"It is of the greatest importance to the object I have in view that the facts I am about to disclose to you should reach your mind in the order I have here put them; otherwise the main fact in the revelation might have a pernicious effect upon you, my son."
The young man lowered the manuscript and mused a moment. It was obvious to him that no matter what he should think of the contents of this document his father had considered them of first-rate importance, and likely to influence his own mind and actions in no ordinary way. His father's sense and judgment! had never been called in question by any of his father's oldest and closest friends, and those who knew him most intimately never saw reason to account him liable to exaggerated estimates of the influence of ideas, except in his morbid sensitiveness to anything like popular revolutions or dynastic intrigues.
John Hanbury raised the document and recommenced where he had left off. That first sentence was cautionary: the second sentence took away the breath of the young man, by reason of the large field it opened to view, and the strange and intense personal interest it at once aroused. It ran thus:
"About the middle of the last century, when George the Second sat on the throne of England, and the usurper, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter the Great, on the throne of Russia, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams was appointed our ambassador to Russia. To Sir Charles Hanbury Williams you and I owe our name, although a drop of his blood does not flow in our veins, nor are we in any way that I know of related to him or his."
Again the young man lowered the manuscript from before his eyes. His face suddenly flushed, his eyes contracted, he thrust his head forward as though listening intently. What could be coming? He strained his hearing to catch sounds and voices muttering and mumbling on the limits of his thoughts. He was at sea, gazing with wild eagerness into the haze ahead, trying to determine whether what he saw was sea-smoke or cloud or land. Why these great chords in the prelude? What meant these muffled trumpets, telling of ambassadors and courts and kingdoms and empires? What concords were these preluding? What stately themes and regal confluences of harmony? Were these words the first taps of the kettle drums in his march upon some soul-expanding knowledge? What should he now see with his eyes and hear with his ears and touch with his hands? Upon what marvellous scenes of the undisclosed past was the curtain about to rise? Were some mighty engines that had wrought in the world's history about to be exhibited to his eyes? What mysteries of councils and of courts was he destined to witness and understand? Who was he? Of whom was he? Whence was he? Hanbury and yet no Hanbury. How came it he owned the middle and not the final name of the diplomatist and poet of the days of George the Second?
God of Heaven, could it be there was the blood of a shameful woman in his veins?
His face suddenly blanched. The thick dark veins of his temples and forehead lay down flat and then sank hollow. His swarthy rough skin shrank and puckered. His lips drew backward thinned and livid. His clenched white teeth shone out, and his breath came though them with a hissing noise. He drew himself up to his full height, and for a moment looked round defiantly.
All at once the blood flew back to his cheeks, his forehead, his neck. He covered his face with his bent arm and sank into a chair, crying: "Not that! Oh God, not that! Anything but that!"
He remained for a long time motionless, with his face covered by his arm, and the hand of that arm holding the paper against his shoulder. At first no thoughts passed through his mind. He was no longer trying to see or hear or divine. He felt overwhelmed, and if he had the power to do it he would there and then have ceased to think, have annihilated the power of thought for ever. To his sensitive and highly-wrought mind, base blood of even four or five generations back would have forbidden him any part in public life, and, worse than that a thousand times, have destroyed his personal interest and pride in himself for ever.
"I would rather," he moaned, when his mind became more orderly, "carry the hump upon the withered, distorted legs of that man, Oscar Leigh, than a bend sinister. A noble woman may fall, but no noble woman who has fallen would take money for her sin. It is not the sin that would hurt me, but the hire of the sin, the notion that I had the blood of shame in my veins, and the price of shame in my pocket. Bah! I would die of fever if it were so. My blood, the blood in my veins would ferment and stew my flesh. I should rot from within."
He dropped his arm and looked around him. The sight of the familiar room and well-known objects allayed the agony of despair. He drew a deep breath and sat up.
"I have been terrifying myself with shadows, with less than shadows, with absolute blanks; nay, I have been terrifying myself with less than nothing! I have been trying to change the absolute and manifest, and vouched sunlight into gloom and the people of gloom, phantoms. The only evidence before me is evidence against my fears. Instead of an intangible horror, there is an affirmed and ponderable assurance that although my name is Hanbury, and I got that name from Sir Hanbury Williams, not a drop of his blood is in my veins! Why, I am more like a girl with her first love-letter, trying to guess its contents from the outside, than a man with a business document in his hand! Let me read this thing through now as I discussed another matter awhile ago, as if it were a brief put into my hands as a counsel. It is exactly, or almost exactly like a brief." He tossed the sheets carelessly in his hand. "Let us see what the case is."
