to the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel. Yet they seem to
convey nothing. Ah!” he sighed, “if only I could reconstruct the
context. There are Biblical references, too. I must obtain a Bible.”
So he rose, rang for a waiter, and asked him whether there was such a
thing in the hotel as a copy of Holy Writ.
The man, a young German, naturally regarded the visitor as an eccentric
person or a religious crank, but he went at once and borrowed a small
Bible from the chambermaid--a volume which afterwards proved to contain,
between its leaves, small texts of her Sunday-school days, several
pressed flowers, and a lock of hair.
A reference given upon one of the crinkled folios was “Ezekiel xxviii,
24.”
Reseating himself after the young German had left, Raymond Diamond
hastily turned over the pages of the little well-thumbed Bible and found
what proved to be the prophecy of the restoration of Israel.
Another reference in the next line of the half-burnt screed was Ezekiel
xl, xli and xlii, no verses being designated.
On turning to these chapters, the doctor found that they contained a
description of Ezekiel’s vision of the measuring of the temple.
Continuing, he read the further dimensions of the temple, the size of
the chambers for the priests, and the measures of the outer court “to
make a separation between the sanctuary and the profane place.”
All this conveyed to the deformed man but little.
That it had some connection with the strange secret was apparent, but in
what manner he failed to distinguish.
He had gathered broadly that the dead man’s discovery was an amazing
one, and that a strange secret was revealed by those documents when they
were intact, but it was all so mystifying, so astounding, that he could
scarce give it shape within his own bewildered brain.
The enormous possibilities of the discovery had utterly dumbfounded
him--it was a discovery that was unheard of.
In order to present to the reader some idea of the fragments of the dead
man’s papers lying upon the table before him, it may be of interest if
the present writer gives a photographic representation of one of the
badly burned folios.
As will easily be seen, the undestroyed fragment of the document showed
but little that was tangible. Of interest, it was true, but the
interest was, alas! a well-concealed one. The dead man was a scholar.
Of that there was no doubt whatsoever. The doctor had recognised from
the first that he was no ordinary person.
The document seemed to be a portion of some statement made by a person
as to the curious and unexpected result of certain studies.
He who made the declaration had apparently been a student of the Talmud,
and especially the school of the Amoraim, or debaters, who about A.D.
250 expounded the “Mishna.”
Raymond Diamond had long ago read Wunsche, Bacher and Strack, and from
them had learned how the Amoraim had expounded the “Mishna,” and how
their labours had formed the Gemara, while the united Mishna and Gemara
formed the books of the Talmud. By that time, and even earlier, the
teachers of Judaism were also working in the schools of Babylonis.
Hence the Talmud now exists in two forms--the Palestinian Talmud, or
Talmud of Jerusalem, and the Babylonian Talmud. Rabbi Jehuda compiled
the “Mishna” which, in general, sums up the outcome of the activity of
the Sopherim, Zugoth and Tannaim, and thus became the canonical book of
the oral law.
He was recalling these facts as he sat staring at the half-charred
fragments on the table before him.
“The person making the declaration,” he said aloud to himself, “appears
to have discovered certain hidden meanings in the ‘Mishna.’ Well--one
can read hidden meanings in most writings, I believe, if one wishes.
Yet he seems to have come across something which amazed him--some
cabalistic message very complicated and ingenious. It caused him great
astonishment when he found himself able to--able to what? Ah! that’s
the point,” he sighed.
Then, after another long pause, he decided that “nine ch--” meant “nine
chapters,” and that the final lines of the page dealt with some
declaration opening with the arrival of the Messiah.
“Yes,” he said in a hard decisive tone, straightening his crooked back
as well as he was able. “There is a mystery explained here--a great and
most astounding mystery.”
CHAPTER FOUR.
CONCERNS A CONSULTATION.
Late that same afternoon Raymond Diamond walked up the long muddy
by-road which led from Horsford station to the village, about a mile
distant.
Horsford was an obscure little place, still quite out-of-the-world, even
in these days of trains and motor-cars.
About four miles west of Peterborough on the edge of the fox-hunting
country, it was a pleasant little spot consisting of a beautiful old
Norman church, with one of the finest towers in England and one long,
straggling street mostly of thatched houses.
There were only two large houses--Horsford House, at the top of the hill
on the Peterborough side, and the Manor, an old seventeenth-century
mansion, half-way down the village.
It was not yet dark when the Doctor, the only arrival by train, turned
the corner by the Wheel Inn and entered the village. As he did so,
Warr, who combined the business of publican and village butcher, wished
him a cheery “Good evenin’, Doctor.”
And as the little man trudged up the long street he was greeted with
many such salutes, to all of which he answered mechanically, for he was
thinking--thinking deeply.
The fragrant smell of burning wood from the cottages greeted his
nostrils--the smell of that quiet little village which for some years
had been his home.
He breathed again in that rural peace, as a dozen cows slowly plodded
past him.
At last he turned from the main street, up a short, steep hill where, at
the end of a small _cul-de-sac_, stood a long, old-fashioned,
two-storied cottage with its dormer-windows peeping forth from the brown
thatch. In summer, over the whole front of it spread a wealth of
climbing roses, but now, in winter, only the brown leafless branches
remained.
In the small, well-kept front garden were a number of well-trimmed
evergreens, while an old box-hedge ran around the tiny domain.
As he lifted the latch of the gate, Mrs Diamond, a neat, well-preserved
woman in black, threw open the door with a cheery welcome, and a moment
later he was in his own old-fashioned little dining-room, warming
himself at the fire, which, sending forth a ruddy glow, illuminated the
room.
For such a humble home, it was quite a cosy apartment. Upon the
old-fashioned oak-dresser at the end were one or two pieces of blue
china, and on the oak overmantel were a few odd pieces of Worcester and
Delft. On the walls were one or two engravings, while the furniture was
of antique pattern and well in keeping with the place.
The doctor possessed artistic tastes, and was also a connoisseur to no
small degree. In the days when he had possessed means, he had been fond
of hunting for curios or making purchases of old furniture and china,
but, alas! in these latter days of his adversity he had experienced even
a difficulty in making both ends meet.
“I received your telegram, Raymond dear,” exclaimed Mrs Diamond. “I’m
so glad you were successful in finding Aggie’s father. It’s taken a
great weight from my mind.”
“And from mine also,” he said with a sigh seated before the fire with
his hands outstretched to the flames. “Mullet wants me to take the
child over to Paris to see him in a week or so.”
“Why does he not come over here?”
The Doctor pulled a wry face, and shrugged his shoulders ominously.
His wife, by her speech, showed herself to be a woman of refinement.
She had been the widow of a medical man in Manchester before Diamond had
married her. Though it was much against her grain to submit to
registration as a foster-mother of children, yet it had been their only
course. Raymond Diamond was too ugly to succeed in his profession. The
public dislike a deformed doctor.
He told his wife how he had been at the end of his resources in Paris,
and how, just at the moment when things had looked blackest, “Red
Mullet” had returned. But he made no mention of meeting the stranger,
or of the record of the curious secret which, between two pieces of
cardboard, now reposed carefully in his breast-pocket.
Its possession held him in a kind of stupor. From what he had been able
to gather--or rather from what he imagined the truth to be--he already
felt himself an immensely wealthy man. He was, in fact, already
planning out his own future.
The dead stranger had said he intended to remove to the Grand Hotel.
Diamond’s intention was to go further--to purchase a fine estate
somewhere in the grass-country, and in future live the life of a
gentleman.
Mrs Diamond noticed her husband’s preoccupied manner, and naturally
attributed it to financial embarrassment.
A few moments later the door opened, and a pretty, fair-haired girl,
about thirteen, entered, and finding the doctor had returned, rushed
towards him and, throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him, saying:
“I had no idea you were back again, dad. I went down the station-path
half-way, expecting to meet you.”
“I came by the road, my child,” was the Doctor’s reply as he stroked her
long fair hair. “I’ve been to Paris--to see your dad, Aggie,” he added.
“My other dad,” repeated the child reflectively. “I--I hardly remember
him. You are my own dear old dad!” And she stroked his cheek with her
soft hand.
Aggie was the doctor’s favourite. He was devoted to the daughter of
that tall, thin man who was such a cosmopolitan adventurer, the child
who was now the eldest of his family, and who had, ever since she had
arrived, a wee weakly little thing, always charmed him by her bright
intelligence and merry chatter.
She was a distinctly pretty child, neat in her dark-blue frock and white
pinafore. In the village school she was head of her class, and Mr
Holmes, the popular, good-humoured schoolmaster, had already suggested
to the Doctor, and also to Lady Gavin at the Manor, that she should be
sent to the Secondary School at Peterborough now that he could teach her
no more.
The Doctor drew Aggie upon his knee, and told her of her father’s
inquiries and of his suggestion that she should go to Paris to see him.
Paris seemed to the child such a long way off. She had seen it marked
upon the wall-maps in school, but to her youthful mind it was only a
legendary city.
“I don’t want to leave Horsford, dad,” replied the girl with a slight
pout. “I want to remain with you.”
“Not in order to see and know your father?”
“You are my dad--my only dad,” she declared quickly. “I don’t want to
see my other dad at all,” she added decisively. “If he wants to see me,
why doesn’t he come here?”
“He can’t my dear,” replied the doctor. “But tell me. Have you seen
Lady Gavin since I’ve been away?”
“No, dad. Mr Farquhar and his sister have come to stay at the Manor,
so she’s always engaged.”
“Frank Farquhar is down here again, eh?” asked Diamond quickly. Then he
reflected deeply for a few moments.
He was wondering if Farquhar could help him--if he dare take the young
man into his confidence.
Nowadays he was “out of it.” He knew nobody, buried there as he was in
that rural solitude.
“Is Sir George at home?” he asked the child, who, like all other
children, knew the whole gossip of the village.
“No, dad. He started for Egypt yesterday. Will Chapman told me so.”
The Doctor ate his tea, with his wife and five “daughters” of varying
ages, all bright, bonnie children, who looked the picture of good
health.
Then, after a wash and putting on another suit, he went out, strolling
down the village to where the big old Manor House, with its quaint
gables and wide porch, stood far back behind its sloping lawn.
Generations of squires of Horsford had lived and died there, as their
tombs in the splendid Norman church almost adjoining testified. It was
a house where many of the rooms were panelled, where the entrance-hall
was of stone, with a well staircase and a real “priests’ hole” on the
first floor.
He ascended the steps, and his ring was answered by a smart Italian
man-servant. Yes. Mr Farquhar was at home. Would the doctor kindly
step into the library?
Diamond entered that well-known room on the right of the hall--a room
lined from floor to ceiling with books in real Chippendale bookcases,
and in the centre a big old-fashioned writing-table. Over the fireplace
were several ancient manuscripts in neat frames, while beside the
blazing fire stood a couple of big saddle-bag chairs.
Sir George Gavin, Baronet, posed to the world as a literary man, though
he had risen from the humble trade of a compositor to become owner of a
number of popular newspapers. He knew nothing about literature and
cared less. He left all such matters to the editors and writers whom he
paid--clever men who earned for him the magnificent income which he now
enjoyed. Upon the cover of one of his periodicals it was stated that he
was editor. But as a matter of fact he hardly ever saw the magazine in
question, except perhaps upon the railway bookstalls. His sole thought
was the handsome return its publication produced. And, like so many
other men in our England to-day, he had simply “paid up” and received
his baronetcy among the Birthday honours, just as he had received his
membership of the Carlton.
Diamond had not long to wait, for in a few moments the door opened, and
there entered a smart-looking, dark-haired young man in a blue serge
suit.
“Hulloa, Doc! How are you?” he exclaimed. “I’m back again, you see--
just down for a day or two to see my sister. And how has Horsford been
progressing during my absence--eh?” he laughed.
Frank Farquhar, Lady Gavin’s younger brother, occupied an important
position in the journalistic concern of which Sir George was the head.
He was recognised by journalistic London as one of its smartest young
men. His career at Oxford had been exceptionally brilliant, and he had
already distinguished himself as special correspondent in the Boer and
Russo-Japanese campaigns before Sir George Gavin had invited him to join
his staff.
Tall, lithe, well set-up, with a dark, rather acquiline face, a small
dark moustache, and a pair of sharp, intelligent eyes, he was alert,
quick of movement, and altogether a “live” journalist.
The two men seated themselves on either side of the fireplace, and
Farquhar, having offered his visitor a cigar, settled himself to listen
to Diamond’s story.
“I’ve come to you,” the Doctor explained, “because I believe that you,
and perhaps Sir George also, can help me. Don’t think that I want any
financial assistance,” he laughed. “Not at all. I want to put before
you a matter which is unheard of, and which I am certain will astound
even you--a journalist.”
“Well, Doc,” remarked the young man with a smile, “it takes a lot to
surprise us in Fleet Street, you know.”
“This will. Listen.” And then, having extracted a promise of silence,
Diamond related to the young man the whole story of the dead stranger,
and the curious document that had been only half-consumed.
When the Doctor explained that the papers had not been wholly burned,
Frank Farquhar rose quickly in pretence of obtaining an ash-tray, but in
reality in order to conceal the strange expression which at that, moment
overspread his countenance.
Then, a few seconds later, he returned to his chair apparently quite
unmoved and unconcerned. Truth to tell, however, the statement made by
the dwarfed and deformed man before him had caused him to tighten his
lips and hold his breath.
Was it possible that he held certain secret knowledge of which the
Doctor was ignorant, and which he could turn to advantage?
He remained silent, with a smile of incredulity playing about his mouth.
The truth was this. Within his heart he had already formed a fixed
intention that the dead man’s secret--the most remarkable secret of the
age--should be his, and his alone!
CHAPTER FIVE.
SPREADS THE NET.
The deformed man existed in a whirl of excitement. He already felt
himself rich beyond his wildest dreams. He built castles in the air
like a child, and smiled contentedly when rich people--some of the
hunting crowd--passed him by unrecognised.
During the three days that followed, Frank Farquhar held several
consultations with him--long earnest talks sometimes at the Manor or
else while walking across that heath-land around the district known to
the followers to hounds as the Horsford Hanglands.
The villagers who saw them together made no comment. As was well known,
the little Doctor and Lady Gavin’s clever young brother were friends.
Diamond had enjoined the strictest secrecy, but Farquhar, as a keen man
of business and determined to put his knowledge to the best advantage,
had already exchanged several telegrams with some person in London, and
was now delaying matters with Diamond until he obtained a decided reply.
On the fourth day, just after breakfast, Burton, the grave old butler,
handed the young man a telegram which caused him to smile with
satisfaction. He crushed it into his pocket and, seizing his hat,
walked along to the Doctor’s cottage. Then the pair took a slow stroll
up the short, steep hill on to the Peterborough road, through the damp
mists of the winter’s morning. Away across the meadows on the left,
hounds were in full cry, a pretty sight, but neither noticed the
incident.
“Do you know, Doctor,” exclaimed the young man as soon as they got
beyond the village, “I’ve been thinking very seriously over the affair,
and I’ve come to the conclusion that unless we put it before some great
Hebrew scholar we shall never get down to the truth. The whole basis of
the secret is the Hebrew language, without a doubt. What can we do
alone--you and I?”
The little Doctor shook his head dubiously.
“I admit that neither of us is sufficiently well versed in Jewish
history properly to understand the references which are given in the
fragments which remain to us,” he said. “Yet if we go to a scholar,
explain our views, and show him the documents, should we not be giving
away what is evidently a most valuable secret?”
