THE TREASURE OF
THE BUCOLEON

ARTHUR D. HOWDEN SMITH

Author of "THE DOOM TRAIL" "BEYOND
THE SUNSET," etc.

NEW YORK
BRENTANO'S
Publishers

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To
JACK NASH

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. [The Cable from Hugh's Uncle]
II. [The Broken Message]
III. [The Papers in the Charter Chest]
IV. [The Gunroom at Castle Chesby]
V. [A Blind Alley]
VI. [The Hilyer Party]
VII. [The Fight in the Gunroom]
VIII. [The Prior's Vent]
IX. [Hide and Seek]
X. [Stole Away]
XI. [We Split the Scent]
XII. [The Balkan Trail]
XIII. [The Road to Stamboul]
XIV. [The House in Sokaki Masyeri]
XV. [Watkins Plays the Goat]
XVI. [The Red Stone]
XVII. [The Dance in the Courtyard]
XVIII. [The Big Show Begins]
XIX. [First Cruise of the Curlew]
XX. [Out of Luck]
XXI. [Watkins to the Rescue]
XXII. [Hilmi's Friend]
XXIII. [Our Backs to the Wall]
XXIV. [In the Storm]
XXV. [The Reckoning]
XXVI. [Under the Red Stone]
XXVII. [Antiques, Statuary, Chgs. Pd., with Care]

The Treasure of the Bucoleon

CHAPTER I
THE CABLE FROM HUGH'S UNCLE

The messenger was peering at the card above the push-button beside the apartment entrance as I came up the stairs.

"Chesby?" he said laconically, extending a pink envelope.

"He lives here," I answered. "I'll sign for it."

The boy clumped off downstairs, and I let myself in, never dreaming that I held the key to destiny in my hand—or, rather, in the pink envelope.

A samovar was bubbling in the studio, and my cousin Betty King hailed me from the couch on which she sat between her father and Hugh.

"Here you are at last," she cried. "Dad and I have come to say good-by to you."

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Can't you stand Hugh any longer?"

Hugh glowered at me.

"Always raggin'," he commented.

Betty laughed.

"We are going to Constantinople to hunt for Greek manuscripts."

"I have a theory," explained my uncle, Vernon King, "that the upheavals of the war and the occupation of the city by Christian garrisons should be productive of rich opportunities for bibliophiles like myself, aside from an enhanced chance for archæological research."

"Well, I wish you luck," I grumbled. "And I wish I was not tied down to an architect's drawing-board."

"'Matter of fact, I'm about fed up with Wall Street," growled Hugh. "Nobody can make money any more."

"It's very funny," remarked Betty. "Both you and Jack announced when you settled down after the war, Hugh, that nothing could ever root you up again. All you wanted, you said, was a good job and plenty of hard work."

"I know it," admitted Hugh. "I remember Nash, here, and Nikka Zaranko—"

"You mean the famous Gypsy violinist?" interrupted my uncle, who, I ought to say, uses the millions he receives from his oil-holdings to patronize the arts and sciences.

"Yes, sir. He was in the Foreign Legion durin' the war. We all met in the last big push in Flanders. I went in with my battalion to help out Jack's crowd, and was snowed under with them. Then Nikka tried to extricate both outfits, and the upshot was the Aussies finally turned the trick. Some show!

"Well, we three became pals. What I was going to say was that the last time we got together before demobilization we agreed we never wanted to feel the threat of danger again. We wanted to become rich and prosperous and fat and contented. That was why I came over to New York with Jack, instead of staying home and fighting with my uncle."

"That reminds me," I said, extending the pink envelope. "Here's a cable for you. Maybe—"

"If it's from Uncle James I shall be surprised," replied Hugh, ripping open the envelope. "A line once in six months is his idea of avuncular correspondence. Hullo!"

He pursed his lips in a prolonged whistle.

"Anything wrong?" asked Betty anxiously.

"No—well—humph! It's hard to say. Listen to this: 'Sailing Aquitania to-day due New York eighteenth must see you immediately have made important discovery your aid essential family fortunes involved this confidential."

"Yes, on second thought, it is wrong, all wrong. He's after that treasure again. Oh, lord! I did my best to persuade him to be sensible before I left England with Jack."

"A treasure!" exclaimed Betty. "But you never told me about it!"

"Oh, it's a long story," protested Hugh. "Frightfully boring. It's a sort of family curse—like leprosy or housemaid's knee. It's supposed to be located in Constantinople, and my uncle has spent his life and most of the family's property trying to find it. That's why I have to make money in New York instead of playing the country gentleman. There was little enough in the family treasury before Uncle James reached it. Now— Well, the new Lord, who will probably be me, will find trouble paying the Herald's fees, let alone succession duties."

"You really are too exasperating," declared Betty. "A treasure story is never boring."

"I am on Betty's side," said her father.

My uncle Vernon is a very decent sort, despite the fact that he is a millionaire. He is a professor several times over, and hates the title. And he is one of the few learned men I know who can be genuinely interested in low-brow diversions.

"So am I," I said, backing him up. "You have been guilty of secrecy with your friends, which is an English vice I thought I had broken you of, Hugh. Come clean!"

"But there's so little to tell," he said. "I had an ancestor about seven hundred years ago, who is generally called Hugh the First. This Hugh was son to Lord James, who went to the Crusades and was a famous character in his time. On his way to Palestine, the stories say, James stayed a while with the Emperor Andronicus, who ruled in the Eastern Empire—'

"Ah, yes," interrupted King eagerly, "would that have been Andronicus Comnenus, sometimes called The Butcher?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Very interesting," nodded King. "Andronicus amassed a great wealth through fines and exactions from the nobles, so the contemporary chronicles tell us."

"And this treasure is supposed to be in Constantinople!" exploded Betty. "Where we are going! Isn't that so, Hugh?"

"Yes, it is always located in Constantinople," answered Hugh. "In fact, it is generally referred to as the Treasure of the Bucoleon, which, I understand from Uncle James and other authorities of my university days, was the principal palace of the Eastern Emperors."

"Quite right," agreed Vernon King, his scholar's interest whipped aflame. "It was a magnificent residence, vying with the Palace of the Cæsars in Rome. In reality, in light of modern antiquarian research, we may describe it as a group of noble structures, standing isolated from the city within a spacious park, surrounded by an independent series of fortifications and with its own naval harbor on the Bosphorus."

"An extensive area to hunt over for an apocryphal treasure," remarked Hugh drily.

"You may well say so," endorsed my uncle. "I have been in Constantinople for extended periods upon several occasions, and I have never satisfied myself as to the existence at this time of any bone fide portions of the Bucoleon, although it is difficult to pronounce definitely on this point. The older portions of the city, especially those most massively constructed, have been so over-built since the Turkish conquest that frequently what is ostensibly a relatively modern building turns out to be almost unbelieveably ancient at the core. But the prejudices of the Turks and their distaste for foreign—"

Betty, chewing her finger with impatience, waved to her father to be silent.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed. "Really, you aren't lecturing, you know! Do let Hugh get on with the treasure."

"But I'm afraid I've gotten as far as I can," replied Hugh. "The tradition simply says that Andronicus confided the secret of the location of the treasure to Lord James. Then Andronicus was assassinated, and James was thrown into prison by his successor. Hugh, James's son, went to Constantinople with an army of Latin Crusaders who had decided that the best way to help the Holy Land was to establish a friendly base there. They conquered the city—"

"A remarkable venture," corroborated my uncle. "The ease with which they secured possession of a city of one million inhabitants, not to speak of an extensive empire, is a clear indication of the degeneracy—"

Betty clapped her hand over his mouth.

"Do get on, Hugh!" she begged. "The treasure! You're almost as long-winded as Dad."

We all laughed, and yet, indefinably, she had communicated to each of us something of the magic spell which is conveyed by any hint of treasure hidden in the past. We savored the heady wine of danger. I felt my right palm itching for the corrugated rubber butt of an automatic. When Hugh continued his story we all leaned forward, flushed and tense.

"The Crusaders captured the city, and Hugh rescued his father. Then they returned to England. Before James died he passed on the secret of the treasure to Hugh. There are documents in the Charter Chest—"

"What's that?" demanded Betty.

"It's a terribly old oaken box, bound with copper and steel," explained Hugh. "We keep it in a safe deposit vault in the City—London, you know. These documents say that James's idea was to have the treasure used for the rehabilitation of Christendom if any cause arose which would justify such a gift. Failing that, the money was to go to his descendants. But for many generations the Lords of Chesby were too busy to hunt treasure so far from home.

"One Lord tried for it in Harry the Fifth's time, but the Greeks watched him so closely that he thought himself lucky to escape from Constantinople with his life. Then the Turks captured the city, and after that it was too risky—except for one chap in Elizabeth's reign. He was Lord James, the sixteenth baron, a shipmate of Raleigh and Drake and Hawkins, and he feared nothing that lived. He put in at Constantinople and bearded the Grand Turk in his lair. But even he did not venture to make a genuine search in view of the conditions that prevailed. From his time on few of the family bothered with the tradition until Uncle James commenced to mortgage farms to finance his researches."

"Then you have no definite knowledge of the location of the treasure?" asked King. "No chart or—"

Hugh laughed bitterly.

"No, sir, that is just why I feel so peevish over the way Uncle James has devastated the estate. It's a search for a needle in a haystack—and a needle that in all probability never existed, at that."

"I fear so," assented King, shaking his head.

"Nonsense!" said Betty. "It's as good a treasure story as I ever read. Why shouldn't it be true? Could you imagine a more perfect place for concealing a treasure all these centuries than Constantinople?"

"Your father will tell you," retorted Hugh scornfully, "that there is not a famous ruin in the Near East but is declared to contain a treasure of one kind or another."

"True—only too true!" agreed King.

"The sole use of the legend so far," continued Hugh unhappily, "has been to give Uncle James something to do. It must be a godsend to Curzon in managing the House, for during the war while Uncle James was shut up in England he was continually moving for the appointment of committees to preserve the monumental brasses of country churches and appealing to the government to recognize that England owed a duty to civilization in retaining and Christianizing Constantinople—so he could dig to his heart's content for the treasure."

"Well, I for one intend to believe in it," stated Betty, "and if your uncle wants any help in hunting for it, he can count on me."

"We'll all help him, if it comes to that," I said. "Nikka Zaranko would never forgive us if we left him out of such a party."

"Uncle James will have nothing tangible to go on," said Hugh. "You can stake your last shilling on that. He's never had a sane idea yet."

"I take it, then," remarked Betty, rising with a detached air, "that you have no desire to go to Constantinople."

Betty is slim, with brown hair and eyes and a face that you have to look at and when she sets her head back— But of course I am only her cousin. Hugh jumped up, nervously crunching the cable in his hand.

"If I only do get a decent excuse to go to Constantinople!" he exclaimed. "But there's no use. I won't, Bet. I couldn't honestly encourage Uncle James in any more foolishness."

"Perhaps," suggested King, "his visit has nothing to do with the treasure."

Hugh chuckled, his merry self again.

"Cross the Atlantic just to look me up? Not a chance, sir. His ruling passion is driving him on. Confound it, though! I wish this hadn't come up. And I wish I didn't crave adventure again. And I wish you weren't going to Constantinople. All right! Laugh, Jack, curse you! Laugh! Here, I'll scrag you with a couch-pillow!"

"Easy! Easy!" I pleaded. "For the furniture's sake! How about giving the Kings a line to Nikka in Paris or wherever he is?"

"Thanks," said Betty, "but we're going via the Mediterranean. The best thing for you boys to do is to pack up with Hugh's uncle, collect your friend Nikka en route and follow on."

"No go," answered Hugh dismally. "All I am scheduled for is a fat family row."

CHAPTER II
THE BROKEN MESSAGE

The steamship company telephoned while Hugh and I were at breakfast to say that the Aquitania was just docking. When we reached the pier West Street was swarming with out-going automobiles loaded with the first contingents of debarking passengers. We pushed our way upstairs into the landing-shed, surrendered our passes and dived into the swirling vortex of harried travelers, hysterical relatives and impassive Custom's officials.

The Purser's office in the Main Saloon was vacant, but Hugh buttonholed a passing steward.

"Lord Chesby, sir? Yes, sir, he was one of the first ashore. There was a gentleman to meet him, I think, sir."

"That's queer," muttered Hugh as we returned to the gangway.

"Our best bet is to go straight to the C space in the Customs lines," I said.

"But who could meet him besides us?" objected Hugh.

"It's damned queer," I agreed. "What does your uncle look like?"

"He's small, stocky, not fat. Must be around sixty," said Hugh vaguely.

We surveyed the space under the letter C, where porters were dumping trunks and bags and passengers were arguing with the inspectors.

"No, he's not here," said Hugh. "Wait, though, there's Watkins!"

"Who's Watkins?" I asked, boring a passage beside him through the crowd.

"He's Uncle James's man."

Watkins was the replica of Hugh's description of his uncle. He was a chunky, solid sort of man, with the masklike face of the trained English servant. He was clean-shaven, and dressed neatly in a dark suit and felt hat. When we came upon him he was sitting forlornly on a pile of baggage, watching the confusion around him. with a disapproving eye.

"Hullo, Watty?" Hugh greeted him. "Where's my uncle?"

The valet's features lighted up, and he scrambled to his feet.

"Ah, Mister Hugh! I'm very glad to see you, sir, if I may say so. "Is ludship, sir? Why, 'e went off with your messenger, sir."

"My messenger?" Hugh repeated blankly.

"Yes, sir, the dark gentleman. Your man, 'e said 'e was, sir."

"My man!" Hugh appealed to me. "Did you hear that, Jack?"

Watkins became suddenly anxious.

"There's nothing wrong, I 'ope, sir? The gentleman came aboard to find us, and told 'is ludship how you'd been delayed, and 'e was to come along to your rooms, sir, whilst I saw the luggage through the Customs. Wasn't that right, sir?"

Hugh sat down on a trunk.

"It's right enough, Watty," he groaned, "except that I never sent such a message and I haven't a man."

"What sort of fellow was this messenger?" I asked.

Watkins turned to me, a look of bewilderment in his face.

"An Eastern-looking gentleman, 'e was, sir, like the Gypsies 'is ludship occasionally 'as down to Chesby. Strange, I thought it, sir, Mister Hugh, that you should be 'aving a gentleman like that to valet you—but as I said to 'is ludship, likely it's not easy to find servants in America."

"How long ago did Uncle James leave, Watty?" asked Hugh.

"Nearly an hour, sir."

"Time enough for him to have reached the apartment. Jack, do you mind telephoning on the off-chance? I'll fetch an inspector to go over this stuff."

I had no difficulty in getting the apartment. The cleaning woman who "did" for us answered. No, nobody had called, and there had been no telephone messages. I hastened back to the C space with a sense of ugly forebodings. Hugh I found colloguing with Watkins, while two Customs men opened the pile of Lord Chesby's baggage.

"Do you know, Jack," said Hugh seriously, "I am beginning to think that something sinister may have happened? Watty tells me that he and Uncle James are just come from Constantinople. He says my uncle went there convinced that he had discovered the key to the treasure's hiding-place, but in some unexplained way Uncle James was deterred from carrying out his plans, and they returned hurriedly to England."

"And now I think of it, sir," amended Watkins, "we 'ave been shadowed ever since we went to Turkey. I never paid much attention to them, considering it was coincidence like, but its been one dark gentleman after another—at the Pera Palace Hotel in Constantinople, on the Orient Express, in London when we called on 'is ludship's solicitors—"

"What was that for?" interrupted Hugh—and to me: "Uncle James hated business. He couldn't be brought to any kind of business interview unless he had a pressing motive."

"Why, sir, Mister Hugh, I don't know rightly—leastways, 'twas after 'is conversation with Mr. Bellowes 'e sent the cablegram to you, sir. And 'e 'ad the Charter Chest sent up from the safe deposit vaults—but that was before we went to Turkey, to be sure, sir.'

"It was, eh?" Hugh was all interest. "How was that?"

