riental Rug

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

The Baron had always lived in Lilliland Castle. He grew up there and knew every room and every storage closet. When his fiancée Lady Angela of Alpine Castle was visiting as a child they would play hide-and-seek throughout the castle.

As adults they would still play hide-and-seek but they made sure they could easily find each other. They both had kept their respective castles unchanged for the past hundred years. In fact, if a long deceased relative had returned he would have felt perfectly at home.

The entrance to the Great Hall had always been very impressive. The oil paintings, the statues, the drapes, the oriental rugs, and the fine furniture all seemed to be perfectly suited to the Great Hall in Lilliland Castle.

Periodically, things in the Great Hall had to be cleaned and polished. The paintings had to be restored, the tapestries cleaned, and the statues scrubbed. Once every five years the large oriental rug in the center of the hall had to be sent out for a careful cleaning.

The year for the rug cleaning had arrived. Since there was a new company doing the rug cleaning it was noticed that the back of the rug had a peculiar design resembling a map on it. The Baron was notified to ascertain whether he knew about the design on the back. He indicated that he did not and asked his chief advisor Professor Hamblin to take a careful look at the back of the rug. The Professor had the back of the rug photographed and a careful drawing made of the design.

The Professor soon determined that the design was a map to a secret cave near the castle. The map indicated that the cave was at the water’s edge on Castle Lake. The map looked to be about 200 years old and the configuration of the shoreline might have changed over the years.

The map indicated that there was a treasure buried in the cave, a large single stone, a sapphire. The large stone had been smuggled on a boat from the Orient and was to be picked up by a person who had originally planned to purchase the rug. But the rug was sold to the Baron’s ancestors by mistake. Once something was sold to royalty, it was difficult to ask for it back without causing an insulting incident.

The Baron and Lady Angela with the Professor led a search for the secret cave and the treasure. The cave was found exactly as indicated on the map. The sapphire, according to the map, was hidden in a piece of pottery. The pottery was located with the stone inside, and the objects were both placed in the Lilliland Museum for all to see.