The Dangerfield Talisman

by J. J. Connington

“I have seen the document in his own handwriting,” he continued, “which gives an account of the affair. He had taken the Talisman from under the bell and asked a jeweller what it would cost to make a replica. He thought the thing should be put in safety; and it seems that he, too, had hit on the idea of substituting a counterfeit for the real thing, the notion of a stalking-horse which I explained to you once before, Mr. Westenhanger. And you can guess his consternation when he learned from the jeweller that the thing was worth no more than a few pounds. The whole mainstay of his scheme for keeping the Dangerfield credit secure, now turned out to be worthless. There was no other easily-vended article—all the valuable jewellery had vanished, sold to pay the Corinthian’s debts, as we have wrongly believed until to-day.

“He had to come to a decision. Rightly or wrongly, he chose his course. He started the Dangerfield Secret as we have known it. He quieted any suspicions of the jeweller by ordering ‘a second replica.’ And he embarked on a career of concealment. It was safe enough. The Corinthian had had the armlet valued out of curiosity. Everyone knew it was worth £50,000. No one had any reason to suppose that it had gone astray. And with that sham asset behind him to strengthen confidence, he pulled the estate out of its immediate difficulties. I have no right to criticise him. He worked according to his lights, with the sole purpose of handing over Friocksheim to my father when he came of age.”

It was plain enough from the old man’s tone that he himself might have chosen the same course had the alternatives been offered.

“We have paid dearly enough for his decision,” Rollo went on. “He involved us all in his machinations, even those of us who were born long after he died. When my father came of age, the old solicitor laid the whole case before him. The estate was still in a shaky state, and an involuntary liquidation would have left us insolvent. More, in a forced sale we could not have hoped to pay our creditors in full. We’d have been defaulters and real losses would have been incurred by innocent people. On the other side, by keeping up the estate’s credit, we gained time enough to pay in full, eventually—to be honest, in fact—provided that the Talisman deception could be kept in being. It was merely a choice, you see, between two forms of dishonesty; but the one alternative would hurt other people, whilst the second course laid a burden on ourselves alone. My father chose the second path. I cannot say that in his position, I would have done otherwise myself.”

His face took on a bitter cast.

“That was the beginning of the Dangerfield Secret—the trickery of the spurious Talisman. Can you wonder that I described it to you, once, as a memorial of lying and deceit? How do you suppose I felt, being driven to lie to my own guests in my own house every time I was asked to show it to anyone? The famous Dangerfield Talisman!”

He moved in his chair, almost as though he wished to free himself from some physical contamination.

“And all the time, we were in the toils which that old man had wrapped around us a century ago. How could we shake free from that web of deception? We still need the asset—at least we needed it yesterday. And to let the thing leak out would be to put a black mark on my father’s name. You know what people would say about the part we have played. There was no getting clear. We had to go on as we had begun.”

He glanced at his two guests as though he feared that he had wearied them by a long story; but their expressions encouraged him to continue to the end.

“People often wonder why we do not insure a thing of such immense value. How could we insure it? It would need to be valued—and the game would be up! So we have been forced into that second series of deceptions—the return of the Talisman after it has been stolen. We have to keep a series of replicas; and put out a fresh one every time there is a theft. We have to play that silly game of pretending we believe in an old legend—another lie—because we dare not call in the police if the thing vanishes, and because we dare not admit that we have lost it.”