"Why, sir, 'e rang for me one day at Chesby, and 'e was rubbin' 'is 'ands together like he does when 'e's pleased, and 'e said: 'Watkins, pack the small wardrobe and the portmanteau. We're goin' to run down to Constantinople.' 'Yes, sir,' I said, 'and do we go direct to Dover?' 'No,' 'e said, 'we'll go up to London. Wire Mr. Bellowes to 'ave the Charter Chest sent up from the bank. I must 'ave another look at it—' 'e was talkin' to himself like, sir—'I wonder if the hint might not 'ave been in the Instructions, after all.'"

Hugh jumped.

"By Jove, he has been after the treasure! The Instructions is the original parchment on which Hugh the First inscribed his command to his son to go after the treasure—carefully leaving out, however, the directions for finding it. And what happened then, Watty?"

"Why, sir, we went up to London, and Mr. Bellowes, 'e tried to persuade 'is ludship not to go. They were together 'alf the morning, and when they came from the private office I 'eard Mr. Bellowes say: 'I'm afraid I can't follow your ludship. There's not a word in the Instructions or any of the other documents to shed a ray of light on the matter.' 'That's what I wished to make sure of, Bellowes,' said 'is ludship, with a chuckle."

"Cryptic, to put it mildly," barked Hugh. "Dammit, I knew the old boy was up to some foolishness. If he's taken on some giddy crew of crooks for a piratical venture—"

"He wouldn't have called on you for help," I cut him off.

"True," assented Hugh. "But I wish I could take some stock in the nonsense at the bottom of it."

"I wonder!" I said. "I'm drifting to Betty's belief that there is more in the treasure story than you think."

"It's bunk, I tell you," said Hugh, thoroughly disgusted. "Well, the Customs men are through. Watty, collect some porters, and get this baggage down to the taxi stand."

The cleaning-woman was still in the apartment when we returned, and she reiterated her assertion that nobody had called. We had some lunch, and then, on Watkins's suggestion, I rang up hotels for two hours—without any result. At the end of my tether I hung up the receiver and joined Hugh in gloomy reflection on the couch. Watkins hovered disconsolately in the adjoining dining room.

"There's one thing more to do," said Hugh suddenly. "Telephone the police."

"That would involve publicity," I pointed out.

"It can't be helped."

The telephone jangled harshly as he spoke, and I unhooked the receiver. Hugh started to his feet. Watkins entered noiselessly.

"Is this Mr. Chesby's apartment?" The voice that burred in my ear was strangely thick, with a guttural intonation. "Tell him they are taking what's left of his uncle to Bellevue. It's his own fault the old fool got it. And you can tell his nephew we will feed him a dose of the same medicine if he doesn't come across."

Brr-rring!

"Wait! Wait!" I gasped into the mouthpiece. "Who—"

"Number, please," said a stilted feminine voice.

"My God!" I cried. "Hugh, they've killed him, I think."

Hugh's face went white as I repeated the message. Watkins' eyes popped from his head.

"Where is this hospital?" stammered Hugh.

"Over on the East Side."

"We must catch a taxi. Hurry!"

Watkins came with us without bidding. In the taxi none of us spoke. We were all dazed. Things had happened too rapidly for comprehension. We could scarcely realize that we were confronting stark tragedy. As we turned into East Twenty-sixth Street and the portals of the huge, red-brick group of buildings loomed ahead of us, Hugh exclaimed fiercely:

"It may not be true! I believe it was a lie!"

But it was not a lie, as we soon learned in the office to which we were ushered by a white-uniformed orderly. Yes, the nurse on duty told us, an ambulance had brought in an elderly man such as Hugh described within the half-hour. The orderly would show us the ward.

We traversed a maze of passages to a curtained doorway where a young surgeon, immaculate in white, awaited us.

"You want to see the old man who has been stabbed?" he said.

Hugh gripped my arm.

"Stabbed! Is he—"

The surgeon nodded.

"Yes. He must have made a hell of a fight. He's all slashed up—too old to stand the shock."

Watkins caught his breath sharply.

"Of course, he may not be your man," the surgeon added soothingly. "This way."

He led us into a long room lined with beds. A high screen had been reared around one of them, and he drew it aside and motioned for us to enter. An older surgeon stood by the head of the narrow bed with a hypodermic needle in his hand. Opposite him kneeled a nurse. Two bulky men in plainclothes, obvious policemen, stood at the foot.

And against the pillow lay a head that might have been Hugh's, frosted and lined by the years. The gray hair grew in the same even way as Hugh's. The hawk-nose, the deep-set eyes, the stubborn jaw, the close-clipped mustache, the small ears, were all the same. As we entered, the eyes flashed open an instant, then closed.

"Uncle James!"

"'Is ludship! Oh, Gawd!"

The policemen and the nurse eyed us curiously, but the surgeon by the bed kept his attention concentrated on the wan cheeks of the inert figure, fingers pressing lightly on the pulse of a hand that lay outside the sheets. Swiftly he stooped, with a low ejaculation to the nurse. She swabbed the figure's arm with a dab of cotton, and the needle was driven home.

"Caught him up in time," remarked the surgeon impartially. "Best leave him while it acts."

He turned to us.

"I take it you recognize him, gentlemen."

"He is my uncle," answered Hugh dully.

"Ah! I fancy you will be able to secure a few words with him after the strychnia has taken hold, but he is slipping fast."

One of the policemen stepped forward.

"I am from the Detective Bureau," he said. "Do you know how this happened?"

"We know nothing," returned Hugh. "He landed from the Aquitania this morning. We were late in reaching the pier. When we reached it—"

Some instinct prompted me to step on Hugh's foot. He understood, hesitated and shrugged his shoulders.

"—he was gone, ostensibly to seek my apartment."

"Name?" asked the detective, thumbing a notebook.

"His? Chesby. It is mine, too."

"Initials?"

"His full name is James Hubert Chetwynd Crankhaugh Chesby."

"English?"

"Yes."

"Business or profession?"

"Well, I don't know how to answer that question. He is a scholar—and then he's a member of the House of Lords."

A subtle change swept over the faces of the policemen. They became absurdly deferential. Their interest, which had been perfunctory, grew intent. The surgeons and the nurse, hardened to such deathbed scenes, responded also to the element of drama which Hugh's words had injected into the drab story.

"Gee-roosalum!" exclaimed the policeman. "This begins to look big. Who could have wanted to bump off a guy like him? Was he—a gay sorter old boy, eh?"

"Positively, no. He was the last man to suspect of anything like that. He has been a traveler and student all his life."

"What was his specialty?"

"Gypsy dialects and history, and the ancient history of Constantinople.'

"Gypsies, eh?" The detective was all alert. "He was picked up corner of Thirteenth Street and Avenue C. There's a plenty of Gypsy dumps in that neighborhood. A man and three women saw him dropped from a closed auto. The Gyps are a bad people to get down on you, clannish as hell and awful suspicious. It may be this here Lord Chesby crossed some family of 'em in his studying and they went out to knife him.'

"It may be," agreed Hugh, "but I haven't a thing to back up the assertion with."

"Well, we'll start to work on that clue anyhow."

The detective stepped around the screen, and Hugh touched the senior surgeon on the arm.

"How long?"

"Probably only a few minutes."

As he spoke, the deep-sunk eyes flickered open, surveyed us almost quizzically one by one.

Hugh bent forward, Watkins beside him.

"Do you know me, Uncle James?"

The lips parted, framed words that were barely audible.

"Good lad! Where's—Watkins?"

"'Ere, your ludship," volunteered the valet, with a gulp.

"Send—others—"

Hugh looked up to the senior surgeon.

"Do you mind, sir?"

"Not at all. Just a moment, though."

He stooped to feel the pulse, reached for the needle and shot in a second injection. Its effect was instantaneous. The dying man's eyes brightened; a very faint tinge of color glowed in his ashen face.

"I'm afraid that second shot will hasten the end," the surgeon muttered to me, "but it will give the poor old fellow more strength while he lasts. Make the most of your opportunity."

He shepherded his assistants outside the screen, and Hugh pulled me to my knees beside him.

"This is Jack Nash, Uncle James," he said, speaking slowly and distinctly. "He is my friend—your friend. He will be with me in whatever I have to do for you."

Lord Chesby's eyes, a clear gray they were, examined me closely.

"Looks—right." The syllables trickled almost soundless from his lips. "It's—treasure—Hugh." His eyes burned momentarily with triumph. "Know—where—"

"But who stabbed you?"

I have often wondered what would have happened if Hugh had let him talk on of the treasure, instead of switching the subject.

"Toutou," answered the dying man, with sudden strength. "Tiger—that chap—others—against—him."

"But why? Why did he do it?"

Once more the smile of triumph in the eyes.

"Wouldn't—tell—him—treasure—said—torture—broke—away—Gypsies—"

Exhaustion overcame him. His eyes closed.

"Is he going?" I murmured.

Hugh crouched lower and held his watch-case to the blue lips. A mist clouded the polished surface.

"Give him time," he said. "Watty, who is Teuton!"

"Never 'eard of 'im, sir. Oh; Mister Hugh, sir, is 'is ludship—"

The gray eyes opened; the lips began to move.

"Watch—out—that—gang—desperate—be—after—you."

"But who are they, Uncle James?"

"Toutou—worst—Beran—many—bad—lot."

"Where did they take you? Tell us, and we shall have them arrested?"

The gray eyes glittered.

"No—no—lad—avoid—police—don't—talk—treasure—"

"Where is the treasure?" I interposed.

"Bull—cedars—li—"

His breathing dwindled to little, fluttering gasps, but he fought on.

"How did you find it, Uncle James?" asked Hugh softly.

That gay smile of triumph shone in his eyes for the last time.

"Used—my—brain—all—laughed—me—in—Hugh's—"

And the life flickered out of him as we watched.

Two big tears rolled down Watkins' cheeks.

"'E was a good master. Oh, Mister Hugh, sir, I do hope we can punish those bloody villains!"

"We will," said Hugh coldly, rising to his feet. "For the time being, Watkins, remember to keep your mouth shut about all this. Uncle James was right about the police. They can't help us in such a matter. If there is anything in the treasure story we should wreck any chance of finding it by advertising our purpose."

"The less said the better," I agreed. "If the police ask us, he rambled at the end about Gypsies and family affairs."

There were several details to be settled with the hospital authorities. The British Consulate had to be notified. Reporters had to be seen. It was early evening when the three of us returned to the apartment in West Eleventh Street, and the newsboys were yelling an extra.

"English nobleman murdered on the East Side! Horrible death of Lord Chesby!"

I bought a copy, and we read it as we walked down Fifth Avenue:

"'One of the strangest murder mysteries in the criminal annals of New York has been presented to the police for solution through the death in Bellevue Hospital this afternoon of James Hubert Chetwynd Crankhaugh Chesby, twenty-ninth Baron Chesby in the Peerage of Great Britain, thirty-fifth Lord of the Manor of Chesby and Hereditary Ranger of Crowden Forest.

"'After landing from the Cunarder Aquitania this morning, Lord Chesby, a dignified, scholarly man of fifty-eight, was lured away from the pier into the purlieus of the East Side, where, apparently after a valiant fight for life, he was set upon and hacked with knives. His body, still living, was left by an automobile—"

"Skip it," ordered Hugh impatiently. "What do they say of the object of the crime?"

"'From the fact that Lord Chesby has made a life-long study of Gypsy lore and dialects,' I read on, 'the police suspect that some criminal of these nomad tribes may have slain the distinguished nobleman, either for personal gain or vengeance. Lord Chesby's nephew and heir, the Hon. Hugh James Ronald Howard Chesby, who is a Wall Street bond-broker, received a telephone message during the afternoon, notifying him of his uncle's fate and warning him that the same end would be his if he made any attempt to run down the assassins.'

"'The new Lord Chesby when interviewed at—'

"I don't like it," interrupted Hugh again, frowning, "but it will have to stand. Uncle James wanted it that way, and his word is law. It will do no good to add to the story. The police can't help us. We are playing a lone hand. All rules are off."

"A lone hand?" I repeated. "Does that mean that Nikka is out of it? Remember, we agreed after the Armistice that if we ever did forsake the fleshpots for the call of danger it would be together."

"I hate to drag him away from his concerts," answered Hugh, considering. "He's makin' pots of money. But if there's a Gypsy angle to this he'd be priceless to us."

"And he'd never forgive us if we left him out," I added.

"I suppose he wouldn't. Tell you what, we'll cable him to meet us in London at my solicitors' office. We've got a long way to go, Jack. We don't even know who we have to fight. As for the treasure— Well, I want to talk to Bellowes first and have a look at the Charter Chest."

CHAPTER III
THE PAPERS IN THE CHARTER CHEST

At Liverpool we wired to Hugh's solicitors for an appointment that afternoon and dispatched Watkins direct to Chesby with the body of his late master. We arrived at Victoria about four o'clock, and took a taxi to the offices of Courtenay, Bellowes, Manson and Courtenay in a smutted old building in Fleet Street over against the Law Courts.

Up two nights of stairs we climbed to a dirty door with the firm-name straggling across it. A clerk stepped forward as we entered, but before he could speak a brown figure shot out of an inner office, and wrapped Hugh and me in a jovial hug. It was Nikka, thinner than we remembered him, but with the same steady eyes and quiet smile. He was abashed by his own enthusiasm and started to apologize.

"I am so glad to see you two," he said, "that I forget it is a time of sadness. Yet even so it means gladness for me that I see my friends again.'

"It's gladness for all of us," returned Hugh, wringing his hand, with its delicate, sinewy fingers.

"It means something like the old life once more," I added. "That is, if you can come, Nikka."

"I'll come," he said simply. "For two years I have been faithful to my fiddle. Now, I think, it is time I had a rest."

An elderly gentleman, with gray hair and precise features, emerged from the inner offices and bowed deferentially to Hugh.

"I trust your lordship is in good health. If you remember—"

"Of course, Mr. Bellowes," assented Hugh. "I remember you very well. This is my friend, Mr. Nash. Mr. Zaranko, I take it, you already know. Are you at liberty?"

"Surely, sir. I expected you. This way, please."

And he ushered us into a room where chairs were clustered about a square table on which reposed a huge, steel-bound box of very heavy, dark oak. Mr. Bellowes waved his hand toward the box.

"I trust I anticipated your lordship's wishes. I directed the bank to send up the Charter Chest this afternoon."

"Quite right," said Hugh, "it will simplify our task. Did my uncle leave any will?"

A shadow settled upon Mr. Bellowes' lined face.

"There was no need, your lordship. The estate is entailed. The Shipping Bonds, your grandmother's dower, went before the war. The mining shares all have been sold, as well as several smaller blocks of securities. Aside from some insurance accruing from your uncle's demise, there is practically nothing—oh, a few government bonds of the war issues, to be sure—outside of the Chesby lands."

He wrung his hands nervously.

"Oh, Mister Hugh—I beg your pardon, your lordship—I don't know what we shall have to do. The death duties can scarcely be met. The insurance will help some, but I am afraid we must raise another mortgage at a ruinous rate or else move to break the entail and sell off some of the farms. I warned his late lordship again and again of the harm he was doing, but he would never listen to me."

"Poor Uncle James has paid a stiff price for his efforts," answered Hugh. "I can't find it in my heart to take exception to his extravagances after what happened in New York."

The old lawyer looked at us slyly.

"Just what did happen, if I may ask, sir? The reports in the press were—"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"He was murdered by a gang of criminals, who were trying to obtain from him information which he apparently believed furnished a clue to this treasure he had been searching for all his life," returned Hugh.

"Really, sir?" exclaimed Mr. Bellowes in surprise.

"Why did you suppose he was killed within a few hours of landing in a strange city?" countered Hugh.

The solicitor hesitated.

"If your lordship will permit me to speak quite frankly? Ah! Thank you, sir. I will say, then, that I had fancied I knew your uncle unusually well, and in light of that knowledge I would never have fancied him addicted to—er—" he coughed apologetically—"probably I need not say any more. But at any rate it will not be offensive if I add that in a long course of legal experience I have never heard of a man of his late lordship's position being murdered unless—unless there were circumstances of a character we may describe off-hand as unsavory."

