Le Queux William
The Lost Million
Chapter One
Describes a Man and his Secret
See! Its its in my kit-bag, over there! The thing the Thing at which the whole world will stand aghast!
The thin, white-faced, grey-bearded man lying on his back in bed roused himself with difficulty, and with skinny finger pointed at his strong but battered old leather bag lying in the corner of the small hotel bedroom.
The keys on my chain Mr Kemball he gasped faintly, his face slowly flushing. Open it, quick! ah no! you cant deceive me, my dear fellow. Im dying! I heard what the doctor told you though he only whispered. But, Mr Kemball, although you are a young man, I Im going to trust you with a with a strange responsibility. I I trust you because you were so very kind to me on board. They all shunned me all save you! They didnt know my real name, and the old man chuckled bitterly to himself and they were not likely to!
You were unwell on the voyage, Mr Arnold, and it was surely my duty to
Duty! What duty do you owe to me? a perfect stranger an adventurer for aught you know! cried the old fellow with whom I had formed such a curious friendship. No, Mr Kemball, you have acted as a real man, as a friend one of the few friends one meets in this hard, workaday world, and he clutched wildly at his throat, while his sunken cheeks slowly assumed a hectic flush. Unlock the bag get it out before before I lose my senses, he added.
I took from the dressing-table the bunch of keys attached to his steel watch-chain, and was crossing the room towards the bag when he exclaimed
Listen, Mr Kemball! Im a dying man. Will you make a solemn promise to me? Will you grant me one last earnest request? In half an hour perhaps before I shall be lying here dead. But Im still alive a man who has seen much, who knows strange things a man who has lived through much, and who has stood by and seen men die around him like flies. God! If I dare only tell you half but
Well, Mr Arnold, I asked quietly, returning to the bedside and looking into the pinched grey face, how do you wish me to act?
I have already written it here I wrote it on board ship, after my first seizure, he said, slowly drawing a crumpled and bulky envelope from beneath his pillow and handing it to me with trembling fingers. Will you promise not to open it until after I have been placed in the grave, and to act as I have requested?
Most certainly, Mr Arnold, was my reply. A promise given to one who is about to pass to the Beyond is sacred.
His thin fingers gripped my hand in silent acknowledgment. He did not speak, but the expression in his eyes told of his profound thankfulness. I placed the letter in my breast-pocket. Something seemed to be enclosed within.
Go and open the bag, he whispered, after a brief silence.
I did so, and within, to my great surprise, found two huge bundles of fifty and hundred pound Bank of England notes, each packet several inches thick and tied with faded pink tape.
He beckoned me to bring them to him, and when I again stood near the bed, he selected one note, and then said
I wish you to destroy all of them burn them there in the grate so that I can watch you, and he gave vent to a harsh, unnatural laugh, a hideous laugh of despair.
I looked at him in hesitation. The poor old fellow was surely mad. In my hands I held notes to the value of an enormous sum. And yet he wished to ruthlessly destroy them!
He noticed my hesitation, and in a quick, impatient tone, asked whether I would not carry out his wishes, at the same time handing me the note he had taken, telling me that it was to pay for his interment.
As you desire, I said, with some reluctance.
But is it just with so much distress here, in London to deliberately destroy money like this?
I have a reason, Mr Kemball, a very strong reason, he answered in a low tone.
So I was compelled to untie the bundles, and, separating the notes, placed them in the grate and commenced a fire, which I fed on and on, until the last note had been consumed, and there remained only a grate full of blackened tinder. I confess that I found myself wishing that I had the numbers of some of the notes, in order to reclaim their equivalent from the Bank.
The old mans wild eyes, full of unnatural fire, watched the flames die down, and as they did so he gave a sigh of distinct relief.
Then, with difficulty, he turned to me and, putting out his hand, said
In the bag at the bottom you will find a sealed cylinder of metal.
I searched as he directed, and drew forth a heavy ancient cylinder of bronze, about a foot and a half long and three inches in diameter. The top had, I saw, been welded down, but a long time ago, because of the green corrosion about it.
