“No, I just gave the dimensions.”
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We weigh it on the kitchen scales and have a good look to see whether the gold appears to be wrapped around it or whether it seems to be solid, and then we put those details on the site.”
“So,” I asked. “Are we having an email conversation with whoever this person is?”
“Sort of.”
“What do mean by sort of?”
“Well it’s not like emailing on the internet. He, or she, doesn’t know who we are, and we don’t know who they are. It’s a little bit like eBay, except that the replies don’t go to our email address, they stay on the website for anyone to read. And we have usernames, also like eBay.”
“What’s our username?”
“I used Crossover for the cross and Boxie for the Asian gold piece. That way we keep them completely separate.”
“Can you actually give the other person our email address? Will the site let you do that?”
“Yes, I think so, but it wouldn’t be advisable.”
“Why not?”
“It just lets them get a little bit closer to us and maybe even lets some real smart character hack into us and get the rest of our details, our actual address and who we are.”
“And we definitely don’t want that,” I replied.
“No, we don’t.”
I placed the cross on the kitchen table, and picked up the magnifying glass. I looked at Sue and she looked at me, both shrugging our shoulders. We knew nothing about antique crosses, or about any other antique metal objects for that matter.
“Does it look like it’s only gold leaf?” Sue asked.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I would’ve thought that if it was gold leaf wrapped around a central piece of iron, or copper, or whatever, then it would have been crinkly.”
“It doesn’t look crinkly,” Sue replied. “It looks quite smooth. We’d better weigh it.”
We weighed it on Sue’s kitchen scales, but that didn’t help. We had no idea what the difference between what the weight of an iron central core would have been and what it would be if it were solid gold.
“It’s certainly heavy, though,” Sue said. “It’s a pity we can’t figure out what the volume of it is.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It’s got too many other bits and pieces attached to it to do any sort of accurate measurement. I reckon it’s got to be gold. We could always scrape some of the surface away, or maybe drill a hole?” I suggested.
“Are you crazy?” she exclaimed. “If this thing was made in the 1700’s and you drill a hole in it, do you know what that’ll do to the value?”
“Ah, yes,” I mumbled.
“Right,” she replied. “No holes and no scrapings. We accept it as being gold, solid gold. Okay?”
“Agreed.”
We went back to the computer and Sue posted the weight and details of the thickness and the width of the arms, together with a few more pictures, and we waited.
That evening, there was another reply.
“What’s he say?” I asked. Sue brought the answer up on to the screen.
“It’s from someone else,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Different username. See, this one is from Truecross.” She pointed to where the name was set out at the bottom of the message. “The other one was Bobsyboy.”
“It could be the same person, but using a different name,” I replied.
“Maybe, but I don’t think so. Read the message. The language is a bit different.”
Once more I looked over her shoulder and read the user’s comments.
Could you please upload some clear pictures of the stone in the centre of the cross so that we can ascertain whether it has ever been replaced? Truecross.
“What the hell do they want that for?” Sue asked.
“I haven’t got a clue. Can you do it? Can you take really clear close-ups?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, then do it, Suze. Give them what they want.”
It only took ten or fifteen minutes to take the pictures and load them into the computer. A couple of minutes after that she had three more pictures listed on the site. There was also another message from Bobsyboy, the first person who had written to us.
What the hell do they want that for? It’s clearly an 18th Century religious cross, probably one worn by a bishop on a chain around his neck. Where the hell did you get it? Bobsyboy.
“How does this guy know what they’ve asked us?” I demanded.
“I told you, Ben. It’s an open website. All our questions and answers are there for anyone in the world to read.”
“What, anywhere? China, South America, Europe?”
“Yes, you ignoramus.”
“Oh,” I replied, totally confused with the entire system.
“So what do I tell him?” Sue asked.
“Huh?”
“What do I tell this guy? Where do we say we got it from?”
“Do we have to tell him anything?”
“Well, I think we’ve got to say something, otherwise they’ll think we’ve got something to hide.”
“Okay, tell him we haven’t got a clue why they want to know about the middle stone, and tell him that the cross is a family heirloom.”
She shot this off and this person, this Bobsyboy, came back almost immediately.
You want to get that stone in the middle checked by an expert. I’ve had a good look at your pictures and it looks like a South American emerald, although it is a big one if it is. The cut is much older than the cross itself. To me it looks like it was native cut, possibly Aztec or Inca, possibly 16th Century. It could be Spanish loot taken by the Conquistadors back to Spain in the second half of the 16th Century. You could be on to a gold mine, folks. Bobsyboy.
“Aren’t you glad I let you buy the writing box?” Sue said brightly.
“Oh yeah? Aren’t you glad I don’t always listen to you? Aren’t you glad that I persuaded you to let me buy it?”