There was a brief silence.

"I infer that is the general supposition?" asked Hugh, rousing himself.

"I fear it is, your lordship."

"And it is absolutely untrue!" exclaimed Hugh with energy. "I know that! Mr. Nash knows it! Watkins knows it!"

"Then why not make the facts known?" suggested Mr. Bellowes.

"If we did so, we should have a negligible chance of establishing our point, and we should certainly lose whatever slight chance there may be of finding the treasure. I am sure my uncle would have wished us to go after the treasure at any cost."

"The treasure!" Mr. Bellowes permitted himself a faint smile of amusement. "Am I to understand that your lordship has succumbed to this fatal lure?"

"You may understand I am extremely interested in the possibility of finding it," retorted Hugh.

"Dear, dear!" murmured the aged solicitor, genuinely distressed. "Surely, you will listen to reason, sir. This Fata Morgana—if I may term it so—has exercised an evil influence upon your family time out of mind. Your uncle is one of a number of people whose lives have been cursed by its futile spell. I do hope you will permit me to urge you to abandon an attempt which must infallibly dissipate whatever is left of your estate."

"But you tell me that the estate is wrecked in any case," replied Hugh. "I do not blame you for one instant for being skeptical, Mr. Bellowes. I felt so, myself, until recent events forced me to the conclusion that there may—notice, please, that I say may—be more to the matter than I had imagined.

"I am anxious to secure your advice, and therefore I propose that Mr. Nash and I recount for you and Mr. Zaranko precisely what happened in connection with my uncle's visit to New York."

So we began at the beginning, with the time I found the messenger boy studying the door-card of our apartment, and carried the tale through to Lord Chesby's death in Bellevue. Mr. Bellowes was visibly shocked.

"I had not supposed such criminals existed any longer," he said. "However, let me draw to your attention the fact that these incidents happened in New York. They could never have happened in England."

"They might have happened anywhere," interjected Nikka, speaking for the first time.

We turned to him with startled interest. His face was very serious as he leaned forward over the table.

"In the first place," he continued, "consider this treasure. I have always heard of it as the Treasure of the Bucoleon, but I believe it is also sometimes referred to as the Treasure of Andronicus."

"You mean to say, you, too, have heard of it?" exclaimed Mr. Bellowes.

"Yes. It is well-known in the Near East. I am a Gypsy. My father before me was Voivode Tzaibidjo, or King, of the Balkan Gypsies. Many tales come to my ears, for, though my people are scattered far and wide and no longer make pretense of being a nation, they still honor those who have been their leaders. I have heard, for instance, a story that a certain tribe of Gypsies in Constantinople guard the supposed site of the treasure. But I do not vouch for the story.

"I do, however, vouch for the statement that Lord Chesby is confronting an organized international band of criminals with many Gypsy members; and I do not believe that such a band would waste time on any enterprise which they did not have good reason to believe would promise handsome profits."

"You mean to say that such a band could operate in England to-day?" demanded the old lawyer doubtfully.

"They can, and almost certainly they do. Crime has increased since the war, remember. The removal of national barriers and the unsettlement of conditions have stimulated it anew. I know something of this band. If it is the one I have heard of we are menaced by the most intelligent combination of thieves, murderers and outlaws that ever acted together."

"What do you know about them?" I asked.

"I have heard that they are doing a great deal of smuggling, and it is in this work that they use the Gypsies especially. I have heard, too, of this Toutou you speak of. He is usually called Toutou LaFitte, but he has many other names. He is said to be a combination of blood-thirsty monster and intensely clever strategist. The band have ramifications in all classes of society, and there are few countries they do not reach. I have no doubt, Hugh, they made arrangements in your uncle's case with some affiliated criminal organization in America."

"Where do you get all this information?" asked Hugh curiously.

"I am a Gypsy," answered Nikka. "We Gypsies are really a separate people, and I grieve to say our lower orders constitute a criminal class. As it happens, I am well-known to my people, and many of them come and tell me what they hear."

"Why don't you tell this to the police?" demanded Mr. Bellowes.

"What good would it do? The police would laugh at me—and I should be stabbed some dark night as I came from a concert. No, I can turn my knowledge to better use by aiding Lord Chesby in his quest."

"It's blame lucky we have Nikka to help us!" I exclaimed. "And I'd like to ask him for his candid opinion on the treasure business."

"I don't know," said Nikka slowly. "I should not like to raise Hugh's hopes, but— Put it this way. I should not be surprised if it is true. Before we go any farther, let us ascertain the facts we have to go upon."

"That is my idea," agreed Hugh. "Mr. Bellowes, I gathered from Watkins that my uncle discussed his discovery with you. Did he indicate precisely what it was or where he had found it?"

Mr. Bellowes joined his fingers tip to tip with meticulous precision. A thoughtful expression possessed his face.

"I might as well admit," he began, "that you have shaken my judgments in the matter. The circumstances narrated are extraordinary. I am not prepared to endorse your conclusions, yet— Well, that is by the way, your lordship."

"Watkins is correct in his supposition. Your uncle did discuss his—ah—fancied discovery with me. Aside from the fact that he had made it whilst at Chesby—"

"At Chesby?" Hugh interrupted.

"So I understood. He came in to see me just before he started for Constantinople the last time. I should describe him as considerably excited. "By Jove, Bellowes,' he said, 'do you know, I've found the missing part of the Instructions?' I remember I pooh-poohed his claim, and instead of becoming angry, as he usually did, he laughed at me. "Oh, you may doubt,' he said, 'but I am going to Constantinople, and I shall soon know whether I am correct or not.'

"'You have been to Constantinople before,' I told him, 'but you never obtained any information.' 'I lacked the key,' was his answer. 'To think that all these years nobody ever found it!' I ventured to remind him of a mortgage coming due, which could be extended only at an increased rate, and he replied: 'We'll attend to that without any difficulty. I tell you, Bellowes, it's all perfectly plain in the missing half of the Instructions.' Then he had me get out the Charter Chest, saying he wished to go over the known half of the Instructions to see if there had not been a hint of the hiding-place in that or any of the other old documents."

"Was there?" questioned Hugh.

"If there was, he did not tell me, your lordship. He went away without any comment, and the next I saw of him was perhaps three weeks later when he returned from Constantinople. He was even more excited than he had been when he came up from Chesby. "I really think there's something in it,' he said. "I wish you'd have one of your young men send this cable to my nephew. I am going to need some young blood in this. It's there, Bellowes, I am persuaded, but we shall have to figure carefully on getting it out.'"

"Humph," said Hugh. "That's not much to go on. Do you know what he did with the missing half of the Instructions he said he found?"

"No, sir. He never showed it to me, and so far as I know, he did not have it in his possession when he was here."

"He wouldn't have carried it, or even a copy of it, if he had supposed others had an interest in it," I interposed.

"True," assented Hugh. "Well, let's have a look at the Charter Chest."

Mr. Bellowes went to a safe in the corner, and took from an inner compartment a bunch of heavy keys, some of them comparatively modern, others clumsy and ancient. With these he opened lock after lock along front and sides of the old chest. Hugh and I carefully raised the lid. A musty odor floated up to us, such an odor as you find in old books. The chest, itself, was packed with smaller boxes, some of wood and some of iron and steel.

The aged solicitor indicated a massive steel box in one corner.

"That contains the Instructions and related documents your lordship," he said, and lifting it to the table top fitted a small key to the lock.

There was a click, and the cover flew back. Inside was a wooden lid, which Hugh pried up with his thumb-nail, and below that a layer of oiled silk, and below that again more layers of cloth, silk and linen. Finally, we came to several framed parchments, with glasses in front and back.

"Your uncle did that," explained Mr. Bellowes. "He was afraid they would be ruined by handling and exposure."

The first frame contained a sheet of parchment, I should say, twelve inches by ten, covered with minute Black Letter script in a rather corrupt form of mediæval Latin.

"That is Hugh's Instructions," said the solicitor. "I'd advise you not to strain your eyes trying to make out the original. We had a very careful translation prepared, and checked over by scholars at Oxford."

He drew out a typewritten sheet of foolscap, and Nikka and I read it over Hugh's shoulder:

"INSTRUCTIONS of Hugh, Lord of Chesby. I, Hugh, write this for my son, and it may be, those who come after him.

"In the reign of the Emperor Andronicus Comnenus my father visited Constantinople, and the Emperor made much of him. At the Emperor's request my father aided in the disposition of a certain treasure which Andronicus had amassed by confiscating and fining the estates of rebel nobles. None save these two knew the location of the treasure.

"It chanced that my father passed oversea to the Holy Land to make good his vows to Our Lady the Virgin, and the Emperor Andronicus was slain by his enemies. The Emperor Isaac, who succeeded Andronicus, sent urgent messages to my father, bidding him visit Constantinople that the new Emperor might do him honor. And in time my father journeyed again to Constantinople, and the Emperor would have had him yield the secret of the treasure. But my father would not, because Andronicus had obtained from him a solemn oath never to give up the treasure to any save one who would spend it for the bettering of the Empire, and the new Emperor craved it for his courtiers and courtesans. Then the Emperor threw my father into prison, and so kept him until Messer Baldwin of Flanders and Messer Dandolo of Venice and the barons of the Crusade went against the Emperor and smote him down.

"Ill-fortune continued to beset the Empire, and so my father kept the secret. In God's appointed time he died and passed on the secret to me. Now, I, too, see Death riding toward me, nor do I fear it, for those I love are in the Shadow Worlds of Hell or Purgatory.

"Harken, then, my son, and those of your seed who come after us. The Lords of Constantinople are rotten. Their Empire dwindles away. The treasure is not for such as they. Therefore I say it shall go to augment the fortunes of our house and recompense my father's sufferings.

"Take it, he who can. But beware the Greeks, for some know of the treasure and the secret will not die.

"In Manus Tuas, Domine."

Hugh let fall the typed script, and we all stared reverently at the original parchment under its sheltering glass. There was something inexpressibly poignant about these words carried across the ages from a Norman-English baron to his modern descendant.

"Is there anything else?" asked Hugh. "It's odd, he speaks so impressively of going after the treasure, and yet he offers no hint of how to find it. Was the secret always unknown? But no, of course not! There was that chap in Henry the Fifth's time, and the Elizabethan Hugh. They knew where it was."

"There is another document here which sheds light upon that phase of the mystery," volunteered Mr. Bellowes, and he sorted an envelope from the mass of documents in the steel box.

From the envelope he drew a heavy sheet of yellowed linen paper inscribed in an angular feminine hand in very faded black ink.

"This was written by the widow of the Elizabethan Hugh," the old solicitor continued. "Her husband, as you may remember, my lord, never returned from one of his voyages. His lady seems to have been a strong-minded person, after the fashion of her royal mistress, indeed. She was in charge of the estate for some years in the minority of her son, and she evidently used her authority."

He spread the paper before us. It was dated "Castle Chesby, ye 5th Septr., 1592," and we read the vigorous strokes with ease:

"Forasmuch as yt hath pleased God to sette mee in authoritie in this my deere late Husband's place, I have seene fitte to Take that Roote of Evill which hath beene ye bane of Oure race Fromme oute ye Chartar Cheste and putte yt where yt may Wreak noe more Of harmme and Sorrowe. I will not have my Sonne awasting of Hys substaunce and hys Life as didde Hys deere Fathour.

"JANE CHESBY.

"Postscriptum. Yette will I leave a trase for Thatte yt might seeme Unfaithfull to ye Dead didde I lose thatte whych ys a part of ye House's wealthe."

"What do you make out of that?" I asked in bewilderment.

Hugh and Mr. Bellowes laughed.

"I remember hearing of this, but I never saw it before," said Hugh. "Jane Chesby was a character, by all accounts."

"The tradition," said the solicitor, "is that the 'Roote of Evill' was the part of the Instructions containing the directions to the location of the treasure. At any rate, there is no record of its having been seen since the date of Lady Jane's minute."

"But the 'trase' she speaks of?" I queried.

"Nobody has ever found it—unless Lord James did so."

"What is that on the back of the paper?" Nikka asked.

"The lady seems also to have been a poetess," said Mr. Bellowes with a smile. "They are some lines she scrawled, apparently without any reference to the matter on the other side."

Nikka turned the paper over. The lines were scrawled, as the lawyer had said, diagonally across the sheet, as if in a moment of abstraction:

Putte downe ye Anciount riddel
In Decente, Seemelie ordour.
Rouse, O ye mystic Sybil,
Vex hymme who doth Endeavour,
Nor treate Hys efortte tendour.

"A farrago of antique spelling and nonsense," commented Hugh. "That gets us no farther."

"Still, I suggest we take a copy of it with us," said Nikka.

"It won't do any harm," agreed Mr. Bellowes, and he called a stenographer and directed him to make copies of the two writings.

"This Lady Jane was a ferocious Protestant," pursued Hugh reflectively. "It was she who blocked up the old family crypt, saying it was not fit to bury Protestant Chesbys with the Papist lords in a place that had known the rites of the Scarlet Woman and all that sort of stuff."

"Yes," said Mr. Bellowes, turning from the stenographer, "and if you recall, my lord, she blocked up the crypt so successfully that its exact location has been a mystery ever since." And to us he explained: "It lies somewhere under the extensive ruins of Crowden Priory, an old monastic establishment which was closely linked with Chesby in the Middle Ages."

Hugh rose reluctantly.

"I am afraid we have learned nothing here," he said. "Have we exhausted the Charter Chest?"

"Unless you wish to read the brief records of the Elizabethan Hugh and his ancestor of Henry the Fifth's time," replied the lawyer. "Neither furnishes any concrete information. The one records the suspicion and hampering of the Greeks; the other was never allowed about except under escort of Janissaries."

"Then we have done all we can," said Hugh. "We'll take the night train for Chesby."

Mr. Bellowes suspended his work of returning the several documents to their places in the steel box.

"I do hope you will take thought to whatever you do, your lordship," he urged. "As you see, the trail so far is blind, and whatever validity we may attach to your uncle's assertion that he had discovered the clue, it must be manifest that you are helpless until you have learned as much as he did."

"You are quite right," returned Hugh, somewhat to the old gentleman's surprise. "But we intend to find out what my uncle discovered. If he did not overrate his achievement, then you may be sure that we shall do everything in our power to obtain the treasure."

"You must admit that common sense can dictate no other course. You say I am ruined as it is. Well, then, I can well afford to risk whatever is left on the chance of extricating the estate."

The lawyer wagged his gray head sorrowfully.

"It's a very sad situation for me, Mister Hugh—beg pardon, your lordship," he sighed. "One way, as you say, it's ruin, to put the facts bluntly. The other way, there'll be terrible danger. Well, sir, I wish you and your friends the best of luck, and whatever poor service I can afford you you may rely upon."

CHAPTER IV
THE GUNROOM AT CASTLE CHESBY

The inimitable Watkins met us at Chesby station with a motor in which we were whirled off through mirky woods and a half-seen park to a low, rambling building of varying architecture set on the summit of a saddle-back hill. Lights showed in one wing, but the center and other wing were dark.

"I'm very sorry, your ludship," apologized Watkins, as he assisted us from the car in front of a Tudor archway. "It's been some years since the 'ouse has been opened. Your uncle, 'e was used to living 'ere in the Old Wing, and we're under-staffed, if I may say so, your ludship, for—"

"It suits me, Watty," returned Hugh. "My friends are not company, and of course, we shall not entertain. It would be foolish to open up the entire place."

He stood on the doorstep, glancing around him at the thick, ivy-draped walls and the machicolated parapets which lined the roofs.

"Welcome to Chesby, you chaps," he hailed us. "It gives me a thrill to come here. I haven't seen it since before the war, except for one brief visit two years ago, and I haven't really lived here since I was a lad."

