A Splendid Hazard Part 17

The admiral put on his Mandarin spectacles. With his hands behind his back, he bent and critically examined the contents. Then, very carefully, he extracted a packet of papers, yellow and old, bound with heavy cording. Beneath this packet was a medal of the Legion of Honor, some rose leaves, and a small glove.

"Know what I think?" said the admiral, stilling the shake in his voice.

"This belonged to that mysterious Frenchman who lived here eighty years ago. I'll wager that medal cost some blood. By cracky, what a find!"

"And the poor little glove and the rose leaves!" murmured the girl, in pity. "It seems like a crime to disturb them."

"We shan't, my child. Our midnight friend wasn't digging yonder for faded keepsakes. These papers are the things." The admiral cut the string, and opened one of the doc.u.ments. "H'm! Written in French. So is this," looking at another, "and this. Here, Laura, cast your eye over these, and tell us why some one was hunting for them."

Fitzgerald eyed Breitmann thoughtfully. The whole countenance of the man had changed. Indeed, it resembled another face he had seen somewhere; and it grew in his mind, slowly but surely, as dawn grows, that Breitmann was not wholly ignorant in this affair. He had not known who had been working at night; but that dizziness of the moment gone, the haste in opening the case, the eagerness of the search last night; all these, to Fitzgerald's mind, pointed to one thing: Breitmann knew.

"I shall watch him."

Laura read the doc.u.ments to herself first. Here and there was a word which confused her; but she gathered the full sense of the remarkable story. Her eyes shone like winter stars.

"Father!" she cried, dropping the papers, and spreading out her arms.

"Father, it's the greatest thing in the world. A treasure!"

"What's that, Laura?" straining his ears.

"A treasure, hidden by the soldiers of Napoleon; put together, franc by franc, in the hope of some day rescuing the emperor from St. Helena.

It is romance! A real treasure of two millions of francs!" clapping her hands.

"Where?" It was Breitmann who spoke. His voice was not clear.

"Corsica!"

"Corsica!" The admiral laughed like a child. Right under his very nose all these years, and he cruising all over the chart! "Laura, dear, there's no reason in the world why we shouldn't take the yacht and go and dig up this pretty sum."

"No reason in the world!" But the secretary did not p.r.o.nounce these words aloud.

"A telegram for you, sir," said the butler, handing the yellow envelope to Fitzgerald.

"Will you pardon me?" he said drawing off to a window.

"Go ahead," said the admiral, fingering the medal of the Legion of Honor.

Fitzgerald read:

"Have made inquiries. Your man never applied to any of the metropolitan dailies. Few ever heard of him."

He jammed the message into a pocket, and returned to the group about the case. Where should he begin? Breitmann had lied.

CHAPTER XI

PREPARATIONS AND COGITATIONS

The story itself was brief enough, but there was plenty of husk to the grain. The old expatriate was querulous, long-winded, not n.i.g.g.ard with his ink when he cursed the English and d.a.m.ned the Prussians; and he obtained much gratification in jabbing his quill-bodkin into what he termed the sniveling n.o.bility of the old regime. Dog of dogs! was he not himself n.o.ble? Had not his parents and his brothers gone to the guillotine with the rest of them? But he, thank G.o.d, had no wooden mind; he could look progress and change in the face and follow their bent. And now, all the crimes and heroisms of the Revolution, all the glorious pageantry of the empire, had come to nothing. A Bourbon, thick-skulled, sordid, worn-out, again sat upon the throne, while the Great Man languished on a rock in the Atlantic. Fools that they had been, not to have hidden the little king of Rome as against this very dog! It was pitiful. He never saw a shower in June that he did not hail curses upon it. To have lost Waterloo for a bucketful of water!

Thousand thunders! could he ever forget that terrible race back to Paris? Could he ever forget the shame of it? Grouchy for a fool and Blucher for a blundering a.s.s. _Eh bien_; they would soon tumble the Bourbons into oblivion again.

A rambling desultory tale. And there were reminiscences of such and such a great lady's _salon_; the flight from Moscow; the day of the Bastille; the poor fool of a Louis who donned a red-bonnet and wore the tricolor; some new opera dances; the flight of his cowardly cousins to Austria; Austerlitz and Jena; the mad dream in Egypt; the very day when the Great Man pulled a crown out of his saddle-bag and made himself an emperor. Just a little corporal from Corsica; think of it! And so on; all jumbled but keyed with tremendous interest to the listeners and to Laura herself. It was the golden age of opportunity, of reward, of sudden generals and princes and dukes. All gone, nothing left but a few battle-flags; England no longer shaking in her boots, and the rest of them dividing the spoils! No! There were some left, and in their hands lay the splendid enterprise.

