Читать книгу The Treasure of the Bucoleon - Arthur D. Howden Smith - Страница 3

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The messenger was peering at the card above the push-button beside the apartment entrance as I came up the stairs.

"Chesby?" he said laconically, extending a pink envelope.

"He lives here," I answered. "I'll sign for it."

The boy clumped off downstairs, and I let myself in, never dreaming that I held the key to destiny in my hand—or, rather, in the pink envelope.

A samovar was bubbling in the studio, and my cousin Betty King hailed me from the couch on which she sat between her father and Hugh.

"Here you are at last," she cried. "Dad and I have come to say good-by to you."

"What's the matter?" I asked. "Can't you stand Hugh any longer?"

Hugh glowered at me.

"Always raggin'," he commented.

Betty laughed.

"We are going to Constantinople to hunt for Greek manuscripts."

"I have a theory," explained my uncle, Vernon King, "that the upheavals of the war and the occupation of the city by Christian garrisons should be productive of rich opportunities for bibliophiles like myself, aside from an enhanced chance for archæological research."

"Well, I wish you luck," I grumbled. "And I wish I was not tied down to an architect's drawing-board."

"'Matter of fact, I'm about fed up with Wall Street," growled Hugh. "Nobody can make money any more."

"It's very funny," remarked Betty. "Both you and Jack announced when you settled down after the war, Hugh, that nothing could ever root you up again. All you wanted, you said, was a good job and plenty of hard work."

"I know it," admitted Hugh. "I remember Nash, here, and Nikka Zaranko—"

"You mean the famous Gypsy violinist?" interrupted my uncle, who, I ought to say, uses the millions he receives from his oil-holdings to patronize the arts and sciences.

"Yes, sir. He was in the Foreign Legion durin' the war. We all met in the last big push in Flanders. I went in with my battalion to help out Jack's crowd, and was snowed under with them. Then Nikka tried to extricate both outfits, and the upshot was the Aussies finally turned the trick. Some show!

"Well, we three became pals. What I was going to say was that the last time we got together before demobilization we agreed we never wanted to feel the threat of danger again. We wanted to become rich and prosperous and fat and contented. That was why I came over to New York with Jack, instead of staying home and fighting with my uncle."

"That reminds me," I said, extending the pink envelope. "Here's a cable for you. Maybe—"

"If it's from Uncle James I shall be surprised," replied Hugh, ripping open the envelope. "A line once in six months is his idea of avuncular correspondence. Hullo!"

He pursed his lips in a prolonged whistle.

"Anything wrong?" asked Betty anxiously.

"No—well—humph! It's hard to say. Listen to this: 'Sailing Aquitania to-day due New York eighteenth must see you immediately have made important discovery your aid essential family fortunes involved this confidential."

"Yes, on second thought, it is wrong, all wrong. He's after that treasure again. Oh, lord! I did my best to persuade him to be sensible before I left England with Jack."

"A treasure!" exclaimed Betty. "But you never told me about it!"

"Oh, it's a long story," protested Hugh. "Frightfully boring. It's a sort of family curse—like leprosy or housemaid's knee. It's supposed to be located in Constantinople, and my uncle has spent his life and most of the family's property trying to find it. That's why I have to make money in New York instead of playing the country gentleman. There was little enough in the family treasury before Uncle James reached it. Now— Well, the new Lord, who will probably be me, will find trouble paying the Herald's fees, let alone succession duties."

"You really are too exasperating," declared Betty. "A treasure story is never boring."

"I am on Betty's side," said her father.

My uncle Vernon is a very decent sort, despite the fact that he is a millionaire. He is a professor several times over, and hates the title. And he is one of the few learned men I know who can be genuinely interested in low-brow diversions.

"So am I," I said, backing him up. "You have been guilty of secrecy with your friends, which is an English vice I thought I had broken you of, Hugh. Come clean!"

"But there's so little to tell," he said. "I had an ancestor about seven hundred years ago, who is generally called Hugh the First. This Hugh was son to Lord James, who went to the Crusades and was a famous character in his time. On his way to Palestine, the stories say, James stayed a while with the Emperor Andronicus, who ruled in the Eastern Empire—'

"Ah, yes," interrupted King eagerly, "would that have been Andronicus Comnenus, sometimes called The Butcher?"

"I believe so, sir."

"Very interesting," nodded King. "Andronicus amassed a great wealth through fines and exactions from the nobles, so the contemporary chronicles tell us."

"And this treasure is supposed to be in Constantinople!" exploded Betty. "Where we are going! Isn't that so, Hugh?"

"Yes, it is always located in Constantinople," answered Hugh. "In fact, it is generally referred to as the Treasure of the Bucoleon, which, I understand from Uncle James and other authorities of my university days, was the principal palace of the Eastern Emperors."

"Quite right," agreed Vernon King, his scholar's interest whipped aflame. "It was a magnificent residence, vying with the Palace of the Cæsars in Rome. In reality, in light of modern antiquarian research, we may describe it as a group of noble structures, standing isolated from the city within a spacious park, surrounded by an independent series of fortifications and with its own naval harbor on the Bosphorus."

"An extensive area to hunt over for an apocryphal treasure," remarked Hugh drily.

