“Hi, sir, stop, sir!” the fellow cried. “You’ve left something behind!” And in spite of Hamar’s denials the officious menial persisted the book was his. In the end Hamar was obliged to submit. He took the book, and rewarded the waiter with curses.
Hamar next tried to dispose of it down the area of a Chinese laundry; but a policeman saw him, and he only escaped being taken up on suspicion, by parting with a dollar. This was the climax. He did not dare make any further attempt to dispose of the book, but, with bitter hatred in his heart, tucked it savagely under his arm, and made direct for his room in 115th Street.
To his annoyance—for under the circumstances he preferred to be alone—he found two men sitting in front of his empty hearth. They were Matt Kelson and Ed Curtis; both of whom had been his colleagues at Meidler, Meidler & Co., in Sacramento Street, and like himself had been thrown out of work when the firm had “smashed.” Since that affair Hamar had studiously avoided them. It was true he had once been as friendly with them as he deemed it politic to be friendly with any one; but now—they were out of employment, and in danger of starvation. That made all the difference. He did not believe in poverty encouraging poverty, any more than he believed in charity among beggars. He had nothing to share with them, not even a thought; and resolving to get rid of his quondam friends as soon as possible, he confined his welcome to a frown.
“Hulloa! what’s the matter?” Kelson exclaimed. “When a man frowns like that, it usually means he is crossed in love.”
“Or has an empty stomach, which amounts to the same thing,” Curtis interposed. “Come—let the sun loose, Leon! We’ve good news for you!—haven’t we, Matt?”
Kelson nodded.
“What is it, then?” Hamar grunted. “Have you both got cancer?”
“No! We’ve come to borrow from you!”
“Then you’ve come to the wrong shop! I’m about done, and unless something turns up mighty quick I shall clear out.”
“For good?”
“I don’t count on being a ghost nor yet an angel,” Hamar said; “when we’ve done here, I reckon we’ve done altogether!”
“I shouldn’t have thought suicide was in your line,” Curtis remarked. “More Matt’s. I should have credited you with something more original.”
“Original!” Hamar snarled. “I defy any man to be original when he hasn’t a cent, and his stomach contains nothing but air. Give me money, give me food—then, perhaps, I’ll be original.”
“You don’t mean to say you’re cleared out of grub!” Kelson and Curtis cried in chorus. “We’ve come to you as our last hope. We’ve neither of us tasted anything since yesterday.”
“Then you’ll taste nothing again to-day—at least as far as I’m concerned,” Hamar jeered. “I tell you I’m broke—haven’t as much as a crumb in the room; and I’ve pawned everything, save the clothes you see me in!”
“And yet you can buy books—unless—unless you stole it!” Curtis said, eyeing with suspicion the volume Hamar had thrown on the table.
“Buy it! Not much!” Hamar cried quickly. “It’s one I’ve had all my life. Belonged to my grandfather. I took it with me to-night to see what I could raise on it.”
“And no one would have it? I should guess not,” Kelson said, drawing it towards him. “Why it’s got a new label inside—S. Leipman! I know him. He’s slick even for a Jew. This looks as if it belonged to your grandfather, Leon. If I’m not real mistaken you bought the book to-night. There’s something in it you thought you could make capital of. Trust you for that. Now I wonder what it was!”
“You’re welcome to see!” Hamar sneered. “Perhaps you’d like some water!”
“Water! Why water?”
“Well, instead of tea or whisky to help digest the book. Besides, it’s the only thing I have to offer you.”
“Look here, Leon,” Curtis interrupted; “what’s the good of behaving like this? We are all in the same boat—starving—desperate. So let us lay our heads together and see if we can’t think of something—some way out of it.”
“A Burglary Company Limited, for instance!” Hamar sneered. “No! I’m not having any. I’ve neither tools nor experience. The San Francisco police handle one roughly, so I’m told, and hard labour isn’t to my liking.”
“There are other things besides burglary!” Curtis said in tones of annoyance. “We might work a fake.”
