GIDEON FORSYTH AND THE BROADWOOD GRAND
The reader has perhaps read that remarkable work, "Who Put Back the
Clock?" by E. H. B., which appeared for several days upon the railway
bookstalls and then vanished entirely from the face of the earth.
Whether eating Time makes the chief of his diet out of old editions;
whether Providence has passed a special enactment on behalf of authors;
or whether these last have taken the law into their own hand, bound
themselves into a dark conspiracy with a password, which I would die
rather than reveal, and night after night sally forth under some
vigorous leader, such as Mr. James Payn or Mr. Walter Besant, on their
task of secret spoliation--certain it is, at least, that the old
editions pass, giving place to new. To the proof, it is believed there
are now only three copies extant of "Who Put Back the Clock?" one in the
British Museum, successfully concealed by a wrong entry in the
catalogue; another in one of the cellars (the cellar where the music
accumulates) of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh; and a third, bound
in morocco, in the possession of Gideon Forsyth. To account for the very
different fate attending this third exemplar, the readiest theory is to
suppose that Gideon admired the tale. How to explain that admiration
might appear (to those who have perused the work) more difficult; but
the weakness of a parent is extreme, and Gideon (and not his uncle,
whose initials he had humorously borrowed) was the author of "Who Put
Back the Clock?" He had never acknowledged it, or only to some intimate
friends while it was still in proof; after its appearance and alarming
failure, the modesty of the novelist had become more pressing, and the
secret was now likely to be better kept than that of the authorship of
"Waverley."
A copy of the work (for the date of my tale is already yesterday) still
figured in dusty solitude in the bookstall at Waterloo; and Gideon, as
he passed with his ticket for Hampton Court, smiled contemptuously at
the creature of his thoughts. What an idle ambition was the author's!
How far beneath him was the practice of that childish art! With his hand
closing on his first brief, he felt himself a man at last; and the muse
who presides over the police romance, a lady presumably of French
extraction, fled his neighbourhood, and returned to join the dance round
the springs of Helicon, among her Grecian sisters.
Robust, practical reflection still cheered the young barrister upon his
journey. Again and again he selected the little country-house in its
islet of great oaks, which he was to make his future home. Like a
prudent householder, he projected improvements as he passed; to one he
added a stable, to another a tennis-court, a third he supplied with a
becoming rustic boat-house.
"How little a while ago," he could not but reflect, "I was a careless
young dog with no thought but to be comfortable! I cared for nothing but
boating and detective novels. I would have passed an old-fashioned
country-house with large kitchen-garden, stabling, boat-house, and
spacious offices, without so much as a look, and certainly would have
made no inquiry as to the drains. How a man ripens with the years!"
The intelligent reader will perceive the ravages of Miss Hazeltine.
Gideon had carried Julia straight to Mr. Bloomfleld's house; and that
gentleman, having been led to understand she was the victim of
oppression, had noisily espoused her cause. He worked himself into a
fine breathing heat; in which, to a man of his temperament, action
became needful.
"I do not know which is the worse," he cried, "the fraudulent old
villain or the unmanly young cub. I will write to the _Pall Mall_ and
expose them. Nonsense, sir; they must be exposed! It's a public duty.
Did you not tell me the fellow was a Tory? O, the uncle is a Radical
lecturer, is he? No doubt the uncle has been grossly wronged. But of
course, as you say, that makes a change; it becomes scarce so much a
public duty."
And he sought and instantly found a fresh outlet for his alacrity. Miss
Hazeltine (he now perceived) must be kept out of the way; his houseboat
was lying ready--he had returned but a day or two before from his usual
cruise; there was no place like a houseboat for concealment; and that
very morning, in the teeth of the easterly gale, Mr. and Mrs. Bloomfield
and Miss Julia Hazeltine had started forth on their untimely voyage.
Gideon pled in vain to be allowed to join the party. "No, Gid," said his
uncle. "You will be watched; you must keep away from us." Nor had the
barrister ventured to contest this strange illusion; for he feared if he
rubbed off any of the romance, that Mr. Bloomfield might weary of the
whole affair. And his discretion was rewarded; for the Squirradical,
laying a heavy hand upon his nephew's shoulder, had added these notable
expressions: "I see what you are after, Gid. But if you're going to get
the girl, you have to work, sir."
These pleasing sounds had cheered the barrister all day, as he sat
reading in chambers; they continued to form the ground-base of his manly
musings as he was whirled to Hampton Court; even when he landed at the
station, and began to pull himself together for his delicate interview,
the voice of Uncle Ned and the eyes of Julia were not forgotten.
