The Lost Million

Between the smart chauffeur and ourselves the window was closed; therefore we could converse without being overheard.

“Mr Shaw told me how generously you assisted him when you met at Totnes,” she exclaimed at last. “Ah, Mr Kemball!” she added, suddenly growing very serious, “you cannot tell how great a service you rendered us then.”

“Us?” I echoed. “Then I presume you are a relation?”

“His daughter,” she replied, “or, to be quite correct, his adopted daughter. My name is Asta – Asta Seymour. So perhaps I may be permitted to thank you, Mr Kemball, for the generous assistance you gave in securing my foster-father’s escape.”

“No thanks are needed, Miss Seymour, I assure you,” I declared. “But tell me, why is he in dread of the police?”

“Of that you will learn soon enough, I fear,” she replied in a hard, changed voice, which had a distant touch of sadness in it.

“Yes. But is there not a grave danger in returning to England?”

“He was compelled to do so – first in order to meet you at Totnes, and now for a second reason, in connection with the unfortunate death of poor Mr Melvill Arnold.”

“You, of course, knew Mr Arnold,” I said. “It is your hand that has placed those fresh flowers upon his grave.”

She was silent. Then in a low voice she said —

“I admit that I have done so, for he was always my friend – always. But please say nothing to my father regarding what I have done.”

“To me a great mystery enshrouds Mr Arnold,” I said. “Cannot you tell me something concerning him – who and what he was? By my very slight knowledge of him, I feel instinctively that he was no ordinary person.”

“And your estimate was surely a perfectly correct one, Mr Kemball. He was one of the most remarkable of men.”

“You knew of his death. How?”

“I knew he was in London, for he scribbled me a note telling me his address, but requesting me to reveal it to nobody, not even my father,” she said, in a low, hoarse voice. “I called to see him upon some urgent business – because he wished to see me, but, alas! they told me at the hotel that he had died only a few hours before. So I went away, fearing to reveal myself to you, who they told me was his friend. Two days later I made inquiries, and learned where they had buried him. Then, in tribute to the memory of the man of whose greatness of heart and remarkable attainments the world has remained in ignorance, I laid flowers upon his grave.”

“Why did you fear to reveal yourself to me, Miss Seymour?” I asked earnestly, looking straight into her soft brown eyes as the car rushed along.

But she avoided my gaze, while a flush overspreading her cheeks betrayed her embarrassment.

“Because – well, because I did not know how far you might be trusted,” was her frank, open response, after a moment’s hesitation. “Indeed, I do not even now know whether you would still remain our friend and preserve the secret if the ugly truth became revealed to you!”

Chapter Seven

Dawnay Makes Confession

Her curious reply greatly puzzled me. What could be “the ugly truth” to which she had referred?

At her side I sat in silence for some time. The car was tearing along a wide straight main road between dusty hedges and many telegraph wires, and as I glanced at her I saw that she was staring straight before her fixedly, with a strange hard look upon her beautiful countenance.

Perhaps I might have been mistaken, but at my mention of the dead man I felt certain that I saw in her eyes the light of unshed tears.

Through the busy town of Northampton we went, and out again on the road to lettering – a road I knew well, having motored over it many times. In the centre of the latter town we turned sharply to the left, and, taking the Oakham Road, soon passed through the village of Great Oakley, and suddenly descending a very steep hill, on the summit, of which a castle was perched, we found ourselves in the wide straggling main street of Rockingham village.

My fair companion spoke but little. She seemed suddenly to have become strangely preoccupied. Indeed, it struck me as though she had been seized by some sudden apprehension, by a thought which had crossed her mind for the first time. Her manner had completely changed.

“Your father has been away in France since I met him?” I remarked, for want of something else to say.

“Yes,” she responded; “he has been moving rapidly from place to place for reasons to which I need not refer.”

“But why has he returned if there is still danger?” I queried.

“I scarcely think there is further danger – at least at present,” she answered. I was puzzled at her reply, but not for long, as I will relate.

