Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3)

That looked a perfectly reasonable and complete explanation. In fact it was the explanation and no other was needed. This was simplicity itself.

But what was the object of this hocussing of Timmons, and, having hocussed the man, why didn't he rob him of the gold he had with him, or call the police? That was a question of nicer difficulty and would require more beer and a pipe. So far he was getting on famously, doing a splendid morning's work.

He made himself comfortable with his tobacco and beer and resumed where he had left off.

The reason why the dwarf didn't either take the gold or hand over Timmons to the police was because he hadn't all he wanted. When he got Timmons asleep he left him somewhere and went back to wind his clock just to show he wasn't up to anything. What was it Timmons hadn't? Why, papers, of course. Timmons hadn't any papers about Stamer or any of them, and the only thing Leigh would have against Timmons, if he gave him up then, would be the gold, out of which by itself they could make nothing! That was the whole secret! Leigh knew the time when Timmons would come to his senses to a minute, and had him out in the street half a mile from the house before he knew where he was.

If confirmation of this theory were required had not Timmons told him that Leigh carried a silver bottle always with him, and that he was ever sniffing up the contents of the bottle? Might not he carry another bottle the contents of which, when breathed even once, were more powerful, ten times more powerful, than chloroform?

This explanation admitted of no doubt or even question. But if a clincher were needed, was it not afforded by what he had heard the landlord and frequenters of the Hanover say last night about this man's clock? They said that when the clock was wound up by night the winding up _always_ took place in the half hour between midnight and half-past twelve, and furthermore that on no occasion but one, and that one when Leigh was out of town, that one and singular occasion being the night before his visit to the Hanover, had a soul but the dwarf been seen in the clock room or admitted to it.

This affair must be looked after at once. It admitted of no delay. He would go to the Hanover and early enough to try some of their rum hot, of which he had heard such praises last night.

This was the substance of Stamer's thinking, though not the words of his thought.

On his way to Chetwynd Street he thought:

"He wants to get evidence against Timmons, and he wants to get evidence against _me_ for the police. If he doesn't get it from Timmons pockets next Thursday, he'll get it some other way soon, and then Timmons and I will be locked up. That must be prevented. He is too clever for an honest, straightforward man like Timmons. It isn't right to have a man like that prying into things and disturbing things. It isn't right, and it isn't fair, and it must be stopped, and it shall be stopped soon, or my name isn't Tom Stamer. I may make pretty free in this get-up. It belonged to a broken-down bailiff, and I think I look as like a broken-down bailiff as need be. When Timmons didn't guess who I was, I don't think anyone else will know, even if I met a dozen of the detectives."

He was in no hurry. He judged it to be still early for the Hanover. He wanted to go there when people were in the private bar, some time about the dinner hour would be the best part of the day for his purpose, and it was now getting near that time.

When he reached Welbeck Place he entered the private bar of the Hanover, and perching himself by the counter opposite the door, on one of the high stools, asked for some rum hot. There was no one in this compartment. The potman served him. As a rule Williams himself attended to the private compartment, but he was at present seated on a chair in the middle of the bar, reading a newspaper. He looked up on the entrance of Stamer, and seeing only a low-sized man, in very seedy black, and wearing blue spectacles, he called out to Tom to serve the gentleman.

Mr. Stamer paid for his steaming rum, tasted it, placed the glass conveniently at his right elbow, lit his pipe, and stretched himself to show he was quite at his ease, about to enjoy himself, and in no hurry. Then he took off his blue spectacles, and while he wiped the glasses very carefully, looked around and about him, and across the street at the gable of Forbes's bakery, with his naked eyes.

He saw with satisfaction that Oscar Leigh was sitting at the top window opposite, working away with a file on something held in a little vice fixed on his clockmaker's bench.

Oscar Leigh, at his bench in the top room of Forbes's bakery, overlooking Welbeck Place, was filing vigorously a bar of brass held in a little vice attached to the bench. He was unconscious that anyone was watching him. He was unconscious that the file was in his hand, and that the part of the bar on which he was working gradually grew flatter and flatter beneath the fretting rancour of the file. He was at work from habit, and thinking from habit, but his inattention to the result of his mechanical labour was unusual, and the thoughts which occupied him were far away from the necessities of his craft.

