The Box of Delights (22 page)

‘This woman, Aurelia Stiborough, when she was old repented of her folly. She wrote down the bearings of the hiding-place.

‘The actual bearings were in cipher, but above the cipher she wrote some verses in English, which suggested that the cipher was worth deciphering.

‘You won’t have heard of the Historical Commissions, which went about examining papers in old houses all over the country and printing brief summaries of all that they found. In
their wanderings they came upon the Stiborough papers and printed the cipher for the sake of the verses at the beginning: that was in 1882; and there were the bearings for anybody with the wit to
see what they meant. But perhaps, my dear Joe, I worry you with this. I should be desolated to inflict boredom on an old friend.’

‘Go ahead,’ Joe said. ‘Now we’ve begun I may as well know it all.’

‘Well, we came here,’ Abner said. ‘I have always been interested in magic, as you know. For many years I have been aware of all the stories about Arnold of Todi, but, like most
students of magic, I believed that the Box must have fallen into the hands of Inquisitors or Puritans and been burned.

‘I have always been interested in ciphers of different kinds and, quite by accident, came upon this Stiborough cipher while I was stopping with the Bishop at the time of the Missionary
Conference. As I said, the poem at the beginning of the cipher showed that it referred to something very important. You are not interested in ciphers, Joe?’

‘Well, I did a little ciphering at school,’ Joe said. ‘That’s been enough for me so far.’

‘So I gather,’ Abner said. ‘Well, a cipher will always yield its secret if you go on long enough and this one gave way to me, although it was a very ingenious thing. That
Aurelia Stiborough was not the fool I thought her by any means.

‘You’re not an imaginative man, Joe, but you can imagine my excitement at finding that this amazing treasure of one of the amazing men of all time was buried in the earth less than
twenty miles from here – a thing that Shakespeare and Dante and the great painters had used? That I had only got to go and dig it up and have it for my own – a thing that Ramon Lully
had sought to buy from Arnold and been refused? Think, Joe, if you can think; there were those two great men, each supreme in his own way of thought. Lully travelled through Spain and across France
and over the Alps and down through Italy to Todi to offer his secret for Arnold’s, and Arnold refused.’

‘So then, I suppose, you got busy,’ Joe said.

‘Busy!’ Abner said. ‘You little know, Joe, what I went through. I learned what the cipher contained at two in the morning here. Before three I was on the site of Stiborough
Castle; pitch dark night, gale blowing, rain coming down in torrents, the ivy blowing loose from the walls, bits of boughs flying everywhere, the Castle in such a mess of old broken stones and
earth and bramble that I almost broke my neck half a dozen times. And then gradually the autumn dawn appeared and I could get proper bearings: a hill with a nick cut in it, a church spire and the
entrance gate of Stiborough; and then, Joe, I made my measurements. I was wet through: was cold to the marrow. I didn’t mind wet: I didn’t mind cold. And there, by the first rays of
light, I saw that I was too late: someone had read the cipher a little before me. There were the brambles cut away and the shaft sunk in exactly the right place and, at the bottom of the pit, the
marks showed that I was too late.’

‘Gee!’ Joe said, with feeling, ‘it isn’t often you’re too late.’

‘I was too late. Here,’ Abner said. Kay saw Abner pull open one of the drawers of the desk. He took out some wrappings and covers of leather, much perished, of rotten wood, of a
harder wood that was not rotten, and what looked like wool and silk. ‘These were the outer wraps,’ he said. ‘Inside was this jewel-case – plain silver: time of James the
First – marked ‘A.S.’ for Aurelia Stiborough; but the inside box was gone. I had been beaten, as you would put it in your poetical way, on the post by a short head. He had got the things at sunset on the night before, just before the rain began.

‘Well, there it was: the Box was gone but it hadn’t been gone long, and the next question was to get it from the man who had it. Who had it? Who’d been digging at Stiborough
and making enquiries there? It is not difficult to find out in a countryside as lonely as that. The only man who had been near the ruins was a little old man who played a Punch and Judy
show.’

‘Cole Hawlings,’ Joe said.

‘As he calls himself now,’ Abner said. ‘He was the man who had been taking measurements at Stiborough and borrowing a billhook to cut away some of the brambles and
undergrowth.’

‘Well, you’ve got Cole Hawlings all right,’ Joe said. ‘You’ve no cause to complain. I suppose it wasn’t hard to run him down: an old man with a Punch and Judy
show?’

