The Great God Gold. William Le Queux

      In an instant the old man became intensely interested though he endeavoured very cleverly to conceal the fact. He bent, and taking up a large magnifying-glass mounted in silver—a gift from Frank on the previous Christmas—he carefully examined each word in its order.

      “Ah!” he exclaimed, “the first three lines, underlined as you see, are apparently a portion of some prophecy regarding the captivity of the Jews in Babylon, ‘the period of the Blood-debts,’ after which comes the period when the oppression will lose its power, which means their release by Cyras. Come now, this is of some interest!”

      “Read on, dad,” urged the dainty girl, excitedly. “Tell us what you gather from it.”

      The pair were standing hand-in-hand, at the back of the old man’s writing-chair.

      “Not so quickly, dear—not so quickly. That’s the worst of women. They are always so erratic, always in such an uncommon hurry,” he added with a laugh.

      Then, after a pause during which he carefully examined the lines which followed, he pointed out: “You see that somebody—not the writer of the document, remember—has stated that Moses’ tablets ‘The Cha—’, which must mean the Chair of Grace, between two cherubims of fine gold, a number of other things, including the Ark of the Covenant itself and the archives of the Temple down to B.C. 600 are—what?”

      And he raised his head staring at the pair through his round and greatly magnifying-glasses.

      “Doctor Diamond’s theory is that the treasures of Solomon’s Temple are still concealed at the spot where they were hidden by the priests before the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar.”

      The Professor laughed aloud.

      “My dear Farquhar,” he exclaimed, “on the face of this folio it would, of course, appear so. One may read it as a statement of fact that all the relics of the Temple and all the great treasures of the ages bygone—the Treasure of Israel—are concealed ‘beneath’, somewhere—‘which is a series’ of something. To this, there are three entrances, one only being accessible. Then in the final lines, we have another prophecy that the tablets shall ‘remain in their hiding-place—that is with the Ark of the Covenant—till the coming of the Messiah who alone may open the treasure-house, or place of concealment, in order that he may show proof of—’, and the rest is lost.” he added with a sigh of disappointment.

      “I admit,” said Frank, “that is one reading of it. But what is your reading—that of an expert?”

      The old man merely shrugged his shoulders and said:

      “I don’t think that the Doctor’s theory is the correct one. The belief that the Treasure of Solomon’s Temple still exists is far too wild and unsubstantiated. Of course, it is not quite clear in history what became of the contents of the Temple, but I think we may safely at once dismiss any possibility of the relics of Moses as being intact after a couple of thousand years or so. Stories of hidden treasure have appealed to the avarice of man throughout all the ages, from the days of the Roman Emperors, down to the day before yesterday, when a ship went forth to search for the lost gold of President Kruger. There have been hundreds, nay thousands of expeditions to search for treasure, but in nearly every case the searchers have returned sadder and poorer men. No, Frank,” he exclaimed, decisively, “I don’t think any one would be such an utter fool as to attempt to suggest that the Treasure of Israel still exists. At least no scholar would. Whoever would do such a thing would be a clumsy bungler, ignorant of both the Hebrew language and the history of the Hebrew nation. Doctor Diamond, from what you tell me, is, I gather, one of such.”

      “But they are not the Doctor’s documents,” Frank hastened to point out. “As I’ve told you, a man dying in Paris ordered him to burn them. He did so, but they were not all consumed.”

      “The Doctor worked a trick upon a dying man,” sniffed the Professor. “Hardly played the game—eh?”

      “I quite agree with you there,” answered young Farquhar. “Yet, according to the Doctor’s version, he was in no way responsible for the fact that only half the folios were consumed.”

      “Well, whatever it is,” declared the Professor, very decisively, “it seems to be some rather clumsy ‘cock-and-bull’ story. In what I’ve read. I, as a scholar, could pick many holes. Indeed, such a screed as this could never have been concocted by any one with any pretence of knowledge of old Testament history. There are certain statements which are utterly absurd on the face of them.”

      “Which are they?” inquired Frank eagerly.

      “Oh—several,” was the rather light reply. “As you are not a scholar, my dear boy, it would be useless me going into long and technical explanations. The disjointed bits of prophecy are, I admit, really most artistic,” he added with a laugh.

      If the truth be told, Arminger Griffin was concealing the intense excitement that had been aroused within him. He was making a discovery—a wonderful, an amazing discovery. But to this young journalist, who would merely regard it as a good “boom” for one of his irresponsible halfpenny journals, he intended to pooh-pooh it as a mere clumsy fairy tale.

      “Well,” he asked, a moment later, in an incredulous tone. “What else have you to show me?”

      “No more typewriting,” was Frank’s reply. “The only other folio is one of manuscript, and it will probably interest you, for it contains two Hebrew words,” and he placed before the great expert a half-consumed fragment of lined manuscript paper which bore some close writing in English of which the present writer gives a facsimile here.