"You may well say so," endorsed my uncle. "I have been in Constantinople for extended periods upon several occasions, and I have never satisfied myself as to the existence at this time of any bone fide portions of the Bucoleon, although it is difficult to pronounce definitely on this point. The older portions of the city, especially those most massively constructed, have been so over-built since the Turkish conquest that frequently what is ostensibly a relatively modern building turns out to be almost unbelieveably ancient at the core. But the prejudices of the Turks and their distaste for foreign—"

Betty, chewing her finger with impatience, waved to her father to be silent.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed. "Really, you aren't lecturing, you know! Do let Hugh get on with the treasure."

"But I'm afraid I've gotten as far as I can," replied Hugh. "The tradition simply says that Andronicus confided the secret of the location of the treasure to Lord James. Then Andronicus was assassinated, and James was thrown into prison by his successor. Hugh, James's son, went to Constantinople with an army of Latin Crusaders who had decided that the best way to help the Holy Land was to establish a friendly base there. They conquered the city—"

"A remarkable venture," corroborated my uncle. "The ease with which they secured possession of a city of one million inhabitants, not to speak of an extensive empire, is a clear indication of the degeneracy—"

Betty clapped her hand over his mouth.

"Do get on, Hugh!" she begged. "The treasure! You're almost as long-winded as Dad."

We all laughed, and yet, indefinably, she had communicated to each of us something of the magic spell which is conveyed by any hint of treasure hidden in the past. We savored the heady wine of danger. I felt my right palm itching for the corrugated rubber butt of an automatic. When Hugh continued his story we all leaned forward, flushed and tense.

"The Crusaders captured the city, and Hugh rescued his father. Then they returned to England. Before James died he passed on the secret of the treasure to Hugh. There are documents in the Charter Chest—"

"What's that?" demanded Betty.

"It's a terribly old oaken box, bound with copper and steel," explained Hugh. "We keep it in a safe deposit vault in the City—London, you know. These documents say that James's idea was to have the treasure used for the rehabilitation of Christendom if any cause arose which would justify such a gift. Failing that, the money was to go to his descendants. But for many generations the Lords of Chesby were too busy to hunt treasure so far from home.

"One Lord tried for it in Harry the Fifth's time, but the Greeks watched him so closely that he thought himself lucky to escape from Constantinople with his life. Then the Turks captured the city, and after that it was too risky—except for one chap in Elizabeth's reign. He was Lord James, the sixteenth baron, a shipmate of Raleigh and Drake and Hawkins, and he feared nothing that lived. He put in at Constantinople and bearded the Grand Turk in his lair. But even he did not venture to make a genuine search in view of the conditions that prevailed. From his time on few of the family bothered with the tradition until Uncle James commenced to mortgage farms to finance his researches."

"Then you have no definite knowledge of the location of the treasure?" asked King. "No chart or—"

Hugh laughed bitterly.

"No, sir, that is just why I feel so peevish over the way Uncle James has devastated the estate. It's a search for a needle in a haystack—and a needle that in all probability never existed, at that."

"I fear so," assented King, shaking his head.

"Nonsense!" said Betty. "It's as good a treasure story as I ever read. Why shouldn't it be true? Could you imagine a more perfect place for concealing a treasure all these centuries than Constantinople?"

"Your father will tell you," retorted Hugh scornfully, "that there is not a famous ruin in the Near East but is declared to contain a treasure of one kind or another."

"True—only too true!" agreed King.

"The sole use of the legend so far," continued Hugh unhappily, "has been to give Uncle James something to do. It must be a godsend to Curzon in managing the House, for during the war while Uncle James was shut up in England he was continually moving for the appointment of committees to preserve the monumental brasses of country churches and appealing to the government to recognize that England owed a duty to civilization in retaining and Christianizing Constantinople—so he could dig to his heart's content for the treasure."

"Well, I for one intend to believe in it," stated Betty, "and if your uncle wants any help in hunting for it, he can count on me."

"We'll all help him, if it comes to that," I said. "Nikka Zaranko would never forgive us if we left him out of such a party."

"Uncle James will have nothing tangible to go on," said Hugh. "You can stake your last shilling on that. He's never had a sane idea yet."

"I take it, then," remarked Betty, rising with a detached air, "that you have no desire to go to Constantinople."

Betty is slim, with brown hair and eyes and a face that you have to look at and when she sets her head back— But of course I am only her cousin. Hugh jumped up, nervously crunching the cable in his hand.

"If I only do get a decent excuse to go to Constantinople!" he exclaimed. "But there's no use. I won't, Bet. I couldn't honestly encourage Uncle James in any more foolishness."

"Perhaps," suggested King, "his visit has nothing to do with the treasure."

Hugh chuckled, his merry self again.

"Cross the Atlantic just to look me up? Not a chance, sir. His ruling passion is driving him on. Confound it, though! I wish this hadn't come up. And I wish I didn't crave adventure again. And I wish you weren't going to Constantinople. All right! Laugh, Jack, curse you! Laugh! Here, I'll scrag you with a couch-pillow!"

"Easy! Easy!" I pleaded. "For the furniture's sake! How about giving the Kings a line to Nikka in Paris or wherever he is?"

"Thanks," said Betty, "but we're going via the Mediterranean. The best thing for you boys to do is to pack up with Hugh's uncle, collect your friend Nikka en route and follow on."

"No go," answered Hugh dismally. "All I am scheduled for is a fat family row."