TREASURE OF WHITE CREEK.She was the daughter of Colonel Kershaw Klein, and he was worth a million, as the society papers said. I had danced with her for the first time in the ball-room of the magnificent house her father had rented in Grosvenor Crescent, on the occasion of her coming of age; and I agreed with the men that she was beyond criticism, an exquisite vision of dark and matured girlhood, so incomparably fascinating that you forget in her company some of her bluntness in speech, and set down the voluptuousness of her glance and mien to the southern luxuriance amidst which she had been reared, and to those "other" notions which prevail in Chili, the land of fleeting republics. Some part of this perhaps unnecessary adulation may have been due to the fact that I had helped in the production of her perfect picture on the night of which I am speaking. The commercial element will intrude at such times; and I could not help but see that she wore at least eight hundred pounds' worth of my jewels. Had the value of them been double, it would have been the same to me, for of her father's stability I had then no doubt. He had been received At the end of the dance—the next being some newfangled "Barn Dance" wherein men scarce put "Well," she said, when we had composed ourselves behind a huge fern, and had made a successful attack upon the meringues glacÉs, "well, this is about splendid; don't you think so?" I said that nothing could be more delightful. "And to think that I've never danced with you before; why, you're just perfect," she went on. "I haven't enjoyed myself right along like this since I was in Valparaiso." "Are the Chilians such wonderful dancers then?" I asked, as she looked up at me bewitchingly. "They just make a profession of it between the shooting times," said she; and then changing the subject quickly, she asked, "What do you think of the crystals now I've got them on?" It is not particularly consoling to hear your rubies spoken of as crystals, but her description was accompanied by such a pretty laugh, and she opened her great black eyes so widely, that I smiled when I answered,— "Why, they're to be envied in such a setting." "You're the fourth man that has said the same to-night," she exclaimed, putting her glass down and tugging at her glove. "I think that Britishers learn their compliments out of copy-books; they're all presents for good girls. Let's see if you're cleverer at getting a glove on than at making pretty speeches." The arm that she held out was gloriously white; and as every man knows, the operation of pulling on the glove of a pretty girl is apt to be prolonged. There are fingers to fit, and a little thumb to stroke daintily; while the grip upon the more substantial part of the forearm will bear repetition so long as time serves. I must have occupied myself at least five minutes with her buttons, she finding it necessary to press close to me when I did so; and the task was none the less pleasant when her rich brown hair touched my face, and her dress rustled with her long-drawn breathing. How long the process would have lasted, or what I should have said foolishly in the end, I do not know; but of a sudden she drew her arm away and exclaimed,— "Oh, I'd quite forgotten; I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye." "I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye." "I wanted to ask you about the bull's-eye." —Page 82 This was her description, I may mention without anger, of the famous White Creek Diamond, which, as all London knows, I have had in my possession for the last two years. Her father, who was reputed to have some commission to buy it for a Persian, was then negotiating with me for its purchase for the sum of one hundred and thirty thousand pounds. He waited only, he said, for the coming of his partner from Valparaiso, to complete the transaction; and it was owing to the intimacy which the pour parlers brought about that I found myself then in his house. How much his daughter knew of the business, however, I could not tell, and I answered her question by another. "What do you know about the bull's-eye?" "That you're trying to sell it to my father," she replied, "and that he won't promise to give it to me." "Have you asked him, then?" "Have I asked him—why, look at him; isn't he ten years older since he met you in Bond-street?" "He certainly seems to have something on his mind," said I. "That's me; he's got me on his mind," she remarked flippantly; "but I wish he'd buy the bull's-eye, and give it to me for a wedding present." "Oh, you're engaged," I ventured dolefully; "you never told me that——" "Didn't I?" she answered, "well, of course I am, and here's my partner." She went away on another man's arm; but she left to me a vision of dark eyes and ivory white flesh; and her breath still seemed to blow balmily upon my forehead. Her partner was a young man just down from Oxford, they told me; seemingly a simple youth, to whom the whole sentence in conversation was as much a mystery as the binomial theorem; but he danced rather well, and I doubt not that she suffered him for that. I watched her through the waltz, and then, after a few words with her father, who promised to call upon me the next day concerning White Creek treasure, I said "Good night" to