A butler no less dignified than Watkins held the door open for us, and a palsied footman strove with the valet for custody of our scanty baggage. Watkins motioned both aside when we entered the high-pitched hall.

"This way, if you please, your ludship and gentlemen," he said. "I 'ave 'ad supper served in the Gunroom. 'Is late ludship used it as a snuggery, as 'e called it, Mister Hugh—beg pardon, sir, your ludship—and far more cheery it is, sir, with a bright fire and all, than the other rooms."

"That's fine," approved Hugh, and he led us after Watkins through a short passage to the right and into a big room, with mullioned windows, deeply-embrasured, and carved oaken rafters and stone walls showing above the rich paneling that rose a tall man's height from the floor. At one side was a vast fireplace, with chimney-piece, ingle-nooks and over-mantle elaborately carved. A log-fire blazed on the dogs, and before it, warmly illuminated, a table was set with snowy linen and silver emblazoned with the Chesby crest, a mailed arm clutching a dagger and beneath it an open eye, with the motto "I search."

Hugh rubbed his hands with satisfaction.

"This is home," he said.

But a shadow instantly chased the smile from his lips.

"And if Bellowes is correct, it will continue to be my home only if we succeed in finding something lost more than seven hundred years ago," he added.

"If it is to be found we shall find it," answered Nikka. "What a beautiful room!"

"I was going to say the same thing," I said. "As an architect, I have tried to achieve this effect for rich Americans, but I must admit I can't do with mere money what time and many men's imaginations have accomplished here."

"And women's imaginations, too," replied Hugh. "This is the oldest part of the castle, but it has felt the influence of that redoubtable Lady Jane you heard about this afternoon. I believe this wing is supposed to be the remains of the Angevin keep and Great Hall of the first Hugh's castle, which were partially destroyed in the Wars of the Roses, and again by fire in Bloody Mary's time. Lady Jane rebuilt this wing and joined it with what was then the modern, and early Tudor, central mass."

Curious, I stepped over to the fireplace and examined the splendid carvings in deep relief that adorned stone and woodwork. High up near the roof on the over-mantel I discerned the family crest, together with numerous heraldic shields in colors faded and dimmed. But the most curious feature of the ornamentation was a lower panel supported by a group of bibulous monks in comically disordered attitudes. On the panel appeared to be lettering.

"Watkins," I called, "bring me a candle, please."

He lifted a weighty candelabra from the table and carried it toward me, Hugh and Nikka trailing him like small boys eager to view anything new. As he held it aloft, arm-high, the soft light shone on four lines of Gothic lettering which had once been gilded. They showed clearly in the age-old oak of the paneling:

Whenne thatte ye Pappist Churchmanne
Woudde seke His Soul's contente
He tookened up ye Wysshinge Stone
And trodde ye Prior's Vent.

"I had forgotten that," exclaimed Hugh. "It's some more of Lady Jane's poetry.'

"She seems to have been rather hipped that way," I suggested.

"Now you speak of it, I can't recall any other specimens of her wit in rhyme," answered Hugh, puzzled. "Can you, Watty?"

"No, your ludship. 'Is ludship, your late uncle, made a careful examination of Lady Jane's papers, but 'e found no other verses."

"But what was her idea here?" I persisted, for the whimsicalness of the thing interested me.

"Oh, as I told you, she was virulently anti-Catholic," said Hugh carelessly. "It was she, you know, who sealed up the old family crypt and built a new one in the Priory, as the parish church is called. She probably believed that the former monks of the Priory had been more interested in their wine-cellar than in masses."

"But the 'Prior's Vent'? What on earth is that?"

"I don't know, unless it was the way to the wine-cellar. Don't you see the point?"

"No, I don't. And this 'Wysshinge Stone,' too? What could that be?"

"It must have been something connected with entering the wine-cellar. Oh, it's all perfectly simple, Jack. Crowden Priory was one of those establishments guilty of abuses which furnished Henry the Eighth with his excuse for looting the monastic orders. The facts were still a matter of memory in Lady Jane's time, and she took advantage of them to mock the Catholics. That's all."

I did not answer him for I had become engrossed in the decorations of the stone mantel, itself, a magnificent piece of freestone, sculptured in a frieze of Turks' heads, sphinxes and veiled women, ranged alternately.

"Well, she—or her masons, I should say—did a fine job," I said at last, tearing myself reluctantly from the beautiful courses of stone and the even flags of the hearth.

"You'll have plenty of time to indulge your architect's eye hereabouts," declared Hugh from the table. "Come and eat or Nikka will leave you nothing. Watty, what is the news?"

The valet deposited a chafing dish and stand by my place.

"Mr. Penfellow, the Vicar, your ludship, instructed me to tell you the service for 'is late ludship would be tomorrow morning, as you requested. 'E had made all arrangements consequent upon receiving your ludship's cablegram. Oh, yes, sir, and Mr. Hilyer was over from Little Depping this afternoon in a motor—with some ladies, sir—and asked after you. 'E said 'e would be at the funeral, sir."

Hugh frowned.

"I will not have anything to do with that bounder," he grunted.

"'E 'as quite a lively time, so the servants tell me, your ludship," volunteered Watkins. "A regular 'ouse-party 'e's entertaining now, with foreign gentry and all."

"They would be foreign," retorted Hugh. "He can't get a decent Englishman inside his house, and if he thinks I shall fall for him just because I've spent two years in America—" he broke into a sudden grin—"It's rather funny, Jack. I expect he believes I've been metamorphosed into a bloomin' democrat. The bounder!"

"What's the matter with the man?" inquired Nikka.

"Everything! The Hilyers own the next place to us—Little Depping, it's called. They were always decent enough people, but this chap, Montey Hilyer, is a wrong 'un. He got into trouble before the War with the Stewards of the Jockey Club and was barred from the course. Then he picked up a reputation as a card-sharp and society gambler. For a while he used to hang around Continental resorts and fleece the innocent.

"When the War came he enlisted, made a splendid record and earned a commission. The next thing that happened was a scandal in his mess over heavy play, and he was compelled to resign. He's a bad egg, through and through. Odd, though, how he keeps up Little Depping. I believe he's been on short rations more than once, but he always has managed to preserve the estate—and like me, he's the last of the line."

Watkins removed the savory, and received a platter of sandwiches from the butler, who he permitted to come no farther than the door.

"And your ludship may remember Mr. Hilyer married some years ago—before 'e got into trouble, sir," he observed as he placed the platter before us. "She was, if I may say so, your ludship, not one of us."

Watkins contrived to express deep disapprobation, without wrinkling or contorting his countenance, a trick at which I always marveled.

"Quite so," assented Hugh. "She was an actress or something like that. Well, it's in the beggar's favor that he married her. But they can't come footling around here. I'd have the whole County up in arms against me."

We chatted on for a while, and then Watkins guided us to the upper story where three adjoining bedrooms had been made ready.

"The bathroom is across the 'all, sir," he informed me, stopping at my door on his way from Hugh's room. "My room is beside it. You 'ave only to ring, sir, if you wish anything. Good night, sir."

As he left, I reflected with a grin that I had not been so coddled since my schooldays as in the brief period following his adoption of Hugh and myself. For that was what it amounted to. For all his deference and servility, neither Hugh nor I would have dared to withstand any wish which Watkins gave serious expression to, and furthermore, he made us feel constantly that we were obligated to maintain a certain standard of conduct, which he, Watkins, might find satisfaction in.

I was up early the next morning, and a brief scouting tour revealed Nikka's room empty, while Hugh snoozed blissfully on. So I shaved and bathed, and descended the broad, shallow staircase into the entrance hall below. This wing, I noted, seemed to be shut off entirely from the remainder of the house. At any rate, there were no open corridors.

Watkins was arranging flowers in a luster bowl on a table under an oriel window, and I mentioned this fact to him as I stood on the lowest step, drinking in the wonderful satisfaction of a perfectly designed and furnished entrance, something that it takes the average architect ten years to learn how to do.

"You are right, sir," he answered. "There are corridors, but they are shut off, in order to save heat, sir, and prevent draughts. Since the death of the old lord, sir—Mister Hugh's grandfather—we 'ave 'ad such a small family that no occasion was found for all the rooms. And the old wing, sir, is a large 'ouse by itself."

"Well, that makes so much less for us to defend," I said.

"Beg pardon, sir?"

"In case our friends of Toutou's gang should try to attack us," I explained.

But Watkins was as positive as Mr. Bellowes that such things could not transpire in England.

"Oh, sir, sure I am you need not concern yourself for that," he said seriously. "They would never dare. The constabulary, sir—and all that."

"Perhaps," I said. "What is that music?"

He inclined his ear towards the door of a room that opened from the opposite side of the hall to the Gunroom.

"Oh, sir. That's Mister Nikka. 'E's in the music room aplaying to 'imself, sir."

I crossed to the half-open door and peered inside. Nikka was sitting at a pianoforte in a flood of sunshine, and the music poured from his lips and fingers, like the sunshine, passionately intense, warm and vital. It stirred me as I listened, searching out primitive impulses, painting sound-pictures of outlandish scenes, spreading exotic odors over that conventional room. It was rebellious, uncivilized, untamed—and I liked it.

He crooned to himself, rather than sang, but the words and the melody, savage, melancholy, joyously-somber, beat their way into my brain:

Sad is the ache in my heart;
The cities crowd me in.
I may not breath for their stench,
My ears are deaf from their din.

Let me go forth from their ways,
Out where the road runs free,
Twisting over the Balkan hills
Down to the restless sea.

The dust shall caress my feet,
The sun shall warm my limbs,
The trees shall tell me their thoughts
At dusk as the twilight dims.

And I shall inhale the smoke
Of fires beside the road;
I shall hear the camels grunt
As the drivers shift their loads.

And best of all, I shall hear
The wild, mad Tzigane songs,
Cruel and gay and lustful,
Like fiddles and clanging gongs.

And in the glare of the campfires
I shall see the Tziganes dance—
Women with lithe, round bodies,
Men straight as a heiduck's lance.

And perhaps a wild brown maiden
Will seek me amongst the throng,
And dance with me down the twisting road
To a wild, mad Tzigane song.

He ended with a crashing of keys, and looked up to meet my fascinated gaze.

"You liked it?" he asked shyly. "I can see you did. It is a little song I have made out of the heart-beats of my people. We Gypsies can make music, if nothing else. And all Gypsy music should be played on strings. Only the fiddle can reach the heights and depths of human emotion. But I have put my fiddle away from me until we have finished this job."

He walked over and slipped his arm through mine.

"Let us see what Watty has for breakfast," he went on, "and send him to awaken that lazy-bones, Hugh."

"But see here, Nikka," I broke in. "Are you really a Gypsy? In the usual sense of the word?"

He considered as he explored a fruit-dish.

"I don't know what you mean by 'the usual sense of the word,'" he answered finally. "I am a Gypsy by birth and blood. I passed my boyhood with the caravans. I learned to play the fiddle with the Gypsy maestros of Hungary."

"It's funny," I admitted, "but I never quite envisaged you as a Gypsy until I heard you sing that song."

Nikka smiled.

"I can understand that. I made up that song because I was feeling the lure of the blood. The Gypsy in me has been crying out for assertion. I think that is one reason why I was so glad to have Hugh call on me. I smelled in his need a chance to sample the old, wild life again."

"Do you believe the Gypsies play a part in this treasure business?" I asked.

He nodded.

"I feel it in my bones. It is a Gypsy tradition, remember. Probably we shall find the interest of some Tzigane tribe crossing ours."

"And then?"

"My tribe fight for Hugh."

"Your tribe?"

"Surely, I have a tribe. They fight for my hand and for my friends."

I regarded him with increased respect.

"That has a delightfully mediæval sound. It strikes me you are going to be the most valuable member of this expedition."

"All for one, and one for all," laughed Nikka.

He waved a greeting to Hugh, who came in at that moment.

"We are talking about Gypsies and fighting," he explained.

"And it seems that Nikka is a potentate who has a tribe to carry out his wishes," I amended.

"I wish we had his tribe here to help us pull down this old stone-box," answered Hugh gloomily. "How else are we going to uncover any hiding-places? And I feel like fighting when I remember that we are going to Uncle James's funeral this morning. Well, the best way to fight, I suppose, is to search. That's the family motto. Jack, you'll have a first rate opportunity to investigate early structural methods in English architecture. I expect you'll be the only one to get anything out of the affair."

Which last was a very poor piece of prophecy.

CHAPTER V
A BLIND ALLEY

Mr. Penfellow, the Vicar, received us at the west door of the parish church, a gigantic edifice which was all that was left of the once noble foundation of the Priory of St. Cuthbert of Crowden. With verger and curate, both striving mightily to equal his solemn countenance, he escorted Hugh—and incidentally, Nikka and me—up the center aisle to a high-walled pew directly under the choir. Immediately behind us, Watkins was marshaling the slender array of servants from Castle Chesby, all of whom had come to pay the lost honors to their dead master.

The church was so large that the considerable congregation were swallowed up in its echoing nave. The transepts contained nothing save monuments and tombs. The tempered light that stole through stained-glass windows left most of the space in shadow, but I descried beyond the breadth of the crossing a second box-like pew identical with ours, and in it a company whose gay raiment and gabbling ways were out of place in contrast with the stolid piety of the village folk and neighboring gentry.

"There's Hilyer," muttered Hugh in my ear, as the verger pompously presented his mace and the Vicar withdrew toward the altar.

But we had no time to spare for observing the county's black sheep. Mr. Penfellow's quavering, nasal voice began to intone the stately rite of the Established Church for the dead. The shrill voices of the choir-boys responded.

Our eyes became fastened upon the oblong casket resting on its low catafalque under the choir railing, which contained the body of James Chesby, that quaint, whimsical, Twentieth Century knight errant, who had upheld the traditions of his race by tilting over the world in pursuit of a prize which all sober men proclaimed to be impossible of attainment.

And he had as good as found it! Laughed at, derided, mocked and ridiculed, he had persisted doggedly in what he had regarded as his life-work. He had succeeded where all others had failed or feared to venture. And at the last, probably when he envisaged complete success in his grasp, he had accepted death rather than yield the prize to any but his heir. He must have had good stuff in him, that slight, wan-faced slip of a man, whom I had only seen as he lay on his death-bed in the hospital, his eyes shining to the end with indomitable spirit.

As I thought of him, cut and hacked by that brute Toutou, I found my fingers clenching on the book-rack in front of me; and glancing down, I saw Hugh's knuckles, too, were white. We exchanged a grim glance. For the first time we understood fully that we were playing a man's game, a game in which there was no limit. And we experienced the thirst for action which comes from a desire to slake unsatisfied vengeance. This task we had set ourselves to was more than a hunt for treasure. It was likewise a pursuit of James Chesby's murderers.

Nikka must have read somewhat of our thoughts in our faces, for he reached behind me and slid a hand over Hugh's straining knuckles; and I saw that his lips were shut tight and his eyes blazing like coals under their eagle brows. And then my eyes chanced to stray toward the opposite side of the crossing, and in the shadows that hovered over the Hilyer pew I glimpsed a pair of eyes that gleamed with the evil green light of a beast of prey. For an instant only they showed. Then the shadows moved, and they disappeared. Startled, I looked again, and saw nothing. It must have been fancy, I told myself, a trick of the sunbeams filtered through the particolored glass of the windows. And I turned my ear to the cadenced voice of the Vicar:

"Man, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay."

The formal service was soon ended, and after the congregation had filed out, a little knot of men from Chesby farms poised the casket on their shoulders and paced slowly after Mr. Penfellow and the verger down the broad, winding stairs to the pillared crypt. At the east end, beneath the altar, the verger unlocked a massy oaken door and behind that an iron grate. There was a minute's delay while he lit tall candles, and then the little procession marched on into the last resting-place of the Chesbys.

It was an octagonal chamber, Tudor in style and extraordinarily spacious, the groined roof springing lightly from slender pillars. At the far end was a simple altar, and all around the other segments of the octagon were ledges in two tiers. At intervals over the floor space were tombs and sarcophagi. The flickering candles brought out an occasional inscription.

