BEFORE RECOUNTING THE REMARKABLE events surrounding the search for the lost treasure of Jack the Ripper, it might be well to say a few words about my friend and occasional companion Simon Ark. It was Simon who brought the affair to a satisfying conclusion, as he has so many other times in the 22 years I’ve known him.
I was a young newspaper reporter when I first met Simon Ark back in the mid-fifties. I’d been sent to a remote western town to report on an apparent mass suicide. Simon was there too, looking tall and imposing and very old. He told me later that he was nearly 2,000 years old, that he’d been a Coptic priest in Egypt, and now was doomed to roam the world like some Flying Dutchman or Wandering Jew, undying, seeking a final confrontation with Satan and all that was evil on this earth.
Did I believe any of that?
Frankly, no. Not at first, anyway. I married a wonderful girl named Shelly Constance and moved from a career in journalism to one in publishing. When Simon Ark reappeared in my life, as he kept doing at irregular intervals, I was an editor at Neptune Books. Whether I believed his story or not, I realized his vast knowledge of the occult and the mystic arts could be put to good use. He wrote a book and I published it. This was, after all, the era when every mystic had a book to publish.
In recent years Simon and I drifted apart. I was a middle-aged editor no longer quite up to the sudden journeys to Egypt or Poland or London that used to fascinate me in the old days. And for all I knew, Simon himself might have died of old age. Because I never really believed all that business about Simon being 2,000 years old, did I?
It had been fully five years since our last adventure together when suddenly he was back, on the other end of the telephone, acting as if he’d seen me not ten minutes earlier.
“Hello, my friend:”
“Simon! Is that really you?”
“Are you free for lunch?”
“Of course! But what—?”
“I could not pass through New York without telephoning my publisher now, could I?” I knew his face would have that familiar sly smile as he said it.
I arranged to meet him at one o’clock at a steak house near my office. It had a small back room where customers could talk or drink away the afternoon without interruption, and I often took my authors there to iron out some sticky point in their plots or in our contracts.
“You look the same,” I told Simon, meaning every word of it. His large body and worn but vigorous face reminded me of our first meeting 22 years earlier.
“You are looking good too, my friend. Putting on a little weight, though. How is Shelly?”
“She’s fine. Away visiting her mother in Florida at the moment.”
“Ah, then you’re alone?”
“Yes,” I admitted reluctantly.
“Come to England with me,” he said suddenly.
It was the sort of spur-of-the-moment suggestion I would have relished in the old days. “I can’t, Simon. I have my work.”
“We shall have some high old times, as we did in the old days.”
“Still chasing the Devil?”
“Yes. It is an eternal quest.” His face had gone solemn at my question. “Satanism has become a new fad among many young people.”
“I’ve been reading about the resurgence of witch cults in England. Is that what you’re after?”
He shook his head. “Something far more evil, my friend.” The old eyes flashed with a familiar fire. “The treasure of the late Jack the Ripper.”
“At least you admit that he’s dead. Every once in a while someone tries to prove he’s still alive. But I never heard of any treasure.”
“I have a communication from a man in London named Ceritus Vats. A collector of esoterica. He feels my presence is needed to forestall a murder. And to find a treasure.”
I thought about it. I still had a week’s vacation coming, and June was a slow time in publishing. The autumn books were already in various stages of production, the concern of other people, and I wouldn’t have to finalize our spring list for months yet. Shelly would be at her mother’s place another week. There was no real reason why I couldn’t go, except common sense.
And I’d never let that stop me before. If Simon Ark was going to find a treasure belonging to Jack the Ripper, I wanted to be along for the show.
I phoned Shelly in Florida to tell her what was up. She’d always had mixed feelings about Simon Ark, and I knew she was far from delighted to have him back in our lives. But she didn’t argue about the trip. She only said, “Be careful,” and then, “I’ll see you next week.”
At ten o’clock the following night Simon and I were airborne over the Atlantic. It had been a bumpy takeoff from Kennedy, in the midst of an early summer rainstorm, but the flight quickly settled down to a smooth uneventful crossing. “What have you been doing with yourself these past five years?” I asked Simon.
