Chapter Thirty Five. Shows Further Complications.

At nine o’clock next morning the hunch-backed Doctor, pale and eager, was closeted with the Professor, to whom he related what he had witnessed while watching outside the house in Berkeley Square on the previous night.

In consequence of this, the good-looking Laura was summoned to the study, closely questioned, and returning impudent answers, was summarily dismissed and left the house.

“So it is Sir Felix Challas who is desirous of ascertaining our secret,” remarked Aminger Griffin, greatly surprised, “He is such a great churchman, and such a high-minded philanthropist, that I can hardly believe that he should employ such methods. Why, only this very week I saw in the papers that he has made a fourth donation to Guy’s Hospital of two thousand pounds.”

“He is a swindler, hiding himself beneath the cloak of religion,” declared Diamond emphatically. “I have seen Mullet this morning, and he has promised to call and have a chat with you. He will come to-day, I expect.”

“Well,” exclaimed the Professor with some hesitation, and with a smile of triumph upon his lips, “we need have no further fear of our enemies, Doctor, for we have forestalled them. Yesterday I succeeded in deciphering the whole record in Ezekiel, and convincing myself of the existence of a similar cipher in Deuteronomy. I have here the complete translation in English.” And he placed the document in the Doctor’s trembling hands.

The ugly little man read it through eagerly, and then sat staring straight into the Professor’s face.

“Then the secret of the treasure of Israel is revealed!” he gasped in a low voice, as though fearing to be overheard. “But is it not probable that your servant listened, and heard you tell Miss Gwen the manner in which the cipher could be read?”

“No doubt. But fearing that, in a matter of this magnitude I might be the victim of treachery, I deviated slightly from the correct key, in such a manner as to throw out the whole reading!” laughed the Professor. “I told my daughter so afterwards.”

“Mullet has told me a good deal. I stayed with him in his rooms last night,” the Doctor said. “It appears that Sir Felix Challas’s methods are, on occasions, so unscrupulous as to be criminal. In his employ he has a dangerous scoundrel named Jim Jannaway—a thief and gaol-bird, though his exterior is that of a gentleman. He has served several terms of imprisonment for burglary. To this man the philanthropist of Berkeley Square, who received a Baronetcy for his good deeds, leaves his dirty work. From what Mullet told me I should not be surprised that it was he who arranged that your servant should spy upon you.”

“Mullet is also an outsider, is he not?” remarked the Professor with some suspicion.

“Of course, but of necessity. Though he may rob the rich, he prides himself on never having done a mean action to a poor person, or a woman.”

“Ah! Doctor,” laughed Griffin. “I see you believe in degrees of crime—eh?”

“In this case, yes. ‘Red Mullet’ has greatly assisted us. It was he who telegraphed to me from his retreat in Kent to watch the house in Berkeley Square. And now he has explained to me many points which were hitherto mysteries.”

“We need have no fear of our enemies now,” remarked the Professor, as at that moment Gwen, looking fresh in her white blouse and navy serge skirt, entered the room brightly and greeted the ugly little hunchback. “It only remains for us to call Farquhar into conference, and decide how we shall act. Somebody should proceed at once to Jerusalem, decide the exact spot, and purchase the land. We can have time for further operations when once the land on both sides of the hill is ours. Farquhar has promised that Sir George will find the necessary funds for that, if we so desire.”

Gwen, holding her breath, walked to the window and looked out upon the gloomy London street.

Her position was hideous. Her father believed that the great secret was his—and his alone. Frank would believe it—and by remaining silent she would be misleading her lover into a false sense of security.

She knew, alas! that their enemies would hesitate at nothing—that the Treasure of Israel was already lost to them—lost to the Jews for ever!

With her back turned to her father and his visitor she stood listening, her clenched hands trembling. What could she do? How could she act?

Suppose she told the truth, and bore the inevitable blow?

“It’s certainly fortunate that you did not explain to Miss Gwen the actual mode of deciphering the record,” the Doctor was remarking, “for Sir Felix and Haupt, at any rate, cannot gain the knowledge we have gained.”

“Sir Felix—who—dad?” inquired the girl, turning quickly.

“Sir Felix Challas, my dear,” was the Professor’s reply. “The Doctor has discovered that it is he who is our enemy. He poses as a great philanthropist as you well know. His portrait is in this week’s Tatler—over yonder.”