The car slipped through Rockingham, and when about two miles farther on swung abruptly through a handsome pair of lodge-gates and into a broad, well-timbered park, at last pulled up before a long, old-fashioned Jacobean mansion which commanded from its grey stone terrace fine views of the green undulating hills and rich pastures around. The old ivy-clad place, with its pointed gables and mullioned windows, was a good type of the stately English home, and as the car drew up at the porch the great door was flung open by a neat man-servant, who bowed low as we entered the fine hall, where the stone slabs were, I noticed, worn hollow by the tread of generations.

The place was built in a quadrangle, two-storeyed, with handsome heraldic devices in the stained windows. There seemed to be roomy corridors, leading by stout oak doors to roomier apartments within, some oak-panelled, others with moulded ceilings and carved stone fireplaces. The whole place had a cloak and rapier look about it, built probably when the old Cavalier was poor and soured and had sheathed his sword, but nevertheless was counting the months when the King should come to his own again.

I followed Asta Seymour along the hall, and turning into a corridor on the left, suddenly found myself in a pleasant sitting-room wherein the man I knew as Dawnay stood, his hands behind his back, awaiting me.

As we entered she closed the door behind us. The room bore an old-world air, with chintz-covered furniture and filled with the perfume of pot-pourri.

“At last, Mr Kemball! At last?” cried the fugitive, crossing quickly to me and taking my hand in warm welcome. “So Asta found you all right, eh?”

“Her appearance was certainly a surprise,” I said. “I expected you to meet me yourself.”

“Well,” he laughed, his small narrow-set eyes filled with a merry twinkle. “It would hardly have been a judicious proceeding. So I sent Asta, to whom, I may as well tell you, I entrust all matters of strictest confidence. But sit down, Mr Kemball. Give me your hat and stick.”

And he drew forward for me a comfortable chair, while the girl, excusing herself, left us alone.

When she had gone, my friend looked me in the face, and burst out laughing, exclaiming —

“I suppose, Mr Kemball, this is rather a surprise to you to find that Harvey Shaw, the occupier of Lydford Hall, and Alfred Dawnay are one and the same person, eh?”

“It is,” I admitted. “I have passed the edge of your park many times in my car, but I never dreamed that you lived here.”

“Well,” he said, “I rely upon your secrecy. You were extremely good to me the other day, so I see no reason why I should not be just a little frank with you.”

“Your affairs are, of course, no business of mine,” I declared. “But whatever you may reveal to me I shall certainly treat with the strictest confidence.”

“Ah! I feel sure that you will. Melvill Arnold would never have taken you into his confidence if he had not been certain that he could trust you. He was one of the very shrewdest men in all England, or he would not have been so enormously successful.”

From the long windows, with their small leaded panes, I could see from where I sat far away across the park with its fine beech avenue. Over the wide fireplace were carved many heraldic devices in stone, while against the dark oak-panelling the bright chintzes showed clean and fresh. Taste was displayed everywhere – the taste of a refined man.

Mr Shaw, as he was apparently known there, was dressed very different from the occasion when we had met at Totnes. Then he had assumed the appearance of a racing man, but in his guise of country gentleman he was dressed in morning-coat of a rather old-fashioned cut, and pepper-and-salt trousers, an attire which gave him a quiet and somewhat distinguished appearance.

I sat before him, wondering at his remarkable dual personality – the man hunted by the police, and the wealthy occupier of that fine country mansion.

His small, shrewd eyes seemed to realise the trend of my thoughts as he lounged back in his chair near the window, regarding me lazily.

“I promised, Mr Kemball, that I would see you again as soon as opportunity offered,” he said; “and feeling assured of the spirit of good fellowship existing between us, I have this afternoon let you into the secret of my double life. That evening at Exeter I had a very narrow squeak of it – by Gad! one of the narrowest in all my life. An enemy – one whom I had believed to be my friend – gave me completely away. The police evidently expected to find me through you, for you were watched constantly. Everywhere you went you were followed.”

“You know that?”

“I do,” he said. “The fact is I have a personal guardian who constantly watches over me, and warns me of danger. You saw him on his cycle at Lathbury. He watched you while I was absent in France shaking off those bloodhounds of the law.”

“And you have now shaken them off, I presume?”

