The Dangerfield Talisman

by J. J. Connington

Wraxall turned the paper over in search of something further; but the back of the sheet was blank.

The American passed the manuscript to Mrs. Caistor Scorton and held out his hand for the second object which Rollo Dangerfield had taken from the safe. It was a circular disc cut from a sheet of leather. Originally the sheet may have been the same thickness as a boot-sole, or rather thinner; but a century of atmospheric changes had warped and contorted its form. Evidently when new it had been about two and a half inches in diameter. Through the centre of the leather there passed a piece of twine secured on one side of the disc by a knot and looped on the other side into a fixed ringlet of a size which would just admit a hand. Wraxall turned the object over and over, but it suggested nothing to him. After a final inspection, he passed it also to his neighbour, and then turned inquiringly to Rollo Dangerfield.

“It suggests nothing to you?” old Dangerfield demanded perfunctorily. He took back both objects after they had been examined by everyone, and held up the paper so that they could see it. “This first line, in Latin, is simply part of the second verse of the Nineteenth Psalm: Night unto night sheweth knowledge. The two references to the Gospels give you the verse: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. I am afraid we can’t discover anything from that part of the document. The rest of it seems easier to account for, if I tell you a little more about the paper.”

He put the sheet on his knee and leaned back in his chair as though tired.

“You see the rough sketch of the chess-board,” he went on after a moment or two. “That gives the position in which the pieces were found on this board here after his death. Possibly it represents the end-position in that game during which the quarrel arose between him and his opponent. He must have attached some importance to it himself, for he came into this room just before going off to his duel, jotted the thing down, and left orders that it was to be given to his son if anything happened. That, I must admit, seems to suggest that he was not quite in a normal frame of mind when he put the thing on paper; for at that date my father was a boy of four or five years old. We Dangerfields are a very late-marrying family, for some reason or other. Obviously a child of that age could have no interest in chess-endings. Put that together with the three texts; and I believe the normal mind would say that my grandfather’s brain was still bemused with his night’s wine—he drank an enormous quantity of port, they say—and that in a muddled-headed way he scribbled down this end-game, added one or two of his favourite texts, and then, with some idea that the texts might be of service to his son, he left directions for the paper to be handed on.”

He glanced amusedly round the circle to see if they shared this view.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “that explanation falls short of completeness on one matter. This little leather disc was also to be handed to my father. Was it a toy that he had made for the boy? Perhaps he had promised it to the child, and even at that dangerous moment he remembered his promise? I like to think that there was something of the kind in his mind. But if there had been any promise of the sort, my father had forgotten it. When they questioned him he knew nothing about it. Quite possibly it was a promised toy. You know what the memory of a four-year-old is like and how difficult it is to catch hold of something which he has once allowed to slip. Nothing came of it.”

His fingers played almost affectionately with the wrinkled scrap of leather.

“My grandfather’s death left my father an orphan; for his mother had died a year or two earlier. The paper was preserved and handed to my father, when he came of age, by the lawyer of our family who had impounded it shortly after its discovery. It meant nothing to anyone. Whatever meaning it carried had been lost. All that it meant to my father was the last link with his Corinthian ancestor; and I believed that he preserved it on that account. At any rate, it found its way into the Dangerfield archives, and there it is likely to remain.”