He sat himself back deliberately in his chair, thrust out his legs before him, and holding the manuscript in both hands began it again.
With contracted brows and face of stern attention he read on. He betrayed no more excitement than if he held in his hand a bluebook which he desired to master for some routine speech. Now and then he cleared his throat softly, imperfectly, indifferent to the result; for all other sound he made he might have been fashioned of marble. Now and then he turned the leaves and moved slightly from side to side; for all other motion he made he might have been dead.
At last he came to the final line, to his father's signature. He read all and then allowing the manuscript to fall from his hands and his arms to drop to his side, sat in the chair motionless, staring into vacancy.
For an hour he remained thus. Beyond the heaving of his chest and his calm regular respiration, he was perfectly still. At length he sighed profoundly, not from sadness, but deep musing, shook himself, shuddered, looked round him as though he had just waked from sleeping in a strange place.
He rose slowly and going to the window drew up the blind.
No lights were now to be seen in the rear of any of the houses, and complete silence filled the windless air.
"How peaceful," he whispered, "how calm. All the loyal subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria are now sleeping in calm security. What a contrast! Here the person of the subject is as sacred as the person of the sovereign. Good heavens, what a contrast! Gracedieu in Derbyshire. I seem to have heard of that place before, but I cannot recollect, when or where. Gracedieu must be a very small place, for my father says it is near the village of Castleton. I don't know where Castleton is, beyond the fact that it is in Derbyshire. Gracedieu--Gracedieu--Gracedieu. The name seems familiar enough, but joined with what or whom I cannot think. It is a common name. There must be many places of the name in England. My memory of it must be connected with some circumstance or people, for I am sure I have never been in the place myself or in Castleton either; or in Derbyshire at all, for the matter of that, except passing through. I don't think I can be familiar with the name in connection with the Peak. My only knowledge of the Peak and its neighbourhood is from some written description, and my only memory of the name Gracedieu is one of the ear, not of the eye.
"I am sure my memory of it is of the ear, and that it is a pleasant memory too! but I can get no further now. To-morrow I shall go and see the place for myself. This whole history is astounding. I am too much stunned by it to think about it yet.
"There's two o'clock striking. I must not wake my mother to tell her. I feel as if my reason were a little disturbed. I feel choked and smothered up--as if I could not breathe. I am worn out and weak. The day has been too much for me. I will go to bed. I am sure I shall sleep. I am half asleep as it is."
He drew back from the window and stretched up his hand for the cord.
"The Queen of England sleeps secure, with all her subjects secure around her--and I----" He did not finish the sentence. He shook his head and pulled down the blind.
Suddenly he struck his thigh with his clenched fist, calling out in a whisper: "Of course, I now remember where I heard of Gracedieu. What a stupid fool I have been not to recall it at once! It's the place that beautiful girl the dwarf introduced me to comes from! My head must be dull not to remember that! His Pallas-Athena, and I----"
He turned out the lights, and began undressing in the dim twilight; there were already faint blue premonitions of dawn upon the blind.
"I wonder," he muttered in the twilight, "will his figures of time include Cophetua and the Beggar Maid! Ha--ha--ha. I am half asleep.
"That old story I read this night was not unlike Cophetua and the Beggar Maid, only--I must not think of it now, I am too dazed and stunned and stupid."
He was in bed, and in a few minutes was asleep. On a sudden he woke up at the sound of his own voice, crying out loud in the profound peace of the early dawn:--
"Thieves! Thieves! Kosciusko to the rescue. The king is on your side!"
He found himself standing up in the bed gesticulating wildly. The sweat was pouring down from his forehead and he was trembling violently in all his limbs.
He stood listening awhile to ascertain if his shout had wakened the household, but unbroken silence followed his cry. Then he lay down and soon fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Mr. John Timmons's tea was a very long and unsociable meal. It took hours, and not even the half-dozen red-herrings brought to him by Mrs. Stamer in the fish-basket were allowed to assist at it. They lay in dense obscurity on the floor of the marine-store. Tunbridge Street was now as silent as the grave.