“No. I hardly think that,” answered the shrewd young man. “Before
putting it to any scholar we should first make terms with him, so that
he may not go behind our backs and profit upon the information.”
“You can’t do that!” declared Diamond.
“Among scholars there are a good many honourable men,” replied Frank
Farquhar, with a glance of cunning. “If we proposed to deal with City
sharks, it would be quite a different matter.”
“Then to whom do you propose we should submit the documents for expert
opinion?” inquired the deformed man, as he trudged along at his side.
“I know a man up in London whom I implicitly trust, and who will treat
the whole matter in strictest confidence,” was the other’s reply. “We
can do nothing further down here. I’m going up to town this afternoon,
and if you like I’ll call and see him.”
The Doctor hesitated. He recognised in the young man’s suggestion a
desire to obtain his precious fragments and submit them to an expert.
Most deformed men are gifted with unusually shrewd intelligence, and
Raymond Diamond was certainly no exception. He smiled within himself at
Frank Farquhar’s artless proposal.
“Who is the man?” he asked, as though half-inclined to adopt the
suggestion.
“I know two men. One is named Segal--a professor who writes for our
papers; an exceedingly clever chap, who’d be certain to make out
something more from the puzzle than we ever can hope to do. I also know
Professor Griffin.”
“I shall not allow the papers out of my possession.”
“Or all that remains of them, you mean,” laughed the young man uneasily.
“Why, of course not. That would be foolish.”
“Foolish in our mutual interests,” Diamond went on. “You are interested
with myself, Mr Farquhar, in whatever profits may accrue from the
affair.”
“Then if our interests are to be mutual, Doctor, why not entrust the
further investigation to me?” suggested the wily young man. “I hope you
know me sufficiently well to have confidence in my honesty.”
The Doctor cast a sharp look at the little young fellow at his side.
“Why, of course, Mr Farquhar,” he laughed. “As I’ve already said, you
possess facilities for investigating the affair which I do not. If what
I suspect be true, we have, in our hands, the solution of a problem
which will startle the world. I have sought your assistance, and I’m
prepared to give you--well, shall we say fifteen per cent, interest on
whatever the secret may realise?”
“It may, after all, be only historical knowledge,” laughed young
Farquhar. “How can you reduce that into ‘the best and brightest?’
Still, I accept. Fifteen per cent is to be my share of whatever profit
may accrue. Good! I only wish Sir George were home from Egypt. He
would, no doubt, give us assistance.”
The Doctor purposely disregarded this last remark. He held more than a
suspicion that young Farquhar intended to “freeze him out.”
“When are you going up to town?” he asked.
“This afternoon. I shall see my man in the morning, and I feel sure
that if I put the problem before him he’ll be able, before long, to give
us some tangible solution,” was Frank’s reply. “When I act, I act
promptly, you know.”
The Doctor was undecided. He knew quite well that young Farquhar was
acquainted with all sorts of writers and scholars, and that possibly
among them were men who were experts in Hebrew, and in the history of
the House of Israel.
He reflected. If the young man were content with fifteen per cent, what
had he further to fear?
Therefore, after some further persuasion on Frank’s part, he promised to
write out an agreement upon a fifteen per cent, basis, and submit the
fragments to the young man’s friend.
They returned to the village, and the Doctor promised to call upon him
at noon with an agreement written out.
This he did, and in the library at the Manor Frank appended his
signature, receiving in return the precious fragments carefully
preserved between the two pieces of cardboard.
When the deformed man had left, Frank Farquhar lit a cigarette, and
stretching his legs as he sat in the armchair, laughed aloud in triumph.
“Now if I tie down old Griffin the secret will be mine,” he remarked
aloud. “I’ve already ‘wired’ to Gwen, so she’ll expect me at eight, and
no doubt tell her father.”
At five o’clock Sir George’s red “Mercedes” came round to the front of
the house to take Frank into Peterborough, and half an hour later he was
in the “up-Scotsman” speeding towards King’s Cross, bearing with him the
secret which he felt confident was to set the whole world by the ears.
He dropped his bag at his rooms in Half Moon Street, had a wash and a
snack to eat at his club, the New Universities, round in St. James’s
Street, and then drove in a taxi-cab to a large, rather comfortable
house in Pembridge Gardens, that turning exactly opposite Notting Hill
Gate Station.
Standing behind the neat maid-servant who opened the door was a tall,
dark-haired, handsome girl not yet twenty, slim, narrow-waisted, and
essentially dainty and refined.
“Why, Frank!” she cried, rushing towards him. “What’s all this
excitement. I’m so interested. Dad has been most impatient to see you.
After your letter the day before yesterday, he’s been expecting you
almost every hour.”
“Well, the fact is, Gwen, I couldn’t get the business through,” he said
with a laugh. “We had terms to arrange--and all that.”
“Terms of what?” asked the girl, as he linked his arm in hers and they
walked together into the long, well-furnished dining-room.
“I’ll tell you all about it presently, dear,” he replied.
“About the secret?” she asked anxiously. “Dad showed me your letter.
It is really intensely interesting--if what you suspect be actually the
truth.”
“Interesting!” he echoed. “I should rather think it is. It’s a thing
that will startle the whole civilised world in a few days. And the
curious and most romantic point is that we can’t find out who was the
original holder of the information. He died in Paris, refusing to give
his real name, or any account of himself. But there,” he added, “I’ll
tell you all about it later on. How is my darling?”
And he bent until their lips met in a long, fervent caress.
Her arms were entwined about his neck, for she loved him with the whole
strength of her being, and her choice was looked upon with entire favour
by her father. Frank Farquhar was a rising man, the adopted candidate
for a Yorkshire borough, while from his interest in Sir George Gavin’s
successful publications he derived a very handsome income for a man of
his years.
“I’ve been longing for your return, dearest,” she murmured in his ear as
he kissed her. “It seems ages ago since you left town.”
“Only a month. I went first to Perthshire, where I had to speak at some
Primrose League meetings. Then I had business in both Newcastle and
Manchester, and afterwards I went to Horsford to see my sister. I was
due to stay there another fortnight, but this strange discovery brings
me up to consult your father.”
“He’s upstairs in the study. We’d better go up at once. He’s dying to
see you,” declared the bright-eyed girl, who wore a big black silk bow
in her hair. She possessed a sweet innocent face, a pale soft
countenance indicative of purity of soul. The pair were, indeed, well
matched, each devoted to the other; he full of admiration of her beauty
and her talents, and she proud of his brilliant success in journalism
and literature.
At the throat of her white silk blouse she wore a curious antique
brooch, an old engraved sapphire which Sir Charles Gaylor, a friend of
Dr Griffin, had some years ago brought from the excavation he had made
in the mound of Nebi-Yunus, near Layard’s researches in the vicinity of
Nineveh. The rich blue gleamed in the gaslight, catching Frank’s eye as
he ascended the stair, and he remarked that she was wearing what she
termed her “lucky brooch,” a gem which had no doubt adorned some
maiden’s breast in the days of Sennacherib or Esarhaddon.
The first-floor front room, which in all other houses in Pembridge
Gardens was the drawing-room, had in the house of Professor Griffin been
converted into the study--a big apartment lined with books which, for
the most part, were of “a dry-as-dust” character.
As they entered, the Professor, a short, stout, grey-haired man in round
steel-framed spectacles, raised himself from his armchair, where he had
been engrossed in an article in a German review.
“Ah! my dear Farquhar!” he cried excitedly. “Gwen told me that you were
on your way--but there, you are such a very erratic fellow that I never
know when to expect you.”
“I generally turn up when least expected,” laughed the young man, with a
side-glance at the girl.
“Well, well,” exclaimed the man in spectacles; “now what is all this
you’ve written to me about? What ‘cock-and-bull’ story have you got
hold of now--eh?”
“I briefly explained in my letter,” he answered. “Isn’t it very
remarkable? What’s your opinion?”
“Ah! you journalists!” exclaimed the old professor reprovingly. “You’ve
a lot to answer for to the unsuspecting public.”
“I admit that,” laughed Frank. “But do you really dismiss the matter as
a ‘cock-and-bull’ story?”
“That is how I regard it at the moment--without having been shown
anything.”
“Then I can show you everything,” was Farquhar’s prompt reply. “I have
it all with me--at least all that remains of it.”
The old man smiled satirically. As Regius Professor of Hebrew at
Cambridge, Dr Arminger Griffin was not a man to accept lightly any
theory placed before him by an irresponsible writer such as he knew
Frank Farquhar to be.
He suspected a journalistic “boom” to be at the bottom of the affair,
and of all things he hated most in the world was the halfpenny press.
Frank had first met Gwen while he had been at college, and had often
been a visitor at the professor’s house out on Grange Road, prior to his
retirement and return to London. He knew well in what contempt the old
man held the popular portion of the daily press, and especially the
London evening journals. Therefore he never sought to obtrude his
profession when in his presence.
“Well?” said the old gentleman at last, peering above his glasses. “I
certainly am interested in the story, and I would like to examine what
you’ve brought. Burnt papers--aren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“H’m. Savours of romance,” sniffed the professor. “That’s why I don’t
like it. The alleged secret itself is attractive enough, without an
additional and probably wholly fictitious interest.”
Frank explained how the fragments had fallen into his hands, and the
suggestion which Doctor Diamond had made as to the possibility of a
financial value of the secret.
“My dear Frank,” replied the professor, “if it were a secret invention,
a new pill, or some scented soap attractive to women, it might be worth
something in the City. But a secret such as you allege,”--and he
shrugged his shoulders ominously without concluding his sentence.
“Ah!” laughed the young man. “I see you’re sceptical. Well, I don’t
wonder at that. Some men of undoubted ability and great knowledge
declare that the Bible was not inspired.”
“I am not one of those,” the professor hastened to declare.
“No, Frank,” exclaimed the girl. “Dad is not an agnostic. He only
doubts the genuineness of this secret of yours.”
“He condemns the whole thing as a ‘cock-and-bull’ story, without first
investigating it!” said Farquhar with a grin. “Good! I wonder whether
your father will be of the same opinion after he has examined the
fragments of the dead man’s manuscript which remain to us?”
“Don’t talk of the dead man’s manuscript!” exclaimed the old professor
impatiently, “even though the man is dead, it’s in typewriting, you
say--therefore there must exist somebody who typed it. He, or she, must
still be alive!”
“By Jove!” gasped the young man quickly, “I never thought of that! The
typing is probably only a copy of a written manuscript. The original
may still exist. And in any case the typist would be able to supply to
a great degree the missing portions of the document.”
“Yes,” said the other. “It would be far more advantageous to you to
find the typist than to consult me. I fear I can only give you a
negative opinion.”
CHAPTER SIX.
GIVES EXPERT OPINION.
Frank Farquhar was cleverly working his own game. The Professor had
scoffed at the theory put forward by Diamond, therefore he was easily
induced to give a written undertaking to regard the knowledge derived
from the half-burnt manuscript as strictly confidential, and to make no
use of it to his own personal advantage.
“I have to obtain this,” the young man explained, “in the interests of
Diamond, who, after all, is possessor of the papers. He allowed me to
have them only on that understanding.”
“My dear Frank,” laughed the great Hebrew scholar, “really all this is
very absurd. But of course I’ll sign any document you wish.”
So amid some laughter a brief undertaking was signed, “in order that I
may show to Diamond,” as Frank put it.
“It’s really a most businesslike affair,” declared Gwen, who witnessed
her father’s signature. “The secret must be a most wonderful one.”
“It is, dear,” declared her lover. “Wait and hear your father’s
opinion. He is one of the very few men in the whole kingdom competent
to judge whether the declaration is one worthy of investigation.”
The Professor was seated at his writing-table placed near the left-hand
window, and had just signed the document airily, with a feeling that the
whole matter was a myth. Upon the table was his green-shaded electric
reading-lamp, and with his head within the zone of its mellow light he
sat, his bearded chin resting upon his palm, looking at the man to whom
he had promised his daughter’s hand.
A scholar of his stamp is always very slow to commit himself to any
opinion. The Hebrew professor, whoever he may be, follows recognised
lines, and has neither desire nor inclination to depart from them. It
was so with Griffin. Truth to tell, he was much interested in the
problem which young Farquhar had placed before him, but at the same time
the suggestion made by Doctor Diamond was so startling and unheard of
that, within himself, he laughed at the idea, regarding it as a mere
newspaper sensation, invented in the brain of some clever Continental
swindler.
From his pocket the young man drew forth the precious envelope, and out
of it took the cards between which reposed three pieces of crinkled and
smoke-blackened typewriting, the edges of which had all been badly
burned.
The first which he placed with infinite care, touching it as lightly as
possible, upon the Professor’s blotting-pad was the page already
reproduced--the folio which referred to the studying of the “Mishna” and
the cabalistic signs which the writer had apparently discovered therein.
The old man, blinking through his heavy round glasses, examined the
disjointed words and unfinished lines, grunted once or twice in
undisguised dissatisfaction, and placed the fragment aside.
“Well?” inquired Farquhar, eagerly, “does that convey anything to you?”
The Professor pursed his lips in quiet disbelief.
“The prologue of a very elegant piece of fiction,” he sneered. “The man
who makes this statement ought certainly to have been a novelist.”
“Why?”
“Because of the clever manner in which he introduces his subject. But
let us continue.”
With delicate fingers Frank Farquhar handled the next scrap of
typewriting and placed it before the great expert.
The folio in question apparently attracted Professor Griffin much more
than the first one presented to him. He read and re-read it, his grey
face the whole time heavy and thoughtful. He was reconstructing the
context in his own mind, and its reconstruction evidently caused him
deep and very serious reflection.
A dozen times he re-read it, while Frank and Gwen stood by exchanging
glances in silence.
“The first portion of the statement on this folio is quite plain,”
remarked the Professor at last, looking up and blinking at the young
man. “The writer indicates the Biblical fact that, after the Babylonian
imprisonment the tablets of Moses were never again exhibited in the
Temple. Surely this is not any amazing discovery! Every reader of the
Old Testament is aware of that fact. The prophet Ezekiel himself was
one of the temple priests deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar in 597
B.C. You’ll find mention of it in Ezekiel, i, 2-8. His message
consisted at first of denunciations of his countrymen, both in Babylon
and in Palestine, but after the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C. he became
a prophet of consolation, promising the eventual deliverance and
restoration of the chosen people. Give me down the Bible, Gwen, dear,
and also Skinner--the ‘Expositor’s Bible.’ You’ll see it in the second
case--third shelf to the left.”
The girl crossed the room, and after a moment’s search returned with the
two volumes, which she placed before her father.
“Nebuchadnezzar received certain vessels from the temple at Jerusalem.
Well, we know that,” remarked the old man, as he opened the copy of Holy
Writ and slowly turned its pages.
“The reference in the book of Ezra,” he said, referring to the open book
before him, “concerns the proclamation of Cyrus, King of Persia, for the
building of the temple in Jerusalem, how the people provided for the
return, and how Cyrus restored the vessels of the temple to Sheshbazzar,
the Prince of Judah.” Then, turning to Gwen, he said: “Read the verses
referred to, dear--seventh to the eleventh in the first chapter.”
The girl bent over the Bible, and read the verses aloud as follows:
“Also Cyrus the King brought forth the vessels of the house of the Lord,
which Nebuchadnezzar had brought forth out of Jerusalem, and had put
them in the house of his gods;
“Even those did Cyrus King of Persia bring forth by the hand of
Mithredath the treasurer, and numbered them unto Sheshbazzar, the Prince
of Judah.
