Spanish Gold/Chapter 2

AJOR KENT returned at half-past six o'clock, well satisfied with the condition of the Spindrift. He found Meldon absorbed in the little brown book, the diary of the Kent who was a sea captain and flourished in 1798.

"Have you worked through the papers?" asked the Major.

"Haven't looked at one of them," said Meldon, "and don't mean to. I've got something here worth Portsmouth Lodge and your whole footy little property along with it."

"I don't believe you."

"Very well, then, don't. Be an incredulous Jew, if you like. But I can tell you you'll open your eyes when you hear what I've found."

"Hurry up, then, and tell me. It's time for me to go and dress for dinner."

"Go on. Get into your starched shirt and your silk-lined coat. After dinner I'll tell you all about it."

"Wouldn't you like a wash yourself, J. J.?"

"No," said the curate, "I'm a busy man. I can't spend hours and hours every day washing and dressing myself. I've something else to do. At present I have to run through this log of your grandfather's again and copy out a few of the most important bits."

Major Kent dressed quietly. He dined with a good appetite and without hurry. Meldon seemed excited and eager to get dinner over. Contrary to his usual custom, he ate very little. He kept the old diary beside his plate, and every now and then stroked it affectionately.

At last the meal came to an end. The servant, after leaving coffee on the table, finally withdrew. Major Kent lit a pipe and lay back in a comfortable chair, Meldon stood with his back against the chimneypiece.

"I'm coming with you on your cruise to Inishgowlan," he said.

"What about your poor old governor and the little girl in Rathmines?"

"Never you mind about them. When I've explained things to you a bit you'll see that it'll be a jolly sight better both for my governor and for my little girl if I go with you."

"You mean to shoot seals and to make muffs out of their skins for the little girl?"

"No, I don't. I know well enough that the seals off this coast don't have the proper sort of skins for muffs. I mean to go to Inishgowlan and bring back a whole pot of money, thousands and thousands of pounds. I'll rig my little girl out in proper furs when I get back. She shall have silk dresses and real lace and a motor-car, and I'll drive her up and down Grafton Street and buy her any mortal thing she chooses. I'll take my poor old governor out of that beastly dispensary, where he's slaving away doctoring people who neither pay nor say 'Thank you.' I'll set him up in a jolly little house down near Kingstown with a couple of daily papers, a bottle of good whisky, and as much tobacco as he cares to smoke. I'll give the rector a couple of hundred or so for the church, and make his mind easy about the loss of Sir Giles's subscription. I'll"

"Perhaps you'll tell me," said the Major, "where this enormous fortune is to come from."

"Out of Inishgowlan."

"Oh! out of Inishgowlan. I see. But how?"

"Look here, Major. Your grandfather went to that island in 1798 with Sir Giles and Lady Buckley. He anchored his sloop in the bay, and, naturally, as they were there nearly six weeks, they occasionally went on shore."

"I shouldn't wonder if they did."

"Very well. The people of Inishgowlan in those days talked nothing but Irish, and so naturally your grandfather and Sir Giles couldn't understand them. But Lady Buckley could."

"I know what you're at now," said the Major. "I've read that diary or log or whatever the old man called it. You've got a hold of that cock-and-bull story about the Spanish Armada shipwreck and the lost treasure."

"Do you mean to deny," said Meldon, "that a Spanish ship was wrecked on Inishgowlan?"

"No, I don't. I dare say there was one wrecked there. That Armada seems to have piled up ships all round this coast. My grandfather brought back an old iron chest from Inishgowlan which is in the house this minute. I always heard it was an Armada chest."

"So far, so good. You give in to the shipwreck. Now it appears that Lady Buckley didn't say a word to her husband or your grandfather at the time about what she heard from the island people. But when she came home she told them a long story. All the people believed then that there was a pile of gold hidden somewhere on the island. They said that the Spanish captain left the island with the remains of his crew in two of their curraghs, or rather their great-grandfather's curraghs, and didn't, in fact, couldn't, take anything with him except some papers and arms. That's the story Lady Buckley heard."

"I don't think much of it," said the Major. "I don't see where the treasure comes in."

"Well, you must be uncommonly thick-headed if you don't. If the Spanish captain didn't carry off the treasure, he must have left it on the island. You follow that reasoning, I suppose?"

"I do, of course, but"

"Well, if the treasure had been found any time between the shipwreck and 1798 the people would have known about it, wouldn't they? And they wouldn't have told Lady Buckley it was still on the island. Therefore the treasure was still there in 1798. See?"

