Chapter Five

A Mermaid and a Red Herring

 

There is a world of difference as to the resulting knowledge between a cursory observation that notes only generalities and an attentive examination that considers particular details. I realized this with great force when, having strolled out from my lodgings at the Royal George inn to smoke my morning pipe on the little green, I turned to look up at the picturesque house. Between the middle windows, close under the eaves, was a small square of stone in which were cut three initial letters and a date. I had noticed it when I first came to the inn and I had frequently glanced at it since; but if I had been asked to describe the inscription I could have told no more than that it consisted of three initial letters surrounding a heart with the date 1636 underneath. What the letters were I certainly could not have told, though I should have remembered the date.

The explanation of this is perfectly simple. A group of figures forming a date conveys a definite meaning, whereas the initial letters of an unknown person’s name have none; and meaningless things neither stimulate the attention nor impress the memory.

Yet I had often looked, and not without interest, at the little tablet. For these simple memorials illustrate a very pretty old-world custom. The initials – usually set in a triangle about a heart or flower or star – are those of a man and wife and the date below is that on which the house was finished and the young couple entered into possession to begin their married life. The upper letter is the initial of the joint surname and the lower ones represent the Christian names of the husband and wife respectively.

This morning I was in a reflective vein and somewhat at a loose end. Only the previous day I had made that abortive search in the vault. The treasure, deliberately hidden by old Simon over two centuries ago, was still undiscovered. I had been hot on the scent; and though that scent had proved a false one, the search had warmed my blood with the treasure-hunting fever.

I looked up at the tablet and somewhat absently read the brief inscription. The upper letter was G; the lower two S and M. And then I started, suddenly wide awake. For these were the initials of Simon and Margery Glynn.

At first I thought it must be a mere coincidence. Glynn was a man of means who lived in the great house of Elham Manor. How should his name appear on this obscure wayside inn? The initials must be those of some other couple; Solomon and Miriam Gobbler, for instance. But then there was the date, 1636. I made a rapid calculation from the dates on Glynn’s tomb in Bouldersby church. He died in 1692, aged eighty-one. Then in 1636 he was twenty-five years old; a very likely age at which to marry and settle down. Margery Glynn died in 1662, aged forty-five. Then in 1636 she would be nineteen; again a very likely age. It looked uncommonly as if these initials were those of Glynn and his wife.

Suddenly I recalled a passage in Boteler’s “Manor Houses of Kent”, which stated that “from a reference to him (Glynn) in Pepys’ Diary, it would seem that he had property in this neighbourhood, of which he was probably a native”. Now it happened that, only a day or two previously, I had picked up on a bookstall in Canterbury an old copy of Pepys’ Diary, which I had not looked at since. Full of my new discovery, I bustled indoors, and, running up to my room, opened the volume and eagerly ran my eye down the index, until it lighted on the name “Glynn, Simon”, when, with a trembling hand, I turned up the entry.

“23rd April (1664). Upp and to the Coffee House by the Exchange to talk with Mr Gannett a Turky Merchant. While we are talking comes Mr Simon Glynn (a Goldsmith and Secretary of the Mint in Oliver’s time) a pleasant fellow but whimsicall. Much good discourse and merriment. Mr Gannett asketh Glynn how he, being a widower without issue, shall devise his wealth; to which Glynn answers that his house and lands and a tavern that he hath he shall give to his sister’s sons, but not his money. And then he makes this observation (which methought mighty pretty) viz:– That some doe possess much money and little wit, and others much wit and little money, but whoso inherits his gatherings shall have both.”

Here was matter indeed! There could be very little doubt that the “tavern that he hath” was the very inn in which I was lodging; and that concluding observation seemed to hint that when Simon deposited his “gatherings” in a hiding place for the benefit of some future treasure-hunter, he intended that “wit” and not chance should be the instrument of its discovery. And no doubt he had made suitable arrangements. At any rate, upwards of two centuries had passed, and, though, according to all accounts, there had been no lack of treasure-seekers, Simon Glynn’s hoard still waited for the adventurer with wit enough to locate it.