“If I work anything of that sort,” Hamar said hastily, “I work alone. Think of something else.”
“I tell you Matt and I are pretty well desperate,” Curtis cried, “and if we don’t think of something soon, we shan’t be able to think at all. We’ve tried our level best to get work—we’ve answered every likely and unlikely advertisement in the papers—and all to no purpose. So if Providence won’t help us we must help ourselves. Robbery, burglary, fakes, anything short of murder—it’s all the same to us now—we’re tired of starving—dead sick of it. We would do anything, sell our very souls for a meal. My God! I never imagined how terrible it is to feel so hungry. You appear to be interested, Matt. What is it?”
“Why, look here, you fellows!” Kelson said slowly. “This book is all about a place called Atlantis that is said to have existed in the Atlantic Ocean between America and Ireland, and to have been deluged by an earthquake owing to the wickedness of its inhabitants. They practised sorcery.”
“Practised foolery,” Hamar said. “It’s tosh—all tosh! Wickedness is only a matter of climate—and there’s no such thing as sorcery.”
“So I thought,” Kelson replied; “but I’m not so sure now. The author of this book writes darned sensibly, and is apparently at no loss for corroborative testimony. He was a professor too. See! Thomas Henry Maitland, at one time Professor of English at the University of Basle in Switzerland. There’s an asterisk against his name and a footnote in very old-fashioned handwriting—the ‘s’s’ are all ‘f’s,’ and half the letters capitals. Listen—
“‘Thomas Maitland, despite the remonstrances of his friends, visited Spain. By order of the Holy Inquisition he was arrested, May 5, 1693, on a charge of practising sorcery, and burned alive at the Auto da Fé, in the Grand Market Square, Madrid; having in the interim been subjected to such tortures as only the subtle brains of the hellish inquisitors could devise. On receipt of a message from him, delivered in his supernatural body, we attended his execution, and can readily testify that he suffered no pain, although the torments endured by those around him were pitiable to behold.
“(Signed) George Richard Pool, Physician; and Robert James Fox, Merchant.
“Citizens of Boston, Massachusetts; August 1, 1693.’”
“Rot!” Hamar said savagely; “don’t waste time reading such bunkum.”
“It may be bunkum, but if it takes away his mind from his stomach let him go on,” Curtis interposed. “It’s very obvious you haven’t arrived at our pitch of starvation yet, Leon, or you would welcome anything that would make you forget it even for a moment. Let’s hear some more, Matt! Go on, tell us something. How to make coyottes out of paraffin paint, or convert a Sunday pair of pants into a glistening harem skirt! Anything that won’t remind us of food.”
Thus encouraged Kelson slowly turned over the pages of the book. “I see it was printed and published for—I presume that means by—A. Bettesworth and J. Batley in Pater-noster-Row, London, England, in 1690. Basle, London, Boston, Madrid! The author seems to have had wandering on the brain. By the bye, Leon, with your features you could easily work off a fake as ‘the Wandering Jew.’ There’s money in it—people will swallow anything in that line now.”
“I don’t see how it would profit you anyhow,” Hamar snarled. “Leave my features alone and go on with your reading.”
Kelson chuckled—here was one way at least in which he could occasionally get even with Hamar. Hamar
’s features were Yiddish, and the Yids were none too popular in California.
“Oh, all right!” he said; “if the subject is so painful I’ll try and avoid it in future; but it’s odd how some things—for instance, murder and noses—will out. Let me see, what have we here? ‘Discovery of ancient books, manuscripts, etc., relating to Atlantis.’ Apparently, Thomas Maitland, when shipwrecked on an island, called Inisturk, off Mayo, in Ireland, found a wooden chest of rare workmanship—he had seen, he says, similar ones in Egypt and Yucatan—containing some very ancient books—curiously bound, and some vellum manuscripts, which, after an infinite amount of labour, he managed to translate. The books, he says, were standard histories, biographies, and scientific works on occultism—all published in Banchicheisi, the capital of Atlantis—and the manuscripts, he affirms, had been transcribed by one Coulmenes, who believed himself to be the only survivor of a tremendous submarine earthquake that had destroyed the whole of Atlantis. The manuscripts included a diary of the events leading up to the catastrophe—even to the meals! How about this?—‘Sunrise on the day of Thottirnanoge in the month of Finn-ra. Breakfasted on cornsop, fish (Semona, corresponding to salmon), fruit, and much sweet milk.’”
