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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42499 ***
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://books.google.com/books?id=tT4VAAAAQAAJ
+      (Oxford University)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                     New Novels at the Libraries.
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+    MARVEL. By the Author of "Molly Bawn." 3 vols.
+    FOR FREEDOM. By TIGHE HOPKINS. 2 vols.
+    MOLLY'S STORY; a Family History. 3 vols.
+    AN ADVENTURESS. 2 vols.
+    LADY STELLA AND HER LOVER. 3 vols.
+    ONE MAID'S MISCHIEF. By G. M. FENN. 3 vols.
+    UNCLE BOB'S NIECE. By LESLIE KEITH. 3 vols.
+    A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS. By C. FOTHERGILL. 3 vols.
+
+                          *   *   *   *   *
+
+                  WARD & DOWNEY, PUBLISHERS, LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+                               A Novel.
+
+
+
+
+
+                                  BY
+
+                           RICHARD DOWLING,
+
+                              AUTHOR OF
+
+            "The Mystery of Killard," "The Weird Sisters,"
+              "Tempest Driven," "Under St. Paul's," &c.
+
+
+
+
+                         _IN THREE VOLUMES_.
+
+
+                              VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+
+                               LONDON:
+
+                           WARD AND DOWNEY,
+
+                 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C.
+
+                                1888.
+
+                       [_All rights reserved_.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              PRINTED BY
+          KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS,
+                       AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              CONTENTS.
+
+
+       CHAP.
+
+     XXVII.--New Relatives.
+
+    XXVIII.--Leigh at his Bench.
+
+      XXIX.--Strong Smelling Salts.
+
+       XXX.--Dora Ashton Alone.
+
+      XXXI.--Winding up the Clock.
+
+     XXXII.--The Morning After.
+
+    XXXIII.--Leigh confides in Timmons.
+
+     XXXIV.--The Wrong Man.
+
+      XXXV.--The Ruins.
+
+     XXXVI.--Open Confession.
+
+    XXXVII.--Free.
+
+   XXXVIII.--Doctor Shaw's Verdict.
+
+     XXXIX.--Patient and Nurse.
+
+        XL.--The Two Patients.
+
+       XLI.--Fugitives.
+
+      XLII.--The End.
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                            MIRACLE GOLD.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+                            NEW RELATIVES.
+
+
+When John Hanbury turned his face homeward to Chester Square from
+Grimsby Street that evening, the long summer day was at last ended,
+and it was dusk.
+
+He had, before setting out for the country that morning, written a
+note to his mother explaining whither he was going, and left it with
+the document she had given him the night before. He wound up his note
+by telling her he was still, even after the night, so confused and
+hurried in his thoughts that he would make no comment on the discovery
+except that it was one of the most extraordinary that had ever
+befallen man. He was going into the country to find what confirmation
+he could, if any, of the marvellous tale.
+
+On getting back to London he had had a strange meeting with his
+mother. Both were profoundly moved, and each, out of mercy to the
+other, affected to be perfectly calm, and fell to discussing the new
+aspect of affairs as though the news into which they had just come was
+no more interesting than the ordinary surprises that awaken interest
+once a week in the quietest family. Beyond an embrace of more warmth
+and endurance than usual, there was no sign that anything very unusual
+had occurred since their last meeting. Then Mrs. Hanbury sat down, and
+her son, as was his custom when excited, walked up and down the room
+as he told his Derbyshire experience.
+
+"In a few hours," he went on, after some introductory sentences, "I
+found out all that is to be found out about the Graces near their
+former place, Gracedieu. It exactly corresponds with all my father
+says. The story of Kate Grace's disappearance and marriage to a
+foreign nobleman (by the tradition he is French), is still told in the
+place, and the shop in which her father formerly carried on his
+business in wool can still be pointed out, unaltered after a hundred
+and thirty years. There is Gracedieu itself, a small house in a
+garden, such as a man who had made money in trade in a country town
+would retire to. There is also the tradition that Grace, the wool
+dealer, did not make his money in trade, but came into it through his
+rich son-in-law, whose name is not even guessed at, the people there
+being content as a rule to describe him as a foreigner, while those
+who pride themselves on their accuracy, call him a Frenchman, and the
+entirely scrupulous say he was a French count."
+
+"And do these Graces still live at Gracedieu, John?"
+
+"No, mother. They left it years ago--generations ago. And now I want
+to tell you a thing almost as incredible as the subject of my father's
+letter. No longer since than yesterday I met, in London, the
+representative of these Graces, the only surviving descendant."
+
+"That is truly astonishing," said Mrs. Hanbury. "Yesterday was a day
+of wonders."
+
+"A day of miracles," said the young man thoughtfully.
+
+For the first time in his life he had a secret from his mother, and he
+was at this moment in doubt as to whether he should impart to her, or
+not, all the circumstances of his going to Grimsby Street yesterday.
+He had no inclination to speak now of the quarrel or disagreement with
+Dora. That incident no longer occupied a front and illumined position
+in his mind. It was in a dim background, a quiet twilight.
+
+"How did you come across them? What are they like?"
+
+"I came across them quite by accident. It is much too long a tale to
+tell now. Indeed, it would take hours to tell fully, and I want not to
+lose any time at present."
+
+"As you please, John. This is a day when wonders come so quick that we
+lose all sense of their importance. Tell me just what you like. I am
+only concerned about one thing."
+
+"And what is that, mother?" He asked in a troubled voice. He was
+afraid she was about to make some reference to Dora.
+
+"That you do not allow yourself to become too excited or carried
+away," she said, with pleading solicitude.
+
+He kissed her, and said cheerfully: "Trust me, mother, I am not going
+to lose my head or knock myself up. Well, when I met Mrs. and Miss
+Grace yesterday----"
+
+"Oh, the representatives are women?"
+
+"Yes, mother, and gentlewomen too; though I should think far from well
+off----"
+
+"If," said Mrs. Hanbury promptly, "narrow circumstances are all the
+drawback they labour under that could be soon put right."
+
+"God bless you, my good mother," cried the son with affectionate
+pride. "Well, when I saw them yesterday in their place in Grimsby
+Street I had, of course, no notion whatever that they were in any way
+related to us. I took no particular notice of them beyond observing
+that they were ladies. The strangest thing about them is that the
+younger is--is----" He hesitated, not knowing how much of yesterday's
+events must come out.
+
+"What?" said the mother with a smile.
+
+"Is, as I said, a perfect lady."
+
+"Yes; but why do you hesitate?"
+
+"Well, mother, I don't know how to put it," he laughed lightly, and
+coloured impatiently at his own blundering stupidity.
+
+"I will help you. That the younger is fifty, wears corkscrew curls,
+and teaches the piano in that awful Grimsby Street. Never mind, John,
+I am not afraid of an old maid, even if you are."
+
+"Good heavens! I don't mean that, mother! I'll put it in this way. It
+is not to say that there is a strong likeness, but, if you saw Miss
+Grace, you would be prepared to swear it was Miss Ashton."
+
+"What? So like Dora Ashton! Then, indeed, she must be not only
+ladylike but a beauty as well."
+
+"The two would be, I think, quite indistinguishable to the eye,
+anyway. The voices are not the same."
+
+"Now, indeed, you do interest me. And was it because of this
+extraordinary resemblance you sought the young lady's acquaintance?"
+
+"Well, as I said, it is too long a story, much too long a story to
+tell now. I did not seek the lady's acquaintance. A man who knew us
+both, and whom I met yesterday by accident, was so struck by the
+similarity between Miss Ashton and Miss Grace that he insisted upon my
+going with him to the house of this Mrs. Grace."
+
+"Oh, I understand. You were at Mrs. Ashton's Thursday, met some man
+there, and he carried you off. Upon my word you seem to be in a whirl
+of romances," she said gaily.
+
+"That was not exactly the way the thing arose. The man who introduced
+me was at Ashton's, but we shall have the whole story out another
+day."
+
+"Then what do you think of doing now? You seem in a great hurry."
+
+"I'm not, mother, in a great hurry anywhere in particular.
+
+"You, of course, are wishing to run away to Curzon street?"
+
+"No. They are not at home this evening. Mrs. Ashton said they were to
+dine at Byngfield's. I am in a hurry, but in a hurry nowhere. I am
+simply in a blaze of excitement, as you may imagine." He paused, and
+wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The worst was over. There
+had been a reference to Dora and no explanation, a thing he wished to
+avoid at any expense just now. There had been a statement that he had
+met the Graces, and no mention of Leigh. His mind had been in a wild
+whirl. He had in the first burst of his interview with his mother
+magnified to himself the unpleasant episodes of yesterday, as far as
+Leigh was concerned at all events. Now he was more at rest. He had got
+breathing space, and he could between this and the next reference
+decide upon the course he should pursue in that most uncomfortable
+affair. There would be ample excuse for almost any irregularity on his
+part with regard to her in the amazing news which had come upon him.
+His mind was calmer and more unclouded now.
+
+"Well, perhaps if you talk to me a while you may grow cooler. Tell me
+anything you like or nothing. You will wear yourself out, John, if you
+don't take care. To judge from your father's letter to you he attached
+on practical importance to the secret it contained, to the only object
+he had in communicating it was to keep you still. It has had so far an
+effect the very opposite of what he desired."
+
+"I know I am very excitable. I will try to be more calm. Let me see.
+What can we talk about? Of course I can neither think nor speak about
+anything which does not bear on the disclosure."
+
+"Tell me then what you heard of the Graces in Derbyshire, and why you
+think them not well off. That may have a practical use, and will take
+your mind off your own place in the affair."
+
+"Oh! yes. Well, you see Castleton isn't a very big place, and Mr.
+Coutch is the most important professional man in it, so I found my way
+to him, and he told me he had been making inquiries for a widow and
+her granddaughter who lived in London, and I asked where they lived
+and so on, and found out that Mrs. Grace who was making the inquiries
+was the very Mrs. Grace I had met yesterday. I told Coutch that I was
+the person he was looking for, that I represented the other branch of
+the Grace family, and that I was most anxious to befriend my relatives
+by giving them what information they might desire. I did not say
+anything to him about the Polish affair, or the man whom Kate Grace
+had married, beyond informing Coutch that he had not been a French
+nobleman, and that I was a descendant of that marriage.
+
+"Then he told me he feared from what his London correspondent had
+written him that the Graces were in distress, or anyway were far from
+well off, as Mrs. Grace had lately lost a large sum of money, and Miss
+Grace every penny she had in the world. His correspondent said he
+thought the only object of the inquiry was to find out if by any
+chance there might be ever so remote a chance of tracing the other
+branch of the family with a view to finding out if by will or failure
+of that line some property might remain to those who bore the name of
+Grace, and were direct in the line of the wool-dealer of the
+eighteenth century. I then told him that I was not either exactly poor
+or rich, and that I would be most happy to do anything in my power for
+my distant relatives. He said that there was not even a trace of
+property in his neighbourhood to which either of the branches had the
+shadow of a claim, as Gracedieu had generations ago passed away from
+the family by sale, and they had never owned anything else there."
+
+"I am delighted you told this man we would be happy to be of any use
+we could to this poor old lady, and her granddaughter. Of course,
+John, in this case you must not do anything in which I am not a
+sharer. All I have will be yours legally one day, and in the mean time
+is yours with my whole heart and soul. Apart altogether from my desire
+to aid in this matter because these people are your people, it would,
+of course, be my duty to do so, because they are your dead father's
+people. You own you are restless. Why not go to them and tell them
+all? Say they have friends and well-wishers in us, and that I will
+call upon them to-morrow."
+
+So mother and son parted, and he went to Grimsby Street. He had left
+Chester Square in a comparatively quiet state of mind, but as he drove
+in the hansom his imagination took fire once more, and when he found
+himself in Mrs. Grace's sitting-room he was highly excited.
+
+When he returned to Chester Square he sought his mother's room. He
+found her sitting alone in the twilight. In a hasty way he described
+the interview between himself, Mrs. and Miss Grace, and said he had
+conveyed his mother's promise of a visit the next day.
+
+Then he said: "Do you know, I think we had better keep all this to
+ourselves?"
+
+"I am glad, my son, you are of that opinion. Up to this I have spoken
+to no one, not even to your aunt Preston or Sir Edward, who were here
+to-day. I don't remember ever having heard that the Hanburys were
+related to people called Grace, and I suppose if I did not hear it, no
+one among our friends did. I hope you cautioned Mrs. and Miss Grace.
+But, remember, John, this is not wholly our secret. It is theirs quite
+as much, if not more, than ours. All we can do for the present is to
+keep our own tongues quiet."
+
+"I am sure you will like Mrs. and Miss Grace. They are very quiet
+people and took my news very well. Good news or news of this kind
+tries people a great deal more than calamitous news. They seem to be
+simple and well-bred."
+
+"Well, when people are simple and well-bred, and good-natured, and not
+selfish----"
+
+"I think they are all that," he interjected.
+
+"There is no merit in getting on with them. The only thing to consider
+John, is, will they get on with me? Am I to be got on with by them?"
+
+"Why, my mother would get on with the most disagreeable women ever
+known."
+
+"Yes, but then these two may not be the most disagreeable. At all
+events I'll do my best. Do you intend staying in or are you going to
+the club or to Curzon Street?"
+
+"The Curzon Street people are dining out at Byngfields' as I told you
+earlier in the day. I am too restless to stay in the house and the
+club seems too trivial for an evening like this. I think I'll go out
+and walk to that most delightful of all places."
