“What proof do you want? I’m here to warn you. Are you a fool, Charlie?”
“Yes. Until I know why this warning has been given me. How does Felix know?”
“He has a pal down at Scotland Yard – a sergeant whom he helped ‘over the stile’ a few years ago. He gives him valuable tips sometimes. One of them is that you’ve been recognised, and that the warrant has been given for your arrest to-night.”
“Ah, my boy,” replied “Red Mullet,” lighting a fresh cigarette without turning a hair, “that’s really interesting. And if I go down to Bow Street depend upon it I shan’t go alone. So you can just go back to Berkeley Square, and tell Felix what I say.”
“Why – what’s the matter with you to-night, Charlie?” asked the other, looking at him in surprise.
What could the man know, he wondered? He seemed to scent the betrayal intended as soon as he was across the Channel.
“Matter?” he echoed. “Why, my dear Jim, I merely keep my eyes skinned, that’s all.”
“And you refuse to heed Felix’s warning?”
“Yes, I’m very comfortable at home here – and here I mean to stay. Let the police come along if they like and I’ll entertain them with a very interesting story. They re fond of hearing stories from men like myself, Jim.”
“What the devil is the matter with you!” cried Jannaway, turning upon him fiercely.
“Nothing, I’m only surprised to find you such a fool, Jim. I thought better of you,” was the other’s calm response. “Do you know,” he added, “you people who live in London want the moss scraped off you. We boys on the Continent are a lot sharper. We see the word danger written up, even when it’s beyond the horizon and the detective is still off the map. You people here deliberately run your heads into nooses.”
“How?”
“Well, you and Felix have arranged the little loop for yourselves in this affair, my dear boy. So do go home and sleep on it,” he laughed merrily.
“You’re a fool!” declared the other, turning from him impatiently.
“Of course. I’m a fool for not falling into the very clever trap which Sir Felix Challas and his sharp ‘cat’s-paw’, Jim Jannaway, have laid for me,” he answered, looking the fellow straight in the face.
“Bah! All this quarrel arises over a girl – a little chit of a girl who, after all, hasn’t much of a reputation to lose.”
“And to whom do you refer, pray?” asked Charlie, indignantly.
“To Griffin’s girl, of course – the girl who was with you so long in these chambers, and whom you pretended to regard with such paternal care,” he sneered.
“You cast a slur upon the poor girl who was your victim!” cried the red-haired man angrily.
“I cast no slur. I speak the truth.”
“Then you’re an accursed liar!” cried Mullet, angrily. “Having failed to entrap her, you come here to-night to try and have me! But your ruse is a little bit too thin! Let the police come and learn from me the truth concerning our beautiful Birthday Baronet! I’ll welcome them. So first go back with my compliments to Berkeley Square.”
“Then your intention, now you’re in danger, is to give us away – eh?” exclaimed Jannaway, now flushed and excited. And in a second he had snatched up a heavy bronze ornament from the mantelshelf, intending to bring it down upon the other’s head with a blow that must have crushed him.
In an instant, however, Mullet was on his guard. He was not a man to be taken by surprise.
“Now put that down at once, Jim, and clear out of my rooms,” he cried, and Jannaway found himself looking down the plated barrel of a serviceable-looking Smith-Wesson revolver.
“Curse you!” cried the man, and he cast the ornament heavily upon the floor.
“My dear Jim,” said the other, “the best place for you would really be on the Continent. You would learn wisdom, and would never attempt a bluff on a pal like this. You can’t attempt a four-flush with me, you know. So first go back to the ‘Birthday Money-Spinner’ and tell him ‘Red Mullet’s’ decision is to remain in London, and if necessary – to tell Scotland Yard the tale!”
“But – ”
“Curse you! There are no buts!” cried Red Mullet, his eyes now flashing with anger while he held his revolver straight at his enemy’s head. “Out of my rooms with you, or by Gad! I’ll plug you! I see through your clever little game. Once I’m over there, then you’d send me to prison without the least compunction – because I let the girl slip through your blackguardly fingers. But no more gas. I mean business to-night. Out you go – and quick!”
“You wouldn’t say this if I had a gun!” remarked Jannaway between his teeth.
