Bab Bab 11 · 第11章

The Great Agra Treasure

Our captive sat in the cabin opposite to the iron box which he had done

so much and waited so long to gain. He was a sunburned, reckless-eyed

fellow, with a network of lines and wrinkles all over his mahogany

features, which told of a hard, open-air life. There was a singular

prominence about his bearded chin which marked a man who was not to be

easily turned from his purpose. His age may have been fifty or

thereabouts, for his black, curly hair was thickly shot with grey. His

face in repose was not an unpleasing one, though his heavy brows and

aggressive chin gave him, as I had lately seen, a terrible expression

when moved to anger. He sat now with his handcuffed hands upon his lap,

and his head sunk upon his breast, while he looked with his keen,

twinkling eyes at the box which had been the cause of his ill-doings.

It seemed to me that there was more sorrow than anger in his rigid and

contained countenance. Once he looked up at me with a gleam of

something like humour in his eyes.

“Well, Jonathan Small,” said Holmes, lighting a cigar, “I am sorry that

it has come to this.”

“And so am I, sir,” he answered, frankly. “I don’t believe that I can

swing over the job. I give you my word on the book that I never raised

hand against Mr. Sholto. It was that little hell-hound Tonga who shot

one of his cursed darts into him. I had no part in it, sir. I was as

grieved as if it had been my blood-relation. I welted the little devil

with the slack end of the rope for it, but it was done, and I could not

undo it again.”

“Have a cigar,” said Holmes; “and you had best take a pull out of my

flask, for you are very wet. How could you expect so small and weak a

man as this black fellow to overpower Mr. Sholto and hold him while you

were climbing the rope?”

“You seem to know as much about it as if you were there, sir. The truth

is that I hoped to find the room clear. I knew the habits of the house

pretty well, and it was the time when Mr. Sholto usually went down to

his supper. I shall make no secret of the business. The best defence

that I can make is just the simple truth. Now, if it had been the old

major I would have swung for him with a light heart. I would have

thought no more of knifing him than of smoking this cigar. But it’s

cursed hard that I should be lagged over this young Sholto, with whom I

had no quarrel whatever.”

“You are under the charge of Mr. Athelney Jones, of Scotland Yard. He

is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true

account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you

do I hope that I may be of use to you. I think I can prove that the

poison acts so quickly that the man was dead before ever you reached

the room.”

“That he was, sir. I never got such a turn in my life as when I saw him

grinning at me with his head on his shoulder as I climbed through the

window. It fairly shook me, sir. I’d have half killed Tonga for it if

he had not scrambled off. That was how he came to leave his club, and

some of his darts too, as he tells me, which I dare say helped to put

you on our track; though how you kept on it is more than I can tell. I

don’t feel no malice against you for it. But it does seem a queer

thing,” he added, with a bitter smile, “that I who have a fair claim to

nigh upon half a million of money should spend the first half of my

life building a breakwater in the Andamans, and am like to spend the

other half digging drains at Dartmoor. It was an evil day for me when

first I clapped eyes upon the merchant Achmet and had to do with the

Agra treasure, which never brought anything but a curse yet upon the

man who owned it. To him it brought murder, to Major Sholto it brought

fear and guilt, to me it has meant slavery for life.”

At this moment Athelney Jones thrust his broad face and heavy shoulders

into the tiny cabin. “Quite a family party,” he remarked. “I think I

shall have a pull at that flask, Holmes. Well, I think we may all

congratulate each other. Pity we didn’t take the other alive; but there

was no choice. I say, Holmes, you must confess that you cut it rather

fine. It was all we could do to overhaul her.”

“All is well that ends well,” said Holmes. “But I certainly did not

know that the _Aurora_ was such a clipper.”

“Smith says she is one of the fastest launches on the river, and that

if he had had another man to help him with the engines we should never

have caught her. He swears he knew nothing of this Norwood business.”

“Neither he did,” cried our prisoner,—“not a word. I chose his launch

because I heard that she was a flier. We told him nothing, but we paid

him well, and he was to get something handsome if we reached our

vessel, the _Esmeralda_, at Gravesend, outward bound for the Brazils.”

“Well, if he has done no wrong we shall see that no wrong comes to him.

If we are pretty quick in catching our men, we are not so quick in

condemning them.” It was amusing to notice how the consequential Jones

was already beginning to give himself airs on the strength of the

capture. From the slight smile which played over Sherlock Holmes’s

face, I could see that the speech had not been lost upon him.

“We will be at Vauxhall Bridge presently,” said Jones, “and shall land

you, Dr. Watson, with the treasure-box. I need hardly tell you that I

am taking a very grave responsibility upon myself in doing this. It is

most irregular; but of course an agreement is an agreement. I must,

however, as a matter of duty, send an inspector with you, since you

have so valuable a charge. You will drive, no doubt?”

“Yes, I shall drive.”

“It is a pity there is no key, that we may make an inventory first. You

will have to break it open. Where is the key, my man?”

“At the bottom of the river,” said Small, shortly.

