"Dear Mr Homfray,--Though we have not met for nearly two years, you will probably recollect me. I have of late been very ill, and in a most mysterious manner. I am, however, fast recovering, and am at last able to write to you--having recollected only yesterday your name and address.

"I have been suffering from blindness and a peculiar loss of memory; indeed, so much that I could not, until yesterday, tell people my own name. Here I am known as Betty Grayson, and I am living with some good, honest Normandy folk called Nicole.

"I need not recall the tragedy which befell my _fiance_, Mr Willard, but it is in that connexion that I wish to see you--and with all urgency, for your interests in the affair coincide with my own. I feel that I dare not tell you more in this letter than to say that I feel grave danger threatening, and I make an appeal to you to come here and see me, so that we may act together in clearing up the mystery and bringing those guilty to the justice they deserve.

"The situation has a.s.sumed the greatest urgency for action, so will you, on receipt of this letter, telegraph to me: chez Madame Nicole, 104, Rue des Chanoines, Bayeux, France, and tell me that you will come at once to see me. I would come to you, but as an invalid I am in the charge of those who are doing their best to ensure my rapid recovery.

You are a clergyman, and I rely upon your kind and generous aid.-- Yours very sincerely,

"Edna Manners."

"Edna Manners?" gasped Roddy when he saw the signature. "Can she possibly be the girl whom I saw dead in Welling Wood?"

CHAPTER TWENTY.

CONCERNS THE CONCESSION.

Next morning Roddy was compelled to leave Haslemere by the early train, and having met Barclay at Waterloo station, they drove in a taxi to the Ritz, where in a luxurious suite of apartments they found the white-bearded intellectual old Moor, Mohammed ben Mussa. His dark, deep-set eyes sparkled when in French Mr Barclay introduced the young man as "one of the most active and enthusiastic mining engineers in London," and from beneath his white robe he put forth his hand and grasped Roddy's.

"I am very pleased, Monsieur Homfray, to think that you contemplate prospecting in the Wad Sus. Our mutual friend Mr Barclay is well known to us in Fez, and at his instigation I am granting you the necessary concession on the same conditions as my predecessor proposed to you, namely, that one-eighth of the profits be paid to me privately."

"To those terms, Your Excellency, we entirely agree," Roddy said.

"Good. Then I have the agreement ready for your signature."

Upon the writing-table stood a small steel dispatch-case, from which His Excellency brought out a doc.u.ment which had been drawn up by a French notary in Tangiers, and, having read it, both Barclay and Homfray appended their signatures. Replacing it in the box, he then drew out a formidable-looking doc.u.ment written in Arabic with a translation in French.

Both Roddy and his friend sat down and together digested the contents of the doc.u.ment by which "Son Majeste Cherifiane," through "his trusted Minister Mohammed ben Mussa," granted to Roderick Charles Homfray, of Little Farncombe, in Surrey, the sole right to prospect for and to work the emerald mines in the Wad Sus region of the Sahara on payment of one-eighth of the money obtained from the sale of the gems to the Sultan's private account at the Credit Lyonnais in Paris.

It was a long and wordy screed, couched in the quaint and flowery language of the Moors, but the above was the gist of it. The Sultan and his Minister were sharing between themselves a quarter of the spoils, while Morocco itself obtained no benefit whatever.

The two Englishmen having expressed their acceptance, His Excellency, the slow-moving Moorish Minister, bestirred himself again, and taking a large piece of scarlet sealing-wax, produced a huge silver seal--his seal of office as Minister--and with considerable care and with a great show of formality, he heated the wax until he had a round ma.s.s about three inches in diameter, into which he pressed the all-important seal.

Then, ascertaining that the impression was a good one, he took out a red pen and signed it with long, sprawly Arabic characters, afterwards signing his name in French as Minister of His Majesty the Sultan.

"And now, my young friend," said the patriarchal-looking man in French, as he handed the doc.u.ment to Roddy hardly dry, "I want to give you some little advice. You will go to Mogador, and there you will meet Ben Chaib Benuis, who will bear a letter from me. He will conduct you safely through very unsafe country which is held by our veiled Touaregs, the brigands of the Great Desert. While you are with him you will have safe conduct into the Wad Sus, one of the most inaccessible regions south of the Atlas Mountains."

"I am much indebted to Your Excellency," said the young man. "I have had some little experience of mining operations in South America, and up to the present I am glad to say that I have been successful. I hope I may be equally successful in Morocco."

"You will surely be," the old man a.s.sured him. "Already Ben Chaib Benuis knows where to find the entrance to the workings, and the rest will be quite easy for you. You have only to raise the necessary capital here, in your city of London, and then we go ahead. And may Allah's blessing ever rest upon you!" concluded the mock-pious old man, who saw in the concession a big profit to himself and to his royal master.

Roddy folded the precious doc.u.ment into four and placed it in the breast pocket of his dark-blue jacket with an expression of thanks and a promise to do his utmost to carry out his part of the contract.

"We have every hope of floating a very important company to carry out the scheme," said Andrew Barclay enthusiastically, even then in ignorance that the plan given him by the Minister's predecessor in Ma.r.s.eilles was no longer in his possession. "I saw the beautiful dark emerald which has been only recently taken from one of the mines. It is a glorious stone, finer, they say, than any that have ever come from the Urals into the treasury of the Romanoffs."