“And this is the number of them: thirty chargers of gold, a thousand
chargers of silver, nine and twenty knives,
“Thirty basons of gold, silver basons of a second _sort_ four hundred
and ten, _and_ other vessels a thousand.
“All the vessels of gold and silver _were_ five thousand and four
hundred. All _these_ did Sheshbazzar bring up with _them_ of the
captivity that were brought up from Babylon unto Jerusalem.”
“Surely that is sufficient historical fact!” the old Professor said in
his hard, “dry-as-dust” voice. “Again, farther on, there is, you see, a
statement that Titus destroyed Jerusalem and that he built the Arch of
Triumph in Rome and placed a representation of the candlesticks upon it.
Does not every schoolboy know that! Bosh! my dear Frank!”
“True,” exclaimed Frank, “but see! in the next line but one is a
reference to the existence of something in ‘the whole prophecy of
Ezekiel’--something in ‘black and white.’”
Professor Griffin shrugged his shoulders.
“Ezekiel develops the doctrine of individual responsibility and of the
Messianic kingdom as no prophet before him,” was the Professor’s reply.
“It may refer to that. The prophet’s style is not of the highest order,
but is extraordinarily rich and striking in its imagery. The
authenticity of the book is now admitted, all but universally, but the
corrupt state of the Hebrew text has, for ages, been the despair of
students. Cornhill, in 1886, made a brilliant attempt to reconstruct
the Hebrew text with the aid of the Septuagint.”
Griffin noticed that his young friend did not quite follow that last
remark, so he added:
“The Septuagint is, as you may perhaps know, the earliest Greek
translation of the Old Testament scriptures made directly from the
Hebrew original during the third century before Christ for the use of
the Hellenistic Jews. In the literary forgery produced about the
Christian era, known as the ‘Letter of Aristeas,’ and accepted as
genuine by Josephus and others, it is alleged that the translation was
made by seventy-two men at the command of Ptolemy II. You will find
portions of it in the British Museum, and from it we find that the
translation is not of uniform value or of the same style throughout.
The Pentateuch and later historical books, as well as the Psalms,
exhibit a very fair rendering of the original. The prophetical books,
and more especially Ezekiel, show greater divergence from the Hebrew,
while Proverbs frequently display loose paraphrase.”
“But is there anything in those typed lines which strikes you as
unusually curious?” demanded young Farquhar, pointing to the smoked and
charred fragment upon the blotting-pad.
The Professor was silent for a moment, his eyes fixed upon the
disjointed and unfinished sentences.
“Well--yes. There is something,” was his answer. “That statement that
something exists in ‘the whole prophecy of Ezekiel.’ What is that
something?”
“Is it what Doctor Diamond suspects it to be, do you think?”
“I can form no definite conclusion until I have investigated the whole,”
was the great scholar’s response. “But I would, at this point, withdraw
my own light remarks of half an hour ago. There may be something of
interest in it, but what the picturesque story is all leading up to I
cannot quite imagine.”
“To a secret--to the solution of a great and undreamed-of mystery!”
declared Frank excitedly.
“The last few lines of this scrap before me certainly leads towards that
supposition,” was the answer of Gwen Griffin’s father.
“Then you do not altogether negative Diamond’s theory that there is
here, if we can only supply the context, the key to the greatest secret
this world has ever known!”
“Ah! that is saying a good deal,” was the reply. “Let me continue the
investigation of this wonderful document which the dying man was so
anxious to destroy.”
And by the sphinx-like expression upon the old man’s face it was
apparent that he had already gathered more information than he was
willing to admit.
The truth was that the theory he had already formed within his own mind
held him bewildered. His thin fingers trembled as he touched the dried,
crinkled folio.
There was a secret there--without a doubt, colossal and astounding--one
of which even the greatest scholars in Europe through all the ages had
never dreamed!
The old man sat staring through his spectacles in abject wonder.
Was Doctor Diamond’s theory really the correct one? If so, what right
had these most precious papers to be in the hands of an irresponsible
journalist?
If there was really a secret, together with its solution--then the
latter must be his, and his alone, he decided. How it would enhance his
great reputation if he were the person to launch it forth upon the
world!
Therefore the old man’s attitude suddenly changed and he pretended to
regard the affair humorously, in the hope of putting Frank off his
guard.
If the world was ever to be startled by the discovery it should, he
intended, be by Professor Arminger Griffin, and not through any one of
those irresponsible halfpenny sheets controlled by Sir George Gavin and
his smart and ingenious young brother-in-law.
Both Frank Farquhar and Gwen noticed the old man’s sudden change of
manner, and stood puzzled and wondering, little dreaming what was
passing with his mind.
Few men are--alas!--honest where their own reputations are at stake.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
IN WHICH THE PROFESSOR EXHIBITS CUNNING.
Frank was fully aware that Professor Griffin was an eccentric man, full
of strange moods and strong prejudices. Most scholars and writers are.
“But, dad,” exclaimed his daughter, placing her soft hand upon his
shoulder, “what do you really think of it? Is there anything in this
Doctor Diamond’s theory?”
“My dear child, I never jump to conclusions, as you know. It is against
my habit. It’s probably one of the many hoaxes which have been
practised for the last thousand years.”
The girl exchanged a quick glance with her lover. She could see that
Frank was annoyed by the light manner with which her father treated the
alleged secret.
“Well, Professor,” said the young man at last, “this, apparently, is the
next folio, though the numbering of each has been destroyed,” and he
placed before the man in spectacles another scrap which presented the
appearance as shown.
In an instant the old man became intensely interested though he
endeavoured very cleverly to conceal the fact. He bent, and taking up a
large magnifying-glass mounted in silver--a gift from Frank on the
previous Christmas--he carefully examined each word in its order.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, “the first three lines, underlined as you see, are
apparently a portion of some prophecy regarding the captivity of the
Jews in Babylon, ‘the period of the Blood-debts,’ after which comes the
period when the oppression will lose its power, which means their
release by Cyras. Come now, this is of some interest!”
“Read on, dad,” urged the dainty girl, excitedly. “Tell us what you
gather from it.”
The pair were standing hand-in-hand, at the back of the old man’s
writing-chair.
“Not so quickly, dear--not so quickly. That’s the worst of women. They
are always so erratic, always in such an uncommon hurry,” he added with
a laugh.
Then, after a pause during which he carefully examined the lines which
followed, he pointed out: “You see that somebody--not the writer of the
document, remember--has stated that Moses’ tablets ‘The Cha--’, which
must mean the Chair of Grace, between two cherubims of fine gold, a
number of other things, including the Ark of the Covenant itself and the
archives of the Temple down to B.C. 600 are--what?”
And he raised his head staring at the pair through his round and greatly
magnifying-glasses.
“Doctor Diamond’s theory is that the treasures of Solomon’s Temple are
still concealed at the spot where they were hidden by the priests before
the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.”
The Professor laughed aloud.
“My dear Farquhar,” he exclaimed, “on the face of this folio it would,
of course, appear so. One may read it as a statement of fact that all
the relics of the Temple and all the great treasures of the ages
bygone--the Treasure of Israel--are concealed ‘beneath’,
somewhere--‘which is a series’ of something. To this, there are three
entrances, one only being accessible. Then in the final lines, we have
another prophecy that the tablets shall ‘remain in their hiding-place--
that is with the Ark of the Covenant--till the coming of the Messiah who
alone may open the treasure-house, or place of concealment, in order
that he may show proof of--’, and the rest is lost.” he added with a
sigh of disappointment.
“I admit,” said Frank, “that is one reading of it. But what is your
reading--that of an expert?”
The old man merely shrugged his shoulders and said:
“I don’t think that the Doctor’s theory is the correct one. The belief
that the Treasure of Solomon’s Temple still exists is far too wild and
unsubstantiated. Of course, it is not quite clear in history what
became of the contents of the Temple, but I think we may safely at once
dismiss any possibility of the relics of Moses as being intact after a
couple of thousand years or so. Stories of hidden treasure have
appealed to the avarice of man throughout all the ages, from the days of
the Roman Emperors, down to the day before yesterday, when a ship went
forth to search for the lost gold of President Kruger. There have been
hundreds, nay thousands of expeditions to search for treasure, but in
nearly every case the searchers have returned sadder and poorer men.
No, Frank,” he exclaimed, decisively, “I don’t think any one would be
such an utter fool as to attempt to suggest that the Treasure of Israel
still exists. At least no scholar would. Whoever would do such a thing
would be a clumsy bungler, ignorant of both the Hebrew language and the
history of the Hebrew nation. Doctor Diamond, from what you tell me,
is, I gather, one of such.”
“But they are not the Doctor’s documents,” Frank hastened to point out.
“As I’ve told you, a man dying in Paris ordered him to burn them. He
did so, but they were not all consumed.”
“The Doctor worked a trick upon a dying man,” sniffed the Professor.
“Hardly played the game--eh?”
“I quite agree with you there,” answered young Farquhar. “Yet,
according to the Doctor’s version, he was in no way responsible for the
fact that only half the folios were consumed.”
“Well, whatever it is,” declared the Professor, very decisively, “it
seems to be some rather clumsy ‘cock-and-bull’ story. In what I’ve
read. I, as a scholar, could pick many holes. Indeed, such a screed as
this could never have been concocted by any one with any pretence of
knowledge of old Testament history. There are certain statements which
are utterly absurd on the face of them.”
“Which are they?” inquired Frank eagerly.
“Oh--several,” was the rather light reply. “As you are not a scholar,
my dear boy, it would be useless me going into long and technical
explanations. The disjointed bits of prophecy are, I admit, really most
artistic,” he added with a laugh.
If the truth be told, Arminger Griffin was concealing the intense
excitement that had been aroused within him. He was making a
discovery--a wonderful, an amazing discovery. But to this young
journalist, who would merely regard it as a good “boom” for one of his
irresponsible halfpenny journals, he intended to pooh-pooh it as a mere
clumsy fairy tale.
“Well,” he asked, a moment later, in an incredulous tone. “What else
have you to show me?”
“No more typewriting,” was Frank’s reply. “The only other folio is one
of manuscript, and it will probably interest you, for it contains two
Hebrew words,” and he placed before the great expert a half-consumed
fragment of lined manuscript paper which bore some close writing in
English of which the present writer gives a facsimile here.
“H’m,” grunted the old man, after a swift glance at it. “A copy,
evidently. The Hebrew words are too clumsily written. No scholar wrote
them. Probably it’s a translation from German or Danish--I think you
said that the man who called himself Blanc, was really a Dane--eh?”
“Yes. He told Diamond that he came from Copenhagen,” Farquhar replied.
But the old man was too deeply engrossed in the study of the neat
manuscript. How he wished that the context had been preserved, for
here, he recognised, was the key, or rather the commencement of the key
to the whole secret. He was now anxious to get rid of Frank Farquhar,
and be allowed to pursue his investigations alone. There was certainly
much more in it than he had at first suspected.
With such a sensation as that contained in the half-burnt documents to
launch upon the world, he would be acclaimed the most prominent scholar
of the day. The whole of academic Europe would shower honours upon him.
“What does it mean about the ‘wāw’ sign?” inquired the young man. “Does
that convey anything?”
“Nothing,” laughed the Professor with affected indifference. “What can
one make out of such silly nonsense? It says, apparently, that in
Ezekiel the ‘wāw’ sign appears with great regularity. Well, so it does
in all Hebrew texts. The letter ‘a’ appears often in English doesn’t
it? Well, so does the Hebrew ‘w’ or ‘v’. Therefore it’s all bunkum--
that was my first impression--and I still retain it!”
Gwen looked genuinely disappointed. She had hoped that this wonderful
manuscript which had fallen into her lover’s hands would turn out, as he
had declared it would, to be of utmost value, both to history and also
of financial value to its possessors.
But her father, recognised as one of the first authorities of the day,
had decisively condemned it as a clumsy fraud.
“The reference given in the manuscript is, I see, Ezekiel xli. 23,”
remarked the girl, and turning over the pages of the Bible which she
still held in her hand she exclaimed:
“Here it is. Let me read it: ‘And the temple and the sanctuary had two
doors. And the doors had two leaves _apiece_, two burning leaves; two
_leaves_ for the one door, and two for the other _door_. And _there
were_ made on them, on the doors of the temple, cherubims and palm
trees, like as _were_ made upon the walls; and _there were_ thick planks
upon the face of the porch without. And _there were_ narrow windows and
palm trees on the one side and on the other side, on the sides of the
porch, and upon the side chambers of the house, and thick planks.’”
“Yes,” remarked the old man. “The first Hebrew word in the manuscript
means either ‘palace’ or ‘temple’. That occurs as the third word of the
quotation. But there is no mention of ‘cupbearer’. If I recollect
aright, there is a mention of the doors of the Temple in the First Book
of Kings. I believe it’s in the sixth chapter. Look, dear, and see if
you can find it.”
His daughter turned over the leaves quickly, found the chapter he had
indicated, and scanned over the verses.
“Ah!” she cried, a moment later. “Yes. You are right, dad. Here it
is, beginning at verse 31: ‘And for the entering of the oracle he
(Solomon) made doors _of_ olive tree: the lintel _and_ side posts _were_
a fifth part _of the wall_. The two doors also _were_ of olive tree:
and he carved upon them carvings of cherubims and palm trees and open
flowers, and overlaid _them_ with gold, and spread gold upon the
cherubims, and upon the palm trees. So also made he for the door of the
temple posts _of_ olive tree, a fourth part _of the wall_ And the two
doors _were of_ fir tree: the two leaves of the one door _were_ folding,
and the two leaves of the other door _were_ folding. And he carved
_thereon_ cherubims and palm trees and open flowers: and covered them
with gold fitted upon the carved work.’”
“I looked up the reference in Ezekiel,” remarked Frank, “but I could not
understand it. Perhaps, you, Professor, may be able to throw some light
upon it?”
The old man turned to the speaker, and held up his thin, almost waxen
hands.
“How can I?” he asked with an air of bewilderment well feigned. “How
can I possibly? The latter half of this fragment of scribble is a mere
copy of a verse out of the Old Testament, and seems to have nothing
whatever to do with the theory--whatever it may be--expounded in the
upper part of the page.”
“Then what is your candid opinion, dad?” asked Gwen, placing her hand
softly upon her father’s shoulder again as she stood behind him, and at
the same time turning her eyes affectionately upon the tall,
good-looking, young man at her side.
“My candid opinion, my dear,” grunted the old Professor, “is that it is
one of the many extraordinary theories we have had of hare-brained
persons who have gained a smattering of Hebrew, and believe themselves
to have discovered some very wonderful secret. To put it bluntly,
Gwen--the whole thing is bunkum!”
The young man said nothing. His spirits fell. Of course, he had
expected the Professor, in the habit of all scholars, to throw cold
water upon Doctor Diamond’s suggestion, but he was hardly prepared for
such a drastic dismissal of the subject.
“Well,” he exclaimed at last, “I don’t wish you to come to any premature
conclusion, Professor. You have really not had sufficient opportunity
yet of thoroughly investigating the affair, have you?”
“No. That’s quite true. I--well--I’d like to keep these scraps for a
day, or say a couple of days--if I might, my dear Frank. I’ll be most
careful of them, I promise you, and they shall not leave my possession.
As a matter of fact,” he added, “Ginsberg from Berlin happens to be in
London, and I’m extremely anxious to show them to him, and hear his
views.”
Frank Farquhar was a smart young man, and in a second realised danger in
this.
“I fear, Professor, that I cannot allow you to show them to Professor
Ginsberg. I made a promise to Diamond that they should be shown only to
yourself.”