When he put the rod in the vice, and touched its dull yellow skin into glittering ribs and points sparkling like gold, he had had a purpose in his mind for that rod. Now he had shaved it down flat, and the rod and the purpose for which it had been intended were forgotten. The brazen dust lay like a new-fallen Danäe shower upon the bench before him, upon his grimy hands, upon his apron. He was watching the delicate sparkling yellow rain as it fell from the teeth of inexorable steel.

Oscar Leigh was thinking of gold-Miracle Gold.

Stamer had resumed his blue spectacles. He was furtively watching out of the corners of his eyes behind the blue glasses the man at the window above. He too was thinking of a metal, but not of the regal, the imperial yellow monarch of the Plutonian realms, but of a livid, dull, deadly, poisonous metal-lead, murderous lead.

The gold-coloured dust fell from the dwarf's file like a thin, down-driven spirt of auriferous vapour.

"Miracle Gold," he thought, "Miracle Gold. All gold is Miracle Gold when one tests it by that only great reagent, the world. The world, the world. In my Miracle Gold there would be found an alloy of copper and silver. Yes, a sad and poisonous alloy. Copper is blood-red, and silver is virgin white, and gold is yellow, a colour between the two, and infinitely more precious than they, the most precious of all metals is gold.

"The men who sought for the elixir of life sought also for the philosopher's stone. They placed indefinite prolongation of life and transmutation of the baser metals into gold side by side in importance. And all the time they were burying in their own graves their own little capital of life; they were missing all the gold of existence!

"They ceaselessly sought for endless life and found nothing but the end of the little life which had been given them! They ceaselessly sought to make gold while gold was being made all round them in prodigal profusion! They seared up their eyes with the flames of furnaces and the fumes of brass, to make another thing the colour of flame, the colour of brass! Was there no gold made by the sunlight or the motion of men's hearts?

"I cannot make this Miracle Gold. I can pretend to make it and put the fruit of violence and rapine abroad as fruit of the garden of the Hesperides. The world will applaud the man who has climbed the wall and robbed the garden of the Hesperides, providing that wall is not in London, or England, or the British Empire.

"I am not thinking of making this gold for profit; but for fame; for fame or infamy?

"I am in no want of money, as the poor are in want of money, and I do not value money as the rich value it. From my Miracle Gold I want the fame of the miracle not the profit of the gold. But why should I labour and run risk for the philosopher's stone, when I am not greedy of pelf? For the distinction. For the glory.

"Mine is a starved life and I must make the food nature denies me.

"But is this food to be found in the crucible? or on the filter?

"I am out of gear with life, but that is no reason why I should invent a dangerous movement merely to set me going in harmony with something that is still more out of gear with life.

"The elixir of life is not what is poured into life, but what is poured out of it. We are not rich by what we get, but by what we give. Tithonus lived until he prayed for death.

"And Midas starved. He would have given all the gold in the world for a little bread and wine or for the touch of a hand that did not harden on his shoulder.

"Here is a golden shower from this brass bar.

"Miracle Gold! Miracle Gold does not need making at my hands. It is made by the hands of others for all who will stretch forth their hands and take it. It is ready made in the palm of every hand that touches yours in friendship. It is the light of every kindly eye.

"It is on the lips of love for lovers.

"One touch of God's alchemy could make it even in the breast of a hunchback if it might seem sweet to one of God's angels to find it there!"

He dropped the file, swept the golden snow from the bench, rose and shook from his clothes the shower of golden sparks of brass. Then he worked his intricate way deftly through the body of the clock and locking the door of the clock-room behind him, descended the stairs and crossed Welbeck Place to the Hanover public house.

CHAPTER XXIX

STRONG SMELLING SALTS

Stamer had by this time been provided with a second glass of the Hanover's famous rum hot. Mr. Williams the proprietor was still immersed in his newspaper, although Stamer's implied appreciation of the hot rum, in the order of a second glass, had almost melted the host into the benignity of conversation with the shabby-looking stranger. On the appearance of the dwarf, Williams rose briskly from his chair and greeted the new-comer cordially. Stamer did not stir beyond drawing back a little on his stool. Out of his blue spectacles he fixed a steady and cat-like gaze upon Leigh.