‘I have other ways of finding things that I want,’ Abner said, ‘than by questioning all those who happen to be in the taproom of the
Blue Dragon.
I used certain magical
ways. But, of course, you don’t believe in magic, Joe.’

‘Well, sometimes, Chief,’ Joe said, ‘sometimes you talk in a way that makes me think you’ve got bats in your belfry.’

‘Ah, so you don’t believe in magic,’ Abner said. ‘That’s a pity. Just look at me, Joe.’

Joe looked at Abner, who moved his left hand strangely. Instantly, the door opened and through it came queen after queen, crowned, smiling and wearing scarlet. They looked into Joe’s face
and said, ‘Don’t you believe in magic, Joe?’ then smiled and passed out at the door. After them there came little scarlet horses that whinnied and tossed their manes. They too
looked into Joe’s face and whinnied, ‘Don’t you believe in magic, Joe?’

Then, immediately it seemed to Kay that the room had disappeared into a waste of thistles and dried grass blowing in the wind. Over this expanse came an old donkey with a matted, thick fell, one
ear lopped down and the other cocked. He trotted up and turned to look at Joe. He looked extraordinarily perverse and very clever. Then he brayed, ‘Don’t you believe in magic,
Joe?’ Then he cocked the ear that was lopped and lopped the ear that was cocked and brayed again, ‘No, Joe doesn’t believe in magic:’ and there was the room just as it had
been before.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Joe, ‘how did you do that? I suppose you’ve got a magic lantern somewhere.’

‘You might call it that,’ Abner said. ‘But by some such body of friends as those you have just seen I was able to find out who Cole Hawlings really is.

‘When you see your friends again, Joe, you will be able to tell them who he is and why I have never hurt him. Cole Hawlings is Ramon Lully.’

Kay, who was watching Joe’s face, saw Joe gasp, and then assume a look of pity, contempt and tolerance for a man plainly gone mad.

‘But you said he was dead, Chief,’ Joe said at last.

‘I said, “They show his tomb at Palma.” He discovered the Elixir of Life and flew away from his disciples in the likeness of a golden cock, and here he is now as Cole
Hawlings.’

There was a pause at this, Joe looked at Abner, and at the floor, then back to Abner: he was plainly trying to find something tactful to say: at last he found it:

‘That thing you say he discovered, the liquor of Life and that, would that be a kind of cough mixture?’

‘If you can imagine a cough mixture that will make a man eternal, able to survive pestilence or any other way of death . . .’

‘It would be a good mixture to get on the market, I can see,’ Joe said. ‘Abner’s Cure-All, at one and six the half-pint bottle. These patent medicines just rake in the
money. But it wouldn’t cure crashing in an aeroplane nor being run over by a lorry, you don’t pretend?’

‘Why not?’ Abner asked. ‘Why shouldn’t that which makes tissue unkillable make bone unbreakable?’

‘I see,’ Joe said, scratching his head, ‘it’s like one of those rubber solutions they used to pump into tyres; they made the tyres solid, so then you couldn’t
puncture. Well, if you could get a stuff like that on the market you’d beat all the pill-merchants, and all the salts fellows. And should we all be in it with you?’

‘My dear Joe,’ Abner said, ‘if there is one thing I pride myself on it is my loyalty to my colleagues. For whom do I toil here? For whom do I think and worry and scheme, but
for the Brotherhood? We have lived through all these years of danger and adventure together. What could be a greater joy to me than to share all our little takings and enter into partnership for
the marketing of the Elixir, for an eternity of happy quiet?’

‘Chief,’ Joe said, ‘if you don’t mind, I’ll sit down. Some of what you’ve told me is a bit of a knock out.

‘Well, that’s that then,’ he said at last.

‘That is that,’ Abner answered.

‘About these clergymen,’ Joe said; ‘what still we don’t see, is why you keep scrobbling the clergymen. See here now in
The Daily Thriller
 
:

‘The latest outrage at Tatchester, culminating in the disappearance of the Bishop’s Chaplain, the Reverend Edward Charity, B.D., and his friend, the Chief
Theologian, Doctor Isaiah Dogma, points to the existence of an organised conspiracy, possibly, as has been suggested, to prevent the holding of the Millennial Christmas Service advertised for the
early hours of Christmas morning. If this be so, and no other explanation of the outrage, so far suggested, seems to meet the case, we would warn the scoundrels responsible that the Establishment
will contrive to defeat their machinations.

