A few days after that exciting chase in Battersea Reilly, Usher, and Mr. Staffurth assisted me to go through the treasure and check it by the long list written in the vellum book. We found, to our satisfaction, that it was intact.
Within a month, with Dorothy’s authority, we had disposed of all of it save a few of the most valuable ornaments, which she kept for her own use. The firm in Piccadilly were the principal purchasers of the coins and diamonds, but much of the remainder was sold by auction at Christie’s and other sale-rooms and realized very high prices, while a quantity of it has now found its way into the British Museum and other similar institutions.
The chestful of gold coins bequeathed to me as finder realized a little over £1,000, and out of this I paid for the dilapidations at Caldecott Manor—which is, by the way, now reoccupied by a highly respected gentleman and his wife—and made presents to my friends, Job Seal included, augmented, of course, by Dorothy herself.
And the rest? Need I tell you? I think not. All I shall say further is that within two months of our sudden fortune Dorothy, whom I had loved long before I knew her to be heiress of the treasure, married me at Hampstead, where we now live—in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, to be exact—leading an idyllic life of peace and love. If you pass up the thoroughfare in question you will probably notice the name, “Mr. Pickering, Surgeon,” upon a brass plate, for although the sum realized by the sale of the jewels has provided us with a comfortable income for life, yet I am not by any means an idle man.
So careful have we been to preserve our secret that to those who know us and may chance to read this narrative, the truth will come as an entire surprise. Our love is perfect, for surely no couple could be happier than we are. When at evening I sit at the fireside gazing at the sweet, smiling face of my devoted wife, I often reflect upon those dark days of anxiety and despair—the days of my love’s thraldom and of my own desperate endeavour to solve the mystery. Before me there hang, in black frames, the parchment with the seven signatures and the ancient diploma with leaden seal which I discovered with it, and whenever I look up at them my memory runs back to the potency of that simple number three—that numeral scrawled in faded ink which revealed to us “The Tickencote Treasure.”
THE END.
Ward, Lock & Co., Ltd., London.
Ward, Lock & Co.’s