Was it possible that I was to be that fortunate adventurer? Elham Manor house had been ransacked again and again, its garden excavated and its very panelling torn down; the vault under the church had been opened and dug out to the foundations. But no one, so far as I knew, had ever searched the tavern; indeed, its connection with Glynn would appear to have been forgotten. Which might easily have happened, seeing that the existence of hidden treasure did not become known until nearly half a century after Simon’s death.

Since the finding of the mirror every likely place seemed to have been searched. The Manor House had been searched; the vault under the monument had been explored. But no treasure had come to light. The treasure-seekers had apparently struck the wrong place each time.

Could it be that Glynn had after all secreted his savings somewhere in the inn? It was intrinsically probable enough. The small house in which he had made his start in life and to which he had brought home his young wife, must have had happier memories for him than the stately Manor House in which he had lived a solitary widower. It was highly probable that he would choose that place in which to hide his curious legacy; but – there was not the slightest evidence that he had. No vestige of any harp or cross or anchors three had I seen since I had lodged at the inn.

But wait! There was one thing that I had seen and had meant to investigate. On the main gable of the house – which, oddly enough, looked on the garden and the river – was some kind of tablet or ornamental panel of carved brick. Only a corner of the moulding that framed it was visible, the whole of the remainder being hidden by a too-luxuriant creeper; but the size of the frame showed that it was a work of more pretensions than the little tablet on the front of the house.

I walked through into the garden, and, backing away from the house until I was stopped by the great mulberry tree that dominated the lawn, looked up at the gable. The corner of a well-carved frame poked out from under the creeper; and, even as I looked, a breath of wind lifted the foliage and showed me the date 1640. That settled it. The panel was put up in Glynn’s time. The frame almost certainly enclosed some kind of sculpture. Perhaps a harp and a cross – but I would soon see. For my bedroom window was just underneath it and the principal branch of the offending creeper was within easy reach.

Full of my investigation and oblivious of the remoter consequences of what I was about to do, I ran up to my bedroom and thrust my head out of the window. The panel was but a few feet above, embedded in the mass of creeper that covered the gable. I grasped the large branch that strayed past the jamb of the window and gave it a gentle pull. The plant was a species of Virginia creeper; the kind which attaches itself to the wall without artificial support, though not with the security of the less handsome ampelopsis; and, as I pulled, I could feel some of the little tendrils break away. I gave one or two more jerks – quite gentle ones lest I should damage the possibly fragile ornament of the panel. At each jerk I felt more of the tendrils break and then suddenly the whole branch separated from the wall and came tumbling down so that I had to cut it through with my knife and let it drop to the ground.

Once more I thrust out my head and looked up; but crane out as I might, I could see no more than the bottom edge of the frame, though the gable was now clear of the creeper. But if I could not see the panel, there was somebody else who could. I observed him just as I was withdrawing my head, and in a moment realized what an idiot I had been. The man was standing under a clump of willows on the opposite side of the river and was in such deep shadow that I could not see what he was like, though it was clear enough that he was looking up at the gable and mightily interested in my proceedings. But though I could not recognize him, an uneasy suspicion as to his identity flitted through my mind; a suspicion that this untimely observer was none other than Detective-Sergeant Burbler.

If this should really turn out to be the case, then I had brought my pigs to a pretty fine market! For the worthy detective, who had come down to this neighbourhood on official business, was admittedly staying here for his own purposes. He was “taking a few weeks’ leave to enjoy the quiet and the beautiful scenery”. That was how he put it. The actual fact was that he had caught the scent of Simon Glynn’s treasure and was hanging about in the hope of picking up some further clues. And, as he believed me to be in possession of some private information respecting the hiding place of that treasure, he had made it his special business to shadow me ever since I had begun my researches. He hadn’t got much by his shadowing up to the present, for the simple reason that there had been nothing to get. I knew no more than he. But now, by uncovering that panel for all the world to see, I had, perhaps, put him in possession of a valuable clue.

