Clutterbuck's Treasure

We caught a train on the Monday evening, and reached Flushing in due course; but the weather was so terribly stormy that the steamers were not running.

This circumstance put the coping-stone to my disgust and depression. It was too bad—too utterly unfortunate. The delay would cost us another twenty-four hours, every second of which time was a clear profit to Strong.

When the weather moderated, and the steamer was advertised to start in the evening, we found that an immense number of passengers had assembled to make the crossing. We obtained berths with difficulty, and at some additional expense. At supper I asked the steward whether his steamer was always crowded in this way.

"Oh dear, no, sir," said my friend; "most of these passengers have been waiting two days and more. We haven't run since the gale began—Sunday night." A moment later, the significance of this statement suddenly occurred to me.

"Why, Jack!" I exclaimed, "then"—

"Yes," said Jack. "Either he's on board now, or else he has seen us, and remained behind on shore; at anyrate there's been no digging done at Streatham."

"Thank God!" I exclaimed. "I was a brute to rave about bad luck, Jack, before I knew."

"Yes," said Jack, smiling; "the winds and waves and all the elements seem to have fought on our side this time, old man! It strikes me we are going to win yet."

At Queenborough Station, in the morning, we scrutinised every passenger that landed from the Princess Clementine. There were many pale, sea-sick, travel-worn people that came ashore to take train to London; but we were both certain that Strong was not among them. Neither did he alight at Victoria. There was no doubt about it; for once Strong's cleverness had been over-trumped by the forces of nature!

CHAPTER XXXIX

DIGGING AGAIN

Jack was determined to see me through with my treasure hunting, now—as we hoped—at its last stage, and came with me to Streatham without even a flying visit to his Gloucestershire home; which was good of old Jack.

Arrived at Streatham, we put up at the best hotel we could find, and lost no time in walking down to old Clutterbuck's house in the lower town. The place looked gloomy and forbidding, and we rang at the garden gate—the only entrance—with a feeling that our trouble was not quite over yet, and that in all probability the old man would have exerted his eccentric ingenuity to the uttermost in order to make the last stage of our search at least as difficult and toilsome as any, in spite of the seemingly simple instructions of the letter, which were merely to go and dig in his own garden at Streatham, and find what we should find.

As a matter of fact, we encountered one difficulty before getting farther than the garden gate—the outside of it, I mean; for an old caretaker answered the ring, and, opening the door an inch or two, but without removing the chain which secured it, peeped out and asked us what we wanted.

I said that we had authority from its late master to take possession of the house and garden.

The old fellow produced from his pocket an envelope, from which he drew a scrap of paper.

"Is your name William Clutterbuck?" he asked.

"He's dead," I replied.

"James Strong?" he continued.

"Oh, hang it, no! not that blackguard," said Jack. "It's all right, old gentleman; this is Mr. Clutterbuck's heir."

The old caretaker took no notice of this remark.

"Charles Strong?" he continued, unmoved.

"He's dead too," I said.

"Ellis?" said the old fellow, doubling up his paper and preparing to return the envelope into his pocket.

"No," said I, "but"—

"Then you don't come in here," concluded the man, banging the door in our faces and double-locking it.

The old caretaker's arbitrary action nonplussed me for the moment.

"But my name is down in the will together with those you have read out," I cried through the panels. Jack stood and laughed. I heard the old man stumping towards the house. I shrieked out a repetition of my last appeal. He paused and spoke. An errand boy stopped to look on, and whistled "D'isy, D'isy, give me your answer do," so loudly that I could scarcely hear the reply.

"No, it ain't," shouted the old fellow back again. "For I copied these down from it myself, and there wasn't another. And what's more, this 'ere door don't git opened to no one else but these four, and if yer wants to git into the garden, yer'll 'ave to climb the wall and see what yer'll git from the dawg. He's loose in here—speak, Ginger!"

Ginger spoke, and the utterance was certainly alarming. Ginger's voice was a deep bass, and it seemed to say—unless my imagination gave it a meaning which it did not really possess—that it was as well for those outside that there was a wall between them and Ginger. It was ridiculous; but it was extremely aggravating also.

"But my name was added afterwards," I pleaded, while Ginger barked and Jack laughed, and the errand boy, interested, stopped whistling to hear the reply. This was not encouraging.

"Garn!" said the rude old man; "I know what I knows; you go and git yer 'air cut, and come back and show me the will."

"I can do that easily enough," I shouted, "and the lawyer who drew it up too, so you'd better save trouble and let me in at once."