She gave me a playful punch in the shoulder, and I went back to the message on the computer. I read the reply again and then turned back to my wife.
“How did that second mob know to ask about the middle stone?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Well, the first set of pictures you put on the site didn’t show a lot of detail of the individual stones. There are a couple of other fairly large ones and yet they only asked about the one in the middle. They weren’t concerned about any of the others.”
“Do you think they know what the cross is, and who it belonged to?” she asked. “Maybe it’s the large stone in the middle that identifies it.”
“It’s possible, although maybe it’s just the middle stone that they’re interested in. Maybe it really was taken back to Spain by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. For all we know the stone might’ve been stolen from some Spanish family and sold or given to a church. Maybe that family wants it back.”
“Do you think so?”
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “For all we know the stone might be famous in its own right. It might have its own name. There could be a curse on it. It might be tainted by massacres, murders, and desecration over the centuries.”
“My, God, Ben Dunlop!” she exclaimed. “You do get carried away!”
“Oh, yeah?’ I replied. “All jokes aside. It looks like we’ve got a serious piece of merchandise here, and some people are getting a little bit too interested.”
Sue looked at me worryingly. “Maybe we shouldn’t have put it on the internet at all. We might have started something we don’t know how to finish.”
The second reply from Truecross came back during the night and we only got to see it in the morning.
We would like to examine the cross. Would you please give us your telephone number so that we can call and speak to you directly without the entire world knowing our business. We assure you th
at we are genuine. We are not unscrupulous persons, nor are we dealers of antiquities. Truecross.
“Why don’t they give us their telephone number?” I said. “Why do they want ours?”
“They don’t want anyone else to know who they are,” Sue replied. “If they post their telephone number on the site then all sorts of people are going to call and offer to sell various bits and pieces to them. Whereas if we post our number, then we’re only going to get calls from people offering to buy the cross.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “We’d be the ones getting the crank calls. And everyone would know who we were, including anyone interested in stealing the cross. Do these people think we’re stupid?”
“Well,” she said. “They probably thought it was worth a try.”
“Where do you think these people are?” I asked.
“Probably in Europe,” she replied.
“Why Europe?” I asked.
“Their answers are posted late at night.”
“They could be in America,” I ventured.
“Maybe,” she replied. “It doesn’t really matter. What do you think we should do?”
I thought for a moment and then said: “Nothing. We do nothing. We’ve got what we wanted. We now know that it’s probably an eighteenth century Jesuit cross and that one of the stones was possibly brought back from South America in the sixteenth century. We just leave it. If we start supplying more information, then maybe they can track us down, and we don’t want that.”
“How could they track us down?” Sue asked.
“Well, you said it yourself. They probably know that we aren’t in Europe. If they’re smart enough, they might know that we’re Australian and not American from the spelling and words we use.”
“You’re getting paranoid again!” she said, laughing.
“Hey, that cross might be worth a hell of a lot more than we think! That hunk of metal could be worth a million dollars or more! People get killed for less than that, far less!”
“Now I know you’re getting paranoid!” she said, laughing.
“Look on your computer!” I said, ignoring her ridicule. “See what prices crosses are bringing nowadays!”
“Oh, come on. How many eighteenth century crosses do you think are on the market at the moment? There wouldn’t have been more than one or two sold in the last five years!”
“Well, go on. Bloody look!” I yelled.
I stormed off and left her to it. It had been a long time since I had raised my voice at my wife, and it didn’t make me feel good. I sat out on the front veranda for a time, watching the water of the Brisbane River on the other side of the street drift slowly downstream, and then went and made her a cup of coffee.
“I’m sorry, Suze. I guess I just got carried away.”
“That’s okay.” She paused. “I’ve tried to see if there’s any record of the sale of an old Jesuit cross, but I can’t find a damned thing.”
It was then I remembered something that had been mentioned on the BBC program, The Antiques Roadshow. Some person had brought in a ring that turned out to have been the ring of a bishop. The expert said that it was rare to find these in private hands as they were usually passed over to the church when the owner died. I told Sue.
“That’s probably why I can’t find anything,” she replied. “The only church stuff that would find its way to the open market would be something that was looted, like the Nazis did during the Second World War.”
“Yeah, like in every war since time began, including what the Brits and the rest of the foreign forces did in China during the Boxer rebellion.”
“So, what do we do?” she asked.
“We go to China and try to find the chest that Captain Monty buried, like we discussed.”
“Not right now, we don’t,” she replied.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because it’s half way through November, that’s why not.”
“So?”
“So, winter starts in China in two weeks time. If we decided right now to leave, it would take us three or four weeks just to get tickets, visas, hotel bookings, etc. It’d be freezing by the time we got there.”
“So what?”
