by Fergus Hume
“There is little more to tell, Hagar. Uncle Ben hid his money away, and left a will which gave it all to the person who should find out where it was concealed. The testament said the secret was contained in the Dante. You may be sure that Treadle visited me at once and asked to see the book. I showed it to him, but neither of us could find any sign in its pages likely to lead us to discover the hidden treasure. The other day Treadle came to see the Dante again. I told him that I had pawned it, so he volunteered to redeem it if I gave him the ticket. I did so, and he called on you. The result you know.”
“Yes; I refused to give it to him,” said Hagar, “and I see now that I was quite right to do so, as the man is your enemy. Well, Mr. Lorn, it seems from your story that a fortune is waiting for you, if you can find it.”
“Very true; but I can’t find it. There isn’t a single sign in the Dante by which I can trace the hiding-place.”
“Do you know Italian?”
“Very well. Uncle Ben taught it to me.”
“That’s one point gained,” said Hagar, placing the Dante on the table and lighting another candle. “The secret may be contained in the poem itself. However, we shall see. Is there any mark in the book—a marginal mark, I mean?”
“Not one. Look for yourself.”
The two comely young heads, one so fair, the other so dark, were bent over the book in that dismal and tenebrous atmosphere. Eustace, the weaker character of the twain, yielded in all things to Hagar. She turned over page after page of the old Florentine edition, but not one pencil or pen-mark marred its pure white surface from beginning to end. From “L’Inferno” to “Il Paradiso” no hint betrayed the secret of the hidden money. At the last page, Eustace, with a sigh, threw himself back in his chair.
“You see, Hagar, there is nothing. What are you frowning at?”
“I am not frowning, but thinking, young man,” was her reply. “If the secret is in this book, there must be some trace of it. Now, nothing appears at present, but later on ——”
“Well,” said Eustace, impatiently, “later on?
“Invisible ink.”
“Invisible ink!” he repeated, vaguely. “I don’t quite understand.”
“My late master,” said Hagar, without emotion, “was accustomed to deal with thieves, rogues, end vagabonds. Naturally, he had many secrets, and sometimes by force of circumstances, he had to trust these secrets to the post. Naturally, also, he did not wish to risk discovery, so when he sent a letter, about stolen goods for instance, he always wrote it in lemon-juice.”
“In lemon-juice! And what good was that?”
“It was good for invisible writing. When the letter was written, it looked like a blank page. No one, you understand, could read what was set out, for to the ordinary eye there was no writing at all.”
“And to the cultured eye?” asked Eustace, in ironical tones.
“It appeared the same—a blank sheet,” retorted Hagar. “But then the cultured mind came in, young man. The person to whom the letter was sent warmed the seeming blank page over the fire, when at once the writing appeared, black and legible.”
“The deuce!” Eustace jumped up in his excitement. “And you think ——”
“I think that your late uncle may have adopted the same plan,” interrupted Hagar, coolly, “but I am not sure. However, we shall soon see.” She turned over a page or two of the Dante. “It is impossible to heat these over the fire,” she added, “as the book is valuable, and we must not spoil it; but I know of a plan.”
W ith a confident smile she left the room and returned with a flat iron, which she placed on the fire. While it was heating Eustace looked at this quick-witted woman with admiration. Not only had she brains, but beauty also; and, man-like, he was attracted by this last in no small degree. Shortly he began to think that this strange and unexpected friendship between himself and the pawnbroking gipsy beauty might develop into something stronger and warmer. But here he sighed; both of them were poor, so it would be impossible to ——
“We will not begin at the beginning of the book,” said Hagar, taking the iron off the fire, and thereby interrupting his thoughts, “but at the end.”
“Why?” asked Eustace, who could see no good reason for this decision.
“Well,” said Hagar, poising the heated iron over the book, “when I search for an article I find it always at the bottom of a heap of things I don’t want. As we began with the first page of this book and found nothing, let us start this time from the end, and perhaps we shall learn your uncle’s secret the sooner. It is only a whim of mine, but I should like to satisfy it by way of experiment.”
