LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2357, 22 October 1881, Page 4

LITERATURE.

HOW WB LOB C A TREASURE. ["London Society.”] ( Concluded.) * Yes, Monsieur I started at daybreak and have just gat back.’ •You took (’arl Muller there I believe ?’ ' Yes, and a tough job I had up the hills. Mon Dieu, but those boxes were heavy ! ’ I glanced at Mr Dawkins, and saw that, like myself, ke was getting excited. However. calming himself, ho said carelessly, ‘ Boxes! ’ * Yes, monsieur, boxes ; four of them, bound with iron, besides an old trunk. They must have weighed some 150 kilos, each. Muller said that he was taking them to Calais for a Monsieur Lamb.’ I dared not look at Mr Dawkins, and I gradually felt my face grow hotter and hotter. ‘ Yon ssid Calais ?’ I asked. ‘Yes. We got there about noon, and I left them for him at an inn in the outskirts called the Trois Peoheurs. I had some acquaintances whom I wished to see in Calais, so I stayed the night in town, and started for home before daybreak this morning. ’ * Thank you,’ a .id 1, looking at Mr Dawkins to see if he had any more questions to ask. ‘ Good morning.’ ‘Now then,’said Mr Dawkins, when we were outside of tho bouse, ‘we must be off to Calais at once, that’s plain.’ ‘Yes,’ said I. ‘Bat if this villain has been telling everybody that he was taking tho boxes away for mo, what a scrape I shall be in if the authorities once get hold of the idea of treasure ! Well, we have missed the ton o’clock train, so we must wait till midday. We had better go homo and tell our wives, and explain why we must be absent.’ Mr Davkins assented, and we agreed to meet at the rallw ay station a quarter of an hour before the train was to start. I shall not dilate on the scene between Mrs Lamb and myself when I told her all that had happened. Let it suffice to say that up to that hour I had a lingering belief in womanly sympathy and forbearance as exemplified in that lady. Now, however, that belief has passed away, never to return.

After telling her my story in the most interesting, not to say pathetic way, drawing pictures of the French Government seizing me for having made away with buried treasure, and, after confiscating my property, sending me to drag out a miserable existence in New Caledonia —after all this tho sympathy I got was : ‘Well, Lamb, you are a bigger donkey thanl ever took you for.’ Bigger, mind you, there was the sting. She must, than, always have taken me for somewhat of a donkey, ‘ Yes, bigger donkey for trusting o nasty deceiving German of whom you know nothing, and becoming churchwarden, and all that nonsense! ’

‘ Silence, woman! ’ I shouted, inj my grandest tones. Without a word more I seized my hat, crammed )t on my head, grasped my stick, and, without waiting for anything to eat or drink (I knew that we were to have cold mutton for lunch that day), rushed down to Michaud’s, tho restaurateur, ate a hurried morsel (which, I must say, was beautifully cooked), reached the station ten minutes before Mr Dawkins.

When we arrived at Calais we took a fly and drove at once to the Trcis Pechenra. We stepped into the little sanded public room, and by making inquiries of the landlandly, a neat and very talkative little

woman, we soon learned all there was to know about Muller.

Ho had arrived with tho cart and boxes, and, after seeing them safely deposited, went out and hired another vehicle to take them on to Dunkerque. He said that he was taking charge of them for an English gentleman called Monsieur Lamb, who lived at Feteville I tried to look as if I were not that miserable individual j and after thanking the hostess, and accounting for our inquiries by saying that we had been requested to find out whether he had reached Calais safely, we arked if she knew the driver of tho cart which had taken the boxes on to Dunkerque. She said that she had not noticed tho man particularly, bnt that it we could wait a taw minutes she would find out who he was. But after a short delay she returned, and told us that none of her household knew the man. All that they remembered was that ho was fair, talked with a foreign accent, and had a cart which was not of tho local bnild. They had supposed him to be a Fleming from beyond Dunkerque, bnt he might have been a German, This was tho last trace of Muller that wo ever discovered. Mr Dawkins and myself both agreed that the man with the cart was probably an accomplice, and must have come with his conveyance across the Belgian frontier. Still he may possibly have been a mere ignorant instrument The reason for Muller’s choosing such a way of getting the boxes out of Franco was plain. If he had gone by rail the boxes would have attracted attention, and would besides have been examined by tho dnuaniers at Lille or Plandain. Moreover, hla destination would have been divulged by the labels of the boxes, and he would have run the risk of being stopped by telegrath._ Going, as he did, by road, ho escaped all immediate pursuit ; indeed, he may have calculated on a longer start than ho had, as hla absence was only discovered soon after his departure, owing to the accident of my wishing to apeak to him early in the morning. Besides, if he had not been noticed in company with Dubois at daybreak it would have been a much more lengthy business to discover trac-s of his flight. Mr Dawkins and I had a gloomy journey back to Feteville ; and the more I pondered on my responsibility, the less I liked It. If Dubois once got speaking of Muller’s boxes and my inquiries, and the people who lived round the church connected them with our mysterious manoeuvres in the courtyard with ropes and lanterns, I should certainly, and Mr Dawkins possibly, be arrested for making away with the treasure. To prove my innocence would not be very easy. I should, even when 1 had proved It, always be a marked man in Feteville, and should never hoar the end of jokes and taunts for the undignified part I had played in the matter.