her. She give me a glance which was more entrancing than any word; and although she had the habit of looking at a man as though she were dying for love of him, I carried it away with me foolishly into the street, when the dawn had broken The invigorating breath of morning somewhat sobered my thoughts; but none the less left the impression of her beauty fermenting in my mind. I turned into Hyde Park, where the trees were alive with song-birds, and the glowing flowers sparkled with the silver freshness of the dew, and set out to walk to Bayswater. In these moments, I forgot the prosaic necessities of forms and customs; and bethought how pleasant it would be if some enchantment could place her at my side, a Phyllis of Mayfair, freed from the tie of conventionality, to look at me for all time with those eyes she had used so well but an hour ago. I forgot her manners of speech, her unpleasing idioms, even the discordant note that her usually melodious voice was sometimes guilty of; forgot all but her ripe beauty, the softness of her touch, the alluring fascination of her way, the insurpassable play of her mouth, the exquisite perfection of her figure. Women's eyes make dreamers of us all; and though I have pride in the thought that I am not a susceptible man, I will confess without hesitation that I was as near to being in love on that summer morning in July as was ever a professor of the single state who has come within hail of his thirty-fifth year with the anti-feminine vow unweakened. At Lancaster Gate I paused a moment, leaning upon the iron rail of the drive to look back at the London veldt fresh to luxuriance in the dew showers which gave many colors in the play of sunlight. "I've had a sharp run to catch you," said he, "for this infernal dancing takes it out of you when you're not used to it. I wanted a word with you particularly before this thing goes any further. Do you know anything of these people?" "Why," said I, "I might ask you that question, since you made yourself so much at home there; don't you know them?" "No, I'm hanged if I do," said he; "but, if I'm not mistaken, I shall be on very good terms with them before the season's out. You haven't sold them any jewels, have you?" This was such an extraordinary question that I turned upon him with an angry reply upon my lips; "Whew!" I remarked, as I looked full at him, "you've made rather a quick change, haven't you?" "It's the running," he replied, mopping himself with a handkerchief, and leaving his countenance like a half-washed chess-board, "we're in for another six hours' stew, and my phiz is plastic—I'd better be moving on, lest I meet any of my partners; I might break some hearts, you know; but what I wanted to say was, Don't go making a fool of yourself, Mr. Sutton, over that little witch with the black eyes, and don't, if you love your life, put yourself for a moment in the power of her long-tongued father." This utterly surprising rejoinder was given without a suspicion of concern or bombast. Many people would have resented it as an impertinence, and a dishonorable slander upon one whose hospitality we had just enjoyed; but I had not been a dealer in jewels for ten years without learning to recognize instantly the "professional" tongue; and I knew that I was talking to a man from Scotland Yard. Yet I must confess that I laughed inwardly at the absurdity of his fears. Few men had come to London with stronger recommendation than Kershaw Klein, and even the banks had trusted him implicitly. "Are you sure that you are making no mistake?" He thought for some minutes before he answered me, standing with his hands in his pockets and his cigar pointing upwards from the extreme corner of his mouth. His reply was given with a pitying smile, and was patronizing—as are the replies of men convinced but unable to convince. "Well," he said, exhaling tremendous clouds of smoke, "what I know I know; and what I don't know my wits will find out for me. I gave you the tip because you've done me—though you don't know it—a good many services; but whether you take it or leave it, that's your look out. Only, and this is my last word, don't come complaining to me if the witch walks off with your goods—and don't write to the Times if her father cracks your skull." He had turned on his heel before I could utter another word; and he left me to walk slowly and thoughtfully to Bayswater, divided in my musings between the vision of the Chilian girl's beauty and the jewels of mine which she wore; but for which her father had not paid. I can only set it down to absurd infatuation; but I admit unhesitatingly that I did not very much care then whether the I went home in this mood, but not to sleep. A feverish dreaming—chiefly of a seductive girl with black-brown wavy hair and black eyes that searched and fascinated with an inexplicable spell—served me for rest; and at eleven o'clock I was at my office, and the Chilian was with me. He was a man of fine presence, a long black beard falling upon his ample chest, and a certain refinement of carriage and bearing giving him a dignity which is not usual in an American. The object of his visit was twofold, to pay the bill he owed me, and to tell me that his I did not hear more of Klein for some fifteen days, at the end of which time