“I think so. Scotland Yard has, happily, never yet associated Harvey Shaw, Justice of the Peace for the County of Rutland, and one of the visiting justices of Oakham Gaol, with Alfred Dawnay, alias Day, whom they are so very eager to arrest,” and he laughed grimly. “Mine is an amusing situation, I assure you, to sit on the Bench and try prisoners, well knowing that each police-officer who appears as witness would, if he knew, be only too eager to execute the warrant outstanding.”

And his broad, good-humoured face again expanded into a smile.

“Certainly. I quite see the grim humour of the situation,” I said.

“And if you had not assisted me, Mr Kemball, I should, at this moment, have been under detention in His Majesty’s prison at Brixton,” he said. “By the way, I have to return the suit of clothes you so very kindly lent to me. My man has them upstairs ready packed. I shall send them to you by parcel-post. Gates was, I think, rather surprised to find another man’s clothes among my kit. But fortunately he’s used to my idiosyncrasies, and regards them as mere eccentricities on the part of his master. But he is always discreet. He’s been with me these ten years.”

“How long have you lived here, Mr – er – ”

“Shaw here,” he interrupted quickly.

“Mr Shaw. How long have you lived here? I thought the place belonged to Lord Wyville?”

“So it does – at least to the late lord’s executors. I’ve rented it for the past three years. So in the county I’m highly respectable, and I believe highly respected.”

“The situation is unusual – to say the least,” I declared.

“Perhaps I’m a rather unusual man, Mr Kemball,” he said, rising and crossing the room. I saw that in his dark green cravat he wore a fine diamond, and that his manner and bearing were those of a well-born country gentleman. Truly, he was an unusual person.

“I hope,” he went on, halting suddenly before me, “that as you have associated yourself with my very dear and intimate friend, Melvill Arnold, you will now become my friend also. It is for that reason I venture to approach you as I have done to-day.”

“Well,” I said, my natural sense of caution exerting itself as I recollected the dead man’s written injunction, “I must admit, Mr Shaw, that I am sorely puzzled to fathom the mystery of the situation. Ever since my meeting with poor Mr Arnold I seem to have been living in a perfect maze of inexplicable circumstances.”

“I have no doubt. But all will be explained in due course. Did Arnold make no explanation?”

“None. Indeed, in his letter to me, which I opened after his burial, he admitted to me that he was not what he had pretended to be.”

“Few of us are, I fear,” he laughed. “We are all more or less hypocrites and humbugs. To-day, in this age of criminality and self-advertisement, the art of evading exposure is the art of industry. Alas! the copy-book proverb that honesty is the best policy seems no longer true. To be dishonest is to get rich quick; to remain honest is to face the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court. A dishonest man amasses money and becomes great and honoured owing to the effort of his press agent. The honest man struggles against the trickery of the unscrupulous, and sooner or later goes to the wall.”

“What you say is, I fear, too true,” I sighed. “Would that it were untrue. Virtue has very little reward in these days of unscrupulous dealing in every walk of life, from the palace to the slum.”

“Then I take it that you do not hold in contempt a man who, in dealing with the world, has used his opponents’ own weapons?” he asked.

“How can I? In a duel the same weapons must be used.”

“Exactly, Mr Kemball, we are now beginning to understand each other, and – ”

At that moment the door opened without warning, and Asta re-entered. She had changed her frock, and was wearing a pretty muslin blouse and skirt of dove-grey.

“Shall you have tea in here, Dad – or out on the lawn?” she inquired.

“Oh, on the lawn, I think, dear. I just want to finish my chat with Mr Kemball – if you don’t mind.”

“I’m awfully sorry I intruded,” she laughed. “I thought you’d finished.” And with a sweet smile to me she closed the door and again left us.

How very dainty she looked; how exquisite was her figure! Surely her grace was perfect.

“Really,” my companion said, “I don’t know what I’d do without Asta. She’s all I have in the world, and she’s a perfect marvel of discretion and diplomacy.”

“She’s indeed very charming,” I said, perfectly frankly.

“I’m glad you find her so. She has plenty of admirers, I can assure you. And I fear they are spoiling her. But as I was saying, Mr Kemball,” he went on, “I hope we now understand each other perfectly. Poor Arnold was such a dear and intimate friend of mine, and we were equally interested in so many financial schemes that it has puzzled me greatly that he should have sought an obscure burial as he has done, and that his affairs are not in the hands of some responsible lawyer. Did he mention anything to you concerning the terms of his will?”