+
+"Where is that?"
+
+"Nowhere in particular. I am too tired and excited to decide upon
+anything to-night. I'll just go for a stroll and think about nothing
+at all. I'll say good night, as I may not be back early."
+
+And so mother and son parted.
+
+He left the house. It was almost dark. He wandered on in an easterly
+direction, not caring or heeding where he went. He tried to keep his
+mind from hurrying by walking at a leisurely rate, and he tried to
+persuade himself he was thinking of nothing by employing his eyes
+actively on all things that came his way as he strolled along. But
+this device was only an attempt and scarcely a sincere attempt.
+
+"A king," he would think, insensibly holding his head high, "one of my
+people, my great grandfather's grandfather, has been king of an old
+monarchy and millions of men. It is a long time ago, no doubt, but
+what does all blood pride itself upon if not former splendours? A
+king! And the king of no miserable Balkan state or Christian fragment
+of the Turkish empire, but a king of an ancient and powerful state
+which stood powerful and stubborn in the heart of fierce, military,
+warlike Europe and held its own! Poniatowski was no doubt an elected
+king, but so were the others, and he was a Lithuanian nobleman before
+he became King. The kingdom over which he ruled exists no longer
+except in history, and even if the infamous partitions had never taken
+place and Stanislaus had owned his English marriage and taken his
+English family with him, I should have no more claim to the throne
+than to that of the Queen. But I am the lineal descendant of a king
+who reigned for a generation, and neither the malignity of to-day nor
+the lies of history can destroy that fact.
+
+"Still the whole thing is, of course, only moonshine now, and if I
+went to Lithuania, to Wolczyn itself, they would laugh at my
+pretensions. The family estates and honours had been vapourized before
+that last of the Poniatowskis fell under Napoleon. So my father
+asserts, and he took some trouble to enquire. Therefore, no doubt it
+would be best to keep the whole thing secret. But can we?"
+
+He put the thought away from him as having no immediate urgency. It
+would be best for him to think of nothing at all, but to watch the gas
+lamps and the people and the cabs and carriages hurrying through the
+free air of England.
+
+But Dora? What of Dora? Dora had said good night to him and then good
+bye. He had behaved badly, shamefully, no doubt. There was no excuse
+for him or for any man allowing himself to be carried away by temper
+in speaking to a lady, above all in speaking to a lady whom he thought
+and intended to make his wife. Could Dora ever forgive him? It was
+more than doubtful. If she did, what assurance had he for the future?
+How would Dora take this discovery about the husband of Kate Grace in
+the eighteenth century? She would think little or nothing about it.
+She had no respect for hereditary honours or for old blood. She judged
+all men by their deeds and by their deeds alone. Hence she had
+tolerated him, doubtless, when she believed him to be no more than the
+son of a City merchant possessing some abilities. She had tolerated
+him! It was intolerable to be tolerated! And by the woman he intended
+asking to be his wife.
+
+He had asked her to be his wife and she had hung back because he had
+not yet done anything important, had not yet even taken up a
+well-defined position in politics.
+
+If he told her to-night that he was descended from Stanislaus II. King
+of Poland she would not be impressed ever so little. He did not attach
+much importance to his old Lithuanian blood or the transient gleam of
+kingship which had shone upon his race. But there was, in spite of
+Dora, something in these things after all, or all the world was wrong.
+
+Dora was really too matter-of-fact. No doubt the rank is but the
+guinea stamp and the man is the gold for all that. But in our complex
+civilization the stamp is very convenient; it saves the trouble of
+assaying and weighing every piece of yellow metal we are offered as
+gold, and Burns himself, in his letters at least, shows anything but
+this fierce democratic spirit. Why Burns' letters erred the other way,
+and were full of sickening tuft-hunting and sycophancy.
+
+What a marvellous likeness there was between the appearance of those
+two young girls. Now, if anyone had said there was a remote cousinship
+between the girls all who saw would say cousinship! Sisterhood! No
+twins could be more alike. And yet the resemblance was only
+accidental.
+
+He would like to see them together and compare them.
+
+Like to see them together? Should he?
+
+Well, no.
+
+Dora was generous, there was no question of that; and she was not
+disposed to be in the least jealous. But she could scarcely help
+wondering how he felt towards another girl who was physically her
+counterpart and seemed to think more of blood and race.
+
+It might occur to Dora to look at the likeness between herself and his
+cousin Edith in this way: To me John Hanbury is merely a young man of
+promising ability, who may if he likes forward causes in which I take
+a great interest. I sometimes cross him and thwart him, but then he is
+my lover, and, though I despise rank, I am his social superior in
+England now anyway. How would it be with him if this young girl whose
+appearance is so like mine cares' for him, apart from his abilities
+and possible usefulness in causes interesting to me, and sets great
+store by noble race and royal blood?
+
+That would be an inquiry upon which Dora might not care to enter. Or
+it might be she would not care? Might it be she was glad to say
+good-bye?
+
+"Perhaps Dora has begun to think she made a mistake in listening to me
+at all. After yesterday and my cowardly weakness and vacillation
+during the afternoon, and my unpardonable outburst after dinner, she
+may not care to send me away from her because she pities me! Good God!
+am I going to marry a woman who pities me?
+
+"I will put Dora away from my thoughts for the present.
+
+"The Graces must come to live with us, that's certain.
+
+"Fancy that odious dwarf and Dora pitying me! I cannot bear the
+thought! I could not breathe five minutes in an atmosphere of pity.
+There are good points in my character, but I must take care of them or
+they might deteriorate into baseness. I must take care of myself,
+beware of myself. I am not perfect, I am not very vile. I should like
+to be a god. Let me try."
+
+He had told his mother he was going Nowhere in particular. It was
+quite plain his reflections were bringing him no nearer to Curzon
+Street.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+                         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.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+                        STRONG SMELLING SALTS.
+
+
+Stamer had by this time been provided with a second glass of the
+Hanover's famous rum hot. Mr. Williams the proprietor was still
+immersed in his newspaper, although Stamer's implied appreciation of
+the hot rum, in the order of a second glass, had almost melted the
+host into the benignity of conversation with the shabby-looking
+stranger. On the appearance of the dwarf, Williams rose briskly from
+his chair and greeted the new-comer cordially. Stamer did not stir
+beyond drawing back a little on his stool. Out of his blue spectacles
+he fixed a steady and cat-like gaze upon Leigh.
+
+"How warm the weather keeps," said Leigh, climbing to the top of a
+stool, with his back to the door of the compartment and directly
+opposite Stamer. "Even at the expense of getting more dust than I can
+manage well with, I think I must leave my window open," pointing
+upwards to the clock-room. "The place is suffocating. Hah!
+Suffocating."
+
+"Why don't you get a fine muslin blind and then you could leave the
+window open, particularly if you wet the blind."
+
+"There's something in that, Mr. Williams; there's a great deal in what
+you say, Mr. Williams. But, you see, the water would dry off very soon
+in this broiling weather, and then the dust would come through. But if
+I soaked the blind in oil, a non-drying oil, it would catch all the
+dust and insects. Dust is as bad for my clock as steel filings from a
+stone are for the lungs of a Sheffield grinder. Hah! Yes, I must get
+some gauze and steep it in oil. Would you lend me the potman for a few
+minutes? He would know what I want and I am rather tired for
+shopping."
+
+"Certainly, with pleasure, Mr. Leigh. Here, Binns, just put on your
+coat and run on an errand for Mr. Leigh, will you."
+
+The potman who was serving the only customer in the public bar
+appeared, got his instructions and money from the clock-maker and
+skipped off with smiling alacrity. The little man was open-handed in
+such matters.
+
+"Yes; the place is bad enough in the daytime," went on Leigh as he was
+handed a glass of shandy-gaff, "but at night when the gas is lighted
+it becomes choking simply."
+
+"It's a good job you haven't to stay there long at night. No more than
+half-an-hour with the gas on."
+
+"Yes, about half-an-hour does for winding up. But then I sometimes
+come there when you are all in bed. I often get up in the middle of
+the night persuaded something has gone wrong. I begin to wonder if
+that clock will get the better of me and start doing something on its
+own account."
+
+"It's twice too much to have on your mind all by yourself. Why don't
+you take in a partner?" asked Williams sympathetically, "or," he
+added, "give it up altogether if you find it too much for you?" If
+Leigh gave up his miserable clock, Leigh and Williams might do
+something together. The two great forces of their minds might be
+directed to one common object and joined in one common fame.
+
+"Partner! Hah!" cried Leigh sharply, "and have all my secrets blown
+upon in twenty-four hours." Then he added significantly. "The only man
+whom I would allow into that room for a minute should be deaf and dumb
+and a fool."
+
+"And not able to read or write," added Williams with answering
+significance.
+
+"And not able to read or write," said the dwarf, nodding his head to
+Williams.
+
+The publican stood a foot back from the counter and expanded his chest
+with pride at the thought of being trusted by the great little man
+with the secret of the strange winder of two nights ago. Then he
+added, by way of impressing on Leigh his complete trustworthiness
+respecting the evening which was not to be spoken of, "By-the-way Mr.
+Leigh, we saw you wind up last night, sure enough."
+
+"Oh yes, I saw you. I nodded to you."
+
+"Yes, at ten minutes past twelve by my clock, a quarter past twelve by
+my watch; for I looked, Mr. Leigh. You nodded. I told the gentlemen
+here how wonderfully particular you were about time, and how your
+clock would go right to a fraction of a second. If I am not mistaken
+this gentleman was here. Weren't you here, sir?" Williams said,
+addressing Stamer for the first time, but without moving from where he
+stood.
+
+"I happened to be here at the time, and I saw the gentleman at the
+window above," said Stamer in a meek voice.
+
+Then a remarkable thing happened.
+
+The partition between the private bar and the public bar was about six
+feet high. Just over the dwarf's head a pair of long thin hands
+appeared on the top of the partition, and closed on it with the
+fingers pointing downward. Then very slowly and quite silently a
+round, shabby, brown hat stole upwards over the partition, followed by
+a dirty yellow-brown forehead, and last of all a pair of gleaming blue
+eyes that for a moment looked into the private bar, and then silently
+the eyes, the forehead, and the hat, sank below the rail, and finally
+the hands were withdrawn from the top of the partition. From the
+moment of the appearance of the hands on the rail until they left it
+did not occupy ten seconds.
+
+No one in the private bar saw the apparition.
+
+"Well," said Leigh, who showed no disposition to include Stamer in the
+conversation, "I can have a breath of air to-night when I am winding
+up. I am free till then. I think I'll go and look after that mummy.
+Oh! here's Binns with the muslin. Thank you, Binns, this will do
+capitally."
+
+He took the little silver flask out of his pocket, and poured a few
+drops from it into his hand and sniffed it up, and then made a noisy
+expiration.
+
+"Very refreshing. Very refreshing, indeed. I know I needn't ask you,
+Williams. I know you never touch it. You have no idea of how
+refreshing it is."
+
+The smell of eau-de-cologne filled the air.
+
+Stamer watched the small silver flask with eyes that blazed balefully
+behind the safe screen of his blue glasses.
+
+"Would you oblige me," he said in a timid voice, holding out his hand
+as he spoke.
+
+Leigh was in the act of returning the tiny flask to his waistcoat
+pocket. He arrested it a moment, and then let it fall in out of sight,
+saying sharply: "You wouldn't like it, sir. Very few people do like
+it. You must be used to it."
+
+Stamer's suspicions were now fully roused. This was the very drug
+Leigh had used with Timmons. It produced little or no effect on the
+dwarf, for as he explained, he was accustomed to it, but on a man who
+had never inhaled it before the effect would be instant, and long and
+complete insensibility. "I should like very much to try. I can stand
+very strong smelling salts."
+
+"Oh! indeed. Can you? Then you would like to try some strong smelling
+salts?" said Leigh with a sneer as he scornfully surveyed the shabby
+man who had got off his stool and was standing within a few feet of
+him. "Well, I have no more in the flask. That was the last drop, but I
+have some in this." Out of his other waistcoat pocket he took a small
+glass bottle with a ground cap and ground stopper. He twisted off the
+cap and loosened the stopper. "This is very strong, remember."
+
+"All right." If he became insensible here and at this time it would do
+no harm. There was plenty of help at hand, and nothing at stake, not
+as with Timmons last night in that house over the way.
+
+"Snuff up heartily," said the dwarf, holding out the bottle towards
+the other with the stopper removed.
+
+Stamer leaned on one of the high stools with both his hands, and put
+his nose over the bottle. With a yell he threw his arms wildly into
+the air and fell back on the floor as if he were shot.
+
+Williams sprang up on the counter and cried: "What's this! He isn't
+dead?" in terror.
+
+The potman flew over the counter into the public bar, and rushed into
+the private compartment.
+
+The solitary customer in the public bar drew himself up once more and
+stared at the prostrate man with round blue eyes.
+
+Leigh laughed harshly as he replaced the stopper and screwed on the
+cap.
+
+"Dead! Not he! He's all right! He said he could stand strong salts. I
+gave him the strongest ammonia. That's all."
+
+The potman had lifted Stamer from the ground, propped him against the
+wall and flung half a bottle of water over his head.
+
+Stamer recovered himself instantly. His spectacles were in pieces on
+the floor. He did not, considering his false beard and whiskers, care
+for any more of the potman's kindnesses. He stooped, picked up his hat
+and walked quickly out of the Hanover.