It was after eleven o'clock and John Timmons had not yet emerged from his cellar. All the while he had been below a strong pungent smell of burning, the dry sulphurous smell of burning coke, had ascended from below, with now and then noise of a hand-bellows blowing a fire, but no steam or sound or savour of cooking. Now and again there was the noise of stirring a fire, and now and again the noise of a tongs gripping and loosing and slipping on what a listener might, in conjunction with other evidence, take to be pieces of coke. From time to time the man below might be heard to breathe heavily and sigh. Otherwise he uttered no sound. If the subterranean stoker desired secrecy he had his wish, for there was no one in or near the place listening.
But if no one was listening to the stoker some one was watching the exterior of the marine-store in Tunbridge Street. A short time before eleven o'clock a man dressed in seedy black cloth, with short iron-grey, whiskers and beard, and long iron-grey hair and wearing blue spectacles, turned into the street, and sat down in a crouching position on the axle-tree of a cart, whose shafts, like a pair of slender telescopes, pointed to the dim summer stars, or taken together the cart and man looked like a huge flying beetle, the body of the cart being the wings, the wheels the high elbowed legs, the man the body of the insect and the two long shafts the antennae thrust upwards in alarm.
When it was about a quarter past eleven John Timmons emerged from the cellar, carrying in one hand a dark lantern, with the slide closed. When he found himself in his upper, or ground-floor chamber, or shop, or store, he drew himself to his full height, and, with head advanced sideways, listened awhile.
There was no sound. He nodded his head with satisfaction. Then he went cautiously to the wicket, and with a trowel began digging up the earth of the floor, which was here dark and friable and dry. It was, old sand from a foundry, and could be moved and replaced without showing the least trace of disturbance. Timmons did not use the lamp. He had placed it beside him on the ground with the slide closed.
After digging down about a foot he came upon a small, old, courier-bag, which he lifted out, and which contained something heavy. The bag had been all rubbed over with grease and to the grease the dark sand stuck thickly. Out of this bag he took a small, heavy, cylindrical bundle of chamois leather. Then he restored the bag to the hole, shovelled back the sand and smoothed the floor, rose and stood a minute hearkening, with the cylinder of chamois rolled-up leather in his hand.
This hiding-place had been selected and contrived with great acuteness. It was so close to the foot of the shutters that no one looking in through the ventilators at any angle could catch sight of it. The presence of the moulder's sand at the threshold was explained by the fact that no other substance was so good for canting heavy metal objects upon. Superficial disturbances were to be expected in such a floor, and it was impossible to tell superficial disturbances from deep ones. Once the sand was re-levelled with a broom-handle, used as a striker is used in measuring corn, it was impossible to guess whether any disturbance had recently taken place. In concealing and recovering anything here the operator's ear was within two inches of the street, and he could hear the faintest sound outside. The threshold was not a likely place to challenge examination in case of search.
Timmons now walked softly over his noiseless floor, carrying his lantern in one hand and the roll of leather in the other, until he got behind the old boiler of the donkey engine. Here he slid back the slide of the lantern and unrolled the leather. The latter proved to be a belt about a palm deep, and consisting of little bags or pockets of chamois leather, clumsily but securely sewn to a band of double chamois.
There were a dozen of those little pockets in all; six of them contained some heavy substance. Each one closed with a piece of string tied at the mouth. Timmons undid one and rolled out on his hand a thick lump of yellow metal about the size of the large buttons worn as ornaments on the coats of coachmen. It was not, however, flat, but slightly convex at one side and almost semi-spherical on the other.
He smiled a well-satisfied smile at the gold ingot, and weighed it affectionately in his black, grimy palm, where the gold shone like a yellow unchanging flame. Timmons gave the ingot a loving polish with his sleeve, dropped it back into its bag, and re-tied the string. Then out of each of his trousers' pockets he took a similar ingot or button, weighed each, and looked at each with affectionate approval, and secured each in one of the half-dozen vacant leather bags.
"Two pounds two ounces all together," he whispered. "I have never been able to get more than fifteen shillings an ounce for it, taking it all round at fifteen carats. His offer is as good as thirty shillings an ounce, which leaves a margin for a man to get a living out of it, if the dwarf is safe. If I had had only one deal with him, I'd feel he's safe, but he has done nothing but talk grand and nonsense up to this, and----" Timmons paused and shook his head ominously. He did not finish the sentence, but as he stood weighing the belt up and down in his hand, assumed suddenly a more pleasant look, and whispered with a smile exhibiting his long yellow teeth: "But after this deal to-night he can't draw back or betray me. That's certain, anyhow."