He smiled. “Five years is merely a weekend to me, my friend. A pause, a rest from the search. As a matter of fact, I was studying at an Irish abbey for part of the time. I had only just returned to America when Ceritus Vats got in touch with me.”
“What sort of man is Vats? And how did he know where to reach you? I’ve never known your address in all these years, except for the brief times you stayed with Shelly and me.”
“Ceritus Vats is a bookseller among other things. He operates from a little shop off Hammersmith Road in London. He knows my wants in certain fields, and he knows an address where I may be reached.”
“You mentioned esoterica. The mystic arts, I suppose.”
“In this case, yes, though he deals in a wide range of books and maps. Anything old or rare.”
I was prepared to meet a man who went with his name, but Ceritus Vats was a surprise. Our first afternoon in London was misty with a damp June rain, but the shop of Ceritus Vats was warm and brightly lit. He was a short handsome gentleman with white hair, who moved between the stacks of old books with a nimbleness born of long experience. Though the shop had the traditional hodge-podge look of a good second-hand book store, I never doubted that he could lay his hand on any title in the place at a moment’s notice.
“So good to see you again, Simon,” he said with a smile. “And it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”
I shook his hand and sat down. “I noticed a few of our Neptune Books have drifted across the sea to England.”
“Quite a few, actually. Neptune is a fine American house.”
Simon cleared his throat, anxious to get down to business. “You can speak freely in front of my friend here. He’s shared many adventures with me.”
Vats glanced at me a bit uncertainly, then replied. “Very well. Of course you’re familiar with Jack the Ripper and his crimes.”
“I am,” Simon said. “Unfortunately I was not in London at the time, or I might have brought the criminal to justice.”
I was used to this sort of talk from Simon, and apparently Vats was too. He hurried on. “Nowadays the killing of five prostitutes on the streets of London would hardly attract all that fuss.”
“Perhaps it would,” Simon said. “If done in the manner of the Ripper’s killings.”
“You mean the mutilations?”
“And the letters to the newspapers. He was nothing if not a showman.”
Ceritus Vats leaned back in his chair. “Suppose I told you I have evidence that the Ripper was neither a madman nor a sex fiend, but only a coldly calculating killer whose motive was financial gain!”
“I’d find that difficult to believe,” Simon said.
“And suppose I could name the Ripper?”
“Do so, by all means!”
“Recently a remarkable document—a handwritten journal—was offered to dealers in rare books and esoterica, like myself. Its author purports to be none other than Jack the Ripper himself. In this journal he explains the motive for his crimes, and reveals his identity. I must say that the handwriting compares favorably with that in reproductions of the Ripper’s newspaper letters.”
“Who is offering this journal?”
“A great-granddaughter of the man who wrote it. Her name is Glenda Coxe. His was Raymond Slackly.”
“I’ve never heard of Slackly,” Simon admitted. “Nor the woman either, for that matter.”
“According to the journal, Raymond Slackly was a small-time thief. He’d once knifed a man in a brawl, but he admits to no other prior violence. Sometime in the mid-1880s he teamed up with another thief named Hogarth, a smarter criminal who expanded both their horizons. After a number of profitable robberies they heard about the heist of a lifetime.
“It seems that 1887 was Queen Victoria’s Jubilee year, the fiftieth anniversary of her coronation. To celebrate the event a merchant named Felix Rhineman collected contributions for the crafting of a solid gold lion encrusted with fifty diamonds. It was to be a surprise gift to Victoria from London’s merchants, presented during the summer Jubilee week. Only a few people knew of it in advance, but unfortunately one of them let something slip in a pub. Hogarth and Slackly learned of the golden lion and managed to steal it on the eve of the presentation. The matter was hushed up to avoid embarrassment and Queen Victoria never knew of it.”
“Do you believe all this?” I asked with an editor’s natural skepticism. “That sort of thing went out with the Maltese Falcon!”
Ceritus Vats merely smiled. “It’s possible your Mr. Hammett got his idea from legends about the golden lion. Certainly I demand proof for such a story—but the map is a proof of a sort.”
“What about Jack the Ripper?” Simon pressed on. The lines of his face were deep and his eyes were veiled.