+
+"I like to see a man like that," said Leigh, calmly blowing a dense
+cloud of cigar-smoke from his mouth and nodding his head in the
+direction Stamer had taken.
+
+"You nearly killed the man," said Williams, dropping down from the
+counter inside the bar and staring at Leigh with frightened eyes that
+looked larger than usual owing to the increased pallor of his face.
+
+"Pooh! Nonsense! That stuff wouldn't kill anyone unless he had a weak
+heart or smashed his head in his fall. I got it merely to try the
+effect of it combined with a powerful galvanic battery, on the nasal
+muscles of my mummy. Now, if that man were dead we'd get him all right
+again in a jiffy with one sniff of it. I was saying I like a man like
+him. You see, he was impudent and intruded himself on me when he had
+no right to do anything of the kind, and he insisted on smelling my
+strong salts. Well, he had his wish, and he came to grief, and he
+picked himself up, or rather Binns picked him up, and he never said
+anything but went away. He knew he was in the wrong, and he knew he
+got worsted, and he simply walked away. That is the spirit which makes
+Englishmen so great all the world over. When they are beaten they
+shake hands and say no more about the affair. That's true British
+pluck." Leigh blew another dense cloud of smoke in front of him and
+looked complacently at Williams.
+
+"Well," said the publican in a tone of doubt, "he didn't exactly shake
+hands, you know. He does look a bit down in the world, seems to me an
+undertaker's man out of work, but I rather wonder he didn't kick up a
+row. Many another man would."
+
+"A man of any other nationality would, but not a Britisher. If,
+however, you fancy the poor chap is out of work and he comes back and
+grumbles about the thing, give him half-a-sovereign from me."
+
+"Mr. Leigh, I must say that is very handsome of you, sir," said
+Williams, thawing thoroughly. He was a kind-hearted man, and did think
+the victim of the trick ought to get some sort of compensation.
+
+Meanwhile, Stamer had reached the open air and was seemingly in no
+great hurry to go back to the Hanover to claim the provision Leigh had
+made for his injury. He did not seem in a hurry to go anywhere, and a
+person who knew of what had taken place in the private bar, and seeing
+him move slowly up Welbeck Place with his left shoulder to the wall
+and his eyes on the window of the workshop, would think he was either
+behaving very like a kicked cur and slinking away with the desire of
+attracting as little attention as possible, or that he was meditating
+the mean revenge of breaking the dwarf's window.
+
+But Stamer was not sneaking away. He was simply taking observations in
+a comprehensive and leisurely manner. Above all, he was not dreaming
+of breaking the clockmaker's window. On the contrary he was hugging
+himself with delight at the notion that he would not have to break
+Leigh's window. No, there would not be the least necessity for that.
+As the window was now no doubt it would be necessary to smash one pane
+at least. But with that muslin blind well-soaked in oil stretched
+across the open, caused by the raising of the lower sash there would
+be no need whatever of injuring the dwarf's glass.
+
+He passed very slowly down Welbeck Place towards the mews under the
+window which lighted the private bar, and through which he had watched
+the winding up of the clock last night. His eyes, now wanting the blue
+spectacles, explored and examined every feature of Forbes's with as
+close a scrutiny as though he were inspecting it to ascertain its
+stability.
+
+When he had deliberately taken in all that eyes could see in the gable
+of Forbes's bakery, he turned his attention to his left, and looked
+with care unmingled with anxiety at the gable or rather second side of
+the Hanover. Then he passed slowly on. It might almost be fancied from
+his tedious steps that he had hurt his back or his legs in his fall,
+but he did not limp or wriggle or drag his legs.
+
+Beyond the Hanover, that is on this side between the end of the public
+house and the Welbeck Mews, were two poor two-storey houses, let in
+tenements to men who found employment about the mews. These houses
+Stamer observed closely also, and then passed under the archway into
+the mews. Here he looked back on the gables of the tenement houses.
+They were, he saw, double-roofed, with a gutter in the middle, and
+from the gutter to the mews descended a water-pipe into the ground.
+
+When there was nothing more to be noted in the outside of the gables,
+Stamer pulled his hat over his eyes and struck out briskly across the
+mews, which he quitted by the southern outlet.
+
+As he finished his inspection and left the mews he thought:
+
+"So that was the stuff he gave Timmons, was it? I suppose it had more
+effect on him or he got more of it. It didn't take my senses away for
+more than a flash of lightning, but more of it might knock me silly
+for a while. Besides, Timmons is not as strong a man as I. It is a
+wonder it did not kill him. I felt as if the roof of my skull was
+blown off. I felt inclined to draw and let him have an ounce. But
+then, although he may be playing into the hands of the police, he
+isn't a policeman. He couldn't have done the drill, although his boots
+are as big as the regulation boots. Then, even if I did draw on him I
+couldn't have got away. There were too many people about.
+
+"So he'll wind up his clock to-night between twelve and half-past,
+will he? It will take him the longest half-hour he ever spent in all
+his life! There's plenty of time to get the tools ready, and for a
+little practice too."
+
+Stamer had no personal resentment against Leigh because of the trick
+put upon him. A convict never has the sense of the sacred
+inviolateness of his person that belongs to men of even the most
+depraved character who have never "done time." He had arrived at his
+deadly intent not from feelings of revenge but from motives of
+prudence. Leigh possessed dangerous information, and Leigh was guilty
+of treason and was trying to compass betrayal; therefore he must be
+put away, and put away at once.
+
+Meanwhile the man who drew himself up by his hands, and looked over
+the partition between the public and private bar, had left the
+Hanover. He was a very tall man with grizzled, mutton-chop whiskers
+and an exceedingly long, rusty neck. He wore a round-topped brown hat,
+and tweed clothes, a washed-out blue neckerchief, the knot of which
+hung low on his chest. He had no linen collar, and as he walked
+carried his hands thrust deep into his trousers' pockets.
+
+He too, had come to Chetwynd Street, to the Hanover, to gather any
+facts he might meet about this strange clockmaker and his strange
+ways. He had gone into the public bar for he did not wish to encounter
+face to face the man about whom he was inquisitive. He had sent a boy
+for Stamer's wife and left her in charge of his marine store in
+Tunbridge Street, saying he was unexpectedly obliged to go to the
+Surrey Dock. He told her of the visit Stamer had paid him that
+morning, and said he thought her husband was getting a bit crazy. Then
+he left her, having given her instructions about the place and
+promising to be back in a couple of hours.
+
+Timmons was more than three hours gone, and when he re-entered
+Tunbridge Street Mrs. Stamer came in great excitement to meet him,
+saying she had no notion he would be so long and that if Tom came back
+during her absence he would be furious, as she had left no word where
+she was to be found. To this Timmons replied shortly that he didn't
+suppose Stamer would have come back, and parted from her almost
+rudely, which showed he was in a mind far from ordinary, for he was
+always jocular and polite after his fashion to the woman.
+
+When he was alone in his own place he began walking up and down in a
+state of great perturbation.
+
+"I don't know what to make of it--I don't know what to make of it," he
+thought. "Stamer is no fool, and I know he would not lie to me. He
+says he saw Leigh wind up the clock at the time Leigh was standing
+with me under the church tower. The landlord of that public-house says
+he saw him, and Leigh himself says he nodded to the landlord at a
+quarter past twelve! I'm not mad, and I wasn't drunk. What can it
+mean? I can make nothing of it.
+
+"There may be something in what Stamer says after all. This miserable,
+hump-backed creature may be only laying a trap for us. If I thought I
+was to be caught after my years of care and caution by a mannikin like
+that, I'd slit his wizand for him. I did not like his way last night,
+and the more I think of it the less I like it. I think I had better be
+off this job. I don't like it, but I don't care to fail, particularly
+after telling Stamer all about it.
+
+"What business had that fool Stamer to walk straight into the lion's
+mouth? What did he want in Chetwynd Street? No doubt he went there on
+the same errand as I, to try to find out something more about last
+night. Well, a nice thing he did find out. What infernal stuff did the
+dwarf give Stamer to smell? It was a mercy it did not kill the man. If
+it had killed Stamer, and there had been an inquest, it would have
+made a nice mess. No one could tell what might have come out about
+Stamer, about the whole lot, about myself!
+
+"It is plain no one ought to have further dealings with that little
+man. Anyone who could give stuff like that to a man to smell in broad
+daylight, and in the presence of witnesses, would not stick at a
+trifle in the dark and when no one was by. Yes, I must cut the dwarf.
+Fortunately, there is nothing in Leigh's possession he can use against
+me. I took good care of that.
+
+"How will Stamer take the affair? Will he cherish anger? Will he want
+revenge?
+
+"Well, if he will let him."
+
+These were not the words in which Timmons thought, but they represent
+the substance of his cogitations.
+
+Meanwhile, Oscar Leigh had left Chetwynd Street, and gone back to the
+clock-room to fix the new blind Binns, the potman, had bought for him.
+He had not intended returning that day, but he had nothing special to
+do, and the blind was a new idea and new ideas interested him.
+
+He let himself in by the private door, and went straight to the
+clock-room. He had a bottle of sweet oil, and the roll of muslin. He
+oiled the muslin, and having stretched and nailed it in position,
+raised the lower sash of the window about two feet from the sill. The
+muslin was double, and the two sheets were kept half an inch apart by
+two rods, so that any dust getting through the outer fold might be
+caught by the inner one. Having settled this screen to his
+satisfaction, he left the room and descended once more.
+
+"My clock," he thought, "will be enough for fame. I will not meddle
+with this Miracle Gold. I am committed to nothing, and anything
+Timmons may say will be only slander, even if he did dare to speak."
+
+He reached the street, and wandered on aimlessly.
+
+"My clock when it is finished will be the most perfect piece of
+mechanism ever designed and executed by one man. It will be classed
+among the wonders of the world, and be spoken of with admiration as
+long as civilization lasts.
+
+"But I must take care it does not get the upper hand of me. Already
+the multiplicity of the movements confuse my head at times when I am
+not near it. I must be careful of my head, or my great work will
+suffer. Sometimes I see those figure of time all modelled and
+fashioned and in their proper dispositions executing their assigned
+evolutions. At times I am in doubt about them. They grow faint, and
+cobwebby, and misty, as though they were huddled together in some dim
+room, to which one ray of light was suddenly admitted. I must be
+careful of my head.
+
+"Long ago, and also until not very long ago, when I added a new effect
+or movement it fell into its proper place and troubled me no more.
+Now, when I am away from my clock, when I cannot see and touch it, I
+often forget a movement, or give it a wrong direction, draw from it a
+false result.
+
+"I am too much a man of one idea. I have imagination enough for a score
+of hands and ten stout bodies, and I have only a pair of hands and
+THIS!"
+
+He paused and looked down at his protuberant chest and twisted trunk,
+and shrunken, bent legs, and enormous feet.
+
+"I am a bad specimen of the work of Nature's journeyman, to put it as
+some one does, and I am abominably made--all except the head!"
+
+He threw up his head and glanced around with scornful challenge in his
+eye.
+
+"Hey!" cried a man's voice in alarm.
+
+He looked up.
+
+The chest of a horse was within a hand's breadth of his shoulder. The
+horse's head was flung aloft. The horse snorting and quivering, and
+bearing back upon his haunches.
+
+Leigh sprang aside and looked around. He was in the middle of
+Piccadilly at Hyde Park Corner. He had almost been ridden over by a
+group of equestrians.
+
+The gentleman whose horse had nearly touched him, took off his hat and
+apologised.
+
+"You stopped suddenly right under the horse's head," said the
+gentleman. "I am extremely sorry."
+
+Leigh raised his stick to strike the head of the horse.
+
+The rider pulled his horse sharply away and muttered something under
+his breath.
+
+"Oh, Sir Julius," cried a voice in terror, "it's Mr. Leigh!"
+
+The dwarf's stick fell from his hand. "God's mercy in Heaven!" he
+cried in a whisper, as he took off his hat slowly, "Miss Ashton!"
+
+Then, bareheaded and without his stick, he went up to the side of her
+horse, and said in a hoarse whisper, "I will have nothing to do with
+that Miracle Gold!"
+
+A groom who had dismounted handed him his stick, and putting on his
+hat, he hastened away through the crowd which had begun to gather,
+leaving Dora in a state of mingled alarm and pity.
+
+"Is he mad?" said Sir Julius Whinfield as the dwarf disappeared and
+the equestrians moved on.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know. I think not. For a moment he terrified me, and
+now he breaks my heart!"
+
+"Breaks your heart?"
+
+"Oh, he ought not to be human! There surely can be no woe like his!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX.
+
+                          DORA ASHTON ALONE.
+
+
+Dora Ashton was greatly shocked and distressed by the peril of Oscar
+Leigh and his subsequent behaviour.
+
+"I am sure, Miss Ashton, I hope you will not imagine for a moment
+either that I was riding carelessly or that I recognised Mr. Leigh
+until you spoke. I saw him plainly enough as he was crossing the road.
+He was not minding in the least where he was going. He would have got
+across us in good time if he had only kept on; but he pulled up
+suddenly right under my horse's nose. I am sure I was more frightened
+than he. By Jove! how he glared at me. I think he would have killed me
+there and then if he could. He was going to strike my horse with that
+dreadful bludgeon of his. I am sure I was much more frightened than he
+was," said Sir Julius, in a penitential tone of voice, as the two rode
+on side by side.
