IV

A good many hours after Salisbury had returned to the company of the

green rep chairs, Dyson still sat at his desk, itself a Japanese

romance, smoking many pipes, and meditating over his friend's story. The

bizarre quality of the inscription which had annoyed Salisbury was to

him an attraction, and now and again he took it up and scanned

thoughtfully what he had written, especially the quaint jingle at the

end. It was a token, a symbol, he decided, and not a cipher, and the

woman who had flung it away was in all probability entirely ignorant of

its meaning; she was but the agent of the 'Sam' she had abused and

discarded, and he too was again the agent of some one unknown, possibly

of the individual styled Q, who had been forced to visit his French

friends. But what to make of 'Traverse Handle S.' Here was the root and

source of the enigma, and not all the tobacco of Virginia seemed likely

to suggest any clue here. It seemed almost hopeless, but Dyson regarded

himself as the Wellington of mysteries, and went to bed feeling assured

that sooner or later he would hit upon the right track For the next few

days he was deeply engaged in his literary labours, labours which were a

profound mystery even to the most intimate of his friends, who searched

the railway bookstalls in vain for the result of so many hours spent at

the Japanese bureau in company with strong tobacco and black tea. On

this occasion Dyson confined himself to his room for four days, and it

was with genuine relief that he laid down his pen and went out into the

streets in quest of relaxation and fresh air. The gas-lamps were being

lighted, and the fifth edition of the evening papers was being howled

through the streets, and Dyson, feeling that he wanted quiet, turned

away from the clamorous Strand, and began to trend away to the

north-west. Soon he found himself in streets that echoed to his

footsteps, and crossing a broad new thoroughfare, and verging still to

the west, Dyson discovered that he had penetrated to the depths of Soho.

Here again was life; rare vintages of France and Italy, at prices which

seemed contemptibly small, allured the passer-by; here were cheeses,

vast and rich, here olive oil, and here a grove of Rabelaisian sausages;

while in a neighbouring shop the whole Press of Paris appeared to be on

sale. In the middle of the roadway a strange miscellany of nations

sauntered to and fro, for there cab and hansom rarely ventured; and from

window over window the inhabitants looked forth in pleased contemplation

of the scene. Dyson made his way slowly along, mingling with the crowd

on the cobble-stones, listening to the queer babel of French and German,

and Italian and English, glancing now and again at the shop-windows with

their levelled batteries of bottles, and had almost gained the end of

the street, when his attention was arrested by a small shop at the

corner, a vivid contrast to its neighbours. It was the typical shop of

the poor quarter; a shop entirely English. Here were vended tobacco and

sweets, cheap pipes of clay and cherry-wood; penny exercise-books and

penholders jostled for precedence with comic songs, and story papers

with appalling cuts showed that romance claimed its place beside the

actualities of the evening paper, the bills of which fluttered at the

doorway. Dyson glanced up at the name above the door, and stood by the

kennel trembling, for a sharp pang, the pang of one who has made a

discovery, had for a moment left him incapable of motion. The name over

the shop was Travers. Dyson looked up again, this time at the corner of

the wall above the lamp-post, and read in white letters on a blue ground

the words 'Handel Street, W. C.,' and the legend was repeated in fainter

letters just below. He gave a little sigh of satisfaction, and without

more ado walked boldly into the shop, and stared full in the face the

fat man who was sitting behind the counter. The fellow rose to his feet,

and returned the stare a little curiously, and then began in stereotyped

phrase--

'What can I do for you, sir?'

Dyson enjoyed the situation and a dawning perplexity on the man's face.

He propped his stick carefully against the counter and leaning over it,

said slowly and impressively--

'Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the

maple-tree.'

Dyson had calculated on his words producing an effect, and he was not

disappointed. The vendor of miscellanies gasped, open-mouthed like a

fish, and steadied himself against the counter. When he spoke, after a

short interval, it was in a hoarse mutter, tremulous and unsteady.

'Would you mind saying that again, sir? I didn't quite catch it.'

'My good man, I shall most certainly do nothing of the kind. You heard

what I said perfectly well. You have got a clock in your shop, I see; an

admirable timekeeper, I have no doubt. Well, I give you a minute by your

own clock.'

The man looked about him in a perplexed indecision, and Dyson felt that

it was time to be bold.

'Look here, Travers, the time is nearly up. You have heard of Q, I

think. Remember, I hold your life in my hands. Now!'