“I care less for your gun than I do for you, my dear boy,” laughed “Red Mullet;” “go back to Challas, and tell him that to-night he’s tried to bluff the wrong man, and that he’ll have to pay heavily for losing the game.”
“You talk like an idiot.”
“And you’ve acted as one. Out and begone!”
And the man who, when he had entered, believed that he held all the honours in the game, was compelled to walk slowly out beneath the threatening muzzle of the weapon, cowed and vanquished.
“And now, Jim Jannaway!” Mullet cried, when he was on the threshold, “send your detectives along as soon as you like, for I’ll go to bed in an hour, and if they come afterwards I shan’t admit them. Understand that? Good-night and bad luck to you!” And with a laugh he slammed the door.
Then he held his breath, and stood staring straight before him, wondering whether that bold action had not been his own undoing.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Explains Frank’s Attitude
Christmas had passed, the New Year had been welcomed, its advent quickly forgotten, and London now lay dark and fog-bound in the yellow gloomy days of mid-January.
As far as Professor Griffin was concerned, little had occurred. His surprise when Gwen had told him of Erich Haupt being interested in the investigation of the secret was unbounded, and he had taken a cab at once to the Waldorf Hotel. He was anxious to meet the great German scholar, but was disappointed to learn that he had suddenly left the hotel on the previous night for the Continent.
Once again was he prevented from meeting the man who was working in opposition to him, even though he was now aware of his identity.
It puzzled him, as it also puzzled Diamond and Gwen, to know who was behind the German scholar. That there was some one was evident from what the girl had admitted. But his identity was still kept a profound secret.
Gwen had expected to be rung up on the telephone by Mullet, but having waited for three anxious days, found his number in the telephone directory and rang him up. She did so on four different occasions, but on each the response from the exchange was the same. “No reply.”
What could have happened?
Was it possible that he could have left hurriedly for the Continent? She recollected how he had told her that perhaps he would be compelled, by force of circumstances, to leave London, and leave her alone. She wrote him a brief note, and posted it, hoping that it might be forwarded to him.
Then she had waited – for nearly four long weeks.
Doctor Diamond came up from Horsford on several occasions, but the interviews he had with the Professor carried them no further. The key to the cipher was still an enigma which none could solve.
Griffin’s one thought was of Erich Haupt. He had returned to the Continent. Perhaps he was hot upon a solution of the tantalising problem.
In those four weeks, with the interval of a dreary Christmas spent alone with her father, nothing startling had occurred. The estrangement had driven Frank Farquhar to distraction. Jealousy had caused him to think ill of the girl he so dearly loved, and in order to try and forget, he had gone South for a week or so at Monte Carlo. But as soon as he stepped inside the Hotel de Paris, he had longed to be back again at Gwen’s side in Pembridge Gardens. The smart women he saw in their white serge gowns, golden chatelaines, and picture hats, all nauseated him. Of the lilies of France, none were half so fair as his own sweet English rose. Christmas he had spent with a big and merry house-party up in the Highlands, but the gaiety of it all bored him to death, and at last, when he returned in the New Year, he had, after a severe struggle with himself, driven down to Notting Hill Gate, and again bowed over the soft little hand of the girl whose wonderful eyes held him in such complete fascination.
For Gwen, that evening was a never-to-be-forgotten one.
She was seated by the fire at the further end of the study buried in the big saddle-bag chair with a book, while her father was busily writing, when the maid announced the young man’s arrival.
She held her breath. Her heart gave a great bound, and then stopped and she sat rigid, her face blanched, her hands grasping the arms of the chair.
She heard his well-known voice, and rising slowly, faced him without a word.
And he, without a word also, took her hand, bowing gallantly over it.
Then, with a half-timid look into her pretty face, he stammered:
“I – I’ve been wondering, Gwen, how you’ve been all this time. I’ve been away, first at Monte Carlo and afterwards up in Scotland. How did you spend your Christmas?”
“Well – it was not very exciting,” she laughed, “was it, dad?”
“No, my dear,” replied the old man, “I fear it was a very very dull time for you.”
Her lover glanced at her, and she saw by the expression of his eyes that he was full of genuine regret. That absence had, indeed, caused both their hearts to yearn for each other. He had, alas! been too hasty, he declared within himself. Would she ever forgive him? Would she ever allow him to kiss her again upon the lips?
