"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, even they, 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!"
CHAPTER XXII
A QUARTER PAST TWELVE
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 see her who 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 what do you 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.
CHAPTER XXIII
AN EARLY VISITOR TO TIMMONS
Men in Mr. Timmons's business never look fresher at one period of the day than another. They seem no brighter for sleep, and, to judge by their appearance, either soap and water has no effect on them, or they seek no effect of soap and water. Lawyers put aside their wigs and gowns, and professors their gowns and mortar-boards, and butchers their aprons, and cooks their caps, before they leave the scene of their labours, but dealers in marine-stores never lay aside their grime. They cannot. The signs and tokens of their calling are ground into their flesh, and would resist any attempt at removal. Mr. Timmons was no exception to his class. On Thursday morning he was in every outward seeming the same as on Wednesday night. He was the same as on all other mornings, except that he came a little earlier than usual to his place in Tunbridge Street. He had private business to transact before throwing open the front of his store to the eyes of the few stragglers who passed through that gloomy haunt of discarded and disabled vehicles of the humbler kind.
He went in through the wicket, locked the wicket after him, and without loss of time dug up the old canvas-bag from under the sand, rolled up the chamois belt, and, having placed the belt in the bag, re-buried the latter in its old hiding place. Then he rose and stretched himself and yawned, more like a man whose day's work was over than about to begin.
He sat down on the old fire-grate where Mrs. Stamer had rested the night before, yawned again, leaned his head against the wall and fell fast asleep. The fact is he had slept little or nothing the night before. Oscar Leigh's strange conduct had set him thinking and fearing, and the knowledge that for the first time his chamois-belt was away from its home made him restless and kept him awake.
John Timmons had no regular time for throwing his bazaar open to the public. The shutters were never taken down before eight o'clock and never remained up after ten. He had come that morning at seven, and sat down to rest and doze before eight. At a little after nine he jumped up with a start and looked round with terror. A knock on the outside of the shutters had aroused him. He had often been at the store as early as seven, but never until now had he heard a demand for admittance at so early an hour. Could it be he had slept long into the day, or were the police after him?
He looked round hastily, wildly, out of his pale blue eyes. He threw up his arms on high, and shook them, indicating that all was lost. Then he composed himself, pulled his hat straight over his forehead, drew down his waistcoat and coat-sleeves, arranged his blue tie, and clearing his throat with a deep loud sound, stepped quickly to the wicket, where for a moment he moved his feet rapidly about to give the newly-levelled sand an appearance of ordinary use.
With great noise and indications of effort he unlocked the door and opened it.
A low-sized man, with grizzled hair and mutton-chop whiskers and blue spectacles, dressed in seedy black, and looking like a schoolmaster broken in health and purse, stood in the doorway.
Timmons stared at the man in amazement first, anger next, and lastly rage.
"Well?" he bellowed fiercely; "who are you? What do you want?"
The man did not speak. He coolly stepped over the bar of the wicket and stood close to Timmons in the dimly-lighted store.
The dealer was staggered. Was this a policeman come to arrest him? If he was, and if he had come alone, so much the worse for him!
Timmons put his hand on the man's shoulder, drew the man quickly clear of the wicket, shut the door and locked it. Then turning menacingly on the intruder, who had taken a couple of paces into the store, he said ferociously, "Now, sir! What is it?"
Quick as lightning the man drew a revolver from his waist-band under his coat and presented it at Timmons's head.
The latter fell back against the shutters with an oath and a shout of dismay.
Swift as thought the man dropped the weapon and thrust it back into its place in his waist-band under his coat, saying as he did so:
"You always said you should know me if I was boiled. What do you say now?"
"Stamer!" yelled Timmons, with another oath.
The other laughed. "And not even boiled either."
"By – , I'll have it out of you for this trick yet," said Timmons in a whisper. "What a fright you gave me! and what a shout I made! Someone may have heard me. You should not play such tricks as that, Stamer. It's no joke. I thought you were a copper." And he began walking up and down rapidly to calm himself.
"If you'll excuse me, Mr. Timmons," said the man, humbly and with an apologetic cough, "but I think your nerves want looking after."
"You scoundrel!"
"They do indeed, sir; you ought to get your doctor to put them right."
"You cursed blackguard!" hissed Timmons as he strode up and down the dark store, wiping the sweat off his streaked forehead with the ball of his hand.
"In an anxious business like ours, sir, a man can't be too careful. That's my reason again' the drink. Attendin' them temperance meetin's has done me a deal of good. I never get flustered now, Mr. Timmons, since I gave up the drink. I know, sir, you're next door to a teetotaller. It may be too much studyin', sir, with you. I have heard, sir, that too much studyin' on the brain and such like is worse than gin. If you could get away to the sea-side for a bit, sir, I'm certain 'twould do you a deal of good. You know I speak for your good, Mr. Timmons."
"You fool, hold your tongue! First I took you for a policeman-"
"I haven't come to that yet, sir," said the man in a tone of injury, and raising his shoulders to his ears as if to protect them from the pollution of hearing the word.
"And then I took you for a thief."