Eustace nodded and laughed, while Hagar placed a sheet of brown paper over the last page of the Dante to preserve the book from being scorched. In a minute she lifted the iron and paper, but the page still showed no mark. With a cheerful air the girl shook her head, and repeated the operation on the second page from the end. This time, when she took away the brown paper, Eustace, who had been watching her actions with much interest, bent forward with an ejaculation of surprise. Hagar echoed it with one of delight; for there was a mark and date on the page, half-way down, as thus:
Oh, abbondante grazia ond’io presumi Ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna | 27.12. 38. Tanto, che la veduta vi consumi!
“There, Mr. Lorn!” cried Hagar, joyously—“there is the secret! My fancy for beginning at the end was right. I was right also about the invisible ink.”
“You are a wonder!” said Eustace, with sincere admiration; “but I am as much in the dark as ever. I see a marked line, and a date, the twenty-seventh of December, in the year, I presume, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight. We can’t make any sense out of that simplicity.”
“Don’t be in a hurry,” said Hagar, soothingly; “we have found out so much, we may learn more. First of all, please to translate those three lines.”
“Roughly,” said Eustace, reading them, “they run thus: ‘O abundant grace, with whom I tried to look through the eternal light so much that I lost my sight.’” He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t see how that transcendentalism can help us.”
“What about the date?”
“One thousand eight hundred and thirty-eight,” said Lorn, thoughtfully; “and this is ninety-six. Take one from the other, it leaves fifty-eight, the age at which, as I told you before, my uncle died. Evidently this is the date of his birth.”
“A date of birth —l a line of Dante!” muttered Hagar. “I must say that it is difficult to make sense out of it. Yet, in figures and letters, I am sure the place where the money is concealed is told.”
“Well,” remarked Eustace, giving up the solution of this problem in despair, “if you can make out the riddle it is more than I can.”
“Patience, patience!” replied Hagar, with a nod. “Sooner or later we shall find out the meaning. Could you take me to see your uncle’s house at Woking?”
“Oh, yes; it is not yet let, so we can easily go over it. But will you trouble about coming all that way with me?”
“Certainly! I am anxious to know the meaning of this line and date. There may be something about your uncle’s house likely to give a clue to its reading. I shall keep the Dante, and puzzle over the riddle; you can call for me on Sunday, when the shop is closed, and we shall go to Woking together.”
“O Hagar! how can I ever thank ——”
“Thank me when you get the money, and rid yourself of Mr. Treadle!” said Hagar, cutting him short. “Besides, I am only doing this to satisfy my own curiosity.”
“You are an angel!”
“And you a fool, who talks nonsense!” said Hagar, sharply. “Here is your hat and cane. Come out this way by the back. I have an ill enough name already, without desiring a fresh scandal. Good night.”
“But may I say ——”
“Nothing, nothing!” retorted Hagar, pushing him out of the door. “Good night.”
The door snapped to sharply, and Lorn went out into the ho
t July night with his heart beating and his blood aflame. He had seen this girl only twice, yet, with the inconsiderate rashness of youth, he was already in love with her. The beauty and kindness and brilliant mind of Hagar attracted him strongly; and she had shown him such favor that he felt certain she loved him in return. But a girl out of a pawn-shop! He had neither birth nor money, yet he drew back from mating himself with such a one. True, his mother was dead, and he was quite alone in the world—alone and poor. Still, if he found his uncle’s fortune, he would be rich enough to marry. Hagar, did she aid him to get the money, might expect reward in the shape of marriage. And she was so beautiful, so clever! By the time he reached his poor lodging Eustace had put all scruples out of his head, and had settled to marry the gipsy as soon as the lost treasure came into his possession. In no other way could he thank her for the interest she was taking in him. This may seem a hasty decision; but young blood is soon heated; young hearts are soon filled with love. Youth and beauty drawn together are as flint and tinder to light the torch of Hymen.
Punctual to the appointed hour, Eustace, as smart as he could make himself with the poor means at his command, appeared at the door of the pawn-shop. Hagar was already waiting for him, with the Dante in her hand. She wore a black dress, a black cloak, and a hat of the same somber hue—such clothes being the mourning she had worn, and was wearing, for Jacob. Averse as she was to using Goliath’s money, she thought he would hardly grudge her these garments of wo for his father. Besides, as manageress of the shop, she deserved some salary.
