"Not of necessity. It"s an easy mistake to fall into, dear boy. And, besides, I don"t know that you were trapped that way, after all; it"s only a guess on my part."
"By Jove, you must have hit upon the right thing, though, and for this reason. I only told Weems about the Recipe. I kept back the item about specimens being buried under the writing, as a sort of _bonne bouche_; and as matters turned out, never told a soul about it. So, you see, the man who looted the Talayot could certainly not have overhauled the Diary, or he would never have left this little red urn full of gems. I found it where Lully buried it six hundred years ago, the lid waxed over, and stamped with an alembic and the man"s own family coat of arms. Gad, I wonder where that signet ring"s got to now."
"Never mind that trifle, old chappie. We"ve got enough of the gentleman"s family jewellery to be able to do without a trumpery gold ring. It"s the rest of the legacy that I"ve got my covetousness upon now. Where"s that gone to? You didn"t happen to inquire of your farmeress person whether she"d had any other visitors with archaeological tastes during the last few days?"
"I didn"t; but I don"t think she knew of any one being about on that tack, or she"d have told me about it. The woman was garrulousness personified."
"Still there"s no harm in returning there to-morrow and pushing inquiries a little further."
"Not the least. It stands to reason some one has been inside the Talayot; and thanks to this island being a small one, with a good average of inhabitants to the acre, we should, if we push inquiries far enough, find out who the explorer was and when he went there."
With that we left the subject, and Haigh went on to relate what a day he"d had with the Juggins before that worthy finally tore himself away to catch the Mallorca steamer; which topic, being treated with a humorous touch, kept us in merriment for the rest of the evening.
Next day I lazed, and Haigh, taking his turn on duty, rode down to the neighbourhood of Talaiti de Talt, and brought back news that mystified us still further. The good woman who owned the farm knew nothing about the matter, neither did the ploughman from whom I had bought the three-angled hoe; but a stonemason in the cemetery above Alayor reported as follows:--
He had seen three men, strangers, come up the road from Ferreiras and walk down that towards Alayor. The time was after midnight, and as he had finished the work which had detained him so long--to wit, opening a vault for the reception of a fresh tenant on the morrow--he strolled homewards after them. But as they pa.s.sed on straight through the town he got a bit curious, and, keeping out of sight, followed astern, along the narrow country roads which led to nowhere special. He saw them pull up before the great tumble-down Talayot which stands opposite the big stone altar, and watched them produce lantern, shovel, and pickaxe, and begin to dig; after which, feeling that his interest had evaporated (so he said), or, more probably, being oppressed with sleepiness, he returned to Alayor, and soon had his head under the bedclothes.
Now this was all understandable enough; but when that inquisitive tombstone artificer deliberately affirmed, in spite of many attempts to shake his memory, that the spoiling of the Talayot had taken place on the night immediately preceding our arrival in Mahon and the arrival of his most Catholic Majesty"s mail steamer _Antiguo Mahones_, then it seemed to Haigh and myself either that somebody was lying most blackly, or that we ourselves could not believe certain of our own senses which we had hitherto considered strictly reliable. For during the gale there had been absolutely no steam communication with Mahon from the Continent, and to Ciudadella steamers never run at any time.
"Of course," said Haigh, slowly swinging round the contents of his gla.s.s and blinking thoughtfully at them--"of course there"s the cable, which nine days out of ten is in working order. And as this show seems to be run on lines suitable for some place half-way between Egyptian Hall and the Bethlehem Inst.i.tution, we need be surprised at precious little. But the idea of your _caffe_ friend with the spectacles cabling across for some one here to copy the Recipe for him and send it back by post is a leetle too strong. Of course the chances are several millions to one against his knowing a soul in the island, much less the address of such a person; but even supposing that did occur, and he had an intimate friend here, we"ll say, for the sake of argument, at Ferreiras, why should he trust that friend? He must see the friend would understand that the opportunity was one which would not occur again in several score of lifetimes; and he might lay his boots on it that the friend, be he never so confidential and honest, would not fail to profit by the matter for his own ends. Because, you see, this earth is peopled by human beings and not archangels. And besides this trifling objection, doesn"t it strike you that the message would never land in the confidential friend"s fingers at all?"
"I don"t quite see that."
"It"s simple, though. The message is handed in at Genoa. I think there"s a through wire from there to Ma.r.s.eille. Thence it goes to Valencia, by which time it has been overhauled by at least three telegraph clerks and all their intimate friends. One cable crosses to Ivica, another continues on to Mallorca, and a third crosses to this island. Knowing the weakness of the Spaniard for making his work as c.u.mbersome as possible, it"s a small estimate to say that the message is--or ought to be--fingered by at least six more men before it gets to the delivering office. And do you suppose that out of all those poor devils of telegraph clerks there wouldn"t be at least one who would forswear his vows and pocket the information? No, no; "tisn"t good enough. If your man was smart enough to eavesdrop, you can lay to it he wasn"t a sufficiently stupendous idiot to shout his secret down a telegraph wire."
"There"s such a thing as cipher, though."
"There is," said Haigh dryly; "but I think we can make bold to leave that out of the calculations. The odds are piled up star-high, as it is, against Mr. Spectacles having a confidential agent here at all whom he would be inclined to trust with such a job. But when you suppose that the pair of them have a ready-arranged cipher in full working order, why, then, infinity is a small figure for the chances against it. Cabling is out of the question, old chappie. In fact, set alongside of that the idea of flying across carries ordinary probability with it."