“Hogarth and Slackly were afraid to offer the lion for sale once they’d stolen it. And they possessed neither the knowledge nor equipment to melt it down. They decided Hogarth would bury the treasure in a safe place for five years, at which time they would then take the lion abroad and sell it.”
“Where was it buried?”
Vats shook his head. “Hogarth never told Slackly. He claimed that Slackly drank too much and had a loose tongue. But Slackly insisted he draw a map of the location, in the event he was arrested for some other crime. Hogarth agreed to draw a map in five parts, and to leave one part with each of five London streetwalkers. They were paid to keep it, with more money promised in five years’ time. Only Hogarth and Slackly had lists of the prostitutes’ names.”
“An unlikely story,” Simon remarked.
“But is it? For the money, and the promise of more money, these women could be depended on. The parts of the map would remain safe. Hogarth seemed certain they wouldn’t be lost or misplaced. And even if one of the women died or disappeared, Hogarth himself still knew the location of the treasure. The trouble is, Hogarth died—he was killed in a pub brawl the following year. Slackly was left with five names and nothing more. According to the journal, he tracked the women down over a period of months but each one refused to give him her portion of the map—he hadn’t the money that was promised. So he was forced to kill them, all five, using the mutilations and his letters to the press to hide the true motive.”
“Is there any evidence besides the handwriting?” Simon asked.
“The journal is curiously reticent about the specific details of the killings—almost as if Slackly himself could no longer face the memory of them. But he does say he strangled the women before using his knife. Donald Rumbelow’s recent book on the Ripper confirms that at least four of the victims were probably strangled first.”
“Could I examine this journal?”
Vats shook his head. “I was allowed to read portions in the presence of Glenda Coxe, but she would not let me keep it.”
“And the map?”
“That’s the strangest part of all. Once Slackly retrieved it and put the pieces together, he found he couldn’t read it. That’s why he wrote the journal, leaving the map for his heirs.”
“I assume Miss Coxe can’t read it either, or she’d hardly offer it for sale.”
“Correct. She feels the journal and the map themselves are of great value, even if the treasure is never located.”
“And certainly they are valuable, if the story is true.”
“Can you help me, Simon?” Vats asked.
“Just what sort of help do you need? You asked me to forestall a murder.”
Vats nodded sadly. “My own. It is depressing to reach this stage in one’s life and realize that a colleague would actually kill you for financial gain.”
“And this colleague is—?”
“Martin Rood, an antiquarian bookseller and dealer in esoterica like myself. We’ve been friendly rivals for years.”
“Miss Cox showed him the journal too?”
“Yes, indeed. She wanted us to bid against each other and she has succeeded admirably.”
“Has Rood actually threatened your life?”
“Yes. Last week we held a joint meeting with Miss Coxe. When I topped his bid he stormed out, saying if I cheated him out of the journal and map he’d see me in Hades. He was not jesting.”
“But perhaps he’s cooled down by now.”
“No. On the morning I cabled you I received a package at my shop here. It was an old leather-bound book with no indication of who’d sent it. When I opened the cover I saw the book had been hollowed out—to make room for a live black widow spider.”
“My God!” I breathed.
But Simon did not take it so seriously. “Hardly a serious attempt to kill you, Ceritus, or the book would have contained a bomb rather than a spider. Still, it’s a bit unpleasant. You think Rood sent it?”
“Who else? The book was an old regimental history of little value. I almost think I’d seen it on his shelves.”
“Have you spoken to him since then?”
“I tried to phone him but he’s always out.”
“Perhaps a visit to Mr. Rood is in order,” Simon decided. “Meanwhile, is it possible that Miss Glenda Coxe has shown this journal to other dealers?”
“I doubt it. Both Rood and I made strong bids for it.”
“And the map? Did she allow you to inspect that as well?”
“No. Only the buyer gets to see the map, though she’s described it to us as a circle of dots with a horseshoe of dots inside.”
Simon Ark lifted his head. “Is that so? And she was unable to identify it?”
“So she says. Do you know—”
“Just a thought. I’ll withhold comment for the present.”
“Can you speak to Rood, Simon? Somehow get him off my back so I can close this deal for the journal?”
