THE UNSPEAKABLE THING

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIV, Issue 305, 23 December 1903, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE UNSPEAKABLE THING

BY HARRIS BURLAND, Author of " Dacobra," Etc

CHAPTER XXIV. WALROYD'S STORY.

For answer, Tredegar slipped out •ffiftly from under the shadow of the rillar, and, crossing the line of light, disappeared in the darkness. Walroyd's •ye and hand were quick, and the revolver spoke twice, and two bullets spattered against a distant pillar. Then _ realised the situation and resolved not to fire again till Tredegar had come to close quarters with him. As he mov•d forward in pursuit Mavanwy slipped across behind him and groped about for tie tomb. Then she stepped inside and Jvin 1 * down on the thick bod of dust peered over the edge and saw the light j of the lantern moving further and fur- i ther from her. j Tredegar, though he was unarmed, j had all the best of this serious game of hide-and-seek. Walroyd's lantern betrayed his every movement, and yet he : dared not extinguish it. His whole ! chance of killing Tredegar lay in being ; able to see him. Tredegar, on the other i hand, depended solely on his great j strength, and this was as serviceable in j the darkness as in the light. Death I lurked for Walroyd in every shadow, | but Tredegar had only to keep behind a ! pillar and dodge the rays of the lantern. j All the fun of the game, as he after- ] wards said, in narrating the story, lay ; in his own hands. Walroyd never knew j exactly where his adversary might be. J Under cover of the darkness Tredegar ! moved from shelter to shelter, now in I front, now at the side, now behind, j Wahoyd's lantern flashed swiftly round in circles, in the hope of discovering his adversary. And yet only three times was he quick enough to see Tredegar's face. And thrice he 11 red and missed. He was a first-class shot with a revolver, and the second bullet struck Tredegar's ear. The latter was more j careful after this. _ For a whole hour this phantom combat continued in the darkness. Then j at last Tredegar's opportunity came. He ! was crouching in the sand behind the j pillar. Half a dozen yards away Wai- l royd was flashing his lantern from place I to place, standing in the open to avoid ! any chance of a surprise. Tredegar I leaned forward and peered round the j corner directly the light was turned . away from his hiding place. Then in j the soft sand he touched a smooth round stone. He drew it ought and ; weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. It ! was about as large as a cricket ball. I Ten seconds later it went spinning I through the air and caught Walroyd on the right elbow with such force that he yelled with pain, and the revolver dropped from his nerveless fingers, and his arm hung limply by his side. Before h» could recover himself and reach for His weapon with the other hand Tredegar had leapt out upon him and flung him to the ground. "Now, Mr Walroyd," he said, with one hand upon the wretched man's throat, "it is my turn to dictate terms?" And lifting him up from the ground, he held him out at arm's length and shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. The lantern dropped in the sand, and they were in darkness. "I yield—l yield!" gasped Walroyd. Tredegar flung him on the ground, and, taking off the silk scarf from his own neck, bound his wrists securely. Then he groped for the lantern and relighted it." "Now," said Tredegar, sternly, "I am going to have a plain talk with you,.Mr. Walroyd. You have done your best to kil' mc, and to doom an innocent girl to a terrible and lingering death. You have failed; and if I were to choke the life out of you I should not be troubled by any qualms of consicence. Moreover, I could do it with impunity, for your body would never be found. I intend, however, to spare you, because you will be more useful to m" alive than dead. In the first place, I want you to show us the way out of this cavern; and, secondly. I intend you to tell mc how you frund this treasure." Walroyd did not answer. His face was as white as a sheet, and he snarled like an angry dog. Tredegar leant down and lifted him to his feet. "Walk in front of mc," he said. "We will return to Miss Morgan." The light of th-> lantern fell on a glittering object in the sand. It was Walroyd's revolver. Tredegar picked it up, and looked at the chambers. They were ah empty but one. "Any more cartridges?" he queried. Walroyd did not reply. Tredegar searched his pockets and found no further ammunition. He found, however, the half of the gold disc. He wondered hnv it had come into Walroyd's possession. He could no . believe that Cynthia had given it to this man. He placed it in his pocket. "Move on," Tredegar said, "and lead the way back to the tomb. I don't want • to be rough, but the sooner you realise 'lit situation the better for you. The tame is up, Walroyd, and you'd better be pleasant about it." A dozen schemes for escape had flashed through Walroyd's subtle mind, but he rejected them all as worthless. He turn- *>• to Tredegar with a smile. 'As you say, Tredegar," he replied; "the game is up! lam at your service. 1 will show you the way if you will follow mc."

