Chapter 3

This was Mr Somerton’s story:

“You know roughly, both of you, that this expedition of mine was
undertaken with the object of tracing something in connexion with some
old painted glass in Lord D——’s private chapel. Well, the
starting-point of the whole matter lies in this passage from an old
printed book, to which I will ask your attention.”

And at this point Mr Somerton went carefully over some ground with
which we are already familiar.

“On my second visit to the chapel,” he went on, “my purpose was to take
every note I could of figures, lettering, diamond-scratchings on the
glass, and even apparently accidental markings. The first point which I
tackled was that of the inscribed scrolls. I could not doubt that the
first of these, that of Job—‘There is a place for the gold where it is
hidden’—with its intentional alteration, must refer to the treasure; so
I applied myself with some confidence to the next, that of St
John—‘They have on their vestures a writing which no man knoweth.’ The
natural question will have occurred to you: Was there an inscription on
the robes of the figures? I could see none; each of the three had a
broad black border to his mantle, which made a conspicuous and rather
ugly feature in the window. I was nonplussed, I will own, and, but for
a curious bit of luck, I think I should have left the search where the
Canons of Steinfeld had left it before me. But it so happened that
there was a good deal of dust on the surface of the glass, and Lord
D——, happening to come in, noticed my blackened hands, and kindly
insisted on sending for a Turk’s head broom to clean down the window.
There must, I suppose, have been a rough piece in the broom; anyhow, as
it passed over the border of one of the mantles, I noticed that it left
a long scratch, and that some yellow stain instantly showed up. I asked
the man to stop his work for a moment, and ran up the ladder to examine
the place. The yellow stain was there, sure enough, and what had come
away was a thick black pigment, which had evidently been laid on with
the brush after the glass had been burnt, and could therefore be easily
scraped off without doing any harm. I scraped, accordingly, and you
will hardly believe—no, I do you an injustice; you will have guessed
already—that I found under this black pigment two or three
clearly-formed capital letters in yellow stain on a clear ground. Of
course, I could hardly contain my delight.

“I told Lord D—— that I had detected an inscription which I thought
might be very interesting, and begged to be allowed to uncover the
whole of it. He made no difficulty about it whatever, told me to do
exactly as I pleased, and then, having an engagement, was
obliged—rather to my relief, I must say—to leave me. I set to work at
once, and found the task a fairly easy one. The pigment, disintegrated,
of course, by time, came off almost at a touch, and I don’t think that
it took me a couple of hours, all told, to clean the whole of the black
borders in all three lights. Each of the figures had, as the
inscription said, ‘a writing on their vestures which nobody knew’.

“This discovery, of course, made it absolutely certain to my mind that
I was on the right track. And, now, what was the inscription? While I
was cleaning the glass I almost took pains not to read the lettering,
saving up the treat until I had got the whole thing clear. And when
that was done, my dear Gregory, I assure you I could almost have cried
from sheer disappointment. What I read was only the most hopeless
jumble of letters that was ever shaken up in a hat. Here it is:

_Job_. DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAVIBASBATAOVT _St
John_. RDIIEAMRLESIPVSPODSEEIRSETTAAESGIAVNNR
_Zechariah_. DREVICIOPEDMOOMSMVIVLISLCAVIBASBATAOVT

“Blank as I felt and must have looked for the first few minutes, my
disappointment didn’t last long. I realized almost at once that I was
dealing with a cipher or cryptogram; and I reflected that it was likely
to be of a pretty simple kind, considering its early date. So I copied
the letters with the most anxious care. Another little point, I may
tell you, turned up in the process which confirmed my belief in the
cipher. After copying the letters on Job’s robe I counted them, to make
sure that I had them right. There were thirty-eight; and, just as I
finished going through them, my eye fell on a scratching made with a
sharp point on the edge of the border. It was simply the number xxxviii
in Roman numerals. To cut the matter short, there was a similar note,
as I may call it, in each of the other lights; and that made it plain
to me that the glass-painter had had very strict orders from Abbot
Thomas about the inscription, and had taken pains to get it correct.