"How warm the weather keeps," said Leigh, climbing to the top of a stool, with his back to the door of the compartment and directly opposite Stamer. "Even at the expense of getting more dust than I can manage well with, I think I must leave my window open," pointing upwards to the clock-room. "The place is suffocating. Hah! Suffocating."

"Why don't you get a fine muslin blind and then you could leave the window open, particularly if you wet the blind."

"There's something in that, Mr. Williams; there's a great deal in what you say, Mr. Williams. But, you see, the water would dry off very soon in this broiling weather, and then the dust would come through. But if I soaked the blind in oil, a non-drying oil, it would catch all the dust and insects. Dust is as bad for my clock as steel filings from a stone are for the lungs of a Sheffield grinder. Hah! Yes, I must get some gauze and steep it in oil. Would you lend me the potman for a few minutes? He would know what I want and I am rather tired for shopping."

"Certainly, with pleasure, Mr. Leigh. Here, Binns, just put on your coat and run on an errand for Mr. Leigh, will you."

The potman who was serving the only customer in the public bar appeared, got his instructions and money from the clock-maker and skipped off with smiling alacrity. The little man was open-handed in such matters.

"Yes; the place is bad enough in the daytime," went on Leigh as he was handed a glass of shandy-gaff, "but at night when the gas is lighted it becomes choking simply."

"It's a good job you haven't to stay there long at night. No more than half-an-hour with the gas on."

"Yes, about half-an-hour does for winding up. But then I sometimes come there when you are all in bed. I often get up in the middle of the night persuaded something has gone wrong. I begin to wonder if that clock will get the better of me and start doing something on its own account."

"It's twice too much to have on your mind all by yourself. Why don't you take in a partner?" asked Williams sympathetically, "or," he added, "give it up altogether if you find it too much for you?" If Leigh gave up his miserable clock, Leigh and Williams might do something together. The two great forces of their minds might be directed to one common object and joined in one common fame.

"Partner! Hah!" cried Leigh sharply, "and have all my secrets blown upon in twenty-four hours." Then he added significantly. "The only man whom I would allow into that room for a minute should be deaf and dumb and a fool."

"And not able to read or write," added Williams with answering significance.

"And not able to read or write," said the dwarf, nodding his head to Williams.

The publican stood a foot back from the counter and expanded his chest with pride at the thought of being trusted by the great little man with the secret of the strange winder of two nights ago. Then he added, by way of impressing on Leigh his complete trustworthiness respecting the evening which was not to be spoken of, "By-the-way Mr. Leigh, we saw you wind up last night, sure enough."

"Oh yes, I saw you. I nodded to you."

"Yes, at ten minutes past twelve by my clock, a quarter past twelve by my watch; for I looked, Mr. Leigh. You nodded. I told the gentlemen here how wonderfully particular you were about time, and how your clock would go right to a fraction of a second. If I am not mistaken this gentleman was here. Weren't you here, sir?" Williams said, addressing Stamer for the first time, but without moving from where he stood.

"I happened to be here at the time, and I saw the gentleman at the window above," said Stamer in a meek voice.

Then a remarkable thing happened.

The partition between the private bar and the public bar was about six feet high. Just over the dwarf's head a pair of long thin hands appeared on the top of the partition, and closed on it with the fingers pointing downward. Then very slowly and quite silently a round, shabby, brown hat stole upwards over the partition, followed by a dirty yellow-brown forehead, and last of all a pair of gleaming blue eyes that for a moment looked into the private bar, and then silently the eyes, the forehead, and the hat, sank below the rail, and finally the hands were withdrawn from the top of the partition. From the moment of the appearance of the hands on the rail until they left it did not occupy ten seconds.

No one in the private bar saw the apparition.

"Well," said Leigh, who showed no disposition to include Stamer in the conversation, "I can have a breath of air to-night when I am winding up. I am free till then. I think I'll go and look after that mummy. Oh! here's Binns with the muslin. Thank you, Binns, this will do capitally."

He took the little silver flask out of his pocket, and poured a few drops from it into his hand and sniffed it up, and then made a noisy expiration.