“Very well, very well,” laughed the Professor, “if you care to trust
them with me till the day after to-morrow I will promise to show them to
nobody. I only wish to study the extraordinary statement myself, and
consult certain original Hebrew texts.”
At first Frank was reluctant, remembering his promise to Doctor Diamond.
But at Gwen’s persuasion he was induced to leave them to be locked up
in the old-fashioned oak bureau at the further end of the cosy room.
The three then passed into the small drawing-room on the same floor,
where Gwen, at her lover’s request, sat at the piano and sang in her
sweet contralto several pretty French _chansonettes_ which she had
learnt.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
PRESENTS ANOTHER CURIOUS PROBLEM.
In the solution of a problem such as that placed before Professor
Griffin, knowledge meant power.
Though he had successfully concealed his excitement he had, truth to
tell, learnt much from the perusal of those charred papers--much that
held him in utter amazement. A theory had presented itself of which no
one had ever before dreamed.
He had derided the manuscript as a clumsy story by some half-educated
person. But, within himself, he knew quite well that the problem had
been propounded and the suggestion made by some person equally well-read
as himself, some Hebrew scholar of highest attainment, if not of highest
standing. Alas, in these days of impudent self-advertisement, it is not
the cleverest man who is the most notable, or who looms largest in the
public eye. The same rule applies to Professors of Hebrew, as to men in
every other walk of life.
That night, after Frank had left and Gwen had kissed him good-night and
gone to her room, he sat for over an hour, smoking his long pipe in
silence at his study fireside. He had resolved that he would be the
first to reveal the startling secret to the world. Yes. He would write
an article in the _Contemporary_, and he knew full well that words,
coming from such a high authority as himself, would be quoted by almost
every newspaper in the whole civilised globe.
It was astounding--never before in the whole history of the world had
such a wonderful discovery been made. The Christian religion would be
shaken to its very foundations--not weakened, be it said, but actually
strengthened a thousandfold.
He laughed aloud as he sat with his pipe in his hand, his eyes cast down
upon the bright red hearthrug.
“What would the Bishops of the Anglican Church, the Cardinals of the
Romish Church, the Rabbis of the Jewish Synagogues and all the other
heads of our religion give for possession of this secret which is mine--
mine only!” he exclaimed, speaking to himself in a low whisper. “What
would men in the city, the financiers, speculators, and the
thousand-and-one varieties of money ‘sharks’ give me to reveal the truth
to them. The truth?” he repeated thoughtfully. “The truth? No. I
have not yet got at the actual truth. To discover it will be my work
to-morrow. And I will not pause for a single instant until all is
plain, and I have the secret open and revealed.”
Again he hesitated, smoking on in silence, his brow heavy and
thoughtful, for he had taken off his glasses and placed them in their
big, bulky case.
“Two men, this fellow Diamond, whoever he may be, and Frank Farquhar
stand between myself and the secret!” he muttered to himself with a
grin. Then he rose impatiently and snapped his fingers. “They shall
not stand in my way for long,” he laughed. “The secret is mine--it is
in _my_ possession!”
The Professor rose early next day, as was his habit.
As he sat at the breakfast table, Gwen who looked bright and fresh in
her neat white blouse and plain navy serge skirt, noticed that he was
unusually silent and morose. They were devoted to each other, but at
such times when her father, rendered irritable by his studies, betrayed
impatience she always remained silent.
“I’ve asked Frank over to luncheon, dad,” she ventured at last to
remark.
Whereupon the old man replied in a snappy voice: “I fear I shall not be
bade. I’m going along to the Museum, and may be there all day. I have
a number of researches to make. Apologise for my absence.”
Gwen promised to do this; but instead, an hour later, she sent her lover
a wire, suggesting that, as the Professor would be absent, they should
lunch together at Princes’, which idea the young man gladly adopted.
At eleven Professor Griffin, descending from a cab, entered a small
office in Oxford Street, the office of a firm of photographers whose
specialty is the reproducing of ancient documents for the official
publications of the British Museum, the Paleographical Society and
similar institutions. To the manager, he produced the carefully
preserved scraps of typewriting and manuscript, and ordered photographic
reproductions to be made with as great a speed as possible.
The manager examined the charred folios closely, and declared that the
work would be useless for reproduction in any journal or magazine.
“I don’t want them for that purpose,” was Griffin’s reply.
“We’ll do them as clearly as possible on whole plates, Professor,” was
the man’s reply, “but they will not come out very satisfactorily, I
fear.”
“As long as I can decipher them easily is all I care,” replied the older
man. “I shall call for the originals at four o’clock.”
“We will have finished with them by that time, sir. I will send them
down to the studio at Acton.”
“And take the utmost care of them please,” urged the Professor.
“We are used, as you know, sir, to handling the most valuable
manuscripts in the world. The Museum give us all their work, and we
often have, in our safes, manuscripts worth thousands of pounds each,”
replied the manager.
A sudden thought occurred to Griffin, and taking from the table the
scrap of writing upon the ruled paper, he held it up to the light to
examine its watermark. The design was at once apparent--the head of a
lady of the seventeenth century with hair dressed in the style of
Charles the First, low-cut bodice, puffed sleeves, and a necklet of
pearls, while above the words placed in a semi-circle was “Sevigne
Paper.”
“H’m,” grunted the old man, “evidently one of those imitation English
papers, made in France. Well, Macdonald, get as good results as you can
from the scraps, won’t you?”
The photographer’s manager, who knew Griffin well, and who had often
photographed Hebrew and Greek manuscripts for him, assured him that the
very greatest care should be taken in the work.
Thereupon, the Professor rose and left, urging that the originals should
be returned from Acton well before four o’clock.
In his thick and somewhat shabby overcoat and soft felt hat, he walked
through the drizzling rain to the British Museum, where, as he entered,
the attendants saluted him. In that national institution he was a
well-known figure, for during the greater part of his lifetime he had
studied there, especially in the Department of Manuscripts.
It was to that he at once made his way. The Keeper of the Department
was absent, but a man of Professor Griffin’s reputation has the “run of
the place;” therefore after wishing good-day to one of the
assistant-keepers he began searching the catalogue of manuscripts for
the Hebrew ones which he wished to consult, writing their numbers upon a
slip. This he handed to the assistant-keeper who, having glanced at the
numbers and recognised to which they referred, regarded him with a
glance of quick curiosity.
“One of the earliest originals of the Book of Ezekiel--eh, Professor?”
remarked the man. “And the other is the Muratori Manuscript.”
“Exactly,” was Griffin’s reply, and when the man had left the little
room in which he was standing, he drew from his pocket a small book in
which overnight he had made pencilled memoranda from the half-confused
fragments which Frank had placed before him. Then he waited in
undisguised anxiety.
Presently the assistant-keeper returned with two of the most important
Biblical manuscripts the Museum possessed, and placed them before the
man whose opinion upon Hebrew originals of Holy Writ was always
decisive.
The first manuscript, one of the earliest originals of the Book of
Ezekiel and one used by the revisers of the Bible a few years ago, was
upon yellow and discoloured parchment of great age, bound in old calf of
the early sixteenth century. The binding had practically perished, but
the writing within was still plain and quite decipherable to an expert.
Originally written upon a long roll, it had in later times been cut into
folios and bound, as being readier of access, and easier to consult. Of
its early history from the time of being written until A.D. 1421,
practically nothing was known. In the year in question it was brought
to Constantinople from Palestine, and in 1627 was given by the Patriarch
to Charles the First.
The Professor removed his hat and overcoat seated himself, and with
reverent fingers turned the time-dimmed pages from which a portion of
our Holy Bible had been translated.
To the person unacquainted with early Hebrew script the pages were
covered by meaningless hieroglyphics; but to him they were as clear as
any printed column in the _Times_ newspaper.
He searched through until he discovered a certain passage. Then,
eagerly consulting his notebook, he began translating it, word for word,
writing down the English equivalent upon the paper that had been placed
before him.
He did not hurry, but alone in the little room, he worked on, slowly and
deliberately. For fully two hours he continued but the result was,
judging from the expression upon his face, by no means gratifying.
The assistant-keeper came and went, for the Professor, being such a
great authority, was always allowed to work in the keeper’s private
room. Indeed only a man of Griffin’s rare attainments and knowledge
would have been able to translate from the original Hebrew of that
ancient character, so often indistinct and involved in meaning and in
sense.
At times, with a rapid hand, he made an exact reproduction of the
original, especially that of chapter xli, verse 23 to the end which, as
will be recollected, was given in the dead man’s manuscript as an
illustration.
Heedless of the fact that he had had no luncheon, he continued copying
the original very carefully and with a sure and expert touch until he
had made a complete copy of the original of chapters xl, xli, xlii,
xliv, and xlvii, a work which occupied him till nearly four o’clock.
He took no count of time, so wholly engrossed was he in his work. The
assistant-keeper entered prior to his departure at four o’clock when the
department closed, and began bustling about, hoping that the
“dry-as-dust” old fellow, being disturbed, might abandon his work for
that day.
But nothing interrupted him in making his rapid copying of those Hebrew
characters that had been written before the birth of Christ.
Presently, in sheer despair, the assistant-keeper remarked:
“That’s rather heavy work for you, Professor, isn’t it?”
“No. Not exactly,” was the old man’s quick reply without looking up, “I
am about to make a most interesting investigation; therefore, I dare not
employ any copyist. He might so easily make mistakes.”
“An investigation!” echoed the younger man. “Why, curiously enough for
the past three days we’ve had a man here copying that same book for some
mysterious purpose. He finished only yesterday afternoon. But he
refused to tell me the reason he was making the copy other than that he,
like yourself, was making some investigations. He used the same
expression as yourself, curiously enough.”
“Another searcher!” gasped the Professor, laying down his pen, and
staring at the speaker. “Another investigator of the original of the
Book of Ezekiel! Who was he? What was he like?” demanded the old man
quickly, his face blanched in an instant.
“I don’t know who he was, for we’ve never seen him here before. He was
an old gentleman, a foreigner evidently--and a scholar, for he wrote the
Hebrew characters almost as quickly and accurately as you yourself.”
Professor Arminger Griffin sat back in his chair, his mouth open,
staring into space.
Was it possible that some one else besides himself had obtained
knowledge of the great secret, and was actively engaged upon
investigations!
And the stranger who had copied that very manuscript which he was
copying, was an unknown foreigner and a scholar into the bargain!
Was it possible that the secret was already out?
CHAPTER NINE.
CONCERNS “THE OTHER MAN.”
“What was the stranger like?” asked the Professor eagerly, his thin hand
resting upon the ancient parchment he had been so carefully copying.
“A short, stout, elderly man with white pointed beard,” was the
assistant-keeper’s reply. “Four days ago he came here, carrying with
him a number of references which he turned up in various early Hebrew
manuscripts. But it was the one you have there before you which
attracted him most. He worked three days upon it, and made a complete
and most accurate copy.”
“He didn’t tell you whence he came, or for what purpose he was making
the researches?”
“No, for, as you well know, Professor, students seldom do. They are not
very communicative, unless they be young,” laughed the official. “But
he was a foreigner.”
“Undoubtedly. From the north of Europe, I should say--Norwegian or
perhaps Russian, not German, I think. But he spoke most excellent
English.”
“A scholar?”
“Without a doubt. He went about his work in that careful methodical
manner that at once betrayed the specialist. He concluded his work only
yesterday.”
“How was he dressed?”
“Fairly well. He wore a dark-grey suit and a black bow cravat.”
“His searches were confined to Ezekiel?”
“No, not exactly. He copied some references from our earliest
manuscript of Deuteronomy--you examined it a few months ago, I remember.
The thirty-second chapter seemed to attract him, as he copied it in its
entirety.”
“Ah, that’s the Song of Moses,” remarked the Professor. “‘Give ear O ye
heavens, and I will speak; and hear O earth, the words of my mouth.’ I
wonder what can be his object,” he added thoughtfully.
“He merely told me that he was making an investigation in order to put a
remarkable theory to the test.”
Griffin started. A remarkable theory was being put to the test by this
stranger! Was it possible that another scholar was in possession of the
dead man’s secret, besides himself!
He held his breath. Then, when a few moments later he had recovered
himself, he began to make many inquiries concerning the unknown
foreigner. But it was already past four o’clock, and the
assistant-keeper had his train to catch to his home at Epping.
Therefore he declared that he knew no more, and taking the precious
manuscript, replaced it with the others and hastily bade the Professor
“Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon,” was the old man’s reply. “I am sorry you are in such
a hurry. I’ll return to-morrow.”
Then he struggled into his overcoat, and left the Museum full of vague
misgivings.
Already dark outside, the street-lamps were lit, and the steady downpour
was unceasing. But he trudged across to the photographer’s, and there
obtained the scraps of half-destroyed manuscript, which only a few
moments before had been brought back from the studio at Acton.
“We shall have prints ready for you to-morrow evening,” said the
manager. “I’ll send them to you, shall I?”
“No, don’t do that,” Griffin said quickly. “I would rather call for
them. I’ll be in about this time to-morrow.”
Then placing the packet in his pocket, he walked along Oxford Street in
the direction of Tottenham Court Road.
His mind was full of the alarming discovery that another person was
investigating the same problem as himself. This meant that the secret
was known, and if known to another, what more likely than that the
stranger possessed a complete manuscript--a manuscript which gave the
context, not only of the curious statement, but of the directions of how
the truth could be verified.
Of the latter, he possessed only that one scrap of written manuscript.
There must have been other folios, but all were, alas! missing. They
had, no doubt, been consumed by the flames before the eyes of the dying
man.
He was beside himself with anxiety. It could not have been Diamond
himself who had been at the Museum, for the Doctor was not a Hebrew
scholar and, besides, he had been told by Frank that the man was badly
deformed. Therefore, his deformity would certainly have impressed
itself upon the assistant-keeper.
By the “Tube” from Tottenham Court Road Station he travelled to Notting
Hill Gate, and turning into Pembridge Gardens, let himself in with his
latch-key.
Frank was with Gwen in the drawing-room, and they were taking their tea
_tête-à-tête_ when the old man entered. After luncheon he had taken her
to a matinée, and the happy pair had only just returned.
“Tell me, Frank,” asked the Professor, almost before he had time to
greet him, “did that friend of yours, Diamond, show those papers to any
one else besides you, do you think?”
“Certainly not. Why?” inquired the young man in some surprise.
“Oh, nothing,” replied the Professor with slight hesitation. “I--well--
I only thought that it would be a little unfair to trouble me if
somebody else had already been making any researches.”
“Nobody has seen it save myself, I can assure you. Diamond is a most
careful and cautious man,” Frank declared. “He brought them straight
over from Paris, and came at once to me.”
“He might possibly have shown them to somebody in Paris,” the elder man
suggested.
“I asked him, and he distinctly told me that nobody save myself had set
eyes upon them.”
The Professor sank into an armchair, and in silence took the cup of tea
which Gwen handed to him.
“You’re tired, dad,” she said. “I see it in your face!”
“A little, dear. I’ve been at the Museum all day.”
“I wish you wouldn’t go to that horrid old place. It always gives you a
headache, you know,” said the girl anxiously.
“Ah, my child,” replied the old man with a sigh, “the place holds, for
me, much that is interesting in life--in fact all that is interesting,
except your own neat little self.”
The girl laughed merrily, declaring that compliments should not be paid
to her in the presence of Frank.
But the old man, sighing rather wearily, said:
“Well, Gwen, it’s the truth. I have nothing much to live for, except
yourself and my studies. When your dear mother died, the sun of my life
was extinguished. And now you have grown up to take her place.”
