‘So far I’ve learnt nothing, except that in his spare time Barberton amused himself by translating native fairy stories into English and putting them into Braille for use in the blind school. I knew, of course, that he did that, because I’d already interviewed his sister, who is the mistress of the girls’ section.’
He had gone through half a dozen letters when he rose from the table and walked across to the safe.
‘I have a notion that the thing we’re seeking is not here,’ he said. ‘It is hardly likely that he would allow a communication of that character to be jumbled up with the rest of the correspondence.’
The safe door was open and the steel drawer at the back had been pulled out. Evidently it was from this receptacle that the letters had been taken. Now the drawer was empty. Manfred took it out and measured the depth of it with his finger.
‘Let me see,’ said Gonsalez suddenly.
He groped along the floor of the safe, and presently he began to feel carefully along the sides.
‘Nothing here,’ he said. He drew out half a dozen account books and a bundle of documents which at first glance Manfred had put aside as being personal to the owner of Rath Hall. These were lying on the floor amidst the mass of molten metal that had burnt deep holes in the carpet. Leon examined the books one by one, opening them and running his nail along the edge of the pages. The fourth, a weighty ledger, did not open so easily – did not, indeed, open at all. He carried it to the table and tried to pull back the cover. ‘Now, how does this open?’
The ledger covers were of leather; to all appearance a very ordinary book, and Leon was anxious not to disturb so artistic a camouflage. Examining the edge carefully, he saw a place where the edges had been forced apart. Taking out a knife, he slipped the thin blade into the aperture. There was a click and the cover sprang up like the lid of a box.
‘And this, I think, is what we are looking for,’ said Gonsalez.
The interior of the book had been hollowed out, the edges being left were gummed tight, and the receptacle thus formed was packed close with brown papers; brown, except for one, which was written on a large sheet of foolscap, headed:
‘Bureau of the Ministry of Colonies, Lisbon.’
Barberton had superimposed upon this long document his Braille writing, and now one of the mysteries was cleared up.
‘Lee said he had never received any important documents,’ said Manfred, ‘and, of course, he hadn’t, so far as he knew. To him this was merely a sheet of paper on which Braille characters were inscribed. Read this, Leon.’
Leon scanned the letter. It was dated ‘July 21st, 1912’, and bore, in the lower left-hand corner, the seal of the Portuguese Colonial Office. He read it through rapidly and at the end looked up with a sigh of satisfaction.
‘And this settles Oberzohn and Co., and robs them of a fortune, the extent of which I think we shall discover when we read Barberton’s letter.’
He lit a cigarette and scanned the writing again, whilst Meadows, who did not understand Leon’s passion for drama, waited with growing impatience.
‘Illustrious Senhor,’ [began Leon, reading] ‘I have this day had the honour of placing before His Excellency the President, and the Ministers of the Cabinet, your letter dated May 15th, 1912. By a letter dated January 8th, 1911, the lands marked Ex. 275 on the Survey Map of the Biskara district were conceded to you, Illustrious Senhor, in order to further the cause of science – a cause which is very dear to the heart of His Excellency the President. Your further letter, in which you complain, Illustrious Senhor, that the incursion of prospectors upon our land is hampering your scientific work, and your request that an end may be put to these annoyances by the granting to you of an extension of the concession, so as to give you title to all mineral found in the aforesaid area, Ex. 275 on the Survey Map of Biskara, and thus making the intrusion of prospectors illegal, has been considered by the Council, and the extending concession is hereby granted, on the following conditions: The term of the concession shall be for twelve years, as from the 14th day of June, 1912, and shall be renewable by you, your heirs or nominees, every twelfth year, on payment of a nominal sum of 1,000 milreis. In the event of the concessionaire, his heirs or nominees, failing to apply for a renewal on the 14th day of June, 1924, the mineral rights of the said area, Ex. 275 on the Survey Map of Biskara, shall be open to claim in accordance with the laws of Angola – ’
Leon sat back.
