Chapter Ten.
What Mr Sandys Knew.
“I am very pleased indeed to meet your son, Mr Homfray,” said the grey-bearded man in his well-worn dinner-jacket as he grasped Roddy’s hand in the handsome hall of Farncombe Towers.
“It’s awfully kind of you to say that, Mr Sandys,” replied the young man, as they crossed to the great open fireplace with the blazing logs, a fireplace with carved stone over which was the time-worn escutcheon with the sea-horse rampant of the ancient Farncombe family. “It’s so very kind of you to invite me,” the young man went on. “Lord Farncombe asked me here the last time I was back in England.”
“You are a great traveller, I believe—are you not? Your father told me the other day about your adventures on the Amazon.”
“Well,” laughed the young man, easy in his well-cut dinner-jacket. “I’m a mining engineer, you know, and we have to rough it very often.”
“No doubt. Some of you are the pioneers of Great Britain. Once, years ago, I accompanied an expedition up the Yukon River, and I had a very rough time of it, but it was intensely interesting.”
“Just now my son is interested in a concession for emerald prospecting in the Atlas Mountains,” the old rector remarked. “I have been going into the matter. There are some ancient workings somewhere in the Wad Sus district, from which it is said that the Pharaoh Rameses V of the Twenty-First Dynasty, and who was called Amennesu-F, obtained the magnificent gems which were among the greatest treasures of his huge palace in ancient Thebes. They were the gems which five hundred years later Ptolemy IV gave to Arsinde, the wife of Philopator—a fact which is recorded in a papyrus in the British Museum. And that was about eleven hundred years before the Christian era. The exact locality has been lost, but my son believes that from the mention of two ancient documents—one of which is in the Egyptian department at the British Museum and the other in the National Library in Paris—it can be located.”
“Most interesting, intensely interesting,” exclaimed the honest-faced old gentleman whose name in connexion with his partner, Sir Charles Hornton, the international banker, who lived mostly in Paris, was one to conjure with in high finance. All over Europe the banking house of Sandys and Hornton was known. Next to that of the Rothschilds it was the most world famous. Old Purcell’s partner lived in the Avenue des Champs Elysées and had the ancient château of Livarot on the Loire, a beautiful winter villa at Cap Martin, and a house in Suffolk. Sir Charles seldom, if ever, came to London. Lady Hornton, however, frequently came, and spent a few weeks each season at Claridge’s or at Fawndene Court.
“I hope you will be successful, not only in obtaining the concession from the Moors, Homfray, but also in locating the exact position of the ancient workings,” Sandys said, turning to the young man. “It should bring you a fortune, for such a business proposition is worth money even to-day when there is a slump in precious gems.”