He unbuttoned his waistcoat, strapped the belt round his lank, hollow waist, blew out the lantern, and walking briskly, crossed the store, opened the wicket and stepped into the deserted street. He closed and locked the door behind him, and turning to his left walked rapidly among the carts and vans to London Road.
Before he disappeared, the elderly man with grizzled hair and whiskers, dressed in seedy black cloth, emerged from the shadow of the cart and kept stealthily and noiselessly in the rear of the marine-store dealer. John Timmons was on his way to keep his important business appointment with Leigh in Chetwynd Street, Chelsea, and the low-sized man with blue spectacles was following, shadowing Timmons.
When Leigh left Curzon Street that evening, he made his way into Piccadilly first, and thence westward in a leisurely way, with his head held high and a look of arrogant impudence and exultation on his face. He turned to the left down Grosvenor Place. He was bound to Chetwynd Street, but he was in no humour for short cuts or dingy streets.
He was elated. He walked with his head among the stars. All the men he met were mud and dross compared with him. Whatever difficulty he set himself before melted into nothingness at his glance. If it had suited him to set his purpose to do what other men counted impossible, that thing should be done by him. No political party he led should ever be out-voted, no army he commanded defeated, no cause he advocated extinguished. These creatures around him were made of clay, he of pure spirit, that saw clearly where the eyes of mere men were filled with dust and rheum.
This clock upon which he was engaged would be the eighth wonder of the world when completed. He had not yet done all the things he spoke of, had not yet introduced all the movements and marvels he had described to the groundlings. But the clock was not finished. Why it was not well begun. By and by he would set about those figures of time. They would require a new and vastly complicated movement and great additional power, but to a man of genius what was all this but a bagatelle, a paltry thing he could devise in an hour and execute by and by?
Already the clock was enormously complicated, and although it seemed simple enough, as simple as playing cats-cradle when he was near it, when he could see the cause and application of all its parts and instantly put any defect to rights, still when he was away from it for a long time, part of it seemed to stop and sometimes the whole of it, and--this was distracting, maddening--the power seemed to originate at the escapements, and the whole machine would work backward against his will until the enormous weights in the chimney, out of which he got his power, were wound up tight against the beams, until the chains seemed bursting and the beams tearing and the wheels splitting and dashing asunder. And all the while the escapements went flying in reverse so fast as to dazzle him and make him giddy, and then, when all seemed lost and the end at hand, some merciful change would occur and the accursed reversed movement would die away and cease, and after a pause of unspeakable joy the machine would start in its natural and blessed way again and he would cry out and weep for happiness at the merciful deliverance.
Hah! He felt in thinking of these sufferings about the clock as though the movement were going to be reversed now.
Leigh paused for a moment, and looked around him to bring himself back to the actual world.
"Hah!" he whispered. "I know why I feel so queer. It's the want of food. I have had no food to-day--for the body any way--except what she gave me. What food she gave me for the soul! My soul was never full fed until to-day."
He resumed his course, and, without formulating his destination, directed his steps instinctively towards the restaurant where he usually dined.
"But this alchemy?" his thoughts went on, "this miracle gold? What of it?" He dropped his chin upon his chest and lapsed into deep thought. The boastful and confident air vanished from his eyes and manner. He was deep sunk in careful and elaborate thought.
The position looks simple if regarded in one way. Here this man Timmons calls on him and says:--
I am a marine store dealer, and all kinds of old metal come into my hands. I buy articles of iron and copper and lead and brass and tin and zinc. I buy old battered silver electro-plate and melt it down for the silver. Silver is not worth the attention of a great chemist like you. But sometimes I come across gold. It may reach my hands in one way or several ways. It may turn up in something I am melting. It may be gilding on old iron I buy. You are not to know all the secrets of my trade as a marine store dealer, which is a highly respectable if not an exalted trade. Now gold, no matter how or where it may be, is worth any man's consideration. The gold that comes my way is never pure. It averages half or little more than half alloy. You are a great chemist. I cannot afford time to separate the gold from the alloy. I cannot spare time to go about and sell it. Every man to his trade; I am a marine-store dealer, you are a great chemist. What will you give me for ingots fifteen carats fine?