I raced down the stairs, all agog to see what that panel really was. Hurrying out into the garden, I backed away under the great mulberry tree and looked up. And as my eye lighted on the carved brick sculpture enclosed within the frame, a wave of mingled exultation and alarm swept over me; exultation because here was a first-class clue; alarm lest my inveterate rival should have seen it too. For the panel exhibited in bold relief the figure of an unmistakable mermaid.

It was clearly not the work of an ordinary village mason. The ornament of the frame was but a plain and simple lattice pattern, but the figure was quite competently done; entirely unlike the crude and childish figure-work of the rustic sculptor. Indeed, the whole panel, in both design and finish, was singularly out of character with the homely building – little more than a cottage – on which it was placed; and this suggested that by the year 1640 Glynn had already begun to be a prosperous man. Probably he worked here at his trade, while his wife managed the inn, and found in the city hard by plenty of customers for his work.

But the immediate question was as to the meaning of this sculptured figure. I repeated the doggerel lines:

“Ankores three atte the foot of a tree and a maid from the sea on high.”

And it was instantly borne in on me that I was standing at the foot of a tree to look up at the sea-maid; and that, as there was no other tree near, this was the only one that could possibly be referred to. I turned to look at the mulberry tree. Obviously, it was of great age. It might well have been – and probably was – planted by Glynn himself. And if it was; if Glynn had planted it soon after he came to the house in 1636, then, at the time when the treasure was buried – which was, apparently, about 1684 – it would be nearly fifty years old and quite a large and well-grown tree. The reasonable inference was that this was the tree referred to in the doggerel and that Simon Glynn’s hoard was buried at its foot.

Of course there were objections to this conclusion. There was no sign of any harp or cross and the “ankores three” were nowhere to be seen. But the harp and cross might easily have been removed by Vandalic “restorers” if they were originally carved on, or affixed to, the house; and as to the anchors, they were probably incised on the bark of the tree itself, and, if so, would naturally have disappeared after all these years. Simon Glynn could never have reckoned that two hundred and thirty years would elapse before a really intelligent man should appear to claim his legacy. It was unsatisfactory, I could not but admit, that those confirmatory signs were absent; but still, there was the tree, and there was the “maid from the sea on high”, and that seemed good enough to justify a careful exploration.

Already a delighted imagination was filling in the outline of the picture. I saw the hole at the foot of the mulberry tree and heard the thud as my pick or spade impinged on the iron-bound chest: and I was beginning to speculate on the nature of the precious contents, when, suddenly, the recollection of Burbler came like the shadow of the Upas Tree, to blot out the sunlight of my dreams. Had he seen me uncover the panel? or was that figure under the willows merely a chance rustic, curious but innocuous?

I ran down to the landing stage and, getting into the boat that belonged to the inn, pulled upstream. But there was no one under the willows now. I landed and searched the neighbourhood of the towpath, but not a soul was to be seen. Rustic loiterer or watchful detective, that unwelcome observer had vanished and left no trace.

With mixed feelings, in which pleasurable excitement predominated, I pulled back to the inn and landed. The suspicion that Burbler had seen the tell-tale figure of the mermaid could not influence my course of action except to hasten it. At the foot of the mulberry tree lay Simon Glynn’s “gatherings”. Of that I had very little doubt. The course was to dig them up; and, under the circumstances, the sooner the better. I had the great advantage over Burbler that I was a resident of the inn. When the premises were shut up for the night I should have the place practically to myself, for old Mrs Hodger, my landlady, was the only other person who slept in the house, and she was as deaf as a post. When once she had retired to her room in the front of the house, which she usually did about ten o’clock, I was as free as if I were quite alone.