“I can speak to him. But the police could have spoken to him too. Why didn’t you simply call them and tell them about the spider?”
“If the police got wind of this Ripper connection they’d surely confiscate the journal and the map. The newspapers would get the story and no one would make a penny out of it!”
“I suppose the monetary factor is important to you.”
“Of course it’s important. I’m not in this business for my health, Simon! And neither is Rood. This is my chance to acquire the find of a lifetime!”
“Have you and Rood considered sharing it?”
“Share? With him? Never!”
There seemed little more to be said. Simon and I left Vats with a promise to do what we could. But I detected in my friend a depression that our long journey had come to this. “I have known Ceritus for years,” he said finally, breaking the gloomy silence, “but I never realized the full extent of his greed. Rood resorts to spiders in hollowed-out books, and Ceritus resorts to me. I am to be the weapon to gain his ends.”
“Do you really believe this business about Jack the Ripper’s buried treasure?”
“Perhaps this solution is no more fantastic than the original crimes were. However it leaves one fact unaccounted for: if the Ripper was a sane and rational man bent only on finding that buried lion, why did he find it necessary to mutilate his victims after strangling them?”
“He was crazy and this whole business is crazy, if you ask me. Let’s forget it and catch the next plane back to New York.”
“I think first a few words with Martin Rood are called for. Then perhaps we will leave.”
Rood’s Rare Books occupied a shop on Bayswater Road, opposite Kensington Gardens. In its cluttered shelves and haphazard piles of books it was much like Vats’s shop, but the lighting was dimmer and the odor a bit mustier. And Martin Rood, when he appeared, looked very much like the sort of person who would send black widow spiders in hollowed-out books. He was as tall as Simon, but much thinner, with sunken cheeks and a pale skin that gave him something of a cadaverous appearance.
“What may I help you with today?” he asked. “We have some fine leather-bound volumes of Sir Walter Scott, just purchased from an estate.”
“I’m more in the market for regimental histories,” Simon remarked. “Perhaps something on the Black Widows.”
“Black Widows?” Rood seemed puzzled. “I don’t believe I know that regiment.”
“Strange. Ceritus Vats thought you could help me.”
At the mention of Vats’s name, the bookdealer’s whole manner changed. I could see the veins in his temples beginning to throb as he said, “I have no dealings with Vats! I know nothing of the lies he may have told you!”
“They concern a certain Miss Glenda Coxe and a handwritten journal dating from the last century.”
“Miss Coxe has contacted me, yes. I believe the entire matter to be a hoax. If Vats wishes to spend his money on it, so be it!”
“You didn’t mail him a spider in a book?”
“A spider? In a book? What a quaint idea!”
Simon and I exchanged glances. Either Vats or Rood was a consummate liar. And maybe it didn’t much matter which one. But then Simon said something which surprised me. “I’m quite interested in Miss Coxe’s journal myself. I’d like to make a purchase offer on it.”
“You? Who’d you say you were?”
“The name is Simon Ark.”
“American?”
“Most recently.”
“You don’t exactly sound American.”
“I’m a mixture,” Simon answered with a smile. “Now about this journal—”
“You can’t really believe in it? Jack the Ripper and all that?”
“But if it’s true, the journal could be worth a fortune.”
Rood considered. “How to prove it?”
“Dig up the golden lion. That should prove it.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Simon turned to me. “Come along, my friend.”
“Where are you going?” Rood asked.
“To see Miss Coxe, of course. To put in my bid on Jack the Ripper’s map.”
Simon’s performance may have galvanized Rood into some sort of action. We were only a block away from the shop when I turned to see him lowering the sunshade on his front window and putting out the lights. “Looks as if he’s decided to close early,” I remarked. “Maybe he wants to beat you to Miss Coxe’s place.”
“Or else he’s planning another little surprise for Ceritus. In any event, I think it’s time we called on Miss Coxe. She obviously holds the key to this entire matter.”
Glenda Coxe was a psychologist doing basic research in animal behavior at a university laboratory located in London’s East End. We found it without much difficulty, and after being announced we were greeted by a cool young woman wearing a white lab coat. Her dark hair was pulled up in a knot at the back of her head, and I had the impression that she might be far prettier if she allowed her hair to hang free. It took me a moment to remember that this was, supposedly, the great-granddaughter of Jack the Ripper.
