Clutterbuck's Treasure

Mr. Baines knew nothing, he protested, about anything whatsoever; he merely thought me a madman, and considered it the safer way to leave me entirely alone. I questioned him, now and again, as to whether he had ever observed the late lamented, whom he had served as factotum in life, employed in digging or in taking measurements in the garden; but to all these inquiries Mr. Baines gave answers courteously but plainly pointing to one and the same conclusion—namely, that though old Clutterbuck had been undoubtedly a "skinflint" (as he picturesquely described the parsimonious character of the deceased), yet he had always shown himself a sane skinflint, and therefore unlike the gentleman who now took his place as master of the establishment. By which Mr. Baines meant to infer that old Clutterbuck neither took measurements nor dug in the garden, and that I—who did both—must therefore be mad. He did not say so in as many words, but he made it pretty clear that this was his meaning.

There was no assistance to be got out of old Baines.

CHAPTER XL

JACK PROVES HIMSELF A GENIUS

After all, it was only natural that "the testator," desiring to give his heirs as much trouble as possible, should scarcely confide his secret to one who would probably reveal it, afterwards, to the first that offered him half a crown for the information.

At the end of the fourth day I was very tired and rather depressed. I had measured the garden from end to end and across, and dug down at every spot where, according to carefully thought out calculations, stretched strings would cross one another; I tried every dodge I could think of or that Jack could suggest. I gazed a dozen times at the old portrait, and could suck no inspiration from it; indeed, as regards that work of art, I had quite decided ere this that the thing was no more than a sickly joke on the part of its grim old original. I took Clutterbuck's age and measured it out in feet, and dug at the end of the seventy-first, and in inches, and diagonally in yards, starting each from the house, and the two first from the centre. I pulled up the old stump of a cut-down tree and looked inside the hole it left behind. I think I really tried nearly every device that the mind of man could conceive, but nothing had as yet come of my labours excepting fatigue and depression and stiffness.

Then, one day, on returning to the hotel, weary and cross by reason of repeated failure, I found Jack studying the portrait of old Clutterbuck, which annoyed me still more; for I was angry with the miser and his detestable expedients for keeping his money out of the hands of honest persons who had worked for it and fairly earned it.

"Look here, Peter," said Jack, smiling, "here's fun for you; see what I have found on the back of this work of art—read it for yourself!" He passed the portrait over to me.

I took it with, I am afraid, a growl of ill-temper, and read the words he had pointed out to me. They were written very faintly and in pencil on the back of the portrait, at a spot where the paper had become loose under the beading, and ran as follows—it was a doggerel rhyme, and this fact annoyed me still more in my ridiculously furious state of mind at the moment:—

"If you'd save yourself some trouble,
Dig at three foot six, and double!"

"What does it mean?" said Jack.

"Oh, take the confounded thing and chuck it into the fire!" I said sulkily.

"Well, but what does it mean, if it means anything?" Jack insisted. "You've got to take tips if you can get them, you know; so make the most of this, though it does seem to convey a rather unpleasant meaning. As I understand it, you have to dig to a depth of seven feet—that is, double three foot six, and"—

"What!" said I hotly, "dig over the whole garden to a depth of seven feet? I'll see the old skinflint"—

"Don't swear," said Jack, though I had not sworn; "but keep cool and help me to think this matter out. Now look here: he said, 'Dig at seven feet in order to save yourself trouble,' or words to that effect. Now, I can't help thinking he meant this for a tip; for if it meant that you were to dig over the whole garden to a depth of seven feet, what trouble would you save yourself by doing that? What the old boy meant was, find the right spot, and then dig down seven feet."

"Yes," I said, laughing mockingly and throwing the portrait on the table, "find the right spot; that's just the crux! If you'll kindly find the spot for me, I'll dig to any depth you like—sink an artesian well, if you please; but where the dickens is the spot?"

"You are angry and disinclined to speak like a sensible creature," said Jack. "Have your dinner, and then perhaps you'll be in a fit mood to listen to an idea which has struck me."

This rather sobered me.

"Have you really an idea?" I asked, flushing.

"Yes," said Jack, "I have; but I'm not going to tell you till you've dined. A full man is a less dangerous being than an empty one; you might fall upon me and rend me now, if you thought my idea absurd, as you very likely may."

Entreaties broke like little waves upon the shingle of Jack's obstinacy. I said I was sorry for being rude and angry; I begged to hear his last new idea. Jack's only reply was—

"Dinner's at eight; you'd better change those digging clothes and make yourself look like a decent Christian, if you can."