When I had carried it across to him, he looked me straight in the face with those deep-set glassy eyes, which haunted me for long afterwards, and said
I trust you with that, Mr Kemball, because because I feel assured that you will act as I direct. Do not attempt to seek to discover what is within. That secret must be withheld from you. In this I hope that you will respect my desire I hope so, for for your own sake.
I held the mysterious cylinder in my hand in wonder. Evidently he treasured it even far greater than his riches, and had brought it to London with some distinct purpose which he was now owing to his heart-trouble unable to accomplish.
There are other things other things in the bag. Bring them to me, he said, in a low, weak voice, speaking with the greatest difficulty.
I brought the bag over to him and turned its contents pell-mell upon the floor. Among the several articles of clothing were a few old letters which, at his direction, I burned amid the tinder of the banknotes. Then, on searching further, I found a small, and evidently very antique, statuette of a figure standing, holding a kind of spear. It was about seven inches high, much worn, with a square base, and of solid gold. Around it I noticed an inscription in hieroglyphics.
That, my dying friend managed to gasp, is an ancient image of the Egyptian God Osiris, son of Seb, and Nut, or Heaven and Earth, and married to Isis. He was held to have gone through sufferings to have died to have risen again, and finally to have become the Judge of the Dead, His mysteries and rites were were the most important part of Egyptian wisdom. The inscription upon it shows that it was made by one Mersekha, in the reign of King Radadef, in the Fourth Dynasty or about three thousand five hundred years before the Christian era. Take it for yourself, Mr Kemball, added the old man, his voice distinctly weaker. It will serve as your mascot and will perhaps remind you of the friendless man whom you have to-day befriended.
I stood by in silence, for I saw a distinct change had crept over him.
I took a glass in which the doctor had placed some drug, giving me instructions to administer it to him, and I forced a few drops of it between his teeth.
The evening was warm and oppressive. Twilight was just falling, and through the open window came the low hum of the motor traffic a few hundred yards away in the Strand. The hotel in which we were was a quiet, unostentatious little place in Surrey Street, to which, on leaving the ship two days before, he had persuaded me to accompany him. Some one had recommended him to go there, he said, in preference to the Savoy or Carlton.
On board the Miltiades, which he had joined at Naples, he had displayed no outward sign of wealth or that he possessed money to burn. Indeed, his dress was mean and shabby, and by the wardrobe contained in his two ragged bags, one would certainly never put him down as a man of means. It is generally dangerous, however, to judge a man by his clothes.
The old clock of St. Clement Danes struck eight, and a few moments later there came a low tap at the door, and the doctor again reappeared, and bent over his patient anxiously.
He gave him a few more drops of the medicine, but the old man made an impatient gesture, and refused to swallow more.
What request, I wondered, was contained in that crumpled and rather bulky letter which I held in my breast-pocket?
Outside, in the corridor, the doctor told me that the end was quite near, and suggested that I should obtain something from him concerning his friends.
Mr Arnold has already told me, I replied. He possesses no friends.
And at that the doctor shrugged his shoulders and descended the stairs.
Back at the bedside in the fast-fading light of the hot day of early June, I took the old mans bony hand in silent farewell.
He turned his eyes upon me, gazing at me with a strange intense look, as though trying to read my very soul.
He endeavoured to speak, but though I bent my ear to his mouth, I could catch no words. His thin nervous hands clenched themselves, his grey beard moved, and he struggled violently to communicate with me, but without avail. Then with his right hand, he made a sign that he wished to write.
Instantly I obtained a pen and scrap of paper which I placed before him.
For a long time his hand trembled, so that he could make no intelligible writing. At last, however, he managed slowly, and with infinite difficulty, to trace very unevenly the words
Remember the name Harford be friendly, but beware of him and the Hand.
He watched my face eagerly as I read.
Of a sudden, the light went out of his grey countenance, the pen dropped from his thin, nerveless fingers, a scarlet spot fell upon the paper, and a deep, long-drawn sigh escaped his ashen lips.
Then a great stillness fell a great silence broken only by the low roar of the London traffic.
And I knew that Melvill Arnold, the man of mystery, was dead.
Chapter Two
Contains Several Surprises
For some moments I stood gazing upon the dead mans changed face, not knowing how to act.