+
+The other members of the party, including Mr. Ashton, had fallen
+behind and were also discussing the incident among themselves.
+
+"You were quite blameless," said the girl, who was still pale and
+trembling. "I don't suppose the poor man was much afraid. Of what
+should he be afraid?"
+
+"Well," said the baronet, stroking the arching neck of his bay, "he
+was within an ace of being ridden over, you know."
+
+"And suppose he had been knocked down and ridden over, what has he to
+fear, poor man?" she said. Her eyes were fixed, and she was speaking
+as if unconscious she uttered her words. The group had turned out of
+the noise of Piccadilly and were riding close together.
+
+"He might have been hurt, I mean seriously hurt. Particularly he?"
+
+"Hurt! How could he be hurt? You might be hurt, or I might be hurt,
+but how could he be hurt. Particularly he! You fancy because he is
+maimed and misshapen he is more likely to be hurt than a sound man?"
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"I cannot see that. When people say a man was hurt, they do not mean
+merely or mostly that he endured pain. They mean that he was injured
+or disabled in some way. How can you injure or disable him? He is as
+much injured and disabled as a man can be and live."
+
+"That is very true; but he might have been killed. Miss Ashton, you do
+not mean to say you think it would be better he had been killed?"
+cried Sir Julius in a tone of one shocked and surprised.
+
+"I do not know. Surely death and Heaven must be conditions of greater
+ease and happiness for him than for ordinary mortals."
+
+"I am entirely of your opinion there. But from what I saw and heard
+of this man yesterday and to-day, I am disposed to think he has
+self-esteem enough to sustain him in any difficulty and carry him
+through any embarrassment."
+
+"How are we to know how much of this self-esteem is assumed?"
+
+"It does not matter whether it is assumed or not, so long as it is
+sustaining."
+
+"What! Does it not matter at what expense it is hired for use? You
+amaze me, Sir Julius. You are generally sympathetic and sound, I think
+you have not been taking your lessons regularly under Lady Forcar. She
+would be quicker sighted in a matter of this kind." The girl shook off
+her air of abstraction and smiled at the young man.
+
+"No, Miss Ashton, I am not neglecting the lectures of Lady Forcar, but
+of late they have not been much concerned with man. I deeply deplore
+it, but she has taken to pigs. Anyway she would talk of nothing but
+pigs yesterday, at your mother's. And even the improvement of my mind
+does not come within her consideration under the head of pigs,
+although I begged of her to be gracious and let it."
+
+"That is very sad indeed. You must feel sorely slighted. And what has
+she to say about pigs?"
+
+"Oh, I really couldn't think of half the distractingly flattering
+things she has to say about them. She made me miserably jealous, I
+assure you. She says she is going to write an article for one of the
+heavy, of the very heaviest, magazines, and she is going to call her
+article 'Dead Pigs and the Pigs that eat them,' and such harmless
+people as you and I are to be considered among the latter class in the
+title. Isn't that fearful. She says from this forth, her mission is
+pigs."
+
+"I shall certainly read this wonderful article when it appears," said
+the girl with a laugh. "Can you tell me anything more about this
+article?"
+
+"No; except that it was Mr. Leigh started the subject between her and
+me."
+
+"Mr. Leigh?" said Dora gravely.
+
+"Yes. When she saw him eat all your bread and butter, she said he was
+a man who, in the hands of a clever wife, might act the part of a
+Napoleon the Great in social matters."
+
+The grave look on Dora's face changed to one of sadness. At first,
+when Sir Julius mentioned the dwarf's name, she thought some unkind
+reference was about to be made to his unhappy physical deformities.
+Now her anxiety was relieved on that score only to have her feelings
+aroused anew over the spectacle of his spiritual desolation. He marry!
+How could he marry? And yet he had told them he had found the model
+for his Pallas-Athena. She was not so simple as to think the mere
+intellectual being was represented to him by the model for his
+Pallas-Athena. Suppose he used the name of Pallas-Athena only out of
+shyness for what struck him as mere loveliness in woman, mere good
+looks and kindliness of nature? What a heart-breaking thought! What an
+awful torture it must be to be hungry for love and beauty in such a
+form!
+
+Sir Julius Whinfield left her at the house in Curzon Street, and she
+went up to her own room to change her dress. She had nothing arranged
+for between that and dinner. Her father had gone away on foot from the
+house, and her mother had taken the carriage before luncheon to pay a
+visit to some people in whom Dora was not interested. The girl had all
+the afternoon to herself, and she had plenty of thought to occupy it.
+She threw herself in a large easy chair by the open window. Her room
+was at the back of the house, and looked out on a space of roofs and
+walls and tiny gardens. There was nothing in view to distract the eye.
+There was much within to exercise the spirit.
+
+"It would be madness," was the result of deep and long thought, "to go
+any further. I like him well enough and admire him greatly, and I
+daresay--no, let me be quite candid--I _know_ he likes me. I daresay
+we are better disposed towards each other than one tenth of the people
+who marry, but that is not enough.
+
+"We did not fall in love with one another at first sight. It was no
+boy and girl attachment. We were attracted towards one another by the
+intellectual sides of our characters. I thought I was wiser than other
+girls in not allowing my fancy to direct my fate. I thought he and I
+together might achieve great things. I am now afraid it is as great,
+even a greater, mistake to marry for intellect than to marry for money
+or position.
+
+"I have made up my mind now. Nothing shall change me. My decision is
+as much for his good as my own. Last night was not the climax of what
+would be. It was only the first of a long line of difficulties or
+quarrels that would increase as time went on.
+
+"We have been enduring one another out of admiration for one another,
+not loving one another for our own and love's own sake.
+
+"It will cost me many a pang, but it must be done. I shall make no
+sign. I shall make no announcement. No one has been formally told we
+are engaged, and no one has any business to know. If people have
+guessed it, let them now guess the engagement has been broken off. I
+am not bound to enlighten them."
+
+Then she rose and found materials for a letter, and wrote:
+
+
+"Dear Mr. Hanbury,
+
+"I have been thinking a great deal of the talk we had last night after
+dinner, and I have come to the conclusion that it was all for the
+best. We should never be able to agree. I think the least said now the
+better. Our engagement has not been announced to anyone. Nothing need
+be said about its being broken off. I hope this arrangement will be
+carried out with as little pain to either as possible. I shall not
+send you back your letters. I am sure getting back letters is always
+painful, and ought to be avoided. I shall burn yours, and I ask you to
+do the same with any notes you may have of mine. Neither will I return
+the few things that cannot be burned. None of them is, I think, of any
+intrinsic value to you beyond the value it had between you and me. I
+shall keep them for a week and then destroy them.
+
+"Believe me, Mr. Hanbury, I take this step with a view to our mutual
+good, and in no haste or pique. I shall always think of you, with the
+greatest interest and respect. I should like, if you think well of it,
+that we may remain friends in appearance as I hope we may always be in
+spirit.
+
+"I ask you for only one favour. Pray do not make any attempt whatever
+to treat this decision as anything but final and irrevocable.
+
+                    "Yours very sincerely,
+
+                                  "Dora Ashton."
+
+
+She determined not to post this letter until late that night.
+To-morrow she was dining out. She should leave home early and not come
+back until she had to go straight to her room to dress. After dinner,
+they were going to the theatre, so she should avoid all chance of
+meeting him if he disregarded her request and called.
+
+So far the difficult parts of the affair had been done, and done too
+with much less pain than she could have imagined. She had taken the
+two great steps without faltering. She had made up her mind to end the
+engagement between her and John Hanbury, and she had written to him
+saying the engagement was at an end. If ill-matched people who found
+themselves engaged to one another only acted with her decision and
+promptness what an infinity of misery would be avoided. She was almost
+surprised it had required so little effort for her to make up her mind
+and to put her decision on paper. She had often heard of the miseries
+such a step entailed, and here she was now sitting alone in her own
+room after doing the very thing and feeling little the worse of it.
+She was but twenty-one, and she had broken with the only man she had
+ever seriously thought of as a lover, and it had not caused her
+anything like the pang she had suffered last night when he reproached
+her so bitterly and told her he could expect nothing but betrayal at
+her hands.
+
+And now that the important part of the affair had been disposed of in
+a business-like way, what had she to do?
+
+Nothing.
+
+She could do nothing else whatever. It wanted some hours of
+dinner-time, and no one ever called upon them of Fridays except--him,
+and he would not call to-day. She should have the whole of the
+afternoon to herself. That was fortunate, for although she did not
+feel greatly depressed or cast down, she was not inclined towards
+company of any kind. It had been arranged early yesterday that she
+should ride with her father in the Park to-day, and she had not cared
+to plead any excuse, for she did not want to attract attention to
+herself, and besides, she did not feel very much in need of any excuse
+since she knew he would not be there. He knew they were to ride there.
+In fact he had promised to meet her there, but after last night he
+would not of course go, for he would not like the first meeting after
+last night to occur in so public a place and so soon after that scene.
+
+Yes, everything was in perfectly regular order now and she had the
+afternoon to herself without any fear of interruption. So she could
+now sit down and rest, and--think.
+
+Then she remained quite still for a long time in her easy chair, quite
+still, with her hand before her face and her eyes closed. The
+difficulties had been faced and overcome in a wise and philosophical
+way, and nothing remained to be done but to do nothing, and as she sat
+and thought this doing of nothing became harder than all that had gone
+before. She had told herself she was a person of convictions and
+principles when she was resolving on action and acting on resolve. She
+had no further need of her convictions and principles. She laid them
+aside with the writing materials out of which she had called forth
+that letter to Jack--to Mr. Hanbury. She did not realize until this
+moment, she had not had time to realize it, that she was a woman, a
+young girl who had given her heart to a young man, and that now he and
+she had parted to meet no more on the old terms.
+
+It was easy to shut up the ceremonious gates of the temple and say
+worship was at an end in that place for ever. But how fared it in the
+penetralia of her heart? How did she face the inner chambers of her
+soul where the statue of her hero stood enshrined for worship? It cost
+but little effort to say that the god was deposed, but could she all
+at once effectually forbid the priestess to worship?
+
+Ah, this doing of nothing when all had been done, was ten thousand
+times harder than action!
+
+All the faculties of her reason were in favour of her decision, but
+what has the reason to do with the glance of an eye, or the touch of a
+hand, of the confiding commune of a soul in sympathy with one's own?
+
+She understood him better than any other woman ever should. It was her
+anxiety that he should stand high in his own regard that made her
+jealous of his little weaknesses, and they were little, and only
+weaknesses after all, and only weaknesses in a giant, not the
+weaknesses of a man of common clay. If she had loved more what he was
+to her than what she dreamed he might be to himself and all the world,
+she would have taken no trouble in these matters that angered him to
+fury.
+
+And why should he not be angered with her for her poor, feeble woman's
+interference with his lion nature? Why should he not turn upon her and
+revile her for coming across his path? Who was she that she must
+irritate him that was all the world to her, and deferred to by all men
+who came his way? Why should she thwart or impede him?
+
+He was not perfect, no doubt, but who had set her the task of
+perfecting him?
+
+Her haughty love.
+
+Yes, the very intensity of her love had ended in the estrangement of
+the lover. She found noble qualities in the man, and she had tried to
+make him divine. Not because he was _her_ lover, but because she
+_loved him_. She had given him her heart and soul, and now she had
+sacrificed her love itself upon the altar of her devotion.
+
+That was the heroic aspect of the affair, and as in all other sorrows
+that take large shape, the heroic aspect elevated above pain and
+forbade the canker of tears.
+
+But this girl saw other aspects too.
+
+She should miss him--oh, so bitterly! She should miss him the whole of
+her life forth from that hour! She should miss him in the immediate
+future. She had missed him that day in the Park. She should miss him
+tomorrow. He always came on Saturdays. He used to say he always came
+to Curzon Street on Saturday afternoon, like any other good young man,
+to see his sweetheart when the shop was shut. She should miss him on
+Sunday, too, for he always came on Sunday, saying, the better the day
+the better the deed. On Mondays he made it a point to stay away, but
+contrived to meet her somewhere, in the Park, or at a friend's place,
+or in Regent Street, and now he would stay away altogether, not making
+a point of it, but because she had told him to make an observance of
+always staying away.
+
+She should miss his voice, his marvellous voice, which could be so
+clarion toned and commanding among men, and was so soft and tunable
+for her ear. When he spoke to her it always seemed that the
+instrumental music designed to accompany his words had fined off into
+silence for shame of its inadequacy. How poor and thin and harsh all
+voices would sound now. They would merely make idle sounds to the idle
+air. Of old, of that old which began its backward way only yesterday,
+all voices had seemed the prelude of his. They sounded merely as notes
+of preparation and awakening. They were only the overture, full of
+hints and promises.
+
+She should miss his eyes. She should miss the clear vivid leap of
+flame into his eyes when he glanced at her with enthusiasm, or joy, or
+laughter. She should miss the gleam of that strange light which, once
+having caught his eye in moments of enthusiasm, appeared to bathe his
+face while he looked and spoke. She should miss the sound of his
+footstep, that fleet herald of his impatient love!
+
+Oh, it was hard--hard--hard to be doomed to miss so much!
+
+And all this was only what she should miss in the immediate future.