"Hugh James Cuthbert................twenty-eighth Baron Chesby."

"Claudia Anne, Lady Chesby, aetat 34, beloved.......... James, twenty-first................"

On several coffins reposing on the side ledges there were the moldering remnants of old flags. On one lay an officer's cocked hat and sword, tarnished and covered with dust.

Mr. Penfellow was bowing to Hugh.

"The—ah—space next your grandfather, I suppose?"

Hugh nodded dumbly, and the men carrying the casket shifted it gently into the niche adjoining the twenty-eighth baron's. Once they had set it in place, we were at some difficulty to distinguish it from those above and on either side of it. They were all exactly alike. And how different, probably, had been the men and women they held!

Hugh stumbled forward, and knelt beneath his uncle's casket. Nikka, beside me, breathed hastily in my ear:

"I can't stand this, Jack. How can people be buried in stone vaults? I'm choking."

Without waiting for a reply, he slipped away between the pillars, and I was left alone with Mr. Penfellow. The verger was just shepherding the pall-bearers through the gate.

"A very sad chapter in the glorious history of this ancient family, Mr. Nash," murmured the vicar with moist eyes. "But surely no man could hope for a grander Valhalla."

He gestured toward the encircling tombs.

"All of the line since Elizabethan times. That is, all the lords and their ladies. Cadets and collaterals are buried elsewhere in the church. Have you heard the story of Lady Jane Chesby, the builder of this chamber? Ah! Very interesting, is it not? Her own husband was lost at sea, you know. But here is an empty tomb she reared to him."

He led me to the handsomest sarcophagus in the center of the chamber. On the marble lid was carved life-size the effigy of a man in half-armor, sea-boots and morion. In his hands, clasped upon his breast, he grasped a sextant.

The lettering of the inscription on the side I hastily deciphered as:

"James Matthew Kymmer, Baron Chesby
Hereditarie Rangare of Crowdene Wood,
Admirall of ye Queene's Gracious Majestie,
Scourge of ye Spaniards and all Papists and
Infidells, Lost at Sea anno apud. 1590

And underneath this;

"Deere Lord, I, that was yr Bedfellowe,
do reare thys thatte yf yt please Godde so to do
and Hee bringe You to my Side there shal not
Lacke a Space."

"The famous Lady Jane rests under the adjoining sarcophagus with the plain lid," continued the Vicar. "I wish we might find the old crypt. It is somewhere under the Priory grounds but she concealed it very effectually. The tradition is that the old lords were buried in their mail. They were all noted as warriors. Ah, Lord Chesby," as Hugh rose and walked over to us. "This has been very sad, very sad, indeed. And yet, as I was saying to Mr. Nash, it is something for a man after he dies to be brought back to wait the Last Trump in such glorious company."

"I am afraid I have been thinking of the criminals who murdered my uncle," said Hugh curtly. "You have been very kind, sir. I should like to thank you and everybody else for what they have done. Where's Nikka, Jack? Gone up? Do you mind if we leave you to shut the vault, Mr. Penfellow? Thank you again."

He hooked his arm in mine, and together we passed out of that sepulchral chamber, with its great company of illustrious dead. Upstairs in the church porch Nikka was awaiting us, breathing in deep gusts of the air that blew in tinctured with the perfume of Crowden Forest that stretched all around the village.

"I'm sorry, Hugh," he exclaimed, taking Hugh's other arm, "I couldn't wait. There's something in me that rebels against your churches. I feel the same way about mosques and synagogues, for that matter. And as for being buried down in a close, stone-lined hole in the ground, herded in with other dead!" He shivered violently. "I hope not! If there is a God—and there must be some kind of one to make the trees and hills and the grass and to put music in one's heart—why, I pray to Him that I shall lie on a hillside, with only the trees around me and the sun beating down."

Hugh smiled.

"Each to his own, Nikka. You are a Gypsy, a son of the open road. I am an Englishman, son to these stone walls, that old house we came from. I cannot get away from it. I am bound up with them. So long as they and I last we shall be indivisible."

"And what am I?" I demanded lightly.

"You? You are an American. The world is your oyster. You can be satisfied in any way, in Nikka's way or in mine."

It was a scant ten minutes' walk through the park to Castle Chesby. As we entered the drive, Watkins, who had driven back with the servants, came around the house from the stables and started to run toward us.

"Somebody broke in whilst we were at church, your ludship," he panted when he was within earshot.

We were all startled.

"Anything missing?" questioned Hugh sharply.

"I can't say as yet, your ludship. They seem to 'ave been only in the unoccupied parts. I fancy, sir, they 'adn't the time to go through the West Wing."

We hastened into the house after him. A rear door in the center of the castle—it was really more of a manor than a castle in style—had been forced. Desks, wardrobes, chests of drawers, closets, armories, every corner or piece of furniture that might conceal anything had been thoroughly ransacked. Drawers and their contents were still piled helter-skelter on the floor.

"Do you suppose they could have found anything?" I asked.

Watkins shook his head positively.

"I am sure they could not, Mr. Nash, sir. I think I know most of the stuff that they have gone through. Oh, in a very general way, your ludship, to be sure. But I am sure 'is late ludship was not in the 'abit of keeping anything he was precious of in the East Wing or the Main 'Ouse, sir."

We left Watkins to supervise the servants in reëstablishing order in the upset rooms, and returned to the West Wing. In the Gunroom, Hugh lit a cigarette and straddled his legs in front of the fire. Nikka and I dropped into the lounge that faced the hearth.

"Well?" said Hugh, and his lips had resumed the grim line I had noticed in church.

"Who are they?" I suggested.

"Good idea," approved Hugh, and he rang the bell by the door.

Watkins arrived with the celerity of a djin.

"Watty, I wish you'd make inquiries along the roads, and find out if any strangers have been seen around the place this morning. Oh, yes, and tell the servants not to talk. You understand? Not to talk. The man or woman who talks is to be dismissed."

"That was another good idea," said Nikka. "Our best bet is to keep our mouths shut. They, whoever, they are, have us guessing. Maybe we can make them guess a little. And that reminds me, do you realize that they have saved us quite a bit of searching?"

"You mean in turning two-thirds of the house upside down?" answered Hugh.

"Just that. And I'd suggest that we waste no time in going thoroughly over this wing, ourselves."

We set to work with gusto. On my suggestion—they nominated me captain in this enterprise because of my supposed architectural knowledge—we commenced with the Gunroom. We examined it from end to end, tapped the paneling for secret recesses, examined the furniture. No result.

After luncheon, we began on the upper floor and went over the entire wing in detail. We measured the different rooms. I even took outer measurements. We studied chimneys. We sounded floors. We took to pieces every article of furniture which might have concealed a secret drawer—and we found several hidden receptacles, by the way, but they contained nothing beyond ordinary family letters and trash. Immersed in the hunt and baffled by lack of success, we caused Watkins to put off dinner, and worked on until after nine o'clock. Still no success.

We went to bed that night, tired out and disgusted. But in the morning we arose with sharpened interest and determined to canvas the possibilities in the parts of the house the invaders had searched. Again we took careful measurements, inside and out. Again we sounded paneling, investigated recesses and chimney spaces. We hunted for two days. Then we went back, and reëxamined the West Wing a second time. We ended up in stark disappointment in the Gunroom.

"Damn it all!" ripped Hugh. "The trouble is that my family were not Catholics in the times when priests were proscribed, and every self-respecting Catholic family had its Priest's Hole."

"I'm not worried just because your family can't boast an accessible hiding-place," I retorted. "What bothers me is that their hiding-place, if they have one, is so cunningly hidden that we can't find it."

"'If they have one,'" repeated Hugh. "You may well say that! I am beginning to believe we may be on a wild goose chase, after all.'

"If we were the only ones after it, I might think so," I replied.

Nikka, who had relapsed into one of his frequent spells of silent contemplation, jumped suddenly from his chair.

"If it is here, it is in this room," he said.

"Is that a Gypsy prophecy?" jeered Hugh.

There was a racket of motors outside in the drive, and Watkins appeared in the doorway.

"Pardon, your ludship. But I thought you would wish to know Mr. Hilyer and 'is party 'ave just driven up.'

"The devil they have!" exclaimed Hugh. "I suppose we'll have to see 'em."

But Watkins lingered in the doorway.

"What is it?"

Watkins cleared his throat.

"You may remember you instructed me to inquire if strangers 'ad been seen on the roads 'ereabouts the morning of the funeral, your ludship."

Hugh nodded.

"Mrs. Dobson at the Lodge said nobody passed on the village road, your ludship. And I made other inquiries, but without success until I met 'Iggins, the carpenter, sir, this morning. 'E said one of Mr. Hilyer's motors passed on the London road close on noon, but that was all."

"Well, that doesn't help any," said Hugh. "Whoever did it must have taken to the woods and cut across to the Channel road."

"They need only 'ave dropped over the park wall to reach the London Road, your ludship," suggested Watkins.

"Oh, I see your point," agreed Hugh. "Then Hilyer's people might have seen them. I'll find an opportunity to speak to him about it.'

"Thank you, your ludship."

And Watkins withdrew.

CHAPTER VI
THE HILYER PARTY

"Mr. and Mrs. Hilyer, your ludship!"

And never in my life have I seen anything more splendid than the emotionless disapproval with which Watkins was able to invest his countenance as he announced our callers.

Hilyer was a lean, rangy chap, with a hatchet face and close-set eyes. His mustache was waxed in the Continental fashion, and he had slim, powerful hands, the hands of a born horseman and gambler. He looked what he was: good blood gone wrong.

His wife was a handsome, statuesque woman, awfully well turned out. She was absolutely in the mode, as perfect as a show-girl in a Gayety production. And she had cold eyes that saw everything, and never lost their icy glitter even when her manner was warmest.

"Hullo, Hugh!" exclaimed Hilyer. "Frightfully glad to see you home again, but rotten sorry for the occasion. You don't know Mrs. Hilyer, I believe."

Hugh bowed to her with cold precision.

"Thanks, Hilyer—" just a shade of emphasis on the family name—"it was kind of you to come. We are keeping bachelors' hall, Mrs. Hilyer, and I am afraid our entertaining resources are limited."

"Don't let that bother you," protested Mrs. Hilyer affably, "and if you and your friends want any lively diversion on the quiet, remember we keep liberty hall over at Little Depping. We wanted our—"

But I lost the thread of her conversation as I found myself staring into those same evil green eyes that I had seen peering out of the shadows of the Hilyer pew the morning of the funeral. The man they belonged to had entered the room immediately after the Hilyers. He would have challenged attention in any company with his amazing personality, the strange force that radiated from him. He had the long arms, short, thick legs and enormous body of a gorilla, capped by a beautifully-modeled head. His forehead was high; his clean-shaven face was very white; his jaw was square, without being prognathous. But his eyes were his outstanding feature. They were large and vividly green like a cat's.

The man baffled you. The expression of his face was dreamy, preoccupied. He had the appearance of a thinker, a recluse. But underneath his outward seeming I sensed another self, lurking as if in ambush. He was handsome in an intellectual way. Yet I found him repulsive.

Hilyer, undeterred by Hugh's frosty greeting, dropped his hand on this man's shoulder, and began introducing him. I noticed that the Englishman let his hand lie there only a minute, and then almost snatched it away.

"Signor Teodoreschi, gentlemen! The Italian chemist. And my other friends, Countess Sandra Yassilievna and Count Serge Vassilievich! I ought to explain they are brother and sister!"

This last with a well-bred leer.

"And Hilmi Bey, gentlemen! If you knew your Levant, you would recognize him without introduction."

I saw Nikka shift his attention at this from the two Russians to the Levantine, an olive-skinned individual, good-looking in a portly way, with a predatory beaked nose, effeminate eyes and a sensual mouth.

"You see we're rather an international crowd—what?" Mrs. Hilyer was drawling. "Matter of fact, Lord Chesby, we might muster another race or two."

"Very interesting, I'm sure," said Hugh, cold as ever. "You won't mind if I present my friends to you as a group? Thanks. This is Mr. Zaranko—and Mr. Nash."

"Not Mr. Nikka Zaranko?" exclaimed Mrs. Hilyer. "Oh, I say, it is a treat to meet you! How wonderfully you play!"

And she wrenched Nikka away from his obvious intent to probe the Levantine, and carried him off to a corner, along with Vassilievich, a slim-waisted, old-young man, with a hard, dissipated face. Hilmi, after a look around, joined the gorilla-like Italian, who was turning the pages of a review on the table, with occasional flashing glances about the room. Montey Hilyer was volubly describing the prospects of the racing season to Hugh, and I was left by process of elimination to entertain the Countess Sandra Yassilievna.

I think both Hugh and Nikka envied me the chance. She was a dark girl, with great, sleepy, almond-shaped eyes and a sinuous, willowy figure.

"You're an American, aren't you?" she said with a very slight accent. "How do you happen to know Lord Chesby?"

I explained to her.

"He went to New York to earn his living! Ah, that is an old story, Mr. Nash. Look at my brother and me! Exiles! Forced to turn our hands to whatever we can do. The Old World is a sad place these days."

I felt like telling her that I didn't believe it would hurt her sort to do a little work, but instead I asked her what she did do.

"Oh, anything," she replied evasively. "Secretarial work when I can get it. And you? What shall you and your friends do now? But I suppose you will help Lord Chesby enjoy the life of an English country gentleman."

"For a while, yes," I agreed.

"And then?"

"I don't know. America, I suppose. One must earn a living."

"So you would leave him—Lord Chesby, I mean?"

I began to have a disagreeable feeling that I was being pumped.

"I can't stay here forever, you know," I retorted.

"Ah, but of course! And Lord Chesby? Will he marry an heiress, an American, perhaps? But no! He does not need money, they say."

"'They say' a great many things," I commented.

"It may be he did ill to leave America," she suggested. "One is so safe there. In Europe, who can say what the future holds? Russia is chaos. Turkey torn by war. Eastern Europe boiling. Germany thirsting for vengeance. Ah? Mr. Nash, were I an American I should stay at home."

"That sounds almost like a threat," I laughed.

"God forbid!" she ejaculated with true Russian piety. "It is that I envy you your security. All Serge and I can do is to wait and plot and plot and wait."

"Are you staying in England?" I asked.

"Only temporarily. We shall be in Paris shortly. Perhaps you would care to call when you—"

"I haven't any present intention of going to Paris," I cut in.

"I can't believe you," she replied. "Don't all good Americans expect to go to Paris when they die? Perhaps you will travel elsewhere, no?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"You Americans are so venturesome," she sighed. "One never really knew you as a people until the War."

I happened to look up at that moment, and surprised the Italian in one of his lightning surveys of the room.

"Your friend there seems exclusive," I remarked.

"Oh, he?" she said hastily. "He speaks no English, and he is sensitive about it. He talks little in any case. These scientists, you know."

Hilmi Bey left the Italian's side, and sauntered over to us.

"A beautiful old room," he said. "Has it any history?"

"It's the oldest part of the present building," I told him. "I understand it represents a reconstruction during Elizabeth's reign."

"Ah! Faultless taste, isn't?" He swung around on me. "They tell me you are an architect. You must appreciate such a good job."

The fellow spoke very pleasantly, and yet there was something about him that aroused in me a continual desire to punch his face.

"You can't beat the old people who worked slowly and lovingly," I answered, forcing myself to be civil.

"That is a gorgeous fireplace," said the Countess.

"Ah, yes," he agreed, with his absurdly broad pronunciation. "Rather a quaint verse there, too, I see. How does it run?"

He picked it out slowly, with some help from the Russian girl.

Whenne thatte ye Pappist Churchmanne
Woulde seke Hys Soul's contente
He tookened up ye Wysshinge Stone
And trode ye Prior's Vent.

"Deuced odd! What does it all mean?"

"I haven't the slightest idea," I said. "Nor has anybody else. It seems like a gratuitous slap at a certain religion, and as the author of the lines was noted for her religious bias, that is probably as good an explanation as any other."