"Emeralds and rubies are the most precious stones of to-day," Roddy declared. "Diamonds do not count. They are unfashionable in these post-war days of the ruined aristocracy and the blatant profiteer. A big emerald worn as a pendant upon a platinum chain is of far greater notoriety than a diamond tiara. n.o.body wears the latter."

It was eleven o'clock, and His Excellency rang for a cup of black coffee, while Barclay and Roddy each took a gla.s.s of French vermouth.

Then, when they sat down to chat over their cigarettes, Roddy glanced casually at the morning newspaper, and saw the announcement that the Moorish Minister was in London "upon a matter of international importance concerning the port of Mogador."

The young fellow smiled. The matter upon which old Mohammed was "doing himself well" at the Ritz concerned his own pocket--the same matter which affects nine-tenths of the foreign political adventurers who visit Paris and London. They make excuses of international "conversations,"

but the greed of gain to themselves at the expense of their own country is ever present.

Later, when he walked with Barclay along Piccadilly towards the Circus, the concession safely in his pocket, Roddy turned to his friends and said:

"Do you know, Andrew, I'm not quite easy in my own mind! I fear that somebody might try to do me out of this great stroke of good fortune for which I am indebted to you."

"Why? Who could contest your right to the concession? The future is all plain sailing for you--and for Miss Sandys, I hope. I congratulate you, my boy. You'll end by being a pillar of finance!"

"Never, old chap," laughed Roddy. Then, after a few moments' pause, he added: "I'm going over to France to-morrow. I must go."

"Why?"

"I have a little matter to see after that brooks no delay. When I'm back I'll tell you all about it. I'll be away only two or three days at most. But in the meantime I shall place the concession with old Braydon, my father's solicitor, in Bedford Row. I have to see him this afternoon regarding some matters concerning the poor old governor's will."

"Yes. Perhaps it may be just as well, Roddy," said his friend. "But as soon as you have recovered from the blow of your poor father's death we ought to take up the concession and see what business we can do to our mutual advantage. There's a big fortune in it. Of that I'm quite convinced."

"So am I--unless there are sinister influences at work, as somehow I fear there may be."

But Barclay laughed at his qualms. The pair took lunch in a small Italian restaurant in Wardour Street, and while Andrew returned to Richmond, Roddy went along to see his father's old friend, Mr Braydon, and asked him to put the sealed concession into safe keeping.

"I'm just sending along to the Safe Deposit Company's vaults in Chancery Lane," said the grey-haired, clean-shaven old man who was so well known in the legal world. "I'll send the doc.u.ment for you. Perhaps you will like a copy? I'll have a rough copy made at once." And, touching a bell, he gave the order to the lady clerk who entered in response.

When Roddy left Bedford Row he felt that a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

Perhaps he would not have been so completely rea.s.sured if he had known that Gordon Gray himself had been very cleverly keeping watch upon his movements all the morning. He had been idling in the corridor of the Ritz while Roddy had been engaged in the negotiations, and he had been standing on the opposite pavement in Bedford Row while he had sought Mr Arnold Braydon.

When Roddy had walked down towards Holborn the silent watcher had turned upon his heel and left, with a muttered expression of dissatisfaction, for he knew that young Homfray had placed the official doc.u.ment in keeping so safe that theft would now be impossible.

"We must change our tactics," growled the king of international crooks to himself. "That concession would be worthless to us even if we had it at this moment. No; we must devise other means."

And, hailing a pa.s.sing taxi, he entered and drove away.

Gordon Gray had been foiled by Roddy's forethought. Yet, after all, the concession had been actually granted and stamped by the official seal of the Moorish Minister of the Interior. Therefore, the dead rector's son was in possession of the sole right to prospect in the Wad Sus, and it only now remained for him to start out on his journey into the Sahara and locate the mines, aided by the plan which his friend Barclay had been given.

As far as Roddy was concerned the concession was an accomplished fact.

But uppermost in his mind was that curious letter addressed to his father from the girl, Edna Manners. Something impelled him to investigate it--and at once.

Therefore, he dashed back to Little Farncombe, and before going home called at the Towers, intending to show the strange letter to Mr Sandys before leaving for Bayeux. James, the footman, who opened the door to him, replied that both his master and Miss Elma had left at twelve o'clock, Mr Sandys having some urgent business in Liverpool. They had gone north in the car.

Disappointed, Roddy went home and packed a suit-case, and that evening left for Southampton, whence he crossed to Havre, as being the most direct route into Normandy.

At midday he alighted from the train at Bayeux, and drove in a ramshackle _fiacre_ over the uneven cobbles of the quaint old town, until at the back of the magnificent cathedral he found the address given in the letter.

Ascending to the first floor, he knocked at the door, and Madame Nicole appeared.

"I am in search of Mademoiselle Grayson," he said inquiringly in French.

"Mademoiselle lives here," answered the woman, "but, unfortunately, she is not at home. She went out last evening to post a letter, and, strangely enough, she has not returned! We are much distressed. Only an hour ago my husband informed the commissary of police, and he is making inquiries. Mademoiselle has recovered her sight and, to a great extent, her proper senses. It is a mystery! She promised to return in a quarter of an hour, but she has not been seen since!"