Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
But the same night he received a visit. A delegation of strongly built, grimly silent men invaded his room. Very little was said, but there followed an uninterrupted night journey. By daybreak von Veltheim was well on his way to British territory, with instructions to remain away from the Transvaal.
For a time his luck seems to have left him. In Cape Colony he was among enemies, and was forced to make shift as a manual laborer for several months. He worked his way eastward, avoiding capture with difficulty, but at Delagoa Bay the police picked him up as a vagrant without recognizing him.
With a number of other vagrants he was placed on a ship for deportation to England, which was the last place he cared to visit. The ship’s officers were not aware of the identity of their passenger, and taking advantage of their laxity, he disappeared from the ship at Capetown. Then, like a bad penny, he turned up again at the Transvaal.
Two things could be said for him. He possessed plenty of courage, and he had the utmost confidence in his own ability to extricate himself from any difficulty. So again he boldly walked the streets of Johannesburg. Too boldly.
Solly Joel, brother of the late Woolf Joel, passed by and glanced casually at him. A few minutes later a gentle tap on the shoulder conveyed a familiar message to him. A Transvaal policeman, gun in hand, quietly requested his company to the station.
With an equal lack of fuss he was conducted to jail. Charge? Oh, anything. British spy, for example. And it was as a spy that he was imprisoned for the period of the Boer War.
The British captured Johannesburg. The prison records revealed the existence of an English spy in its cells. Whereupon von Veltheim was given his freedom with honors, and began to blaze a new trail of misadventure throughout Europe.
Once more he was the elusive giant, badly wanted in many countries; almost caught time without number; always vanishing with one name, reappearing with another; living riotously, squandering a fortune during one month, haunting the docks the next.
In 1901 Trieste, the seaport town on the Mediterranean, was garrisoned by the pomp and glittering uniforms of Austrian military aristocracy. The general in command was fond of display, an adorer of rank, and — short of money.
One day there appeared in his quarters a man after his own heart. He was tall, finely built, displayed a uniform more gorgeous than his own, claimed high rank in the German army, and — promised the general the opportunity to make much money.
How? That would come later. Would the general introduce him to his officers and later to the best society of the town? The general would.
He gave a resplendent dinner for which von Veltheim supplied the funds. Colors flashed, white shoulders gleamed, military music resounded. At the commanding officer’s right hand sat a figure which held the eyes of all the women present.
Warmed with noise, laugher and wine, the general spoke with fervor. He wished to introduce to the favor of the distinguished company the son of one of the highest officers of the German army, who would relate to them the narrative of his marvelous adventures in South Africa.
The stranger rose to a clatter of applause. His language was simple, straightforward. He attempted no forensic effects. But the dignity of his bearing, his air of natural power gave his words the significance of truth.
He briefly sketched the preliminaries of his career in the Transvaal. As a personal friend of Paul Kruger’s he acted as his right hand man during the war — a war fought for the holy cause of liberty. He had suffered in that war, prison, torture, malignment. But it had not been without reward. First, the reward was a happy conscience; second, the strong possibility of a material payment.
“I possess a secret, my friends,” he said, “a secret of a buried treasure. Paul Kruger, my poor, persecuted comrade of the dead republic, shared this great secret with me before the end; before the final victory of that tyrant, England.
“An immense store of gold from the heart of the Transvaal, a vast wealth of diamonds from the mines of Kimberley lie buried far out on a lonely veldt. And I, dear friends, helped to bury it. This is the secret which has been locked in my bosom, and, sooner than to permit it to pass into the hands of the ravisher of Africa, I shall die with the knowledge hidden in my breast.
“There are millions and tens of millions, and none but black savages and the animals of the wilds tread the soil that covers them. What happiness it would bring to me, what joy, to share them with you, my newly-found comrades. The dangers I must pass through to reach that Golconda, to bring it back, they are nothing.
“But my sorrow is this: I have lost my all in the war of oppression. I am a poor man. And so to you, companions in arms of my beloved Vaterland, I offer this wealth. For myself I ask but a part. To you, if you will, shall go the bulk. All that I ask is that you make this recovery possible. I ask you to form an expedition, to pay the costs.
“I shall give my knowledge, my experience, if need be — my life. But this, too, I ask, nay demand, that one-third of this treasure hoard shall be sent to my poor friend, the heart-broken idealist, Paul Kruger, Else there shall be no search.” He folded his arms nobly over his breast.
Buried treasure! The glamour of the phrase! The romance of it! How it dazzles the eyes of the most worldly, the most skeptical. The company broke into a furor of exclamations, questions, offers. Von Veltheim was surrounded by a clamor which he had difficulty in stilling.
Gradually out of the confusion came the coherence of a plan, the formation of a stock company and the selling of shares. It is a commentary on the man’s hypnotic powers that there was not a single unbeliever in the gathering.
The reader will smile at their credulity, but perhaps the smile will acquire a somewhat bitter flavor when memory brings back the promises of some oil stock or mining shares which proved to have no greater existing value than von Veltheim’s buried treasure.
Twenty thousand pounds! That was the sum placed into his hands by those of simple faith and simpler heads. Then — pouf — the man was gone. And with him went the wife of one of the officers — and her jewels.
America came next. A favorite with society, silencing rumors with a glance, an accusation with a brilliant lie; an outwitter of business men, who admired him the more for fooling them. Wealth poured in and flooded out. Several years of crest and trough.
Naples and a duel; Switzerland and a marriage to eight thousand pounds; Paris and a girl who killed herself for him. Fifty years of age, still a freeman, still a wanderer — but a tired one. What would be the end? He wanted peace and rest, but the devil of his nature drove him. One last coup for millions and he would stop — if he could.
His memory traveled back. What did he know that could give him this? The secrets of Woolf Joel. The scandals that would tarnish a great name. Solomon Barnato Joel, multi-millionaire race horse owner, living in England, would pay well to keep these skeletons in their graves.
In 1908, ten years after the death of Woolf, von Veltheim and “Solly” Joel met again. The blackmailer wasted no words.
“These are the things I know,” he said. And he recited them. The other man eyed him coolly and speculatively.
“How much?”
“Fifteen thousand pounds.”
The calm brain of the Boer was at work. “It would be only the beginning,” he thought silently. Aloud he said: “That is too much.”
“Nothing less.”
“Ten thousand?”
“No.”
“Give me time to think it over.”
“Three days.” He left, exulting.