Before her father his greeting was, of necessity, a somewhat formal one; besides, he was compelled to sit and discuss with him the present situation, and ask his opinion as to the next move in the game.
“The possession of a complete copy of Holmboe’s statement has carried us a good deal further. Professor,” he said, “but how are we now to act?”
“I really don’t know, my dear Farquhar,” was the elder man’s response, as he rubbed his big round glasses.
“I only wish this man Mullet would tell Diamond a little more,” he sighed. “We ought to discover who is directing the opposition against us.”
“That’s just where we are so completely handicapped. We’re handicapped in two directions,” said the Professor. “First, we remain in ignorance of the identity of our enemy, and secondly we are at a loss to discover the key to the cipher. We now know the truth concerning the Russian’s discovery, and naturally we are beckoned on to see what more may be added to the mental outfit of our religion and our civilisation, by recovering the sacred treasures that yet remain. The occasional excavations scattered through the last two centuries in Palestine, Egypt, Rome and Assyria, have shown but a fraction of all that has to be done. Such a prospect is most attractive, and if we could but find the key to the cipher the interest of the whole Jewish race would instantly be stimulated, and we should certainly not lack funds for the expedition, the purchase of the land in question, and the necessary excavations. It would be a great undertaking of international co-operation, but no loophole must be allowed for vandalism and wrecking, of which we have so much evidence in the past few centuries. Such wrecking is, alas! by no means unknown, even down to our day. The Department of Antiquities in Egypt, for instance, at the present moment, sells the right to dig up and destroy all the Roman buildings in Egypt at so much per thousand bricks removed by the speculators! We must allow no such sort of speculation with the treasures of Israel.”
“I take it, Professor, that our opponents are anti-Semitics of the most pronounced type,” said Farquhar. “At least, so the Doctor informs me. Once it is in their hand their chief object will be to destroy the sacred relics, and melt down the golden vessels. Diamond says, that according to his information, those working against us are rich, and have no need of gain. The whole of their energies are directed towards an anti-Semitic demonstration – one that would convulse the whole civilised world.”
“We will not allow it, Farquhar!” cried the old Hebrew scholar, bringing his hand down heavily upon his writing-table. “I am not a Jew, but while it remains within my power I will never allow the sacred relics of Israel to be desecrated.”
“If they exist,” added Gwen from the depths of her armchair.
“They do exist!” exclaimed her father, “of that I now feel quite convinced. At first I was very sceptical, but I have spent many weeks in close and ardent study, and my first opinion is now greatly modified.”
“And you anticipate that we shall one day gain a knowledge of the mode of reaching that cipher record?” asked Frank, eagerly.
“I fervently hope so,” was the elder man’s response. “I hope so in the interests of the Hebrew race. As soon as I write my article in the Contemporary or in the Jewish Chronicle, the world will instantly be agog.”
“But until you have read the hidden message for yourself you will write nothing?” remarked Farquhar.
“Of course not. We must closely preserve the secret for the present. Not a soul must know, or Holmboe’s discovery will most certainly get to the ears of some enterprising journalist. Why, we’d be having one of your papers, Frank, sending out an expedition in search of the Ark of the Covenant!” he laughed. “And that would surely be fatal.”
Farquhar held his breath for a few seconds.
“Why fatal, Professor?” he asked, for it was at the bade of his head to suggest to Sir George the advisability of despatching an expedition when the time was ripe.
“Fatal to the scheme as well as to the newspaper,” was the elder man’s response. “Even you modern journalists cannot make money by exploiting sacred relics of such importance.”
“No, but we could investigate for the benefit of the Hebrew race. We sorely would not lose prestige by that?”
“Yes, you would. No Jew, or even Christian for that matter, would ever believe that a newspaper defrayed the cost of an expedition out of pure regard for the interests of the Hebrew faith.” He laughed. “The public know too well that a ‘boom’ means to a newspaper increased circulation, and, therefore, increased income. Before these days of the yellow journalism, the press was supposed to be above such ruses; but now the public receives the journalistic ‘boom’ with its tongue in its cheek.”