"But"

"Wait a moment. If the treasure was discovered since 1798 we'd have heard of it. Those Inishgowlan men come in here to Ballymoy to do their marketing. Now suppose they'd taken to offering the shopkeepers hundreds and thousands of Spanish gold coins any time during the last century, do you suppose we shouldn't have heard of it? Why, man, the whole country would be full of stories of their find. But nobody in this neighbourhood has ever so much as seen a Spanish coin, therefore the Inishgowlan people can't have found the treasure. Therefore it's on the island still."

Meldon paused triumphantly. His chain of reasoning was complete.

"That's all right," said the Major, "supposing there ever was any treasure to find."

"My dear Major, do try to be sensible. Further on in the log-book, which you say you've read, I find that old Sir Giles and your grandfather, having heard Lady Buckley's story, made another expedition to the island to look for the treasure."

"They did, and brought back the old iron chest that's in my bedroom this minute."

"Now I ask you," said Meldon, "were your grandfather and old Sir Giles the kind of men to go off on a wild-goose chase after treasure which didn't exist? They weren't that kind of men at all, either of them. They were shrewd, hard-headed men who thought things out carefully before they acted. If they had a fault, it was that they were a bit too keen about money."

"How do you know all that?"

"It stands to common sense," said Meldon. "People who keep their property safe, as the Buckleys did, all through the eighteenth century in Ireland, must have been pretty sharp business men. Besides, I always heard that the first Buckley came over from Scotland. And the Scots, as we all know, don't waste their time fooling after treasure which doesn't exist. You may take my word for it, Major, that those two old gentlemen knew what they were about."

"They didn't find it."

"No, they didn't. That's where we come in. If they'd found it, it wouldn't be there for us, would it?"

"I don't see that you've proved yet that there was any treasure to find. The ship, supposing there was a ship wrecked there, mightn't have had treasure in her."

"That's where your want of a proper education tells against you, Major. If you'd read history you'd know that all those Spanish ships were full of treasure. Take Kingsley's 'Westward Ho!' for instance. You may have read that perhaps."

"That's only a novel."

"Well, I can't help quoting novels to you when you've read nothing else, and very few of them. If you'd read other books I'd refer you to them. But 'Westward Ho!' will show you that the Spaniards never went to sea without a good supply of gold in the holds of their ships, besides silver cups and any amount of ecclesiastical robes, copes, and mitres and things, simply studded with gems. That's the kind of men the Spaniards were."

"I suppose you think you're going to find all this wonderful treasure yourself."

"Of course I am. It only wants a little intelligence."

"You said just now that old Sir Giles and my grandfather were intelligent men, and they didn't find it."

"They hadn't the advantages we have now," said Meldon. "I don't deny their intelligence, but they didn't know, they couldn't know, how to go about the business. The discovery of buried treasure hadn't become an exact science in their time. Edgar Allan Poe hadn't written his stories. The art of the detective hadn't been developed. They hadn't so much as heard of Sherlock Holmes. They had about as much chance of finding that treasure as Galileo with his old-fashioned telescope had of discovering a disease germ. Now we are in quite a different position. We start with all the methods of highly-trained intellects ready to our hand, so to speak. There's only one thing I'm sorry for, and that is that there isn't a cryptogram. I'm particularly good at cryptograms."

"How do you mean to start?"

"It would have been easier," said Meldon, "if there had been a cryptogram. However, there isn't. Or, if there is, we haven't got it. As it is, we've got to do without it. The first thing is to put ourselves in the place of the Spanish captain. That's the way great detectives always begin. They put themselves in the other fellow's place and think what they'd have done if they'd been him. Now, supposing you'd been the Spanish captain and found that you couldn't carry off your treasure, what would you have done with it?"

"I suppose I'd have dug a hole and buried it."

"No, you wouldn't. Not unless you'd been a perfect fool. If you'd been the Spanish captain you'd have had more sense than you appear to have now."

"Then it wouldn't have been me."

"It would, because we started with the supposition that you were the Spanish captain, and he must have had some sense. You don't suppose the Spaniards, the greatest nation on earth at the time, would have started off a thing like that Armada without seeing that the captains of the ships were sensible men. Of course they wouldn't."