The value of gold of fifteen carats to sell is two pounds thirteen shillings and a penny. Gold is the only thing that never changes its price. Any one who wants pure gold must give four pounds four shillings and eleven pence halfpenny for it. Fifteen twenty-fourths! The value of fifteen twenty-fourths of that sum is two pounds thirteen and a penny. The alloy counts as dross and fetches nothing----
"Hah! Yes," thought Leigh interrupting his retrospect with a start as he found himself at the door of the restaurant where he proposed dining, "I must have food for the body. Food for the soul, if taken too largely or alone, kills the body, no matter how strong and shapely and lithe it may be. I shall think this matter out when I have eaten. I shall think it out over a cigar and coffee."
He ordered a simple meal and ate it slowly, taking great comfort and refreshment out of the rest and meat. He had a little box all to himself. He was in no humour for company, and it was long past the dinner time in this place, so that the room was comparatively deserted.
When he had finished eating he ordered coffee and a cigar, and putting his legs up on the seat, rested his elbow on the table, lit his cigar and resumed his cogitations in a more vigorous and vocal manner, using words in his mind now instead of pictures.
"Let me see. Where was I? Oh, I recollect. Timmons can't spare time for chemistry or metallurgy and doesn't care to deal with so valuable a metal as gold, even if he had the time. I understand all about metals and chemistry and so on. I entertain the suggestion placed before me and turn it round in my mind to see what I can make of it. I get hold of a superb idea.
"Of course, after extracting the metal from the alloy, when I had the virgin gold in my hand I should have to find a market for it, to sell it. The time has not yet come for absolutely forming my figures of time in metal. Wax will do even after I begin the mere drudgery of the modelling.
"Well, if I were to offer considerable quantities of gold for sale in the ordinary way, I should have to mention all about John Timmons, and that would be troublesome and derogatory to my dignity, for then it would seem as though I were doing no more than performing cupelling work for this man Timmons.
"The whole volume of science is open to me. I am a profound chemist. I am theoretically and practically acquainted with the whole science from the earliest records of alchemy down to to-day. I agree with Lockyer, that according to the solar spectrum some of the substances we call elements have been decomposed in the enormous furnaces of the sun. I hold instead of their being seventy elements there is but one, in countless modifications, owing to countless contingencies. What we call different elements are only different arrangements of one individual element, the one element of nature, the irreducible unit of the creation, the primal atom. This is a well-known theory, but no one has proved it yet.
"I stand forth to prove it, and how better can I prove it than by realizing the dream of the old transmuters of metals. Alikser is not a substance. The philosopher's stone is not a thing you can carry in your pocket. It is no more than a re-arrangement of primal atoms. What we call gold is, let us say, nothing more than crystallized electricity, and I have found the secret of so bringing the atoms of electricity together that they fall into crystals of pure gold. Up to this the heat of the strongest furnaces have not been able to volatilize one grain of metallic gold: all you have to do to make metallic gold is to solidify it out of its vapourous condition, say electricity or hydrogen, what you please.
"How this is done is my great discovery, my inviolate secret. The process of manufacture is extremely expensive, I cannot share the secret with anyone, lest I should lose all the advantage and profit of my discovery, for no patent that all the government of earth could make with brass and steel would keep people from making gold if they could read how it may be done.
"Pure gold is value for a halfpenny less than four pounds five shillings an ounce Troy. I will sell you pure gold, none of your childish mystery gold with its copper, and silver, and platinum clumsiness that will not stand the fire, but pure gold that will defy any test wet or dry, or cupel, for four pounds the ounce. Come, will you buy my Miracle Gold at four pounds the ounce Troy?"
Leigh struck the table triumphantly with his hand, and uttered the question aloud. His excitement had carried him away from the table, and the restaurant. He was nowhere he could name. He was in the clouds challenging no one he could name to refuse so good an offer. He was simply in the lists of immortality, throwing down the gage to universal man.
No one was present to accept or decline his offer. No one caught the words he uttered. But the sound of the blow of his fist upon the table brought a waiter to the end of the box. Leigh ordered more coffee and another cigar. When they had been brought and he was once more alone, his mind ran on:--
"That is one view of it, that is the view I should offer to my customers and to the world of my position. But what kept me so from closing with this Timmons was the consideration that everyone who heard my version of the matter might not accept it.
