THE BURGOTT TREASURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16895, 6 July 1918, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BURGOTT TREASURE.

BY H. DE VISME SHAW.

(COPYRIGHT.)

SYNOPSIS, Hugh Burcott. a dissolute young blackgutnf has been dispossessed by bis father, who lias left the estate to Emm Burcott, his daughter, with the wish that she should marry Valentino Boper. the son of a late friend A search amongst various papers discloses the existence in Burcott Steepte of hidden treasure, saved from the pi"age of a local roomistery by one of the ioras of the manor. The secret, «o»rdjM.to cryptio directions, is guarded by the lnrce Maries" Hush Burcott. with (in evil heart, tea™the hall, whilst Hespera andi Valentino set out to discover the treasure.

CHAPTER 111. THE hector's STOUT.

On reaching London Hugh at once made his way to the flat occupied by a friend with whom he had been closely associated in more or less shady enterprises during the past two or three years. Cecil Preston was his name. The door in his city office bore the words, "Cecil Preston and Co.. Financial Agents."

'file two men bore a drange resemblance to one another both in feature and build- Strangers invariably took them for brothers. It was this striking likeness which had first led to their speaking to one another in a London music hall.

"Well, and how do things look now?" were Hugh's first words.'

" .My dear Burcolt," the other answered, flinging the end of hie cigar into the grate, " it would be quito impossible for them to look blacker—for me."

"You mean it is inevitably a case of cut and run?"

"Inevitably."

"And as to myself?"

" 01), you are all right. I went carefully through every paper to-day, and made away with everything that could by the remotest chance possibly incriminate you. Yes, things have moved quickly in the last two days. I have sold everything here— flat will be stripped on Monday. That day month the fat will bo in the' fire, and I—well, I shall bo in quite a different part of the globe. I think, considering the enormous stream of immigration just at this season, that I stand a better chance of escaping detection in Canada than anywhere else."

"What about accounts?" Hugh asked, after a few moments' pause.

"I balanced everything up yesterday,' Preston answered, lighting a fresh cigar. " This latest thing of ours has been even a more ghastly Failure than I thought. We stood to clear eighty thousand pounds between us, and still keep on the right side of the law; now that the bottom is doomed to fall out of the swindle in a month's time I have only to hand you ahalf share of the cash in hand, which totals exactly nine hundred pounds and elevenpence, unless—well, I suppose you are a rich man now, Burcott?"

"My father cut me off without so much as a shilling," was the answer.

For a short time the two men sat and smoked in silence. ,Each was wrapped up in his own thoughts. It was Hugh who first spoke.

" When do you sail for Canada?" he asked suddenly. "This day week— the Valania."

"What about the office?" "Kept open till the end, of course! Walters and thu boy will bo there every day as usual. I shall pay them a fewweeks in .advance. Walters will tell all callers that I was suddenly summoned to Australia on urgent mining business, and shat I shall be back at the earliest possible date."

"Have you booked your passage to Canada vet?" Hugh asked. " No."

"I am going to Canada too. Wo will join one another there."

Preston looked at him in surprise. "It is a certain five years or more for me if I am caught," he said, " but I can assure you that you are—"

"I am not leaving England on that account," Hugh interrupted; "I have a scheme in which I want your help. We can go into details later. It is enough for me to say now that it will most certainly have your approval because it will render your chance of detection almost non-existent. If it benefit* myself, as I think it will, you may rely upon my treating you handsomely. I will see about hooking your passage, in the Valania. You will sail under my name. I shall sail a day or two afterwards under an assumed one."

Before he went to bed that night Hugh had written and posted the following letter :—

"My Dear Val,—According to your promise, will you please lose no time in booking me a passage by the A. and S.P. Line's Valanis., which sails on the 22nd, and also let me have a draft on Winnipeg for £50? I feol exceedingly sorry for the things I have said to you and Hespera. Few men, I think, could have borne such a situation with perfect equanimity, and vou know my temper is not of tho best. i apologise unreservedly to you both. You and Hespera have my best wishes that you may bo happy in your married life. Please give her my love.—Yours sincerely, Hugh Burcott."

More than a year would have to pass before Hespera reached the age her father had named as the youngest at which he wished her to marry.

Tho engagement was made public at once, Thus people thought it was only what mig'at be expected that Valentine should be at Burcott Hall every day. Hespera quickly began to throw off tho effects her father's illness and death had had upon her. At such an, age and the prospect of a life of perfect happiness before her, no woman could for long have remained crushed undor tho weight of bereavement, even such bereavement as the loss of a dearly-loved father. Yet she could never wholly freo her mind from the presentiment and fear that by some unknown means or another Hugh might yet come between her lover and herself.