“For God’s sake, don’t!” Curtis groaned. “Skip over that part. The very mention of grub makes the gnawing pain in my stomach ten times worse.”
“You’re different to me then!” Hamar grinned; “I love to think of it. My word, what wouldn’t I give to be in Sadler’s now. Roast beef—done to a turn, eh! As only Sadler knows how! Potatoes nice and brown and crisp! Horseradish! Greens! Boiled celery! Pudding under the meat! Beer!—What, going?”
Curtis had risen from the table with his fingers crammed in his ears. “There’s a fat splice of the devil in you to-night, Leon!” he panted. “I’ve had enough of it. I’m off. Come on, Matt. If you want us, you know where to find us—only if we don’t get something to eat soon—you’ll find us dead.”
CHAPTER II
THE BLACK ART OF ATLANTIS
For some time after Kelson and Curtis had left him, Hamar lolled back in his seat, lost in thought. Thought, as he told himself repeatedly, should be the poor man’s chief recreation—it costs nothing: and if one wants a little variety, and the walls of one’s rooms are tolerably thick, one can think aloud. Hamar often did, and derived much enjoyment from it.
“I’m convinced of one thing,” he suddenly broke out; “I’d rather be hungry than cold. One can, in a measure, cheat one’s stomach by chewing leather or sucking pebbles, but I’ll be hanged if one can kid one’s liver. It’s cold that does me! A touch of cold on the liver! I could jog along comfortably on few dollars for food—but it’s a fire, a fire I want! The temperature of this room is infernally low after sunset: and half a dozen coats and three pairs of pants don’t make up for half a grateful of fuel. Hunger only makes me think of suicide—but cold—cold and a chilled liver—makes me think of crime. Yes, it’s cold! Cold that would make me a criminal. I would steal—burgle—housebreak—cut the sweetest lady’s throat in Christendom—for a fire!
“There! that little outbreak has relieved me. Now let me have a look at the book.”
He dragged the volume towards him, and despite the feeling of antagonism with which it had inspired him, and despite the cynical attitude he had, up to the present, adopted towards the supernatural, he speedily became engrossed. On a few leaves, somewhat clumsily inserted between the cover and first page of the book, Hamar read an account, presumably in the author’s own penmanship, of how he, Thomas Maitland, after being shipwrecked, had remained on Inisturk Island for a fortnight before being rescued, and had spent the greater portion of that time in examining the books, etc., in the chest he had found—his only food—shell-fish and a keg of mildewy ship’s biscuits.
He was taken, so the account ran, by his rescuers, on the barque Hannah, to London, where he lived for five years. His lodgings were in Cheapside, and it was there that he compiled his work on Atlantis, having obtained his subject matter from the Atlantean books he had managed to bring with him, and which, after an enormous amount of perseverance and labour, he had translated into English. Though these books were subsequently destroyed in a big fire that demolished the entire street, luckily for him, he had sent his MS. to the publishers, Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley, a week or so before the conflagration broke out; so that he was, at any rate, spared the loss of his own arduous and invaluable work.
The publishers did not accept the MS. at once. At that time there were very severe laws in operation against anything savouring of witchcraft and magic, and as the manuscript dealt at length with these subjects, and in a manner that left no doubt whatever that he, Thomas Maitland, had practised sorcery extensively, Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley were forced to consider whether it would be injurious to them to publish it. Mrs. Bettesworth was eventually consulted—as indeed she always was, on extraordinary occasions—and her interest in the MS. being roused, she decided in its favour. Within a week of its publication, however, it was suppressed by law; all the copies saving three presentation ones to the author, which he successfully concealed, were destroyed; Messrs. Bettesworth and Batley were put in the stocks on Ludgate Hill and fined heavily, and he, Thomas Maitland, was ordered to be arrested, flogged and imprisoned.