‘Fourteenth of June?’ he said, and looked up. ‘Why, that is next week – five days! We’ve cut it rather fine, George.’
‘Barberton said there were six weeks,’ said Manfred. ‘Obviously he made the mistake of timing the concession from July 21st – the date of the letter. He must have been the most honest man in the world; there was no other reason why he should have communicated with Miss Leicester. He could have kept quiet and claimed the rights for himself. Go on, Leon.’
‘That is about all,’ said Leon, glancing at the tail of the letter. ‘The rest is more or less flowery and complimentary and has reference to the scientific work in which Professor Leicester was engaged. Five days – phew!’ he whistled.
‘We may now find something in Barberton’s long narrative to give us an idea of the value of this property.’ Manfred turned the numerous pages. ‘Do any of you gentlemen write shorthand?’
Meadows went out into the hall and brought back an officer. Waiting until he had found pencil and paper, Leon began the extraordinary story of William Barberton – most extraordinary because every word had been patiently and industrially punched in the Braille characters.
Chapter 18
The story of Mont d’Or
‘Dear Friend Johnny,
‘I have such a lot to tell you that I hardly know where to begin. I’ve struck rich at last, and the dream I’ve often talked over with you has come true. First of all, let me tell you that I have come upon nearly £50,000 worth of wrought gold. We’ve been troubled round here with lions, one of which took away a carrier of mine, and at last I decided to go out and settle accounts with this fellow. I found him six miles from the camp and planted a couple of bullets into him without killing him, and decided to follow up his spoor. It was a mad thing to do, trailing a wounded lion in the jungle, and I didn’t realize how mad until we got out of the bush into the hills and I found Mrs Lion waiting for me. She nearly got me too. More by accident than anything else, I managed to shoot her dead at the first shot, and got another pot at her husband as he was slinking into a cave which was near our tent.
‘As I had gone so far, I thought I might as well go the whole hog, especially as I’d seen two lion cubs playing around the mouth of the cave, and bringing up my boys, who were scared to death, I crawled in, to find, as I expected, that the old lion was nearly gone, and a shot finished him. I had to kill the cubs: they were too young to be left alone, and too much of a nuisance to bring back to camp. This cave had been used as a lair years; it was full of bones, human amongst them.
‘But what struck me was the appearance of the roof, which, I was almost certain, had been cut out by hand. It was like a house, and there was a cut door in the rock at the back. I made a torch and went through on a tour of inspection, and you can imagine my surprise when I found myself in a little room with a line of stone niches or shelves. There were three lines on each side. Standing on these at intervals there were little statuettes. They were so covered with dust that I thought they were stone, until I tried to take one down to examine it; then I knew by its weight that it was gold, as they all were.
‘I didn’t want my boys to know about my find, because they are a treacherous lot, so I took the lightest, after weighing them all with a spring balance, and made a note where I’d taken it from. You might think that was enough of a find for one man in a lifetime, but my luck had set in. I sent the boys back and ordered them to break camp and join me on top of the Thaba. I
called it the Thaba, because it is rather like a hill I know in Basutoland, and is one of two.
‘The camp was moved up that night; it was a better pitch than any we had had. There was water, plenty of small game, and no mosquitoes. The worst part of it was the terrific thunderstorms which come up from nowhere, and until you’ve seen one in this ironstone country you don’t know what a thunderstorm is like! The hill opposite vas slightly smaller than the one I had taken as a camp, and between was a shallow valley, through which ran a small shallow river – rapids would be a better word.
