I now feel it obligatory upon me to inform you of what was then but a dim suspicion,and as such would have been unwise to give utterance to,but which now,from various subsequent calculations assuming no little probability,it may be important that you should not remain in further ignorance of.
It is my solemn duty to warn you,sir,that there is architectural cause to conjecture that somewhere concealed in your chimney is a reserved space,hermetically closed,in short,a secret chamber,or rather closet.How long it has been there,it is for me impossible to say.What it contains is hid,with itself,in darkness.But probably a secret closet would not have been contrived except for some extraordinary object,whether for the concealment of treasure,or for what other purpose,may be left to those better acquainted with the history of the house to guess.
But enough:in making this disclosure,sir,my conscience is eased.Whatever step you choose to take upon it,is of course a matter of indifference to me;though,I confess,as respects the character of the closet,I cannot but share in a natural curiosity.Trusting that you may be guided aright,in determining whether it is Christian-like knowingly to reside in a house,hidden in which is a secret closet,I remain,with much respect,Yours very humbly,HIRAM SCRIBE.
My first thought upon reading this note was,not of the alleged mystery of manner to which,at the outset,it alluded-for none such had I at all observed in the master-mason during his surveys--but of my late kinsman,Captain Julian Dacres,long a ship-master and merchant in the Indian trade,who,about thirty years ago,and at the ripe age of ninety,died a bachelor,and in this very house,which he had built.He was supposed to have retired into this country with a large fortune.But to the general surprise,after being at great cost in building himself this mansion,he settled down into a sedate,reserved and inexpensive old age,which by the neighbors was thought all the better for his heirs:but lo!upon opening the will,his property was found to consist but of the house and grounds,and some ten thousand dollars in stocks;but the place,being found heavily mortgaged,was in consequence sold.Gossip had its day,and left the grass quietly to creep over the captain's grave,where he still slumbers in a privacy as unmolested as if the billows of the Indian Ocean,instead of the billows of inland verdure,rolled over him.Still,I remembered long ago,hearing strange solutions whispered by the country people for the mystery involving his will,and,by reflex,himself;and that,too,as well in conscience as purse.But people who could circulate the report (which they did),that Captain Julian Dacres had,in his day,been a Borneo pirate,surely were not worthy of credence in their collateral notions.It is queer what wild whimsies of rumors will,like toadstools,spring up about any eccentric stranger,who settling down among a rustic population,keeps quietly to himself.With some,inoffensiveness would seem a prime cause of offense.But what chiefly had led me to scout at these rumors,particularly as referring to concealed treasure,was the circumstance,that the stranger (the same who razeed the roof and the chimney)into whose hands the estate had passed on my kinsman's death,was of that sort of character,that had there been the least ground for those reports,he would speedily have tested them,by tearing down and rummaging the walls.
Nevertheless,the note of Mr.Scribe,so strangely recalling the memory of my kinsman,very naturally chimed in with what had been mysterious,or at least unexplained,about him;vague flashings of ingots united in my mind with vague gleamings of skulls.But the first cool thought soon dismissed such chimeras;and,with a calm smile,I turned towards my wife,who,meantime,had been sitting nearby,impatient enough,I dare say,to know who could have taken it into his head to write me a letter.
"Well,old man,"said she,"who is it from,and what is it about?""Read it,wife,"said I,handing it.
Read it she did,and then--such an explosion!I will not pretend to describe her emotions,or repeat her expressions.Enough that my daughters were quickly called in to share the excitement.
Although they had never dreamed of such a revelation as Mr.
Scribe's;yet upon the first suggestion they instinctively saw the extreme likelihood of it.In corroboration,they cited first my kinsman,and second,my chimney;alleging that the profound mystery involving the former,and the equally profound masonry involving the latter,though both acknowledged facts,were alike preposterous on any other supposition than the secret closet.
But all this time I was quietly thinking to myself:Could it be hidden from me that my credulity in this instance would operate very favorably to a certain plan of theirs?How to get to the secret closet,or how to have any certainty about it at all,without making such fell work with my chimney as to render its set destruction superfluous?That my wife wished to get rid of the chimney,it needed no reflection to show;and that Mr.
Scribe,for all his pretended disinterestedness,was not opposed to pocketing five hundred dollars by the operation,seemed equally evident.That my wife had,in secret,laid heads together with Mr.Scribe,I at present refrain from affirming.But when Iconsider her enmity against my chimney,and the steadiness with which at the last she is wont to carry out her schemes,if by hook or crook she can,especially after having been once baffled,why,I scarcely knew at what step of hers to be surprised.
Of one thing only was I resolved,that I and my chimney should not budge.