" Let us mako a start on this treasure hunt," Valentine said one bracing, sunny morning. He had come over from Burcott Parva directly after breakfast, a thing ho had done without omission since the day of their engagement.

" So we will, Val dear," she answered. "I am ready to start at once."

"I think," he said, "that our plan should bo to begin by thoroughly exploring the three. parishes and building up a rough map showing all depressions where ponds and possibly streams may once nave been. It seems to me it would be better to work systematically. When the map is complete we can mark it off in sections and make a minute examination of all tho spots we liavo noted. We might make a start this morning at the south end of Burcott Steeple." They both knew, one might say, almost every yard of the well-wooded' country which comprised the three parishes, though there were parte of Burcott Hautboys into which they had net wandered since they were children. They began at the extreme end—that lying furthest from two other parishes— of Burcott Steeple, every depression which might at one time have held water beinf marked on the map, which grew rapidly. 0 " I suppose, Val," Hesptra said, "that if we really did at some time or another find the treasure the Crown could have no possible claim upon ii as treasure trove'/"

" None whatever, my Hespera," he answered. " There can be no doubt en that point—the documentary evidence you have puts the matter quite beyend dispute. Now that your Australian coisins are all dead, the treasure if found would belong equally to yourself and Hugh," " I think so often of Hugh," she said. They worked steadily on tin map for some days. Then one morning on regaining the high road they found themselves face to face with Canon Rendle, the Rector d Burcott Steeple. He had held the living for many years, and had known Valentine ind Hespera from their earliest diildhooii. "Caught you at last!" he exclaimed. "Now what is all this mysteries surtearing about? Prevarication ia spite use-

less, because I am determined to get to ;•*" the bottom of it. I suppose you know m that everyone within a radius of something v' under fifty miles is talking about on 11 What aro you doing?" ; !/; " Only looking for coal mines, rector *M Valentine answered solemnly. ' '.■> "We have found seventeen already '' : Hespern added. She had chaffod th« ''■-' genial old man ever since she could re-, "2 member. , f " Well, that is very curious," the rector said, looking from one to the other. "When :■' I first heard that you had been seen ; poking about all over the country I said 1 felt quite sure that you must be hunting ' • for coal mines and that you ought to fina about seventeen of them in Burcott Steeple. But the truth is what 1 want. Now then, out with it!" "Wo absolutely decline to tell the truth •• under intimidation," she said. "At least I do." i " Then I shall follow you about till I ' find out for myself." " You could never find it out unless we told you," Valentine said. " Look here, I rector." he continued, " speaking seriously, we wish no one to know, for the present at least, what our object is. If you givg your word to ray nothing whatever about it, we will tell you—indeed we had decided that we should like you to know if you would promise secrecy." The promise having been given, Valentine told the whole story. The rector listened in silence— seemed deeply interested in what he heard. " I have been trying to recall a name," he said thoughtfully as Valentine finished. "Ah, I have it now. Gooch— that is the name Well, to the best of my belief this treasure is still where it was buried by Taggin de Burcntte." Hespera started. She looked at Valentine. "I will tell you the story," the rector went on. "A year ,-' so after I came here— is, about thir • years ago— man cf the name of Gooci. a farm labourer, was believed to bo dying. I visited him every day. The doctor, I remember, had told his wife there was no hope. " Well, one 'Jay Gooch—he had been delirious shortly suddenly asked mo whether it was wrong for a man to die with a secret. I expected to hear a confession of some petty crime, but he went on in a rambling account of how his father just before he died had told him ) a secret which, his own father had told i him when dying—as far as I could make out it had been a secret handed down v by fathers to their eldest sons for several ■ ' generations. At all events Gooch, who ; was childless, had received injunctions -i from his father that he, when he knew | his last days come, was to hand on/;* the secret and the same injunctions to'*, his eldest son. " The secret in question was the where- | abouts of some hidden treasure. According ■: to Gooch the treasure was of enormous • value. Having made these various state- ; ments, he pressed me to say whether, as '; ho had no child, he ought to toll anyone I else. He had become partly delirious | again by then, and believing the whole I tiling to be merely the outcome of a disordered imagination I attached no importance whatever to his statements, Wtien o I saw him again the following- day, he s made no further allusion to the subject. After this be astonished the doctor by ] making a rapid and complete recovery. i He left the parish a year or two after- : wards." <

" And where did he go?" Hespera asked. " That, my fair treasure-hunter, I cannot tell you," the rector answered. " I heard at the time, of course, but I have entirely forgotten. Doubtless there are peoplo in the parish who would remember. I will make inquiries. Gooch, if alive, would be a man of eighty or thereabouts." "We must leave everything else for the present," Valentine said, "and devote ourselves entirely to finding Gooch if alive."