She and Frank exchanged quick meaning glances.
“I hope always to live near you, dear old dad, even after we’re
married,” she said. “I shall never desert you.”
Her father smiled, saying:
“That is what every girl says to her parents before marriage. Few,
however, fulfil their promise.”
“Well, dad, don’t let’s talk about parting till the time really comes,”
exclaimed his daughter, in an endeavour to change the topic of
conversation. Only a moment prior to the Professor’s return she and
Frank had been discussing the future, and considering that very point.
“Have you been making researches in the Museum in connection with the
burnt papers, Professor?” asked young Farquhar, who, standing in his
well-cut suit of blue serge, looked a splendid specimen of the lithe,
athletic young Englishman.
“Yes, I have.”
“And the result?”
The Professor shook his head in the negative.
“At present I have failed to discover the slightest title of
corroboration of your friend Doctor Diamond’s wonderful theory. The
construction which may be placed upon the scrappy statements are many,
but none upon which I can yet form any absolute conclusion.”
He made no mention that he had caused photographic negatives of the
burnt papers to be secured, or that, within his pocket, there reposed an
accurate copy of the accepted original of the Book of Ezekiel.
“You are still in opposition, then, to Diamond’s theory?” asked the
young man.
“Of course.”
“But why?”
The Professor drank his tea slowly, and replaced the cup upon the little
table.
“Well,” he answered with much deliberation, “because Biblical history is
entirely opposed to it. The first Book of Kings relates in detail the
building of the temple by Solomon in B.C. 1012, the dimensions of the
Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. Within and without the
building was conspicuous by the lavish use of gold from Ophir and
Parvaim. Above the sacred Ark, which was placed as of old in the Most
Holy Place, were made new cherubim, one pair of whose wings met above
the Ark and another pair reached to the walls behind them. In the Holy
Place, besides the Altar of Incense, which was made of cedar overlaid
with gold, there were seven golden candlesticks instead of one, and the
table of the shew-bread was replaced by ten golden tables bearing beside
the shew-bread the innumerable golden vessels for the service of the
sanctuary. Instead of the brazen laver we know that there was a ‘molten
sea’ of brass, a masterpiece of Hiram’s skill, for the ablutions of the
priests. It was called a ‘sea’ from its great size, being five cubits
in height ten in diameter and thirty in circumference, and containing,
it is estimated, about sixteen thousand gallons of water. It stood upon
twelve oxen, three towards each quarter of the heavens, and all looking
outwards. The brim itself, or lip, was wrought ‘like the brim of a cup,
with flowers of lilies,’ or curved outwards like a lily or lotus flower.
The front of the porch was supported, after the manner of some Egyptian
temples, by the two great brazen pillars Jachin and Boaz, eighteen
cubits high, with capitols of five cubits more, adorned, as we are told,
with lily-work and pomegranates.
“But,” he added, “all this is historical fact. In the temple reposed
the most valuable collection of gold and jewels ever gathered together,
and the dedication of the House of Jehovah, the God of Israel, was the
grandest ceremony ever performed under the Mosaic dispensation. And if
you read 1 Kings, viii, and 2 Chronicles, v, you will there learn how,
at the ceremony, Jehovah gave the sign of His coming to take possession
of His house. Then Solomon built his own house, placing within it the
wonderful ‘wealth of Ormuz and Ind,’ and to him came the Queen of Sheba,
an event which marked the culminating-point of his glory. The very king
who built the glorious temple, and to whom Jehovah had twice given
solemn warning in his old age, however, and under the influence of his
wives, turned his heart away from God. He served Ashtoreth, the
moon-goddess of the Zidonians, and Moloch, the ‘horrid king’ whom the
Ammonites worshipped with human sacrifice. Solomon died in B.C. 976,
and very shortly after his death the prophecy of Ahijah was fulfilled:
his kingdom was rent in twain, and the parts, weakened by the
disruption, formed the separate kingdoms of Judah and of Israel.”
“It will be interesting to trace the history of the temple from that
date down to the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar,” remarked Frank.
“That occurred about three hundred years after Solomon’s death--at least
according to our latest chronologers,” replied the Professor, “and it is
in tracing that history that we have many of the points before us
negatived most decisively. Let me instance one or two of them.”
“Yes, do, dad,” cried Gwen, greatly interested. “I’m quite excited,
over the mysterious affair.”
“Then listen, child,” the old man said. “But, first go and get a Bible
from the study.”
And the girl rose to do her father’s bidding.
CHAPTER TEN.
FACT OR FICTION.
“I may perhaps with advantage give you very roughly some historical
facts which tend to negative Diamond’s theory,” the Professor said,
turning to Farquhar while Gwen was absent.
“That is what I’m most desirous of hearing,” replied the young man. “I
can claim no special knowledge like yourself. Indeed, no man in England
is more capable of expressing an opinion than you are.”
The Professor passed his hand through his scanty grey hair and smiled.
He saw that his wide knowledge impressed this young man whose only
thought was a “sensation” in one or other of the Gavin group of
publications.
Then, when Gwen had re-entered the room with a Bible in her hand, he
said in that slow, deliberate habit of his, the habit of the scholar and
deep thinker:
“The theory of this Doctor Diamond is that the treasures of Solomon’s
temple were hidden by the priests prior to the taking of Jerusalem by
Nebuchadnezzar. Well, that is a bold but quite unsubstantiated
assertion. As early after Solomon as the reign of Jeroboam the First,
King of Judah, the golden calves, the symbols of the Heliopolitan deity,
were set up in the two extremities of the kingdom, and the temple was
put to sacrilegious usages. These sins were continued by his
successors, until in the reign of Asa, the third King of Judah, the
impure orgies of Ashtoreth were suppressed, for ‘having his heart
perfect with Jehovah all his days’ the king repaired Shishak’s plunder--
the first plunder of the temple, mark you--with ‘rich offerings of gold
and of silver.’ Asa made war against the Ethiopians, and on returning
to Jerusalem the prophet Azariah, son of Oded, met him and exhorted him
and his subjects to be strong heart in hand in seeking God. He gave an
affecting description of the former state of Israel: ‘For a long season
Israel hath been (or was) without the true God, and without a teaching’
priest, and without law. [2 Chronicles, xv, 3.] His words roused the
hearers to a new and more thorough reformation. The idols were removed
from all the cities of Judah and Benjamin, and those which had been won
from Ephraim. The altar of burnt-offering, which had been polluted by
Jeroboam, was renewed, and in the third month of the fifteenth year
(B.C. 940) Asa called a great convocation at Jerusalem. Jehoshaphat
followed his father’s piety, but the darkest night of Israel’s spiritual
declension came with the accession of Ahab, seventh King of Israel, and
husband of Jezebel. The service of Baal was established throughout
Israel, a grove was made for the orgies of Ashtoreth, and by Jezebel’s
orders the prophets of Jehovah were put to death, all except one hundred
who were hidden in a cave by Obadiah, the governor of Ahab’s house.”
“But was the temple already plundered?” asked Gwen, seated with her chin
resting upon her hand, listening intently.
“We know that it was plundered seriously by Shishak, King of Egypt, who
carried off many of its greatest treasures, including the celebrated
golden shields of Solomon’s house, which Rehoboam replaced by brass to
keep up the display,” was the Professor’s prompt reply. “Recent
discoveries at Karnak tell the whole story of the conquest from the
Egyptian point of view. The kingdom of Judah, it seems, became for a
long time tributary to Shishak, and upon the walls of the great temple
at Karnak there are the sculptured representation of the siege and the
hieroglyphics ‘Fuda Melchi’--meaning ‘The Kingdom of Judah.’ That was,
you will bear in mind, the first spoliation.”
“Were there others?” asked Frank. “I mean others that are authenticated
by recent discoveries?”
“Yes, Jehoram reigned in Jerusalem from B.C. 895-892, and after his
marriage with Athaliah, daughter of Ahab, the temple was again
despoiled, and the daughters of Judah were once more prostituted to the
rites of Ashtoreth,” replied Professor Griffin. “Joash, in B.C. 884,
repaired the fabric of the temple by public subscription, for he was the
inventor of the modern money-box--and there were enough funds left over,
we are told, to purchase vessels for the sanctuary. [2 Kings, xii, 4-6;
2 Chronicles, xxiv, 4-14.] This, however, did not last long, for in the
reign of Amaziah, ninth King of Judah, Jehoash, King of Israel, defeated
him in B.C. 826, took him prisoner and, entering Jerusalem again,
reached the temple and conveyed all its treasures to Samaria.
“In the reigns of Jeroboam the Second, Shallam, Menaham and Pekehiah,
other vessels and treasures were provided for the temple. Jonathan
built the high gate, but his successor, Ahaz, after plunging into all
the idolatries of the surrounding nations, making molten images for Baal
and sacrificing his children to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom, found
himself, according to our best chronologer, Ussher, involved in war. He
was therefore compelled to apply for help to Tiglath-pileser, the
‘Tiger-Lord of Asshur,’ King of Assyria, against Syria and Israel, and
declaring himself his vassal, sent him all the treasures then left in
the temple. Ahaz, we learn from 2 Kings, xvi, 10-18, profaned the
temple by dismounting the brazen altar and replacing it by another.
Likewise the ‘Great Sea of Solomon,’ too large to be removed at previous
despoliations, was dismounted from its supporting oxen, and the lavers
from their bases, which were also sent to the King of Assyria, together
with the coverings which had been built for the King’s entry to the
house, and for the shelter of the worshippers on the Sabbath. The
golden vessels of the House of God were cut in pieces and sent with the
rest, and the sanctuary itself was shut up. Hezekiah, who came after
him in B.C. 726, reopened and restored the Holy Place, though it was now
devoid of most of its treasures.
“To trace the history of the Temple through the days of Hoshea, son of
Elah, Manasseh and Amon is perhaps unnecessary. Under Josiah, whose
reign marks the last dying glory of the earthly kingdom of David,
idolatry was put away, the Temple was renovated and the Ark of the
Covenant which had been hidden restored to its place. [2 Chronicles,
xxxiv, 3-13; xxxv, 3.] During these repairs the high priest Hilkiah
found the sacred copy of the book of the law and delivered it to
Shaphan, the scribe, who read it before the king. It was afterwards
publicly read, and incited a new zeal among the people, and once again
was the sanctuary filled with gold and silver vessels. Therefore you
will see that by this period there could not have been any of the actual
treasures placed by Solomon remaining in the Temple.”
“The Ark of the Covenant was still there,” remarked young Farquhar.
“That is not at all certain,” was the old man’s reply. “Many of the
events chronicled in the Old Testament are corroborated by the
inscriptions found by Flinders Petrie in Egypt and by Layard at Nineveh.
Others are negatived, and our chronology rendered uncertain. Certain
it is, however,” he went on, “that in the fourth year of the reign of
Jehoiakim, eighteenth King of Judah (B.C. 608-597), Nebuchadnezzar
arose, and a few years later advanced to Jerusalem, which he took after
a brief siege. The vessels of the sanctuary were carried off to
Babylon, where they were dedicated in the temple of Belus. If you turn
to 2 Kings, xxiv, 13, you will there read: ‘And he carried out thence
all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the
king’s house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold which Solomon,
King of Israel had made in the temple of the Lord, as the Lord had
said.’”
“Surely it was Ezekiel who went as one of the prisoners of
Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon,” remarked Gwen.
“Yes,” replied her father, “on the second occasion when the Babylonian
king attacked the city. But,” he added, “in the reference I have just
given you, you will note that the vessels are described as ‘those that
Solomon had made.’ Either therefore they had been too massive for
removal on the many previous occasions when the temple was plundered or
they had been made to replace the ancient originals. The latter is my
own theory. Now, as I dare say you will recollect, in B.C. 586, on the
tenth day of the fifth month, Ab, Nebuchadnezzar again advanced against
the rebellious city of Jerusalem and destroyed it. The two great
pillars of the temple porch, Jachin and Boaz, and Solomon’s brazen sea
with the twelve bulls supporting it, were broken in pieces and their
brass transported to Babylon, together with a great number of captives.
And on the third day of the catastrophe, in the nineteenth year of
Nebuchadnezzar, the temple and the city were committed to the flames
with the palaces of the king and princes, and all the chief houses of
Jerusalem, and their walls levelled to the ground.”
“Then that was the actual end of Solomon’s temple,” remarked Frank
Farquhar. “Is that authentic?”
“Without a doubt,” said the Professor. “Yet did not Jeremiah comfort
the Jews amid all these judgments by contrasting His destruction of the
other nations of their present oppressors with His correction of
themselves? ‘Fear thou not, O Jacob, my servant, saith Jehovah, for I
am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I
have driven thee; _but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct
thee in measure_; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.’ Surely
no words could more fully express the principle of Jehovah’s dealings
with the Jews, His own people, in every age.”
“Belshazzar, at his feast in Babylon, put to sacrilegious uses the
vessels of the temple, did he not?” asked the young man.
“Yes,” answered Griffin, and addressing Gwen said: “Turn to the fifth
chapter of Daniel, dear, and read out the first four verses.”
The girl found the place and read as follows: “Belshazzar, the King,
made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the
thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the
golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out
of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the King and his princes, his
wives and his concubines, might drink therein. Then they brought the
golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God
which was at Jerusalem; and the King, and his princes, his wives, and
his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine and praised the gods of
gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.”
“And at that moment,” remarked the Professor, “was seen the prophetic
handwriting on the wall: ‘_Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin_,’ being followed
by the city’s surprise by Cyrus the Great, and its fall and destruction.
Then under Cyrus, the Israelites returned from their captivity, and by
his decree another temple was built by Zerubbabel, the prince of Judah,
who was leader of the migration. Cyrus caused his treasurer Mithredath
to deliver up the vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from
Jerusalem, five thousand four hundred in number, to Zerubbabel to be
re-consecrated to the service of Jehovah.”
“Is it to this second temple which our manuscript relates, do you
think?” queried Frank. “Or is it to Solomon’s temple?”
“Of the temple of Zerubbabel we have but few particulars,” answered the
Professor, “and no description that would enable us to realise its
appearance. But there are some dimensions given in the Bible and
elsewhere which are extremely interesting as affording points of
comparison between it and the temple of Solomon and Herod after it. The
first and most authentic are those given in the Book of Ezra [Ezra vi,
3-4] when quoting the decree of Cyrus, wherein it is said: ‘Let the
house be builded, the place where they offered sacrifices, and let the
foundations thereof be strongly laid; the height thereof three-score
cubits, and the breadth thereof three-score cubits, with three rows of
great stones and a row of new timber.’ Josephus quotes this passage
almost literally, but in doing so enables us with certainty to translate
the word here called ‘row’ as storey, as indeed the sense would lead us
to infer--for it could apply only to the three storeys of chambers that
surrounded Solomon’s, and afterwards Herod’s temple, and with this again
we come to the wooden talar which surmounted the temple and formed a
fourth storey. It may be remarked that this dimension of sixty cubits
in height accords perfectly with the words which Josephus puts into the
mouth of Herod when he makes him say that the temple built after the
Captivity wanted sixty cubits of the height of that of Solomon. For as
he had adopted the height of a hundred and twenty cubits in the
Chronicles for that temple, this one remained only sixty. This temple
was still standing in Herod’s time, and was repaired by him. Hecataeus
mentions that the altar was twenty cubits square and ten high. But he
unfortunately does not supply us with the dimensions of the temple
itself. Therefore if the priests and Levites and Elders of families
were disconsolate at seeing how much more sumptuous the old temple was
than the one which on account of their poverty they had just been able
to erect, [Ezra, iii, 12-13; Joseph Ast., xi, 4, 2] it certainly was not
because it was smaller, as almost every dimension had been increased
one-third; but it may have been that the carving and the gold and other
ornaments of Solomon’s temple far surpassed this, and the pillars of the
portico and the veils may all have been far more splendid, so also
probably were the vessels; and all this is what a Jew would mourn over,
far more than mere architectural splendour.”