It took them twenty minutes to reach their destination, Walroyd stopping every now and then to examine some «cret mark on the stono columns. When the green jasper pillars came in sight, 'liedegar called out cheerily to Mavanwy, and she rose from her hiding-place *itb a white face and wide staring eyes, like some ghost from a tomb. "Thank God!" she murmured, under -fi breath, as she saw Walroyd'B bound hands.

"Mr. Walroyd has kindly consented to »how 113 the ay out of here," Tredegar said. "He has also promised to enlighten us as to this treasure. I think we tad better hear the story before we •fave. He may forget, 5* w« wait till we 'each the daylight." Walroyd flushed angrily. "I have said that I will tell you the story," he rep'ied with Bom" show of dignity. "I nave no interest in keeping the truth from you." Tredegar smiled grimly, and drew out "nine food from his knapsack. "1 am hungry," he said, "and I expect v too, Mavanwy. If Mr. Walroyd

will join us we shall be delighted. We have not much to offer him/ Walroyd looked at the knotted silk scarf on his wrists. Tredegar unfastened it and bound it tightly round, the prisoner's ankles. Then they all three sat down in the sand and ate of the frugal !are in silence. When they had finished, Iredegar pulled out his pipe and lit it. Walroyd looked wistfully at the curling smoke. "You can smoke," Thedegar said, in answer to the mute inquiry in his eyes. Walroyd took out a cigar and lit it with trembling hands. "I will tell you everything," he said in a low voice, "but only on one condition." ''Condition?" queried Tredegar. "It is I who dictate the terms, Mr. Walroyd." "Pardon mc," replied Walroyd, "but unless* you comply with this one condition, I shalfl not open my mouth on the subject, and you can do what you please with mc." "Well?" said Tredegar with a frown. "It is merely this—that you regard what I tell you as a secret. Personally [ do not qare who knows the story so long as it is kept from the ears of one person. Ifo ensure this, no one must know it but yourselves." "Who is the one person?" asked Tredegar. "The lad'v I am going to marry." "I do nol: know her," Tredegar replied, "but she ha.3 all my sympathy." "On the .contrary, you know her very well. It is Miss Cynthia Cantrip." Tredegar scarcely repressed an oath. The idea of Cynthia Cantrip married to this scoundrel was intolerable. He glanced at Mavanwy, and saw from her downcast eyes and averted head that she knew the truth. He wondered why she had not spoken to him of this. "I had not heard of this before," he said quietly; "Mavanwy, I think you might have told mc." Mavanwy looked up from the sand and her eyes flashed dangerously. For a brief moment she suspected the faithfulness of her lover. Then she went red with shame. Walroyd enjoyed the situation. He felt .he was getting his own back, and made up his mind to tell Tredegar the whole truth. "I am surprised Miss Morgan did not tell you," Walroyd said, "seeing that you/ escape from the Plas Tredegar j "That will do," Tredegar broke in : roughly, as he saw the look of pain lon Mavanwy's face. "Miss Morgan ■ did' not tell mc because she -thought !it would not interest mc. Ido not wish jto hear it. Please proceed with the | story of the treasure." i "I have told you my condition," Wal-

l royd replied sullenly. "Unless you agree to it I shall not speak a word." "Very well," Tredegar said curtly; "your "secret shall be kept. Tell us in as few words as possible- You will, of course, speak the truth." "I swear it by all 1 hold most sacred." Tredegar set the lantern so that the light fell full on Walroyd's face. Then he went up to his prisoner, and once more transferred the scarf from the ankles to the wrists. After that he sat down and leant his back against one of the jasper pillars. "Well?" he said, keeping his eyes fixed on Walroyd's face. "This is the truth." Walroyd said slowly, "and when you have heard of it, you will at least admit that the credit for the discovery of the treasure is due to mc and my brother." "1 am, as perhaps you have guessed, an Englishman. But ten years ago we were both in Chicago, aud engaged in a business which brought us in a moderate income from several different source*. I need only mention two or these. We dealt in second-hand articles of plate, jewellery, etc., and we advanced money on various things deposited with us at a remunerative rate of interest. There was a third partner in the business, but bis name does not matter to you. Our own name at that time was not Walroyd, but that again is of no importance, fn any case I do not intend to enlighten you on the matter. "Well, one day, a sailor off one of the lake steamers came to our establishment and oficred to sell us a gold disc inscribed with various unintelligible characters- I need not describe it to you, Tredegar, because by a strange coincidence, you happen to possess half of it. We purchased it for a little more than its weight in sovereigns, and my brother, who took some interest, in antiquities, would not rest until he had found someone who could decipher the inscription." "Where did the sailor get the disc?"