“Why are you taking the Dante?” asked Eustace, when they set out for Waterloo Station.
“It may be useful to read the riddle,” said Hagar.
“Have you solved it?”
“I don’t know; I am not sure,” she said, meditatively. “I tried by counting the lines on that page up and down. You understand— twenty-seven, twelve, thirty-eight; but the lines I lighted on gave me no clue.”
“You didn’t understand them?”
“Yes I did,” replied Hagar, coolly. “I got a second-hand copy of a translation from the old bookseller in Carby’s Crescent, and by counting the lines to correspond with those in the Florentine editlon I arrived at the sense.”
“And none of them point to the solution of the problem?”
“Not one. Then I tried by pages. I counted twenty-seven pages, but could find no clue; I reckoned twelve pages; also thirty-eight; still the same result. Then I took the twelfth, the twenty-seventh, and the thirty-eighth page by numbers, but found nothing. The riddle is hard to read.”
“Impossible, I should say,” said Eustace, in despair.
“No; I think I have found out the meaning.”
“How? how? Tell me quick!”
“Not now. I found a word, but it seems nonsense, as I could not find it in the Italian dictionary which I borrowed.”
“What is the word?”
“I’ll tell you when I have seen the house.”
In vain Eustace tried to move her from this determination. Hagar was stubborn when she took an idea into her strong brain; so she simply declined to explain until she arrived at Woking—at the house of Uncle Ben. Weak himself, Eustace could not understand how she could hold out so long against his persuasions. Finally he decided in his own mind that she did not care about him. In this he was wrong. Hagar liked him — loved him; but she deemed it her duty to teach him patience—a quality he lacked sadly. Hence her closed mouth.
When they arrived at Woking, Eustace led the way towards his late uncle’s house, which was some distance out of the town. He addressed Hagar, after a long silence, when they were crossing a piece of waste land and saw the cottage in the distance.
“If you find this money for me,” he said, abruptiy, “what service am I to do for you in return?”
“I have thought of that,” replied Hagar, promptly. “Find Goliath— otherwise James Dix.”
“Who is he?” asked Lorn, flushing. “Some one you are fond of?”
“Some one I hate with all my soul!” she flashed out; “but he is the son of my late master, and heir to the pawn-shop. I look after it only because he is absent; and on the day he returns I shall walk out of it, and never set eyes on it, or him again.”
“Why don’t you advertise?”
“I have done so for months; so has Vark, the lawyer; but Jimmy Dix never replies. He was with my tribe in the New Forest, and it was because I hated him that I left the Romany. Since then he has gone away, and I don’t know where he is. Find him if you wish to thank me, and let me get away from the pawn-shop.”
“Very good,” replied Eustace, quietly. “I shall find him. In the mean time, here is the hermitage of my late uncle.”
It was a bare little cottage, small and shabby, set at the end of a square of ground fenced in from the barren moor. Within the quadrangle there were fruit trees—cherry, apple, plum, and pear; also a large fig-tree in the center of the unshaven lawn facing the house. All was desolate and neglected; the fruit trees were unpruned, the grass was growing in the paths, and the flowers were straggling here and there, rich masses of ragged color. Desolate certainly, this deserted hermitage, but not lonely, for as Hagar and her companion turned in at the little gate a figure rose from a stooping position under an apple-tree. It was that of a man with a spade in his hand, who had been digging for some time, as was testified by the heap of freshly-turned earth at his feet.
“Mr. Treadle!” cried Lorn, indignantly. “What are you doing here?”
“Lookin’ fur the old un’s cash!” retorted Mr. Treadle, with a scowl directed equally at the young man and Hagar. “An’ if I gets it I keeps it. Lord! to think as ‘ow I pampered that old sinner with figs and such like—to say nothing of French brandy, which he drank by the quart!”
“You have no business here!”