“It is a pity we do not know more about this second temple,” remarked
Gwen, in a tone of disappointment and regret.
“For our present purpose its history, down to the taking of Jerusalem by
Titus, does not concern us, my dear,” remarked the old scholar, drawing
his hand rather wearily over his white brow. “The problem before us
evidently has to do with the days of Jehoiakim, prior to the advance of
Nebuchadnezzar. Later facts and traditions do not concern us at the
moment. I think, however, I have given you an outline of the varied
history of the temple and its treasures based upon the very latest
readings of Egyptian, Assyrian and other inscriptions, sufficient to
show you quite plainly that Solomon’s treasure could not possibly have
existed in the reign of Jehoiakim, and that the theory of this friend of
yours, Diamond, is utterly and entirely without the foundation of
tradition or of ancient legend.”
“Well,” remarked the young man, “such an opinion coming from your mouth
is, of course, final, Professor. Yet you must admit that the statement,
even as it stands, is full of interest.”
“Full of very cleverly conceived mystery--and mystery is always
attractive,” laughed the Professor, looking at him through his big,
round, highly magnifying spectacles.
In the statement he had made there was one discrepancy, one that only a
scholar would notice. He had purposely withheld one Biblical
reference--one which, above all, had caused him to reflect and believe
that the writer of the half-burnt screed was correct, that the secret
and its key were actually genuine.
But it was his fixed intention to turn Frank Farquhar from further
investigation, and to laugh at Doctor Diamond as a fool, ignorant of any
knowledge of the history of the Hebrew race.
A silence fell. Gwen Griffin and her lover were both staring straight
at the fire without uttering a word.
The old man sat watching the effect of his words upon the pair, and
before Frank left, he handed back to him the charred remnants which he
had received from the photographer.
But his thoughts were of that other man--the short, white-bearded
foreigner, his rival--who was so busy with his researches, the stranger
from across the Channel who also held the remarkable secret.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
THE GREAT GOD GOLD.
After dining at the club Frank Farquhar strolled round to Half Moon
Street, and throwing himself into an armchair before the fire, gave
himself up to reflection.
He was recalling what the Professor had said. It was true that all
stories of lost treasure were nowadays received with incredulity, and
surely this was the most amazing and most wonderful of them all.
Arminger Griffin, Regius Professor of Hebrew, treated the whole matter
as a huge joke. Historical fact was wholly against the suggestion
contained in these half-burned scraps which, before his departure from
Pembridge Gardens, the Professor had handed back to him. Ah! if they
could only reconstruct the context of those disjoined words.
He took a cigar and lit it. But a moment later he tossed it impatiently
into the fire. It tasted bitter. The Professor had dashed all his
hopes to the ground, for was not his opinion on such a matter final.
As he bade good-night to Gwen in the hall and held her soft hand in his
she had whispered to him words of encouragement. “Father is really
devoid of any romance,” she declared. “There may be something in the
secret after all. Could you not endeavour to find the person who made
that remarkable declaration?”
Her suggestion he was now carefully considering.
The stranger who had died in Paris was apparently not the person who
made the declaration. The latter was in all probability alive. If so,
could he not furnish many more facts than the scrappy information they
at present possessed?
Yet what right had Doctor Diamond to the secret--and for the matter of
that, what right had he himself?
That the hard-up stranger in Paris feared lest the documents should fall
into other hands was shown by his last act of causing them to be burned.
Such a course made it appear as though the stranger had no right to the
possession of the papers. In all probability he had not!
Gwen’s suggestion, however, appealed to him. Yet to find that one man
in the whole world who knew the truth would, he foresaw, be a work
fraught with greatest difficulty. The only manner by which he could be
approached, if found, would be upon pretence of restoring to him the
charred remains of his valuable statement.
The telephone-bell rang, and he rose and answered it. The editor of one
of the great daily journals controlled by his brother-in-law, Sir
George, spoke from the office in Fleet Street, at that hour of the
evening a hive of industry. A question of policy had arisen, and the
editor, one of the shining lights of modern journalism, consulted Frank
as representative of the proprietor, Sir George being still in Egypt.
Frank, after a brief conversation, left the matter entirely in the
editor’s hands, and replacing the receiver walked back from the big
roll-top writing-table to the fireplace, where he stood with both arms
leaning on the mantelshelf gazing thoughtfully into the blazing coals.
A few moments later his man entered saying:
“A gentleman to see you, sir--Doctor Diamond.”
Frank started. His visitor was the very man of all men he wished most
to consult, therefore he gave orders for him to be shown in at once.
“Why, my dear Doctor,” cried the young fellow, as the ugly little old
man entered, “this is a real surprise! I thought of running down to
Horsford to see you in the morning. Take off your coat and sit down. I
want to have a serious chat with you.”
“I got no reply to my two letters, Mr Farquhar,” said the crook-backed
little man in explanation of his visit. “So I thought I’d just run up
and see how you are progressing with our business.”
Frank helped him off with his shabby frieze coat and, having installed
him comfortably by the fire and given him a cigar, replied:
“Well, Doctor, the fact is I did not reply to your letters because I had
nothing definite to report. I trust you will not attribute my silence
to any want of courtesy. I have been busy over the matter ever since I
returned to London.”
“And with what result?” asked the crafty-eyed little man.
“Nothing very satisfactory, I regret to say,” was the young man’s
answer. “Yet I am not discouraged. Professor Griffin, before whom I
have placed it, gives as his opinion that there is probably, something
in the theory, but he will not quite commit himself to any absolute
declaration.”
“Is he really competent to judge?” Diamond queried.
“Competent! Why, my dear sir, he’s one of the first Hebrew scholars in
the world! He is daily engaged in making researches. History, as we
are acquainted with it, may negative the theory advanced in those scraps
of typewriting, yet Old Testament history is, as you know, very involved
and often very contradictory.”
“Well,” exclaimed the Doctor, “to tell the truth, Mr Farquhar, I’m
getting anxious. What I fear is that too many people will get knowledge
of it. Then, with the secret out, we shall have others trying to
investigate. And with such a gigantic business before us, is it any
wonder that I’m becoming impatient?”
“Many a good business is spoilt by being in too great a hurry,” Frank
declared. “Remain patient, and leave matters entirely to me,” he added
reflectively. “I’ve been wondering whether, if we made diligent and
secret inquiry, we might not discover the actual person, whoever he may
be, who made the curious declaration. It certainly was not your dead
friend.”
The Doctor hesitated. The idea at once commended itself to him.
“No,” he said. “Often when I have recalled all the romantic facts, I
have been inclined to suspect that the man who died, although a scholar,
had no right to possession of those papers. He intended to make money
with them if death had not come so unexpectedly. His very words proved
that.”
“Exactly my opinion,” declared Frank. “Now if we could but find out who
the mysterious discoverer really is, we might approach him under
pretence of handing back to him the remains of the papers.”
“Ah! You still have them safely, eh?” demanded the Doctor.
“Certainly. They are locked in from prying eyes in my desk yonder.”
“May I have them?”
“Of course,” was Frank’s unhesitating reply, though he had no desire to
part with them at that juncture. Yet he had, unfortunately, no excuse
for keeping them further. He could not say that the Professor held
them, as he had given his visitor a solemn promise not to allow the
documents out of his possession.
So he rose, unlocked a drawer with the key upon his chain, and handed to
the deformed man the packet containing the half-burnt statement.
“Well,” remarked Diamond, as he took the precious documents in his hand,
“if you think it a wise course, let us adopt it.”
“Yes, but where are we to commence our search?”
“The stranger said he was a Dane. He came from Copenhagen. Is it not
probable,” suggested the Doctor, “that the discoverer was some friend of
his residing in that city?”
“More than likely,” Farquhar agreed. “Yes. Let us try Copenhagen. We
must first find out who are the professors of Hebrew resident there. I
will write to our Copenhagen correspondent to-night and ask for a list.
Then, if necessary, I will run over there myself. In this matter we
must lay out a decisive line of inquiry and follow it up.”
“Quite so,” exclaimed the hunchback. “Copenhagen must be our
starting-point. The initial difficulty, however, as far as I discern,
is that we do not know our dead friend’s name. If we did and could
trace him, we might discover whether he knew anybody who was a Hebrew
scholar.”
“The Danish police would furnish us with names and descriptions of
persons lately missing from the capital.”
“So they would, that’s a brilliant idea,” exclaimed the Doctor. “My
opinion is that the reason why he refused his name to me, even at the
final moment, was because he was wanted by the police, and intended that
they should remain in ignorance of his end.”
“If so, it makes our inquiry far easier,” declared Frank. “And suppose
we find him?” he asked.
“If we find him,” answered Diamond, looking straight into the eyes of
the ambitious man opposite--“if we find him, we will compel him to
furnish to us the context of the statement.”
“Compel--eh?” repeated the other, a hard smile playing about the young
man’s lips. Diamond was a queer figure and strange persons had always
attracted him. Through the ugly little doctor he had gained this
remarkable knowledge of an uncanny secret withheld from the world for
over two thousand years. He was reflecting what a “boom” the discovery
would be for that great daily newspaper of which he was one of the Board
of Directors.
“Then you agree that we shall at once turn our attention to Copenhagen--
eh?” he asked.
“Certainly--the sooner the better.”
“We have no photograph of your friend--a most unfortunate fact.”
Diamond gave a detailed description of the dead man, and his friend,
crossing to his writing-table, wrote it carefully at his dictation.
“I’ve been in Copenhagen several times,” Frank remarked, “so I know that
city fairly well. I wonder whether the man we seek is a professor at
the University?”
“Our first object is to establish the dead man’s identity.”
“He may have lied, and perhaps was not a Dane after all! He may have
been a Norwegian, or even a Swede.”
Diamond raised his deformed shoulders and answered:
“True, as he was so bent upon concealing his identity he may well have
lied to me regarding his nationality. Yet we must risk that, don’t you
think?”
“But you told me that you were convinced that he was a Scandinavian.”
“Yes. But he might have come from Stockholm, or Gothenburg or
Christiania.”
“Our first inquiries must be of the Danish police,” Frank said
decisively. “I’ll write to-night to our correspondent in Copenhagen.”
“Would it not be best for you to go there and make inquiries yourself?”
“I may do that. Most probably I shall.”
“Stories of treasure are always attractive,” remarked the Doctor,
casting a crafty glance at his young friend. “I hope, Mr Farquhar, you
will make no mention in any of your papers regarding it.”
“My dear Doctor, don’t worry yourself about that,” Frank laughed. “Of
treasure stories we’ve of late had a perfect glut. For a long time, for
instance, I’ve taken a deep interest in the wrecks of vessels known to
have contained treasure, the exact location of which are known. As an
example, we have the ship _Grosvenor_ now lying off the Pondoland Coast
with over a million and a half pounds of treasure in her rotting hold.
Then there’s the _Ariston_, in Marcus Bay, with 800,000 pounds worth;
the _Birkenhead_, on Birkenhead Reef, with a similar amount; the
_Atlas_, near Yarmouth, with 700,000 pounds, the _Dorothea_, on Tenedos
Reef, with 460,000 pounds; the _Abercrombie_, lying under the Black
Rock, with 180,000 pounds; and the _Merenstein_, on the coast of Yutton
Island, with 120,000 pounds. In addition to these there are H.M.S.
_Chandos_ with 60,000 pounds in coin in her hold, the troopship
_Addison_ with 20,000 pounds in gold, and the _Harlem II_, lying half
covered by sand with her hold full of silver bars. All these and many
others are lying in positions perfectly well known, and only await
salvage. Why, in one gale off the West African coast in 1802 seven
ships were wrecked, all of them containing a vast treasure. Besides,
the contents of the vessels I have mentioned have all been verified from
their bills of lading still in existence. No, my dear Doctor,” the
young man added with a laugh, “had the story been an ordinary one of
treasure it would not have interested me in the least, I assure you; and
as for publishing any details, why, my dear sir, is it not to my own
personal interest to keep the matter as secret as possible? Please do
not have any apprehension on that score.”
“I have not,” declared the hunchback; “my great fear, however, is that
this professor friend of yours may chatter.”
“He will not. I have impressed upon Griffin the value of silence,” said
Frank. “Besides, he is a ‘dry-as-dust,’ silent man, who says nothing,
so absorbed is he in his studies in his own particular sphere.”
“Good. Then we will now transfer our attention to Copenhagen.”
“I shall write to-night. Remain patient and wait the reply of the
Danish police. I’m open to bet anything that your friend was compelled
to make himself scarce from Denmark, and carried with him confidential
documents which were not his property and with which he had no right to
deal.”
“Then if that really turns out so, it also proves another thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Why, if the documents were to be of any commercial value, they must
have contained the actual key to the secret.”
“No doubt. The key was written clearly in those manuscript folios, all
of which were burned save one,” was Frank’s reply. “It is the context
of that document which we must obtain at all costs and at all hazards.
And if the dead man has not lied I’m firmly of opinion that it will be
found within the city of Copenhagen.”
CHAPTER TWELVE.
DESCRIBES AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY.
Professor Griffin, for a scholar was a man of unusually rapid action.
He was convinced that another person was following the same course of
inquiry as himself. Therefore he determined to act quickly and
decisively.
Next day he returned to the British Museum, and after three hours’ work
completed the copy of the manuscript. Then he turned his attention to
two fragments of the Hebrew manuscript of the Book of Ezekiel, one of
the fourth century in the Oriental Room, and the other of the fifth
century in the Harleian collection.
While studying these, he recollected that some fragment of early
manuscript of Ezekiel had been recently found in the Genisa in Old Cairo
by Mr Alder and his companions, and that several of them were in the
Bodleian Library at Oxford. Therefore, he searched the catalogue, noted
the numbers, and that evening took the train to the university centre,
staying the night at the Randolph Hotel.
Next morning he was in consultation with his friend, Professor Cowley,
and Number 2611 of the Hebrew manuscript was brought. It proved to be
the text of Ezekiel from chapter xiv, 22 to chapter xlvii, 6.
“Ah!” exclaimed Griffin, the instant he glanced at it. “It is too
modern, I fear, for it contains the vowel-points.”
“Yes,” answered his friend. “I fear it will be of no value to you, if
you seek a very early manuscript.”
Griffin had made no explanation of the reason of his inquiry.
“The oldest manuscript of Ezekiel is, as you know, in the Imperial
Library in St. Petersburg,” Professor Cowley remarked. “I have here
some photographic reproductions,” and from a portfolio he produced some
facsimiles which had been published by the Paleographical Society some
years ago. They were splendid reproductions, and to Griffin of most
intense interest.
He sat and for a long time examined them most carefully. He made no
remark to his friend, but from the expression upon his face after making
a pencilled calculation upon the blotting-pad before him, it was evident
that his search had not been unrewarded.
The only other actual manuscript in the Bodleian proved to be a
parchment fragment of chaps, x, 9 to xiv, 11. But this containing
vowel-points and accents on both Mashrahs, was, at a glance, dismissed
as comparatively modern, its age being about A.D. 220.
