The Great God Gold

The discovery, much in the form that I have here presented it, has actually been made, and its discoverer, a well-known professor at one of the Universities in the North of Europe, recently placed the extraordinary statement in my hands.

In consequence, I consulted a number of the first living authorities on the subject, who most courteously gave me their opinions and to whom I owe much assistance, while several other Hebrew scholars, less noted, evinced the greatest curiosity.

Therefore I trust that the reader himself may find this hitherto unheard-of statement of facts of equal importance and interest.

William Le Queux.

Devonshire Club, London, 1910.

CHAPTER ONE.

INTRODUCES THE STRANGER.

“My name? Why--what does that matter, Doctor? In an hour--perhaps before--I won’t trouble anybody further.”

“But surely it is your duty, my friend, to let me know your name?” argued the other. “Even if it be in confidence.”

The dying man slowly shook his head in the negative, moved uneasily, and stretching forth his thin trembling hand, answered in indifferent French.

“I regret that I cannot satisfy your curiosity. I have a reason--a--a strong private reason. Here is my key,” he went on, speaking very slowly and with great difficulty in a weak voice scarce above a whisper. “Open my bag, doctor, and;--and you’ll find there a--a big envelope. Will you give it to me?”

The Doctor, a queer, deformed little man shabbily dressed, with grey hair and short grey beard, rose from the bedside and with the key crossed to where a well-worn leather bag lay upon the floor.

As he turned his back upon his nameless patient and knelt beside the bag, a curious look of craft and cunning overspread his hard, furrowed countenance. But it was only for a second. Next instant it had vanished, and given place to that serious expression of sympathy which his face had previously worn.

He found a large blue, linen-lined envelope which he gave into the white trembling hands of the stranger.

The prostrate man looked about fifty, his unkempt hair and moustache just tinged with grey, unshaved, and with white drawn face betraying long and intense suffering.

Why was he so determined to conceal his name? What secret of his life had he to hide?

Upon his blanched features was written the history of a curious and adventurous past. Perhaps he held some strange and amazing secret. He was eccentric in only one particular--that though he knew himself to be dying, he would leave no message for any relative; refusing absolutely and stubbornly to give his name, even to the man who, now at his side, had befriended him.

The room was a small and not over cleanly one, high up in a fourth-rate hotel close to the Gare du Nord, in Paris, a room with a single bed, a threadbare carpet, and a cheap wooden washstand with the grey December light filtering through lace curtains that hung limp and yellow. The wallpaper was greasy and faded, and the bed itself the reverse of inviting.

To Doctor Raymond Diamond the dying man had been an entire stranger until three days before--a chance acquaintance which adversity had brought him. Both men were, as a matter of fact, stranded in Paris. They had, in ascending the narrow stairs of their little hotel, wished each other “Good-day.” Men who are hard up always form easy acquaintanceships. The stranger had told him that he was a Dane, from Copenhagen, but the name, Jules Blanc, which he had given to the proprietor was certainly not Danish. Indeed, he had admitted to Diamond that he had not given his real name. He had reasons for withholding it.