“Ah!” cried the old gentleman, pushing his spectacles to his forehead as I entered, “I’m very glad to see you, doctor,” and he moved aside a wonderfully illuminated Horæ that he had been examining, counting the number of leaves, the number of lines to a column, the number of miniatures, and determining its date and where it was written.
“So you’ve been down to Caldecott. Well, what did you discover?”
I took the cigarette he offered and, flinging myself in the old arm-chair, related all that had transpired and all that I had discovered.
As I did so he drew towards him the old vellum volume that I had discovered on board the Seahorse—the book written by Bartholomew da Schorno—and opened it at the place where he had put in a slip of paper as mark.
“You certainly have not been idle,” he remarked. “Neither have I. To be brief, doctor, I have, after spending the whole of yesterday upon this manuscript, at last discovered the secret referred to in the beginning.”
“You have!” I gasped excitedly. “What is it? The secret of the treasure?”
“No, not exactly that,” was his answer, calm and slow as befitted an expert in such a dry-as-dust subject as faded parchments. “But there is given here the key to a certain cipher which may assist us in a very great degree. There is, or rather was, in the possession of Richard Knutton and his family a certain document written in cipher explaining how and where the Italian had disposed of his secret hoard. It was written in cryptic writing in order that the Knuttons themselves, although guardians of the secret, should not be able to seize the treasure. Only by means of this book can the document entrusted to them by old Bartholomew be deciphered. Here is a full description of it. Let me read in English what it says: —
I have this day, the fourth of May, 1590, given into the hands of my trusted lieutenant, Richard Knutton, a parchment wherein is explained the hiding-place of all I possess, including all that I took from the Spanish galleon two years ago. I have presented unto this same Richard Knutton the Manor Farm of Caldecott as a free gift to him and to his heirs for ever, while he has sworn before God to hand down the sealed parchment to his eldest son, and so on until the gold shall be wanted for the treasury of the noble Knights of St. Stephen. The document is in cipher that no man can read, but hereunto I attach a key to it by which the secret of the treasure-house may at the proper time be revealed and its contents handed over, either to the Knights at Pisa or to the youngest representative of the house of Wollerton, as I have already willed.
“Then,” remarked the old expert, “there follows an alphabet to which he has fortunately placed the cipher equivalent, and by means of which we should be enabled to make out the document in the hands of the Knuttons.”
“Mr. Staffurth,” I said gravely, interrupting him, “I much regret to tell you that we have been forestalled.”