+
+In the measure of her after life would be nothing but idle air. In her
+dreams of the future she had pictured him going forth from her in the
+morning radiant and confident, to mingle in some worthy strife, and
+coming back in the evening suffused with glory, to draw breaths of
+peaceful ease in her society, in her home, her new home, their joint
+home. She had thought of the reverse of this picture. She had thought
+of him returning weary and unsuccessful, coming home to her for rest
+now, and soothing service of love and inspiriting words of hope.
+
+She had visions of later life and visions of their gradual decay, and
+going down the hill of life hand in hand together. She had dreamed
+they should never, never, never be parted.
+
+And now they were parted for ever and ever and ever, and she should
+miss him to-day and to-morrow and all the days of the year now half
+spent, and of all the after years of her life.
+
+She should miss him in death. She should not lie by his side in the
+grave. She should not be with him in the Life to Come.
+
+All the glory of the world was only a vapour, a mist. The sunlight was
+a purposeless weariness. The smell of the flowers in the window-sill
+was thin and foretold decay. What was the use of a house and servants
+and food. Lethe was a river of Hell. Why? Why not a river of Paradise?
+
+She should not be with him even in the grave--even in the grave where
+he could have no fear of her betraying him!
+
+She would now take any share of humbleness in life if she might count
+on touching his hand and being for ever near him in the tomb.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+                        WINDING UP THE CLOCK.
+
+
+It was eleven o'clock that night when Tom Stamer, dressed in the seedy
+black clothes and wearing the false beard and whiskers he had on in
+the morning, started from the Borough once more for the West. He had
+not replaced the spectacles broken in his fall at the Hanover in
+Chetwynd Street. He carried a very substantial-looking walking-stick
+of great thickness and weight. It was not a loaded stick, but it would
+manifestly be a terrible weapon at close quarters, for, instead of
+consisting of metal only in one part of one end, it was composed of
+metal throughout. The seeming stick was not wood or leaded wood, but
+iron It was not solid, but hollow like a gas pipe, and at the end
+intended to touch the ground, the mouth of the tube was protected by a
+brass ferrule to which a small tampion was affixed. The handle was
+massive and crooked, and large enough to give ample hold to the
+largest hand of man. About a couple of inches from the crook there was
+a joining where the stick could be unscrewed.
+
+Stamer accounted to the eyes of observers for carrying so massive a
+stick by affecting a lameness of the right leg. When he entered a
+dense crowd or came upon a point at which the people were hurrying, he
+raised the stick up from the ground and laid aside his limp. But where
+people were few and close observation of him possible, his lameness
+grew very marked, and not only did his stick seem indispensable, but
+he put it down on the pavement as gingerly as though the least jar
+caused him pain. Sympathetic people who saw him fancied he had but
+just come out of hospital, and were inclined to be indignant that he
+had not been supplied with more effectual support, such as crutches.
+
+One old gentleman asked him if he ought not to have a second stick;
+Stamer snivelled and said he knew he ought, but declared with a sigh
+he had no money to buy another one. The old gentleman gave Stamer a
+shilling. Stamer touched his hat, thanked the old gentleman for his
+kindness and his gift, and requested Heaven to bless him. The old
+gentleman wore a heavy gold chain and, no doubt, a watch. But Stamer
+had important business on hand, and there were a great number of
+people about, and he did not want to run, for running would make his
+arm unsteady, so he asked Heaven to bless the old gentleman and
+forebore to rob him.
+
+But the thought of that missed opportunity rankled in him. The feeling
+that he had been obliged to neglect business and accept charity
+fretted and vexed him. The thought of the mean squalid shilling made
+him sick, and as soon as he came to a quiet place he threw it with a
+curse into the middle of the road. He had shillings of his own, and
+didn't want charity of any man. If he had stolen the shilling that
+would have been a different affair. Then it would have come to him in
+a straightforward business-like way, and would, doubtless, be the best
+he could have done under the circumstances. But now it seemed the
+result of a fraud committed upon him, to which he had been forced to
+consent. It was the ransom he had under duress accepted for a gold
+watch and chain, and was, therefore, loathsome and detestable in his
+sight. Its presence could not be endured. It was abominable. Foh! He
+was well rid of it?
+
+He did not approach Welbeck Place by Chetwynd Street. He did not
+intend repeating his visit to Mr. Williams's house. He had got there
+all he wanted and a little more. He kept along by the river and then
+retraced the way he had come that afternoon after leaving the Hanover.
+On his previous visit to-day to this locality he had been silent and
+watchful as a cat, and he had a cat's strong sense of locality. He
+never forgot a place he was once in; and, piercing northward from the
+river through a network of mean streets he had never seen until today,
+he hit upon the southward entrance to Welbeck Mews with as much ease
+and certainty as though he had lived there for twenty years.
+
+The mews were lonely after nightfall, and the road through them little
+used. When Stamer found himself in the yard, the place was absolutely
+deserted. They were a cabman's mews and no one would, in all
+likelihood, have business there for a couple of hours. The night was
+now as dark as night ever is at that time of the year, and the place
+was still. It wanted about twenty minutes of twelve yet.
+
+When Stamer came to the gable of the house next but one to the
+Hanover, and the wall of which formed one half of the northern
+boundary of the yard, he paused and listened. He could hear no sound
+of life or movement near him beyond the snort or cough of a horse now
+and then.
+
+The ostler who waited on the cabmen lived in the house at the gable of
+which he stood, and at this hour he had to be aroused in case of any
+man returning because of accident, or a horse knocked up by some long
+and unexpected drive. As a rule, the ostler slept undisturbed from
+eleven at night till half-past four or five in the morning.
+
+After a pause of two or three minutes, Stamer stooped, slipped off his
+boots, slung them around his neck, and having hitched the crook of his
+heavy stick to a belt he wore under his waistcoat, he laid hold of the
+waterpipe that descended from the gutter of the double roof to the
+yard, and began ascending the gable of the house with surprising
+agility and speed.
+
+In less than two minutes from the time he first seized the waterpipe
+he disappeared in the gutter above. He crawled in a few yards from the
+edge and then reclined against the sloping slates of the roof to rest.
+The ascent had taken only a couple of minutes, but the exertion had
+been very great, and he was tired and out of breath.
+
+Then he unscrewed the ferrule and withdrew the tampion and unscrewed
+the handle of his stick, and was busy in the darkness for a while with
+the weapon he carried. Overhead the stars looked pale and faint and
+wasting in the pall of pale yellow cloud that hangs by night over
+London in summer, the glare of millions of lights on the vapour rising
+up from the great city.
+
+He particularly wished to have a steady hand and arm that night, in a
+few minutes, so he made up his mind to rest until five minutes to
+twelve. Then he should get into position. He should creep down the
+gutter until he came to the wall of the Hanover, the gable wall of the
+Hanover standing up over the roofs of the houses on which he now was
+lying. He should then be almost opposite the window at which he last
+night saw the dwarf wind up his clock. He should be a little out of
+the direct line, but not much. The width of Welbeck Place was no more
+from house to house than fifty feet. The distance from the wall of the
+house he should be on then, and the wall of Forbes's bakery could not
+be more than sixty feet. The weapon he carried was perfectly
+trustworthy at a hundred, a hundred-and-fifty yards, or more. He
+had been practising that afternoon and evening at an old hat at forty
+yards, and he had never missed it once. Forty yards was just double
+the distance he should be from that window if he were on a parapet
+instead of being at the coping tile, lying on the inside slope of the
+roof. Allow another ten feet for that. This would bring the distance
+up to seventy feet at the very outside, and he had never missed once
+at a hundred and twenty feet. He had given himself now and then a good
+deal of practice with the gun, for he enjoyed peculiar facilities;
+because the factory wall by which the lane at the back of his place
+ran, prevented anyone seeing what he was doing, and the noise of the
+factory drowned the whurr of the gun and the whizz of the bullet.
+
+There was to be a screen, or curtain, or blind up to-night, but that
+was all the better, for it made no difference to the aim or bullet,
+and it would prevent anything being noticed for a while, perhaps until
+morning no one would know.
+
+The work would go on at the window until half-past twelve. It would be
+as well not to _do it_ until very near half-past; for then there would
+be the less time for anyone in the Hanover to spy out anything wrong,
+At half-past would come the noise and confusion of closing time. There
+would then be plenty of people about, and it would be quite easy to
+get away.
+
+It was a good job there were no windows in the Hanover gable, though
+no one was likely to be upstairs in the public-house until after
+closing time. The landlord was not a married man. It was a good job
+there was no moon.
+
+It would be a good job when this was done.
+
+It was a good job he thought of waiting until just half-past twelve,
+for then everything would be more favourable below, and his hand and
+arm would have more time to steady.
+
+It was a good job that in this country there were some things stronger
+than even smelling-salts!
+
+At half-past eleven that night the private bar of the Hanover held
+about half-a-dozen customers. The weather was too warm for anything
+like a full house. Three or four of the men present were old
+frequenters, but it lacked the elevating presence of Oscar Leigh, who
+always gave the assembly a distinctly intellectual air, and it was not
+cheered and consoled by the radiation of wealth from Mr. Jacobs, the
+rich greengrocer of Sloane Street.
+
+The three or four frequenters present were in no way distinguished
+beyond their loyalty to the house. They came there regularly night
+after night, drank, in grave silence, a regular quantity of beer and
+spirits, and went away at closing time with the conviction that they
+had been spending their time profitably attending to the improvement
+of their minds. They had no views on any subjects ever discussed.
+They had, with reference to the Hanover, only one opinion, and it
+was that the finishing touches of a liberal education could nowhere
+else in London be so freely obtained without derogation and on the
+self-respecting principle of every man paying his way and being
+theoretically as good as any other. If they could they would put a
+stop to summer in these islands, for summer had a thinning and
+depreciating effect on the company of the private bar.
+
+A few minutes later, however, the spirits of those present rose, for
+first Mr. Jacobs came in, smiling and bland, and then Mr. Oscar Leigh,
+rubbing his forehead and complaining of the heat.
+
+Mr. Jacobs greeted the landlord and the dwarf affably, as became a man
+of substance, and then, knowing no one else by name, greeted the
+remainder of the company generally, as became a man of politeness and
+consideration.
+
+"I'll have three-pennyworth of your excellent rum hot," said Mr.
+Jacobs to the landlord, in a way which implied that, had not the
+opinion of an eminent physician been against it, he would have ordered
+ten times the quantity and drunk it with pleasure. Then he sat down on
+a seat that ran along the wall, took out of his pocket a cigar-case,
+opened it carefully, and, having selected a cigar, examined the weed
+as though it was not uncommon to discover protruding through the side
+of these particular cigars a diamond of priceless value or a deadly
+drug. Then he pierced the end of his cigar with a silver piercer which
+he took out of a trouser's pocket, pulled down his waistcoat, and
+began to smoke, wearing his hat just a trifle on one side to show that
+he was unbent.
+
+Just as he had settled himself comfortably, the door of the public
+department opened, and a tall, thin man, with enormous ears,
+wearing long mutton-chop whiskers, a brown round hat, and dark
+chocolate-coloured clothes, entered and was served by the potman.
+
+"I have only a minute or two. I must be off to wind up," said Leigh.
+"Ten minutes to twelve by your clock, Mr. Williams, that means a
+quarter to right time. I'll have three of rum hot, if you please."
+
+"That's quite right, Mr. Leigh," said the landlord, proceeding to brew
+the punch and referring to his clock. "We always keep our clock a few
+minutes fast to avoid bother at closing time. The same as always, Mr.
+Jacobs, I see, and I _smell_."
+
+"I beg your pardon?" said the greengrocer, as though he hadn't the
+least notion of what the landlord alluded to.
+
+"A good cigar, sir. That is an excellent cigar you are smoking."
+
+It was clear that up to that moment Mr. Jacobs had not given a thought
+to the quality of his cigar, for he took it from his lips, looked at
+it as though he was now pretty certain this particular one did not
+exude either priceless diamonds or deadly drugs, and said with great
+modesty and satisfaction, "Yes, it's not bad. I get a case now and
+then from my friend Isaacs of Bond Street. They cost me, let me see,
+about sixpence a piece."
+
+There was a faint murmur of approval at this statement. It was most
+elevating to know that you were acquainted with a man who smoked
+cigars he bought in Bond Street, and that he did not buy them by the
+dozen or the box even, but by the case! If a man bought cigars by the
+case from a friend in Bond Street at the rate of sixpence each, what
+would be the retail price of them across the counter? It was
+impossible to say exactly and dangerous to guess, but it was certain
+you could not buy one for less than a shilling or eighteen-pence, that
+is, if a man like Mr. Jacobs' friend Mr. Isaacs would bemean himself
+by selling a single one at any price to a chance comer.
+
+"Still working at your wonderful clock, Mr. Leigh?" said the
+greengrocer from Sloane Street, with the intention of sharing his
+conversation fairly between the landlord and the dwarf, the only men
+present who were sitting above the salt.
+
+"Well, sir, literally speaking, I cannot be said to be working at it
+now. But I am daily engaged upon it, and before a quarter of an hour I
+shall be busy winding it up."
+
+"Have you to wind it every day?"
+
+"Yes. St. Paul's clock takes three quarters of an hour's winding every
+day with something like a winch handle. My clock takes half an hour
+every night. It must be wound between twelve and one, and I have made
+it a rule to wind it in the first half hour. My one does not want
+nearly so much power as St. Paul's. It is wound by a lever and not a
+winch handle. By-and-by, when it is finished and placed in a proper
+position in a proper tower, and I can increase the power, once a week
+will be sufficient."
