Chapter Eighteen
The Secret Drawer
NORMAN FORESTER felt that no time ought to be lost if those three men were to be brought to justice. He did not even stop to tell Mr. Sinclair what he had heard, but went down to the village at once to wire the police station at Llantrug.
Needless to say, the matter was taken up immediately. Most diligent and persistent inquiries were made, special detectives were called in who endeavoured to get on the track of Clegg and his assistants; but, unfortunately, so much time had been lost that the thieves had been able to escape with their plunder, and they could trace nothing of their movements.
Without saying a single word to Dick of their intentions, Mr. Sinclair, Rupert, Val, and Forester determined to visit the loft and discover the entrance to the secret staircase.
They had no difficulty in finding the corner where the turret stood, but it was another matter to discover how to open the trap door to get onto the winding steps. There was apparently no sign of it in that corner of the floor. They noticed that there were two short pieces of plank in the flooring, which appeared to have been joined to the longer planks running across the loft, but these seemed to be firmly fixed underneath the skirting board at the bottom of the wall of the room.
In this skirting board, however, they discovered a sliding panel, and when this had been pushed back, the two short boards could easily be removed from the floor and the entrance to the staircase stood revealed. As they descended the narrow stone steps they realized how poor Dick must have felt as he walked on down and heard footsteps coming from behind.
At the bottom they came to the underground chamber in which the treasure had been found. They could see the various holes and excavations made by Clegg and his companions in the course of their search, and they agreed that Dick was right in imagining that the booty from the old shipwreck had been discovered in different parts of this underground cell. The men must have taken several weeks to dig them up and carry them away.
"But," said Forester, as he was sitting that evening in his favourite place on the settle in the old kitchen, "we have not yet got to the bottom of the mystery. How on earth did those men know that this treasure was hidden in the castle? And even if they did know, how did they ever manage to discover in which part of the ruins it was to be found?"
They all agreed with the doctor that no solution of this difficulty had as yet come to light.
"I think you must have told Clegg about that French ship, father," said Rupert. "You were speaking to him at length when he was here in the spring, and you took him round the castle."
"Well, now I come to think of it, I believe I did," said the old man. "You see, he came with such a fair tongue saying he was an antiquarian, and took so much interest in old places and old things, and he asked me so many questions about the castle. Yes, Rupert, I believe I did tell him."
"Will you tell me?" asked Don Mainwaring, who was sitting on the settle beside Forester. "I haven't heard about this French ship."
"Well," said the old man, "it was in the days of old Sir John Mandeville, when he lived here in Hildick castle. There was an awful storm one night, and this ship was wrecked just outside the bay."
"Where was it going?"
"It was on its way to Scotland. James IV was king of Scotland then, the man that was later killed on Flodden Field. You'll remember about him, sir."
"I do," said Forester, "but why was the ship going to Scotland?"
"The King of France wanted to get King James over to his side to help him fight King Henry VII of England. Well, he found out that James was very poor. His father had left him a good hoard, but he had spent every farthing of it and now he was hard up. That king of France felt sure that if he could only fill up King James' treasury, why, then he could make him do just what he wanted. So he packed up a lot of presents, jewels and gold and silver, and all the rest of it. He didn't like to send his ship across the English Channel, for he thought King Henry might get wind of it and seize it, so he sent it up our way along the Irish Sea to Glasgow."
"But it never got there?" said Don.
"No, it was wrecked on the way, and most of the treasure went down in the storm. What was washed ashore old Sir John Mandeville seized and brought up to the castle here, and nobody knew what he did with it."
"I suppose he had that underground chamber made to keep all his things secure in case of attack," said Forester.
"I suppose so, sir. They were wild days then, and no man's property was safe, and Sir Harry D'Arcy across the bay had his eye on the treasure and tried hard to get it. So old Sir John hid it, and soon after that he died, and soon after that the family moved away from Hildick Castle and went to another estate grander than this. One that King Henry VIII gave them. That was when we Norrises came to live here, in this part of the old house."
"It's a wonder they didn't take the treasure with them," said Don.
"It is a wonder, sir, but perhaps they did not know where it was. Old Sir John was a close and secret man, and the son was only young when he died. Anyhow the secret seems to have died out, and I'm sure my father and my grandfather never had the least idea that the treasure was still in the castle, and I'm sure I hadn't."
"Nor I, father," said Rupert. "It would have been found long ago if I had got wind of it."
"Then how in the world did Clegg get to know it was here?" asked Forester. "And how, knowing this, did he manage to discover the place in which it was hidden?"
