Ben opened the book and read the inscription. It was from the great man himself:
To my good friend, Benjamin Cartwright,
Your experiences ignited my imagination, and this is the result. Hope we can correspond again soon.
Your friend, Arthur Conan Doyle
Ben smiled wistfully; we Cartwrights had friends in high places, he thought and then sighed. The letter told him that Doyle obviously didn’t know that Benjamin died down in Venezuela some four years before the book was printed.
He carefully began to read pages here and there, picking up the gist of the story — a newspaper reporter, Edward Malone, is sent to interview a professor by the name of Challenger, who claims he knew of a hidden plateau in the South American Amazon that was inhabited by living dinosaurs.
Ben smiled as he read. In no time, Challenger had convinced a small band of supporters to embark on a perilous adventure to find this plateau, where they certainly did discover creatures from the dawn of time.
Well, of course they did, Ben thought dryly. He turned the book over in his hands, admiring the fine binding; he couldn’t imagine what the book was worth, but he’d certainly not let it linger in the old trunk any longer. He partially rewrapped it and placed it on the table beside his beer.
The next package he drew forth was a bundle of letters tied together with age-stained string. He undid the knot and spread them out. He could see they represented earlier correspondence back and forth between Benjamin and Doyle.
Ben snorted softly. So it was true then, he thought. He remembered his father regaling him with tales of Benjamin, the adventurer’s adventurer who went on many expeditions to remote corners of the globe, with the 1908 one being the fatal last. His wife had to organize recovery of his body from some remote village down in South America at the edge of the Amazon jungle.
He opened the first letter dated 1906, prior to his ill-fated trip. It discussed his preparations for the expedition he was organizing. He even invited Arthur Conan Doyle to come along and document it.
He read quickly; there were also meandering discussions about finances, who and what he should take with him, and then the rest settled on more mundane political matters of the time.
Doyle’s response was to express a keen interest in the expedition, but he politely declined to join Benjamin. However, he did offer to finance part of the trip if Benjamin ran into difficulty raising funds.
Ben looked at the dates of each letter and grinned — they were dated many weeks, and sometimes months apart, and the time lapse would have represented communication times between continents at the beginning of last century. Today, talking to someone anywhere in the world was near instantaneous and would have been something so astounding that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle might have only entertained the concept in one of his fiction novels.
Ben sipped his beer again and opened another letter, enjoying immersing himself into the minds of great men from over a century past. In this one, Benjamin described what he hoped to find — he had heard tales of a place of great beasts appearing once every decade during the wettest of seasons. And also of a hidden plateau in an unexplored Amazonian jungle that, in Benjamin Cartwright’s own words, would rewrite everything the world knew about biology and evolution.
“Get outta here.” Ben’s forehead creased — the hidden plateau, South American jungle, rewriting what we know about biology and evolution — he recognized all the basic elements from Doyle’s fantastic tale. He swung to where he left the copy of The Lost World and carefully unwrapped it again. He reread the dedication:
To my good friend, Benjamin Cartwright — your experiences ignited my imagination, and this is the result, Arthur Conan Doyle had written over a century before.
Is that what Doyle really meant? That over 100 years ago, Benjamin Cartwright had actually done what he had only described in his work of fiction? He chuckled as he closed the book, placing it back on the tabletop.
Impossible, he thought, but his interest sparked up more than ever. He reached for the next item in the pile — a single letter on top, once again in the famous author’s handwriting. Ben eased it open and read.
Dear Benjamin,
My dearest friend, I write this to your spirit, or perhaps to your heirs. Your passing has wounded me and serves to remind one of their mortality. But you, sir, will now remain the brave and youthful adventurer, forever.
Your notebook was, and is, invaluable, and so it will be kept with my favorite things in the secret place only we know — under the earth in Windlesham Manor.
Your friend, forever,
Arthur Conan Doyle
Under the earth? He freaking buried it? Ben snorted softly. “Way to go, Arthur.” Ben placed the old letter aside and lifted the next. This one was a larger envelope, dated 1931, and much more formal looking. It was still unopened and sent to the Benjamin Cartwright estate, just like with Doyle’s last letter, confirming they knew that Benjamin was no more. He carefully slid a finger along the gum-line and the ancient glue easily gave way.
The paper inside was of high-quality fiber. He immediately saw this one was written in a different hand and was from a legal firm representing the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He read down:
To whom it may concern,
You may now be aware that Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle has now passed away, and we have been charged with tidying up his affairs. Many items of Sir Arthur’s collection will be kept for posterity, some will be provided to museums, and some he had wished returned to their owners on his demise.
One such item was to be the leather-bound notebook of the late Benjamin Bartholomew Cartwright of Ohio, United States of America. This notebook was something Sir Arthur valued immensely and always wished to hand-deliver back to its owner, Mr. Cartwright. Obviously, events overtook both parties before this outcome could be satisfactorily achieved.
Unfortunately, our searches to date have not located the item referred to in previous correspondence. Should knowledge of its whereabouts come to light then this letter will serve as proof of ownership for a Cartwright heir to take possession of the notebook in person.
Yours sincerely,
Horatio William Bartholomew, Solicitor of Law
Windlesham Manor, Crowborough, East Sussex
The corner of Ben’s mouth turned up as he looked at the dozens and dozens of large chests in the attic. He held up his hands.
“And did you ever go and get it, Great Granddad or Granddad?” He sighed and lowered his hands, looking down again at the letter. His brows knitted as he remembered something that now seemed to answer his question — the letter had been unopened.
“Or perhaps it was never even claimed.”
He exhaled slowly through his nose and let his mind wander. The thrill of adventure coursed through his Cartwright veins and he let his eyes rise to the stacks of trunks, crates, and chests. But there were so many, it wearied him.
Ben yawned. “Nah, more likely there was another attempt at communication and probably somewhere in this museum warehouse is old Benjamin’s notebook.”
He sat in silence for a few more moments, staring into space and watching as the rays of early morning light streaming in through the attic’s dormer windows illuminated dust motes gently floating for an eternity, waiting patiently for the next large body to move through them and whip them into swirling agitation once again. As he watched them dance in the sunbeam, his eyelids began to lower, and lower.