“He never breathed a word regarding it. Indeed, I have no idea whether he had made one.”

“Ah!” sighed my companion; “so like poor Arnold. He always was fond of postponing till to-morrow what could be done to-day. His will – if he made one – would be interesting, no doubt, for his estate must be pretty considerable. He was a wealthy man.”

I recollected the incident of the burning of the banknotes, and that set me pondering.

“Do you anticipate that he made a will?” I asked. “I think not,” was Shaw’s answer. “He had a strong aversion to making a will, I know, because he feared that after his death the truth might be revealed.”

“The truth concerning what?”

“Concerning a certain chapter of his life which for years had been very carefully hidden. The fact is, Mr Kemball, that he feared exposure!”

“Of what?”

“Of some rather ugly facts. And for that reason he carefully avoided making much explanation to you as to who he really was. He had reasons – very strong reasons – for concealing his actual identity.”

“May I not know them?” I asked very slowly, fixing my eyes upon his.

“Some day,” was the rather strained reply. “Not now – some day – some day. I hope to be in a position to explain all to you – to reveal to you certain matters which will hold you utterly dumbfounded and amazed.”

Chapter Eight

The Story of the Cylinder

I was taking tea beneath the trees with my host and Asta, when there approached a tall, dark-haired athletic young fellow in grey flannels and straw hat. He was smiling merrily, and the sudden light in the girl’s eyes when she saw him was sufficient to reveal to me that they were intimate friends.

They grasped hands, while Shaw exclaimed in his slow deliberate drawl —

“Hulloa, Guy! I thought you had gone up to town?”

“No. I had a wire which put off my appointment until Thursday, so I’ve come over for a cup of tea.” Then she introduced the young fellow to me as Guy Nicholson.

He seated himself in one of the long cane deckchairs, and as Asta handed him some tea the pair began to chat about a tennis tournament which was to be held at a neighbouring house. Presently he turned to me, and we had a long conversation. He had the distinct bearing of a gentleman, smart, spruce, and upright, his handsome smiling face bronzed by the sun, while he seemed brimming over with good-humour.

From the first I instinctively liked him. Shaw explained that the young fellow was a near neighbour, whose father, an ironmaster in the North, had died a couple of years ago, leaving him a handsome fortune.

“He’s always about with Asta,” he added confidently in a low voice. “And I have suspicion that she has grown very fond of him.”

As I glanced across at the pair I saw how well suited they were to each other. She looked the personification of all that is lovely. Her cool muslin blouse and grey skirt fell to her young form prettily; her dark wavy hair shadowed the great brown eyes now that she had removed her motor-bonnet, making them seem to hold in their depths a vague knowledge that should never come to the ken of man, save perhaps at that moment when love would drag from them their slumbering secrets.

But that was only one of Asta’s moods, and almost before I had taken notice of it she was laughing merrily with her companion as she handed him the cake.

I saw that her eyes did not flinch from the steady gaze of those others, but I knew that there was a certain quick thumping beneath the pretty blouse that made her realise she was not quite so adamant as she had believed.

She believed that her secret was her own. It did not matter about her heart. No one could see, and so no one knew.

When we had finished tea the pair rose and strolled away together through the rosery, towards the flower-garden ablaze with bright blossoms. And as they passed beneath the arches of crimson ramblers and were lost to sight, my host exclaimed, with a sigh and a sad smile —

“Ah! How delightful it would be to find oneself young again – young again like you, Mr Kemball!”

I laughed, and we lit cigarettes and began to chat. I confess that the mystery surrounding this man who had so openly admitted to me that he was an adventurer as well as a county magistrate greatly attracted me. I found myself fascinated by the whole unusual circumstances. One curious fact I had noted was that while Asta was aware of Arnold’s death she had never told the man whom she knew as father. What motive had she in concealing the truth? Again, it seemed very evident that the young man Nicholson little dreamed that Mr Harvey Shaw was anything else than the wealthy idler which he pretended to be. And surely Asta had not undeceived him.

As together we strolled about the beautiful well-kept grounds, and as he showed me his motor garage, wherein stood four cars of various types, his electric lighting plant and electric pumps for the water supply, I tried to obtain from him some further information regarding the man Arnold.