he wrote saying that Hermann Rudisic was with him at Basingstoke; and that they hoped to call upon me on the following Friday. The march of events was from that time quick. On the Thursday I read in a daily paper of Now, at the first thought, this intelligence set all the inherent suspicion, which is a part of me, at work once more. Suggestions of doubt rose again and again, instantly to be suppressed. Had I not satisfied myself completely as to the Colonel's standing, his means, his reputation, and his personal character? Was he not staying in Lord Aberly's house? Had not he passed most brilliantly through a London season? Were there not twenty members of the Bachelors' Club seeking to pay for the sake of his daughter the fine imposed upon amorous backsliders? If one were to suspect every man with such credentials as these, the sooner one shut one's door, and locked one's safe for good, the better for all hope of doing business. Of all this I was certain; and had already come to the determination to put from my mind suspicion both of the Count and his daughter, when there came to me by the afternoon "You will be asked to Kershaw Klein's house in three days. I told you the other morning not to trust yourself with the man; I say now, accept the invitation." This was plainly from my friend of Hyde Park; and I confess that his pompous mysteriousness and pretence of knowledge amused me. Even he no longer complained of Colonel Klein's reputation, nor advised me now to avoid him. His letter finally quieted my scruples, and from that moment I resolved to dally with them no longer; and to let no silly fears delay the negotiations for the sale of the treasure of White Creek. In this resolution I waited rather anxiously for the coming of Klein and his partner, but three days went, and I saw nothing of them; it being on the Monday morning at eleven o'clock that the former drove up to Bond Street in a single brougham, and came with his daughter into my private office. He seemed in a great state of distress, saying that Rudisic, although better, was still unable to set foot to the ground: and begging me as the time was so short to take the great jewel to Berkshire—his house was just across the line dividing the county from Hampshire—and there to settle the matter that very day. I heard him mechanically; my eyes glued on the exquisite picture which his daughter made; her gown of white delaine showing the mature contour of her figure admirably; "Come down to-day," said he, "and bring your man with you in case we don't do business, and you have to return alone. I don't like mailing with big stuff on me; you never know who gets wind of it. I suppose you have somebody you could take." Even with the girl's eyes upon me and her laughing threat to "make me tramp at tennis awhile," I had a measure of satisfaction in this request, and thought instantly of Abel. "Yes," said I, with a light laugh, "I will bring my own detective. He's down below now." "That's right," said Klein, "and we'll catch the two-forty from Waterloo. I've ordered the carriage to meet that, and there's just time for a snack between whiles. Never forget your food, sir—I don't for all the business in Europe. I once lost a commission for a railway in Venezuela through a sandwich—but there, that's another story, and I'll tell it you over a chop at the Criterion. I guess I've got an appetite on, and so's Margaret, eh, little girl?" He slapped his chest to signify that a void was there; and we all went off down Piccadilly, returning afterwards for the gem which I had placed in a flat-velvet case. I put it into my jewel pocket, cunningly The discovery was not a pleasant one. It made discord of all the music of Margaret Klein's voice—she was quickly babbling to me in the old Georgian Hall—and forbade my taking considerable notice of the massive oak of the double staircase, or of the exceedingly bright-nosed "ancestors" who smiled upon us from twenty gilt frames. Abel had come up to my room with me, I pretending that he invariably acted as my valet; and once inside a very large but very ugly square bedchamber, whose windows overlooked the prim lawn and terrace of flowers, I shut the door and had a word with him. "Abel," said I, "that footman who drove us from the station must be one of the Scotland Yard lot; what's he doing in this house?" Abel whistled, and by instinct, I suppose, put his hand upon his pistol pocket. "Have you got your revolver with you, sir?" he asked. "Of course I have; and I'll take this opportunity to charge all the chambers, but I don't believe for a moment there will be occasion to use it. The man's on a false scent entirely. It's necessary at the same time to act like wise men, and not like fools; and I must count on you to be near me while we're in the place. If there's any knavery afoot, we shan't hear of it until the place is asleep; but come here when I am going to bed, and then we shall know what to do." I sent him off with this to the servants' quarters, and dressed, though an indescribable sense of nervousness had taken hold of me; and I found myself peering into every cupboard and cranny like an old woman looking for a burglar. The situation was either as dangerous as it could be, or I was the victim of farcical fears. Yet the very shadows