The necessary preparations were few and simple and I had the day before me in which to make them. First I visited the cellar, in which I knew the garden tools were kept. There was a good enough assortment; two spades and three stout forks, in addition to the smaller tools. Unfortunately, however, there was no pick. But to dig a deep hole in undisturbed ground without a pick was a task that I felt to be beyond me; and accordingly I set forth, without delay, to procure the necessary implement from a tool shop in Canterbury. I kept a sharp lookout for Burbler, whose unpleasant habit of shadowing and spying on me I have mentioned, and when I emerged from the shop with the pick, thinly disguised in brown paper, I made at once for the least frequented by-streets and left the town by a footpath across the meadows. But it was an anxious business; for if the detective had met me with that incriminating tool under my arm, the murder would have been out with a vengeance. I should never have got a chance to use it.

But it seemed that I was in luck, for the perilous passage was accomplished without my seeing any sign of Burbler. I sneaked into the inn by the garden door and at once proceeded to deposit the pick in a corner of the cellar. So far, good. I had made my preparations unobserved. If I had the same luck with my midnight explorations, I might get the treasure safely stowed in my trunk before Burbler was ready to begin. That is, assuming that my worst suspicions of him were correct.

In this mood of self-congratulation I slowly ascended the cellar steps. But at the top I halted and my self-congratulations came to a sudden end. In fact, I got a most severe shock.

A deaf person somewhat resembles a telephone; which appears to be an appliance for conveying verbal information to everybody but the person addressed. There was a stranger in the bar. I knew he was a stranger because he was talking to Mrs Hodger. The regular customers simply reached down a mug from the shelf and held it under the tap of the selected cask. But what had filled me with consternation was the sound of the voice. It was pitched in a low and confidential key, and the words were indistinguishable but I seemed to recognize it.

“Ah,” said Mrs Hodger, “you’re right. This hot weather do make you thirsty. So much the better for me. He! he!”

The stranger rejoined, a little louder; and, though I could not hear what he said, I knew that he was repeating his former remark. Strangers always did.

“Well,” said Mrs Hodger, “what I says is, wooden taps is better’n lead pipes when all’s said ’n done. More wholesome, like, you know.”

Here the stranger, abandoning his former confidential and rather secret tone, let off a howl that must have been audible half a mile away. And that howl settled the question of the speaker’s identity.

“I’m – asking – you,” roared the unmistakable voice of Sergeant Burbler, “if you can – let – me – have – a Bedroom?”

Mrs Hodger evidently had some slight misgivings as to whether she had quite caught that last remark. But she was a woman of spirit.

“Ho,” she replied, “then you’d better get a mug down and droar it yourself. Then you’ll know that you’ve got what you want.”

There was a short pause. I knew what was coming; and it came, sure enough. It always did.

“There ain’t any need to write it,” said Mrs Hodger, a little huffily. “I may be a trifle hard of hearing, but this ain’t an asylum for the deaf and dumb… Oh, I see. Got a sore throat and lost your voice? Dear, dear. Surprising what a lot o’ people is took that way nowadays. There’s my lodger, Mr Cobb, and the Rector and – but you’re asking about a bedroom. Well, you can have the little blue room if you’ll take things as they come and not expect no waiting on.”

Apparently the little blue room – so called from the colour of its paint – answered Burbler’s requirements, for he turned up that very day about teatime accompanied by a barrow on which was a large cabin trunk and an elongated parcel enclosed in sacking. That parcel looked as if it contained a spade and pick, but I couldn’t be quite sure, as Burbler declined my offer to carry it upstairs for him.

Now here was a nice cheerful state of affairs! Of course, my proposed nocturnal exploration was impossible so long as Burbler was about. And he seemed to have come to stay. At any rate he would probably see my visit out, for I couldn’t squeeze more than a week or two of extended holiday out of my firm, indulgent as they were.

It was an intolerable situation. Burbler clung to me as if I had been a long-lost brother. He walked abroad with me, of course he took meals with me, and he would even pop into my bedroom unexpectedly when I was dressing – though I put a stopper on that by bolting the door. Even when I escaped for a few minutes’ quiet, I have reason to believe that he consoled himself by visiting my room and raking over my personal effects; an intrusion that I was powerless to prevent, for, though every door in the house seemed to be fitted with massive bolts inside and out, there was not a single workable lock.