"But if the captain had sense and I haven't"

"There's no use arguing round a subject in that way. Put it like this. Suppose I was the Spanish captain, what would I have done? I wouldn't have dug a hole, because I would have known that the people of the island would have watched me dig it. Even if I'd dug it at night they'd have seen the marks next morning, and the moment my back was turned they'd have dug the treasure up again. You must give the captain credit for being a reasonable man."

"Well, now you've barred burying the treasure, which I still think was the obvious thing "

"Too obvious. That's my point."

"What would you do? There aren't any caves on the island that ever I heard of."

"I shouldn't have put it into a cave in any case. A cave is exactly the place the amateur treasure-seeker always looks for first. No. If I were the Spanish captain I should have picked out an unobtrusive-looking hole or cleft in the rocks, just above high-water mark, and dumped my stuff down there. What we have to do is to find that hole or cleft."

"That will be a longish job," said the Major. "I should guess the island to be about two miles around. It will take some time to poke into every hole in two miles of rough rocks."

"We shan't do that. We shall proceed on a carefully reasoned, scientific plan, which I shall think out and explain to you when we get there."

Meldon lit his pipe, which he had hitherto neglected, poured himself out a cup of coffee, and sat down. He remained silent, and it was evident that he was thinking out the scientific plan. The Major took up his Times and began to read a leading article on the appallingly lawless condition of Ireland. At the end of a quarter of an hour Meldon spoke.

"Have you a map of the island?"

"No. I have a chart and the sailing directions, but they are on board the Spindrift."

Again Meldon remained silent for a time. Then he asked

"Are there many people on the island?"

"Ten families, I believe," said the Major. "All cousins of each other."

"I ask," said Meldon, "because if there are people there we may find it necessary to adopt some disguise."

"If you imagine for a moment that I'm going to wander round that island, or any other, dressed up in a false beard and blue spectacles"

"I don't imagine anything of the kind. When I said that we must adopt some disguise, I meant that we must be able to give a reasonable account of our proceedings to the natives. If we let them know we're after their treasure there may be trouble. They will naturally want to go shares in our find."

"I'd take half a crown," said the Major, "for all I find."

Meldon knocked the ashes out of his pipe and rose.

"I must be off," he said. "I've got to see Doyle and that fellow Langton to-night about hiring my boat to them. I was thinking of asking £30 for the month."

"The boat's not worth it to buy," said the Major. "You only gave £25 for her."

"Well, I said I'd ask £30. I'm quite prepared to take £25. That will simply be getting my money back, with no profit on the business at all."

"You'll have the boat at the end of the month."

"Will I? Unless the friend he talks about is a different sort of man from what Langton looks there'll be precious little of the Aureole left at the end of the month."

"All right," said the Major. "Get what you can. If the man is fool enough to hire your Aureole for £25 he's certainly fool enough to smash her up. But I advise you to see the colour of his money before you hand over the boat."

Meldon winked.

"In any case," said the Major, "he'd be a fool to go to sea in her. She's rotten."

"I don't expect he wants to go to sea," said Meldon. "He'll just potter about among the islands in the bay. Anyway, he's got to take my boat if he wants one at all. You won't hire yours, and there's no other. Doyle said this afternoon that there were plenty, but that was only to encourage Langton to stay on at the hotel. There's nothing else that could be called a yacht within fifty miles of Ballymoy. But I must be off. Let me see, is there anything else we have to settle?"

"You might fix a day for starting," said the Major.

"Monday next. I'll see the rector to-morrow and arrange about it. I could start on Sunday night if you like. It's my turn to preach in the evening and I'd cut it a bit short, so as to be out here with you by half-past seven."

"No, thanks. Monday morning will be time enough for me, But we'll get off early. You'd better come out and sleep here or on the boat I'm glad you're coming, J. J. We'll have a jolly cruise. We'll spend a couple of days on the small island and then run across to the big one."

"We'll do nothing of the sort. I can't give more than a week altogether, and it will take us all that time to get the treasure."

"You don't mean to say that you really expect to get that treasure?"

"I do, of course. I tell you, Major, I've all my life had a taste for treasure-seeking. Next to piracy or being wrecked on a desert island, there's nothing in the world I'm so keen on as hidden treasure. I'm pretty sure that I have a special talent for finding it. Do you suppose I'm going to miss my chance now I've got it? Not likely."

"J. J.," said the Major solemnly, "you're a bigger fool than any one would take you for by your looks."

"All right. Just you wait till we're coming home again, and see who is the fool then."