The Elder Ice: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Read Online Free PDF

family looking for it… but as he said, thousands of people had been hunting for the hoard left by Alaric the Goth after he sacked Rome, and the Crown Jewels that King John lost in the Wash. But nobody else had ever searched the Antarctic before us.”
    “But there’s nothing but ice and snow…”
    “Now, maybe, but in ages past… you should have heard him on the subject! He was full of Celtic legends and ancient manuscripts. Ever hear of the Piri Reis map? A Turkish admiral pieced it together in the sixteenth century, from maps older than Noah. It shows the coastline of Antarctica, hundreds of years before Europeans set foot there, with trees and animals. The Boss said he'd studied it and there were some marks worth investigating.”
    “I don't think he ever mentioned anything like that in his book.”
    “He always knew the right story for the person he was talking to,” said Brown. “And he charmed thousands of pounds out of the backers, when you or I couldn't get sixpence.”
    I went to the bar for two more pints. At the mention of money, I could not help but notice Brown’s own condition. His shortage of funds was not temporary. His woollen sweater, like his greatcoat, was showing its age, and his shoes had been mended more than a few times. Nothing about him spoke of prosperity, and he drank his beer as though he had not tasted its nectar in years. Life was not simple for ex-explorers.
    A man with a distinctive unkempt beard was drinking alone in the next booth. I did not know him, but I had seen him before. Is he listening to us?
    “Even if you reached your Fata Morgana,” I said, placing a mug in front of Brown, “even if it had tombs as rich as Tutankhamen’s, and they were intact, and you managed to break into one... you wouldn't be able to carry out much on a sled.” I could not recall my exact calculations on the amount of gold an Antarctic explorer could carry, but they were in my notebook. “And as soon as the place was known, you couldn't stop others from coming afterward and there being a free-for-all.”
    “That was one of the Boss's favourite riddles. Suppose we did reach Fata Morgana itself, and we found the treasure room in the royal palace—piles and piles of loot—and you could only take out what you could carry. What would you have? He had us talking about that for days.”
    I scratched my chin. This sort of exercise requires a special type of imagination. Sir Ernest had it to excess, but I am perhaps deficient. I tried to see myself in some treasure room, like the colour plate in the Arabian Nights book I read as a boy. “I supposed I’d fill my pockets with gems and jewels.”
    “But how would you know if they were real ones or paste?” Brown smiled. “That's what the Boss always said. How would you know if they were stones that were valuable to the ancients but worthless these days, like quartz or coloured glass?”
    I have some skill in valuation, but jewellery is a specialist’s job. I rubbed my chin thoughtfully, not wishing to appear foolish.
    “If it’s a necklace with stones as big as grapes then it's bound to be costume stuff,” Brown went on. “Ever seen the Crown Jewels in the Tower? They’re not half as impressive as the stones the girls wear in Shaftesbury Avenue shows. How do you tell?”
    “Well, I don't know much about gemstones. What's the answer?”
    “Oh, you don't get out of it that easy.” He laughed, enjoying the game. “The Boss would string us out with this sort of thing for hours, days. What about works of art, eh? What about priceless books? Portable wealth... we'd spend whole evenings arguing about it, and about what we'd spend the money on afterwards. The Boss knew how to keep us going. It's funny, but even though you know the whole thing is one of his fantasies, you do get to thinking.”
    “Thinking what?”
    Brown was looking at the wall, but I imagined he was seeing a perfectly white landscape stretching endless out under a blue sky.