It is true that Burbler’s conduct was not without its compensations; for if he could not afford to lose sight of me, neither could I afford to lose sight of him. And there was a further consolation. The continual watch that he kept over my movements and especially his repeated searchings in my room showed that he still believed me to possess some clue to the whereabouts of the treasure that he did not. Still, as I have said, it was an intolerable situation and something would have to be done. There, I felt no doubt, was the treasure, lying perdu at the foot of the mulberry tree, and, somehow, by hook or by crook, I must manage to get it exhumed.

Necessity is the mother of invention. During those dreary walks with Burbler my brain was hard at work; while I sat at table with him I turned over scheme after scheme; and especially in the watches of the night, when I lay by the open window listening for the sound of a surreptitious pick from the lawn below, was my mind busy with plans for getting rid of Burbler. And at last I hit on one.

It was clear to me that the sergeant did not share my certainty as to where the treasure was hidden. Not being gifted, like me, with a brilliant constructive imagination, he was baffled by the absence of the Harp, the Cross and the “Ankores three”. Hence his continual attendance on me and his searchings of my room. He thought I knew more than he did, and he was waiting for me to give him a lead. Very well. I would give him one.

The inspiration of my plan came from a prehistoric monument that stood in a field not far from the inn; a structure of the kind known as a dolmen – a sort of rude tomb chamber roofed in by a huge, flat “table-stone”. Near to it was the hollow trunk of an ancient oak, which, with it, occupied a space that was reserved from cultivation. There is something rather stimulating to the imagination in these prehistoric remains, especially when associated with an ancient and decayed oak. Not that Burbler had much imagination; but it was as well to give him all the assistance possible.

I made a preliminary sketch plan of the place and then, after breakfast, while Burbler was giving his boots a brush in the scullery, I sneaked out of the house and legged it as hard as I could go. The dolmen was visible from the road across one or two open meadows, and I suspected that I shouldn’t have it very long to myself. Nor had I. Within five minutes of my arrival a distant figure appeared getting over a fence and approaching; somewhat circuitously, it is true, for the adjoining meadow, through which the direct footpath led, was occupied by Farmer Babbage’s short-horn bull. I affected not to see him, and proceeded slowly and with long strides to pace the distance from the dolmen to the tree, noting down the measurements and compass bearings on a good-sized piece of paper. When the sergeant climbed over the last fence I looked at him with a startled expression, hurriedly pocketed the paper and walked forward to meet him.

“Rum-looking concern, that,” he remarked, nodding at the dolmen and casting a suspicious glance round the field.

“Yes. Nothing to see, though,” I replied indifferently, making as if to return to the road.

“May as well have a look at it,” said Burbler; and he approached the venerable structure, and, having stared at it blankly for a while, remarked that it “looked as if it had been there some time”.

“Getting on for three thousand years,” said I.

“You don’t say so!” he exclaimed. “Three thousand years! Gad! A repairing lease was worth something in those days.”

He continued to cast puzzled glances at the dolmen and the old tree trunk, but failing to make anything of either of them, allowed himself ultimately to be led away.

On the following morning, having bolted my door, I prepared the final document, which consisted of a rough plan of the field, showing the dolmen and the tree and a number of dotted lines connecting them. At the bottom of the paper I wrote the following explanatory references:

“From dolmen to harp stone, 20 yards English cloth measure, due north.

From harp to first anchor 15…due west.

From first anchor to second anchor 5…due north.

…second anchor to third anchor 7½ …due east.

…third anchor to cross 7½ …due south.

Three and a half feet below the surface.”

It is needless to say that this was all nonsense. But it had a fine, piratical, treasure-seeking appearance. I folded it neatly and laid it on a shelf in my cupboard with a couple of half-crowns on it; and having measured with my pocket dividers the exact distances from the half-crowns to the edges of the paper, I made a note of them and then went down to breakfast. Burbler had not yet left his room; but he appeared some ten minutes later with the most ludicrous expression of bewilderment that I have ever seen. I could have laughed in his face.