‘Early the next morning I was looking round through my glasses, and saw what I thought was a house on the opposite hill. I asked my head-man who lived there, and he told me that it was once the house of the Star Chief; and I remembered that somebody told me, down in Mossamedes, that an astronomer had settled in this neighbourhood and had been murdered by the natives. I thought I would go over and have a look at the place. The day being cloudy and not too hot, I took my gun and a couple of boys and we crossed the river and began climbing the hill. The house was, of course, in ruins; it had only been a wattle hut at the best of times. Part of it was covered with vegetation, but out of curiosity I searched round, hoping to pick up a few things that might be useful to me, more particularly kettles, for my boys had burnt holes in every one I had. I found a kettle, and then, turning over a heap of rubbish which I think must have been his bed, I found a little rusty tin box and broke it open with my stick. There were a few letters which were so faded that I could only read a word here and there, and in a green oilskin, a long letter from the Portuguese Government.’
(It was at this point, either by coincidence or design, that the narrative continued on the actual paper to which he referred.)
‘I speak Portuguese and can read it as easily as English, and the only thing that worried me about it was that the concession gave Professor Leicester all rights to my cave. My first idea was to burn it, but then I began to realize what a scoundrelly business that would be, and I took the letters out into the sun and tried to find if he had any relations, hoping that I’d be able to fix it up with them to take at any rate 50 per cent. of my find. There was only one letter that helped me. It was written in a child’s hand and was evidently from his daughter. It had no address, but there was the name – “Mirabelle Leicester”.
‘I put it in my pocket with the concession and went on searching, but found nothing more. I was going down the hill towards the valley when it struck me that perhaps this man had found gold, and the excuse for getting the concession was a bit of artfulness. I sent a boy back to the camp for a pick, a hammer and a spade, and when he returned I began to make a cutting in the side of the hill. There was nothing to guide me – no outcrop, such as you usually find near a true reef – but I hadn’t been digging for an hour before I struck the richest bed of conglomerate I’ve ever seen. I was either dreaming, or my good angel had at last led me to the one place in the hill where gold could be found. I had previously sent the boys back to camp and told them to wait for me, because, if I did strike metal, I did not want the fact advertised all over Angola, where they’ve been looking for gold for years.
‘Understand, it was not a reef in the ordinary sense of the word, it was all conglomerate, and the wider I made my cutting, the wider the bed appeared, I took the pick to another part of the hill and dug again, with the same result – conglomerate. It was as though nature had thrown up a huge golden hump in the earth. I covered both cuttings late that night and went back to camp. (I was stalked by a leopard in the low bush, but managed to get him.)
‘Early next morning, I started off and tried another spot, and with the same result; first three feet of earth, then about six inches of shale, and then conglomerate. I tried to work through the bed, thinking that it might be just a skin, but I was saved much exertion by coming upon a deep rift in the hill about twenty feet wide at the top and tapering down to about fifty feet below the ground level. This gave me a section to work on, and as near as I can judge, the conglomerate bed is something over fifty feet thick and I’m not so sure that it doesn’t occur again after an interval of twenty feet or more, for I dug more shale and had a showing of conglomerate at the very bottom of the ravine.
‘What does this mean, Johnny? It means that we have found a hill of gold; not solid gold, as in the storybooks, but gold that pays ounces and probably pounds to the ton. How the prospectors have missed it all these years I can’t understand, unless it is that they’ve made their cuttings on the north side of the hill, where they have found nothing but slate and sandstone. The little river in the valley must be feet deep in alluvial, for I panned the bed and got eight ounces of pure gold in an hour – and that was by rough-and-ready methods. I had to be careful not to make the boys too curious, and I am breaking camp tomorrow, and I want you to cable or send me £500 to Mossamedes. The statuette I’m bringing home is worth all that. I would bring more, only I can’t trust these Angola boys; a lot of them arc mission boys and can read Portuguese, and they’re too friendly with a half-breed called Villa, who is an agent of Oberzohn & Smitts; the traders and I know these people to be the most unscrupulous scoundrels on the coast.
‘I shall be at Mossamedes about three weeks after you get this letter, but I don’t want to get back to the coast in a hurry, otherwise people are going to suspect I have made a strike.’
Leon put the letter down.
‘There is the story in a nutshell, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘I don’t, for one moment, believe that Mr Barberton showed Villa the letter. It is more likely that one of the educated natives he speaks about saw it and reported it to Oberzohn’s agent. Portuguese is the lingua franca of that part of the coast. Barberton was killed to prevent his meeting the girl and telling her of his find – incidentally, of warning her to apply for a renewal of the concession. It wasn’t even necessary that they should search his belongings to recover the letter, because once they knew of its existence and the date which Barberton had apparently confounded with the date the letter was written, their work was simply to prevent an application to the Colonial Office at Lisbon. It was quite different after Barberton was killed, when they learnt or guessed that the letter was in Mr Lee’s possession.’
Meadows agreed.
‘That was the idea behind Oberzohn’s engagement of Mirabelle Leicester?’
‘Exactly, and it was also behind the attack upon Heavytree Farm. To secure this property they must get her away and keep her hidden either until it is too late for her to apply for a renewal, or until she has been bullied or forced into appointing a nominee.’
‘Or married,’ said Leon briskly. ‘Did that idea occur to you? Our tailor-made friend, Monty Newton, may have had matrimonial intentions. It would have been quite a good stroke of business to secure a wife and a large and auriferous hill at the same time. This, I think, puts a period to the ambitions of Herr Doktor Oberzohn.’
He got up from the table and handed the papers to the custody of the detective, and turned with a quizzical smile to his friend.
‘George, do you look forward with any pleasure to a two hundred and fifty miles’ drive?’
‘Are you the chauffeur?’ asked George.
‘I am the chauffeur,’ said Leon cheerfully. ‘I have driven a car for many years and I have not been killed yet. It is unlikely that I shall risk my precious life and yours tonight. Come with me and I promise never to hit her up above sixty except on the real speedways.’
Manfred nodded.
‘We will stop at Oxley and try to get a ’phone call through to Gloucester,’ said Leon. ‘This line is, of course, out of order. They would do nothing so stupid as to neglect the elementary precaution of disconnecting Rath Hall.’
At Oxley the big Spanz pulled up before the dark and silent exterior of the inn, and Leon, getting down, brought the half-clad landlord to the door and explained his mission, and also learned that two bi
g cars had passed through half an hour before, going in the direction of London.
‘That was the gang. I wonder how they’ll explain to their paymaster their second failure?’
His first call was to the house in Curzon Street, but there was no reply. ‘Ring them again,’ said Leon. ‘You left Poiccart there?’
Manfred nodded.
They waited for five minutes; still there was no reply.
‘How queer!’ said Manfred. ‘It isn’t like Poiccart to leave the house. Get Gloucester.’
At this hour of the night the lines are comparatively clear, and in a very short time he heard the Gloucester operator’s voice, and a few seconds later the click that told them they were connected with Heavytree Farm. Here there was some delay before the call was answered.
It was not Mirabelle Leicester nor her aunt who spoke. Nor did he recognize the voice of Digby, who had recovered sufficiently to return to duty.
‘Who is that?’ asked the voice sharply. ‘Is that you, sergeant?’
‘No, it is Mr Meadows,’ said Leon mendaciously.
‘The Scotland Yard gentleman?’ It was an eager inquiry.
‘I’m Constable Kirk, of the Gloucester Police. My sergeant’s been trying to get in touch with you, sir.’
‘What is the matter?’ asked Leon, a cold feeling at his heart.
‘I don’t know, sir. About half an hour ago, I was riding past here – I’m one of the mounted men – and I saw the door wide open and all the lights on, and when I came in there was nobody up. I woke Miss Goddard and Mr Digby, but the young lady was not in the house.’
‘Lights everywhere?’ asked Leon quickly.
‘Yes, sir – in the parlour at any rate.’
‘No sign of a struggle?’
‘No, sir; but a car passed me three miles from the house and it was going at a tremendous rate. I think she may have been in that. Mr Digby and Miss Goddard have just gone into Gloucester.’
The Complete Four Just Men Page 83