Our conversation had attracted the attention of the others, and Mrs. Hilyer drew Nikka and the Count in front of the chimney-piece.

"You don't suppose there could be some secret meaning to those words, do you?" she asked.

"I wish you'd pick it out for me," I countered.

That was a query I had often put to myself.

"A key to something else, you know," she went on. "Our ancestors were fond of that sort of thing. They loved mystery, and life wasn't as safe in those days as it is in ours.'

"It's perfectly thrilling," cried the Countess. "This is just the kind of room to house some wonderful secret—or perhaps a tragedy."

"At any rate, her meaning is successfully concealed," I said. "Always supposing she had a meaning."

I felt something behind me, and turned my head. The Italian had left the table in the center of the room and moved up to the fringe of our group. His green eyes, flaring with an uncanny vital force, were intent upon the rhyme on the overmantel.

"Humph," I thought to myself, "you may not be able to speak English, but you appear to be able to read it."

He growled something in an undertone to Mrs. Hilyer, and she nodded.

"Fascinating as your room is, I am afraid we must leave you, Lord Chesby," she called over to Hugh. "Signor Teodoreschi had just reminded me we have to put him on the London train before we drive home."

"I'll have your motors called up," returned Hugh impassively, as he and Hilyer joined the rest of us.

He rang and gave the necessary orders to Watkins.

"You really must come over and have a bit of bridge with us," Mrs. Hilyer bowled along merrily. "Of course, I know you are in mourning, but even so, you ought not to deny yourself all pleasure. Any evening at all. Do make it soon. So glad to have met you, Mr. Zaranko. I can't tell you how sorry I am you won't play for us. Mr. Nash, I've hardly had a word with you, but we'll better that over at Little Depping, won't we?"

The Countess extended her hand to me.

"I hope you will accept Mrs. Hilyer's invitation," she said, her eyes glowing softly. "It's such a pleasure to meet Americans. I'd love to ride with you one day this week."

"I'll ring you up," I prevaricated, feeling very much like doing it, if the truth be known—she had a way with her, that girl.

"And don't forget that tip on Krugersdorp for the St. Leger," I heard Hilyer insist to Hugh. "I'm not so sure about the Derby. When you run over to see us, I'll let you have a look at a sweet little filly I'm grooming for steeplechase work. You aren't takin' on any hunters, are you? I've—"

"By the way," Hugh interrupted. "I meant to ask you: did any of your people see strangers around here the morning of my uncle's funeral?"

I was amazed at the sudden silence that gripped the room. The Italian, Teodoreschi, already in the doorway after a curt nod of farewell, stopped dead and stared hard at Hugh.

"You see," Hugh continued, "I heard one of your cars was seen on the London Road in back of the park, and if—"

"But, my dear fellow," exclaimed Hilyer, "what's the trouble? There are always strangers passing through Chesby. You've got two trunk highways, remember."

"Quite so," agreed Hugh. "But I'm anxious to know whether any strangers were seen that morning, especially strangers on foot."

"Not that we've heard of," responded Mrs. Hilyer promptly. "All of us were at the funeral. And if the servants had noticed anything queer, I'm sure they would have reported it to me."

"Thanks," said Hugh. "Would it be too much trouble for you to inquire of them, just the same?"

"Not at all. D'you mind telling us what happened?"

The whole company crowded closer.

"Oh, nothing much," answered Hugh deliberately, "except we had reason to suppose the house had been entered."

"Great Scott!" protested Hilyer. "That's a go. We've never had anything like that before in the County. But with so many men out of work, and the unrest and whatnot, I suppose it's no more than to be expected."

"Did you lose anything, Lord Chesby?" inquired Hilmi Bey.

"I think not."

The Countess Sandra Vassilievna permitted an artistic shudder to undulate her figure.

"Bozhe moi, Maude!" she cried. "Do you bring us into your rural England to risk death from burglars? I prefer the Bolshevists."

Several people laughed.

"All the same, it's no joke," answered Mrs. Hilyer. "Thanks for the warning, Lord Chesby. We'll let the dogs loose around the house after this at night."

Teodoreschi, still standing in the doorway, rasped a single sentence, and passed out. The others flocked after him like hounds over whom the huntsman cracks his whip. Mrs. Hilyer and the Countess waved a last good-by, and Watkins closed the door on them.

Nikka and I looked at one another, and burst out laughing. Hugh, with a muffled curse, threw up the nearest window.

"Let's have some fresh air," he said. "That scoundrel Montey Hilyer makes me feel dirty. He and his tips! And we must come over and play bridge! Yes, and roulette, too, I suppose, with a wired wheel. I say, you two, do I look like such an utter ass?"

"They were a queer crowd," I admitted. "That countess wasn't bad-looking, though."

"I noticed you stuck to her," insinuated Hugh.

"Nonsense, she singled me out. I think she was trying to pump me."

"Well, Hilyer didn't ask me any questions, I'm bound to say," returned Hugh. "He was too busy with his beastly gambling anecdotes, and crooked dope. What did you make out of them, Nikka?"'

Nikka lit a cigarette before he replied.

"I think they are a party of polite thieves," he answered at last. "At least, some of them. The Italian I made nothing of."

"He didn't talk any," said Hugh.

"They said he couldn't speak English," I put in.

"You didn't notice, then, that he was listening to everything that was said," observed Nikka.

"No, but I saw him read the rhyme up there over the fireplace. He gave me the shakes."

"Who was the Bey person?" inquired Hugh.

Nikka's lip curled.

"That fellaheen cur! I know the breed. They live by graft and worse. If we go to Paris I think I shall make inquiries about some of them. I know persons at the Prefecture of Police who ought to have their dossiers."

We fell silent, as Watkins, the company out of the way, brought in tea.

"How did they get on the subject of that verse of Lady Jane's?" demanded Hugh suddenly.

"It was the countess and Mrs. Hilyer," I explained. "They saw it, and insisted on reading some hidden meaning into it."

As I spoke I looked up again at the overmantel where the Gothic characters showed dimly in the light from the smoldering logs and the rays of the sunset. I conned over the four lines deliberately. "Ye Prior's Vent." The last three words seemed to jump out at me. "Some secret meaning.... A key to something else, you know." Mrs. Hilyer's phrases reëchoed in my brain. I studied the rhyme a second time.

"Hugh," I said suddenly, "d'you happen to have with you the copy of that other verse of Lady Jane's?"

He produced it from his pocketbook, without speaking. We had read over the copy of the Instructions a score of time since our arrival at Chesby, but none of us had recurred to Lady Jane's whimsical effort.

I spread the copy before me:

Putte downe ye Anciount riddel
In Decente, Seemelie ordour.
Rouse, O ye mystick Sybil,
Vex Hymme who doth Endeavour,
Nor treate Hys effortte tendour.

And in the winking of an eyelid the cipher leaped out before me. I did not reason it out. It just came to me—when I saw the VE in the next to the last line, I think.

"I've got it!" I shouted, and I sprang up and danced across the hearth, waving the paper in my hand. "I've got it!"

Hugh and Nikka regarded me in astonishment.

"Got what, you silly ass?" asked Hugh.

"It—the secret! The key! The cipher! The treas—"

But even as I started to say that, I thought better of it.

"No, that's going too far," I panted, breaking off in my mad dance. "I've got something, but how much it means is another matter."

Hugh pulled me down beside them.

"Talk sense, Jack," he ordered. "Show us your—"

"Here!" I shoved the copy of Lady Jane's doggerel in front of him and Nikka. "Now watch!"

I took a pencil and drew it through all except the first letters of the first and last words in each line. So:

The result, of course, was:

P r
I o
R S
V E
N t

"Prior's Vent!" gasped Nikka. "He has found something!"

And his eyes, too, sought the verse carved on the over-mantel.

"Up there, too! It can mean only one thing."

"That the secret to the location of the treasure is in the Prior's Vent!" I added triumphantly.

"Or can be reached through the Prior's Vent," amended Nikka.

Hugh, who had been in a brown study, aroused himself, and peered at the mass of the fireplace.

"I'm not trying to belittle Jack's discovery," he said slowly, "but you chaps must remember that we don't know where or what the Prior's Vent is."

"Except that you may take it for certain it is in this room," replied Nikka.

"And that perhaps the fireplace has something to do with it," I suggested.

Hugh shook his head.

"No, no, Jack, that won't wash. You, yourself, have measured that chimney area, and we all agreed there wasn't space inside it for a secret chamber. If I thought there was, I'd tear it down.'

"Hold on," counseled Nikka. "Easy does it. For the first time we've got something to go upon. Let's chew it over for a while, and see what we can make of it."

We chewed it over until bedtime without reaching any decision.

CHAPTER VII
THE FIGHT IN THE GUNROOM

It was a long time before I went to sleep. Lady Jane's cipher and its inconclusive information kept buzzing through my head. But at last I dozed off and dreamed of fat monks who popped out of a round hole in a courtyard in endless succession until one of their number, stouter than the rest, became wedged in the opening. He babbled profanely in Latin, and I started to go to his aid—and waked up.

The night was very dark, and there was not even a hint of starshine to light the room. A dog was barking on the Home Farm just outside the park enclosure, but not another sound broke the silence. I rolled over, and shut my eyes, and promptly sat up in bed. I thought I had heard another sound. What it was I could not say. It was very faint, a gentle burring rip.

I swung out of bed, reached for a candle, thought better of it, and crossed to the door communicating with Hugh's room. It was ajar, and as I poked my head in, I could hear his gentle breathing. Nikka's room, beyond his, was quiet. Outside of us three, only Watkins slept in that part of the house. The servants' quarters were in the rear over the kitchens.

My first instinct was to laugh at myself, but I opened the door from my room into the hall and listened there. At first, I heard nothing. Then it seemed to me that I detected a creaking, as of subdued footfalls. I strained my faculties in tense concentration, but the creaking was not repeated, and I began to believe that my imagination was playing tricks with me.

To make sure, I crossed the hall in my bare feet, and listened at Watkins's door. Watkins, I regret to say, snored quite audibly, and I was inclined to suspect that he had been responsible for arousing me. But I could not quell the uneasiness which possessed me. I started to call Hugh and Nikka, and stopped with my hand raised to knock on Nikka's door. It would be a fool stunt to wake them for nothing but my own fancies.

After a moment's further hesitation, I crept downstairs into the entrance hall, groping my way in the pitch darkness. Feeling more than ever like a fool, I looked into the dining room and music room. I had just stepped back into the hall when a chink of light shone out of the short passage that led from the hall into the Gunroom. It flickered away, and returned.

Wishing now that I had taken the automatic that lay on the table beside my bed, I stole into the Gunroom passage. I still thought I might have to deal with one of the servants. In fact, I didn't think very much of anything, except the necessity of discovering the identity of the intruder.

The door of the Gunroom opened into the passage. It was ajar, but not sufficiently to permit me to see inside. I drew it cautiously toward me. The chink of light was more pronounced. A brief mutter of voices, hoarse and restrained, reached my ears. As the crack widened, I adjusted my eye to the opening and peered in.

The Gunroom was a pool of shadows, save only in front of the fireplace, where a single ray of light played upon a preposterous figure crouched on the mantle-shelf. The light came from an electric torch in the hand of a second figure outlined against the dying coals of the woodfire on the hearth. They mumbled back and forth to each other, and now I caught once more the faint noise like the prolonged ripping of tough cloth which had attracted my attention upstairs.

The light flashed on steel, and I realized that the figure on the mantle-shelf was working with a small saw on the panel of the over-mantle containing Lady Jane's verse. As I watched, he suspended his efforts and barked impatiently at his assistant. The ray of light quivered and shifted upward. For a fleeting section of a second it traversed the figure on the mantle-shelf and focussed momentarily on his head and shoulders.

I gasped. The figure on the mantle-shelf was Professor Teodoreschi, the Italian chemist who had accompanied the Hilyer's party. There was no mistaking the tremendous shoulders, the long ape-arms, the pallid face, with its high forehead and heavy jaw. He wore the same costume of shooting-coat and knickerbockers that he had had on in the afternoon.

In my amazement my hand tightened involuntarily its grip on the door, which swung out past me with a loud groan. Another beam of light flashed from the shadows close by, focussed on me and snapped off.

"Amerikansky!" cried a man's voice.

I heard him leap through the litter of furniture, and dimly saw him fling his torch at me. It crashed against the door, and I snatched up a chair, stooped low and lashed at his legs. He tumbled in a heap.

"Hugh! Nikka!" I shouted at the top of my lungs.

I had my hands full on the instant. The man who had flung the torch at me was already scrambling to his feet. The gorilla-like Italian had jumped from the mantle-shelf with the alert energy of a big cat. He and the man who had been helping him were now dodging towards me.

"Ne tirez pas!" hissed Teodoreschi in throaty accents that were vaguely familiar. "Percez! Attende, Serge, Vlada! Percez! Poignardez!"

The Italian's helper reached me first. I saw his knife in his hand, and struck out with my fist. Being a knife-fighter, it was what he least expected, and he went over. I ran behind the large center table, and as the Italian and the other man closed in, I reared it on end and toppled it at them. They jumped apart, and I found opportunity to heave another chair at the chap I had just knocked down.

But I was in for a bad time. Teodoreschi and the man who had first rushed me were ugly customers. I evaded them, slipped behind the couch that stood in front of the fireplace and tried to make for the window. They headed me off, and I drove a right hook to the jaw of my original foe that sent him reeling. Then the Italian was on me like a human juggernaut. He swept aside my blows as though they were harmless, folded me in his great arms and tossed me from him. I spun across the hearth into the fireplace, and brought up on all-fours in the ashes.

Every tooth in my head was jarred by the crash, but I had no time to think of pain. I heard the guttural snarl of the gorilla-man behind me, and looked up to see his knife descending in a stab that was aimed inside my collarbone. Desperate, I threw myself backward against his legs, and he fell on the couch. Yet he was up again in an instant, and chopping at me, with foam dripping from his lips.

I had to run, and as I ran, I kicked the fire-irons in his way. They tripped him and his knife went hurtling across the room into a bookcase. But I could not escape. His companions herded me back towards him, and presently I was battling to avoid his clutch. Once within his reach, I was helpless as a child.

His arms wrapped me like cables; his wicked green eyes blazed at me with insane ferocity; his teeth gnashed at my throat. And his two friends hovered near, watching for an opportunity to finish me with their knives.

Then I heard feet pattering in the hall, a cry of encouragement. I summoned all my strength for one last struggle.

"Shoot! Hugh! Nikka! Shoot!" I yelled.

Teodoreschi lifted me from my feet, and turned me face upward in his arms. I honestly think he meant to gnaw through my throat. His pallid cheeks gleamed with sweat. His eyes were utterly inhuman. His mouth dribbled saliva. But an automatic cracked in the doorway, and was followed by a choking cry. He hesitated, glaring down at me, and I could almost see the human intelligence returning to his face. There were two more shots, and he slammed me on the floor, with a barking screech of defiance.

The next thing I remember was Hugh pouring raw Scotch whiskey down my throat—and how good it tasted.

"Did you get him?" I stammered.

"We got one fellow," answered Hugh grimly. "Or I should say, Nikka did."

I staggered to my feet with Hugh's arm around me. In the doorway I saw Watkins, a nightshirt flapping around his calves, forcing back a motley group of servants. Nikka had picked up the electric torch which had been flung at me, and was examining by its light the body of a man that lay between the couch and the fireplace.

As Watkins closed the door, Nikka beckoned to him.

"Did they see this?" he asked shortly, pointing to the body.

"No, sir. None of them got inside, and it's quite impossible to see be'ind the couch 'ere, sir."

"Good! Oh, Hugh!" Nikka turned to us. "Hello, Jack! Do you feel yourself again?"

"I'm right as can be," I insisted, which was the truth. "Nothing bothered me, except having the wind squeezed out of me by that gorilla."

"What gorilla?"

"The Italian—Teodoresehi."

"Oh, was he in it?"