The facsimile of the St. Petersburg manuscript was to him most
interesting and from it Griffin made copious notes. Then, that same
afternoon, he left for Cambridge, where next day he inspected several
early manuscripts in the University Library, and at evening was back
again in Pembridge Gardens, where he dined alone with Gwen.
The girl was anxious to ascertain what her father had discovered, but he
was most reticent, knowing well that all would be told to Frank Farquhar
on the following day.
Suddenly she said:
“Frank has gone abroad, dad.”
“Abroad? Where to?”
“To Copenhagen. He left Victoria at eleven this morning and travels by
Flushing, Kiel and Korsor. I saw him off.”
“Copenhagen!” repeated the Professor thoughtfully, and in an instant he
recollected that the dead stranger was a Dane, from Copenhagen. What
clue was young Farquhar following?
That night he sat alone in his study reading and re-reading the copy of
the first manuscript he had consulted in the British Museum, and
comparing it most carefully with the extracts he had made from the
facsimile of the St. Petersburg codex.
Then he took from a shelf a copy of the Old Testament in Hebrew and
English, and compared the Hebrew with the early texts.
“After all,” he remarked aloud to himself, “there is little or no
difference in our modern Hebrew text, except that in the older
manuscripts the name of the Deity is written larger, in order to render
it prominent. Ah! if I could only reconstruct the context!”
From his table he took up a large envelope, and breaking it open, drew
forth the whole-plate photographic reproductions of the precious
fragments of the dead stranger’s manuscript. These he placed before him
beneath his reading-lamp, and studied them long and carefully,
especially the scrap of handwriting.
Turning again to the extract he had made from the codex in St.
Petersburg he re-examined it. The portion was Ezekiel, ii, 9-10 in
Hebrew, the English of which was as follows: “And when I looked, behold
an hand _was_ sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book _was_ therein.
And he spread it before me; and it _was_ written within and without: and
_there_ was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.”
These two verses had attracted him at Oxford, and they again riveted his
attention. It almost seemed as though he read in them some riddle
meaning something tangible, for he was making upon a slip of paper
frequent and rapid arithmetical calculations.
At half-past ten Gwen came, and kissing him good-night, urged him to go
to bed, but nevertheless he continued his work far into the night, until
the fire had burned itself out and he rose cold and tired.
He sighed, for though he had alighted upon something mysterious and
hitherto undiscerned in that early text, yet its meaning was altogether
uncertain.
Its discovery only served to increase the mystery a hundredfold.
As he lay in bed, two facts caused him apprehension. The first was the
existence of the mysterious foreigner who was following the same line of
inquiry as himself, and the second was the true reason of Frank
Farquhar’s visit to Copenhagen.
That the mysterious foreigner was making active investigations had again
been proved by Professor Cowley at Oxford, for he had remarked that only
on the previous day those selfsame fragments of Ezekiel had been
carefully inspected by a white-bearded man whose description answered in
every detail to the man who had searched in the Oriental Room of the
British Museum.
“He seemed extremely interested in the text of Ezekiel,” professor
Cowley had remarked. “He was a scholar, too, from the north of Europe I
should say.”
The mysterious searcher seemed a kind of will-o’-the-wisp, who had taken
exactly the same course as himself, only he had progressed a day or so
ahead. Was it possible that he held the selfsame knowledge as that
contained on the half-destroyed statement?
Next day Griffin again visited the British Museum, in order to make
further researches, and on entering, his friend the assistant-keeper
exclaimed:
“Oh! Professor! That foreign old gentleman, who is interested in
Ezekiel, was here again yesterday afternoon.”
“Here again!” echoed Griffin. “Have you found out who he is?”
“No--except that he is evidently a scholar.”
“What manuscripts did he consult?”
“Only one--the early fragment of Deuteronomy,” was the
assistant-keeper’s reply.
“May I see it?”
“Certainly,” and the official gave orders for the precious piece of
faded parchment to be brought.
It proved to be a Hebrew manuscript of a portion of the fifth chapter of
Deuteronomy beginning at the twenty-third verse, and ending at the
thirty-first Griffin who read Hebrew as he did English, glanced through
it, and saw that in English, the first verse could be translated as,
“And it came to pass, when ye heard the voice out of the midst of the
darkness, (for the mountain did burn with fire), that ye came near unto
me, _even_ all the heads of your tribes, and your elders; And ye said,
‘Behold the Lord our God hath shewed us His glory and His greatness, and
we have heard His voice out of the midst of the fire: we have seen this
day that God doth talk with man, and He liveth.’”
As he read rapidly the Hebrew words his face brightened. Something was
revealed to him. The stranger was evidently following an exactly
similar line to himself, and had, by copying that Biblical fragment,
advanced a stage nearer the truth!
“This fragment is published in facsimile, if I remember aright?” he
asked the assistant-keeper of manuscripts.
“Yes, by the Paleographical Society. I have a copy if you wish the loan
of it.”
And the Professor gladly accepted the loan of the large thin volume of
reproductions of the rarest treasures among the Biblical manuscripts.
The researches of the foreigner showed him to be in possession of some
additional facts. What were they? Ah! if he could only meet the man
whose footsteps he was following, if he could only watch unseen, and
note what authorities he was consulting.
For a week he haunted the Museum at all hours, hoping to meet the old
man who held possession of the dead man’s secret.
He wrote to Professor Cowley at Oxford, and received a reply stating
that the foreigner had been again to the Bodleian on the previous day
inspecting the two fragments of early texts of Deuteronomy preserved
there.
Griffin lost no time in again going down to Oxford, and next morning
early called at the library. He remained there all day, but to his
disappointment the mysterious old man did not reappear. He had no doubt
left Oxford before the Professor’s arrival.
From those two fragments of Deuteronomy which had so interested the
stranger, Griffin could make out nothing. They did not contain anything
bearing upon the theory that he had been following. Yet he was told
that the stranger had spent five hours in studying them and making
certain arithmetical calculations.
He was sitting in the same silent, restful, book-lined room in which the
stranger had sat. He was in the same chair, indeed, and before him was
the same writing-pad upon which he had written.
The precious fragment was lying upon the pad of red blotting-paper. At
his side stood the official who had handed the stranger the piece of
crinkled parchment which he had sought.
“Yes,” he was saying, “he made a number of calculations, covering many
sheets of paper, and when he left, he said that his work was unfinished,
and that he intended to return. But we have not seen him since.”
As Professor Griffin was gazing long and steadily upon that early
fragment of Hebrew text, the official, who of course, knew the Professor
well, added: “Curiously enough, after he had gone, I found lying on the
table a piece of paper on which he had been making his calculations.
Here it is,” and he placed before the Professor a piece of crumpled
paper bearing upon it what appeared to be a sum of multiplication and
addition.
Griffin examined it eagerly, and, used as he was to the arithmetical
values of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet--for each letter was a
numerical value--he saw instantly that the stranger’s secret had fallen
into his hands! He held his breath as the assistant-librarian placed a
second scrap of paper before him.
By those two discarded scraps astounding truths had been suddenly
revealed to him!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
SHOWS A FACE IN THE NIGHT.
To the ordinary observer the sum upon the scrap of paper would have
conveyed nothing.
Professor Griffin studied it carefully, however, and mentally submitted
it to certain tests.
What was written upon the paper was as follows:
The Professor begged leave to take it with him to London, whereupon the
assistant-librarian replied: “It seems very much as though our friend
the stranger is applying some numerical cipher to that fragment of
Deuteronomy, does it not? Of course, Professor, you may have it--and
welcome. I confess I cannot make head or tail of it.”
“Nor I either,” laughed Griffin, blinking through his spectacles. “Yet
it interests me, and I thank you very much for it. Apparently this
foreigner believes that he has made some discovery. Ah!” he added, “how
many cranks there are among Hebrew scholars--more especially the
cabalists!”
And in pretence of ignorance of the true meaning of that curious
arrangement of figures, the Professor placed the scrap of paper in his
breast-pocket, and returned to the Randolph Hotel, where he had tea,
afterwards sitting for a long time in the writing-room with the
stranger’s discarded calculation spread before him.
In the left-hand corner of the piece of paper was something which
puzzled him extremely. In a neat hand were written the figures,
255.19.7. And while awaiting his train, he lit his big briar pipe, and
seating himself before the fire, tried to think out what they could
mean.
But though he pondered for over an hour he failed to discern their
object. They were evidently the stranger’s signature.
He applied the Hebrew equivalents to them, and they were as follows:
“Bêth. He. He, A-leph-Teth. Za-yin.” But they conveyed to him
absolutely nothing.
Seated alone in the corner of the first-class carriage, he again took
out the scrap of paper, and held it before him. That there was a cipher
deciphered into the words “of the Temple that,” was apparent.
He started with the ordinary numerical values of the Hebrew alphabet.
They were 7.3.4.1.0.9. which meant: Za-yin, Gi-mel, Da-leth, A-leph, the
zero, and Teth. These were multiplied by He, which meant 5. Then
719220, meaning certain other letters, were added and multiplied by
yodh, or ten. From each number of the total 3, or Gi-mel, was
subtracted, and the English translation of the figures that remained
was: “of the Temple that--”
To such a man, versed in all the cabalistic ciphers of the ancients, the
truth was plain. Extremely involved and ingenious it was, without a
doubt, but by careful study of this he would, he saw, be able to find
the key being used by the aged man who had in such an uncanny way signed
himself “255.19.7.”
He replaced it carefully in his pocket, and lighting his pipe, set back
in the carriage to reflect.
Ah! if he could only come across that will-o’-the-wisp who was engaged
in the search after the truth. Probably he possessed the context of the
burnt document, and could supply the missing portion. But if so, how
had it fallen into his hands?
The affair was a problem which daily became more interesting and more
extraordinary.
At Westbourne Park Station, when the collector came for his ticket, he
fumbled for it in his pocket, but was unable for some time to find it.
Then at Paddington he took a taxi-cab home, arriving in time for a late
dinner.
Gwen bright and cheerful, sat at the head of the table as was her habit,
inquisitive as to her father’s movements and discoveries.
But to her carefully guarded inquiries he remained mute. He had been
down to the Bodleian, he said, but that was all. The old man longed to
get back to the restful silence of his own study to examine the scrap of
paper left by the stranger, and from it to determine the exact key to
that very ingenious numerical cipher.
The man who was in search of the same secret as himself was a weird
person, to say the least. Both in London and in Oxford, he had come
across the aged man’s trail. That he was unknown in England as a
scholar was apparent, and that he was a deeply read man and student of
Hebrew was equally plain.
He was not a Jew. Both the Library assistants at the British Museum and
at the Bodleian had agreed upon that point.
They had declared that he was from the north of Europe. Was he a Dane
from Copenhagen, like the dead man who had preferred to be known as
Jules Blanc?
Arminger Griffin ate his dinner in impatience carefully avoiding the
questions his pretty daughter put to him. Then he ascended to the
study, having bidden her good-night. She had received no news of Frank,
it seemed. For what reason had the young man so suddenly left for
Copenhagen? The question caused him constant apprehension. Could he
have discovered any clue to the existence of the context of the
document?
More than once during the day he had been half tempted to go himself to
Denmark, but the discovery of the aged stranger’s arithmetical
calculations induced him to remain in London and watch.
Having switched on the light he crossed the room, and seating himself at
the table felt in his pocket for the scribbled calculation. He failed
to find it. He was horrified. It had gone!
He must have pulled it from his pocket at Westbourne Park while
searching for his ticket. His loss was, indeed, a serious one. In
frantic haste he searched all his other pockets, but in vain. The
scraps of crumpled paper which contained the key to a portion of the
cipher upon which the stranger was working was gone!
He sank into his armchair in despair.
Before his vision rose those mystical figures 255.19.7. written in fire.
What was the hidden meaning therein contained?
One line of the sum he recollected: “7.3.4.1.0.9.” multiplied by 5.
Mental calculation resulted in the answer of 3670646. There was a sum
to add to it. But alas! he could not remember the figures of it.
Therefore the clue, so unexpectedly obtained, was lost.
So he sat alone, his head buried in his hands in deepest despair.
Gwen crept in in silence, but seeing her father’s attitude, crept out
again without disturbing him, and read in the drawing-room alone, until
it was time to return to her room.
“Shall I ever solve the mystery?” cried the Professor aloud to himself
as he paced the room presently. “Misfortune has befallen me! With that
fragment deciphered I could by careful study have learned the key and
then read what that mysterious searcher has undoubtedly read. Ah! if I
could only meet him. Then I would follow and watch his movements. But
alas! I am always too late--too late!”
As he sank again into a chair, plunged in the wildest despair, the dark
figure of a tall, thick-set, military-looking man of about forty, in a
long dark overcoat, passed and repassed the house in the rainy night.
For some time, he had been waiting at Notting Hill Gate Station, almost
opposite the end of Pembridge Gardens, glancing at the clock now and
then, as though impatiently watching for someone. Then, at last, as if
full of determination he had crossed the Bayswater Road, and strolled
slowly past Professor Griffin’s house, eyeing its lighted windows with
considerable curiosity as he went by.
He continued his walk as far as the end of the road which led into
Pembridge Square, and there halted for shelter for a full five minutes
beneath the portico of a house. Then he retraced his steps, re-passing
the house which had aroused so much interest within him, until he came
to the station where he again stood in patience.
The watcher was an active, rather good-looking man, though the reason of
his presence there was not at all apparent. To pass the time he bought
an evening paper, and stood in the corner reading it, yet in such a
position that he could watch everybody who entered or left the
Underground Railway Station. There was a slight foreign cast in his
features. His keen dark eyes were searching everywhere, while the
clothes he wore were the clothes of a man of refined taste.
From time to time there played about his dark face a sinister smile--a
smile of triumph. He was evidently not a man to be trifled with, and it
seemed very much as though he held the owner of that comfortable house
in resentment.
The words he muttered as he stood there pretending to read were, in
themselves, sufficient indication of this:
“They thought to trick him--to trick me--but by Jove, they’ll find
themselves mistaken!” and his claw-like hand gripped the newspaper until
it trembled in his grasp.
He lit a cigarette, and twice crossed the road. Standing at the corner
of Pembridge Gardens, he again looked up the street, dark, misty, and
deserted on that winter’s night.
“They laugh at us without a doubt,” he muttered to himself. “They
laugh, because they think he’s fool enough to give away the secret.
Yes, they take him for a blind idiot. Frank Farquhar has gone upon a
fool’s errand to Denmark, intending to ‘freeze us out’ of what is justly
ours. When he returns, he will find that I have checkmated both him and
his friend Griffin, in a manner in which he little expects.”
His countenance was full of craft and cunning; his smile was sufficient
index to his character.
Soon after ten o’clock, while standing at the corner of Pembridge
Gardens, he suddenly drew back into the shadow, turned upon his heel and
crossed the road to the station, in order to avoid notice.
Having gained the opposite pavement, he drew back again into the shadow,
and saw a female figure in a short dark skirt, and wearing a handsome
white fox boa, hurrying across the road in his direction.
She passed him, and he for the first time caught sight of her pretty
face. It was Gwen Griffin.
Apparently she was in a frantic hurry, for she rushed into the
booking-office and in her haste to get a ticket, dropped her purse.
Then, when she had run down the stairs to the platform, the silent
watcher followed leisurely, obtained a ticket for Earl’s Court, but was
careful not to gain the platform until the girl had already left.