Quietly they had pieced together this sum and that, till there was now stored away two-million francs. Two or three frigates and a corvette or two; then the work would go forward. Only a little while to wait, and then they would bring their beloved chief back to France and to his own again. Had he not written: "Come for me, _mon brave_. They say they have orders to shoot me. Come; better carry my corpse away than that I should rot here for years to come." They would come. But this year went by and another; one by one the Old Guard died off, smaller and smaller had drawn the circle. The vile rock called St. Helena still remained impregnable. On a certain day they came to tell him that the emperor was no more. Soon he was all alone but one; these brave soldiers who had planned with him were no more. An alien, an outcast, he too longed for night. And what should he do with it, this vast treasure, every franc of which meant sacrifice and unselfishness, bravery and loyalty? Let the gold rot. He would bury all knowledge of it in yonder chimney, confident that no one would ever find the treasure, since he alone possessed the key to it, having buried it himself. So pa.s.sed the greatest Caesar of them all, the most brilliant empire, the bravest army. Ah! had the king of Rome lived! Had there been some direct Napoleonic blood to take up the work! Vain dreams!

The Great Man's brothers had been knaves and fools.

"And so to-night," the narrator ended, "I bury the casket in the chimney; within it, my hopes and few trinkets of the past of which I am an integral part. Good-by, little glove; good-by, brave old medal! I am sending a drawing of the chimney to the good Abbe le Fanu. He will outlive me. He lives on forty-centime the day; treasures mean nothing to him; his cry, his eternal cry, is always of the People. He will probably tear it up. The brig will never come again. So best. Death will come soon. And I shall die unknown, unloved, forgotten. _Bonne nuit_!"

Mr. Donovan alone remained in normal state of mind. 'Twas all faradiddle, this talk of finding treasures. The old Frenchman had been only half-baked. He dumped his tools into his bag, and, with the wisdom of his kind, departed. There would be another job to-morrow, putting the bricks back.

The others, however, were for the time but children, and like children they all talked at once; and there was laughter and thumping of fists and clapping of hands. The admiral had a new plan every five minutes.

He would do this, or he would do that; and Fitzgerald would shake his head, or Breitmann would point out the feasibility of the plan. Above all, he urged, there must be no publicity (with a flash toward Fitzgerald); the world must know nothing till the treasure was in their hands. Otherwise, there would surely be piracy on the high-seas. Two million francs was a prize, even in these days. There were plenty of men and plenty of tramp ships. Even when they found the gold, secrecy would be best. There might be some difficulty with France. Close lips, then, till they returned to America; after that Mr. Fitzgerald would become famous as the teller of the exploit.

"I confess that, for all my excitement," said Fitzgerald, "I am somewhat skeptical. Still, your suggestion, Mr. Breitmann, is good."

"Do you mean to say you doubt the existence of the treasure?" cried the admiral, something impatient.

"Oh, no doubt it once existed. But seventy-five or eighty years!

There were others besides this refugee Frenchman. Who knows into what hands similar doc.u.ments may have fallen?"

"And the unknown man who worked in the chimney?" put in the girl quietly.

"That simply proves what I say. He knows that this treasure once existed, but not where. Now, it is perfectly logical that some other man, years ago, might have discovered the same key as we have. He may have got away with it. The man might have plausibly declared that he had made the money somewhere. The sum is not so large as to create any wide comment."

"Ah, my boy, your father had more enthusiasm than that." The admiral looked reproachful.

"My dear admiral," and Fitzgerald laughed in that light-hearted way of his, "I would go into the heart of China on a treasure hunt, for the mere fun of it. Enthusiasm? Nothing would gratify me more than to strike a shovel into the spot where this treasure, this pot of gold, is supposed to lie. It will be great sport; nothing like it. I was merely supposing. I have never heard of, or come into contact with, a man who has found a hidden treasure. I am putting up these doubts because we are never sure of anything. Why, Mr. Breitmann knows; isn't it more fun to find a dollar in an old suit of clothes than to know you have ten in the suit you are wearing? It's not how much, it's the finding that gives the pleasure."

"That is true," echoed Breitmann generously. He fingered the papers with a touch that was almost a caress. "A pity that you will go to the Arctic instead."

"I am not quite sure that I shall go," replied Fitzgerald. That this man had deliberately lied to him rendered him indecisive. For the present he could not do or say anything, but he had a great desire to be on hand to watch.

"You are not your father's son if you refuse to go with us;" and the Admiral sent home this charge with fist against palm.

"'Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!'" parroted the girl drolly. "You will go, Mr. Fitzgerald."

"Do you really want me to?" cleverly putting the decision with her.

"Yes." There was no coquetry in voice or eye.

"When do you expect to go?" Fitzgerald put this question to the admiral.

"As soon as we can coal up and provision. Laura, I've just got to smoke. Will you gentlemen join me?" The two young men declined. "We can go straight to Funchal in the Madieras and re-coal. With the club-ensign up n.o.body will be asking questions. We can telegraph the _Herald_ whenever we touch a port. Just a pleasure-cruise." The admiral fingered the Legion of Honor. "And here was Alladin's Lamp hanging up in my chimney!" He broke in laughter. "By cracky! that man Donovan knows his business. He's gone without putting back the bricks.

He has mulcted me for two days' work."

"But crossing in the yacht," hesitated Fitzgerald. He wished to sound this man Breitmann. If he suggested obstacles and difficulties it would be a confirmation of the telegram and his own singular doubts.