CHAPTER II
THE TALE OF A COINCIDENCE
“The late Viscount Heatherslie,” said Mr. Crum, tapping the desk before him like a schoolmaster demanding silence for a lecture, “was a collector, and at the same time an economist. These you will probably think are walks in life entirely incompatible one with the other. I will explain further. Though he lived far within his income, he had the mania for collection and gratified it. But he did this by making it a rule never to buy what had a merely temporary or sentimental value, but only what was likely to be intrinsically marketable. I never knew a man with a sounder sense of finance or one who, without professional knowledge, made such use of unprofessional experience. I doubt if he ever struck a bad bargain in his life. You will to-day reap the benefit of his judgment. I do not think I exaggerate when I say that you may safely count on his treasures fetching a sum of not less than one hundred thousand pounds.”
I gasped in amazement, nearly bouncing from my chair. My excited shuffling upset a blob of ink from the inkstand before me. With an air of respectful deprecation Crum began to mop it up methodically, before answering the questions I fired at him like bullets.
“Great Heavens!” I exclaimed, “the leery old dog! You mean to tell me in sober earnest that he has amassed all that money by simple grubbing after curios, when we thought he just roamed around for mere amusement and love of travel. Where has he stuck them all? Not at Kilberran, I sincerely hope, or they’re all rotten with mildew by now. And what are they? Pictures, bronzes, china? Why, neither my mother nor my poor old dad had an inkling of it. Great Scott! One hundred thousand pounds. Now really, don’t you think you may be exaggerating, my dear Mr. Crum?”
“I may say that it is not a habit to which I am given, my lord,” he answered dryly, “but it will not be hard to convince you. The collection has been valued by more than one expert, and the lowest figure rendered by these gentlemen was a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, and the collection has been added to since then.”
“But what in the name of goodness can be worth all that money? Why, it would take a large gallery to house pictures up to that figure.”
“Certainly. But I may as well explain at once that the whole collection is within these walls. It is in a large safe in my cellars. It consists wholly of coins.”
“Coins!” I bawled delightedly, “then I hope the half of them have her Majesty’s face on them, God bless her. I see what you’re getting at. You mean the old boy was a miser.”
He drew himself back into his chair with an air of offence.
“I am not given to jest on business matters,” he said in his stateliest manner. “No; your uncle was simply one of the first numismatists of the century. His is the finest harvest of ancient coins ever made by any private individual. If you see fit to turn it to its marketable worth, you will create an excitement among collectors unparalleled for the last five decades. And till the catalogues are published, not one of them will have an idea of the treasures they will find listed there.”
“Well, as far as I am concerned, I don’t mind how soon they’re gratified and surprised,” said I; “but I should like to have a look at the lot now, if it’s not seriously inconveniencing you. Can we descend to visit them?” for I itched to view this astounding hoard with my very own eyes.
“Of course, my lord. It would be only natural that you should wish to inspect such an important part of your inheritance. But I have something more to say. It was not in mere zeal for collecting that your uncle had lately travelled so widely. I have another astonishment in store for you—not so entirely agreeable, no doubt, but out of the common, I think I may say absolutely out of the common.”
“Well, as we’re out of the range of coins this time then, I trust it’s nothing less than banknotes,” I answered. “But for goodness sake what is it?” I added impatiently, for his self-important deliberation began to get on my nerves.
He did not suffer himself to be in the slightest degree flurried by my impatience. His sentences, in fact, seemed to gather a yet more leisurely accent as he unfolded his tale.
“You must let me tell the thing in my own way, my lord. It will be far more conclusive than jerking it out at you in scraps. The facts in sequence were as follows—
“Among the family treasures which have come down the centuries—and I sincerely wish there had been more of them—was a certain amount of old coins which have been in the custody of my firm for at least five generations. They comprised for the most part specimens of the gold and silver coinage of most European countries during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some were of great value. Some were by no means rare. Evidently one of your ancestors—probably, I should say, Sir John Dorinecourte, the famous Elizabethan admiral—had the craze of collection, which has since broken out in your late uncle’s case. At any rate the box contained moidores, zecchins, pesos, crowns, and every sort of currency of every known land—known to our ancestors of that time, at least—to a very considerable amount. The mere bullion, I should say, would be worth a considerable sum. Among them were, however, a couple of gold pieces placed apart, and these had no signification placed opposite them in the catalogue, and bore no sign either on the face or the reverse in any language known at the present day.”