But now it began to rain surprises: in all Hampton Court there was no
Kurnaul Villa, no Count Tarnow, and no count. This was strange; but,
viewed in the light of the incoherency of his instructions, not perhaps
inexplicable; Mr. Dickson had been lunching, and he might have made some
fatal oversight in the address. What was the thoroughly prompt, manly,
and business-like step? thought Gideon; and he answered himself at once:
"A telegram, very laconic." Speedily the wires were flashing the
following very important missive: "Dickson, Langham Hotel. Villa and
persons both unknown here, suppose erroneous address; follow self next
train.--Forsyth." And at the Langham Hotel, sure enough, with a brow
expressive of despatch and intellectual effort, Gideon descended not
long after from a smoking hansom.
I do not suppose that Gideon will ever forget the Langham Hotel. No
Count Tarnow was one thing; no John Dickson and no Ezra Thomas, quite
another. How, why, and what next, danced in his bewildered brain; from
every centre of what we playfully call the human intellect incongruous
messages were telegraphed; and before the hubbub of dismay had quite
subsided, the barrister found himself driving furiously for his
chambers. There was at least a cave of refuge; it was at least a place
to think in; and he climbed the stair, put his key in the lock and
opened the door, with some approach to hope.
It was all dark within, for the night had some time fallen; but Gideon
knew his room, he knew where the matches stood on the end of the
chimney-piece; and he advanced boldly, and in so doing dashed himself
against a heavy body; where (slightly altering the expressions of the
song) no heavy body should have been. There had been nothing there when
Gideon went out; he had locked the door behind him, he had found it
locked on his return, no one could have entered, the furniture could not
have changed its own position. And yet undeniably there was a something
there. He thrust out his hands in the darkness. Yes, there was
something, something large, something smooth, something cold.
"Heaven forgive me!" said Gideon, "it feels like a piano."
And the next moment he remembered the vestas in his waistcoat-pocket and
had struck a light.
It was indeed a piano that met his doubtful gaze; a vast and costly
instrument, stained with the rains of the afternoon and defaced with
recent scratches. The light of the vesta was reflected from the
varnished sides, like a star in quiet water; and in the farther end of
the room the shadow of that strange visitor loomed bulkily and wavered
on the wall.
Gideon let the match burn to his fingers, and the darkness closed once
more on his bewilderment. Then with trembling hands he lit the lamp and
drew near. Near or far, there was no doubt of the fact: the thing was a
piano. There, where by all the laws of God and man it was impossible
that it should be--there the thing impudently stood. Gideon threw open
the key-board and struck a chord. Not a sound disturbed the quiet of the
room. "Is there anything wrong with me?" he thought, with a pang; and
drawing in a seat, obstinately persisted in his attempts to ravish
silence, now with sparkling arpeggios, now with a sonata of Beethoven's
which (in happier days) he knew to be one of the loudest pieces of that
powerful composer. Still not a sound. He gave the Broadwood two great
bangs with his clenched first. All was still as the grave.
The young barrister started to his feet.
"I am stark-staring mad," he cried aloud, "and no one knows it but
myself. God's worst curse has fallen on me."
His fingers encountered his watch-chain; instantly he had plucked forth
his watch and held it to his ear. He could hear it ticking.
"I am not deaf," he said aloud. "I am only insane. My mind has quitted
me for ever."
He looked uneasily about the room, and gazed with lacklustre eyes at the
chair in which Mr. Dickson had installed himself. The end of a cigar lay
near on the fender.
"No," he thought, "I don't believe that was a dream; but God knows my
mind is failing rapidly. I seem to be hungry, for instance; it's
probably another hallucination. Still I might try. I shall have one
more good meal; I shall go to the Cafe Royal, and may possibly be
removed from there direct to the asylum."
He wondered with morbid interest, as he descended the stairs, how he
would first betray his terrible condition--would he attack a waiter? or
eat glass?--and when he had mounted into a cab, he bade the man drive to
Nichol's, with a lurking fear that there was no such place.
The flaring, gassy entrance of the cafe speedily set his mind at rest;
he was cheered besides to recognise his favourite waiter; his orders
appeared to be coherent; the dinner, when it came, was quite a sensible
meal, and he ate it with enjoyment. "Upon my word," he reflected, "I am
about tempted to indulge a hope. Have I been hasty? Have I done what
Robert Skill would have done?" Robert Skill (I need scarcely mention)
was the name of the principal character in "Who Put Back the Clock?" It
had occurred to the author as a brilliant and probable invention; to
readers of a critical turn, Robert appeared scarce upon a level with his
surname; but it is the difficulty of the police romance, that the reader
is always a man of such vastly greater ingenuity than the writer. In the
eyes of his creator, however, Robert Skill was a word to conjure with;
the thought braced and spurred him; what that brilliant creature would
have done Gideon would do also. This frame of mind is not uncommon; the
distressed general, the baited divine, the hesitating author, decide
severally to do what Napoleon, what St. Paul, what Shakespeare would
have done; and there remains only the minor question, What is that? In
Gideon's case one thing was clear: Skill was a man of singular decision,
he would have taken some step (whatever it was) at once; and the only
step that Gideon could think of was to return to his chambers.
