LEIGH AT HIS BENCH.
Tom Stamer was afraid of only two people, namely, John Timmons and the
policeman. Of both he had experience. In his fear of Timmons were
mingled love and admiration. No such diluting sentiments qualified his
feelings towards the guardians of law and order. He had "done time,"
and he did not want to do it again. He was a complete stranger to
anything like moral cowardice. He had never even heard of that
weakness by that name. He was a burglar and a thief without any code
at all, except that he would take anything he wished to take, and he
would die for John Timmons. He did not look on dying as a very serious
thing. He regarded imprisonment as a monstrous calamity, out of all
proportion to any other. He would not go out of his way to kill a
policeman, but if one stood in his way he would kill him with as
little compunction and as much satisfaction as a terrier kills a rat.
If up to the present his hands were clean of blood, it was because
shedding it had never seemed to him at once expedient and safe. If he
were made absolute king he would like to gather all the police of the
kingdom into a yard with high walls and shoot them from a safe
balcony.
Although his formulated code was limited to the two articles mentioned
above, certain things he had not done wore the air of virtue. He never
quarrelled with any man, he never ill-treated his wife, he never
cheated anyone. When drunk he was invariably amiable and good-natured,
and gave liberally to others. He was a completely loyal friend, and an
enemy all the more merciless and horrible because he was without
passion.
He had little or no mind, but he was on that account the more terribly
steadfast. Once he had resolved upon a thing nothing could divert
him from trying to accomplish it. His was one of those imperfect,
half-made intellects that are the despair of philanthropists. You
could do nothing whatever with him; he could rob and murder you. If he
had all those policemen in that high-walled court he would not have
inflicted any torture upon them. He would have shot them with his own
hand merely to make sure the race was extirpated. His fidelity was
that of an unreasoning beast. He knew many men of his own calling, and
by all of them he was looked upon as being the most mild and true, and
dangerous and deadly burglar in London. He was morally lower than the
lowest of the uncorrupted brutes.
Stamer had made up his mind that Oscar Leigh was in league with the
police, and that this postponement of buying the gold from Timmons was
merely part of some subtle plan to entrap Timmons and himself.
This conviction was his way of deciding upon taking Oscar Leigh's
life. He did not even formulate the dwarfs death to himself. He had
simply decided that Leigh meant to entrap Timmons in the interest of
Scotland Yard. Timmons and himself were one.
Wait a week indeed, and be caught in a trap! Not he! Business was
business, and no time was to be lost.
When he left Tunbridge Street that morning, he made straight for
Chelsea. This was a class of business which did not oblige him to keep
his head particularly clear. He would lay aside his ordinary avocation
until this affair was finished. The weather was warm, so he turned
into a public-house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road and sat down at a
table to think the matter over while cooling and refreshing himself
with a pint of beer.
One thing puzzled him. How was it that the dwarf pretended to be with
Timmons half-a-mile away, at the time he himself, and half-a-dozen
other men who knew Leigh's appearance thoroughly, saw him as plain as
the sun at noonday winding up his clock at the second floor window of
the house opposite the Hanover? There could, of course, not be the
least doubt that Timmons had been deceived, imposed upon in some way.
But how was it done? Timmons knew the dwarf well, knew his figure,
which could not easily be mistaken, and knew his voice also. They had
met several times before Timmons even broached the gold difficulty to
him. Leigh had told Timmons that he was something of a magician. That
he could do things no other man could do. That he had hidden knowledge
of metals, and so on, and could do things no other man living could do
with metals, and that he had books of fortune-telling and magic and
the stars, and so on.
Stamer's education had been neglected. He had read little, and knew
nothing of magic and these things, but he had heard it was only
foolishness. Timmons was an honourable man and wouldn't lie. He had
said the plan of getting rid of the gold was to be that Leigh was to
pretend to make it and sell it openly or with very little secrecy.
That was a good notion if Leigh could persuade people he made it.
Unfortunately gold could not be run into sovereigns. It had to be
stamped cold and that could only be managed by machinery.
Well, anyway, if this man, this Leigh, knew a lot of hidden things he
might know a lot about chloroform and laudanum and other drugs he
heard much about but that did not come in his way of business. Leigh
might know of or have invented something more sudden and powerful than
chloroform and have asked Timmons to smell a bottle, or have waved a
handkerchief in Timmons's face, and Timmons might have there and then
gone off into a sleep and dreamed all he believed about the walk at
midnight and the church clock.
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.