"You find me a lawyer and a will as gives more than four names, and in you may walk," said the heroic caretaker; "and till then you can take yourself off or do the other thing—but out you stay!"

This was evidently the ultimatum, for the old fellow could be heard stumping up towards the house. The dog Ginger remained and continued his observations in the same tone until we retired. The errand boy remembered an engagement and departed, disappointed with us, no doubt. We ought, of course, to have scaled that wall and been eaten by Ginger in order adequately to perform our duty to that errand boy; but we had other views, and went and called on the lawyer, Steggins.

That good fellow was sincerely glad to see me, I believe, and to hear that I was the successful competitor up to this point. We told him—in skeleton form—of our adventures, promising him a detailed account if he would dine with us at the hotel, which he gladly undertook to do. Then we told him of our difficulties with the old caretaker, who had received his instructions, evidently, before my name had been added to the will. Steggins laughed.

"What, old Baines?" he said. "I'll soon put that right; we are old friends, he and I. But I'm afraid this other gentleman, Mr.–er"—

"Henderson," interposed that worthy.

"Mr. Henderson cannot take any part with yourself in the digging operations; the instructions are so clear that only the successful competitor is to be allowed in the house or garden until the treasure has been found. Otherwise, you see, all the rest might have remained at home, and still have been in at the death, so to speak. They might simply wait till the report went about that you were busy digging in the garden, and would then come and take a hand on equal terms with you, who had had all the trouble."

This seemed true. It was annoying, however, that I was not to have the benefit of Jack's help in my last dig. As I told Jack, I had particularly wished him to have half the work of digging.

"And half the fun of being worried by Ginger!" added Jack; "thanks awfully, Peter. It will be rather fun to stand outside and hear you 'Good-dogging' Ginger, and presently your squalls when he lays hold of you!"

"Ginger's all right," laughed Steggins. "He's almost as old as his master, and hasn't a tooth in his head; besides, he's the friendliest of animals, and wouldn't injure a baby."

"His voice doesn't sound like it," I said. "Jack grew quite pale when he heard it." Jack shinned me under the table for this, I am sorry to say. He is a vindictive and un-Christian-like person, is Jack, when his pride is touched.

"Ginger's voice is his fortune," said Steggins; "it always has been; he's the finest dog for the other side of a wall that ever I saw."

I may say that presently, when Steggins had taken me down and introduced me to Baines and Ginger as the bonâ fide heir-at-law, I found that Ginger was quite as benevolent a being as Steggins had described him. He was a St. Bernard, of enormous size and the very mildest of manners, and his voice was a complete fraud, for whereas it threatened gore and thunder, its real purport and intent were nothing more shocking than small beer or milk and water. For all he knew, I might have been a murderous desperado, but he took to me at sight, like David to Jonathan.

Old Baines, too, was polite enough on his own side of the wall, and showed me over the house and garden. He was surprised when I asked for spades, but produced one nevertheless; however, when he had watched me turn over the first few sods of turf, he retired muttering into the house, and I could see plainly enough that the new proprietor was, in his opinion, about to prove a disappointing master, inasmuch as he was harmlessly but hopelessly mad.

The garden measured sixty-three yards by forty-eight, and on that first morning of my solitary digging I ardently wished, with all my heart, that it had been one-quarter the size. For to dig up a garden of this area, and dig it deeply too, as the latest instructions suggested, and all by oneself, was a task involving more trouble than is agreeable, or ever has been, to the present scribe, who is no lover of monotonous drudgery.

There were a few trees here and there, but not a flower-bed in the place; the whole area was roughly covered with turf upon which coarse grass had been allowed to grow throughout the summer, which grass I was obliged to mow down with a scythe before I could proceed in any comfort with my digging.

Jack did not desert me, though he might not assist me on my own side of the wall. He remained at the hotel, where I lunched and dined with him daily; and during these meals we consulted upon my labours and the direction these should take; and sometimes Jack would come and carry on a conversation from the top of the wall, upon which he climbed when none were by to see. Ginger used to look up and wag his tail affectionately upon the stranger appearing in that unorthodox fashion within the domains he was kept to watch over. If Jack had been a burglar, Ginger could not have looked up more lovingly at him as he sat on the wall and gave the dog bits of biscuit.

Several days passed, and the late Mr. Clutterbuck's garden now resembled a ploughed field; but never a glint of gold had I struck yet, nor a glimmer of diamonds, nor the pale crisp delight of a bank-note or cheque.