"The clock is out-growing me, and often I feel giddy and in a maze with it. A clock cannot fill all my life and satisfy all a man's heart. At the time I began it years ago I fancied it would suffice. I fancied it would keep my heart from preying on itself. But now the mechanism is often too much for me when it is not before my eyes. It wears, and wears, and wears the mind, as it wears, and wears, and wears itself.
"When this man Timmons came to me first, I thought of putting the clock to a use I never contemplated when I started making it. Since I began to think of making the clock of use in my dealings with this Miracle Gold, I have seen her; I have seen this Edith Grace, who staggered me in my pursuit of Miracle Gold and filled my veins with fire I never knew before. What fools we men are! And I who have not the proportions of a man, what a fool ten thousand times multiplied! She shrank from me as though I were a leper, I who am only a monster! I would give all the gold that ever blazed before the eye-balls of men to have a man's fair inches and straight back! I! I! I! What am I that I should have feelings? Why, I am worse than the vilest lepers that rotted without the city gate.They, eventhey, had had their days of wholesomeness and strength before the plague fell upon them. I was predestined from birth to stand in odious and grotesque blackness against the sun, to seem in the eyes of all women a goblin spewed out of the maw of hell!"
He paused. The clock struck. He sprang to his feet.
"Ten!" he said aloud. He said to himself: "Ten o'clock, and I have a good deal to do before Timmons comes at midnight."
Suddenly he paused on his way to the door of the restaurant, and stood in deep thought. Then he resumed his way to the door and when he got out into the street, said half aloud:
"Strange that I should have forgotten all about that. Have I much to do before midnight? I told her--the other, the more wonderful and more beautiful one of the same mould, the one with the heart, the lady of the two--that I should decide about the gold between the time I was speaking to her and the same time next week. She did not shrink from me as if I were a leper, this second one of the two. Stop, I have no time to think this matter out now. I have a week. I will take all steps as though I had not seen her in that room. What a pitiful, mean cad that Hanbury is! Why, he's lower than a leper! He's more contemptible than even I!"
He cleared his mind of all doubts and concentrated it upon what he had to do before meeting John Timmons. He hurried along and in a few minutes let himself into his house with his latch-key.
There was no voice or even light to greet him in his home. As he ascended the stairs he thought: "If tombs were only as roomy as this house I shouldn't mind being done with daylight and the world, and covered up. Now, I'd give all I own in this world to have a comfortable mind like Williams, my friend the publican, over the way. Ha-ha-ha!" His hideous laugh, now shrill like the squeal of grating metal, now soft and flabby and gelatinous like the flapping of a wet cloth, echoed in the impenetrable darkness around him.
"If Hanbury were only here now and had a knife--in ten minutes I'd know more than any living man. Ha-ha-ha!"
Oscar Leigh sat in the dark on the last step but one of the stairs of his house, awaiting the arrival of John Timmons. It was close to the appointed hour. He had spent the interval in his workshop with the clock. He had one of his knees drawn up close to his body, his elbow rested on his knee, his long bearded chin in the palm of that hand. It was pitch dark. Nothing could be seen, absolutely nothing. For all the human eye could learn an inch from it might be a plate of iron or blind space.
"My mother cannot live for ever," whispered the dwarf--like many people who live much in the solitude of cities he had the habit of communing with himself aloud--"and then all will be blank, all will be dark as this place round me. Where shall I turn then? Whom shall I speak my heart to? I designed my clock to be a companion, a friend, a confidant, a solace, a triumph; it is becoming a tyrant and a scourge. It is cruel that my mother should grow old. Why should not things stop as they are now? But we are all on our way to death. We are all on our way out of the world to make room for those who are coming in. No sooner do we grow to full years and strive to form our hearts than we discover we are only lodgers in this world and that those we like are leaving our neighbourhood very soon, and that while we cannot go with them we cannot remain either.
"A man must have something to think of besides himself; a deformed dwarf must never think of himself at all, unless he thinks great things of himself. I am depressed to-night. I have been living too fast all day. What a long day it has been. I told that young whelp, Hanbury, I should show him something more wonderful than Miracle Gold. I took him with me to Grimsby Street, and the marvellous likeness between those two girls took the sight out of his eyes and the speech out of his mouth, and the little brains he has out of his head. Then I go with him to seeherwho is the other, only with glory added to beauty. She is better and more wonderful than Miracle Gold, better and more wonderful than the substance of the ruby flash in the flame of the diamond. If the devil had but let me grow up as other men, she might have made me try to carry myself and act like a god. I am of Satan's crew now--it would hardly pay to apostatize. Here's Timmons."
