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Show .PpT TREASURE -voifHT 1923 byBRENTANOt JMC, By ARTHUR. D. n?- H wPEjjS M 1 TH "PTT2CB,- garnets, n'lirquoISeVSiiiaIdS. and others I could not name. I picked up what had been a king's crown, a barbaric headdress of crude unalloyed gold, red and soft, set with enormous uncut stones. Next to it was a chased bracelet that might have come from the goldsmiths' shops of Athens in the classic age. The quantity quan-tity of precious things was almost inconceivable. in-conceivable. And this was but one of a score of chests. King stooped aud scooped up a handful of gold pieces from the floor, broad, finely minted, bearing the double-headed eagle of Byzantium and the busts and figures of dead-and-gone emperors. em-perors. "Was there ever such a find?" he muttered. "What a chance for the numismatists! See! Here is a by-zant by-zant of Artavasdos the Usurper. I never saw one before. It was not known that he had coined money. And CHAPTER XIII Continued. f l;a closed the argument. iiVn 011 Bettv's side in this" he ,m "At the least, she has given us etbing definite to work on. Now, ji'rtij iriH taIe my advice, Hugh, you !,j professor King, with Betty and wt to help you, will be the treasure-tang treasure-tang squad. I had best remain tfVlo 8ct as expeditionary liaison a with Wasso Mikali and his peo- at need. And if you don't mind, jlj ni.ed VTatkins as galloper." Every one agreed to this plan, and -le four of us immediately descended i,.0 the passage again. King made a artful study of the stonework, In Weii 1 assisted him, with a view to "irtaining beyond any doubt whether .ere was any sealed opening in its 5.11s. Both of us considered this the I'al first step, but Hugh and Betty wearied of so unexciting a task and lilt os to explore the upper end of lie drain. We had been at this for rather more tt;n an hour, without the faintest hint j success, when we were interrupted Syaliail from Hugh. '"Professor 1 Jack! "Come here!" "Oh, dad," called Betty, "here's a fanny Inscription on the wall." H'e dropped into the water, and t.iM inland for some twenty-odd p!s to where they were standing, ti'.li their torches bearing on a patch li marble let into the rough face of the right-hand wail. Hugh was work-is' work-is' with his knife-point, scraping away :e ffioss and fungi that partially obscured ob-scured the letters. "1 saw it by accident," bubbled Belly. "We went up a long way to litre the roof gets much lower, and se hoard water rushing ahead of us, m Ilajli said we ought to turn back. ; '!' light just happened to catch on j iMs piece of stoue here as we passed The same, daddy? The one the Instructions In-structions speak about?" "Manifestly, my dear, the date certifies certi-fies to that." "Then there must be something in it," she insisted. "'If there were tongues many might praise him.' Don't you see what it means? There were no tongues to praise him. This work was not known at the time. Why? And why was he able to keep it a secret?" "He may have murdered all the workmen," replied her father slowly. "He was a singularly bloody tyrant, according to the contemporary historians." his-torians." "Exactly," triumphed Betty. "And why would be have murdered them, in order to keep this work a secret? You see, he 'built the draija new from the tide-level,' probably to this point. That means there was a drain, but it needed repair, and he seized the opportunity op-portunity to hide his treasure. Hugh, where are those tools? I'm going to get this stone out of the wall." It was as hard a job as we tackled, despite the softening of the mortar by the moisture of the ages; but after two hours, Hugh and Vernon King were able to pry the slab loose and it fell out' with a mighty splash. Hugh thrust in the end of the crowbar, and it struck brickwork. Our torches showed this to be very flimsy, and when it was pounded it rang hollow. The three of us who had two arms apiece went at it with a will, and I was dispatched for reinforcements. Nikka refused to come himself, but he sent Watty, and the valet helped in the final act of demolition. By the end of the afternoon we had smashed through an embrasure nearly three feet high and four feet long, and Hugh nominated Betty for the honor . of leading the way into the dim passage pas-sage which abutted on the hole. The here is the likeness of Arcadius, first of the Eastern emperors." Betty threw ber arms around Hugh, as shameless, for the moment, as Kara. ''Oh, I'm so glad!" she murmured. "It's as much as you thought it would be, isu't it?" Hugh was dazed. "As much? By Jove, sweetheart, 1 1 never dreamed of anything like this! I really, you know, I didn't honestly believe in it before. I used to pretend to make myself carry on. I told myself it was up to me to see the thing through on Uncle James' account. ac-count. But this! I say, professor, how much do you suppose there is here?" Vernon King swept his torch in an arc around the chamber, the extreme confines of which were shrouded In shadow. "I am no fiscal expert, my dear boy. It would take a committee of jewelers to assess those chests alone. As for the gold, I have seen the treasury vaults in Washington, and gold mounts up fast when you run into the thousands thou-sands of pounds avoirdupois. Just as a wild guess, I might hazard a minimum mini-mum of $100,000,000, 20,000,000 at normal exchange." "But it can't be!" I protested, the sweat beading my forehead at the thought. "Why, it's ridiculous. They didn't have wealth on such a scale in those days." "Not at all, Jack," returned my uncle, his scholar's pride aroused. "You must remember that you are reviewing re-viewing here the hoard accumulated by a Roman emperor, one of the lasl rulers before the definite initiation of the empire's final collapse. It was then still by far the richest country