In the middle of breakfast I suddenly left the table and rushed upstairs as if I had forgotten something. Bolting my door, I carefully tested the position of the half-crowns on the sheet of paper; and when I found that it had changed by a full sixteenth of an inch, I knew that Burbler had gorged the bait, for Mrs Hodger had not left the kitchen. I accordingly pocketed the document and descended to finish my breakfast with renewed appetite. All the preliminaries were now arranged. I could reckon on getting rid of Burbler for an hour or so at least, and perhaps in the interval I might manage to lift or at any rate locate the treasure.

That very night I proceeded to carry my plan into execution. Soon after half past ten, the house being then all quiet, I stole silently (but not too silently, you understand) out of my room and descended to the cellar to provide myself with the needful appliances. A bundle of half-inch iron rods, each about four feet long and pointed at one end, stood in a corner; the remains, I suppose, of some kind of iron fence. One of these I selected as a sounding rod, and having annexed a good-sized hammer, a spade and a half-dozen clothes-pegs, I crept up from the cellar and listened for a few moments. The house was very silent, but once I thought I could distinguish faint sounds of stealthy movement above; on which I unbolted the front door and went out, shutting it behind me.

It was an ideal night for the purpose. The nearly full moon was covered by a thin veil of cloud, so that there was plenty of diffused light, and yet one was not too conspicuous; though, for that matter, there was not a soul about. The road was as deserted as the fields, and I arrived at the dolmen – by a slight detour, to avoid the neighbourhood of Farmer Babbage’s bull – and without having seen a living creature.

Resting the spade against the dolmen, and taking a look through a large opening into the dark interior, I reflected awhile, studying my sketch plan and a pocket compass by the feeble light. There was no hurry. If Burbler was on my track, I must give him time to reach the spot. And yet I must not seem to dawdle if he had already arrived. I kept an eye on a clump of elders that would cover his approach, hoping to make out some signs of his presence; but the clouds now grew more dense and the light faded until the elders were no more than a vague dark mass. There was nothing for it but to begin and assume that Burbler was there.

I paced out the first line with long strides (and an eye on the elders) and at the end of it hammered one of the clothes-pegs into the ground. From this point I slowly paced to the “first anchor” and hammered in another peg; and so on until I had made the whole round and arrived at the spot marked on my sketch with the cross. And still there was no sign of Burbler.

A sudden, horrible suspicion entered my mind that I was going through all this tomfoolery without any audience at all. That was a frightful thought. But worse than that was the suspicion that now seized me and chilled my very blood, that Burbler might have taken advantage of my absence, and, even at this moment, while I was playing this fool’s pantomime in an empty field, might be digging at the foot of the mulberry tree!

I broke out into a cold sweat. It was an awful dilemma. I couldn’t stop my foolery for fear he might be watching after all; and yet I was in a fever to get back to the inn and see that nothing terrible was happening.

I had stuck the sounding rod in the ground and had the hammer poised for the first blow when a voice – a distinctly agricultural voice – broke the stillness of the night.

“Now then, you, what are you doing here at this time o’ night?”

Naturally I thought that the unseen speaker was addressing me. But he wasn’t. For a familiar voice answered sheepishly:

“Nothing in particular. Just having a walk round.”

“Oh. Then you just take a walk out; out of my meadows. And you there! What are you up to?”

This question, bellowed in stentorian tones, was obviously addressed to me. It being impossible to ignore it, I walked towards the elders, whence the voice appeared to proceed, mumbling ambiguous explanations. By the fence under the trees I found Burbler and a stout, elderly man; presumably Farmer Babbage.

“Now then,” said the latter, “you just come over the fence and I’ll show you the way off my land. This here is the path.”

“But,” I protested “there is a bull in that meadow.”

“Oh, he won’t hurt you,” said Babbage. “He’s as quiet as a lamb, he is.”

“Excuse me,” said Burbler, “but I think I’d rather go some other way.”

“You’ll go along the footpath,” the farmer began doggedly; but at this moment a roar like the blast of a colossal motor horn rent the silence, and a huge black shape emerged from the darkness of the meadow.