“It sounds charmingly mysterious, my dear Mr. Crum,” I interrupted. “Now, you aren’t going to tell me that the secret still remains unfathomed?”
“My lord, my lord,” said the old fellow entreatingly, “you must allow me to tell you the thing methodically, or not at all. If I’m hurried I shall forget some detail, and I have given time and effort to memorize the matter completely.”
I apologized humbly, settling myself back in my chair resignedly to hear the thing out with no further interruption. Crum continued in his slow, modulated tones.
“I think that it was the sight of that hoard, when your uncle saw it at his accession to the title, which first woke in him the craze for collecting. He no doubt reflected that here was the nucleus of an exceedingly fine numismatic museum, and from that day he set himself steadily to add to it, with an increasing knowledge of his subject, of which you are now reaping the benefit. But those two unknown coins were always a sore mystery to him. Many a time have I seen him take them up—he used to visit me two or three times every year to place what he had possessed himself of in that time with the rest—and turn them over and over in his fingers wistfully, studying every line and figure as if there must be some concealed clue which he had missed. But it was only last year that he gained the trace which put him on the road to success, and also, as it has unfortunately turned out, to death as well.”
“What!” I shouted, nearly jumping out of my chair. “Do you mean to say——”
He held up his hand deprecatingly.
“Please, my lord, please restrain your impatience. You shall have every detail in good time, I assure you. I only mean to say that it was in pursuit of his intense desire to solve the origin of those coins that he was travelling in Central America, where he caught the fever which has been fatal to him. The rest I will tell you as shortly as possible.
“It was last year, as I was saying, that the first trace came to his hand by the merest accident. His lordship was in Portugal. From there I got a letter from him on business matters, and at the end—his lordship was aware that, of course in a modified form, I was interested in his quest—he remarked, ‘A most extraordinary thing has happened. I have found a dozen more of the unknown coins, and what is more an ancient document—no less than a letter written by Sir John Dorinecourte, my ancestor. I will tell you more on my return.’ It was some three weeks after that that his lordship came to see me.
“Nearly his first words to me were, ‘Well, Mr. Crum, the mystery of the coins is pretty well solved, but a greater mystery has arisen on the ashes of the first. The gold pieces are Mayan.’ The word Mayan, I must confess, conveyed nothing to me at the time, but he very soon explained it. The Mayans inhabit—though perhaps your lordship knows as much—the land of Yucatan to the south of Mexico. They are a wild and savage race, but there is every reason to believe that centuries ago theirs was a mighty empire. The coins dated from this extinct civilization of long ago. And now for the method by which your uncle ascertained as much.
“He was wandering along the side-streets of Lisbon one afternoon, when he espied a small curio shop. Outside the window were displayed various articles of furniture, china, etc., for sale, and among these was a curious cameo brooch which rather took his fancy. He entered to make a bid for it, and managed to secure it for what he considered a fair price. He wandered listlessly about the shop, as the woman in charge was placing it in a box for him, and suddenly came upon a glass-covered box full of coins. You may imagine his surprise when, among the rows of copper and silver pieces, he saw staring up at him no less than twelve gold replicas of these mysterious coins of his own. His astonishment was great, but he managed to conceal it from the shop-keeper when he asked her the price she demanded for these ‘medals,’ as he prudently called them.
“She named one very little higher than their simple worth as bullion, intimating at the same time that as they did not seem to commemorate any special event, customers for them had been few. She went on to relate how she came to possess them. A strange story indeed. With some pride she told your uncle that her husband was really of noble blood, but sunk to a narrow pittance beyond the keeping up of his title. Ruined by the failure of vintage after vintage, he had at last compounded with his creditors by giving up his landed possessions, and she and he were now living by the sale of art curios, a good proportion of which she sadly explained was from their own dwindling inheritance.
“Further inquiry elicited the fact that the ‘medals’ had been discovered in an ancient box of cedar wood, which had been left to rot and moulder in an attic of their former mansion, where, wrapped in papers covered with writing in a foreign tongue, nigh fifty of them had been found strung together on a slender chain. She pointed out that all of them had a small hole beside the rim, and your uncle remembered that the same thing was noticeable in those he possessed himself.