interrupted Tredegar. "He did not say, but he was a Spaniard, and for all I know may have come from Peru. Well, as I was saying, my brother went to considerable trouble to find anyone who could make head or tail of what was written on the disc. At last he came across an old Englishman who had made a special study of dead and forgotten languages. This old fellow, who was in very low water indeed, at once recognised the inscription as having been written in some branch of the Celtic tongue. He offered to translate it for 50 dollars, and assured us that the labour would be well worth the money, as the particular form of the language was unknown to him, and though he could roughly gather what the inscription was about, it was writen in a dialect or patois that was quite outside the ordinary knowledge of Celtic scholars. it would, so he assured us, cost him many days of thought, and much original research, to give us an exact translation. "My brother Cyrus agreed to his terms, and in due course we were furnished with a translaVon, whicn, as far as I can remember, ran something like this. On one side was written:

"'Gold is the breath of life, but this : is the disc of death, and of sorrow; and every fragment of it shall bring death and foitow to its owner. Yet tne whole is perfect life.'" "It seems to mc to be perfect rubbish," said Tredegar. "Possibly I have not given the exact words," continued Walroyd. "At any rate, the pieces of the disc have at present brought nothing but disaster to those who have come into contact with them. The' other side was less enigmatical, but mora difficult to remember. It ran, I think, something like this:—

"The treasure of Temawr, to whom the sea gave up its dead. " •Chiqualp-), where the last print of him died. The rock is in the vD*?. «*

the river of gold, and the rock is his tomb, and here is the grave of Dyfydd and the grave oi the treasure of the Temawr.'" "Very interesting," said Tredegar, "but very vague." "It took us a whole year to locate the place," continued Walroyd. "The very name of Chiqualpo was lost and its identity was only discovered by an Aztec scholar whom we employed on the search. The river and the valley are still there, and the sands of the river are rich in gold. The rock, however, proved a veritable stumbling block, and we spent six months in excavating and blasting, and exploring ostensibly in search of gold— we found the tomb of Dyfydd, the last priest of Temawr. There, graven on the rock, we discovered an inscription, apparently in the same characters as those on the disc. Probably Dyfydd engraved it himself in his lifetime. We cabled to Chicago for the old antiquary, paid all his rxpenses, and gave him 600 dollars for his troubles. I bet he had never lived so well for many years." "Is be alive now?" Tredegar queried. He wondered how long the poor old man would live alter he had deciphered the secret of the treasure. "No," Walroyd replied. "Unfortunately he died of fever shortly afterwards, and was buried in Peru. We paid the money to his only daughter, and she was glad of it. poor thing? But, to resume my narrative, the inscription was most interesting, and opened up a whole field of inquiry and research as to some connection between the Aztecs of Peru and •the small band of priests that acknowledged Temawr as their leader on the coast of Wales.

"It appears that in the third century A.D. a city of considerable size lay at the end of what is now the Barn of Cefyn. Even at that time the sea had begun to encroach on the land. Temawr was the priest of a sect which apparently owed half its religion to Christianity and half to the worshippers of the sun, and he seems to have been a man of considerable political as well as religious influence. His temple — — monastery, or college, or whatever you choose to call it— constructed underground, and was the very place we are now in. No one ever entered it but a priest of the order, sworn to lifelong silence. It was some miles inland from the town, and approached by subterranean passages which are now filled by the sea."

"And the treasure?" queried Tredegar, eagerly. "How could the priest of a tribe of savages accumulate a treasure like this?"

"I will tell you," said Walroyd, "so far as I /tan remember. A hundred yards to the south of the Sam of Cefyn lies a deep channel worn out by the ceaseless flow of a current, which exists even to this da v. It is now merely part of the sea, but at that time it ran inland in the form of a gulf. This current was alleged to be the termination of -what might be almost called a "river of the sea,' the source of which was somewhere south of the Equator, and which flowed century after century to this point on the coast of Wales. It appears to have been a submarine current, and to have run close to the bed of the ocen" At any rate, it swept along with it all the wrecks which had sunk to the bottom, and all the bodies which had dropped down through the green water to what might have been supposed to be their last resting-place. Temawr, in the course of the excavation of his temple, came across a mighty cavern, into which the waters of the sea poured and boiled unceasingly. Here were gathered the wreckage and the dead of a thousand years, Bucked in from every sea by the force of this silent stream. Here tossed the bones of ten thousand dead men who had never received a "burial. Temawr, who appears to have been practical as well as pious, formed the idea of despoiling all these wrecks of whatever valuables he could find, and giving the dead owners a decent burial as some sort of payment for what he had taken. He thus accumulated a vast store of treasure, gathered in by the current < of the I sea from many oceans and many lands. j The inscription on the tomb behind you I is the same as appears on the disc:

"'Temawr, to whom the sea gives up its dead.'" "Well, how did yon find the treasure Tredegar said, impatiently. "The inscription on the Peruvian tomb gave minute directions as to the locality; but I will not weary you with them—and, indeed, I can scarcely remember all the details. The first thing we found, however, when we came to Garth, was that the original entrance to the tomb lay several miles out at sea, and was now covered by ten fathoms of water. As you know, the sea has encroached considerably on this coast even during the last century. "It was then we made careful calculations and maps, and after a year's hard work we discovered that one of the passages of the old Tredegar lead mine was likely to run somewhere near the last cavern of Temawr's gigantic temple. We resolved to blast our way through, and after infinite labour we were rewarded with success. That is all, and I think you will admit that the whole credit of the discovery is due to us." "But why this secrecy queried Tredegar. "Why did yon not go about it openly? Your own share would have been enormous."

Walroyd shrugged his shoulders. "The Government," he replied, "make their own terms in these matters. 1 do not see why they should have anything at aIL If you will come with mc I will show you the way out." "Not for a minute or two,' said Tredegar. "You have not said anything yet about the most extraordinary part of the whole business. How is it that I found half of the golden disc on a desert island in the PadficT"

"Oh, I had forgotten that part of the story,*" Walroyd said, carelessly. "The explanation is very simple, though it is an extraordinary coincidence that yon should have also been wrecked on the same island, and should have discovered/ what we lost. On our way from Peru bo England our ship was wrecked in mid-ocean. I and my brother and our partner were the sole survivors, and after enduring considerable suffering and privations, we were cast on an island which appeared to be tenanted entirely by spiders. Yon yourself know the inconceivable horrors of the place. I can- 1 not bear the sight of a spider to this day. Our partner, who bad suffered terribly from thirst and hunger, went mad and threw himself into the sea, and we never saw him again." Tredegar looked keenly at Walroyd's face as he told the story. Ha waa tan the man was lying. , "And th« discf he asked. "Bow wm

It broken, and why was hflH left on the island?"

Walroyd smiled. "When our partner's brain began to give way," he replied, "he insisted on having haaf of the "disc in his own possession. He Buffered from a delusion that we weae going to defraud him of his share in the treasure. He knew that we had some superstitions about the disc, and he agreed to give us the other half when the spoil had 1 been --equally divided, so that the words of Dyfydd, follower of Temawr, might hang over our heads as a threat till the whole affair had been fairly settled up. To humour him, we gave way on this point, and he fastened the half on a gold chain which he always wore round his wrist. Where did you find it?" "I found it on his wrist," Tredegar answered, slowlyWalroyd leaned back as though exhausted, and turned his face away from the light. For a whole minute no one spoke. Then Tredegar started, and peered across the circle of light. He had heard something shuffling softly through the sand. A second later a shadowy form flitted across the light between two pillars in the distance, and disappeared in the darkness. In a moment he was on his feet, and jumping to Walroyd's side began to unfasten the bandage from the man's wrists. Then he took the revolver from his pocket and thrust it into Walroyd's hand. "Take this, you liar!" he said, in a low voice; "for by God you will want it! Your partner, whose death you have so graphically described, is not 20 yards from you at this minute, and 1 dt not think you will care to meet him face to face." *

Walroyd sprang to his feet, and his face was white as death. A second later a great shaggy figure came into the light and stood before them, not ten feet from the terror-stricken man. Ana

through the yellow matted hair John Walroyd recognised the face of his partner Heatherbutt face distorted Bnd horrible, but with still some resemblance to the human features of the aan he had thought dead. He raised his revolver with a trembling hand, steadied it for a moment on his arm, and pulled the trigger. There was no report. It was the oni worthless cartridge that a man may fin.l among 500, and it had so happened that John Walroyd had found it when his very life depended on its accuracy. He gave a loud cry of terror, and fled into the darknessContinued in Saturday's Supplement.}