“So what!” she exclaimed. “We were there at the end of their summer. Do you remember what it was like when we toured the South Island of New Zealand in July four years ago?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember what the temperature was, and how much you complained about the cold?”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I replied. I remembered it right enough. The first night we arrived I had rushed into the toilet, the hamburger I had eaten an hour earlier screaming to be released. I lifted up the lid and plonked myself down on the seat and almost went through the roof. The seat had been near to freezing.
“The South Island wasn’t anywhere near as cold as Beijing is going to be for the next three or four months. I’m not going until it warms up again.”
“But.”
“No buts,” she said. “Anyway, the ground could be frozen. Monty buried the chest in August, the middle of summer, when the ground would have been nice and soft.”
“So, do we just sit here and twiddle our thumbs and wait for the weather to warm up? Do we wait another six months?”
“Yes,” was her terse reply, and then: “Not six months, no, but at least three or four.”
I knew by the look on her face that there was no way I was going to get her to change her mind. Winter time would have been a good time to have dug up the chest, apart from the fact that the ground would have been rock hard. There would have been very few tourists around to see what we would be doing, and probably none. The days would be dismal and cloudy, and would have hidden what we would be up to much more than would be the case on a sunny summer’s day. The days were shorter in winter. We wouldn’t have to be out and about late at night. We could have done the deed early in the evening. And it would have been much easier to hide an army entrenching tool under a heavy parka.
The other alternative was for me to go on my own. Sue hated the cold more than I did. She had been born in Cairns, in far north Queensland, far from the winters of the south. There had been much more complaining about the cold New Zealand weather from her than there had ever been from me.
If I went by myself it would only cost half as much, well a bit more than half – the hotel bill would be the same whether there was just me or the two of us. But I didn’t want to go on my own. I needed Sue to act as lookout while I dug for the chest. And I was certain my nerves would fail if I was on my own. And if they did, I would probably give up and return empty-handed. I wasn’t going without my wife.
“Okay,” I said. “How about we go in February, the end of February?”
“March,” she replied, her eyes firmly fixed on mine. “Halfway through March.”
“Early March?” I asked.
“No negotiation,” she replied firmly. “Mid-March.”
“Okay,” I said, resigned to the fact that I could never win an argument with her. The problem was, she was almost always right.
It was two days later that another email came from John Jenkinson-Smythe. We had received one about ten days after I had sent the box to him, simply saying that he had received it and didn’t realise how big it was going to be, and that he had been pleasantly surprised. The second email was not so pleasant.
Ben. I got one of my pals at the local hospital to x-ray the box. He found a secret compartment in the bottom of the box, underneath the drawer, in the section that the drawer slides on. Once he showed me where it was it was easy to get into. But before I opened it up, I shone an ultra-violet light on the flap. There are fingerprints all over it. It has been opened before, and I don’t mean 110 years ago. What did you find in there? Whatever it was belongs to me!
“What do we say to him?” Sue asked.
“Well,” I replied. “The first thing we tell him is that I only sold him the box. I didn’t sell him whatever came with the
box. I mean, he didn’t even ask for the original letter that Monty was going to send to his wife but never got to finish. John was quite happy with the scanned copy that we emailed to him. The poor bugger was expecting to find the information about the location of the goodies that Captain Monty told his brother George about. And he’s pissed off that it wasn’t there.”
“Do you think he knows that the cross was hidden inside, and the other small pieces?” she asked.
“He doesn’t know anything about the cross,” I replied. “How would he? Nobody knows that it’s us who’ve listed the cross and the other pieces on the internet.”
“Maybe he’s like you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, when you first saw the chest you thought there might’ve been something valuable hidden in one of the secret hiding places. Maybe he thinks there was something under the drawer, something valuable.”
“Hopefully, his thinking was along other lines,” I replied. “It’s a pretty shallow compartment. I didn’t expect to find what we did. No, I think he was only expecting a few sheets of paper, and probably a map.”
“He might have been expecting diamonds,” she said. “You could’ve hidden a million dollars worth of diamonds in there.”
“You’ve had a look at the internet about the Boxer rebellion,” I replied. “Did you see any mention about diamonds being amongst things looted by the occupying forces?”
“No, but he could have brought them from India with him.”
“If he’d brought them from India then he would’ve written to his wife weeks or even months before, and probably even shipped them back to England before he left India for China. No, it’s nothing from India, and John Jenkinson-Smythe would have to know that. He’s looking for a map, or something that will tell him what Captain Monty had, and what he did with it.”
“So,” she asked again. “What do we tell him?”
“Nothing.”
“We can’t tell him just nothing. We have to tell him something. He knows you found the secret compartment. Maybe he’s done some other tests and knows that there was something in there.”
Dark Eye of the Jaguar Page 5