‘You see that, Chief, and the heading “Church Defies Bandits”. They mean business.’

‘So do I, Joe,’ Abner said.

‘Is it your game to stop that service?’ Joe asked.

‘I’ll stop that service if they don’t deliver the Box or tell me where it is.’

Kay saw looks of anger, bewilderment, contempt and mutiny cross Joe’s face in quick succession; he noticed, too, that none of these looks was missed by Abner, who was watching Joe
intently. Joe rose from his chair and walked the room for a moment.

‘Chief,’ Joe said, ‘I don’t like what you’re doing. While you were just a fair and square burglar, like the rest of us, I respected you; but this dabbling in magic
and scrobbling up the clergy will come to no good. You’ll find it so, when it’s too late. The Press respects burglars like us who only burgle the very rich; but you’re going now
against children, women and the clergy, and you’ve turned the Press dead against you. Of course, I’ve got no intellect; don’t go by what I say . . .’

‘I congratulate you on your knowledge of yourself,’ Abner said sweetly. ‘You’re not employed for your intellect, but for your nerve. Are you losing your nerve?’

‘No,’ Joe said sulkily.

‘Good,’ Abner said.

‘I take it, Chief,’ Joe said, ‘that you’re not keen on going dead against your own interests in this?’

‘No,’ Abner said, ‘why?’

‘Of course,’ Joe said, ‘the profits are too small for you to bother about. A thousand quid is nothing to you, but to us poor chaps, who do the work, they’re a thousand
quid.’

‘Come to the point; what is it?’ Abner asked.

‘Well, Chief,’ Joe said, ‘now would be the time to stop this clergy business. The Archbishop is offering a reward of a thousand pounds for the return of the Bishop or Dean,
with reduced sums for the rest; it’s twenty-five quid even for a choirboy. It would be quite a profitable little haul if you chose to take it. Tomorrow, or even today, you’ll have the
Yard poking about.’

‘The Yard! The Yard could be in this room, and those clergy could shout, “O Come, all ye Faithful” at the tops of their voices, yet not be heard. Come to breakfast.’

‘All right,’ Joe said. ‘But there is another thing. There is a boy at Seekings; Kay Harker. He was here with that boy Peter whom we scrobbled; and I don’t see why Cole
Hawlings shouldn’t have given the Box to him, if it comes to that.’

‘You don’t see a good many things,’ Abner said.

‘I dare say I’m as blind as a bat,’ Joe said, ‘and as for intellect I never claimed any, but blind and balmy as I am I never talked such tosh as you’ve talked since
I came into this room; nor I never sold my soul to the devil. What with that and going to the films you’ve got bats in your belfry. I thought so before and now I know it. You’ll come to
a bad end, let me tell you, and it won’t be long hence . . .’

Kay saw Abner’s pale face turn a little whiter; he was plainly very angry and about to answer savagely. At that moment, the door opened. In came Sylvia Daisy Pouncer Brown, who had no
doubt been listening at the keyhole. On seeing her, Joe muttered what sounded like ‘Crikey, now here’s his Missus.’ Sylvia D. P. Brown looked at Joe and drew her own
conclusions.

‘Abner, my dear,’ she said, ‘you’ve talked and talked. Do come to breakfast before it’s all cold. Remember, you’ve got to speak a Christmas talk at Tatchester
Alms Houses at half-past ten.’

‘Certainly, my dear,’ he said. ‘We’ve said all that we had to say.’

Kay could not be sure, but thought that Joe muttered, ‘Oh,
have
we? You’ll see.’

‘I was forgetting the Alms Houses,’ Abner said. ‘Those poor deserving old men and women, we mustn’t forget them, must we? Well, Joe, that will delay our business till
half-past two, in my room. Do you get that?’

‘Half-past two, in your room; very well, Chief,’ Joe said.

Abner walked past him to the door, ‘Come along to breakfast, Joe,’ he said. ‘We’re both half-starved.’

They walked out of the room together. After a moment Kay pressed his Box, resumed his shape and slipped into the corridor after them.

To his right, the corridor led to the hall and main staircase. To his left, it led to a closed door where breakfast was now in progress: cups, knives and forks were clicking; there were strong
smells of bacon and of coffee; Abner’s voice said, ‘May I beg you to pass the butter?’

Almost in front of Kay, a second corridor led towards the kitchen or pantry; there, coming from the kitchen, was the old man who had swept in the hall, carrying a dish on which his eyes were
fixed. He was muttering aloud to himself: