“Well,” he confided, “here is the truth—as much of it as I know. The Ballastons have one of the two Images. I have the other. Nothing from a structural and material point of view suggests the presence of treasure in their interior, and yet I believe that the jewels are there. For years there has been deposited with us a coffer of manuscripts which came first from the Summer Palace of the Emperor and afterwards from the Temple of Yun-Tse. One of those manuscripts which I am now deciphering professes to give precise instructions as to how to secure the jewels. There are only a few passages which I cannot master. I am going to London in a day or two to obtain from the British Museum a dictionary of Mongolian dialects, which is the only thing I need to help me to complete certain phrases. You might think that I could guess at them. I cannot, because even the manuscript is in code. I need the actual letters. I believe that the jewels are in one or both of the Images. Within a week I shall know how to extract them.”
She laid her fingers upon his arm.
“Ralph dear,” she begged, “when that time comes—you are wealthy——”
He stopped her. For a moment the expression of almost superb scorn in his face lent him an unusual and unaccustomed dignity.
“Angèle,” he interrupted, “you do not understand. If I were a pauper, I would refuse to supply the material needs of life with the accumulated offerings of these peasant worshippers. But as it happens, money is no temptation to me. I am already rich. In fairness the treasure such as it is should go back to China. If I were a younger, stronger man, the crowning joy of my life would be to take it back and to choose for myself how to distribute it. That, however, can never be. I will try to be fair from your point of view. China has a claim to the treasure. That young man, Gregory Ballaston, may be said to also have a claim—a claim which I should never have admitted for a single moment but for your prayers. Leave it to me. I will decide.”
There was between them a long and rather wonderful silence. The church clock behind the cottages in the background chimed twice before either of them spoke. Madame was lying flat on her back, her eyes watching the moon rising slowly over the top of the red brick wall. Endacott, as though overcome with a curious fit of exhaustion, was seated almost huddled up in his chair. Finally he rose wearily to his feet.
“I am tired to-night, Angèle,” he confessed. “We understand one another?”
“We understand and I pray,” she answered, grasping his hand.
He left the house then and, instead of immediately entering the postern gate opposite, turned his face towards the village. There were a few lights burning in the windows of the irregular row of houses, scarcely a person in the street. He walked to the corner of the lane and looked down the main thoroughfare. At its further end was a trough and a market cross, on the stone balustrade of which some boys and girls were seated, plunged in eloquent silence. From behind one of the drawn blinds came the sound of a gramophone, and through the open door of the Ballaston Arms the wheezing of a concertina. Up in the background some scattered lights flashed out from the far-spread windows of the Hall, the outline of which was not yet visible. Endacott retraced his steps slowly. In his ears was a faint tinkling of other music, grotesque, monotonous, yet thrilling; before his eyes a strange admixture of roofs; beneath his nostrils an odour which never sprung from the soils of Norfolk; in his brain a confused tumult of thoughts.
Claire, a little bored, a slim, white figure in the violet darkness, leaned forward and waved her hand as he entered the postern gate.