"Grandpa!"
"You’re not supposed to be up here…looking at that."
"I just wanted to know."
"Well, you’re old enough I suppose. You should know the story. Ok, here we go. It was 1832, on a night much like this. Charles Carroll was last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was also a member of a secret society known as the Masons. And he knew he was dying. He woke up his stable boy in the middle of the night and ordered him to take him to the White House to see Andrew Jackson because it was urgent that he speak to the president."
"Did he talk to him?"
"No, he never got the chance. The president wasn’t there that night. But Charles Carroll had a secret, so he took into his confidence the one person he could, my grandfather’s grandfather, Thomas Gates."
"What was his secret?"
"A treasure beyond all imagining. A treasure that had been fought over for centuries by tyrants, pharaohs, emperors, warlords. Every time it changed hands it grew larger. And then suddenly it vanishe