“You’re quite right, Professor, quite right!” remarked Frank, for the first time realising that to “work” the treasure of Israel as a “boom” for his group of newspapers and periodicals was impossible. “I’ve only regarded it from the business side, and not from the sentimental. I see now that any newspaper touching it would be treading dangerous ground, and might at once wound religious susceptibilities.”
“I’m glad you’ve seen it in that light!” replied the old scholar, stroking his grey hair. “As far as I can discern, the best mode of procedure – providing of course, that we can discover the key number to the numerical cipher – is for me to write an article in the Contemporary with a view to obtaining the financial assistance of the Jewish community. I know the Jew well enough to be confident, that all, from the Jew pedlar in the East End to the family of Rothschild itself, would unite in assisting to discover the sacred treasures of the Temple.” And for half an hour or so they chatted, until Frank was able to slip away with Gwen into the drawing-room where, without a single word, he clasped her in his arms passionately and kissed her upon the lips.
He held her closely pressed to his breast, as he stroked her soft hair tenderly, and looked into those wide-open, trustful eyes. Surely that frank expression of true and abiding love could not be feigned! There is, in a true woman’s eyes, a love-look that cannot lie! He saw it, and was at once satisfied.
In a low voice he begged forgiveness for misjudging her, repeating his great and unbounded affection. She heard his quick strained voice, and listened to his heartfelt words, and then, unable to restrain her joy at his return, her head fell upon his shoulders, and she burst into tears.
She was his, she whispered, still his – and his alone.
And he held her sobbing in his strong arms, as his hand still stroked her hair and his lips again bent until they touched her fair white brow in fierce and passionate caress.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Describes certain Curious Events
Has it never struck you that this twentieth century of ours is the essential age of the very young girl?
Supreme to-day reigns the young woman between the age of – well say from sixteen to twenty – who dresses her hair with a parting and a pigtail, wears short skirts, displays a neat ankle, and persists in remaining in her teens. Grumpy old fossils tell us that this species is a product of an advanced state of civilisation which insists that everything must be new, from a dish of pèches à la Melba to the tint of that eternal hoarding in front of Buckingham Palace. One can only suppose that they are correct. Ours is a go-ahead age which scoffs at the horse, and pokes fun at the South-Eastern Railway, which forsakes Saturday concerts for football, yet delights in talking-machines.
Is it any wonder therefore that the statuesque beauty and the skittish matron of a year ago no longer finds herself in demand for supper-parties, Sandown or Henley? No, she must nowadays stand aside, and watch the reign of her little sister who dashes off from the theatre to the Savoy in a motor-brougham still wearing her ribbon bow on her pigtail, much as she did in the schoolroom.
The young of certain species of wild fowl are termed “flappers,” and some irreverent and irascible old gentleman has applied that term to the go-ahead young miss of to-day. Though most women over twenty-one may attempt to disguise the fact, it is plain that the young girl just escaped from the schoolroom now reigns supreme. Her dynasty is at its zenith. She is the ruling factor of London life. Peers of the realm, foreign potentates, hard-bitten soldiers from the East, magnates from Park Lane all hurry to her beck and call. The girl in the pigtail and short skirt rides over them all roughshod. And what is the result of all this adulation upon the dimple-faced little girl herself? In the majority of cases, I fear it results in making her a stuck-up, blasé and conceited little prig, for she nowadays takes upon herself a glory and exalted position to which she is entirely unsuited, but which she has been taught to consider hers by right.
Gwen Griffin was a perfect type of the very young girl, courted, petted and flattered by all the men of her acquaintance. Having no mother to forbid her, she was fond of going motor-rides and fond of flirtation, but through it all she had, fortunately, never developed any of those objectionable traits so common in girls of her age. She had managed to remain quite simple, sweet and unaffected through it all, and six months before, when she had found the man she could honestly love, she had cut her male friends and entered upon life with all seriousness.
A week had gone by, and Frank had called every evening. Once he had taken her to dine at the Carlton, and on to the theatre afterwards, for now they had, by tacit though unspoken consent, agreed that all bygones should be bygones.
Often he felt himself wondering what had been the real cause of her mysterious absence from home, yet when such suspicions arose within him, he quickly put them aside. How could he possibly doubt her love?
