Clutterbuck's Treasure

But there was one thing which I have never regretted in the slightest degree, and that is, that when Michail suddenly laughed out at this point, finding, I suppose, something comical about my words or actions, I laid hold of him by the shoulders from behind, and walked him twice round the room and out at the door, I kicking and he yelling. After this I felt consoled and returned to hear Jack read out the letter.

It was very much like the other.

"The Prize to the Swift," the document began, and continued as follows:—

"Do not despair, you whose energy has proved equal to emergency. Having succeeded up to this point, you are sure to succeed to the end. My treasure is not here. I would never leave it so far from home and at the mercy of prying strangers in a foreign land. How do I know that I am not watched at this moment by jealous eyes from the fishing village a mile away? This box will possibly be dug up after my departure, but I do not dread such an event, since it will add, perhaps, to your trouble in finding it, my most indolent relatives and heirs, and that is a contingency which I hail with joy. That any finder of the box will destroy it, I am not afraid. He will rather keep it by him and sell it to those who come to seek it.

"As for you, my treasure is where it should be, and must ever have been, for I would never trust it elsewhere—in my own country and in my own home. Where else should it be? Return, then, successful pilgrim; seek nearer home. Where my treasure is, there is my heart, or near it. I lie buried in Streatham churchyard; my treasure is not far away from my bones! … Dig, dig, and dig again.

"The only land upon which I or my heirs possess the right of digging is my own garden in Streatham. Dig there, my friend, and success to him who digs wisest and deepest.

"My portrait is part of the spoil for the winner; it was done for me by a pavement artist for two shillings and three pence, but do not throw it away on that account. It is the portrait of your benefactor, and his blessing will go to him who preserves it well."

The letter ended here, without signature or date.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE ELDER MAKES A GOOD BARGAIN, AND

MICHAIL A POOR ONE

"What does he mean?" I growled. "Where's the portrait?"

Jack looked in the boxes, and turned the letter round; there was no sign of a drawing or of anything connected with portraiture.

I walked up to the elder's cupboard and looked in. Besides the teacups and other domestic treasures there was a tin case, in size about one foot by nine inches. I took this without permission from the elder, who had disappeared after Michail. I opened it.

Sure enough, it was a portrait of old Clutterbuck—the vilest that could be conceived, but still recognisable. The old man could never, I should say, have laid claim to good looks; but the "pavement artist" had scarcely done him justice; he had, in fact, represented his client as so repulsively hideous that the lowest criminal would probably have reconsidered his position and turned over a new leaf if informed that he possessed a face like this of poor maligned Clutterbuck.

"By George!" said Jack, "the old chap couldn't have been very vain to bequeath such a thing as that to his heirs. What a terrible specimen he must have been! Was he like this thing?"

"He wasn't as bad as that," I replied. I felt that I had a grievance against the man, and I was not inclined to give him more than the barest justice; but I was bound to admit this much.

"I'm glad to hear it," said Jack; "for if he had been, I think I should have lost my faith in the bonâ fides of his letters and of the whole thing. That pavement artist ought to have been hanged, and his body danced on. What, in Heavens name, did the old man want to leave you a thing like that for? Why couldn't he get himself photographed if he was sentimentally anxious that his heirs should possess his portrait?"

Jack laughed; I could not help joining in. It was really rather funny; and the more one looked at the picture the more one felt inclined to laugh. The artist was evidently not ashamed of his work, for he had painted his name in full at the foot of it, "Thomas Abraham Tibbett," bless him! I know his name well—I read it every day of my life, for his masterpiece hangs over my washstand, and I look at it whenever I feel low in spirits and think that a little T. A. Tibbett will do me good.

"What a merciful dispensation that one can't see his eyes, or, rather, that they are looking downwards and don't follow you about as they do in some portraits that are not by pavement artists," said Jack. "Look at them; there'd be a lifetime of nightmares in a pair of eyes like those, if they happened to be looking up."

I have often thought how true this was, and have rejoiced that the artist of the pavement mistrusted his skill and made the eyes as he did; but for my joy there are more reasons than now appear.

Michail and the elder were outside when we left the house. I think they were conspiring against us; no violence, or anything of that sort—a mere conspiracy of roubles. Michail desired a solatium for the kicks he had received from me; the elder grieved because he had delivered up his tin box, under the influence of fear, without pecuniary equivalent.

Both were sulky and uncommunicative, or perhaps assumed sulkiness for their own ends. The only information that we could obtain from Michail, in reply to our requests that he would inquire of the elder where and how he found the tin boxes, was that Kuzmá was going to sail across to Narva to give evidence against the Swede who had shot him.

"What has that to do with it?" said Jack.

Michail grinned and scratched his head, and said something in Russian to the elder, who did likewise and cleaned up his mouth with the back of his hand besides.

"Well?" said Jack; "go on!"

"The other great lord kicked me in a painful manner!" continued Michail, placing his hand near the afflicted part.

"He will kick you again in a still more painful manner," said Jack, "if you don't explain yourself."