"Very refreshing. Very refreshing, indeed. I know I needn't ask you, Williams. I know you never touch it. You have no idea of how refreshing it is."

The smell of eau-de-cologne filled the air.

Stamer watched the small silver flask with eyes that blazed balefully behind the safe screen of his blue glasses.

"Would you oblige me," he said in a timid voice, holding out his hand as he spoke.

Leigh was in the act of returning the tiny flask to his waistcoat pocket. He arrested it a moment, and then let it fall in out of sight, saying sharply: "You wouldn't like it, sir. Very few people do like it. You must be used to it."

Stamer's suspicions were now fully roused. This was the very drug Leigh had used with Timmons. It produced little or no effect on the dwarf, for as he explained, he was accustomed to it, but on a man who had never inhaled it before the effect would be instant, and long and complete insensibility. "I should like very much to try. I can stand very strong smelling salts."

"Oh! indeed. Can you? Then you would like to try some strong smelling salts?" said Leigh with a sneer as he scornfully surveyed the shabby man who had got off his stool and was standing within a few feet of him. "Well, I have no more in the flask. That was the last drop, but I have some in this." Out of his other waistcoat pocket he took a small glass bottle with a ground cap and ground stopper. He twisted off the cap and loosened the stopper. "This is very strong, remember."

"All right." If he became insensible here and at this time it would do no harm. There was plenty of help at hand, and nothing at stake, not as with Timmons last night in that house over the way.

"Snuff up heartily," said the dwarf, holding out the bottle towards the other with the stopper removed.

Stamer leaned on one of the high stools with both his hands, and put his nose over the bottle. With a yell he threw his arms wildly into the air and fell back on the floor as if he were shot.

Williams sprang up on the counter and cried: "What's this! He isn't dead?" in terror.

The potman flew over the counter into the public bar, and rushed into the private compartment.

The solitary customer in the public bar drew himself up once more and stared at the prostrate man with round blue eyes.

Leigh laughed harshly as he replaced the stopper and screwed on the cap.

"Dead! Not he! He's all right! He said he could stand strong salts. I gave him the strongest ammonia. That's all."

The potman had lifted Stamer from the ground, propped him against the wall and flung half a bottle of water over his head.

Stamer recovered himself instantly. His spectacles were in pieces on the floor. He did not, considering his false beard and whiskers, care for any more of the potman's kindnesses. He stooped, picked up his hat and walked quickly out of the Hanover.

"I like to see a man like that," said Leigh, calmly blowing a dense cloud of cigar-smoke from his mouth and nodding his head in the direction Stamer had taken.

"You nearly killed the man," said Williams, dropping down from the counter inside the bar and staring at Leigh with frightened eyes that looked larger than usual owing to the increased pallor of his face.

"Pooh! Nonsense! That stuff wouldn't kill anyone unless he had a weak heart or smashed his head in his fall. I got it merely to try the effect of it combined with a powerful galvanic battery, on the nasal muscles of my mummy. Now, if that man were dead we'd get him all right again in a jiffy with one sniff of it. I was saying I like a man like him. You see, he was impudent and intruded himself on me when he had no right to do anything of the kind, and he insisted on smelling my strong salts. Well, he had his wish, and he came to grief, and he picked himself up, or rather Binns picked him up, and he never said anything but went away. He knew he was in the wrong, and he knew he got worsted, and he simply walked away. That is the spirit which makes Englishmen so great all the world over. When they are beaten they shake hands and say no more about the affair. That's true British pluck." Leigh blew another dense cloud of smoke in front of him and looked complacently at Williams.

"Well," said the publican in a tone of doubt, "he didn't exactly shake hands, you know. He does look a bit down in the world, seems to me an undertaker's man out of work, but I rather wonder he didn't kick up a row. Many another man would."

"A man of any other nationality would, but not a Britisher. If, however, you fancy the poor chap is out of work and he comes back and grumbles about the thing, give him half-a-sovereign from me."

"Mr. Leigh, I must say that is very handsome of you, sir," said Williams, thawing thoroughly. He was a kind-hearted man, and did think the victim of the trick ought to get some sort of compensation.