+
+"It is, I have heard, the most wonderful clock in London?"
+
+"In London! In London! In the worlds sir. It is the most wonderful
+clock ever conceived by man."
+
+"And now suppose you forgot to wind it up, what would happen?"
+
+"There is no fear of that."
+
+"It must be a great care on your mind."
+
+"Immense. I have put up a curtain today, so that I may be able to keep
+the window open and get a breath of air this hot weather."
+
+"Are you not afraid of fire up there and so near a bakehouse?"
+
+"I never thought of fire. There is little or no danger of fire. Mr.
+Forbes is quite solvent."
+
+"But suppose anything were to happen, it is so high up, it could not
+be got down?"
+
+"Got down! Got down! Why, my dear sir, it is twelve feet by nine, and
+parts of it are so delicate that a rude shake would ruin them. Got
+down! Why it is shafted to the wall. All my power comes through the
+wall, from the chimney. When it is shifted no one will be able to stir
+bolt or nut but me. _I_ must do it, sir. No other man living knows
+anything about it. No other man could understand it. Fancy anyone but
+myself touching it! Why he might do more harm in an hour than I could
+put right in a year, ay, in three years. Well, my time is up. Good
+night, gentlemen."
+
+He scrambled off his high stool and was quickly out of the bar. It was
+now five minutes to twelve o'clock right time.
+
+He crossed Welbeck Street and opening the private door of Forbes's in
+Chetwynd Street went in, closing the door after him.
+
+As he came out John Timmons emerged from the public bar of the
+Hanover, and turned into Welbeck Place. He went on until he came
+opposite the window of the clock-room. Here he stood still, thrust his
+hands deep down in his trousers' pockets, and leaning his back against
+the wall, prepared to watch with his own eyes the winding of the
+clock.
+
+In less than five minutes the window of the top room, which had been
+dark, gradually grew illumined until the light came full through the
+transparent oiled muslin curtain. Timmons could see for all practical
+purposes as plainly as through glass.
+
+"There Leigh is, anyway," thought Timmons, "working away at his lever.
+Can it be he was doing the same thing at this hour last night?
+Nonsense. He was walking away from this place with me at this hour
+last night as sure as I am here now. But what did he say himself
+to-day? I shouldn't mind Stamer, for he is a fool. But the landlord
+and Stamer say the same thing, and Leigh himself said it too this day.
+I must be going mad.
+
+"There, he is turning round now and nodding to the men in the bar.
+They said he did the same last night, and, as I live, there's the
+clock we were under striking the quarter past again! I must be going
+mad. I begin to think last night must have been all a dream with me. I
+don't think he's all right. I don't believe in witchcraft, but I do
+believe in devilry, and there's something wrong here. I'll watch this
+out anyway. I must bring him to book over it. I'll tell him straight
+what I know--that is if I know anything and am not going mad----"
+
+Whurr--whizz!
+
+"Why what's that over head?"
+
+Timmons looked up, but saw nothing.
+
+"It's some young fellows larking."
+
+He glanced back at the window.
+
+"What a funny way he's nodding his head now. And there's a hole in the
+curtain and there seems to be a noise in the room. There goes the gas
+out. I suppose the clock is wound up now. Well, it's more than I can
+understand and a great deal more than I like, and I'll have it out of
+him. It would be too bad if that fool Stamer were right after all,
+and--but the whole thing is nonsense.
+
+"Strange I didn't hear the clock strike the hour and yet Leigh's light
+is out. I suppose his half hour winding was only another piece of his
+bragging.
+
+"Is the light quite out? Looks now as if it wasn't. He must have put
+it out by mistake or accident, for surely it hasn't struck half-past
+twelve yet.
+
+"Ah, what's that? He is lighting a match or something. No, my eyes
+deceive me. There is no light. Everything here seems to deceive me.
+I'll go home.
+
+"Ah, there's the half-hour at last!"
+
+And John Timmons walked out of Welbeck Place, and took his way
+eastward.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+                          THE MORNING AFTER.
+
+
+Mr. John Timmons was not a hard-working man in the sense of one
+devoted ardently to physical labour. His domain was thought. He was a
+merchant, a negotiator, not an artisan. He kept his hands in his
+pockets mostly, in order that his brain might not be distracted by
+having to look after them. He had a theory that it is wasteful to burn
+the candle at both ends. If you employ your brain and your hands it
+will very soon be all over with you. Still, he held that the
+appearance of indulgence or luxury was most unbecoming in any place of
+business, and particularly in a marine store, where transactions were
+concerned with so stern and stubborn things as junk and old metal. He
+dealt in junk, but out of regard for the feelings of gentlemen who
+might have had bitter and long acquaintance with it while adorning
+another sphere, Timmons kept the junk away from sight in the cellar,
+to which mere callers were never admitted. Timmons had an opinion that
+the mere look of junk had a tendency to damp the professional ardour
+of men who had ever spent the days of their captivity in converting it
+into oakum.
+
+On the ground floor of Timmons's premises there was no such thing as a
+chair. He looked on a chair in a marine store as a token of dangerous
+softening of manners. If a man allowed himself a chair in his place of
+business why not also a smoking-cap and slippers?
+
+But Timmons had a high office stool, which was a thing differing
+altogether from a chair. It was of Spartan simplicity and
+uncomfortableness, and besides, it gave the solvent air of a counting
+house to the place. It had also another advantage, it enabled you to
+sit down without placing your eyes lower than the level of a man of
+your own height standing.
+
+On Saturday morning about nine o'clock Timmons was reposing on the
+high stool at his doorway, if any part of this establishment may be
+called a doorway, where one side was all door and there was no other
+means of exit. He had bought a morning paper on his way to business,
+and he now sat with the advertising sheet of the paper spread out
+before him on his knees. Sometimes articles in which he dealt were
+offered for sale in that sheet, and once in a way he bought a paper to
+have a look at this sheet, and afterwards, if he had time, scan the
+news. He made it a point never to look at the reports of the police
+courts or criminal trials. Every man has his own feelings, and Timmons
+was not an exception. If an inquiry or trial in which he took interest
+was going on in London he was certain to know more of it than the
+newspapers told. He avoided the accounts of trials that did not
+interest him. They had as damping effect on him as the sight of junk
+had on some of his customers.
+
+Beyond the improvement of his mind gathered from reading the
+advertisement columns of things for sale, he got no benefit out of the
+advertising sheet. None of the articles offered at a sacrifice was at
+all in his way. When he had finished the perusal of the marvellous
+miscellany he took his eyes off the paper and stared straight at the
+brick wall before him.
+
+He turned his mind back for the twentieth time on the events of
+yesterday.
+
+There was not in the whole list of what had occurred a single incident
+that pleased him. He was a clear-headed man, and prided himself on his
+brains. He had neither the education nor the insolence to call his
+brains intellect. But he was very proud of his brains, and his brains
+were completely at a loss. As with all undisciplined minds, his had
+not the power of consecutive abstract thought. But it had the power of
+reviewing in panoramic completeness events which had come within the
+reach of its senses.
+
+The result of his review was that he did not like the situation at
+all. There was a great deal about this scheme he did not understand,
+and with such minds not to understand is to suspect and fear.
+
+It was perfectly clear that for some purpose or other, Leigh hung back
+from entering upon the matter of their agreement, and now it seemed as
+though there might be a great deal in what Stamer feared, namely, that
+Leigh might have the intention of betraying them all into the hands of
+the police. Stamer had told him that in the talk at the Hanover, the
+night before, the landlord had informed the company under the seal of
+secrecy that Leigh on one occasion entrusted the winding up of the
+clock to a deputy who was deaf and dumb, and not able to write. That,
+no doubt, was the person they had seen in the clock-room the evening
+before, and not the dwarf. Leigh had not taken him into confidence
+respecting this clock, or this man who wound it up for him in his
+absence, but Leigh had taken him into confidence very little. It was a
+good thing that Leigh had not taken the gold from him. Of course, he
+was not such a fool as to part with the buttons unless he got gold
+coins to the full value of them, but still they might, if once in the
+possession of the little man, be used in evidence against him. The
+great thing to guard against was giving Leigh any kind of hold at all
+upon him.
+
+He did not know whether to believe or not Leigh's account of the man
+in Birmingham. It looked more than doubtful. His talk about
+telegraphing and all that was only bunkum. The whole thing looked
+shaky and dangerous, and perhaps it would be as well for him to get
+out of it.
+
+At all events he was pretty sure not to hear any more of the matter
+for a week or so. He should put it out of his head for the present.
+
+He took up the newspaper this time with a view to amusement not
+business.
+
+He glanced over it casually for a time, reading a few lines here and
+there. He passed by columns of parliamentary reports in which he took
+no interest whatever. Then came the law courts which he shunned.
+Finally he came upon the place where local London news was given. His
+eye caught a large heading, "Fire And Loss Of Life In Chelsea." The
+paragraph was, owing to the late hour at which the event took place,
+brief, considering its importance. It ran as follows:--
+
+
+"Last night, between half-past twelve and one o'clock, a disastrous
+and fatal fire broke out in the bakery establishment of Mr. Forbes at
+the corner of Chetwynd Street and Welbeck Place, Chelsea. It appears
+from the information we have been able to gather, that the ground
+floor of the establishment is used as a baker's shop and the floor
+above as a store house by Mr. Forbes. The top floor, where the
+fire originated was occupied by Mr. Oscar Leigh, who has lost his
+life in the burning. The top floor is divided into three rooms, a
+sitting-room, a bed-room, and a workshop. In the last, looking into
+Welbeck Place, the late Mr. Leigh was engaged in the manufacture of a
+very wonderful clock, which occupied fully half the room, and which
+Mr. Leigh invariably wound up every night between twelve and half-past
+twelve.
+
+"Last night, at a little before twelve, Mr. Leigh left the Hanover
+public house, at the opposite corner of Welbeck Place, and went into
+the bakery by the private entrance beside the shop door in Chetwynd
+Street. In the act of letting himself in with his latchkey he spoke to
+a neighbour, who tried to engage him in conversation, but the
+unfortunate gentleman excused himself, saying he hadn't a minute to
+spare, as the clock required his immediate attention. After this,
+deceased was seen by several people working the winding lever of the
+clock in the window. At half-past twelve he was observed to make some
+unusual motions of his head, so as to give the notion that he was in
+pain or distress of some kind. Then the light in the clock-room was
+extinguished and, as Mr. Leigh made no call or cry (the window at
+which he sat was open), it was supposed all was right. Shortly
+afterwards, dense smoke and flames were observed bursting through the
+window of the room, and before help could arrive all hope of reaching
+the unfortunate gentleman was at an end.
+
+"The building is an old one. The flames spread rapidly, and before an
+hour had elapsed the whole was burnt out and the roof had fallen in.
+
+"At the rear of the house proper is an off building abutting on
+Welbeck Mews. In this slept the shopman and his wife. This bakehouse
+also took fire and is burned out, but fortunately the two occupants
+were saved by the fire escape which had been on the spot ten minutes
+after the first alarm.
+
+"It is generally supposed that the eccentric movements of Mr. Leigh
+were the result of a fit or sudden seizure of some other kind, and
+that in his struggles some inflammable substance was brought into
+contact with the gas before it was turned out."
+
+Timmons flung down the paper with a shout, crying "Dead! Dead! Leigh
+is dead!"
+
+At that moment the figure of a man appeared at the threshold of the
+store, and Stamer, with a scowl and a stare, stepped in hastily and
+looked furtively, fearfully, around.
+
+"What are you shoutin' about?" cried Stamer, in a tone of dangerous
+menace. "What are you shoutin' about?" he said again, as he passed
+Timmons and slunk behind the pile of shutters and flattened himself up
+against the wall in the shadow of them.
+
+"Leigh is dead!" cried Timmons in excitement, and taking no notice of
+Stamer's strange manner and threatening tone.
+
+"_I_ know all about _that_, I suppose," said Stamer from his place
+of concealment. He was standing between the shutters and the old
+fire-grate, and quite invisible to anyone in the street. His voice was
+hollow, his eyes bloodshot and starting out of his head.
+Notwithstanding the warmth of the morning, his teeth were chattering
+in his head. His bloodshot eyes were in constant motion, new exploring
+the gloomy depths of the store, now glancing savagely at Timmons, now
+looking, in the alarm of a hunted beast, at the opening into the
+street.
+
+Timmons took little or no notice of the other man beyond addressing
+him. He was in a state of wild excitement, not exactly of joy,
+but triumph. It was a hideous sight to see this lank, grizzled,
+repulsive-looking man capering around the store, and exulting in the
+news he had just read, of a man on whom he had fawned a day before.
+"He's dead! The dwarf is dead, Stamer!" he cried again. In his wild
+gyrations his hat had fallen off, disclosing a tall, narrow head,
+perfectly bald on the top.
+
+"Shut up!" whispered Stamer, savagely, "if you don't want to follow
+him. I'm in no humour for your noise and antics. Do you want to have
+the coppers down on us?--do you, you fool?" He flattened himself still
+more against the wall, as though he were striving to imbed himself in
+it.
+
+Timmons paused. Stamer's words and manner were so unusual and
+threatening that they attracted his attention at last. "What's the
+matter?" he asked, in irritated surprise. "What's the matter?" he
+repeated, with lowering look.
+
+"Why, you've said what's the matter," said Stamer, viciously. "And
+you're shouting and capering as if you wanted to tell the whole world
+the news. This is no time for laughing and antics, you fool!"