“Well, after that discovery you may imagine how minutely I went over
the whole surface of the glass in search of further light. Of course, I
did not neglect the inscription on the scroll of Zechariah—‘Upon one
stone are seven eyes,’ but I very quickly concluded that this must
refer to some mark on a stone which could only be found _in situ_,
where the treasure was concealed. To be short, I made all possible
notes and sketches and tracings, and then came back to Parsbury to work
out the cipher at leisure. Oh, the agonies I went through! I thought
myself very clever at first, for I made sure that the key would be
found in some of the old books on secret writing. The _Steganographia_
of Joachim Trithemius, who was an earlier contemporary of Abbot Thomas,
seemed particularly promising; so I got that and Selenius’s
_Cryptographia_ and Bacon’s _de Augmentis Scientiarum_ and some more.
But I could hit upon nothing. Then I tried the principle of the ‘most
frequent letter’, taking first Latin and then German as a basis. That
didn’t help, either; whether it ought to have done so, I am not clear.
And then I came back to the window itself, and read over my notes,
hoping almost against hope that the Abbot might himself have somewhere
supplied the key I wanted. I could make nothing out of the colour or
pattern of the robes. There were no landscape backgrounds with
subsidiary objects; there was nothing in the canopies. The only
resource possible seemed to be in the attitudes of the figures. ‘Job,’
I read: ‘scroll in left hand, forefinger of right hand extended
upwards. John: holds inscribed book in left hand; with right hand
blesses, with two fingers. Zechariah: scroll in left hand; right hand
extended upwards, as Job, but with three fingers pointing up.’ In other
words, I reflected, Job has _one_ finger extended, John has _two_,
Zechariah has _three_. May not there be a numeral key concealed in
that? My dear Gregory,” said Mr Somerton, laying his hand on his
friend’s knee, “that _was_ the key. I didn’t get it to fit at first,
but after two or three trials I saw what was meant. After the first
letter of the inscription you skip _one_ letter, after the next you
skip _two_, and after that skip _three_. Now look at the result I got.
I’ve underlined the letters which form words:

[D]R[E]VI[C]IOP[E]D[M]OO[M]SMV[I]V[L]IS[L]CAV[I]B[A]SB[A]TAO[V]T
[R]DI[I]EAM[R]L[E]SI[P]VSP[O]D[S]EE[I]RSE[T]T[A]AE[S]GIA[V]N[N]R
F[T]EEA[I]L[N]QD[P]VAI[V]M[T]LE[E]ATT[O]H[I]OO[N]VMC[A]A[T].H.Q.E.

“Do you see it? ‘_Decem millia auri reposita sunt in puteo in at_. . .’
(Ten thousand [pieces] of gold are laid up in a well in …), followed by
an incomplete word beginning _at_. So far so good. I tried the same
plan with the remaining letters; but it wouldn’t work, and I fancied
that perhaps the placing of dots after the three last letters might
indicate some difference of procedure. Then I thought to myself,
‘Wasn’t there some allusion to a well in the account of Abbot Thomas in
that book the “_Sertum_”?’ Yes, there was: he built a _puteus in atrio_
(a well in the court). There, of course, was my word _atrio_. The next
step was to copy out the remaining letters of the inscription, omitting
those I had already used. That gave what you will see on this slip:

RVIIOPDOOSMVVISCAVBSBTAOTDIEAMLSIVSPDEERSETAEGIANRFEEALQDVAIMLEATTHOOVM
CA.H.Q.E.

“Now, I knew what the three first letters I wanted were—namely,
_rio_—to complete the word _atrio_; and, as you will see, these are all
to be found in the first five letters. I was a little confused at first
by the occurrence of two _i’s_, but very soon I saw that every
alternate letter must be taken in the remainder of the inscription. You
can work it out for yourself; the result, continuing where the first
‘round’ left off, is this:

‘_rio domus abbatialis de Steinfeld a me, Thoma, qui posui custodem
super ea. Gare à qui la touche_’.

“So the whole secret was out:

‘Ten thousand pieces of gold are laid up in the well in the court of
the Abbot’s house of Steinfeld by me, Thomas, who have set a guardian
over them. _Gare à qui la touche_.’

“The last words, I ought to say, are a device which Abbot Thomas had
adopted. I found it with his arms in another piece of glass at Lord
D——’s, and he drafted it bodily into his cipher, though it doesn’t
quite fit in point of grammar.