“He won’t hurt you,” repeated the farmer, getting over the fence with uncommon agility nevertheless. “He’s as quiet as a –”

Now a bull is the most thick-headed of animals, literally and metaphorically. This particular behemoth had apparently selected Burbler as the object of assault, and he came on like – well, like a motor omnibus. I can’t think of any more terrifying simile. But, of course, when he arrived Burbler wasn’t there. But he didn’t care for that. He proceeded to hurl a ton or so of beef and bones at the place where Burbler had been; and the consequence was that he hit the fence – a miserable row of rickety hurdles. And then the fence wasn’t there.

What immediately followed I can’t say, not being provided like the spider with eyes in my back. I only know that Farmer Babbage continued to asseverate “He won’t hurt you”, as distinctly as could be expected of a stout, elderly man who is crossing a field at about sixteen miles an hour. When I next looked back, from the shelter of another fence, Burbler appeared to be performing a kind of Druidical dance round the oak tree with the bull as an active and sympathetic acolyte.

Presently, taking advantage of a momentary lapse of attention on the part of the bull, the sergeant bolted across to the dolmen and shot in through the opening like a harlequin; and the last thing that I saw as I turned away was the bull with his nose thrust in through the opening of the dolmen uttering sonorous greetings to the sojourner within.

I made my way back to the inn with as little delay as possible. For the present Burbler was safe – safe, I mean, from my point of view. And when the bull released him he would probably lurk in the neighbourhood to see what I had been doing and to watch for my return. Still there was no time to be lost. I must find the treasure quickly or put off the search to another time.

I was still carrying the sounding rod and hammer, and that fact suggested to me the desirability of probing the ground under the mulberry tree before beginning to dig; for if Glynn’s hoard lay deep down, out of reach of the four-foot rod, the amount of digging required would be greater than circumstances rendered possible on this occasion. Accordingly, having let myself in and bolted the door, I went straight through to the garden, and, taking my stand under the mulbery tree, looked up at the house. It was reasonable to suppose that the spot chosen would be as nearly as possible opposite the “maid from the sea on high”, and, on this supposition, I stuck the point of the rod in the ground exactly in a line with the tablet, about a dozen feet from the tree, and drove it in with the hammer. It entered easily enough for the first eighteen inches. After that it became more and more difficult to drive in. But it met with no obstruction and after driving it in two feet six inches, I pulled it up and tried a fresh place in the same line.

I sounded in four or five places with the same discouraging result; and then I “struck soundings”. It was at about two feet from the surface that I felt the resistance suddenly increase, and, when I had freed the rod a little, I could make out a definite solid obstacle. Eagerly I pulled up the rod, and, sticking the point in the ground about a foot nearer the tree, hammered it in. Again at about two feet down its progress was checked. There was certainly something there, and something of considerable size. Not a block of stone, as I could tell by working the rod up and down and striking the obstruction with the point, but apparently a massive wooden object, such as, for instance, a solidly-built chest.

I paused for a moment to consider. How long would it be before Burbler would be likely to return? That was a question to which I could give no answer. And meanwhile here was a solid something only a couple of feet down. With a pick and spade I could reach it in a few minutes. It might be a treasure chest or it might not, but in any case prudence whispered to me to take the opportunity lest I should never get another.

All a-tremble with excitement, I darted into the house and groped my way to the cellar. Quickly lighting a candle-lantern, I found my pick and a spade and having carried them up to the passage, I stood them against the wall and returned for the lantern. And then came the catastrophe. I was but halfway down the steps when someone leaped on me from behind, pinioning my arms and gripping my wrists. The impact was so violent that my assailant and I flew down the remaining steps and rolled together on the brick floor; and before I could extricate myself from the bear-like embrace, a chilly contact and a sharp, metallic snap told me that I was handcuffed and helpless.

“What the deuce is the meaning of this?” I exclaimed furiously.