Jack was perfectly right. Dinner made a wonderful difference in the view I took of things in general; it always does. After dinner, armed with his pipe, sitting over an early fire in our private sitting-room, Jack dismounted from his high horse and admitted me into his confidence.

"I daresay you won't think anything of it," he said; "but it was the portrait of old Clutterbuck that set me dreaming."

"What!" I said, jumping to my feet and seizing a dessert knife, "you don't mean to say, after all my digging, that the money's hidden in it?"

"Why, man, no! I never thought of that," said Jack. "However, open the back carefully and see, if you like."

I did so; I ripped the back off and looked in the space between it and the canvas upon which the odious caricature was painted. An earwig ran out, but there was no treasure. I threw the thing back upon the table, and the knife with it.

"Don't fret," said Jack; "that's not what I meant at all. What I did mean is this: do you suppose that any sane man—and you cannot say that old Clutterbuck was anything else—would any man who was not insane take the trouble to carry a picture to the Gulf of Finland and bury it there for his heirs to find—an odious misrepresentation of his features too—unless there were some object to gain by so doing? In a word, what I can't understand is how both you and I should hitherto have accepted the ridiculous fact without suspicion."

"But we did suspect," I cried. "We said at the time that the thing was about as idiotic as it could be; but when one's right to benefit by a will depends on the sanity of the testator, one doesn't like to air one's opinion that he was mad, even though one may think so."

"Depend upon it, the old boy was no madder than you or I," said Jack gravely. "I am beginning to think that he was very sane indeed, and that he has managed the whole of this business with consummate skill—always bearing in mind his expressed desire to make his heirs sweat for their money. Now listen here. I have been thinking while you did your hard labour in the garden, and I am now perfectly convinced that the old fox did not bury his precious piece of rubbish because he valued it or thought his heir would. Quite the contrary. He knew that it was extremely likely that his heir—probably James Strong, as he supposed at the time—would chuck the portrait in the fire with a curse at the memory of the original. And why, think you, did he take the trouble to have this picture painted and to bury it and solemnly bequeath it to his heir if he suspected that the finder would burn it?"

"It beats me," said I. "Go on."

"Because he knew that the portrait was indispensable, or nearly so, to the finding of the treasure," said Jack mysteriously. "See here. He hates Strong and the rest, and knows they hate him. Therefore he makes his portrait indispensable in the hope that they will destroy it, and with it their chance of finding his money."

"Very well," said I, "let us admit all that; but how can the portrait be indispensable to, or have any connection with, the finding of the hidden treasure?"

"That's what we have to learn," said Jack; "but I have evolved a theory on that point also."

I laughed.

"Upon my life, Jack, it's too funny," I said. "You are as ingenious as Machiavelli himself; but how are you going to connect that awful daub with the buried treasure? You can't do it; I defy you!"

"Well, I'll tell you, anyhow; it may be as ridiculous as you suppose, and it may not," said Jack. "You see the eyes of the awful personage in the picture: look here, I hold the portrait thus. Now get in front of the thing and try if you can find a place where the eyes focus you; you'll have to lie down on the carpet."

Still amused, but interested nevertheless, I lay down along the carpet, as desired, and presently found a spot where the eyes certainly seemed to gaze at me.

"Well," I said, "what then? They are to gaze at the spot where the money lies hidden? Is that it?"

"That's just exactly it," said Jack, flushing a little.

CHAPTER XLI

THE EXCITEMENT BECOMES INTENSE

"But, man alive," said I, "where's the picture going to hang, or be held, in order to point out the spot?"

"That's what we've to find out," said Jack. "If my theory is right, the old boy will have prepared a place for it to hang. Are there trees, or nails in the wall?"

"There are trees, certainly," said I; "I don't know about the nails. And am I to dig a seven-foot hole wherever the confounded picture will hang?"

"Yes, you are," said Jack imperturbably, "and you know it. And now you had better go to bed; partly because you'll require some rest for these seven-foot holes, but chiefly because you are in such an evil humour to-night that I'm blessed if I will endure your society any longer!"

And so to bed I went.

That night I dreamed a great many wonderful dreams, and in each and all of them I was digging and for ever digging, and the treasure was still unfound or, when found, snatched from me! In one of my dreams, I remember, I fancied that I had hit upon the right tack, when of a sudden three huge Mahatmas bore silently down upon me from the world of spirits and demanded of me what I sought.

They looked out upon me with piercing black eyes let into cavernous sockets framed in dead-white faces, and they flapped their sable mantles over me and frightened me.

"Oh, sirs," I said, "I am seeking for buried treasure; I am within an ace of finding it and yet have not found it. Help me, I beseech you, to light upon it, and you shall do with me as you will!"