+
+"Who are you calling a fool?" cried Timmons, catching up an iron bar
+and taking a few steps towards the burglar.
+
+"You, if you want to know. Put that down. Put that bar down, I say. Do
+it at once, and if you have any regard for your health, for your life,
+don't come a foot nearer, or I'll send you after him! By ----, I
+will!"
+
+Timmons let the bar fall, more in astonishment than fear. "What do you
+mean, you crazy thief? Have they just let you out of Bedlam, or are
+you on your way there? Anyway, it's lucky the place is handy, you
+knock-kneed jail-bird! Why he's shaking as if he saw a ghost!"
+
+"Let me alone and I'll do you no harm. I don't want to have _two_ on
+me."
+
+"What does the fool mean? I tell you Leigh is dead."
+
+"Can you tell me who killed him? If you can't, _I_ can." He pointed to
+himself.
+
+"What!" cried Timmons, starting back, and not quite understanding the
+other's gesture.
+
+"Now are you satisfied? I thought you guessed. I wouldn't have told
+you if I didn't think you knew or guessed. Curse me, but I am a fool
+for opening my mouth! I thought you knew, and that, instead of saying
+a good word to me, you were going to down me and give me up."
+
+Timmons stepped slowly back in horror. "You!" he whispered, bending
+his head forward and beginning to tremble in every limb. "You! You did
+it! You did this! You, Stamer!"
+
+Stamer merely nodded, and looked like a hunted wild beast at the
+opening. He wore the clothes of last night, but was without the
+whiskers or beard. All the time he cowered in the shelter of the
+shutters, he kept his right hand behind his back.
+
+Timmons retreated to the other wall, and leaned his back against it,
+and glared at the trembling man opposite.
+
+"For God's sake don't look at me like that. You are the only one that
+knows," whined Stamer, now quite unmanned. "I should not have told you
+anything about it, only I thought you knew, when I heard you say he
+was dead. You took me unawares. Don't stare at me like that, for God's
+sake. Say a word to me. Call me a fool, or anything you like, but
+don't stand there staring at me like that. If 'twas you that did it,
+you couldn't be more scared. Say a word to me, or I'll blow my brains
+out! I haven't been home. I am afraid to go home. I am not used to
+this--yet. I thought I had the nerve for anything, and I find I
+haven't the nerve of a child. I am afraid to go home. I am afraid to
+look at my wife. I thought I shouldn't be afraid of you, and now you
+scare me worse than anything. For the love of God, speak to me, and
+don't look at me like that. I can't stand it."
+
+"You infernal scoundrel, to kill the poor foolish dwarf!" whispered
+Timmons. His mouth was parched and open. The sweat was rolling down
+off his forehead. He was trembling no longer. He was rigid now. He was
+basilisked by the awful apparition of a man who had confessed to
+murder.
+
+Stamer looked towards the opening, and then his round, blood-shot eyes
+went back to the rigid figure of Timmons. "I don't mind what you say,
+if you'll only speak to me, only not too loud. No one can hear us. I
+know that, and no one can listen at the door, without our seeing him.
+You don't know what I have gone through. I have not been home. I am
+afraid to go home. I am afraid of everything. You don't know all. It's
+worse than you think. It's enough to drive one mad----"
+
+"You murderous villain!'
+
+"It's enough to drive any man mad. I've been wandering about all
+night. I am more afraid of my wife than of anyone else. I don't know
+why, but I tremble when I think of her, more than of the police,
+or--or--or----"
+
+"The hangman?"
+
+"Yes. You don't know all. When you do, you'll pity me----"
+
+"The poor foolish dwarf!"
+
+"Yes. I was afraid he'd betray us--you----"
+
+"Oh, villain!"
+
+"And I got on a roof opposite the window, and when he was working at
+the lever, I fired, and his head went so--and then so--and then
+so----"
+
+"Stop it, you murderer!"
+
+"Yes. And I knew it was done. The neck! Yes, I knew the neck was
+broken, and it was all right."
+
+"Oh! Oh! Oh, that I should live to hear you!"
+
+"Yes. I thought it was all right, and it was in one way. For he
+tumbled down on his side, so----"
+
+"If you don't stop it, I'll brain you!"
+
+"Yes. And I got down off the roof and ran. I couldn't help running,
+and all the time I was running I heard him running after me. I heard
+him running after me, and I saw his head wagging so--so--so, as he
+ran. Every step he took, his head wagged, so--and so--and so----"
+
+"If you don't stop that----"
+
+"Yes. I will. I'll stop it. But I could not stop _him_ last night. All
+the time I ran I couldn't stop him. His head kept wagging and his lame
+feet kept running after me, and I couldn't stop the feet or the head.
+I don't know how long I ran, or where I ran, but I could run no more,
+and I fell up against a wall, and then it overtook me! I saw _it_ as
+plainly as I see you--plainer, I saw it----"
+
+The man paused a moment to wipe his forehead.
+
+"Do you hear?" he yelled, suddenly flinging his arms up in the air.
+"Do you hear? Will you believe me now? The steps again! The lame steps
+again. Do you hear them, you fool?"
+
+"Mad!"
+
+"Mad, you fool! I told you. Look!"
+
+The figure of a low-sized, deformed dwarf came into the opening and
+crossed the threshold of the store.
+
+With a groan Stamer fell forward insensible.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+                      LEIGH CONFIDES IN TIMMONS.
+
+
+Timmons uttered a wild yell, and springing away from the wall fled to
+the extreme end of the store, and then faced round panting and livid.
+
+"Hah!" said the shrill voice of the man on the threshold. "Private
+theatricals, I see. I did not know, Mr. Timmons, that you went in for
+such entertainments. They are very amusing I have been told; very
+diverting. But I did not imagine that business people indulged in them
+in their business premises at such an early hour of the day. I am
+disposed to think that, though the idea is original, the frequent
+practice of such scenes would not tend to increase the confidence of
+the public in the disabled anchors, or shower-baths, or invalid
+coffee-mills, or chain shot, or rusty fire-grates, it is your
+privilege to offer to the consideration of customers. Hah! I may be
+wrong, but such is my opinion. Don't you think, Mr. Timmons, that you
+ought to ring down the curtain, and that this gentleman, who no doubt
+represents the villain of the piece confronted with his intended
+victim, had better get up and look after his breakfast?" He pointed to
+the prostrate Stamer, who lay motionless upon the sandy floor.
+
+Timmons did not move or speak. The shock had, for the moment,
+completely bereft him of his senses.
+
+"I have just come back from the country," said the dwarf, "and I
+thought I'd call on you at once. I should like to have a few moments'
+conversation with you, if your friend and very able supporter would
+have the kindness to consider himself alive and fully pardoned by his
+intended victim."
+
+"Hush!" cried Timmons, uttering the first sound. The words of the
+hunchback, although uttered in jest, had an awful significance for the
+dazed owner of the place.
+
+"Hah! I see your friend is not fabled to be in heart an assassin, but
+the poor and hard-working father of a family, who is just now
+indulging in that repose which is to refresh him for tackling anew the
+one difficulty of providing board and lodging and raiment for his wife
+and little ones. But, Mr. Timmons, in all conscience, don't you think
+you ought to put an end to this farce? When I came in I judged by his
+falling down and some incoherent utterance of yours that you two were
+rehearsing a frightful tragedy. Will you oblige us by getting up, sir?
+The play is over for the present, and my excellent friend Timmons here
+is willing to make the ghost walk."
+
+The prostrate man did not move.
+
+Timmons shuddered. He made a prodigious effort and tried to move
+forward, but had to put his hand against the wall to steady himself.
+
+Leigh approached Stamer and touched him with his stick. Stamer did not
+stir.
+
+"Is there anything the matter with the man? I think there must be,
+Timmons. What do you mean by running away to the other end of the
+place? Why this man is unconscious. I seem to be fated to meet
+fainting men."
+
+Timmons now summoned all his powers and staggered forward. Leigh bent
+over Stamer, but, although he tried, failed to move him.
+
+Timmons regained his voice and some of his faculties. "He has only
+fainted," said he, raising Stamer into a sitting posture.
+
+Stamer did not speak, but struggled slowly to his feet, and assisted
+by Timmons walked to the opening and was helped a few yards down the
+street. There the two parted without a word. By the time Timmons got
+back he was comparatively composed. He felt heavy and dull, like a man
+who has been days and nights without sleep, but he had no longer any
+doubt that Oscar Leigh was present in the flesh.
+
+"Are we alone?" asked Leigh impatiently on Timmons's return.
+
+"We are."
+
+"Hah! I am glad we are. If your friend were connected with racing I
+should call him a stayer. I came to tell you that I have just got back
+from Birmingham. I thought it best to go there and see again the man I
+had been in treaty with. I not only saw him but heard a great deal
+about him, and I am sorry to say I heard nothing good. He is, it
+appears, a very poor man, and he deliberately misled me as to his
+position and his ability to pay. I am now quite certain that if I had
+opened business with him I should have lost anything I entrusted to
+him, or, if not all, a good part. Hah!"
+
+"Then I am not to meet you _at the same place_, next Thursday night?"
+asked Timmons, with emphasis on the tryst. He had not at this moment
+any interest in the mere business about which they had been
+negotiating. He was curious about other matters. His mind was now
+tolerably clear, but flabby and inactive still.
+
+"No. There is no use in your giving me the alloy until I see my way to
+doing something with it, and I feel bound to say that after this
+disappointment in Birmingham, I feel greatly discouraged altogether.
+Hah! You do not, I think you told me, ever use eau-de-cologne?"
+
+"I do not."
+
+"Then you are distinctly wrong, for it is refreshing, most
+refreshing." He sniffed up noisily some he had poured into the palm of
+one hand and then rubbed together between the two. "Most refreshing."
+
+"Then, Mr. Leigh, I suppose we are at a standstill?"
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"What you mean, I suppose, Mr. Leigh, is that you do not see your way
+to going any further?"
+
+"Well, yes. At present I do not see my way to going any further."
+
+Timmons felt relieved, but every moment his curiosity was increasing.
+There was no longer any need for caution with this goblin, or man, or
+devil, or magician. If Leigh had meant to betray him, the course he
+was now pursuing was the very last he would adopt.
+
+"You went to Birmingham yesterday. May I ask you by what train you
+went down?"
+
+"Two-thirty in the afternoon."
+
+"And you came back this morning?"
+
+"Yes. Just arrived. I drove straight here, as I told you."
+
+"And you were away from half-past two yesterday until now. You were
+out of London yesterday from two-thirty until early this morning?"
+
+"Yes; until six this morning. Why are you so curious? You do not, I
+hope, suspect me of saying anything that is not strictly true?" said
+Leigh, throwing his head back and striking the sandy floor fiercely
+with his stick.
+
+"No. I don't _suspect_ you of saying anything that is not strictly
+true."
+
+The emphasis on the word _suspect_ caught Leigh's attention. He drew
+himself up haughtily and said, "What do you mean, sir?"
+
+"I mean, sir," said Timmons, shaking his minatory finger at him, and
+frowning heavily, "not that I suspect you of lying, but that I am sure
+you are lying. I was at the Hanover last night, you were there too."
+
+Leigh started and drew back. He looked down and said nothing. He could
+not tell how much this man knew. Timmons went on:
+
+"I was in the public bar, against the partition that separates it from
+the private bar, when you came in. You called for rum hot, and you
+went away at close to twelve o'clock to wind up your clock. I went out
+then and saw you at the window winding up the clock. I was there when
+the light went out just at half past twelve. Now, sir, are you lying
+or am I?"
+
+Leigh burst into a loud, long, harsh roar of laughter that made
+Timmons start, it was so weird and unexpected. Then the dwarf cried,
+"Why you, sir, you are lying, of course. The man you saw and heard is
+my deputy."
+
+"You lie. I heard about your deputy. He is a deaf and dumb man, who
+can't write, and is as tall as I am, a man with fair hair and beard."
+
+"My dear sir, your language is so offensive I do not know whether you
+deserve an explanation or not. Anyway, I'll give you this much of an
+explanation. I have two deputies. One of the kind you describe, and
+one who could not possibly be known by sight from myself."
+
+"But I have more than sight, even if the two of you were matched like
+two peas. I heard your voice, and all your friends in the bar knew you
+and spoke to you, and called you Mr. Leigh. It was you then and there,
+as sure as it is you here and now." Timmons thought, "Stamer when he
+fired must have missed Leigh, and Leigh must have gone away, after,
+for some purpose of his own, setting fire to the place. He is going on
+just as if the place had not been burned down last night, why, I am
+sure I do not know. I can't make it out, but anyway, Stamer did not
+shoot him, and he is pretending he was not there, and that he was in
+Birmingham. He's too deep for me, but I am not sure it would not be a
+good thing if Stamer did not miss him after all."
+
+The clockmaker paused awhile in thought. It was not often he was
+posed, but evidently he was for a moment at a nonplus. Suddenly he
+looked up, and with a smile and a gesture of his hands and shoulders,
+indicating that he gave in:
+
+"Mr. Timmons," he said suavely, "you have a just right to be angry
+with me for mismanaging our joint affair, and I own I have not told
+you quite the truth. I did _not_ go to Birmingham by the two-thirty
+yesterday. I was at the Hanover last night just before twelve, and I
+did go into Forbes's bakery as you say. But I swear to you I left
+London last night by the twelve-fifteen, and I swear to you I did not
+wind up my clock last night. It was this morning between four and five
+o'clock I found out in Birmingham that the man was not to be trusted.