"Mr. Timmons!" cried the man pathetically. "Couldn't you see who I was? I never came here on business, sir. I came for the pleasure of seeing you, and to try if you would do a favour for me."
"Hold your tongue!" cried Timmons. "Hold your tongue, you fool."
The man said no more, but leaning his back against the wall, looked up blankly at the unceiled rafters and boards of the floor above.
The manner of Mr. John Timmons gradually became less volcanic. He arranged his necktie and thrust his hands deep into his trousers' pockets instead of swinging them round him, or running his fingers through his grizzled hair and whiskers. Suddenly he stopped before his visitor, and said grimly in a low voice, "Stamer, aren't you surprised you are alive?"
Stamer stood up on his feet away from the wall and said in a tone of expostulation, "Now, Mr. Timmons, it isn't so bad as that with me yet. I may have let one or two people see the barrel, you know, just to help business; but I never pulled trigger yet, sir. Indeed, I didn't."
"I mean, you fool, aren't you surprised I didn't kill you?" he asked heavily.
"You kill me, sir! For what?" cried the man in astonishment.
"For coming here at this time of the morning in the disgraceful state you are now in," he said, pointing scornfully at the other.
"Disgraceful state, Mr. Timmons, sir! You don't mean to say you think I'm in liquor?" said Stamer in an injured tone.
"In liquor, no. But worse. You are in masquerade, sir. In masquerade."
"Indeed, I'm not, sir. Why, I couldn't be! I don't even as much as know what it is."
"I mean, sir (and you know very well what I mean), that you are not here in your own clothes. What do you mean in coming here with your tomfoolery?" said Timmons severely. He was now quite recovered from his fright, and wanted to say nothing of his recent abject condition. The best way of taking a man's mind off you is to make an attack on him.
"Not in my own clothes! I hope you don't think I'm such a born loony as to walk about the streets in togs that I came by in the course of business. If you think that of me, sir, you put me down very low. I'm a general hand, as you ought to know, sir, and when there isn't anything to be done in the crib line, I'm not above turning my hand to anything that may be handy, such as tickers in a crowd. I use the duds I have on when I go to hear about the African Blacks. I change about, asking questions for information, and writin' down all the gentlemen tell me in my note-book, and I wind up my questions by asking not what o'clock it is, which would be suspicious, but how long the meeting will last, and no man, sir, that I ever saw can answer that question without hauling out his ticker, and then I can see whether it is all right, or pewter, or a Waterbury. Mr. Timmons, Waterburys is growing that common that men who have to make a living are starving. It's a downright shame and imposition for respectable English gentlemen to give their time to tryin' to improve the condition of the African Black, and do nothing to encourage the English watch-maker. What's to become of the English watch-maker, Mr. Timmons? I feel for him, sir!"
"You have a great deal too much talk for a man in your position. Why did you come here at this hour and in this outlandish get-up?"
"Well, sir," said Stamer, answering the latter question first, "you see I was here yesterday in fustian, and I didn't like to come here to-day in the same rags. It might look suspicious, for a man in my line can't be too careful. Of course, Mr. Timmons, you and I know, sir, that I come here on the square; but bad-minded people are horrid suspicious, and sometimes them new hands in the coppers make the cruellest and most unjust mistakes, sir. So I hope you'll forgive me coming here as an honest man. It won't occur again, sir. Indeed it won't."
"You have a great deal too much talk for a man in your position," repeated Timmons, who by this time had regained his ordinary composure. "You know I treat you as men in your position are never treated by men in mine. I not only give you a fair price for your goods, but now, when the chance comes, I am going to admit you to the advantages of the co-operative system."
"It's very, very kind of you, sir, and I'm truly thankful, sir; and I need only say that, barring thick and thin uns, I bring you everything, notes included, that come my way. The thick and thin uns, sir, are the only perquisites of the business I look for."
"Stamer, hold your tongue. Tell me in two words, what brought you here?"
"Well, sir, I was anxious to know how you got on last night? You know how anxious I was about you, because of your carrying so much stuff with you down a bad locality like Chelsea. I know you got there safe. I hope you'll excuse me, Mr. Timmons, for the liberty I took, but I thought two of us would be safer than one."
"You know I got there! Two of us safer than one! What do you mean? You are full of talk and can't talk straight. Out with it, man! Out with it!" cried Timmons, shaking his fist in Stamer's face.
"I took the liberty of followin' you, sir, at a respectful distance and I saw you safe to Mr. Leigh's door-"
"You infernal, prying ruffian-"
"No, sir. I was not curious. I was only uneasy about you, and I only saw you at his door all right; then I knew I could be of no more use, for, of course, you'd leave the stuff with him, and if anyone got wind of it there would be no use in followin' you after, and I could do nothing while you was in the house."
"Ah!" cried Timmons sharply, as though Stamer had convicted himself of lying. "If you came away when you saw me go into the house how did you find out the man's name? I never told you. That's one question I want to ask you; now here's another. What o'clock was it when you saw me go into the house?"
"Twelve to the minute."
"How do you know? Had you a red herring in your pocket? Eh?" asked Timmons derisively, shaking his forefinger in Stamer's face.