Hugh and Nikka exchanged glances.

"Well, take a look at this fellow," suggested Nikka.

He switched the torch on the body by the hearth. There was a red splotch over the heart. The right hand still clutched convulsively a long knife, with a slight curve near the keen point of the blade. The light settled on a dark, thin, hooknosed face.

"Ever seen him before?" inquired Hugh.

"No," I admitted regretfully.

"Oh, Watty!" called Hugh.

"Yes, your ludship."

Watkins maintained all his usual dignity of demeanor, notwithstanding that he was in his nightshirt and bare feet, with a snuffed-out candle in one hand and an automatic in the other.

"Ever seen this man before?"

Watkins stooped, and almost instantly jerked erect.

"It's 'im, your ludship! It's the man that told us 'e came from you. On the Aquitania, sir! A just and 'Eavenly punishment, indeed, your ludship!"

"I'll take a little credit for it, if you don't mind," said Nikka, grinning.

"Jack, did you recognize the third man?"

I shook my head.

"The Italian was the only one whose face I saw.'

"Well, I had a glimpse of Number Three as he escaladed through the window after Teodoreschi—I'll take your word for the Italian! He—Number Three, I mean—looked very much like the Russian, the brother of that Countess you were so smitten with."

"I wasn't smitten with her," I denied indignantly. "Here, Hugh, don't drink all that whiskey."

"I like your nerve," he retorted. "Didn't I pour a quarter of the bottle down your throat?"

"Be that as it may," I went on when he had surrendered it, "I shouldn't be surprised if Number Three was the Count. Now I think of it, the Italian called 'Serge!' when they first jumped me.'

"That would be right, then," agreed Nikka. "Did he call this carrion anything?"

He touched the dead man with his foot.

"He called 'Vlada!' at the same time."

"That sounds reasonable, too," said Nikka, deep in thought.

"Why?"

"The man is a—what you would call a countryman of mine. He is a Gypsy. I tell you, my friends—"

He broke off, and stared down at the body on the floor.

"What?" asked Hugh.

"Why, this. Our task grows as we draw nearer to it. I have said before that we face a gang of international thieves. But see how their importance swells. Hugh, this man Hilyer—when all is said and done, an English country gentleman, living to outward seeming within the law—is one of them. They have a pair of shady Russian nobles, probably with ex-spy records. We have seen a Levantine financier with them. We know they have powerful connections in America. We know they have access to the criminal organization of the Gypsies. We have seen an Italian scientist—"

"He's no more Italian than you are," I interrupted. "He may be a scientist, but he's French."

"Who is he, then?" asked Nikka placidly.

"He is that same Toutou Hugh's uncle spoke of."

Hugh leaped up.

"How do you know that, Jack?"

"I just know, that's all. Yesterday afternoon I saw him, although I did not recognize him, as he normally is. He's fearsome enough in that mood, God knows! Well, a few minutes ago I saw him blood-crazed. He wanted to bite my throat out like a tiger. Oh, he's Toutou, all right."

Hugh's face grew bitter-hard.

"In that case," he said, "I am going to drive over to Little Depping, and do a bit of killing on my own."

Watkins, without a word, deposited his snuffed candle on the mantel-shelf next an open kit of burglar's tools, and stepped up beside his master.

"You can't do that sort of thing, Hugh," I urged.

"Why not? He's a murderer, isn't he? He killed my uncle—butchered the poor old chap! D'you suppose Hilyer would dare to complain to the police?"

"What you say is right enough, Hugh," said Nikka quietly, "but you forget that Hilyer's gang are hardly the kind to give up without a fight, especially when the man you want is their leader. Also, I fancy you under-rate your enemies' intelligence, if you suppose Toutou or Teodoreschi or whatever his name is will return to Little Depping."

"They prepared an alibi for him when they were here," I cried. "Don't you remember? When they were leaving, Mrs. Hilyer said that they had to put him on the London train before they drove home."

"And you can depend upon it that he took the train," added Nikka. "He probably dropped off at another station, and they met him with a car."

Hugh sat down gloomily.

"I suppose you are right," he admitted. "But I should like to shoot the swine."

"You are very likely to have the opportunity," Nikka comforted him. "That is, supposing you shoot first. Now, see here, you chaps, what are we going to do with this fellow I shot? We can't have any publicity, and while you may persuade servants not to talk about an ordinary burglary, you can't hush them up if it includes a killing."

"What's your suggestion?" asked Hugh.

"Remove him secretly, and tell the servants that nothing is missing and we don't want the affair talked about."

"The idea is good," assented Hugh. "I'm not anxious to have any more sensational interest attached to me, But what can you do with him? The body is in this room. It's got to be taken out. You can't bury a body without digging a grave. That means leaving a trace. Suppose some one should see us or suppose some one should find the grave and investigate. Mind you, old top, whatever our motives, we are violating the law if we don't report the man's death."

"There may be a way out of your difficulty," I remarked.

"What is it?"

"Use the Prior's Vent."

They both looked at me as if I had gone mad. Even Watkins regarded me with stern disapproval.

"What are you talking about?" demanded Nikka.

"This is serious," reproved Hugh. "Just because you find a silly cipher—"

"I am serious," I insisted. "This has been an eventful evening. Among other things, I think I have found the Prior's Vent."

Hugh shook his head sadly.

"There's been too much talk of secrets," he said. "Watty, go and ring up Dr. North. He must have hurt his head in that mix-up."

CHAPTER VIII
THE PRIOR'S VENT

"Stay where you are, Watkins," I commanded. "Let me have that torch, Nikka."

I turned it on the over-mantel. An efficient kit of burglar's tools reposed on the mantel-shelf under the carven group of dancing monks, ale-horns and tankards waving aloft. The figure in the middle of the group had a comically protruding belly that seemed to waggle as the light played on it. But what interested me was the small flexible saw that was still fixed in the base of the panel above the dancing monks.

"Do you see what our friends were up to?" I asked. "That fellow Toutou has a keen mind. He is somebody to be reckoned with. He saw what none of us saw, even after we had worked out the cipher."

"What did he see?" asked Nikka.

For answer I switched the light on to Lady Jane's verse:

Whenne thatte ye Pappist Churchmanne
Woudde seke Hys Soul's contente
He tookened up ye Wysshinge Stone
And trodde ye Prior's Vent.

"He saw that," I answered. "And he jumped to conclusions from it. He knew, as we knew, that there is something concealed in this house, probably in this room. And he thought that that verse would not have been placed just there unless there was a reason for it."

"By Jove, I believe he was right!" exclaimed Hugh.

Nikka propped a chair against the mantle-piece, and climbed on to the shelf. The panel had been sawed through on both sides and part of the bottom.

"Go ahead," said Hugh. "It's ruined anyway. But I swear I don't see how there can be an opening in back there that wouldn't sound hollow when you rap over it."

While I held the light on the panel Nikka sawed away, and in fifteen minutes he had it detached from its beveled frame.

"Come up here, Hugh, and help me with it," he said, as he withdrew the saw, and Hugh climbed to his side.

They found a thin chisel in the burglar's kit, and with this Hugh gently pried the panel loose.

"It has a stone backing," cried Nikka disappointedly, as it came away.

In fact, we all experienced a profound feeling of disillusionment when Watkins received the panel in his arms, and the empty area of stonework was revealed, about four feet long and three feet high.

"Too bad," said Hugh, jumping down. "Especially as we could have gotten a body through an opening that size."

There came a yell of triumph from Nikka, and Watkins, whose eyes had been straining at the opening, shouted:

"There is something there, your ludship!"

Nikka was digging furiously with the chisel at what looked to be a dark stone in the very center of the empty area.

"It's an inner wood panel," he grunted over his shoulder. "I can feel something behind it."

There was a splintering noise, and the "stone" fell apart. Behind it was a shallow recess, perhaps nine inches square, completely filled by a rusty iron box. Nikka levered the box out, and handed it to Hugh.

"Your ancestress was a clever old person," he commented, dropping beside us on the couch. "Fancy her figuring that the inner panel would prevent the recess from sounding hollow when it was rapped."

The box was about three inches deep. It was unlocked, and Hugh lifted the cover without difficulty. Inside were two papers, very brittle and yellow from the heat of the chimney. The first was a torn fragment from a household account book:

"Septr. ye 2nde, 1592.
"Paid Conrad of Nurmburgge ye Germanne masonne:
item, for sealinge ye Olde Cryptte belowe ye Priors
House: item, for ye engine for ye Priors Vent:
item, for ye pannellinge in ye Gunneroom £17 s9 d4
item, two boxes of Flanders iron s7
—————
"Accompte £17 s16 d4"

And below this was written:

"And I sent Hyme forth of ye Vilage thatte Hee might not have Chaunce to talk howbeeit Hee ys clousemouthed and Hath littel Englysh."

It was impossible not to laugh at the invincible determination of Lady Jane.

"What did she do with the second box?" I suggested.

"Probably used it in another mystery," chuckled Nikka. "What's the other paper, Hugh?"

"It's the real thing! Great Jupiter, see what Toutou missed!"

And he spread the second paper on his knee. It was short and to the point:

"To Hymne thatte hath Witte to rede Mye riddel. Presse atte ye One time ye Sfinxes headde and ye Monkes bellie. So wil ye Flaggin drop in ye Dexter side of ye Harth. Thatte whych you Seke you shal Discovour in yts proper Place.

"JANE CHESBY."

I flashed the electric torch on the mantle-piece. "Ye Sfinxes headde" was in the very center of the row of Turks' heads, and veiled women that was sculptured along the edge of the stone mantle-shelf. "Ye Monkes bellie" was the bit of carving that protruded from the center of the bibulous group that had upheld the panel bearing Lady Jane's verse.

"I've pressed both of those more than once," I protested.

"But not both at once," answered Nikka.

He bounded up, and drove his two hands, palm out, against the projections. There was a muffled thud in the fireplace. I sank on my knees, and trained the electric torch inside. On the "dexter," or right-hand side, in the rear, yawned a hole some two feet square.

I crawled through the ashes, and thrust the torch over the rim. There was a sharp drop of three or four feet, and then the beginning of a flight of stairs, heavily carpeted with dust. A damp, earthy odor smote my nostrils. The others crawled in beside me. Even Watkins pulled his nightshirt around him and stuck his head in as far as he could get.

"Ever seen that before, Watty?" asked Hugh, backing out.

"Never, your ludship."

The valet's face was a study.

"Is late ludship, Mister Hugh, was frequently in the 'abit of being alone, as I daresay you know. But 'ow in the world could 'e have found it, your ludship, if he didn't find out first about that?"

Watkins nodded toward the gaping hole in the over-mantle.

"I'm damned if I know," admitted Hugh. "Maybe we'll find out. By the way, how do you suppose you close the Vent?"

Nikka fingered the two projections, and the moment he applied pressure the flagstone slapped up into place.

"There's some counterweight arrangement," he said. "The fellow who designed this was a master-mechanic."

"Evidently," agreed Hugh. "Well, you chaps, we are another mile-stone farther on the road, but the first thing we have to do is to get the corpus delicti safely underground."

"Right," assented Nikka, "But we need clothes and food. You can't tell what we may run into."

For the first time I looked at myself, and burst out laughing at the spectacle I presented. My pajamas were torn to shreds, and I was smutted from head to foot with soot and ashes. Hugh and Nikka were little better. Watkins was as immaculate as a man in his night-shirt may be.

"Very well," said Hugh. "Then Jack had best go upstairs and wash, while Watkins gets dressed and fetches our clothes. In the meantime, Nikka and I can be disposing of our friend here."

We adopted this plan, and Watkins also volunteered to tell cook to start breakfast. The curtains had been close drawn over all the Gunroom windows, and I was amazed to perceive on leaving it that the sun was rising.

When I came downstairs twenty minutes later, Hawkins the butler, carrying a large tray, was knocking on the Gunroom door.

"I'll take it," I told him. "You go back to the kitchen like a good fellow, and keep the maids quiet."

I knocked for several minutes without result, and finally set the tray down, and banged the door with both fists.

"All right! All right!" called a strangely blanketed voice. "Who is it?"

"Jack!"

Feet scuffled inside, and the door was jerked open by Hugh, rather dusty and cobwebby.

"We were out under the Park," he explained. "We took that Gypsy down safely, and I came back ahead of the others on the chance you might be trying to get in. There's a regular passage, Jack. It seems to go on and on. We didn't have time to follow it very far."

He set the table, which I had overturned, on its legs, and I brought in the tray. Then Nikka and Watkins emerged from the fireplace, blinking owlishly, and we three drew chairs up to the table, and Watkins served breakfast as deftly as though we had not departed a hair's-breadth from the ordinary routine of life.

"Have you had breakfast yet, Watty?" asked Hugh.

"No, your ludship."

"Sit down, then, and eat."

Watkins looked like a man instructed to undress in Piccadilly.

"Beg pardon, your ludship—"

"Sit down, man."

"But, your ludship—"

Hugh pointed to a chair.

"Damn it, Watty," he said severely, "bring that chair up, pour yourself some coffee and eat."

Watkins complied with an air of outraged decorum.

There was a knock on the door.

"Who's that?" said Hugh.

"It should be 'Awkins with the quick-lime, your ludship," answered Watkins, hastily pushing back his chair. "'E had to 'ave it brought from the stables."

"Take it from him, Watty—and then come back here and finish your breakfast."

"Why quick-lime?" I asked, as Watkins received a bulky, whitish-powdered sack through the half-opened door.

"We can't very well dig a grave in stone," was Nikka's grim comment.

Watkins dropped the sack on the hearth, and returned to his breakfast. He wanted very much to quit with one cup of coffee, but Hugh ordered him back and insisted that a man who had work to do required not less than four slices of toast and three eggs.

"Bloated I'll be, your ludship," protested the valet. "Oh, if you will 'ave it!"

"I will," said Hugh. "You are going to be on guard here, Watty, while we are gone. Have you your automatic? Right O! Don't let anybody in."

He took the electric torch, and dropped the sack of lime down the hole in the fireplace. We climbed after it, one by one. The first stairs were extremely steep and the roof was so close that we had to stoop; but after we had descended perhaps fifteen feet, they turned to the right and the roof lifted to a little more than six feet.

"This is where the passage strikes off from the house," remarked Hugh.

The stairs continued to descend for another fifteen or twenty feet, and then straightened out. At the foot of the last step lay the body of the Gypsy. Hugh was carrying the lime-sack, so Nikka and I picked up the dead man, following Hugh, who lighted the way with the torch.

The passage was beautifully built, with an even floor, and wide enough for one man to walk comfortably. Despite a damp odor, it was not muddy, and there must have been some means of ventilation, for the air was reasonably fresh. According to a compass on Nikka's watch-chain, it trended across the Park towards the ruins of the Priory.

The Gypsy's body was a clumsy load to manage in so confined a space, and we halted every two or three hundred feet to rest. We estimated that we had walked a kilometer when we noticed a gradual upward slope in the flooring. The passage turned a corner, and the light of Hugh's torch was reflected on the rusty ironwork of what once had been a massive door.

Of the wood only a pile of dust remained, cluttered about the broken lock; but the great hinges still stretched across the path, upholding a ghostly barrier of bolted darkness. We deposited the dead Gypsy on the floor, and helped Hugh to bend back the creaking iron frame. Beyond loomed a vast emptiness, a spreading, low-roofed chamber, studded with squat Norman pillars that marched in dim columns into unseen depths.

The torch scarcely could penetrate the heaped-up shadows, but as our eyes became accustomed to the room's proportions we realized that we stood on the threshold of a mausoleum similar to the one in which we had seen Lord Chesby laid to rest. Hugh stepped across the stone sill of the doorway, and swung the light back and forth between the pillars. Suddenly it glinted on metal.

We all pressed closer, staring at the picture that took shape under the white glare. On a stone shelf lay a skeleton in armor. The peaked helmet had rolled aside from the naked skull, but the chainmail of the hauberk still shrouded trunk and limbs. Next to it lay a smaller skeleton, clad in threads of rich vestments. There was a twinkle of tarnished gold cloth, a fragment of fur. A bygone Lord of Chesby and his lady!

