our excitement over the discovery was unbounded. old mr. staffurth’s announcement seemed hardly possible. his hand trembled as he held the paper whereon i had copied the precious document catalogued among the oblata rolls, while i, bending over him, stood eager but speechless.
“see!” he cried. “the cipher is cunningly reversed, in order to make it more complicated. the big threes written by the old italian were drawn as a silent indication of the correct solution of this document. besides, there is before and after the entry of the date of the document two threes, one at each end—meaning first the third letter, and secondly each three letters reversed.”
“let’s decipher it at once—whatever it is!” i exclaimed, hastily pulling up a chair to the table beside him and taking a sheet of blank paper and pencil. imagine for yourself the tension of my mind at that critical moment. what might not be concealed behind that bewildering array of letters? was the secret of the whereabouts of the treasure written there, or was it, after all, only some unimportant record having no reference at all to the hidden loot?
the old man was staring at the document with a puzzled air, for it was apparently not so easy to decipher as he had believed.
“dictate it to me, and i will write,” i urged quickly, holding up my pencil ready. the suspense was irritating. we both of us were impatient to get at the truth.
slowly, and not without a good deal of difficulty, staffurth reversed each three letters of the cipher, three by three, and then reading them by aid of the alphabet i had compiled, gave down the beginning of the document to me as follows?—
sp hxwe hqophwrabeh lcwo sr mcwo ap wo
on thys twenty-first daye of maye in ye
rskbo cpl hxabhaohx wobo sr wo bcaupo sr
foure and thirtieth yere of ye raigne of
skb esknbaupo jclao ojazcfohx ykopo sr
our souvrigne ladie elizabeth quene of
opujcplo rrbcpio cpl abojcplo loroplob sr wo
englande ffrance and irelande defender of ye
rrcahx a fcbhxsjsmoq lc eixsbps xcno mclo
ffaith i bartholomew da schorno have made
hxwe eoiboh boisbl.
thys secret record.
our excitement knew no bounds. it was, after all, a secret record, and without doubt it referred to the treasure! it is always interesting work to decipher an old document, but more especially so one that no man has been able to read for ages. imagine yourself for a moment in my place, with a fortune attached to the revelation of that secret!
old mr. staffurth’s voice trembled, as did his thin, white hands. as a pal?ographist he had at times made some remarkable discoveries while delving in the dusty parchment records of bygone ages, but surely none had ever affected him like this. we were learning the place where a fortune lay hidden.
for close on two hours we worked together incessantly, slowly obtaining the right equivalents of the cipher, but very often making errors in calculation with the puzzling threes. the writing was simple after all, but at the same time difficult to decipher, requiring great care and patience. at length, however, i sat with the whole of the secret revealed before me, written down in plain english, surely one of the most interesting documents among the thousands preserved in the national archives.
the record, which we read and re-read a dozen times with breathless interest, was as follows?—
on thys twenty-first daye of maye in ye foure and thirtieth yere of ye raigne of our souvrigne ladie elizabeth, quene of englande ffrance and irelande, defender of ye ffaith, i bartholomew da schorno have made thys secret record.
to eight of ye men who fought wyth me on ye great unicorne against ye spanysh galleon and who made covenant was ye place of ye loote knowne. in all those men dyd i place my trust. one robert dafte hath broken hys oath and hath reveled ye secret, for he hath tolde before hys death unto hys wyfe ye place into which we walled ye golde. therefore it hath become necessarie in tyme to remove ye treasure which we captured from ye spanysh and from ye barbarians of algiers unto a place of safetie from thieves, from conspiratiors, and from ye enemies of oure quene.
therefore be it known unto ye person who may rede thys my record that on thys daye above written the whole of what i possess has been removed from ye priest’s hole in ye manor of caldecott and concealed in a place more fytting and secure. the knowledge of it now remains only wyth my trusted friends clement wollerton and john ffreeman, the two signatories to ye present document. be it knowne also therefore that ye secret covenant playced in ye hand of richard knutton is now made by me null and voide, although my testamentary disposition of ye golde jewels and all other articles whych i bartholomew da schorno, noble of ferrara, commendatore of the order of san stefano, have treasured shall remain as i have before written; that is to saye that should ye knights of saint stephen not require funds ye golde is to become ye sole and absolute property of ye youngest childe of ye family of clement wollerton, of stybbington, in ye countie of huntyngedon, but without any parte or portion to go to ye familie of richard knutton, ye last mentioned havyng wickedly and maliciously conspyred wyth ye wyfe of ye saide robert dafte to steale and take possession of ye treasure during our absence on ye seas.
and therefore be it known unto ye person who gains ye secret of thys cipher that i wyth mine owne hand have written thys my record for two purposes. in ye firste playce to make it plaine unto all men that it is my ardent desire to assist ye worke of ye release of christians in slavery in barberie, and secondlie to reveale unto ye one who deciphers my record ye place where ye golde wyll be found. let hym rede and marke well.
foure miles from stamforde towne on ye great roade into scotlande and to ye left hande, is tyckencote laund. within thys woode have we buried ye treasure three arms-lengths deepe, and to recover it ye directions whych herewyth i give must be followed closely. enter ye woode by ye path leading through ye fieldes at ye fourth mylestone from stamford towne and passe ye lyne of six oakes always facing empinghame church until ye three systers are found. midway between ye three, at twenty-and-nyne foot-paces from ye south, have we planted an oak sapling and beneath it will be found hydden ye golde of ye spanyards and ye jewels of ye corsairs.