“Gentlemen, I hope it won’t take too long. I’m timing an experiment with some rats.” Her voice was cool and dispassionate, like the rest of her.
“In a maze, no doubt,” Simon said.
“What?”
“The rats are in a maze.”
“Yes, they are. But I’m sure you didn’t want to talk about rats.”
“As a matter of fact, we came to talk about this journal which has suddenly come to light. And a map, I believe.”
“That’s correct. Do you wish to purchase them?”
“Could we sit down?” Simon asked, indicating some chairs in one corner. When we were seated he continued, “You realize that this journal of yours could be immensely valuable if it’s what you say it is.”
“My dear man, I don’t say it’s anything at all! Perhaps it was a novel my great-grandfather was attempting to compose. I am simply offering it for sale.”
“I see. Then you don’t believe you’re a descendant of Jack the Ripper?”
“I ceased speculating on it long ago. My uncle—” she stopped.
“Your uncle?”
“I was going to say that my uncle does enough speculating for both of us. But that needn’t concern you.”
“Your uncle believes the journal to be authentic?”
“He does. It’s become an obsession with him.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Simon said.
“That would accomplish nothing.”
“Something puzzles me about this whole business, Miss Coxe. When you found this journal, why didn’t you take it to the newspapers—or even to a book publisher? Why offer it surreptitiously to a couple of old booksellers?”
“Frankly, I wanted to get rid of the thing. And I didn’t want to be plastered across the papers as the great-granddaughter of Jack the Ripper. You must understand that.”
“I’d still like to meet your uncle.”
“Meet him if you wish, Mr. Ark. But I repeat, it will accomplish nothing.”
She gave us his address and then retreated into her laboratory. I decided she wasn’t sorry to see us go. Perhaps to her we represented the stigma of publicity she’d tried so hard to avoid.
Or was she trying to avoid it? “Simon, the thought occurs to me that this whole charade might be nothing more than a giant publicity stunt for a new book about jack the Ripper.”
He smiled at me. “British publishers go about things a bit differently from you New Yorkers. I hardly think she’s after publicity. At this point we must accept what she tells us at face value.”
“And later?”
“After we’ve met her uncle we might draw other conclusions.”
As we drove away we noticed Glenda Coxe leaving through a rear door of the lab. Like Martin Rood, she too was closing early.
Meeting her uncle involved driving to Greenwich, where the Coxe home was located within sight of the Observatory. “Virtually at longitude zero,” Simon remarked as we pulled up in front of a red stone house that had obviously seen better days.
His name was Nesbett Coxe and like the house he had seen better days. Somehow he reminded me of a cross between the two bookdealers, Rood and Vats. He moved slowly, with glasses worn low on his nose so he could peer over them. His hair was thin and he looked unwell, though he couldn’t have been more than fifty years old. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Simon Ark. My niece warned me you were on your way. It’s about the Ripper business, what?”
Simon nodded as we followed him through the downstairs rooms. A woman’s touch was obvious here and there, but it did little to alleviate the general gloom. “Do you and your niece live here alone?” Simon asked.
“That’s right. Wife left me ten years ago. I’m Glenda’s guardian for another three years, till she reaches thirty. Her granddad didn’t think women matured till thirty.” He thought about it and remarked glumly, “I suppose then she’ll toss me out and sell the house. That’ll be all the thanks I get for bringing her up and putting her through the university.”
“Then her grandfather had money? He would have been the son of this man Slackly?”
Nesbett Coxe allowed an evil grin to form on his lips. “I know what you’re thinking. But the money didn’t come from Slackly’s criminal activities—and especially not from Queen Victoria’s golden lion. Slackly didn’t have a son, but a daughter—and she married Herbert Coxe, my father. He was something of a department-store tycoon, with a chain of shops in Liverpool and Bristol and York. Finally opened one in London, but that was his ruin. He couldn’t compete with the big boys. Still, there was enough left for me to take care of Glenda when her folks died in a fire.”
“Your brother?”