“The meaning is,” replied the too-familiar voice of Sergeant Burbler, “that you’ve been a bit too artful this time, Mr Cobb. Thought I was a regular greenhorn, didn’t you? But I ain’t. I’ve been watching you over the back gate for the last quarter of an hour. Now then, stop kicking, will you?”

I did stop, as a matter of fact; not voluntarily but in consequence of his lashing my ankles together. I heaped on him every objectionable epithet that a fairly retentive memory could recall; I called him a thief, a liar, a swindler and a traitor. But he was perfectly impassive. With a calm air of business he passed a cord round my arms at the elbows, and, having tied it behind, dragged me to an oaken chest, on which he seated me with my face towards the door.

“Now, Mr Cobb,” said he, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just run away and attend to that little business outside. I’ll leave you the lantern, as I have one of my own.”

With this he departed, bolting the door after him; and very soon there came in, through the little grated ventilators, the sound of a pick – my pick! –plied with furious energy.

I could have wept with rage and disappointment. Here was a pretty end to all my scheming! I had played the jackal that this mangy Scotland Yard lion might gobble up the prey!

After a time I grew calmer. The sound of the pick continued from without and I listened to it with growing resignation. Presently it intermitted and then I heard the sharper sound of the hammer striking the sounding rod. Not a soothing sound it might be thought; and yet it comforted me. For it told me that what I had struck was certainly not the treasure and that, so far, the villain Burbler had drawn a blank. Supposing the treasure was not there, after all! What an anticlimax that would be! And what an awful fool the Sergeant would look!

The old proverb that “the wish is father to the thought” now received an apt illustration in the psychic phenomena that my reflections exhibited. So long as the hidden treasure was potentially mine, I had dwelt rather exclusively on the evidence that it was there; but now that it was potentially Burbler’s I found myself dwelling rather on the facts that suggested that it was not there. And, really, when one came to consider the facts, it did look as if I had jumped at a somewhat hasty conclusion. The harp and the cross and the anchors three, which I had brushed aside as not so very material, now began to loom up as factors of prime importance. It seemed as if the circumstances required careful reconsideration.

And now, for the first time, I began to give that mystical jingle of old Simon’s really systematic thought. I went over it line by line and applied its quaint phrases to the present conditions. And the more I did so, the less they seemed to fit. Gradually, I came to the conclusion that I had made a false shot; a mere hasty guess. That the foot of the mulberry tree could not be the place where the treasure was buried at all, and that the whole of the data needed to be revised.

And all the time, the sound of the pick and spade drifted in monotonously through the little grating.

A couple of hours passed. Slowly my ideas, from a formless ambiguity, began to crystallize into something like definite shape. A few minutes more of concentrated thought and I should have evolved a more or less complete solution of the riddle. But at that moment the sound of the pick ceased; heavy footsteps clumped along the passage; the cellar door was unbolted and flung open; and Sergeant Burbler entered, wiping his forehead with a very dirty hand.

“Look here, Mr Cobb” he said, irritably, “do you know where that stuff is, or don’t you?”

“No, I’m hanged if I do,” said I, “unless you’ve got it.”

“Well, I haven’t. And I don’t believe it was ever there.”

“Neither do I. But you haven’t wasted your time, you know, Sergeant. It might have been there. It was just as well to make sure. I’m very much obliged to you for all the trouble you’ve taken. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind unfastening these things now; then I can help you to fill up the hole.”

Sulkily and with an air of deep depression, Burbler released me from the handcuffs and the lashings. He offered no apology for his conduct, and I asked for none. When I had stretched myself and secured another spade, we went out into the garden to repair damages. Under the mulberry tree yawned a wide and deep pit, bridged by the thick root on which my sounding rod had struck. The sergeant and I fell to at once with our spades to fill up the hole; and though we both worked with a will, it was with very different feelings. Burbler was silent and gloomy. Perhaps he was considering what he should say to Mrs Hodger. As to me, the “might have been” was with me no more, but only that which yet might be.

As I gleefully shovelled in the earth it seemed that perhaps success might, after all, rise, Phœnix-like, from the ashes of a dead and gone failure.