The Doctor was back again at Horsford, leading the same rural uneventful life as before, but daily studying everything that had any possible bearing upon the assertion of Professor Holmboe.
Frank came down to visit Lady Gavin one day, and as a matter of course was very soon seated with the ugly little man in his cottage home.
Diamond, over a cigar, was relating the result of his most recent studies, and lamenting that they were still as far from obtaining a knowledge of the actual cipher as ever.
“Yes,” murmured the young man with a sigh, “I’m much afraid that old Haupt will get ahead of us – even if he has not already done so. How is it that you can’t get your friend Mullet to assist us further?”
“He has left London, I believe. He disappeared quite suddenly from his rooms, and curiously enough, has sent me no word.”
“You hinted once that he’s a ‘crook.’ If so, he may have fled on account of awkward police inquiries – eh?”
“Most likely. Yet it’s strange that he hasn’t sent me news of his whereabouts.”
“Not at all, my dear Doctor,” responded the other. “If a man is in hiding, it isn’t likely that he’s going to give away his place of concealment, is it?”
“But he trusts me – trusts me implicitly,” declared Diamond.
“That may be so. But he doesn’t trust other persons into whose hands his letter might possibly fall. The police have a nasty habit of watching the correspondence of the friend of the man wanted, you know.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Mr Farquhar,” said the Doctor, with a heavy expression upon his broad brow. “The more I study the problem of the treasure of Israel, the more bewildered I become,” he went on. “Now as regards the original of the Old Testament, it is not all written in Hebrew, I find. Certain parts are in Aramaic, often erroneously called Chaldee. (From Daniel, ii, 4, to vii, 28; Ezra iv, 8, to vi, 18; vii, 11 to 26; and Jeremiah x and xi.) Again, we have a difficulty to face which even Professor Griffin had never yet mentioned to me. It is this. On the very lowest estimate, the Old Testament must represent a literary activity of fully a thousand years, and therefore it is but reasonable to suppose that the language of the earlier works would be considerably different from that of the later; while, on other grounds, the possible existence of local dialects might be expected to show itself in diversity of diction among the various books. But, curiously enough – though I am handicapped by not being acquainted with the Hebrew tongue – all the authorities I have consulted agree that neither of those surmises find much verification in our extant Hebrew text.”
“I’ve always understood that,” Frank remarked. “Yes. I’ve been reading deeply, Mr Farquhar. Curiously enough the most ancient documents and the youngest are remarkably similar in the general cast of their language, and certainly show nothing corresponding in the difference between Homer and Plato, or Chaucer and Shakespeare. Though we know that the Ephraimites could not give the proper (Gileadite) sound of the letter shin in Shibboleth, (Judges, xii 8) yet all attempts to distinguish dialects in our extant books have failed.”
“I think,” said Farquhar, “that such remarkable uniformity, while testifying to the comparative stability of the language, is in part to be explained by the hypothesis of a continuous process of revision and perhaps modernising of the documents, which may have gone on until well into our era.”
“Exactly,” remarked the Doctor, “yet in spite of this levelling tendency there appear to remain certain diversities, particularly in the vocabulary, which have not been eliminated, and these serve to distinguish two great periods in the history of the language, sometimes called the gold and silver ages, respectively, roughly separated by the return from the exile. To the former belong, without doubt, the older strata in the Hexateuch, and the greater prophets; to the latter, almost as indubitably, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Ecclesiastes and Daniel, all of which use a considerable mixture of Aramaic of Persian words. Then, the great question for us is whether the ancient text of Ezekiel preserved in St. Petersburg is an original, or a modernised version. If the latter, much of the cipher, perhaps all, must have been destroyed!”
“I quite follow your argument, my dear Diamond,” Farquhar replied, “but has not Holmboe established to his own satisfaction that the cipher still exists in the manuscript in question? He has, therefore, proved it to be an exact copy of the original – if not the original itself.”
“Experts all agree that it cannot be the original,” declared the Doctor. “It is quite true that Holmboe alleges that the cipher exists, and gives quotations from it. Yet now that I have been reading deeply I have become a trifle sceptical. I’m anxious for Griffin to discover the key number, and prove it for himself. Personally, I entertain some doubt about the present text of Ezekiel being the actual text of the prophet.”
