TIMMONS'S TEA AND LEIGH'S DINNER.
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_, 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!"