of which we have any record. According Accord-ing to Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler of the Twelfth century, the revenue received by the emperor from II. There was one row of letters quite ('ear, but the others were all over-swn over-swn with this slimy stuff. What lots It say, dad?" "It's Greek, right enough," added ll'igh, slill scraping industriously. "I m make out a word here and there, 'it It doesn't seem to be the same lacguage I boned at school. Just a SMnt, sir, and I'll have the whole iwririlinn cleared." I peered over their shoulders .at the ttlily-carved lines of angular charters. rest of us crawied In afterward. My uncle and Watkins boosted me up, for my bad shoulder hindered me. The passage was seven feet high and four feet wide. It led straight back between brick walls into a largo chamber the roof of which was upheld by brick piers. The place was musty, fetid even, and very damp, but as our torches struggled thrpugh the darkness the rays were captured and juggled by glinting, sheeny heaps that were stacked against the piers and walls. Betty started forward involuntarily. invol-untarily. There was a slurring sound, and then a tiny tinkling that died away in a faint murmurous ss-ssh. "It's gold !" she cried. We (lashed our torches right and left. It was true. Great golden piles sloped away from us. The fragments of the bags that once had held this the city of Constantinople by itself amounted to 7,300.000 numismaf a, or in the neighborhood of $20,000,000. "Benjamin and other later authorities, authori-ties, Andreades, Paparrhegopulos, Kal-ligas, Kal-ligas, assert the revenue derived from the remainder of the empire to have represented five times this sum. At the most moderate computation, the total revenue of the empire must have exceeded $120,000,000. It was probably proba-bly very much more. In addition, the wealth of the individual citizens and nobles was enormous. The Emperor Andronicus, with whose efforts we have to deal here, had two years to milk the country's wealth. During those two years, he not only absorbed the taxes, but confiscated the wealth of more nobles than any ruler prior to that period. "I should not be greatly surprised If the contents of this chamber was discovered to exceed $123,000,000. Andronicus was possessed with n mania for accumulating a treasure for rebuilding the empire. If he " "If you aren't very lucky, Hugh, you are going to lose all this stuff just because be-cause you were lucky enough to Cud II -r (SI A tTT A PATE I ' I l, I Tift tOT B ti Z 0 WZKZ TiriTQ i 1 Kt , - 4ICF COE EfhrrjTP 33OE ) r rAftEEojY rc$ nc Urn' VIOr 1 FltlTOVri 1 The stone was about three or four swore, aud below it was another si'm0"6' Above tlie lettering was 6' "ataratcly scrolled cross. From ' ,c,,f souslit my uncle's face, and "Ud at once by the astonishment ' 1 mirrored there. amaziuS!" he muttered to 5" Is It. dad?" clamored Betty. ' H , n"'1 be'" he '!. shaking U, ,' ""e extraordinary ! Dear saw this formula before." I n'1'1' s sake, tell us!" I Implored. 1 S; nothing about the treasure, I -!v ys" lie answered sadly. ' ri'riso 'as called forth by the ' - iinii """ of exProssIon. These I : S, nlw-s follow a certain ! t:! .v. but this one is strik- i "w, ;, groaned Betty inelegant- "i; :?'."" Ue limit?" f h i 7wy I orgod. Vfclvi" V'Ui WOrds- : 1 1 bo-"!,n King, "and mind ,,'. "l'aUnK roughly-ln the It," said Nikka's voice behind us. We turned to confront him. Kara's dark, passionate face was at his shoulder. shoul-der. Iler eyes drank In the picture, and she stood on her tiptoes to whisper whis-per in Nikka's ear. "No, thank you, my dear," he answered an-swered dryly. "She suggests that 1 give her my knife, and that between us we clean up you people. Oddly enough, she is not' alone in possessing that idea. Who do you suppose is upstairs?" up-stairs?" "Mrs. Ililyer," I exclaimed. "Right. But she's not alone. She came back with Mahkouf Pasha. I've got them, both safe under lock and key, with Wasso Mikali's knife at their throats. Still" He shrugged his shoulders. "Out of the frying-pan into the fire, your linlship," remarked Walkins glumly. "Sure I was, this was too good to last." (To Be Continued) o My Uncle and Watkins Boosted Me Up. We Print Butter Wrappers. Send in your order today. uuu ur me ln- " i:,, AnIi'onleus, the Scepter : ; I ' i-,ilovi,,S Emperor of the :-; i.vei.-M Uu drain new from the S ',r"!0 off. ;' ' ' no different from thou-: thou-: 0;i 1 er Inscriptions we might r'nohesVn"'al'S' aquMs- el-' el-' '; ""w cm otller Inlb"c works. . :,! :C".n'M th Part I cannot un- ' 'r " Hit , ,'loru were tongues, ' Praise him.'" liii,,'.. Cre '""Sues many might ;w1;;lt(i; repeated Betty. ,, -iWlv .,v ,",a?" said Hugh V'-'-r or ,e Dot Interested in r'r,'r And, e rejects of the !,'' hi 7n,s were anxious to '?8ck-aM d curse nim for put-:,!lorJ!'d-l,ul' story on my fool- n:!c bit,,.,,0 t0"gues many might CllisthPTmed Bey "Sain. -!-lPror And 1 onicus I wealth projected from the multitude of coins. At the end of the chamber the piles mounted to the roof. There were stray rivulets of gold that trickled trick-led almost to the mouth of the passage. pas-sage. To the left stood several tiers of ancient chests. The first yielded at once to the point of Hugh's kuife. The rotten wood cut like cardboard. When he flung the lid back It fell apart, but we scarcely noticed it for the dazzling, glamor of the gems that seemed almost to light to escape from their centuries-long Imprisonment Jewels and jewelry aud massive plate were heaped in Indiscriminate confusion, huge salvers, cups, chalices, amphorae, bracelets, armlets, amulets, brooches, necklaces, rings beyond numberand num-berand running In and out of the set stones, the endless profusion of unmounted gems, diamonds, amethysts, rubles, opuls, pearls, sapphires, to- |