"And as," I added, "the port captain at Ciudadella wires that he has had no single incoming vessel during the last ten days, and we know that none have come into Port Mahon except the fleet and the _Antiguo Mahones_ and ourselves, we"ve arrived at the most unpickable deadlock that two grown men ever scratched their heads over."
"That," said Haigh, "is about the size of it; and so I vote we just let the Recipe slide, and enjoy ourselves on the other goods the G.o.ds have kindly provided. Come across to the next room. The conductor of the opera company"s staying there, and if the opera company"s rank bad, the conductor, at any rate, is a musician."
CHAPTER XII.
A PROFESSIONAL CONSPIRATOR.
Up till that time I knew nothing of Haigh"s gifts in the musical line, and a bit of a revelation was in store for me. It did not come all at once. The conductor of the opera company ("_reputado maestro D.
Vincente Paoli_" the lean handbills styled him) opened the concert, and it was not until he and Haigh had some difference over the accentuation of a note in an air from Bizet"s _I Pescatori di Perle_ that my shipmate strode over the piano stool.
The old professional"s face was amusing to watch. Good-natured contempt for amateur theory was very plainly written on it at first. That gave way to surprise and wonder; and then these merged into undiluted admiration.
Haigh had given his version of the disputed pa.s.sage, and then saying, "This is rather a fine bit too," had played through the Moor"s fierce love song; after which, without any words being spoken, he verged off into other melody which we could appreciate even though we failed to recognize its origin. It was all new to us, and after a while we began to see that the player was his own composer.
He peered round from time to time, glancing over his shoulder at our faces, and once stopped to ask if we were bored.
"No, go on," said Paoli. "I never heard music like that before. It is new. I do not say whether I like it. I cannot understand it all as yet, I who can comprehend all that even Wagner wrote. But it is wonderful.
Continue.--No, nothing fresh, or my ears will be dazed with surfeit.
Play again that--that piece, that study, I know not what you call it, which ran somehow thus"--the Italian hummed some broken s.n.a.t.c.hes.--"It seemed to show me a procession of d.a.m.ned spirits scrambling down the mountains to h.e.l.l, with troops of little devils blackmailing them on the road. I know not how you call the thing, and like enough I have totally missed its motive; but there is something about it that holds me, fascinates me, and I would hear it again that I may understand."
Haigh grinned and complied, and then he played us more of his own stuff, the most _outre_ that human ears had ever listened to, and we marvelled still further. But having by this time fallen in with his vein, we both of us could appreciate the luxuries he was pouring out.
"Signor," said Paoli enthusiastically, when it was over, "if you chose, you could found a new school of music."
"And call it the Vagabond School, eh?"
"Your airs are wild and weird, I own, but, signor, there is melody in every note of them."
Haigh shrugged his shoulders. "Such melody, _maestro mio,_ as only the initiated can appreciate. You have been a wanderer, _maestro_, and so has Cospatric; therefore you understand. But the steady, industrious stay-at-homes, the people who think that they know what music really is, and what its limits are, and all about it, what would they say to these queer efforts of mine? They would not even dignify them by the word "distorted." They would call them unmitigated bosh, and set me down as a virulent maniac. No, signori, I am not ambitious, and so I shall not lay myself open to that sort of snubbing. Come across to the other room for cigarettes and vermouth."
And there we sat till the melancholy chaunt of the _sereno_ outside told us it was five o"clock, and, with the blessing of G.o.d, a fine morning.
A certain black box, my one piece of salvage from the wreck at Genoa, came up from the ugly cutter next afternoon, and I am proud to say that my violin added another link between us.
For the next three days we had as good a time as one need wish to enjoy. Every evening after his duties at the theatre were over the old Italian called us round his piano, and we feasted on what we all three loved. And then the opera company took steamer to fulfil an engagement at Valencia. Haigh was for accompanying them. Amongst other reasons he had a bit of a penchant for the soprano"s understudy. But I said "No,"
reminding him of the other business we had in hand, and pointing out how much time had been frittered away already.
"Oh, as to that," said he, "I think we may as well pat the pocket that holds what we"ve got, and resign ourselves to Kismet with regard to the rest."
"It"s scarcely wise to throw the sponge up yet. I am not hopeful, but I don"t despair."
"I"m letting the thing drop from my mind. However, if you"ve an idea, old chappie, let"s hear it."
"What do you say to taking up another partner?"
"To what end? I fail to see what use a third would be. Still, give the proposed partner a name."
"Taltavull."
"Phew! I say, I rather bar meddling with politics, especially the white-hot explosive politics that he affects."
"So do I. I hate "em. Still, if there"s anybody able to ferret out where that Recipe"s got to, and make the present holder disgorge, that long, lean, respectable-looking anarchist is the man. To begin with, he has a far cleverer head on him than either of us can run to, and from what I told you about his theories, he"ll be as keen as knives when once he"s shown the scent."
"But the man"s not more than human," objected Haigh. "I don"t see that he"ll be able to squint farther through a brick wall than either of us could."
"He has more chances, for this reason: he"s mixed up with social undercurrents whose flow we can neither trace nor follow. These will take him to places where we could not get, and show him things that we could not find."
"Which fine metaphor boiled down signifies that you want to bring the man into partnership because he is a professional conspirator."
"Put it that way if you like. Also you must not forget that you and I are at present dead-locked."
"So that we have all to gain and nothing to lose. Precisely; old man, you"ve put it in a nutsh.e.l.l. The only other thing is, do you think Taltavull would play fair?"
"We must risk that. It isn"t a matter one could make out a paper agreement over, and sign our names to across a charter-party stamp. But I think, from what I saw of him, Taltavull is not the man to do an unfair thing to any one who treats him well. But, as I say, we must be prepared to risk it."