Dyson was shocked at the result of his own audacity. The man shrank and

shrivelled in terror, the sweat poured down a face of ashy white, and he

held up his hands before him.

'Mr. Davies, Mr. Davies, don't say that--don't for Heaven's sake. I

didn't know you at first, I didn't indeed. Good God! Mr. Davies, you

wouldn't ruin me? I'll get it in a moment.'

'You had better not lose any more time.'

The man slunk piteously out of his own shop, and went into a back

parlour. Dyson heard his trembling fingers fumbling with a bunch of

keys, and the creak of an opening box. He came back presently with a

small package neatly tied up in brown paper in his hands, and, still

full of terror, handed it to Dyson.

'I'm glad to be rid of it,' he said. 'I'll take no more jobs of this

sort.'

Dyson took the parcel and his stick, and walked out of the shop with a

nod, turning round as he passed the door. Travers had sunk into his

seat, his face still white with terror, with one hand over his eyes,

and Dyson speculated a good deal as he walked rapidly away as to what

queer chords those could be on which he had played so roughly. He hailed

the first hansom he could see and drove home, and when he had lit his

hanging lamp, and laid his parcel on the table, he paused for a moment,

wondering on what strange thing the lamplight would soon shine. He

locked his door, and cut the strings, and unfolded the paper layer after

layer, and came at last to a small wooden box, simply but solidly made.

There was no lock, and Dyson had simply to raise the lid, and as he did

so he drew a long breath and started back. The lamp seemed to glimmer

feebly like a single candle, but the whole room blazed with light--and

not with light alone, but with a thousand colours, with all the glories

of some painted window; and upon the walls of his room and on the

familiar furniture, the glow flamed back and seemed to flow again to its

source, the little wooden box. For there upon a bed of soft wool lay the

most splendid jewel, a jewel such as Dyson had never dreamed of, and

within it shone the blue of far skies, and the green of the sea by the

shore, and the red of the ruby, and deep violet rays, and in the middle

of all it seemed aflame as if a fountain of fire rose up, and fell, and

rose again with sparks like stars for drops. Dyson gave a long deep

sigh, and dropped into his chair, and put his hands over his eyes to

think. The jewel was like an opal, but from a long experience of the

shop-windows he knew there was no such thing as an opal one-quarter or

one-eighth of its size. He looked at the stone again, with a feeling

that was almost awe, and placed it gently on the table under the lamp,

and watched the wonderful flame that shone and sparkled in its centre,

and then turned to the box, curious to know whether it might contain

other marvels. He lifted the bed of wool on which the opal had reclined,

and saw beneath, no more jewels, but a little old pocket-book, worn and

shabby with use. Dyson opened it at the first leaf, and dropped the book

again appalled. He had read the name of the owner, neatly written in

blue ink:

STEVEN BLACK, M. D.,

Oranmore,

Devon Road,

Harlesden.

It was several minutes before Dyson could bring himself to open the book

a second time; he remembered the wretched exile in his garret; and his

strange talk, and the memory too of the face he had seen at the window,

and of what the specialist had said, surged up in his mind, and as he

held his finger on the cover, he shivered, dreading what might be

written within. When at last he held it in his hand, and turned the

pages, he found that the first two leaves were blank, but the third was

covered with clear, minute writing, and Dyson began to read with the

light of the opal flaming in his eyes.