“Well, what would any human being have been tempted to do, my dear
Gregory, in my place? Could he have helped setting off, as I did, to
Steinfeld, and tracing the secret literally to the fountain-head? I
don’t believe he could. Anyhow, I couldn’t, and, as I needn’t tell you,
I found myself at Steinfeld as soon as the resources of civilization
could put me there, and installed myself in the inn you saw. I must
tell you that I was not altogether free from forebodings—on one hand of
disappointment, on the other of danger. There was always the
possibility that Abbot Thomas’s well might have been wholly
obliterated, or else that someone, ignorant of cryptograms, and guided
only by luck, might have stumbled on the treasure before me. And
then”—there was a very perceptible shaking of the voice here—’I was not
entirely easy, I need not mind confessing, as to the meaning of the
words about the guardian of the treasure. But, if you don’t mind, I’ll
say no more about that until—until it becomes necessary.

“At the first possible opportunity Brown and I began exploring the
place. I had naturally represented myself as being interested in the
remains of the abbey, and we could not avoid paying a visit to the
church, impatient as I was to be elsewhere. Still, it did interest me
to see the windows where the glass had been, and especially that at the
east end of the south aisle. In the tracery lights of that I was
startled to see some fragments and coats-of-arms remaining—Abbot
Thomas’s shield was there, and a small figure with a scroll inscribed
_Oculos habent, et non videbunt_ (They have eyes, and shall not see),
which, I take it, was a hit of the Abbot at his Canons.

“But, of course, the principal object was to find the Abbot’s house.
There is no prescribed place for this, so far as I know, in the plan of
a monastery; you can’t predict of it, as you can of the chapter-house,
that it will be on the eastern side of the cloister, or, as of the
dormitory, that it will communicate with a transept of the church. I
felt that if I asked many questions I might awaken lingering memories
of the treasure, and I thought it best to try first to discover it for
myself. It was not a very long or difficult search. That three-sided
court south-east of the church, with deserted piles of building round
it, and grass-grown pavement, which you saw this morning, was the
place. And glad enough I was to see that it was put to no use, and was
neither very far from our inn nor overlooked by any inhabited building;
there were only orchards and paddocks on the slopes east of the church.
I can tell you that fine stone glowed wonderfully in the rather watery
yellow sunset that we had on the Tuesday afternoon.

“Next, what about the well? There was not much doubt about that, as you
can testify. It is really a very remarkable thing. That curb is, I
think, of Italian marble, and the carving I thought must be Italian
also. There were reliefs, you will perhaps remember, of Eliezer and
Rebekah, and of Jacob opening the well for Rachel, and similar
subjects; but, by way of disarming suspicion, I suppose, the Abbot had
carefully abstained from any of his cynical and allusive inscriptions.

“I examined the whole structure with the keenest interest, of course—a
square well-head with an opening in one side; an arch over it, with a
wheel for the rope to pass over, evidently in very good condition
still, for it had been used within sixty years, or perhaps even later,
though not quite recently. Then there was the question of depth and
access to the interior. I suppose the depth was about sixty to seventy
feet; and as to the other point, it really seemed as if the Abbot had
wished to lead searchers up to the very door of his treasure-house,
for, as you tested for yourself, there were big blocks of stone bonded
into the masonry, and leading down in a regular staircase round and
round the inside of the well.

“It seemed almost too good to be true. I wondered if there was a
trap—if the stones were so contrived as to tip over when a weight was
placed on them; but I tried a good many with my own weight and with my
stick, and all seemed, and actually were, perfectly firm. Of course, I
resolved that Brown and I would make an experiment that very night.

“I was well prepared. Knowing the sort of place I should have to
explore, I had brought a sufficiency of good rope and bands of webbing
to surround my body, and cross-bars to hold to, as well as lanterns and
candles and crowbars, all of which would go into a single carpet-bag
and excite no suspicion. I satisfied myself that my rope would be long
enough, and that the wheel for the bucket was in good working order,
and then we went home to dinner.

“I had a little cautious conversation with the landlord, and made out
that he would not be overmuch surprised if I went out for a stroll with
my man about nine o’clock, to make (Heaven forgive me!) a sketch of the
abbey by moonlight. I asked no questions about the well, and am not
likely to do so now. I fancy I know as much about it as anyone in
Steinfeld: at least”—with a strong shudder—“I don’t want to know any
more.

