Читать книгу Beyond the Great South Wall: The Secret of the Antarctic онлайн

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“Well,” said I, “I am certainly astonished, but I cannot say I am greatly moved by your tale, Mr. Crum. It would certainly never have occurred to me to cross three or four thousand miles of ocean to interview a foreign savant about a coin or a document. But then, you see, I am not made that way.”

“Very likely, my lord,” submitted the lawyer, “but you will pardon me if I say that you have not seen the letter by Admiral Sir John. That sheds a very curious light on the question, and certainly adds vastly to the interest one of your family must take in it. But I will show it to you at your leisure.”

“I am as leisured now as I am likely to be for the rest of time,” said I, “but before I see the letter I should just like to squint at the coins, if you are not particularly occupied for the next hour.”

He rose at once and preceded me to the outer office, where a door opened on to a flight of stone steps. Down these he guided me, ushering me at last into a broad, whitewashed cellar, wherein not less than half-a-dozen great safes faced each other from wall to wall. He clicked a key in the lock of one, and turned a handle. The great door swung back and showed row upon row of numbered sliding drawers, lined with velvet, and covered—every square inch of them—with coins of every degree of dirt, ancientry, and denomination. One drawer alone was nearly empty, and this held two gold pieces, and placed beside them on the velvet a sheet of ancient paper, covered with crabbed writing and faint with the dust of ages. The lawyer took it up and unfolded it carefully, and then I saw for the first time the screed that sent my uncle speeding across the ocean at its behest, and which was to leave its mark on my life also.