The secret in the hill

by Bernard Capes

CONCLUSION.

There was a sequel, which I must relate. Stories of recovered treasure, if true like this, do not always end with the emotional unities and the final chapter. Morning does not always bring a confirmation of pious resolves. A little sourness of digestion sometimes impairs the glamour of last night’s feast of righteousness. That is the deuce of it.

Now, I will not say that Joshua repudiated in the slightest reality the sense of that “Amen” of his; but, once awake and restored to the full realization of his possession, he certainly did try to back out of his undertaking to challenge the law to deprive him of it. Not unscrupulously—not in the least. He merely strove to convince Mr. Sant as to the actual letter of that law, and, consequently, of the Quixotry of calling upon it to establish his claim—probably at considerable expense to both sides—to do what was already, by its own decreeing, indubitably his.

But he was entirely unsuccessful. The rector, seeing in this only a personal obstructive policy, designed to shackle that main moral question of the cleansing of his Augean stable, utterly declined to forego his bond, and wrung a promise out of my reluctant relative himself that I should not be allowed to touch a penny of this treasure until it could be proved well-gotten.

So Joshua, forced at last to give way, though with a very ill grace, sent in his notice to the Ipswich coroner.

In the mean time the process of cleansing was carried through with all despatch. The hill was cleared, at some risk, of its tragic impedimenta, which—after a jury had sat on them, and brought in a verdict of accidental death—were consigned to rest in the churchyard—Abel’s, with some distinction, in a separate grave. The whole story was wrung out at the inquest, and aired, and hung up on the lines for gossips to find holes in; and gradually the village—with the entire country-side, to boot—subsided from its fever heat of excitement, which was only to suffer a temporary recrudescence in the cause célebre which came presently to provide the epilogue.

One day, a tax-cart, a coroner’s clerk, a posse of insurance-office firemen, and a couple of cavalrymen from the barracks to escort the whole, appeared before the rectory, and, removing the treasure-box, well encased and sealed, from the clerical strong-room—where it had lain perdu since its discovery—mounted that and Joshua in the vehicle, and incontinently drove away with both.

We saw him go, sitting darkly on the top of his coffin, like a dyspeptic Jack Sheppard being jogged off to Tyburn; and thereafter for a desperate week or more heard or saw nothing of him. Then one day, a great trumpeting and cheering in the street brought us all out pell-mell; and there he was, worshipful in the repute of fabulous riches, being carried shoulder high.

He had won his cause; and through whom do you think? Why, Mr. Quayle. The little Q.C. accompanied the procession, and shared in its triumph. Joshua had alighted on him, quite accidentally, in Ipswich, and revealing to him everything—not without an ironic satisfaction, one may be sure, in returning at this eleventh hour a Rowland for his Oliver—had engaged him to conduct his case. And he had done it, and won it; and the treasure was ours.

“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” said the little man, meeting me again with delight. “Richard, I am rebuked. I once said you were the son of your father, but not so good a lawyer. I withdraw the riservation, entirely. You could see further than some of us into a stone wall. To think now that your friend spoke the truth through ut all! I’ll never trust the evidence of me nine senses again. Five, is ut? Well, I was thinking of the Muses, I suppose. ’Tis a weakness I have, and will prove my undoing in the end. Never you bother about the girls, Richard. They spoil your law.”

I have only a word or two to add. I am afraid to declare what that box of gold realized. The sum, anyhow, was so large as to enrich us all. A great part of its treasures was distributed into the cabinets of collectors, the beautiful chalice finding its way, I believe, at an immense figure, into the museum of a famous cardinal and virtuoso in Rome. From the total proceeds Joshua handsomely presented to Harry the equivalent of a comfortable income, which was the means of helping my dear friend to the very satisfactory position to which he attained a few years later in London. For me he held the residue nominally in trust till I was come of age, when he proposed to establish himself and Uncle Jenico as pensioners on my bounty. The question was one merely of terms. We made, in fact, our common home together until the end, even after I had so far neglected Mr. Quayle’s advice as to bother my head very much indeed about one girl, and to wive her into the bargain.

We had left Dunberry soon after the events narrated above, taking Mrs. Puddephatt with us for housekeeper, and not forgetting Fancy-Maria. For some time, I understand, after our departure, the famous crypts were a gazing-stock, attracting so many visitors that in the end Mr. Sant’s dearest wish was realized, and a popular watering-place established on the foundations of the old smugglers’ haunt. But long before that the vaults had been closed, as unsafe, by councillors’ authority; and at this day only a deep depression in the soil above denotes the spot under which the tragedy of Abel Pilbrow was enacted.

So the old order changes—all, that is to say, but Uncle Jenico, who is engaged at this moment, very bent and white, in demonstrating to my little boy the method of his latest machine for solving the riddle of perpetual motion.

THE END