He nodded. “House burned down one night when Glenda was twelve. She lost everything, including her parents. Came to live with me after that. My father was still alive and he left all his money in trust for her till she reached thirty. He felt it would make up for the loss of her parents.”
“And this journal?”
“I never knew about it till Glenda showed it to me a few months ago. The map was with it—five little pieces of parchment stitched together, and marked with red dots in a strange sort of ink.”
“I’d be most interested in seeing that map,” Simon told him.
“That would be impossible unless Glenda approved. This is all hers—the journal and the map, you understand. If it was mine I’d be out selling it to the News of the World for a fancy figure.”
I was thinking that was why she’d said it would do us no good to see her uncle. Glenda was in complete charge.
He puttered around the house, offered us tea, and finally announced that he had work to do upstairs. That was as close as we came to seeing the mysterious map.
On the way back to London I asked Simon what he thought about it. “Are we in the midst of a hoax, or a feud, or a swindle, or a great historical discovery, or what?”
“I’m not quite sure, my friend. There are several ways of looking at it, and none of them is satisfactory.”
Things grew even more puzzling the following morning. Ceritus Vats phoned our hotel quite early to announce that he was being questioned by the police. Glenda Coxe’s uncle Nesbett had been murdered the previous night, apparently during an attempted robbery at his home.
The officer investigating the case was Inspector Flaver, a bustling middle-aged man who came right to the point. “So your name is Simon Ark and you’re a friend of Mr. Vats. Is that any reason why I should talk to you?”
Simon’s last encounter with Scotland Yard had been much too long ago to be meaningful to this man. Nevertheless, Simon told him, “I once helped Inspector Ashly in the matter of some Satanists and an arrow murder. I expect it was before your time.”
“Yes, I remember Ashly.” He relaxed a bit. “What do you know about this killing?”
“Far less than you at the moment. How did it happen?”
“The niece, Miss Glenda Coxe, who lives with the deceased, was working late at a research laboratory. She returned home around midnight and found him shot to death on the steps going down to the side door. The door itself had been forced open. It looks as if a burglar tried the place, not knowing anyone was home, and Coxe surprised him.”
“It looks a great deal like that,” Simon agreed. “Does Miss Coxe have an alibi—witnesses who saw her at work?”
“Oh, certainly. You can’t suspect her of killing her own uncle, can you?”
“It happens,” Simon said. “About what time did the crime occur?”
“About nine, we figure.”
“Just getting dark then, this time of year.”
Inspector Flaver nodded. “We figure there were no lights on yet. That’s why the burglar thought the house was empty. There’s a tall hedge on that side which screens the door from the neighbors.”
“They heard no shot?”
“Not a thing. But, you know, they had the telly going.”
“I’d like to see Miss Coxe,” Simon said.
“She’s just finishing her statement. Wait here.”
Glenda Coxe appeared about ten minutes later, looking tired and a bit bedraggled. When Simon Ark attempted to speak to her she held up a hand in protest. “I’ve been up all night. I’ve told the police everything I know. Please let me pass.”
“Ceritus Vats is being questioned. Did you give the police his name?”
“They asked why anyone would try to burgle our house. I had to mention the journal I’d offered both Vats and Rood.”
“Is Rood being questioned too?”
“I assume so. Now please let me pass.”
“Miss Coxe, you must have checked to see if the journal and map were stolen. Were they?”
She hesitated a moment and then answered. “They’re both safe. I believe the thief was frightened away after shooting my uncle.”
“Miss Coxe, I must see that map at once,” Simon insisted.
“That’s impossible.”
“You don’t seem to understand your position at present. If the journal and the map are shown to be frauds, this whole business could be viewed as a plot to kill your uncle from the very beginning. You present the journal to two rival bookdealers known for their interest in esoterica. One of them is sent a black widow spider, apparently by the other—though I’m sure such creatures are easy to come by in your research labs. When you have the rivalry and tension between the dealers at a fever pitch, someone breaks into your house and kills your uncle. The dealers are suspected, while you seem to have an alibi. And with your uncle dead you don’t have to wait three more years to come into your inheritance.”
Her eyes flashed with a cold fury. “Who could concoct such a fantastic plot?”
“A psychologist, Miss Coxe. A psychologist who spends her working days sending rats through mazes.”