(here followed the roughly-executed plan which consisted of three triangles at unequal distance from each other, and a crude sketch of the tree beneath which the gold was hidden. across the sketch was an arrow, presumably showing the direction of the sunrise, and a second one with the word “empinghame” written at its barb.)
let he who fyndeth thys my wealthe carrie out my written will, taking unto hymselfe one of the chests of monie as hys recompense. but should he not give up ye remainder in full unto ye last descendant of ye wollertons of stybbington my curse shall for ever reste upon hym. that what is herein written is true, we who alone knowe ye secret of ye saide treasure and have taken oure oathes to keepe it untyl the golde should be wanted by ye knightes of saint stephen have hereunto sett oure hands and seale on ye daye and yere first above written.
clement wollerton.
john ffreeman.
bartholomew da schorno.
the spot to which the treasure had been secretly removed from that upstairs chamber in caldecott manor was now actually revealed to us! but we entertained a horrible suspicion that bennett and his friends were equally in the possession of the secret. the suggestion that the document sold by the dead man knutton contained a key to the cipher was, of course, now dismissed; but we were nevertheless filled with fear that the quartette might, by some means or other, have solved the problem, just as we had done.
philip reilly, although he had returned to his desk at the bank, had spent his spare time down at hammersmith, and had watched the movements of the four men. he had once or twice told me that he believed some fresh move was being made, and he had also discovered that the fourth man, he who had charge of dorothy on that fatal night at kilburn—a short, dark-bearded, thick-set fellow known as martin—was in reality a low-class solicitor named martin franklin, who rented a small back office in the minories and appeared to have very few clients.
staffurth agreed with me that we should lose no time in obeying the directions given in the document before us, therefore i drove into the city before the banks closed, and showed philip the secret revealed. on reading it he became highly excited, as may be imagined, and, having obtained two days’ leave of absence from his manager, we went out and bought several useful implements, including a saw, three shovels, pickaxes, etc. then, having sent them to king’s cross cloak-room to await us, we drove home to chelsea, where we informed usher of the good news, and found him ready and anxious to render us assistance. afterwards i went on to dorothy and showed her the solution of the cipher. she seemed, however, apprehensive of some evil befalling me.
that night, having purchased an ordnance map in fleet street, the three of us left london, travelling to the quiet, old-world town of stamford, and putting up at that old-fashioned hostelry the stamford hotel. perhaps you, my reader, know the quaint, sleepy old lincolnshire town, with its gothic architecture, its elizabethan houses, its many church spires, and its noisy cobbles. thirty years ago, before the railways came, it was a commercial centre and a busy, prosperous place; but nowadays its streets are deserted, its fine old churches seem to be tumbling to decay, and only on market days does the typically english town awaken from its lethargy. very picturesque is its situation, lying behind the broad, fertile meadows of the welland, with burghley house—that magnificent palace immortalized by tennyson—in its immediate vicinity.
it was not, however, to enjoy the pleasant peace of stamford town that we had come there. we did not arrive until nearly ten o’clock at night, and were, of course, compelled to leave our implements at the railway station. to take them to the hotel might arouse suspicion. therefore we ate our supper in the coffee-room—cold roast beef and ale—retired soon after, and arose early next day, after a night of sleepless impatience. in the privacy of reilly’s room we decided upon a plan of action. with usher i was to hire a trap and drive to tickencote village, which, we learnt, was three miles away, past casterton, on the great north road, and then dismiss the conveyance, while reilly was to go to the station, obtain the tools, and follow us in a separate trap hired from the george. at tickencote village we were to meet and go on together to the place indicated in the old italian’s record.
immediately after breakfast we parted company and reilly went out, after which we ordered a dog-cart and drove along the straight, broad highway, with its quantity of telegraph lines at the side, the great road which runs from london to york. the autumn morning was fresh, even a trifle chilly, but the season was a late one, and the leaves had not yet fallen, although the frosts had already turned them to their bright red and golden tints. beyond great casterton church we crossed a bridge at the end of the village, and a square tower among the trees in the distance was pointed out by our driver as tickencote church. arrived at the village, which was just off the high road, we entered the inn.
over a glass of ale we learnt several things we wished to know, namely, that there was tickencote park and tickencote laund. the park commenced at the junction of the high road with the short road leading up to the village, while the laund lay back from the road behind some fields nearly a mile farther on. i learnt this by chatting with the landlady about fox-hunting. there were always foxes in tickencote laund, she informed me, and hounds were sure to have sport whenever they drew it.
while there it suddenly occurred to me that if philip arrived with a collection of tools our visit would at once arouse the curiosity of the villagers. therefore i whispered to usher and we left the place, eventually meeting our friend on the high road a quarter of a mile away. he handed out the tools from the trap, then, jumping down, told the man to return for him at four to tickencote village.
in order not to attract any attention we walked on, leaving reilly to carry the picks and shovels at a short distance behind. even there we were not safe, for we knew not whether our enemies had secretly watched our departure from london. dorothy was always impressing upon me her suspicion that the men kept continual observation on me, while usher knew bennett well enough to be certain that he would not give up the chance of a fortune without some desperate effort.
nevertheless, keeping a watchful eye everywhere, we walked along the wide muddy high road, impatient to arrive at our goal, and eager to dig at the spot indicated by the roughly-drawn plan upon that faded parchment.