The girl crossed quickly, took up the paper, and searched the pages eagerly. Then when her gaze fell upon the picture, the journal nearly fell from her nerveless fingers.

She recognised the brutal, red-faced man who had been her inquisitor, and who would have struck her had not Mullet interfered, and stood her champion.

Beneath the portrait was a laudatory notice of the hypocrite’s noble contribution to the funds of charities of London.

“You see, Doctor,” her father went on, not noticing the girl’s blanched face and horror-struck eyes, “Erich Haupt will only be entirely misled by the statement I made to Gwen. By using the cipher in that manner, he will obtain a jumble of Hebrew letters which represent nothing. No. We need not fear Sir Felix and his anti-Semitic views in the least. We alone know the place of concealment of the sacred treasure of Israel.”

“I have already telegraphed to Farquhar at Horsford. He should be here before twelve.”

“And when he comes, we shall decide what to do,” remarked the Professor. “I think he should go out at once to Palestine. Only one of us must go to purchase the land, otherwise suspicion might be excited. And if so, then good-bye to all our chances.”

“Sir Felix, if he cannot obtain the secret, may endeavour to upset our plans out there,” remarked Gwen. “He is a man of wealth and power, dad.”

“But he does not possess the information which we possess. Professor Holmboe’s secret is now ours—and ours alone!” he declared triumphantly.

“Could we not get Mr Mullet to assist us, dad?” suggested the girl puzzled to distraction as to how she should act. She was divided between her love and her duty.

“No. He will only help us in his own way,” responded Doctor Diamond.

The girl walked back to the long window which led out upon the balcony—the window which Jim Jannaway had been prepared to use as an emergency exit—and stood with her hands clasped behind her back, while the two men further discussed what they believed to be a most satisfactory situation.

The land on both sides of the mount must be purchased in secret, they agreed, and not a word must leak out regarding the discovery until actual operations had commenced. Then the Professor was to launch his startling statement upon the world in the form of an article in the Contemporary. After the purchase of the land, the Professor, the Doctor, and an engineer were to go out to Jerusalem and make secret investigation. The surveyor, whom Griffin proposed to send out with Farquhar to make secret survey upon the measurements contained in the cipher, was a young man in business at Richmond, a friend of his, to whom he proposed to give a small interest in the syndicate.

“We are agreed, I suppose, Doctor, that at all hazards the most sacred relics and the archives of the Kingdom of Israel which are no doubt preserved there, shall be restored to the Jews?” Griffin said.

“Most certainly,” was Diamond’s reply. “This man Challas intends, it seems, to revenge himself upon the Jews by desecrating the treasure.”

“But, dad!” cried the girl, “surely he would never be allowed to desecrate sacred relics!”

“If he discovered them upon land he had purchased he might very easily destroy them before he could be prevented,” her father pointed out. “There lies the great danger. Fortunately, however, he will be unable to do that. Farquhar must go out to Jerusalem at the earliest possible moment. And I’ll get young Pettit, the surveyor, up from Richmond this afternoon.”

Gwen’s face was blanched, she stood rooted there, still staring down into the street, inexpressibly gloomy that winter’s morning. Lights were in the rooms of some of the houses opposite, while outside Notting Hill Gate Station, at the end of the road, the big electric globes were shedding their brilliance, as they did each night.

How should she act? She was calmly contemplating what might occur. Her head reeled, for she had not closed her eyes since she had last stood in that room face to face with her enemy—the man who had filched the secret from them and departed.

His threats rang in her ears. If she revealed the truth, then Mullet would be arrested, and in addition a foul lie, which alas! she could not refute, would be told both her lover and her father! She shuddered and held her breath. Had she not already promised secrecy to Mullet! Could she, after his self-sacrifice, deliberately bring ruin upon him?

No. She was hemmed in on every side by the impossible. And even if she told the truth, it was now too late, alas! Sir Felix Challas, great financier that he was, had agents in all the capitals, and possessed secret channels of information against which their little combination would be utterly powerless. Alas! they were now only tilting at the wind.

That red-faced blatant parvenu, that Jew-hating hypocrite who did his evil doings behind his moneybags, had triumphed!

Whatever she said, whatever allegation she made against the Baronet or Jim Jannaway—for she now for the first time had learnt his name—would make no difference. The bitterness of it all must fall upon her, and her alone.

Her young heart was crushed, stifled, broken.

If she spoke, or if she were silent, it was the same—she must play her lover false.