I " I suppose there is nothing really improbable," (he rector went on musingly, " in a secret being handed down from illiterate fathers to illiterate sons for a, period of three and a half centuries. Why should not the particular Mary with whom Paggin do Btircotte appears to have shared his secret have been a Mary Gooch, and this man her direct decendaut? Gooch is oue of the commonest name* in our old registers. The very first entry. I remember, in fifteen hundred and fifty records the birth of a boy of that name." "Who do you think would know about Gooch, rector?" Hespera asked.

" Old Burton— will be almost sure to remember where the man moved to. And look here, young people, if I catch you attempting to excavate so muoh as a snadeful of my glebe without my permission, I will have the law about your ears before you know what is happening!" Valentine left Hespera r,t the entrance gate of Burcott Hall, and turned to walk back to Burcott Parva. His mind was filled with thoughts of the possibility of finding this man Gooch. An agricultural labourer, at the age of fifty would have been unlikely in the extreme to have moved, any great distance away. Of course, the chances were that he would bo dead by this time. Plenty of people live to the age of eighty, however. And if dead, he might have had a son after leaving Burcott Steeple, and have handed on to him the secret he had received from his own father.

Among the letters brought to Hespera by the following morning's post was one addressed in Hugh's handwriting, and bearing a Canadian stamp. She opened it before any of the others. It ran :—

"My dear Hespera,— -p "I ought to have sent you a line 'M when I reached Canada some weeks ago, {"-, but there have been so many things to fa occupy my mind since then. M "You will, I am sure, be pleased to W hear that I am already quite reconciled J| to my lot, a lot far different from what M I anticipated. It will be the making of "; ! ; me, and I now feel that being thrown '; I on one's own recourses in a country so '$ full of opportunities as Canada is in many m ways better for a healthy and ambitious • '. young man than succeeding to a fortune .-: already made. I think the thought of M this was not absent from my poor father's ?| mind when he made his last will. if '• My great difficulty just at present ii 'J money. lam not worth £20 in the world. || A capital of £200 or so would give me S the start I ' want. I do not think you «j will feel it possible to refuse when I ask /i you whether you will let me have five .| \ears money in advance—that is £200. ■' No one will ever hear of the transaction % but ourselves. Please do this for me, | Hespera; it means so much, practically 'a everything, to me now. If you send a J cheque, I can clear it from here. I shall \ be grievously disappointed if you refuse. "I wonder if I shall ever see the old J< homo again. '.I "Hoping you are both well, and with love, $ " Your affectionate brother, "Huou BuncoTr." u She could not but see at a glance how I transparent was Hugh's intention to in- ■';'■ veigle her into doing a thing which would M ronder her liable to forfeit not only the j| property but every penny she had in- "Jj herited from her father as well. Know- |g ing beyond all doubt that she could not /V do otherwise than refuse the request, what M could his object be in writing such a let- ;.| ter? M Breakfast over, she still sat pondering 3| on what this object might possibly be. J| Tho letter had brought back with all its >|j earlier force the fear of Hugh which had || filled her heart when first he made the ;j threat to uso any means in his power -h to como between Valentino and herself, M and thus wreck her lather's dying wish. m She seemed to feel instinctively that in m some way or another this letter was the i; first step* in a subtle scheme he had da* |g vised to carry, or attempt to carry, the ( .'> threat, into execution. After all she Knew : .. ;i of her brother, nothing he were to Wm could she accept as true unless proof were • .' given her— experience of his char- v.; acter made that impossible—and nothing ;.,i| short of actual prcof could make her be>:'Hg lieve that what he said in this particular letter was written in good faith. :.<?3 A minute later Valentino was holding her in his arms. ££^ " I am early this morning, my little one," he Baid as he kissed her again and - again, "l have good news. Guess what:,:;;; it is." . fl "Is it something about Gooch, VaLJg§ dear?" . : }$, dote continued en 6Atuidurn«st) :''ss