“Now we come to the crisis, and, though I hate to think of it, I feel
sure, Gregory, that it will be better for me in all ways to recall it
just as it happened. We started, Brown and I, at about nine with our
bag, and attracted no attention; for we managed to slip out at the
hinder end of the inn-yard into an alley which brought us quite to the
edge of the village. In five minutes we were at the well, and for some
little time we sat on the edge of the well-head to make sure that no
one was stirring or spying on us. All we heard was some horses cropping
grass out of sight farther down the eastern slope. We were perfectly
unobserved, and had plenty of light from the gorgeous full moon to
allow us to get the rope properly fitted over the wheel. Then I secured
the band round my body beneath the arms. We attached the end of the
rope very securely to a ring in the stonework. Brown took the lighted
lantern and followed me; I had a crowbar. And so we began to descend
cautiously, feeling every step before we set foot on it, and scanning
the walls in search of any marked stone.

“Half aloud I counted the steps as we went down, and we got as far as
the thirty-eighth before I noted anything at all irregular in the
surface of the masonry. Even here there was no mark, and I began to
feel very blank, and to wonder if the Abbot’s cryptogram could possibly
be an elaborate hoax. At the forty-ninth step the staircase ceased. It
was with a very sinking heart that I began retracing my steps, and when
I was back on the thirty-eighth—Brown, with the lantern, being a step
or two above me—I scrutinized the little bit of irregularity in the
stonework with all my might; but there was no vestige of a mark.

“Then it struck me that the texture of the surface looked just a little
smoother than the rest, or, at least, in some way different. It might
possibly be cement and not stone. I gave it a good blow with my iron
bar. There was a decidedly hollow sound, though that might be the
result of our being in a well. But there was more. A great flake of
cement dropped on to my feet, and I saw marks on the stone underneath.
I had tracked the Abbot down, my dear Gregory; even now I think of it
with a certain pride. It took but a very few more taps to clear the
whole of the cement away, and I saw a slab of stone about two feet
square, upon which was engraven a cross. Disappointment again, but only
for a moment. It was you, Brown, who reassured me by a casual remark.
You said, if I remember right:

“‘It’s a funny cross: looks like a lot of eyes.’

“I snatched the lantern out of your hand, and saw with inexpressible
pleasure that the cross _was_ composed of seven eyes, four in a
vertical line, three horizontal. The last of the scrolls in the window
was explained in the way I had anticipated. Here was my ‘stone with the
seven eyes’. So far the Abbot’s data had been exact, and, as I thought
of this, the anxiety about the ‘guardian’ returned upon me with
increased force. Still, I wasn’t going to retreat now.

“Without giving myself time to think, I knocked away the cement all
round the marked stone, and then gave it a prise on the right side with
my crowbar. It moved at once, and I saw that it was but a thin light
slab, such as I could easily lift out myself, and that it stopped the
entrance to a cavity. I did lift it out unbroken, and set it on the
step, for it might be very important to us to be able to replace it.
Then I waited for several minutes on the step just above. I don’t know
why, but I think to see if any dreadful thing would rush out. Nothing
happened. Next I lit a candle, and very cautiously I placed it inside
the cavity, with some idea of seeing whether there were foul air, and
of getting a glimpse of what was inside. There _was_ some foulness of
air which nearly extinguished the flame, but in no long time it burned
quite steadily. The hole went some little way back, and also on the
right and left of the entrance, and I could see some rounded
light-coloured objects within which might be bags. There was no use in
waiting. I faced the cavity, and looked in. There was nothing
immediately in the front of the hole. I put my arm in and felt to the
right, very gingerly….

“Just give me a glass of cognac, Brown. I’ll go on in a moment,
Gregory….

“Well, I felt to the right, and my fingers touched something curved,
that felt—yes—more or less like leather; dampish it was, and evidently
part of a heavy, full thing. There was nothing, I must say, to alarm
one. I grew bolder, and putting both hands in as well as I could, I
pulled it to me, and it came. It was heavy, but moved more easily than
I had expected. As I pulled it towards the entrance, my left elbow
knocked over and extinguished the candle. I got the thing fairly in
front of the mouth and began drawing it out. Just then Brown gave a
sharp ejaculation and ran quickly up the steps with the lantern. He
will tell you why in a moment. Startled as I was, I looked round after
him, and saw him stand for a minute at the top and then walk away a few
yards. Then I heard him call softly, ‘All right, sir,’ and went on
pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness. It hung for an instant
on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and _put
its arms round my neck_.