across the immense floor, and the aureola upon the carpet about the dressing table seemed to give gloom to the chamber. So thick were the walls of the old house that no sound reached me from the rooms below; and when the gong struck the hour for dinner its note reverberated as a wave of deadened sound through some curtained chapel or chill vault. What did it mean, I kept asking myself; the illness, was it sham? the man from London, was he on a fool's errand? my visit, was it foolhardy? Had I walked into a trap at the bidding of a pretty woman? Were all the The meal was an excellent one, admirably served; the wine was perfect. I sat at my host's right facing his daughter, who seemed to exert herself unusually to fascinate, making delicate play with her speaking eyes; and promising me all the possibilities of Berkshire rest, if I cared to stay with them over the week. To this her father, the Colonel, who had the ribbon of an Order in his buttonhole, and looked exceedingly handsome, added: "And I hope you will, for you're not seeming as well as you were last week. You people in England live in too narrow a circle. A voyage across the pond makes an epoch in your lives; you are scarce prepared to admit yet that there is any other city but London. If you would enlarge the scope of your actions, you would grumble less—and perhaps, if I "I hope Mr. Sutton will do the same," said Margaret, following up his invitation. "I want to learn all about the dames who won't know you unless you had a grandfather; and I should like to see a curate who is passing rich on forty pounds a year. I guess we mean to go right in now we're amongst your best folk." "I'll stay a day or two with pleasure if you will pilot me," said I, as she rose to go to the drawing-room; but I little knew that my visit was to terminate abruptly in three hours or less, or what was to happen in the between-time. A lean, lank-looking butler served the Colonel and myself with coffee when she had gone; and after that my host took me to the drawing-room, where I found her engaged in the pursuit of trying over a "coster" song. The Colonel suggested business at once, saying: "I'll leave you with Margaret while I go up to Hermann and learn if he's well enough to receive us; I dare say you can amuse yourselves. I shan't be gone five minutes." He was really away for twenty minutes; but I did not count the time. The whole situation seemed "It was good of you to come," she almost whispered in one of these pauses, glancing up timorously, and speaking altogether in the sympathetic tone. "Do you miss the excitement of London?" I asked, letting my hand rest for a moment on hers. "I guess not," she replied; "but I miss some one who can talk to me as you talk; you're going to stop awhile, aren't you?" "I'll stop as long as you ask me to." When he was gone she went on playing for some minutes, turning away at last impatiently from the piano, and facing round with a serious, almost alarmed look. What she meant to say or do I cannot tell, for at that moment the Colonel came back and told us that his partner was in the dressing-room upstairs, and would be glad to see me at once. "Margaret may come too?" he asked me. "She would like to see the great stone." "Of course," I replied; "it will be a pleasure to show it to her." I cannot tell you why it was, but as we rose together That you should understand what happened in the next few minutes it is necessary for me to say a word upon the construction of the boudoir. It was a room hung in pink silk and white, and it had two doors in it, giving off to other rooms, whose size I could not see since they were in darkness. For light, we had a lamp with a white shade upon the invalid's table, and two others upon the mantelshelf; while we were seated in a fashion that allayed any fears I might have had of personal and sudden attack. The Colonel lounged in an American rocking-chair, he being nearest to the head of the couch; his daughter leant back against a buhl-work cabinet, she being a little way from the sick man's feet; I had a library-chair, and was alone in an attitude which would allow me to spring to my defence—if that were necessary—without delay. I looked, too, at Hermann Rudisic, the Colonel's partner, and I confess that contempt for his physical powers was my first thought. I was convinced that if it were a question of fight, I could hold the two men until Abel, who was in the servants' hall, came to my assistance; and while the others were present I had no fear of any of those wild machinations which are chiefly the property of imaginative fiction-makers. This knowledge gave to me my nerve again, and The vision of the glorious gem, rippling on its surface with a myriad lights, white, and golden, and many-colored, in the play of radiating fire, was one that compelled the silence of amazed admiration for many minutes. Margaret Klein first spoke, her face bent to the diamond so that its waves of color seemed to float up to her ravished eyes; and with a little cry wrung from her satisfaction she said,— "Oh, Mr. Sutton, it's too beautiful to look at!" "I am glad that it does not disappoint," said I. "It could disappoint no one," the invalid said, stretching out a hand which trembled to draw the treasure closer to his eyes. "It's the