That stopped her. She gnawed at her bottom lip and asked quietly, “What good would it do you to see the map?”
“The description given me, of a circle of dots with a horseshoe of dots within, reminded me of something. I might know the place where the treasure is buried.”
“You might know it, when my great-grandfather didn’t? When neither my uncle nor I could make anything out of it?”
“This man Hogarth would hardly leave a neatly labeled map in the hands of streetwalkers who were virtual strangers to him. Still, I repeat that I may know the place. You must decide quickly, Miss Coxe. Murder has made this a very serious business.”
She hesitated only a moment. “Very well, come with me.
As we followed her in our rented car, I said, “Simon, even if the map and the journal are genuine, that doesn’t prove she didn’t kill her uncle.”
“I know, my friend. But it gives us an opportunity to see this fabled map.”
There was no arguing with his logic, so I didn’t try. When we reached the house in Greenwich once more, I parked behind her little red car and we followed her inside.
She went at once to a small wall safe and extracted a metal box. Opening it, she took out a faded notebook. “There, gentlemen—the journal of Jack the Ripper. Just as I found it in a trunk in my father’s attic.”
“At the moment I’m more interested in the map.”
She unrolled a small piece of parchment and placed it on the table before us. As described, it consisted of five separate pieces which had been stitched together. The whole thing had a diameter of perhaps eight inches. On it, marked in red ink, was a circle of thirty dots, with an inner horseshoe of five more pairs of dots, and a larger dot near the center. At the top of the map, directly opposite the open end of the horseshoe, was an X.
“Just as I suspected!” Simon announced triumphantly.
“What is it?”
“A simplified diagram of the rocks at Stonehenge. That’s where you’ll find Jack the Ripper’s lost treasure—if there is a treasure.”
Simon telephoned Inspector Flaver and told him we planned to dig at Stonehenge for buried treasure. He suggested the Inspector meet us there, accompanied by the two bookdealers, Vats and Rood. Then he hung up before the questions started coming.
“How can you be so sure it’s Stonehenge?” I asked.
“Around 1887 it wouldn’t have been uncommon for people to be digging in the area, searching for artifacts of the past. It’s only in more recent times that the government has taken steps to preserve and protect these ancient monuments. For Hogarth it would have been the perfect hiding place for his stolen lion.”
“But his partner Slackly couldn’t read the map even after he recovered its five parts.”
“Exactly. He wasn’t familiar with Stonehenge and the dots would have meant nothing to him.”
The drive to the Salisbury Plain took nearly two hours from London, but when we arrived I spotted the Inspector and the two bookdealers at once. Stonehenge seemed alive with police that day, guarding against possible trouble from a nearby rock concert.
“All right,” Flaver said, “we came. This had better be worthwhile.”
“It will be,” Simon assured him.
We took the tunnel from the parking area, beneath the highway to Stonehenge. The place was filled with summer tourists and a group of youths from the rock concert who were carrying on a sort of chanting ceremony. “They imagine they’re Druids,” Inspector Flaver explained, “though of course these stones were here long before the Druids came.”
We passed through the great stone archways, which somehow seemed smaller with all the people about. Then Simon consulted the stitched-together parchment once more and paced off a distance to the point that seemed to correspond roughly with the spot on the map where the X was drawn.
“It’s far enough beyond the actual monument, so we can dig here,” Simon said. “I trust you brought a shovel, Inspector.”
“We have one in the car,” he admitted.
Finally it was Martin Rood who insisted on starting the digging. “If it’s there I want to find it,” he said.
Vats tried to pull the shovel from him, but Inspector Flaver intervened. “If you find anything at all, I’m taking it. If there’s any truth to Miss Coxe’s story, it’s the property of the British government.”
But after twenty minutes Rood threw down the shovel. “Nothing here,” he said, obviously disappointed.
“Perhaps a bit to the left,” Simon suggested, consulting the map again. Ceritus Vats took over the digging for a time while the rest of us watched. Some tourists had drifted over, but Flaver’s orders to the police on guard kept them away.
After another half-hour’s digging Vats gave up too. “If it was ever here, it’s gone.”