“My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth. I believe I am now
acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can
endure without losing his mind. I can only just manage to tell you now
the bare outline of the experience. I was conscious of a most horrible
smell of mould, and of a cold kind of face pressed against my own, and
moving slowly over it, and of several—I don’t know how many—legs or
arms or tentacles or something clinging to my body. I screamed out,
Brown says, like a beast, and fell away backward from the step on which
I stood, and the creature slipped downwards, I suppose, on to that same
step. Providentially the band round me held firm. Brown did not lose
his head, and was strong enough to pull me up to the top and get me
over the edge quite promptly. How he managed it exactly I don’t know,
and I think he would find it hard to tell you. I believe he contrived
to hide our implements in the deserted building near by, and with very
great difficulty he got me back to the inn. I was in no state to make
explanations, and Brown knows no German; but next morning I told the
people some tale of having had a bad fall in the abbey ruins, which, I
suppose, they believed. And now, before I go further, I should just
like you to hear what Brown’s experiences during those few minutes
were. Tell the Rector, Brown, what you told me.”

“Well, sir,” said Brown, speaking low and nervously, “it was just this
way. Master was busy down in front of the ’ole, and I was ’olding the
lantern and looking on, when I ’eard somethink drop in the water from
the top, as I thought. So I looked up, and I see someone’s ’ead lookin’
over at us. I s’pose I must ha’ said somethink, and I ’eld the light up
and run up the steps, and my light shone right on the face. That was a
bad un, sir, if ever I see one! A holdish man, and the face very much
fell in, and larfin’, as I thought. And I got up the steps as quick
pretty nigh as I’m tellin’ you, and when I was out on the ground there
warn’t a sign of any person. There ’adn’t been the time for anyone to
get away, let alone a hold chap, and I made sure he warn’t crouching
down by the well, nor nothink. Next thing I hear master cry out
somethink ’orrible, and hall I see was him hanging out by the rope,
and, as master says, ’owever I got him up I couldn’t tell you.”

“You hear that, Gregory?” said Mr Somerton. “Now, does any explanation
of that incident strike you?”

“The whole thing is so ghastly and abnormal that I must own it puts me
quite off my balance; but the thought did occur to me that possibly
the—well, the person who set the trap might have come to see the
success of his plan.”

“Just so, Gregory, just so. I can think of nothing else so—_likely_, I
should say, if such a word had a place anywhere in my story. I think it
must have been the Abbot…. Well, I haven’t much more to tell you. I
spent a miserable night, Brown sitting up with me. Next day I was no
better; unable to get up; no doctor to be had; and, if one had been
available, I doubt if he could have done much for me. I made Brown
write off to you, and spent a second terrible night. And, Gregory, of
this I am sure, and I think it affected me more than the first shock,
for it lasted longer: there was someone or something on the watch
outside my door the whole night. I almost fancy there were two. It
wasn’t only the faint noises I heard from time to time all through the
dark hours, but there was the smell—the hideous smell of mould. Every
rag I had had on me on that first evening I had stripped off and made
Brown take it away. I believe he stuffed the things into the stove in
his room; and yet the smell was there, as intense as it had been in the
well; and, what is more, it came from outside the door. But with the
first glimmer of dawn it faded out, and the sounds ceased, too; and
that convinced me that the thing or things were creatures of darkness,
and could not stand the daylight; and so I was sure that if anyone
could put back the stone, it or they would be powerless until someone
else took it away again. I had to wait until you came to get that done.
Of course, I couldn’t send Brown to do it by himself, and still less
could I tell anyone who belonged to the place.

“Well, there is my story; and, if you don’t believe it, I can’t help
it. But I think you do.”

“Indeed,” said Mr Gregory, “I can find no alternative. I _must_ believe
it! I saw the well and the stone myself, and had a glimpse, I thought,
of the bags or something else in the hole. And, to be plain with you,
Somerton, I believe my door was watched last night, too.”

“I dare say it was, Gregory; but, thank goodness, that is over. Have
you, by the way, anything to tell about your visit to that dreadful
place?”

“Very little,” was the answer. “Brown and I managed easily enough to
get the slab into its place, and he fixed it very firmly with the irons
and wedges you had desired him to get, and we contrived to smear the
surface with mud so that it looks just like the rest of the wall. One
thing I did notice in the carving on the well-head, which I think must
have escaped you. It was a horrid, grotesque shape—perhaps more like a
toad than anything else, and there was a label by it inscribed with the
two words, ‘Depositum custodi’.”[9]

[9] “Keep that which is committed to thee.”