Meanwhile, Stamer had reached the open air and was seemingly in no great hurry to go back to the Hanover to claim the provision Leigh had made for his injury. He did not seem in a hurry to go anywhere, and a person who knew of what had taken place in the private bar, and seeing him move slowly up Welbeck Place with his left shoulder to the wall and his eyes on the window of the workshop, would think he was either behaving very like a kicked cur and slinking away with the desire of attracting as little attention as possible, or that he was meditating the mean revenge of breaking the dwarf's window.

But Stamer was not sneaking away. He was simply taking observations in a comprehensive and leisurely manner. Above all, he was not dreaming of breaking the clockmaker's window. On the contrary he was hugging himself with delight at the notion that he would not have to break Leigh's window. No, there would not be the least necessity for that. As the window was now no doubt it would be necessary to smash one pane at least. But with that muslin blind well-soaked in oil stretched across the open, caused by the raising of the lower sash there would be no need whatever of injuring the dwarf's glass.

He passed very slowly down Welbeck Place towards the mews under the window which lighted the private bar, and through which he had watched the winding up of the clock last night. His eyes, now wanting the blue spectacles, explored and examined every feature of Forbes's with as close a scrutiny as though he were inspecting it to ascertain its stability.

When he had deliberately taken in all that eyes could see in the gable of Forbes's bakery, he turned his attention to his left, and looked with care unmingled with anxiety at the gable or rather second side of the Hanover. Then he passed slowly on. It might almost be fancied from his tedious steps that he had hurt his back or his legs in his fall, but he did not limp or wriggle or drag his legs.

Beyond the Hanover, that is on this side between the end of the public house and the Welbeck Mews, were two poor two-storey houses, let in tenements to men who found employment about the mews. These houses Stamer observed closely also, and then passed under the archway into the mews. Here he looked back on the gables of the tenement houses. They were, he saw, double-roofed, with a gutter in the middle, and from the gutter to the mews descended a water-pipe into the ground.

When there was nothing more to be noted in the outside of the gables, Stamer pulled his hat over his eyes and struck out briskly across the mews, which he quitted by the southern outlet.

As he finished his inspection and left the mews he thought:

"So that was the stuff he gave Timmons, was it? I suppose it had more effect on him or he got more of it. It didn't take my senses away for more than a flash of lightning, but more of it might knock me silly for a while. Besides, Timmons is not as strong a man as I. It is a wonder it did not kill him. I felt as if the roof of my skull was blown off. I felt inclined to draw and let him have an ounce. But then, although he may be playing into the hands of the police, he isn't a policeman. He couldn't have done the drill, although his boots are as big as the regulation boots. Then, even if I did draw on him I couldn't have got away. There were too many people about.

"So he'll wind up his clock to-night between twelve and half-past, will he? It will take him the longest half-hour he ever spent in all his life! There's plenty of time to get the tools ready, and for a little practice too."

Stamer had no personal resentment against Leigh because of the trick put upon him. A convict never has the sense of the sacred inviolateness of his person that belongs to men of even the most depraved character who have never "done time." He had arrived at his deadly intent not from feelings of revenge but from motives of prudence. Leigh possessed dangerous information, and Leigh was guilty of treason and was trying to compass betrayal; therefore he must be put away, and put away at once.

Meanwhile the man who drew himself up by his hands, and looked over the partition between the public and private bar, had left the Hanover. He was a very tall man with grizzled, mutton-chop whiskers and an exceedingly long, rusty neck. He wore a round-topped brown hat, and tweed clothes, a washed-out blue neckerchief, the knot of which hung low on his chest. He had no linen collar, and as he walked carried his hands thrust deep into his trousers' pockets.

He too, had come to Chetwynd Street, to the Hanover, to gather any facts he might meet about this strange clockmaker and his strange ways. He had gone into the public bar for he did not wish to encounter face to face the man about whom he was inquisitive. He had sent a boy for Stamer's wife and left her in charge of his marine store in Tunbridge Street, saying he was unexpectedly obliged to go to the Surrey Dock. He told her of the visit Stamer had paid him that morning, and said he thought her husband was getting a bit crazy. Then he left her, having given her instructions about the place and promising to be back in a couple of hours.