“But,” wrote Maitland, “I was not to be caught napping. My previous adventures and hairbreadth escapes had rendered me unusually wary, and perceiving a number of people, among whom were two or three sheriff’s officers, approaching my house, I at once interpreted their mission, and climbing through a trap-door leading on to the roof of the building, nimbly made my way to the end of the row, and slipping down a waterpipe easily eluded my enemies. London, however, being now too hot to hold me, I booked passage on board the Peterkin, a Thames trading vessel of some eighty tons, and sailed for Boston. My flight had been so hasty that I brought very little with me—nothing in fact except the clothes I stood in—a stout winter suit of home-spun brown cloth, a cloak, and a pair of good, strong leather leggings—a purse of fifty sovereigns (all I had), a knife, pistol and two copies of my precious book, the third copy, alas! I had left behind in my hurry.”
After giving a few unimportant details as to his life on board ship, Maitland went on to say:—
“Owing to a succession of storms the Peterkin was driven out of her course, and after narrowly escaping being dashed to pieces on the Florida reefs, Lat. 24½° N., Long. 82° W., we ran ashore with the loss of only two lives—the second mate and cabin boy—on the Isthmus of Yucatan, close to the estuary of a river.[1] Here we were forced to spend nearly a year, during which time I made several journeys of exploration into the interior of the continent. In the course of one of my rambles amid a dense mass of tropical foliage, I suddenly found myself face to face with a gigantic stone Sphinx, which I at once recognized and identified. It was Tat-Nuada, an Atlantean deity, elaborately described in one of the burned books. Much excited, I set to work, and, after clearing the base of the idol of fungi and other vegetable growth adhering to it, discovered a superscription in Atlantean dialect to the effect that the image had been set up there by one Hullir—to commemorate the destruction of Atlantis, of which catastrophe Hullir believed himself and his family, i. e. his wife Ozilmeave and daughters, Taramoo and Nikétoth, and the crew of his yacht, the Chaac-molré (ten in number), the sole survivors.
“Here, then, to my unutterable joy, was strong corroborative evidence of the great disaster narrated in detail in the manuscripts I had found in Inisturk Island. The existence of Atlantis was now thoroughly substantiated. On all sides of me I stumbled across further evidences of these early settlers. Here, standing in bold outline on a slight eminence, was a stone edifice adorned with symbolical carvings of eggs, harps, mastodons, triangles, and numerous other objects, all of which were capable of interpretation, and indicated that the building was a temple to some god.
“
I was much struck by the extraordinary similarity in many of the things I saw—notably in the sphinx, idols and symbols—to many I had seen in Egypt, and to some extent in Ireland, and I at once set to work to draw up a careful analogy between the languages of those countries.
“The word Banchicheisi[2] I found to contain the Celtic ban, a barrow; and Coptic isi, plenty; whilst I recognized in the words Coulmenes,[3] the Celtic Coul, a man’s name, i. e. Finn, son of Coul; in Thottirnanoge, the Coptic Thoth, i. e. name of ancient Egyptian deity, and Erse Tirnanoge, the name of the wife of Oisin, the last of the Feni; in Chaac-molrée[4] the Coptic deity, ré; in Ozilmeave,[5] the Celtic Meave, a girl’s name; in Taramoo,[6] the Celtic Tara, a girl’s name; and in Nikétoth,[7] toth, the Erse technical form of feminine gender; and comparing the alphabets I traced a very striking likeness between the Atlantean and many of the other letter. To a few, however, I could find no likeness.
“From all these similarities, i. e. in architecture, symbols, letters, and words, I could come to no other conclusion than that there was some strong connecting link between Atlantis and ancient Ireland and Egypt.
The Elliott O’Donnell Supernatural Megapack Page 82