“I thought the story would alarm her,” he laughed to himself as he stood
awaiting the next “Circle” train. “Ah, my fine young fellow, you’ve
made a great and a most fatal error!” he added with a dry laugh, as he
paced the platform.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
IN WHICH OWEN BECOMES ANXIOUS.
When just on the point of retiring, the maid had brought Gwen up a
telegram from Frank, stating that something serious had occurred, that
he had returned to London unexpectedly, and that he was unable to come
to the house as he preferred not to meet her father, and urging her to
meet him at Earl’s Court Station at a quarter past ten that night.
In greatest alarm, and wondering what could possibly have occurred, the
girl had slipped on the first things that had come to her hand and had
dashed out to meet her lover.
Before going forth she had taken the maid into her confidence, saying:
“I have to go out, Laura. You need not mention anything to my father.
Leave the front door unbolted. I will take the latch-key.”
The dark-eyed girl, with whom Miss Gwen was a great favourite, promised
to say nothing, and had let her young mistress quietly out.
Gwen was puzzled why Frank should appoint to meet her at Earl’s Court.
If the interview was to be a secret one, why had he not committed a
breach of the _convenances_ and asked her to his rooms? She had been
there to tea once--in strictest secrecy, of course--but in company with
a girl friend.
What untoward circumstances could have arisen to bring Frank back before
he reached Copenhagen? He could not have got further than Hamburg, she
reflected--if as far.
At Earl’s Court she alighted, and having ascended the stairs in eager
expectation, passed through the booking-office into the Earl’s Court
Road, expecting her lover to meet her.
But she was disappointed. He was not there. She glanced at the railway
dock, and saw that it was already twenty-five minutes past ten. The
receipt of the strange message had upset her. She felt that something
terrible must have occurred if Frank “preferred” not to face her father.
What could it be? She was half frantic with fear and apprehension.
From out the misty night the tall man standing in the shadow on the
opposite side of the road was watching her every movement. At the kerb
stood a taxi-cab which he had hailed, and now kept waiting. He had
remarked to the driver that he expected a lady and would wait until she
arrived.
For fully a quarter of an hour he allowed the girl to pace up and down
the pavement outside the station, waiting with an impatience that was
apparent. That message which she believed to be from Frank had filled
her mind with all sorts of grave apprehensions. He would surely never
appoint that spot as a meeting place if secrecy were not imperative.
She noticed that there were quiet deserted thoroughfares in the
vicinity. There he no doubt intended to walk and explain the situation.
Yet why did he not come, she asked herself. Already he was half an hour
late, while she, agitated and anxious, could scarcely contain herself.
Suddenly, however, a tall good-looking man in a dark overcoat stood
before her and raised his silk hat. She was about to step aside and
pass on when the man begged her pardon, and uttered her name, adding:
“I believe you are expecting my friend, Frank Farquhar?”
“Yes,” she replied. “I--I am.” And she regarded the stranger
inquiringly.
“He has sent me, Miss Griffin, as he is unfortunately unable to keep the
appointment himself?”
“Sent you--why?” asked the girl, looking him straight in the face.
“He has sent me to tell you that something unexpected has happened,”
replied the man.
“What has occurred?” she gasped. “Tell me quickly.”
“Well,” he said with some deliberation. “I do not know whether you are
aware that Mr Farquhar was interested in a great and remarkable
secret--a secret which he was occupied in investigating?”
“Yes,” she answered quickly. “I know all about it. He told me
everything.”
“The _contretemps_ which has occurred is in connection with that,” the
stranger said. “He was on his way to Copenhagen, but was compelled to
return. He has, I believe, gained the key to some extraordinary cipher
or other, and therefore he wishes to see you at once, and in secret. He
told me that at present his return to London must be kept confidential,
as there are other unscrupulous people most anxious to learn the truth
upon which such enormous possibilities depend.”
“He wants me to go to him,” the girl cried. “Where is he then?”
“Not far away,” the man replied. “If you will allow me to escort you, I
will do so willingly, Miss Griffin.”
The girl hesitated. She naturally mistrusted strange men. He saw her
hesitation, and added:
“I trust you will forgive me for not being with you at the time Frank
appointed, but--well, I don’t wish to alarm you unduly, but he was not
very well. I was sitting with him.”
“Then he’s ill!” she cried in alarm. “Tell me. Oh! do tell me what has
occurred.”
“He will tell you himself,” was the ingenious reply. “But,” he added,
as though in afterthought, “I ought to have given you my card.” And he
produced one and handed it to her. The name upon it was “William
Wetherton, Captain, 12th Lancers.”
“Do relieve my anxiety, Captain Wetherton,” the girl implored. “Tell me
what has happened.”
“As I have already said, Farquhar has made a great discovery, and wishes
at once to consult you. His indisposition was only temporary--an attack
of giddiness,” he added, and he saw that she was wavering. “I’m an old
friend of Frank’s,” he went on, “and he consulted me, as soon as the
matter of the Hebrew secret came into his hands. Of course, he has very
often mentioned you,” he laughed.
He was a well-spoken man, and beneath his smile the girl did not detect
his cunning. Her natural caution was overcome by her frantic desire to
see Frank, and hear what he had discovered. An instant’s reflection
showed her that if he could not meet her it was only natural that he
should send his friend Captain Wetherton--a man of whom he had spoken on
several occasions. He was stationed at Hounslow, Frank had told her,
and they often spent the evening together at the club and some “show”
afterwards.
“There’s a ‘taxi’ across the way,” the Captain pointed out. “Let us
take it--that is if I may be permitted to be your escort, Miss Griffin?”
“Is it far?”
“Oh, dear no,” he laughed, and raising his hand he called the cab he had
already in waiting. The vehicle drew across, and as he entered after
her he spoke to the man. He had already given him the address before he
had approached her. As he sat by her side, the man’s face changed. In
the semi-darkness she could not get a good look at his features, yet his
chatter was gentlemanly and good-humoured. From his remarks it was
apparent that he had known her lover for a long time, and held him in
high esteem.
“As soon as Frank’s telegram arrived, I rushed out,” said the young
girl. “It was a great surprise, for I believed him to be on his way to
Copenhagen.”
“They’ll probably miss you at home, won’t they?” he asked, with a glance
of admiration at the girl’s sweet face.
“Well,” she laughed, “my father doesn’t know I’m out. Laura, the maid,
will leave the door unbolted and I’ve got the latch-key.”
The man seated at her side smiled, turning away his head lest she might
wonder.
Acquainted as Gwen was with the streets of the West End, she saw that
the course taken by the “taxi” was through Brompton Road and
Knightsbridge to Hyde Park Corner, then straight up South Audley Street
and across one of the squares, Grosvenor Square she believed it to be.
“Why isn’t Frank at his own rooms in Half Moon Street?” she asked with
some curiosity.
“Because, having discovered the secret, he is now in fear of his rivals,
so is compelled to go into hiding. I, alone, his best friend, know his
whereabouts. Quite romantic, isn’t it?” he laughed.
“Quite. Only--well, only--Captain Wetherton, I do wish you would tell
me what has really occurred. I feel that you are keeping something from
me.”
“I certainly am, Miss Griffin,” was his prompt reply, a reply which
contained more meaning than he had intended. “Frank, in sending me to
you, made the stipulation that he should have the pleasure of telling
you himself. All I can say is that I believe the knowledge of the
secret will be the means of bringing to him wealth undreamed of, and a
notoriety world-wide.”
He was purposely keeping her engrossed in conversation, in order that
they might cross Oxford Street; hoping that in the maze of turnings
beyond that main thoroughfare she might lose her bearings.
Suddenly the “taxi” pulled up with a jerk before a closed shop, in a
dark, rather unfrequented but seemingly superior street, and the Captain
opened the side door with his latch-key, disclosing a flight of
red-carpeted stairs.
“Here are my rooms,” Wetherton explained. “Frank has sought refuge with
me here. He is upstairs.”
Gwen ascended the stairs quickly to the second floor, where the Captain
opened the door with his key, and a moment later she found herself in a
large, well-furnished bachelor’s sitting-room where the electric lamps
were shaded with yellow silk.
It was evidently the room of a man comfortably off, for the furniture
had been chosen with taste, and the pretty knick-knacks and quaint
curios upon the table showed the owner of the place to be a man of some
refinement.
“Where is he?” inquired the girl, looking around blankly, her cheeks
flushed with excitement.
The man turned upon her, and laughed roughly in her face.
She drew back in horror and alarm when, in an instant, she realised how
utterly helpless she now was in the stranger’s hands. He had closed the
door behind him and pushed back the bolt concealed beneath the heavy
portiere.
“He is not here!” she gasped. “You’ve--you’ve lied to me. This is a
trick!” she gasped.
“Pray calm yourself, my dear little girl,” he said, coolly lighting a
cigarette. “Sit down. I want to have a quiet chat with you.”
“I will not, sir!” she answered, with rising anger. “Allow me, please,
to go. I shall tell your friend Mr Farquhar of this disgraceful ruse.”
“You can tell him, my dear girl, whatever you please,” the fellow
laughed insolently. “As a matter of fact, your lover does not know me
from Adam. So you see it’s quite immaterial.”
“It is not immaterial,” she declared, with a fierce look of resentment:
“You shall answer to him for this!”
“Possibly it will be you who will be compelled to answer to him, when he
knows that you have accompanied me here alone to my rooms, at eleven at
night--eh? What will your lover say to that, I wonder?”
“I have the telegram,” she cried, opening the little bag she carried.
It was not there!
“See,” he laughed. “I have the telegram!” And before her eyes he
tossed it into the fire.
She bent to snatch it from the flame, but he seized her white wrist
roughly and threw her backward upon the hearthrug. He had extracted the
message from her bag as they had sat together in the darkness of the
cab.
Struggling to her feet she screamed for help, and fought frantically
with the man who had decoyed her there; fought with the fierce strength
of a woman defending her dearest possession, her honour.
She saw how the man’s countenance had changed. There was an evil
expression there which held her terrified.
She begged mercy from him, begged wildly upon her knees, but he only
laughed in her face in triumph. She saw, now that the telegram was
destroyed, that this man who had posed as Frank’s friend could make his
vile story entirely complete.
She was helpless in the hands of a man whose very face betrayed his vile
unscrupulousness.
In the struggle she felt his hot foetid breath upon her cheek. Her
blouse of pale blue _crêpe-de-chine_ was ripped right across the breast
as she endeavoured to wrench herself from his grasp.
“Ah! Have mercy on me!” she screamed. “Let me go! Let me go! I’ll
give you anything--I--I--I’ll be silent even--if you’ll only let me go!
Ah! do--if you are a gentleman!”
But the fellow only laughed again, and held her more tightly.
Her bare chest heaved and fell quickly before him. Her breath came and
went.
“You think,” he said in a cruel hard voice, “you think your lover will
not believe me. But I see upon your flesh a mark--a natural blemish
that you cannot efface. Listen to me quietly. Hear me, or else I shall
tell him of its existence, and urge him to discover whether or not I
have spoken the truth. Perhaps he will then believe me!”
“You brute!” cried the girl in sudden and breathless horror. “You
blackguard! you intend to ruin me in Frank’s eyes. Let me go, I say!
Let me go.” Again she struggled, trying to get to the window, but with
his strong arms encircling her she was helpless as a child, for with a
sudden effort he flung her backwards upon the couch, inert and
senseless.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
REVEALS THE RIVALS.
Sir Felix Challas, Baronet the well-known financier and philanthropist,
was seated in his cosy library in Berkeley Square, dictating letters to
his secretary between the whiffs of his mild after-breakfast cigar. He
was a man of middle age, with slight side whiskers, a reddish face, and
opulent bearing. In his frock-coat, fancy vest, and striped trousers,
and white spats over his boots, he presented the acme of style as far as
dress was concerned. The whole world knew Sir Felix to be something of
a dandy, for he had never, for the past ten years or so, been seen
without a flower in his buttonhole. Like many another man in London he
had amassed great wealth from small beginnings, until he was now a power
in the world of finance, and as a philanthropist his name was a
household word.
From a small leather shop somewhere in the Mile End Road he had risen to
be the controlling factor of several of the greatest financial
undertakings in the country; while the house of Challas and Bowen in
Austin Friars was known in the City as one of the highest possible
standing.
Though he owned that fine house in Berkeley Square, a beautiful domain
in Yorkshire which he had purchased from a bankrupt earl, a villa at
Cannes, racehorses, motors, and a splendid steam-yacht, he was still a
bachelor, and a somewhat lonely man.
The papers mentioned his doings daily, gave his portrait frequently, and
recorded with a flourish of trumpets his latest donation to this
charity, or to that. Though he made enormous profits in his financial
deals, yet he was a staunch churchman, his hand ever in his pocket for
the various institutions which approached him. Indeed, if the truth
were told, he, like others, had bought his birthday Baronetcy by making
a princely donation to the Hospital Fund. This showed him to be a
shrewd man, fully alive to the value of judicious advertisement.
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.”
“But, Professor,” exclaimed the other, “I know that you yourself are an
authority upon cryptography. Have any ciphers been discovered in the
original of the Book of Ezekiel?”
“Well, yes,” was the Dane’s answer as he stirred himself in his
armchair, and reaching his hand to a bookcase took down a Hebrew-Danish
Bible. Then turning to Ezekiel, he said: “There is certainly something
in the Hebrew of the thirty-sixth chapter which has puzzled scholars
through many centuries. It begins at verse 16: ‘Moreover the word of
the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man--’ Now in the constant
repetition of ‘Son of man’ certain scholars declare they have discovered
a numerical cipher. In the first verse of this chapter we have, ‘Son of
man, prophesy unto the mountains.’ In the third verse of the following
one he asks: ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’ Again in verse 9 of
the same chapter, he says: ‘Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind.’
And in verse 11, still addressing him by the same title, he tells the
prophet: ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.’ By
the title ‘Son of man’ Ezekiel is so often addressed, ‘Son of man’ is so
constantly sounded in his ears and ours, that it forces on our attention
that God deals with man through the instrumentality of men, and by men
communicates his will to men. Hence certain cryptographers have set to
work and formed the theory of a hidden meaning in all this.”
“But is the actual cipher known?” asked Frank, at once excited.
“Certainly. It was deciphered by Bamberg, of Paris, forty years ago.
But the secret message had no bearing whatsoever upon the lost vessels
of Solomon’s temple,” was the Professor’s reply.
“What was the message?” inquired the young Englishman.
“Well--the alleged message which Bamberg deciphered commenced in the
thirty-sixth chapter beginning at verse xvi. The passage has peculiar
claims upon the attention of any one searching for cryptic writings.
Addressed in the first instance to the Jews, and applicable, in the
first instance, to their condition, it presents a remarkable summary of
gospel doctrines, and that in a form approaching at least to systematic
order. In the seventeenth verse we have man sinning: ‘Son of man, when
the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their
own way and by their doings.’ In the eighteenth verse we have man
suffering: ‘Wherefore, I poured my fury upon them.’ In the twenty-first
verse man appears an object of mercy: ‘but I had pity.’ In the
twenty-second verse man is an object of free mercy--mercy without merit:
‘I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel.’ In the twenty-fourth
verse man’s salvation is resolved on: ‘I will bring you into your own
land.’ In the twenty-fifth verse man is justified: ‘Then will I
sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean.’ In the
twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh verses man is renewed and sanctified: ‘A
new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you;
and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give
you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause
you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.’
In the twenty-eighth verse man is restored to the place and privileges
which he forfeited by his sins: ‘Ye shall be my people, and I will be
your God.’ ‘This land that was desolate is become like the garden of
the Lord.’ We have our security f
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