When I arrived homo I found Mrs Limb in a different mood. She waa no longer flippant and insulting, but remained equally ag • gravating in another way. ‘ I should be the ruin ot my wife and children; ' she never should bo able to hold up her head in Feteville again,’ &c, ad infinitum. This waa awful; nor was my state of mind improved when, on going to fill up the hole in the coal shed next morning, I perceived that all my motions were watched by a small, but intensely interested, crowd of the neighbors. This decided me —1 went off to Mr Dawkins immediately, and asked whether he would object very much to my leaving Feteville. _ I waa rather surprised at the alacrity with with which he received my proposal ; but I have since come to the conclusion that ho thought if I, who had introduced Muller to the p’ace, and whose name that wretch had employed in hia stories to the carrier and the people at Calais, were to leave the town, all tho suspicion would fall on me, and he himself would escape notice. My stops for departure were soon taken. I occupied a furnished house, so there was no difficulty about heavy luggage. That afternoon I spent in paying the bills I owed about the town, while my wife was packing all our possessions in our trunks, and in two or three boxes which I purchased for the purpose. I payed our servants some francs more than their wages, left Mr Dawkins a parcel containing my quarter’s rent in five franc notes, to be delivered to my landlord next day, and so was enabled to start by the Folkestone boat that evening. It was on the very next lay that the war between Prance and Germany was declared, and I suppose the authorities at Feteville fou.d some other way of employing their time than in making inquiries for my unfortunate self. At any rate, Mr Dawkins wrote that he never hoard of any being made. However, 1 have taken care not to visit Feteville since ; for the main facta of my story soon became known to all the English residing there at that period and I bad no wish to be reminded of them.

Tho thing which has always been a mystery to me is how Muller came to dig for that treasure. Of course I do not believe a word of the story he told me about his ‘ having a speciality for finding lost and buried treasure that 1s absurd. But what can possibly have led him to commence hia explorations below the churoh ? It is possible, of course, that ho heard the fl-oring of the place sound hollow, or from some other similar reason conjectured that there was a crypt below; or he may have inferred Its existence merely because the church had once been an old monastic chapel. Oommenc’ng to explore from mere curiosity, he may have ended by discovering the recess with the iron door and its contents. This la possible; but I often think it can hardly have been chance that brought him to Feteville, and threw him in the way of one of the few people who could introduce him to the church. Assuming, however, that it was not chance, T cannot make any probable conjecture as to his having acquired any Information about the place. It Is in the highest degree unlikely that some of the old Capuchins who were expelled at the time of the French Revolution, left some memorandum about the hoard, which finally fell into Mailer’s hands. But in what other way he can have known of it I cannot guess. I presume that I am not likely to meet Muller again, so the pnzzle will never receive its solution.

One thing, however, I can solemnly affirm —namely, that if ever you catoh me becoming a churchwarden again in a church built over an old monastery in a French town, you may ‘ write ms down an ass.’ I trnst Mr Dawkins will pardon the revelation of our little adventure of ten years ago, if this story ever falls Into his hands ; for I must assure the public that, though I have changed names and a few circumstances, all the main points of this tale are actually founded on faot.