"There is plenty of good vodka at Narva," said Michail, "forty, fifty, or sixty copeks the bottle, or two-forty for a vedro." (A vedro contains, approximately, a gallon.)

"Oh, I see," said Jack. "All right, sonny, you shall be healed, don't fear; and the other fellow too, but ask him about the boxes first!"

"Tea-money first!" said Michail. "Alexander says the little box is worth five roubles and the big one ten. At Narva, if I complained against the merciful gentleman for kicking me, he would be detained and fined. A gallon of vodka and twenty roubles is my price for being kicked by the honourable lord."

"Kicked how many times?" said Jack. "For that sum we shall certainly kick you round the island, my friend. The police at Narva will fine as much for one kick as for thirty. We shall take all our kicks, remember!"

Michail decided not to go to Narva, and to charge me for the original kicking only—the price of which was fixed at a vedro of vodka, to be brought back from Narva by Kuzmá, and one rouble.

As for the elder, we paid him for the tin boxes, for, after all, they were treasure-trove, and might prove to be very much more valuable to us than the price asked.

This little matter being satisfactorily settled, Alexander the elder deigned to inform us how he came by the property.

This, he said, was a very simple matter. He had had the things five years, keeping them because he felt sure someone would arrive one day to find them. Five years ago an old Englishman had come on the island, all alone, to seek rare flowers and plants, as he informed everyone through a pilot at the lighthouse, since departed, who spoke English.

The elder had watched the old man's botanical researches, and saw him collect a number of roots of "brusnika and other rubbish," and saw him also plant four posts in the wood, digging holes for each and putting them in and piling earth to keep them steady. Then he had dug a fifth hole, somewhere near, and buried these boxes in it, laughing and jabbering to himself, said the elder, like a madman. The rest was very simple. Old Clutterbuck sailed away in the English steamer that stopped to pick him up, and the elder quickly went and dug up the boxes, hoping to find cash, but discovering nothing more valuable than a letter he could not read. He had thought of destroying both this and "the picture of the devil," as he called old Clutterbuck's portrait, but had taken the wiser course of preserving both in case someone to whom they were not valueless should come to find them.

When Strong arrived and commenced his digging operations, the elder hoped that his opportunity had dawned; but Strong proved to be a madman with whom it was impossible to enter into negotiations.

The rest, of course, we knew.

Were we really on the road to success at last? At all events, Jack and I had the grace to admit that we had enjoyed fairly good luck after all, supposing that the letter was actually the passport to wealth which it purported to be. If the elder had destroyed it we should never have got any farther than Hogland in our researches! As for the picture, he might have done what he liked with that, we thought; though, since it seemed to be the desire of the testator that we should keep it, we piously determined to do so.

So that here we were with our object attained, or attained so far as it was possible to attain it, and with another week or so on our hands to be spent on this island before the steamer could be expected to return and fetch us away. What was to be done, and how should the time be spent?

There was fishing, and there was wandering about with our shot guns, in hopes of picking up a few grouse or other game which might be met with in the moorland and woods which covered the island. But the elder made a tempting suggestion which we caught at, though we did not anticipate much result from his idea.

There were three wolves on the island, he said, half-starved and rather savage. They lived here because they could not return to the mainland, whence they had come in the days of ice, last February or March. If we liked to pay for a sheep, he would kill one and lay it down as a decoy. On the third night, if we passed the hours of darkness in a tree over the spot, we should probably have an opportunity of shooting the brutes, and a good thing too; and it was in consideration of this fact that the elder would let us have a sheep for a merely nominal sum—fifteen roubles.

We agreed to pay this sum, so the sheep fell a victim, and was laid to rest not in but upon the earth beneath a tree.

Meanwhile the wounded Kuzmá was about to sail for the mainland in order to bring up his bandaged arm in testimony against James Strong, and the question arose whether Jack and I were not bound to accompany him in order to do what we could to ensure a fair trial to a fellow-countryman in distress.

He had done his best to murder us more than once, true. He had also foully done to death his own cousin, the younger Clutterbuck; and he had only failed to shoot down three innocent Russian peasants because one of the three had had the cleverness to knock him on the head before his purpose was half accomplished.

Yet, for all his crimes, we felt compunction about allowing him to pass, friendless and helpless, into the hands of those who are ever ready, as Englishmen (who know nothing about it) invariably believe, to draft their victims away to Siberia whether guilty or innocent. He deserved "Siberia," whatever that name may imply, as thoroughly as any rascal; but, somehow, though neither of us would have moved a finger to save his neck had it been in danger at the hands of an English hangman, yet we felt inexplicably averse to permitting Russians to have the twisting of it.

Why this was so I do not attempt to explain—it is a psychological problem which I leave to other heads to solve; all I know, is that it was only the sturdy good sense of Jack Henderson that prevented me from stepping on board his fishing-lugger with Kuzmá, and another peasant, and sailing away to Narva to make a quixotic fool of myself in defence of the indefensible James Strong.

CHAPTER XXXII

WE RECEIVE A TERRIBLE SHOCK