“He would have buried it deeper,” Simon speculated, “because of all the digging in the area. He wouldn’t have wanted it uncovered by accident.”
I jumped into the hole and took up the shovel. We were only down about four feet and Simon’s reasoning seemed sound to me. If the treasure was here at all, it would be deeper.
As I plunged the shovel into the earth for the third time I hit something solid. “It could be just a rock,” I cautioned, stooping to scoop the dirt away by hand.
But it wasn’t a rock. It was something hard and heavy, wrapped in burlap sacking that had partly disintegrated with the passage of time. I unwrapped it and held it high, brushing the clinging dirt from its glistening surface.
“The treasure of jack the Ripper!” Ceritus Vats said in a voice touched with awe. And indeed it seemed a treasure—a striding lion all in gold, with fifty glistening diamonds set into the body at regular intervals.
Only Simon seemed unimpressed. He took the lion in both hands and hefted it. “The journal said solid gold. I could tell by the ease with which you lifted it that this isn’t solid gold. A gold statue of this size would weigh nearly a hundred pounds. And those diamonds are fakes as well.”
Vats could not believe it. “But—but something like that could never be presented to the Queen!”
“Exactly—which leads us to believe it was never meant for Queen Victoria. That merchant, Felix Rhineman, collected the money, had a cheap statue gold-plated and encrusted with imitation diamonds, then dropped word at a place where thieves like Hogarth and Slackly would hear of it. There was no danger from his standpoint. Even if they discovered after the robbery that the statue was a fake they could hardly report it to the police.”
“And Rhineman kept the money he collected,” I said. “He made a handsome profit and Queen Victoria never really lost anything.”
Simon Ark nodded. “The only losers were those five women who carried parts of Hogarth’s map.”
“Why did Slackly have to kill them, Simon? Especially the way he did?”
Simon Ark took out the parchment map and held it to the light, “This is not the usual parchment, my friend, made from the skin of a sheep or goat. Slackly mutilated their bodies after strangling them so the missing pieces of flesh would go unnoticed. You see, Hogarth paid those poor women to let him tattoo the five parts of his map on their skin.”
After that Simon walked for a long time with Inspector Flaver. Then Simon and I departed, leaving Ceritus and his rival Rood with Glenda Coxe and the Inspector. “But who killed Nesbett Coxe?” I asked on the drive back. “You never solved it, Simon!”
“My friend, I am not a detective, much as you would like to make me one. I am merely a wanderer, searching the world for evil. At times I find it in unlikely places. At times I find it in the eyes of a twelve-year-old child grown to adulthood.”
“You mean—?”
“The story of the Ripper’s treasure was either true or false. On the basis of what we found here, we concluded it was true, to the best of Raymond Slackly’s knowledge when he wrote the journal. But if the journal is true we must believe that Glenda Coxe found it where she said—in her father’s attic trunk. Now her uncle told us yesterday that her house burned down when she was twelve. She lost everything, including her parents. Therefore her discovery of Slackly’s journal and the map must have come before that fire!”
“Perhaps,” I was willing to grant.
“Not perhaps, but certainly! And can you imagine the effect this discovery would have on a child of that impressionable age? Her great-grandfather—the most terrible murderer in London’s history! We know it had an effect on her, because she kept it a secret all these years till now.
But I shook my head. “There’s a flaw in your reasoning, Simon. Suppose she found the journal sometime before the fire as you say. It would still have burned up, unless she deliberately removed it from the house before the fire.”
“Exactly, my friend.”
“You mean she burned down her own house? Killed her own—?”
“And now resurrected the journal to kill again, in such a way that Vats or Rood would be blamed for it. She needed two suspects, in case one of them could prove an alibi for last night. Remember that back door to her laboratory? An easy way out, and back in, while her coworkers thought she never left the building.”
“And you told all this to Inspector Flaver?”
“I did. The proof is up to him. I believe he’ll start with the fire fifteen years ago.”
“And the map, Simon?”
“I think it will go into Scotland Yard’s files, along with the journal. Someday, perhaps, when there is not already enough horror in the world, it can be revealed.”
We drove on toward London, and that was the last I ever heard of the treasure of Jack the Ripper.