"Yes, on second thought, it is wrong, all wrong. He's after that treasure again. Oh, lord! I did my best to persuade him to be sensible before I left England with Jack."
"A treasure!" exclaimed Betty. "But you never told me about it!"
"Oh, it's a long story," protested Hugh. "Frightfully boring. It's a sort of family curse—like leprosy or housemaid's knee. It's supposed to be located in Constantinople, and my uncle has spent his life and most of the family's property trying to find it. That's why I have to make money in New York instead of playing the country gentleman. There was little enough in the family treasury before Uncle James reached it. Now— Well, the new Lord, who will probably be me, will find trouble paying the Herald's fees, let alone succession duties."
"You really are too exasperating," declared Betty. "A treasure story is never boring."
"I am on Betty's side," said her father.
My uncle Vernon is a very decent sort, despite the fact that he is a millionaire. He is a professor several times over, and hates the title. And he is one of the few learned men I know who can be genuinely interested in low-brow diversions.
"So am I," I said, backing him up. "You have been guilty of secrecy with your friends, which is an English vice I thought I had broken you of, Hugh. Come clean!"
"But there's so little to tell," he said. "I had an ancestor about seven hundred years ago, who is generally called Hugh the First. This Hugh was son to Lord James, who went to the Crusades and was a famous character in his time. On his way to Palestine, the stories say, James stayed a while with the Emperor Andronicus, who ruled in the Eastern Empire—'
"Ah, yes," interrupted King eagerly, "would that have been Andronicus Comnenus, sometimes called The Butcher?"
"I believe so, sir."