“The first and most natural thing was to inquire for the paper wrappings, but for some time these could not be discovered, and it was feared they were lost. However, the next day his lordship received a message from the woman to the effect that she had found them thrust away among a heap of similar refuse and that they were at his service if he chose to purchase them for a small sum. Your uncle did not dally in returning to the shop, as you may suppose. You may also imagine his surprise when he found that one of the documents was not only in English, but absolutely signed by his own ancestor. You shall see the original, so I will not stop to describe it. It is of the other document that I wish particularly to speak.
“It was inscribed on a peculiar yellow-looking fabric, more of the nature of linen than of paper or parchment, and experts have since decided that the coloring matter used as ink is the fluid emitted by the octopus. But the most curious part was the writing, if writing it can properly be called. It consisted of squares, oblongs, parallels, and other geometric figures ranged in a sequence which was not easy to understand, but the chief point of interest was that these figures resembled in every particular the figures on the coins. His lordship immediately and willingly paid what was asked for them, took his passage straightway home to England, and armed with his document paid a visit to the British Museum to get what expert help he could in translating them.
“It is an extraordinary thing how circumstances dovetail into one another. No sooner had he entered the department, where he had so often been before to get light on his coins, than he was greeted with the following question by Professor Barstock, the head, before he had even mentioned his errand.
“‘I am particularly pleased to see you, Lord Heatherslie,’ said the Professor, ‘because information has lately come to hand which I think will settle the origin of your coins, which we have so often pored over. Monsieur Lessaution of Paris, the well-known Egyptologist, has discovered that there is a connecting link between the ancient Egyptian script and that on the monuments of Yucatan. It seems absurd, considering that they are divided by five thousand miles of sea, but he puts his points very plausibly, and I think you should see him.’
“When you have seen the other paper which your uncle discovered—the one in English—I think you will understand that these words came as a most astounding confirmation of his suspicion that he was on the right track at last. He simply opened his bag and spread the mysterious scroll before Professor Barstock, laying one of the coins beside it.
“You may imagine the astonishment of the latter on seeing not only the coin with which he was familiar, but the scroll covered with similar symbols. Nor did he fail to astonish your uncle in his turn. Taking him to another part of the building he showed him some grey, fibrous-looking slabs of dried pulp, and they too were covered with the oblong, square, and parallel figures of the document, only that instead of being raised they were indented. They were, as Mr. Barstock explained, squeezings, taken from the temple facade at Chichitza, where M. Lessaution was now conducting his investigations.
“The Frenchman’s theory was that by comparing the Egyptian symbol with that in Yucatan, and using the grammar and accidence of the former language as a guide to the latter, these inscriptions, which have as yet been undecipherable, would be made clear, and much would be learned about the Mayan civilization of long ago.
“This was quite enough for your uncle. He decided that he would not wait for M. Lessaution’s return, which was not expected for another six months, but would cross the Atlantic and interview him on the spot where he was conducting his experiments. After reading the letter left by your ancestor, I can quite understand that to a man of leisure like his lordship, and a man with a taste for wandering to boot, the fascination of such a quest would be great. At any rate he sailed for Greytown about five months ago, and with the exception of a single letter purely on business matters I have heard no word from him since. You can imagine that his death has come as a shock.”
“Well,” said I, “I am certainly astonished, but I cannot say I am greatly moved by your tale, Mr. Crum. It would certainly never have occurred to me to cross three or four thousand miles of ocean to interview a foreign savant about a coin or a document. But then, you see, I am not made that way.”
“Very likely, my lord,” submitted the lawyer, “but you will pardon me if I say that you have not seen the letter by Admiral Sir John. That sheds a very curious light on the question, and certainly adds vastly to the interest one of your family must take in it. But I will show it to you at your leisure.”
“I am as leisured now as I am likely to be for the rest of time,” said I, “but before I see the letter I should just like to squint at the coins, if you are not particularly occupied for the next hour.”
He rose at once and preceded me to the outer office, where a door opened on to a flight of stone steps. Down these he guided me, ushering me at last into a broad, whitewashed cellar, wherein not less than half-a-dozen great safes faced each other from wall to wall. He clicked a key in the lock of one, and turned a handle. The great door swung back and showed row upon row of numbered sliding drawers, lined with velvet, and covered—every square inch of them—with coins of every degree of dirt, ancientry, and denomination. One drawer alone was nearly empty, and this held two gold pieces, and placed beside them on the velvet a sheet of ancient paper, covered with crabbed writing and faint with the dust of ages. The lawyer took it up and unfolded it carefully, and then I saw for the first time the screed that sent my uncle speeding across the ocean at its behest, and which was to leave its mark on my life also.