V

'Ever since I was a young man'--the record began--'I devoted all my

leisure and a good deal of time that ought to have been given to other

studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of

knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any

attractions for me, and I lived alone in London, avoiding my

fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed

and unsympathetic. So long as I could gratify my desire of knowledge of

a peculiar kind, knowledge of which the very existence is a profound

secret to most men, I was intensely happy, and I have often spent whole

nights sitting in the darkness of my room, and thinking of the strange

world on the brink of which I trod. My professional studies, however,

and the necessity of obtaining a degree, for some time forced my more

obscure employment into the background, and soon after I had qualified I

met Agnes, who became my wife. We took a new house in this remote

suburb, and I began the regular routine of a sober practice, and for

some months lived happily enough, sharing in the life about me, and only

thinking at odd intervals of that occult science which had once

fascinated my whole being. I had learnt enough of the paths I had begun

to tread to know that they were beyond all expression difficult and

dangerous, that to persevere meant in all probability the wreck of a

life, and that they led to regions so terrible, that the mind of man

shrinks appalled at the very thought. Moreover, the quiet and the peace

I had enjoyed since my marriage had wiled me away to a great extent from

places where I knew no peace could dwell. But suddenly--I think indeed

it was the work of a single night, as I lay awake on my bed gazing into

the darkness--suddenly, I say, the old desire, the former longing,

returned, and returned with a force that had been intensified ten times

by its absence; and when the day dawned and I looked out of the window,

and saw with haggard eyes the sunrise in the east, I knew that my doom

had been pronounced; that as I had gone far, so now I must go farther

with unfaltering steps. I turned to the bed where my wife was sleeping

peacefully, and lay down again, weeping bitter tears, for the sun had

set on our happy life and had risen with a dawn of terror to us both. I

will not set down here in minute detail what followed; outwardly I went

about the day's labour as before, saying nothing to my wife. But she

soon saw that I had changed; I spent my spare time in a room which I had

fitted up as a laboratory, and often I crept upstairs in the grey dawn

of the morning, when the light of many lamps still glowed over London;

and each night I had stolen a step nearer to that great abyss which I

was to bridge over, the gulf between the world of consciousness and the

world of matter. My experiments were many and complicated in their

nature, and it was some months before I realized whither they all

pointed, and when this was borne in upon me in a moment's time, I felt

my face whiten and my heart still within me. But the power to draw back,

the power to stand before the doors that now opened wide before me and

not to enter in, had long ago been absent; the way was closed, and I

could only pass onward. My position was as utterly hopeless as that of

the prisoner in an utter dungeon, whose only light is that of the

dungeon above him; the doors were shut and escape was impossible.

Experiment after experiment gave the same result, and I knew, and shrank

even as the thought passed through my mind, that in the work I had to do

there must be elements which no laboratory could furnish, which no

scales could ever measure. In that work, from which even I doubted to

escape with life, life itself must enter; from some human being there

must be drawn that essence which men call the soul, and in its place

(for in the scheme of the world there is no vacant chamber)--in its

place would enter in what the lips can hardly utter, what the mind

cannot conceive without a horror more awful than the horror of death

itself. And when I knew this, I knew also on whom this fate would fall;

I looked into my wife's eyes. Even at that hour, if I had gone out and

taken a rope and hanged myself, I might have escaped, and she also, but

in no other way. At last I told her all. She shuddered, and wept, and

called on her dead mother for help, and asked me if I had no mercy, and

I could only sigh. I concealed nothing from her; I told her what she

would become, and what would enter in where her life had been; I told

her of all the shame and of all the horror. You who will read this when

I am dead--if indeed I allow this record to survive,--you who have

opened the box and have seen what lies there, if you could understand

what lies hidden in that opal! For one night my wife consented to what I

asked of her, consented with the tears running down her beautiful face,

and hot shame flushing red over her neck and breast, consented to

undergo this for me. I threw open the window, and we looked together at

the sky and the dark earth for the last time; it was a fine star-light

night, and there was a pleasant breeze blowing, and I kissed her on her

lips, and her tears ran down upon my face. That night she came down to

my laboratory, and there, with shutters bolted and barred down, with

curtains drawn thick and close, so that the very stars might be shut out

from the sight of that room, while the crucible hissed and boiled over

the lamp, I did what had to be done, and led out what was no longer a

woman. But on the table the opal flamed and sparkled with such light as

no eyes of man have ever gazed on, and the rays of the flame that was

within it flashed and glittered, and shone even to my heart. My wife had

only asked one thing of me; that when there came at last what I had told

her, I would kill her. I have kept that promise.'

* * * * *

There was nothing more. Dyson let the little pocket-book fall, and

turned and looked again at the opal with its flaming inmost light, and

then with unutterable irresistible horror surging up in his heart,

grasped the jewel, and flung it on the ground, and trampled it beneath

his heel. His face was white with terror as he turned away, and for a

moment stood sick and trembling, and then with a start he leapt across

the room and steadied himself against the door. There was an angry hiss,

as of steam escaping under great pressure, and as he gazed, motionless,

a volume of heavy yellow smoke was slowly issuing from the very centre

of the jewel, and wreathing itself in snake-like coils above it. And

then a thin white flame burst forth from the smoke, and shot up into the

air and vanished; and on the ground there lay a thing like a cinder,

black and crumbling to the touch.