But to all my ingenious inquiries he remained dumb.

Therefore I turned my attention to Asta, and discovered that he had adopted her when she was left alone a little child of eight.

“My life, Mr Kemball, has been very full of change and variety. Sometimes for months I have been compelled to live in strict seclusion – sometimes in places hardly civilised. I spent a year in the mountains of Northern Albania, for instance, living with one of the mountain tribes; and on another occasion necessity compelled me to live for eight months in an obscure village in Corfu. But through it all little Asta has been my companion – ah, yes! – and how often she has cheered my lonely, solitary life!”

I saw that, whatever might be this man’s character, he was devoted to her. While she, on her part, had shown herself to be ever watchful of his interests.

“Then she really is quite a cosmopolitan!” I exclaimed.

“Certainly. She speaks three languages perfectly. Few girls of her age have, like her, seen life in all its various phases, from that of the peasant hut to life here in an English home. But,” he added, “when Arnold spoke to you in confidence did he tell you nothing?”

“Of what?” I asked.

“Nothing concerning his past?”

“Nothing.”

“He did not mention me – eh?” asked my companion.

“Only to urge me to carry that letter to you at Totnes.”

“And he gave you nothing else? I understood you to say that he treated you with a certain amount of confidence,” and he looked me narrowly in the face.

“He gave me two objects,” I replied. “A small golden figure of the Egyptian god Osiris – a very ancient relic – and a curious and much corroded cylinder of bronze.”

“Great Heavens! The bronze cylinder!” he gasped, starting and standing before me open-mouthed. His face was blanched at mention of it.

“Yes.”

“He gave you that, eh?” he cried in distinct alarm. “And you accepted the trust – you were fool enough to do that?”

“Of course I did. Why?”

“Ah! You would not have done so had you but known the terrible evil which must now threaten you,” he said in a low, hoarse voice, his manner changing to one of great alarm. He seemed agitated and nervous.

“I don’t quite follow you,” I said, much puzzled at his manner.

“You are, of course, in ignorance, Mr Kemball. But by the acceptance of that executorship – by the holding in your possession of that cylinder you are a doomed man.”

“Doomed? How?” I asked, with an incredulous smile.

“I tell you this quite openly and frankly, because you have already proved yourself my friend,” he said, his face now entirely transformed. We were standing together at the edge of the square croquet lawn, once the bowling-green, where the great old box-trees were clipped into fantastic shapes, while at the end was the long stone terrace with the open park beyond.

“I think you told me that he made you a present in banknotes?” Shaw went on. “Ah! Melvill Arnold knew only too well what dire unhappiness and misfortune, what deadly peril, possession of that cylinder must entail. He therefore made you that payment by way of a little recompense. Did he instruct you what to do with the thing,” he inquired.

“On a certain day I am to hand it over to a person who will come to me and ask for it.”

“To hand it over without question?”

“Yes, without question.”

Shaw was silent for some moments. His brows were knit, and he was thinking deeply, his arms folded as he stood.

“Well,” he exclaimed suddenly, at last, “I never dreamed that he had entrusted the cylinder to you. You, of course, still hold it in your possession?”

“Yes.”

“Then, if I were you, I should be very anxious for the arrival of the appointed day when you are to be relieved of its heavy responsibility. The history of that metal tube is a record of ruin, disaster, and death, for misfortune in one form or another always overtakes its possessor. Its story is surely the weirdest and most terrible that could be related. I knew that Arnold was in Egypt, but I never dreamed that he would dare at last to take the cylinder from its hiding-place and convey it here – to England!”

I recollected how my friend had just before his death declared that its contents would amaze the world, and I made quick inquiry concerning it.

“What it contains I do not know,” he replied. “Only Arnold himself knows, and he has unfortunately carried his secret to the grave. It was found, I believe, in the tomb of King Merenptah, the Pharaoh under whom the exodus of the Israelites took place some twelve hundred years before the Christian era. Arnold himself discovered it at Abydos, but on opening it, dreaded to allow the thing to see the light of day, and in order to preserve its influence from mankind, he again buried it in a certain spot known only to himself; but, no doubt, somewhere near the great Temple of Amon-Ra, at Karnak.”