The knock agreed upon sounded on the door and reverberated through the hollow darkness. Leigh rose, and sliding his left foot and supporting his body on the stick, held close in under his ribs, went to the door and opened it.
"Twelve to the minute," said Timmons, holding up his hand and waving it in the direction whence came the sound of a church clock striking midnight.
"Let us go for a walk," said Leigh, turning west, away from Welbeck Place and the Hanover, and shutting the door behind him.
"But I have the stuff with me," said Timmons, in a tone of annoyance and protest.
"Let us go for a walk, I say," cried Leigh imperiously, striking his thick twisted stick fiercely on the flags as he spoke.
The two men turned to the left, and went on a few paces in silence. Timmons was sulky. A nice thing surely for a creature to ask a man to call on business at his private residence with valuable property at midnight and then slam the door in his face and coolly ask him to go out for a walk! It was a downright insult, but a man couldn't resent an insult from such a creature. That was the worst of it.
"I have been in telegraphic communication with Birmingham since I saw you," said Leigh, stopping under a lamp-post, pouring out a few drops of eau-de-cologne into his palm and inhaling the spirit noisily.
"Oh?" said Timmons interrogatively, as he looked contemptuously at the dwarf.
"Hah! That's very refreshing. Most refreshing. May I offer you a little eau-de-cologne, Mr. Timmons?" said the little man with elaborate suavity.
"No, thanks," said Timmons gruffly. "I don't like it." Timmons's private opinion was that a man who used perfume of any kind must be an effeminate fool. It was not pleasant to think this man, with whom he was about to have very important business transactions, should be an effeminate fool. Perhaps it indicated that he was only a new kind of villain; that would be much better.
"Hah!" said Leigh, as they re-commenced their walk, "I am sorry for that, for it is refreshing, most refreshing. I was saying that since I had the pleasure of visiting your emporium--I suppose it is an emporium, Mr. Timmons?" he asked, with a pleasant smile.
"It may be, or it may be an alligator, or a bird-show, or anything else you like to call it," said Timmons in exasperation. "But you were saying you had a message from Birmingham since I saw you."
"I had not only a message, but several messages. I went straight from your emporium to King's Cross, so as to be near Birmingham and save delay in wiring. I know where I can usually get a clear wire there--a great thing when one is in a hurry--the mere signalling of the message is, as you know, instantaneous."
"Ay," said Timmons scornfully, with an impatient serpentine movement running up his body and almost shaking his head off its long, stalk-like neck. "Well, is the fool off the job?" asked he coarsely, savagely, in slang, with a view to showing how cheap he held such unprincipled circumlocution.
The dwarf stopped and looked up with blank amazement on his face and an ugly flash in his eyes. "Is what fool off the job, Mr. Timmons? Am I to understand that you are tired of these delays?"
Timmons snorted in disdainful rage. The implication that he was the only fool connected with the matter lay in the tone rather than the words, but it was unmistakable. The dwarf meant to insult him grossly, and he could not strike him, for it would be unmanly to hit such a creature, and he could not strangle him, for there were people about the street. By a prodigious effort he swallowed down his rage, spread his long thin legs out wide, as if to prevent the flight of Leigh, and said in a hoarse, threatening, sepulchral voice: "Look here, Mr. Leigh. I've come on business. What have you to say to me? I have twenty-six ounces that will average fifteen carats. Are you going to act square and stump up?"
"Hah! I see," said Leigh, smiling blandly, as though rejoicing on dismissing the injurious suspicion that Timmons wanted to back out of the bargain. "I own I am relieved. The fact, my dear sir, is, that on leaving you I telegraphed to my correspondent in Birmingham for----"
"No more gammon," said the other, menacingly. They were in front of a church, of the church whose clock they had heard strike midnight before they left Leigh's doorstep. Here there was a quiet space suited to their talk. The church and churchyard interrupted the line of houses, and fewer people passed on that side of the way than on the other. There were no shops in this street. Still it was lightsome, and never quite free from the sound of footsteps or the presence of some one at a distance. Stamer had hinted that Leigh might try to murder Timmons for plunder, and now Timmons was almost in the humour to murder Leigh for rage.