"We are intruders in this place," I exclaimed. "It doesn't seem right, Hugh."

My voice rolled thunderously from roof to floor and wall to wall and back again, and the pillars split the echoes into parodies of words.

"Intruder—derr-rr-r—whirr-rrr-rr-r! Place—pla-aay-ayy ay-ay!"

"One feels indecent in being here," agreed Nikka.

Hugh frowned down upon the two skeletons.

"They wouldn't mind," he said. "We have a reason for coming."

And while the echoes had their will with his declaration, he led us slowly around the circuit of the chamber.

Niche followed niche. On shelf after shelf lay the bones of men and women whose bodies had rotted ages ago. On one moldered the skeleton of a man in clerical raiment, with what had been a miter on his skull, some cadet of the house who had entered the Church.

Halfway around we came to another shelf that held two skeletons. The inner, obviously a woman's, thrust its poor bones through the tattered fabric that robed it. The man wore an immense pot-helmet of the early type, with eye-holes and nasals drilled in the fashion of a cross. His chainmail was very finely-woven, and included mail shoes that had collapsed pathetically on crumbled bones. His gauntleted hands were clasped on the hilt of a long, two-edged sword, which lay upon his chest with the point between his feet. His left arm supported a kite-shaped shield that revealed traces of color beneath the over-lying dust.

On his chest, just above the clasped hands, was an iron box identical with the one which we had found behind the panel of the over-mantle, the second of the "two boxes of Flanders iron" which Conrad had furnished to Lady Jane.

Hugh switched his torch on the base of the shelf. In rough, angular Gothic characters we spelt the inscription:

Hic Jacet
Hugh Dominus Chesbiensis
et
Edith Domina Chesbiensis

"The first Hugh!" exclaimed Hugh with a note of awe in his voice.

And indeed, it must have been a moving experience to view the flimsy relics of those two from whose loins he, himself, had sprung through the resistless life impulse prevailing over time and death down the procession of the centuries.

He hesitated a moment, and then reached out reverently and removed the iron box from the mailed breast. Handing the torch to me, he raised the dingy cover. Inside was a chest of ebony, bound with silver, sound and whole. It was unlocked. As Hugh lifted the lid, a sheet of paper fluttered out and Nikka caught it. Across the top was engraved "Castle Chesby," and it was covered with fine, cramped writing.

"It's Uncle James's record," said Hugh. "After the exultation of plumbing the mystery to be murdered like a dog! Poor old chap!"'

The note or record was whimsically brief and undated:

"Last Thursday evening, in studying Lady Jane's doggerel on the back of the Instructions, I suddenly perceived the cipher. It occurred to me that the verse on the over-mantel in the Gunroom must have some connection with this, and after several days' examination, I fell upon the secret. I say fell, advisedly. In my interest in the task, I had shut myself up, and refused luncheon, tea and dinner, and finally, late in the evening, I sank against the mantle-shelf, weak and half-fainting. My hands, groping for support, struck the sphinx's head and the monk's stomach. I felt them give, heard the flagstone fall. After that hunger was forgotten. I descended the chimney stairs and found my way here, the first Chesby to traverse the Prior's Vent since that singular old ancestress of mine so effectually concealed it, and with it, the clue to the treasure. I do not see now how I can fail to find the treasure, but I shall leave the missing half of the Instructions, together with this note, in Lady Jane's chest, so that, if I should fail, the information may be available for Hugh.

"JAMES CHESBY."

"This was what he tried to tell—at the last," said Hugh.

His voice choked.

"Poor old chap!"

"There is something peculiar about his finding the secret in one way and our finding it in another so shortly afterward," I said.

"The soothsayers of my people would call it a sign, a premonition," replied Nikka, with a melancholy smile.

"Of what?"

"Of the removal of whatever curse or inhibition has prevented the discovery of the treasure up to this time."

"Well, two men have died already since this last search was begun," answered Hugh, fumbling in the chest. "And who knows how many others have been killed on its account?"

He drew out a bundle wrapped in decaying velvet cloth. Within was a wrapping of silk, and under all a folded blank sheet of parchment enveloping two other documents. One was a parchment, tattered and worn, which had evidently been much handled. It was jaggedly cut at the top as though by a dull knife or some other instrument. Its surface was crowded with the same intricate Black Letter script in mediæval Latin as comprised the Instructions in the Charter Chest. The writing was badly faded, and a number of words in the lower right-hand corner had been smudged by dampness at some remote time.

The second document was a pencilled translation of the first in James Chesby's handwriting:

"The Great Palace—or as some call it, the Palace of the Bucoleon—is over against the Hippodrome and the Church of St. Sophia. In the Inner Court, which fronts upon the Bosphorus, there is a door under the sign of the Bull. Beyond the door is a hall. At the end of the hall there is a stair. At the foot of the stair there is a gate. Pass through the gate into the atrium which is off the Garden of the Cedars. In the Garden is the Fountain of the Lion. From the center of the Fountain take four paces west toward the wall of the atrium. Then walk three paces north. Underfoot is a red stone an ell square. Raise the ................................................

"... farewell, my son, and forget not the monks of Crowden Priory and the plight of Jerusalem.

"Thine in the love of Christ and the Sainted Cuthbert,

"HUGH."

Beneath this Lord Chesby had scrawled:

"The missing portion is not essential. Below the stone is the treasure. That seems certain."

We looked at one another, hardly able to believe our senses. The thing had appeared so difficult, so unattainable. And now it was almost within our grasp—or so we reasoned in the first flush of confident anticipation.

"It's a question, of course, whether any portion of the Palace of the Bucoleon remains," Nikka pointed out.

"But Uncle James seemed to have no doubt of that," answered Hugh. "Do you remember, Jack?"

A wild shout bellowed from the mouth of the passage, roared and clanged like a trumpet-blast and was shattered by the echoes.

"Your lud'—Mis' Jack! Mis' Nikka!"

CHAPTER IX
HIDE AND SEEK

Hugh slipped the penciled translation in his pocket, swiftly rewrapped the Black Letter original and stowed it in the ebony chest, and refastened the iron box, which he returned to its former place on the mailed breast of his dead ancestor.

"That's Watkins," he said. "Something has happened up above. Come on, you chaps."

In the doorway he paused by the body of Toutou's gangster.

"What about this?" he demanded. "I won't have him left in there—with those."

He gestured toward the silent forms that filled the sepulcher.

"No need to," returned Nikka curtly, emptying the lime-sack as he spoke. "Leave him here."

We trotted on, and when we passed the first turn in the passage, just beyond the wreck of the ancient door, we saw a light that bobbed up and down in the near distance.

"Your ludship!" wailed Watkins's voice through the booming echoes.

"Steady on, Watty," Hugh called back. "I'm here."

"Thank God! Oh, your ludship, I'm that—"

Watkins panted up to us quite out of breath. He carried a dwindling candle in one hand, and his usually tidy garments were coated with dust.

"Must—apologize—ludship—appearance—fell—stairs," he began.

"Easy, easy," said Hugh comfortingly, and fell to brushing him off. "If it's bad news, why, it's bad news, Watty. If it's good news, it can wait."

"It was a lady, your ludship!"

We all laughed.

"A lady!" repeated Hugh. "Bless my soul, Watty, are you gettin' dissolute in your old age?"

"She 'ad nothing to do with me, your ludship," remonstrated the valet indignantly. "Leastwise, I should say, she 'ad no more to do with me than make a mock of me and the pistol you gave me."

"How's that?"

"Took it away from me, she did, your ludship." Watkins's voice quivered with wrath. "And tripped me on me back. Yes, and laughed at me!"

"A lady, you said?" demanded Hugh incredulously.

Watkins nodded his head.

"And hextremely pretty, too, if I may say so, your ludship."

Hugh looked helplessly at Nikka and me.

"I say, this is a yarn!" he exclaimed. "Watty, for God's sake, get a grip on yourself. Begin at the beginning, and tell everything."

He grinned.

"Conceal nothin', you old reprobate, especially, if there were any amorous episodes with this lady."

"Your ludship! Mister Hugh, sir!" Watkins's expression was a study in injured innocence. "You will 'ave your bit of fun, I suppose. As for me, sir, if I was for making love to some female I'd take one that was not so free with her strength."

"Are you sure it was a woman?" interrupted Nikka.

"Judge for yourself, sir, Mister Nikka. After you gentlemen left me, I tidied up the room, and quite a time had passed, I should judge, when I heard a click, and one of the windows opened in the south oriel."

"That's the one Toutou and his man escaped through," I broke in. "They probably fixed the lock."

"Very likely, sir. I turned when I 'eard the click, and the lady stuck 'er leg over the sill."

"Stuck her—" Hugh gasped.

"Quite so, your ludship. She 'ad on riding-breeches. A very pretty lady she was, your ludship," added Watkins contemplatively.

"So you've said before," commented Hugh. "And what next?"

"I said: 'Who are you, ma'am?' And she laughed, and said: 'Oh, it's only me, Watkins.' And I said: 'Well, ma'am, I'm sure I don't know 'ow you come to 'ave my name, but I really can't permit you to come in 'ere. Please get down, and go around to the front door.'

"With that she 'opped over the window-sill, and stood there, looking about 'er. 'Come on, now, if you please, ma'am,' I said again. And I'm sure, your ludship, I was considerate of 'er all the way through."

"I'll bet a pony you were," said Hugh sympathetically.

"Yes, sir. Thank you, your ludship. She looked around, as I said, and she walked over to the fireplace as cool as a cucumber. 'I see they did find it, after all,' she says, and she stooped and peeked in at the 'ole where the stone 'ad dropped. At that I knew she could be no friend, so I poked the pistol at 'er, and said: 'I don't want to 'arm you, ma'am, but you'll 'ave to come outside with me.'

"'Oh,' she says, 'you wouldn't 'urt me, Watkins. You're a nice, kind, old valet, aren't you?'"

Watkins's voice throbbed with renewed indignation, and we all three, the gravity of the situation forgotten, collapsed on the dusty floor.

"Go on, go on," gasped Hugh.

"'Ow can I, your ludship, if you're laughing all the time?" protested Watkins. "Oh, well, you will 'ave your fun!"

"So did she," I chuckled.

"She did, sir," agreed Watkins with feeling. "She came right up against the pistol, and put out 'er 'and and patted my cheek like, and the first thing I knew, gentlemen, she 'ad tripped me and grabbed the pistol from my 'and, and there was I, lying on the floor, and she with 'er legs straddled over me, pointing the pistol at me, and laughing like sin.

"'Get up,' she says. And she went and sat sidewise on the table, with the pistol resting on 'er knee.'

"What was she like, Watty?"

"She 'ad black hair, sir, and was dark in the face. She wasn't big, but she was—well, shapely, you might say. And she 'ad a way of laughing with 'er eyes. She asked me where you were, and what you had found, and I stood in front of her, and just kept my mouth shut. 'I might shoot you if you won't talk,' she says. 'And if you do, there'll be those that will hear it, and you'll be seen before you get away,' I told 'er. 'True,' says she, 'and I couldn't bring myself to do it, anyway. You're too sweet. You can tell your master, though, that we're not sorry he's found what he was looking for. If we couldn't find it, the next best thing was for him to find it. Whatever he does, he will play into our hands.'

"Then she walked over to the window, and dropped the pistol on a chair. "'Ere,' she says. 'You might 'ave me taken up for breaking and entering if I went off with this.' And she 'opped over the sill on to the lawn. When I got there she was in 'er saddle and riding away. I tried to telephone to the Lodge to 'ave 'er stopped, but the wires were cut. They must 'ave done it in the night, your ludship. 'Awkins was unable to get through to any of the village tradespeople this morning.'

"Was that all?" asked Hugh.

"Yes, your ludship. I called 'Awkins, and told 'im to stand in the front door, and send away anybody who came. Then I climbed down into the 'ole, thinking you would wish to know what 'ad 'appened immediately, your ludship."

"You did quite right, Watty. I don't blame you for what happened. The lady must have been a Tartar."

Hugh turned to us.

"It seems to me the lesson for us in this last experience is that we have got to move rapidly if we are going to shake off Teuton's gang," he said. "They are fully as formidable as Nikka warned us they would be. We ought to start for Constantinople this afternoon."

"There's no question of that," assented Nikka. "But what are you going to do with the key to the treasure? You have it in your pocket now, but it is a long journey to Constantinople. Suppose they steal it en route? They may have plenty of opportunities, you know. Personally, I am not sanguine of shaking them off. Then, too, you must remember that Constantinople is the human sink of Europe, Asia and Africa, more so to-day even than before the War. It swarms with adventurers and dangerous characters. The refuse of half-a-dozen disbanded armies make their headquarters there. It will be a simple matter for a gang like Toutou's to waylay you or search your baggage."

Hugh flushed.

"I had thought of that," he said. "Er—the fact is—Jack has a cousin—a girl we both know—"

"You mean you do," I interrupted sarcastically. "I'm only her cousin. Have you heard from Betty?"

"Yes, damn you! She and her father are at the Pera Palace—he's an archæologist-bibliophile Johnny, Nikka, and an awfully good sort."

"And the girl?" inquired Nikka, with his quiet grin.

"Oh, you'll meet her, too. She's very different from what you'd expect in a cousin of Jack. Anyhow, she knows about this treasure business, and she read of Uncle James's murder, and she's most fearfully keen to be in the game with us. My suggestion is that I mail Uncle James's translation of the key to her in Constantinople. Nobody knows that she knows me or has any connection with any of us. She left New York before Uncle James arrived. So it would be perfectly safe in her hands."

"And in the meantime, we'd better commit it to memory," I said.

The others agreed to this, and we read over the brief transcript of the missing half of the Instructions until we had the salient directions fixed in our minds. Then we retraced our steps through the passage, climbed out of the Prior's Vent and sealed it again; and while Hugh and Nikka motored down to the village post office with the letter for Betty, Watkins and I saw to the necessary packing in preparation for the journey.

We had bags ready for all four of us by lunchtime, and arranged with Hawkins to send trunks after us to the Pera Palace in bond. When Hugh and Nikka returned from the village, all that was necessary was to eat the meal, issue final directions to the servants for the repairing of the panel of the over-mantle—the removal of which we represented to have been the work of the burglars—and fill up the tank of the car.

With an eye to a possible emergency, we had arranged in advance for a considerable supply of gold and negotiable travelers' notes, and our passports, thanks to Hugh's influence, had been viséd for all countries in southern and eastern Europe.

"There's only one thing we lack," remarked Hugh, as we drove out through the park gates. "I want an electric torch for each of us. The one we captured came in very handy this morning."

So we stopped at the shop of the local electrician in the village, and Hugh went in to make the purchase. He was just resuming his seat in the car when another machine drew up alongside, and Montey Hilyer waved a greeting.

"Thought you were going to stay in the County a while, Hugh," he hailed.

Hugh stared at him with the concentrated iciness which the English of his class attain to perfection.

"Are you touring?" continued Hilyer. "Or going abroad? Seems to me I heard something this morning about your taking a trip to Constantinople. A favorite hang-out of your uncle's, I believe. Well, if you're following the Dover road, you mustn't mind if I trail you. I have no objection to a knight errant's dust."

Without a word, Hugh slipped in his gears and zoomed off on first, scattering dogs and pedestrians right and left.

THE TREASURE OFTHE BUCOLEON

CHAPTER ITHE CABLE FROM HUGH'S UNCLE

CHAPTER IITHE BROKEN MESSAGE

CHAPTER IIITHE PAPERS IN THE CHARTER CHEST

CHAPTER IVTHE GUNROOM AT CASTLE CHESBY

CHAPTER VA BLIND ALLEY

CHAPTER VITHE HILYER PARTY

CHAPTER VIITHE FIGHT IN THE GUNROOM

CHAPTER VIIITHE PRIOR'S VENT

CHAPTER IXHIDE AND SEEK