Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (253 page)

My
news
editor
was
struck
by
something
odd
in
the
brief
story
that appeared
in
the
morning
paper,
and
sent
me
down
to
make
inquiries. I
left
the
train
at
Reigate;
and
there
I
found
that
Mr.
Campo
Tosto had
lived
at
a
place
called
Burnt
Green—which
is
a
translation
of
his name
into
English—and
that
he
shot
at
trespassers
with
a
bow
and arrows.
I
was
driven
to
his
house,
and
saw
through
a
glass
door
some of
the
property
which
he
had
bequeathed
to
his
servant:
fifteenth-century
triptychs,
dim
and
rich
and
golden;
carved
statues
of
the saints;
great
spiked
altar
candlesticks;
storied
censers
in
tarnished
silver;
and
much
more
of
old
church
treasure.
The
legatee,
whose
name was
Turk,
would
not
let
me
enter;
but,
as
a
treat,
he
took
my
newspaper
from
my
pocket
and
read
it
upside
down
with
great
accuracy and
facility.
I
wrote
this
very
queer
story,
but
Fleet
Street
would
not suffer
it.
I
believe
it
struck
them
as
too
strange
a
thing
for
their
sober columns.

And
then
there
was
the
affair
of
the
J.H.V.S.
Syndicate,
which
dealt with
a
Cabalistic
cipher,
and
the
phenomenon,
called
in
the
Old
Testament,
"the
Glory
of
the
Lord,"
and
the
discovery
of
certain
objects buried
under
the
site
of
the
Temple
at
Jerusalem;
that
story
was
left half
told,
and
I
never
heard
the
ending
of
it.
And
I
never
understood the
affair
of
the
hoard
of
coins
that
a
storm
disclosed
on
the
Suffolk coast
near
Aldeburgh.
From
the
talk
of
the
longshoremen,
who
were on
the
lookout
amongst
the
dunes,
it
appeared
that
a
great
wave
came in
and
washed
away
a
slice
of
the
sand
cliff
just
beneath
them.
They saw
glittering
objects
as
the
sea
washed
back,
and
retrieved
what
they could.
I
viewed
the
treasure—it
was
a
collection
of
coins;
the
earliest of
the
twelfth
century,
the
latest,
pennies,
three
or
four
of
them,
of Edward
VII,
and
a
bronze
medal
of
Charles
Spurgeon.
There
are,
of course,
explanations
of
the
puzzle;
but
there
are
difficulties
in
the
way of
accepting
any
one
of
them.
It
is
very
clear,
for
example,
that
the hoard
was
not
gathered
by
a
collector
of
coins;
neither
the
twentieth-century
pennies
nor
the
medal
of
the
great
Baptist
preacher
would appeal
to
a
numismatologist.

But
perhaps
the
queerest
story
to
which
my
newspaper
connections introduced
me
was
the
affair
of
the
Reverend
Secretan
Jones,
the "Canonbury
Clergyman,"
as
the
headlines
called
him.

To
begin
with,
it
was
a
matter
of
sudden
disappearance.
I
believe people
of
all
sorts
disappear
by
dozens
in
the
course
of
every
year,
and nobody
hears
of
them
or
their
vanishings.
Perhaps
they
turn
up
again, or
perhaps
they
don't;
anyhow,
they
never
get
so
much
as
a
line
in
the papers,
and
there
is
an
end
of
it.
Take,
for
example,
that
unknown man
in
the
burning
car,
who
cost
the
amorous
commercial
traveller his
life.
In
a
certain
sense,
we
all
heard
of
him;
but
he
must
have
disappeared
from
somewhere
in
space,
and
nobody
knew
that
he
had gone
from
his
world.
So
it
is
often;
but
now
and
then
there
is
some circumstance
that
draws
attention
to
the
fact
that
A.
or
B.
was
in
his place
on
Monday
and
missing
from
it
on
Tuesday
and
Wednesday; and
then
inquiries
are
made
and
usually
the
lost
man
is
found,
alive or
dead,
and
the
explanation
is
often
simple
enough.