Leigh made a gesture of gracious deprecation with his left hand and bowed. "This, Mr. Timmons, is a matter of business, and I never allow anything so odious as fiction to touch even the robe of sacred business." He lifted his hat, raised his eyes to the top of the spire of the church and then bowed low his uncovered head. "For, Mr. Timmons, business is the deity every one of our fellow-countrymen worship."
"What are you going to do; that's what I want to know?" said the other fiercely.
"Precisely. Well, sir, I shall tell you my position in two words. I suspect my Birmingham correspondent." Leigh threw back his head and smiled engagingly, as though he had ended an amusing anecdote.
"By ----, you don't say that?" cried Timmons, fairly startled and drawing back a pace.
"I do."
"What does he know?"
"About what, my dear sir? What does he know about what? Are you curious to learn his educational equipments? Surely you cannot be curious on such a point?" He looked troubled because of Timmons's idle curiosity.
"Don't let us have any more rot. You say you suspect this man?"
"I do."
"What does he know of the stuff?"
"Of the stuff, as you call it, he knows from me absolutely nothing."
"How can you suspect him if he doesn't know? How can he peach if you haven't let him into the secret?"
"I didn't say I suspected him of betraying the secret of my manufacture."
"Then whatdoyou suspect him of--speak plain?" Timmons's voice and manner were heavy with threat.
"Of something much worse than treachery."
"There is nothing worse than treachery in our business."
"I suspect this man of something that is worse than treachery in any business."
"It has no name?"
"It has a name. I suspect this man of not having much money."
"Ah!"
"Is not that bad? Is not that worse than treachery?"
Timmons did not heed these questions. They were too abstract for his mind.
"And you think this villain might cheat, might swindle us after all our trouble?"
"I think this villain capable of trying to get the best of us, in the way of not paying promptly or the full price agreed upon, or perhaps not being able to pay at all."
"And, Mr. Leigh, when did you begin to suspect this unprincipled scoundrel?" Timmons's language was losing the horrible element of slang as the virtuous side of his nature began to assert itself.
"Only to-day; only since I saw you in Tunbridge Street."
"Mr. Leigh, I hope, sir, you'll forgive my hot words of a while ago. I know I have a bad temper. I humbly ask your pardon, Mr. Leigh." Timmons was quite humble now.
"Certainly, freely. We are to work, as you suggested, on the co-operative principle. If through my haste or inefficiency the money had been lost, we should all be the poorer."
"I have advanced about twenty pounds of my own money on the bit I have on me. My own money, without allowing anything for work and labour done in the way of melting down, or for anxiety of mind, or for profit. If that little bit of yellow stuff could keep me awake of nights, I often wonder how the people that own the Bank of England can sleep at all."
"They hire a guard of soldiers to sleep for them in the Bank every night."
"Eh, sir?"
"Hah! Nothing. Now you understand why I did not ask you into my place and take the alloy. We must wait a little yet. We must wait until I can light upon an honest man to work up the result of our great chemical discovery. I hope by this day week to be able to give you good and final news. In the meantime the ore is safe with you."
"I'm sure I'm truly grateful to you, sir."
"What greater delight can a person have than helping an honest man to protect himself against business wretches who are little better than thieves?"
"Eh?"
"Hah! Nothing. Give me a week. This day week at the same hour and at the same place."
"Very good. I shall be there."
An empty hansom was passing. Leigh whistled and held up his hand to the driver.
Suddenly both he and Timmons started, a long clang came from the other side of the railings.
"'Tisn't the last Trumpet for the tenants of these holdings," said Leigh, pointing his long, skinny, yellow, hairy hand at the graves. "It's the clock striking the quarter-past twelve. Good-night."
"Good-night," said Timmons, in a tone of reserve and suspicion. He was far from clear as to what he thought of the little man now bowling along down the road in the hansom.
Yes, this man was quite beyond him. Whether the whole thing was a solemn farce or not he could not determine. This man talked fifty to the dozen, at least fifty to the dozen.
Timmons touched his belt. Ay, the gold was there sure enough. That was a consolation anyway, but----
He shook his head, and set out to walk the whole way back to the dim, dingy street off the Borough Road, where he had a bed-room in which he spent no part of his time but the hours of sleep.