“No more ‘ave you!” snapped the irate grocer. “If I ain’t, you ain’t, fur till the ‘ouse is let it’s public property. I s’pose you’ve come ‘ere with that Jezebel to look fur the money?”
Hagar, hearing herself called names, stepped promptly up to Mr. Treadle, and boxed his red ears. “Now then,” she said, when the grocer fell back in dismay at this onslaught, “perhaps you’ll be civil! Mr. Lorn, sit down on this seat, and I’ll explain the riddle.”
“The Dante!” cried Mr. Treadle, recognizing the book which lay on Hagar’s lap—“an’ she’ll explain the riddle—swindling me out of my rightful cash!”
“The cash belongs to Mr. Lorn, as his uncle’s heir!” said Hagar, wrathfully. “Be quiet, sir, or you’ll get another box on the ears!”
“Never mind him,” said Eustace, impatiently; “tell me the riddle.”
“I don’t know if I have guessed it correctly,” answered Hagar, opening the book; “but I’ve tried by line and page and number, all of which revealed nothing. Now I try by letters, and you will see if the word they make is a proper Italian one.”
She read out the marked line and the date. “‘Ficcar lo viso per la luce eterna, 27th December, ‘38.’ Now,” said Hagar, slowly, “if you run all the figures together they stand as 271238.”
“Yes, yes!” said Eustace, impatiently; “I see. Go on, please.”
Hagar continued: “Take the second letter of the word ‘Ficcar.’”
“‘I.’”
“Also the seventh letter from the beginning of the line.”
Eustace counted. “‘L.’ I see,” he went on, eagerly. “Also the first letter, ‘F,’ the second again, ‘i,’ the third and the eighth, ‘c’ and ‘o.’”
“Good!” said Hagar, writing these down. “Now, the whole make up the word ‘Ilfico.’ Is that an Italian word?”
“I’m not sure,” said Eustace, thoughtfully. “‘Ilfico.’ No.”
“Shows what eddication ‘e’s got!” growled Mr. Treadle, who was leaning on his spade.
Eustace raised his eyes to dart a withering glance at the grocer, and in doing so his vision passed on to the tree looming
up behind the man. At once the meaning of the word flashed on his brain.
“‘Il fico!’” he cried, rising. “Two words instead of one! You have found it, Hagar! It means the fig-tree—the one yonder. I believe the money is buried under it.”
Before he could advance a step Treadle had leaped forward, and was slashing away at the tangled grass round the fig-tree like a madman.
“If ‘tis there, ‘tis mine!” he shouted. “Don’t you come nigh me, young Lorn, or I’ll brain you with my spade! I fed up that old uncle of yours like a fighting cock, and now I’m going to have his cash to pay me!”
Eustace leaped forward in the like manner as Treadle had done, and would have wrenched the spade out of his grip, but that Hagar laid a detaining hand on his arm.
“Let him dig,” she said, coolly. “The money is yours; I can prove it. He’ll have the work and you the fortune.”
“Hagar! Hagar! how can I thank you!”
The girl stepped back, and a blush rose in her cheeks. “Find Goliath,” she said, “and let me get rid of the pawn-shop.”
At this moment Treadle gave a shout of glee, and with both arms wrenched a goodly-sized tin box out of the hole he had dug.
“Mine! mine!” he cried, plumping this down on the grass. “This will pay for the dinners I gave him, the presents I made him. I’ve bin castin’ my bread on the waters, and here it’s back again.”
He fell to forcing the lid of the box with the edge of the spade, all the time laughing and crying like one demented. Lorn and Hagar drew near, in the expectation of seeing a shower of gold pieces rain on the ground when the lid was opened. As Treadle gave a final wrench it flew wide, and they saw—an empty box.
“Why—what,” stammered Treadle, thunderstruck—“what does it mean?”
Eustace, equally taken aback, bent down and looked in. There was absolutely nothing in the box but a piece of folded paper. Unable to make a remark, he held it out to the amazed Hagar.
“What the d—l does it mean?” said Treadle again.
“This explains,” said Hagar, running her eye over the writing. “It seems that this wealthy Uncle Ben was a pauper.”