“Hum! There was no use your giving this unnecessary trouble. We have

had work enough already through you. However, doctor, I need not warn

you to be careful. Bring the box back with you to the Baker Street

rooms. You will find us there, on our way to the station.”

They landed me at Vauxhall, with my heavy iron box, and with a bluff,

genial inspector as my companion. A quarter of an hour’s drive brought

us to Mrs. Cecil Forrester’s. The servant seemed surprised at so late a

visitor. Mrs. Cecil Forrester was out for the evening, she explained,

and likely to be very late. Miss Morstan, however, was in the

drawing-room: so to the drawing-room I went, box in hand, leaving the

obliging inspector in the cab.

She was seated by the open window, dressed in some sort of white

diaphanous material, with a little touch of scarlet at the neck and

waist. The soft light of a shaded lamp fell upon her as she leaned back

in the basket chair, playing over her sweet, grave face, and tinting

with a dull, metallic sparkle the rich coils of her luxuriant hair. One

white arm and hand drooped over the side of the chair, and her whole

pose and figure spoke of an absorbing melancholy. At the sound of my

foot-fall she sprang to her feet, however, and a bright flush of

surprise and of pleasure coloured her pale cheeks.

“I heard a cab drive up,” she said. “I thought that Mrs. Forrester had

come back very early, but I never dreamed that it might be you. What

news have you brought me?”

“I have brought something better than news,” said I, putting down the

box upon the table and speaking jovially and boisterously, though my

heart was heavy within me. “I have brought you something which is worth

all the news in the world. I have brought you a fortune.”

She glanced at the iron box. “Is that the treasure, then?” she asked,

coolly enough.

“Yes, this is the great Agra treasure. Half of it is yours and half is

Thaddeus Sholto’s. You will have a couple of hundred thousand each.

Think of that! An annuity of ten thousand pounds. There will be few

richer young ladies in England. Is it not glorious?”

I think that I must have been rather overacting my delight, and that

she detected a hollow ring in my congratulations, for I saw her

eyebrows rise a little, and she glanced at me curiously.

“If I have it,” said she, “I owe it to you.”

“No, no,” I answered, “not to me, but to my friend Sherlock Holmes.

With all the will in the world, I could never have followed up a clue

which has taxed even his analytical genius. As it was, we very nearly

lost it at the last moment.”

“Pray sit down and tell me all about it, Dr. Watson,” said she.

I narrated briefly what had occurred since I had seen her

last,—Holmes’s new method of search, the discovery of the _Aurora_, the

appearance of Athelney Jones, our expedition in the evening, and the

wild chase down the Thames. She listened with parted lips and shining

eyes to my recital of our adventures. When I spoke of the dart which

had so narrowly missed us, she turned so white that I feared that she

was about to faint.

“It is nothing,” she said, as I hastened to pour her out some water. “I

am all right again. It was a shock to me to hear that I had placed my

friends in such horrible peril.”

“That is all over,” I answered. “It was nothing. I will tell you no

more gloomy details. Let us turn to something brighter. There is the

treasure. What could be brighter than that? I got leave to bring it

with me, thinking that it would interest you to be the first to see

it.”

“It would be of the greatest interest to me,” she said. There was no

eagerness in her voice, however. It had struck her, doubtless, that it

might seem ungracious upon her part to be indifferent to a prize which

had cost so much to win.

“What a pretty box!” she said, stooping over it. “This is Indian work,

I suppose?”

“Yes; it is Benares metal-work.”

“And so heavy!” she exclaimed, trying to raise it. “The box alone must

be of some value. Where is the key?”

“Small threw it into the Thames,” I answered. “I must borrow Mrs.

Forrester’s poker.” There was in the front a thick and broad hasp,

wrought in the image of a sitting Buddha. Under this I thrust the end

of the poker and twisted it outward as a lever. The hasp sprang open

with a loud snap. With trembling fingers I flung back the lid. We both

stood gazing in astonishment. The box was empty!

No wonder that it was heavy. The iron-work was two-thirds of an inch

thick all round. It was massive, well made, and solid, like a chest

constructed to carry things of great price, but not one shred or crumb

of metal or jewelry lay within it. It was absolutely and completely

empty.

“The treasure is lost,” said Miss Morstan, calmly.

As I listened to the words and realised what they meant, a great shadow

seemed to pass from my soul. I did not know how this Agra treasure had

weighed me down, until now that it was finally removed. It was selfish,

no doubt, disloyal, wrong, but I could realise nothing save that the

golden barrier was gone from between us. “Thank God!” I ejaculated from

my very heart.

She looked at me with a quick, questioning smile. “Why do you say

that?” she asked.

“Because you are within my reach again,” I said, taking her hand. She

did not withdraw it. “Because I love you, Mary, as truly as ever a man

loved a woman. Because this treasure, these riches, sealed my lips. Now

that they are gone I can tell you how I love you. That is why I said,

‘Thank God.’”

“Then I say, ‘Thank God,’ too,” she whispered, as I drew her to my

side. Whoever had lost a treasure, I knew that night that I had gained

one.