This being achieved, all further inspiration failed him, and he stood
pitifully staring at the instrument of his confusion. To touch the keys
again was more than he durst venture on; whether they had maintained
their former silence, or responded with the tones of the last trump, it
would have equally dethroned his resolution. "It may be a practical
jest," he reflected, "though it seems elaborate and costly. And yet what
else can it be? It _must_ be a practical jest." And just then his eye
fell upon a feature which seemed corroborative of that view: the pagoda
of cigars which Michael had erected ere he left the chambers. "Why
that?" reflected Gideon. "It seems entirely irresponsible." And drawing
near, he gingerly demolished it. "A key," he thought. "Why that? And why
so conspicuously placed?" He made the circuit of the instrument, and
perceived the keyhole at the back. "Aha! this is what the key is for,"
said he. "They wanted me to look inside. Stranger and stranger." And
with that he turned the key and raised the lid.
In what antics of agony, in what fits of flighty resolution, in what
collapses of despair, Gideon consumed the night, it would be ungenerous
to inquire too closely.
That trill of tiny song with which the eaves-birds of London welcome the
approach of day found him limp and rumpled and bloodshot, and with a
mind still vacant of resource. He rose and looked forth unrejoicingly on
blinded windows, an empty street, and the grey daylight dotted with the
yellow lamps. There are mornings when the city seems to awake with a
sick headache; this was one of them; and still the twittering reveille
of the sparrows stirred in Gideon's spirit.
"Day here," he thought, "and I still helpless! This must come to an
end." And he locked up the piano, put the key in his pocket; and set
forth in quest of coffee. As he went, his mind trudged for the hundredth
time a certain mill-road of terrors, misgivings, and regrets. To call in
the police, to give up the body, to cover London with handbills
describing John Dickson and Ezra Thomas, to fill the papers with
paragraphs, _Mysterious Occurrence in the Temple--Mr. Forsyth admitted
to bail_, this was one course, an easy course, a safe course; but not,
the more he reflected on it, not a pleasant one. For, was it not to
publish abroad a number of singular facts about himself? A child ought
to have seen through the story of these adventurers, and he had gaped
and swallowed it. A barrister of the least self-respect should have
refused to listen to clients who came before him in a manner so
irregular, and he had listened. And O, if he had only listened; but he
had gone upon their errand--he, a barrister, uninstructed even by the
shadow of a solicitor--upon an errand fit only for a private detective;
and alas!--and for the hundredth time the blood surged to his brow--he
had taken their money! "No," said he, "the thing is as plain as St.
Paul's. I shall be dishonoured! I have smashed my career for a
five-pound note."
Between the possibility of being hanged in all innocence, and the
certainty of a public and merited disgrace, no gentleman of spirit could
long hesitate. After three gulps of that hot, snuffy, and muddy
beverage, that passes on the streets of London for a decoction of the
coffee berry, Gideon's mind was made up. He would do without the police.
He must face the other side of the dilemma, and be Robert Skill in
earnest. What would Robert Skill have done? How does a gentleman dispose
of a dead body, honestly come by? He remembered the inimitable story of
the hunchback; reviewed its course, and dismissed it for a worthless
guide. It was impossible to prop a corpse on the corner of Tottenham
Court Road without arousing fatal curiosity in the bosoms of the
passers-by; as for lowering it down a London chimney, the physical
obstacles were insurmountable. To get it on board a train and drop it
out, or on the top of an omnibus and drop it off, were equally out of
the question. To get it on a yacht and drop it overboard, was more
conceivable; but for a man of moderate means it seemed extravagant. The
hire of the yacht was in itself a consideration; the subsequent support
of the whole crew (which seemed a necessary consequence) was simply not
to be thought of. His uncle and the houseboat here occurred in very
luminous colours to his mind. A musical composer (say, of the name of
Jimson) might very well suffer, like Hogarth's musician before him, from
the disturbances of London. He might very well be pressed for time to
finish an opera--say the comic opera _Orange Pekoe_--_Orange Pekoe_,
music by Jimson--"this young maestro, one of the most promising of our
recent English school"--vigorous entrance of the drums, etc.--the whole
character of Jimson and his music arose in bulk before the mind of
Gideon. What more likely than Jimson's arrival with a grand piano (say,
at Padwick), and his residence in a houseboat alone with the unfinished
score of _Orange Pekoe_? His subsequent disappearance, leaving nothing
behind but an empty piano case, it might be more difficult to account
for. And yet even that was susceptible of explanation. For, suppose
Jimson had gone mad over a fugal passage, and had thereupon destroyed
the accomplice of his infamy, and plunged into the welcome river? What
end, on the whole, more probable for a modern musician?
"By Jove, I'll do it," cried Gideon. "Jimson is the boy!"