Those were questions which none of them could answer. Many years went by before that part of the mystery was solved. Old Mr. Norris had passed away, and Rupert's children were growing up to manhood and womanhood before any explanation was found of what had so much puzzled them. The solution came in the form of a letter addressed as follows:
Mr. Rupert Norris,
Hildick Castle,
Nr. Llantrug,
Wales.
It was written on foreign paper, and the postmark on it was that of Kimberley, South Africa. The letter was from a lawyer in Kimberley who wrote to inform Rupert that a few weeks earlier he had made the will of a man who went by the name of Joseph Carrington. This man had since died, and now it was the lawyer's duty to inform Rupert Norris, of Hildick Castle, that the said Joseph Carrington had bequeathed to him the whole of his personal estate, amounting to a large fortune. Arrangements were already being made to transfer the money to a bank in Llantrug.
Rupert was utterly astonished, for he had never even heard of a man of the name of Joseph Carrington; but when the lawyer's letter went on to inform him that he had known the testator by the name of Joseph Clegg, and that the will had been made in his favour as a reparation for the inconvenience caused by him fourteen years before, Rupert began to understand the reason of his unexpected legacy.
The lawyer enclosed a sealed envelope which Clegg had requested him to forward to Rupert Norris after his death, and which, he had told the lawyer, would give Mr. Norris information which he might be interested to receive. Of what nature this information was, the testator had not disclosed to the lawyer, and he forwarded the envelope just as he had received it from Joseph Carrington.
When he had finished this letter, Rupert opened the sealed letter. Inside he found two papers. One of these was a statement written by Clegg, to the effect that his curiosity had been excited by old Mr. Norris's account of the shipwreck and of the treasure brought by Sir John to the castle.
Then, soon after, he had bought in one of the cottages on Garroch an old oak bureau. The woman who sold it to him said that she believed it was hundreds of years old, and that it had once been in Hildick Castle. She told him that her great .grandfather had bought it at a sale. He said that he paid the woman for it and took this bureau away with him. When he reached home he examined it carefully. He was fond of old pieces of furniture, and he had a craze for hunting in them for secret drawers or other hiding places.
At first it seemed as if this bureau would not prove to contain any private rec
eptacle; but one day, to his great delight, he discovered one quite by chance. It had evidently been unopened for years. No one had touched the spring since the days of old Sir John Mandeville. He enclosed the paper which he found in the secret drawer, so that Rupert could see how he had been guided in his search for the treasure. The paper referred to was yellow with age, and was torn in several places.
Rupert spread it out before him, and after puzzling for a long time over the old English in which it was written, he was able to read the following words:
To my Deare Sonne for Guidance,
Would'st thou ye treasure find?
Do thou descend;
Lower, and lower still,
Then downward bend.
Search thou by day and night,
Till thou hast brought to light
Twelve heaps of treasure bright;
That is the end.
There was also a plan of the floor, with measurements showing the locations of the twelve caches. After reading this paper, it was easy for Rupert to see why Clegg, when he had carefully explored every nook and cranny of the castle, came to the conclusion that none of the steps he had already seen were the ones which the writer of the paper urged his son to descend. He seemed accordingly to have hunted about until he found some place where a secret staircase could have been made. The turret had evidently appeared to him to be just the place for which he was looking. How he had discovered the way to lift the trapdoor they never knew. Probably his previous experience in opening secret drawers had greatly assisted him in his search. Anyhow, he had somehow or other found the sliding panel and managed to lift the door and get on the spiral staircase. Then, with the directions in his hand, all was easy.
Clegg knew exactly in how many different portions he would unearth the treasure, and their position. As each of these came to light, he and De Jersey had removed what they found to Daniel's cottage. They had evidently been bringing one of these bundles to the cove on the night when Forester stayed with Daniel's dying father.
Daniel never knew when they would come, for he could not tell how soon the next portion of the treasure would be unearthed. He must have been reluctant to go for the doctor while Forester remained with his father, lest Clegg and De Jersey should arrive in his absence bringing more treasure to the cottage. He had been compelled at last to depart, and had gone trusting that no discovery would be made that night. Clegg, happily for himself, had left the bundle with De Jersey under the hedge outside, so that Forester saw nothing of it when he opened the door.
So ended the story of the Hildick Castle treasure. But the old paper with the writing on it in faded ink was carefully preserved by Rupert as an interesting curiosity, to be handed down as a family heirloom to generations yet unborn.