I, Lionel Kemball, had, perhaps very unwisely, accepted a strange responsibility. I had acted with complete indiscretion.
On my way home from Australia, where I had been for a voyage for my health, the liner had called at Naples, and Mr Melvill Arnold had joined us. On the day after we had sailed I heard that he had had a sudden heart seizure, and was confined to his cabin, therefore why, I cant exactly tell I sought him out, and spent a good many hours chatting with him, and keeping him company.
Perhaps it was that, having been something of an invalid myself, I knew the weary monotony of being confined to bed; I could sympathise with anybody who was ill.
From the first I realised that Arnold was a man of no ordinary stamp. Possessed of a clear and quick intelligence, he was a cultured man notwithstanding his rather rough exterior, and full of a quiet sound philosophy. To me, it appeared as though he had lived abroad a good many years, and was consequently out of touch with England. Whence he had come he never told me, save to casually mention that he had been a great traveller and had lived out in the wilds for years. The possession of the golden god seemed to point to the fact that he had come from Egypt.
London has nowadays no attraction for me, he told me one day. I only go there merely because I am forced to do so. I finished with London long, long ago.
Surely, as I, a prosaic man-of-the-world, sat in that narrow cabin as we steamed up the Mediterranean towards Gibraltar, I had never dreamed that in his old kit-bag, smothered as it was with faded hotel labels, there reposed a fortune in banknotes.
He had been perfectly frank on one point. He was a man without a single friend. And now I knew that he had an enemy and that his name was Harford.
Presently I bent to the dead mans bag and examining it thoroughly, discovered that one letter had remained unburned a letter which, by the London postmark upon it, had been written two years ago. It was addressed in a fine, angular, womans hand to Arnold Edgcumbe, Esquire, Post Office, Kingswear, South Devon.
The name caused me to ponder. Had not he admitted that Melvill Arnold was not his real name? Was it not to be supposed that his actual name was Edgcumbe?
The letter was, to say the least, a curious communication. It bore no address, but on the half-sheet of paper was written, in the same feminine hand, the words: You, no doubt, saw the newspapers of 6th September, and the sentence of the Court upon the person they know as Lancaster. Rest assured that her betrayal will not go unrevenged by Her Friend.
I stood gazing at the missive which the dead man had evidently believed that I had burned. It would not be difficult to search the files of the newspapers for 6th September 1908, and ascertain for what crime a prisoner named Lancaster had been sentenced. The information might, perhaps, lead me to some further discovery.
I placed the letter carefully aside and made a most minute search of the dead mans clothes, and of his other belongings, but found absolutely nothing. Then, crossing the wasted hands, and placing the sheet tenderly over the white face, I left the room, and, descending, informed the hotel manager of what had occurred, while he, in turn, telephoned to an undertaker.
The effects of the deceased were taken possession of by the hotel manager pending the opening of the letter of instructions, while I conveyed to my own room the ancient bronze cylinder and the golden image that was to be my mascot.
Death in an hotel is always the cause of unpleasantness with the management, who declare it to be injurious to the reputation of the establishment, hence the body was conveyed away by night to await interment, while I moved to the Cecil.
But that same night a man from the undertakers came to me and asked me somewhat mysteriously what I knew concerning the dead man.
He was my friend, I replied. Why do you make this inquiry?
Well, sir, he answered, the guvnor sent me round to say that hes found he wore a false beard. It fell off!
The mans statement mystified me, more especially when he added
The body is that of a much younger man than the gentleman appeared to be. The guvnor fancies theres a bit of a mystery about him.
Probably hes right, I said, but the judicious administration of a golden coin quickly put matters straight, and my visitor bowed himself out.
Sorely was I tempted to tear open that letter which the mysterious man, now dead, had with calm forethought prepared, yet on the envelope was boldly written the words: Not to be opened until after my burial. That plain injunction deterred me.
Yet on the following morning I went down Fleet Street to the office of the Daily Telegraph, and there asked to see the file of the paper for September 1908.
It was not long before I was turning over the pages of the news of the day in question. For some time I searched, until my eye at last caught the name of Lancaster in the report of a trial at Old Bailey.
The report was headed