whitest stone I've seen for three years," the Colonel remarked coolly, and then, as with a new thought, he added,— "I believe it's whiter than the Brazilian stone in my old ring. I should like to compare them, if you'll let me? The other stuff is in my dressing-room there; Margaret, will you get it?" He gave her his keys, and taking a lamp from the shelf, she passed into the chamber which was behind me. In the same moment Rudisic asked his host to prop him up higher upon the couch, and the Colonel had just begun to place the pillows when I heard Margaret's voice crying,— "Father, I can't open the drawer—it's stuck; do come and help." It was an act of consummate folly—that I concede you; but I was so completely unaware of any signs When the first great terror had passed, and a mental struggle had left me with some sense, I leant against the steel door, and thought again of my fate. I had little science, yet I knew that the hours of any man, shut in an air-tight chamber such as that room of steel was, could be few. I had heard that asphyxiation was a peaceful death, and think I could have had courage to face it if a little light had been given to me. But I was in utter weighty darkness; I could not even see that dull red light as of one's own soul shining, which may come in the gentler dark of night. There was only upon me that sense of impenetrable blackness, the grim feeling that I had come to my coffin, had slept in it, and arisen to this unspeakable terror. My whole being then seemed to cry aloud for sight, one moment in which living light should again shine upon me. A great craving for air; a sense of terrible If I could have reasoned sanely I should have seen that my hope was all bound up in Abel and the detective in the house. Klein, and the invalid, and the girl—they had been gone long since, unless others had put hands upon them. My own servant, I knew, would seek for me first; but even if he came to the safe, how would he open it, how cut through these inches of steel before death had ended it all? It was even possible that the door of the strong room was a concealed door—and so afterwards I proved it to be. In that case, how would they know even of my necessity? These torturing reflections threw at last a glimmer of necessary activity upon my despair. I raised my voice, though I had then the strangest sensation in my veins, and my heart was pumping audibly; and for many minutes I shouted with all my strength. Once I thought that I heard, even through the door, some sound from the other room; yet when I cried louder, and beat again upon the steel, there was no signal. I remained unheeded; my voice gradually failed me; I could cry no longer, but began to sink almost into a coma. How long this coma lasted I cannot tell. I was roused from it, after a hideous dream of waiting, by sounds of knocking upon some wall near me; and —Page 104 "The joke, was, seeing you living, Mr. Sutton, that Abel swallowed the wine that butler gave him, and was made as insensibly drunk as a man who takes stage chloroform. I knew all along that the butler was the one to watch; and while I never thought they'd do you mischief in the room—believing they meant to work after midnight—my men in the grounds clapped the bracelets on the lank chap up by the woods there, and he had the diamond on him." "And the Colonel and his daughter and the invalid?" I asked, raising myself in the bed of an upper chamber of the Woodfields, on the foot of which sat my old friend, the detective of Hyde Park. "Got clear away by a back staircase we'd never heard of, through a cellar and a passage to the lower grounds! They knocked old Jimmy, the local policeman, on the head by the spinney, and all they left him was a bump as big as an orange. That girl must have had a liking for you. One of my men nearly took her as she jumped into a dog-cart; but she threw the keys in his face, and he brought them here. I knew nothing about this room, and shouldn't have done except for the ring of your revolver; but the last Lord Aberly built it to take his famous collection of rubies and emeralds, and that lag Klein evidently heard of it, and leased the place furnished on that account." "How do you know that he was a swindler?" "I heard of him in New York when I was there last winter. He was wanted for the great mail robbery near St. Louis. A clever scoundrel, too; deceived a heap of folk by forged letters of introduction, and the banks by leaving big deposits with them. He must be worth a pretty pile; but I don't doubt he came over here from America on purpose to steal your diamonds. He was out at the Cape nine months ago, and got to hear all about the White Creek stone. Then he must have known that Herbert Klein, his supposed brother, and a real rich man of Valparaiso, was away yachting in the Pacific; and so he claimed him, and traded on his undoubted couple of million. A clever forger, and the other two with him nearly as smart. It was lucky for you that one of the grooms here had heard of a mysterious place in that dressing-room, and led me, when I "And the man's daughter?" I asked, a little anxiously. "His daughter," he replied; "pshaw, she's his wife!—and we'll take the pair of them yet." But he never did, although the lank butler is now our guest at Dartmoor. |