+You will wonder where I made inquiries at such an hour."
+
+"I do, indeed," said Timmons scornfully.
+
+"I told you, and I think you know, that I am not an ordinary man. My
+powers, both in my art and among men, are great and exceptional. When
+I got to Birmingham this morning, I went to--where do you think?"
+
+"The devil!"
+
+"Well, not exactly, but very near it. I went to a police-station. It
+so happens that one of the inspectors of the district in which this
+man lives is a great friend of mine. He was not on duty, but his name
+procured for me, my dear Mr. Timmons, all the information I desired. I
+was able to learn all I needed, and catch the first train back to
+town. You see now how faithfully I have attended to our little
+business. I left the Hanover at five minutes to twelve, and at two
+minutes to twelve I was bowling along to Paddington to catch the last
+train, the twelve-fifteen."
+
+"That, sir, is another lie, and one that does you no good. At
+twelve-fifteen I saw you as plain as I see you now--for although there
+was a thin curtain, the curtain was oiled, and I could see as if there
+was no curtain, and the gas was up and shining on you--I say _at
+fifteen minutes after twelve I saw you turn around and nod to your
+friends in the bar_. It's nothing to me now, as the business is off,
+but I stick to what I say, Mr. Leigh."
+
+"And I stick to what I say."
+
+"Which of the says?" asked Timmons contemptuously. "You have owned to
+a lie already."
+
+"Lie is hardly a fair word to use. I merely said one hour instead of
+another, and that does not affect the substance of my explanation
+about Birmingham. I told you two-thirty, for I did not want you to be
+troubled with my friend the inspector."
+
+This reference to a police-station and inspector would have filled
+Timmons with alarm early in the interview, but now he was in no fear.
+If this man intended to betray him, why had he not done so already?
+and why had he not taken the gold for evidence?
+
+"But if you left Forbes's, how did you get away? Through the
+front-door in Chetwynd Street, or through the side-door in Welbeck
+Place?"
+
+"Through neither. Through the door of the bakehouse into the mews."
+
+Timmons started. This might account for Stamer's story of the ghost.
+
+"But who wound the clock? I saw you do it, Mr. Leigh--I saw you do it,
+sir, and all this Birmingham tale is gammon."
+
+"Again you are wrong. And now, to show you how far you are wrong, I
+will tell you a secret. I have two deputies. One I told that fool
+Williams about, and requested him as a great favour not to let a soul
+know. By this, of course, I intended that every one who enjoyed the
+privilege of Mr. Williams's acquaintance should know. But of my second
+deputy I never spoke to a soul until now, until I told you this
+moment. The other deputy is a man extremely like me from the waist up.
+He is ill-formed as I am, and so like me when we sit that you would
+not know the difference across your own store. But our voices are
+different, very different, and he is more than a foot taller than I.
+You did not see the winder last night standing up. He always takes his
+seat before raising the gas."
+
+A light broke in on Timmons. This would explain all. This would make
+Stamer's story consist with his own experience of the night before.
+This would account for this man, whom Stamer said he had shot, being
+here now, uninjured. This would make the later version of the tale
+about Birmingham possible, credible. But--awful but!--it would mean
+that the unfortunate, afflicted deputy had been sacrificed! Yes, most
+of what this man had said was true.
+
+"What's the unfortunate deputy's name?" he asked, with a shudder.
+
+"That I will not tell."
+
+"But it must come out on the inquest, to-day or to-morrow, or whenever
+they find the remains."
+
+"Remains of what?" asked Leigh, frowning heavily.
+
+"Of your deputy. They say in the paper it was you that lost your life
+in the fire."
+
+"Fire! Fire! Fire where?" thundered the dwarf, in a voice which shook
+the unceiled joists above their heads and made the thinner plates of
+metal vibrate.
+
+"Don't you know? Haven't you seen a paper? Why Forbes's bakery was
+burnt out last night, and the papers say you lost your life in the
+fire."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+                            THE WRONG MAN.
+
+
+When Timmons led the almost unconscious Stamer from the threshold, and
+left him a few yards from the door, the latter did not go far. He had
+scarcely the strength to walk away, and he certainly had not the
+desire to go. He had borne two extreme phases of terror within the
+last twenty-four hours; he had suffered the breathless terror of
+believing he had taken human life, and he had imagined the spirit of
+the murdered man was pursuing him.
+
+He had often, in thought, faced the contingency of having to fire on
+some one who found him at his midnight depredations, but he had not,
+until he formed the resolve of putting Leigh away, contemplated lying
+in wait for an unsuspecting man and shooting him as if he were a bird
+of prey.
+
+Once it had entered his mind to kill Leigh, nothing seemed simpler
+than to do it, and nothing easier than to bear the burden of the deed.
+He had no hint of conscience, and there were only two articles in his
+code--first, that prison was a punishment not to be borne if, at any
+expense, it could be avoided; and, second, that no harm was to be
+allowed near Timmons. Both articles were concerned, inextricably bound
+up, in Leigh's life. He saw in the dwarf the agent, the ally of the
+police--the police, absolutely, in a more malignant form than the
+stalwart detective who, with handcuffs in his pockets, runs a man
+down. This Leigh was a traitor and a policeman together. It seemed as
+though it would be impossible for one human being to possess any
+characteristic which could add to the hatefulness of him who exhibited
+these two. And yet this Leigh was not only a traitor and a policeman
+combined, but an enemy of Timmons--a beast who threatened Timmons as
+well! Shooting was too merciful a death for such a miscreant. But
+then, shooting was easy and sure, so he should be shot.
+
+The act itself had been very easy. There had been no more difficulty
+about it than about hitting the old hat in the shadow of the factory
+wall. But when the silent shot was sped and the air-gun disposed of by
+being carefully hung down the inside of a chimney and hooked to a
+copper-wire tie of the slate chimney-top, and he was safely down the
+water pipe and in the mews, the aspect of the whole deed changed, or
+rather it became another thing altogether.
+
+Before pulling the trigger of the air-gun, he was perfectly satisfied
+that Leigh deserved, richly deserved death. That was as plain as the
+dome of St. Paul's from London Bridge. It had been equally plain to
+him that when Leigh was dead, and dead by his hand, he should never
+because of any compunction be sorry for his act. No sooner was he at
+the bottom of the water-pipe than he found he had no longer any
+control over his thoughts, or more correctly that the thoughts in his
+mind did not belong to him at all, but were, as it might be, thoughts
+hired in the interest of the dead man, hostile, relentless
+mercenaries, inside the very walls of the citadel within which he was
+besieged, and from which there was no escape except by flinging his
+naked bosom on the bayonets of the besiegers.
+
+It made not the least difference now whether the man merited death a
+thousand times or not, that man insisted on haunting him. It did not
+now matter in the least how it pleased him to regard the provoker of
+that shot, it was how the murdered man regarded him was the real
+question. He had always told himself that a murdered man was only a
+dead man after all. Now he had to learn that no man ever born of woman
+is more awfully alive than a murdered man. He had yet to learn that
+the blow of the murderer endows the victim with inextinguishable
+vitality. He had yet to learn that all things which live die to the
+mind of a murderer except the man who is dead. He had yet to learn
+that in the mind of a murderer there is a gradually filling in and
+crowding together of the images of the undamned dead that in the end
+blind and block up the whole soul in stifling intimacies with the
+dead, until the murderer in his despair flings himself at the feet of
+the hangman shrieking for mercy, for mercy, for the mercy of violent
+and disgraceful death in order to put an end to the fiendish gibes of
+the dead who is not dead but living, who will not sink into hell, but
+brings hell into the assassin's brain. The desire to kill is easy, and
+the means of killing are easy, but the spirit of the murdered man
+takes immortal form in the brain of the murderer and cleaves to him
+for evermore.
+
+So that when Stamer descended from the roof and found himself in the
+yard of the mews, he was not alone. He had seen little of Leigh, but
+now all he had seen came back upon the eye of his memory with
+appalling distinctness. He saw each detail of the man's body as though
+it were cast in rigid bronze and pressed forcibly, painfully,
+unbearably, upon his perception. He could see, he could feel, the long
+yellow fingers and the pointed chin hidden in the beard, and the hairs
+on the neck growing thinner and thinner as the neck descended into the
+collar. He could see the wrinkles about the eyes, and a peculiar
+backward motion of the lips before the dwarf spoke. He could see the
+forehead wrinkled upward in indulgent scorn, or the eyes flashing with
+insolent self-esteem. He could see. He could see the swift, sharp
+up-tilt of the chin when a deep respiration became necessary. There
+was nothing about the dwarf that he could not see, that he did not
+see, that he could avoid seeing, that was not pressed upon him as by a
+cold, steel die, that was not pressed and pressed upon him until his
+mind ached for the vividness, until he turned within himself
+frantically to avoid the features or actions of the dwarf, and found
+no space unoccupied, no loop-hole of escape, no resting-place for the
+eye, no variety for the mind. He was possessed by a devil, and he had
+made that devil into the likeness of Leigh with his own hands out of
+the blood of Leigh.
+
+He had run, he did not know how long, or whither, but all the time he
+was running, he had some relief from the devil which possessed him,
+for he heard footsteps behind him, the footsteps of the dwarf. But
+what signified footsteps behind him, or the ordinary ghost one heard
+of, which could not take shape in day-light, or linger after cockcrow,
+compared with this internal spirit of the murdered man, this awful
+presence, this agonizingly minute portraiture at the back of the
+eye-balls where all the inside of the head could see it, when the eyes
+were shut, when one was asleep?
+
+At the time Leigh overtook him, he was sure Leigh was dead. But when
+he found himself exhausted against the wall, and saw the dwarf go by,
+it was with a feeling of relief. This was the vulgar ghost of which he
+had heard so much, but which he had always held in contempt. But he
+had never heard of the other ghost before, and his spirit was goaded
+with terrors, and frantic with fears.
+
+Then came that night of wandering, with inexpungeable features of the
+dwarf sharp limned upon his smarting sight, and after that long night,
+which was a repetition of the first few minutes after the deed, the
+visit to Timmons, and the appearance of Leigh in the flesh!
+
+No wonder Stamer was faint.
+
+He was in no immediate fear now. He was merely worn out by the awful
+night, and prostrated by the final shock. All he wanted was rest, and
+to know how it came to be that the dwarf was about that morning,
+seemingly uninjured. As Leigh was not dead, or hurt, he had nothing to
+fear at present. He would rest somewhere from which he could watch
+Timmons, and go back to his friend as soon as the clock-maker
+disappeared. He sat down on the tail-board of an upreared cart to
+wait.
+
+At length he saw the hunchback issue hastily from the store, and
+hasten, with pale face and hard-drawn breath, in the direction of
+London Road. Stamer kept his eyes on the little man until he saw him
+hail a cab and drive away. Then he rose, and, with weary steps and a
+heart relieved, hastened to the marine store.
+
+The murdered ghost which had haunted the secret chambers of his spirit
+had been exorcised, by the sight of Leigh in the flesh, and he was at
+rest.
+
+He found Timmons pacing up and down the store gloomily. "That's a good
+job, any way, Mr. Timmons," said the shorter man when he had got
+behind the shutters. This time he did not stand up with his back
+against the wall; he sat down on the old fire-grate. He was much
+bolder. In fact, he sought cover more from habit than from a sense of
+present insecurity.
+
+"Good job," growled Timmons. "Worse job, you mean, you fool."
+
+"Worse job? Worse job, Mr. Timmons? Worse, after all you said, to see
+Mr. Leigh here, than to know he was lying on the floor under the
+window with a broken neck?" cried Stamer, in blank and hopeless
+amazement.
+
+"Broken neck! Broken neck! It's you deserve the broken neck; and as
+sure as you're alive, Tom Stamer, you'll get it, get it from Jack
+Ketch, before long, and you deserve it."
+
+"Deserve it for missing Leigh?" cried Stamer, in a tone of dismay.
+Nothing could satisfy Timmons this morning. First he was furious
+because he had killed Leigh, and now he was savage because the bullet
+had missed him!
+
+"No, you red-handed botch! Worse than even if you killed Leigh, who
+hasn't been all straight. But you have killed an innocent man. A man
+you never saw or heard of in all your life until last night. A man
+that came into Leigh's place, privately, through a third door in the
+mews, and wound up his clock for him, in the window, and nodded to the
+Hanover bar people, as Leigh used to do, and who was so like Leigh
+himself, hump and all, barring that he was taller, that their own
+mothers would not know one from the other. Leigh hired him, so that he
+might be able to go to Birmingham and places on _our_ business, and
+seem to be in London and at his own place, if it became necessary to
+prove he had not been in Birmingham, if it became necessary to prove
+an alibi. And you, you blundering-headed fool, go and shoot the very
+man Leigh had hired to help our business! You're a useful pal, you
+are! You're a good working mate, you are! Are you proud of yourself?
+Eh? You not only put your head into the halter of your own free will,
+and out of the cleverness of your own brains, but you round on a chap
+who was a pal after all. You go having snap shots, you do, and you bag
+a comrade, a man who did no one any harm, a man who was in the swim!
+Oh, you are a nice, useful, tidy working pal, you are! A useful,
+careful mate! I wonder you didn't shoot me, and say you did it for the
+good of my health, and out of kindness to me. Anyway, I'm heartily
+sorry it wasn't yourself you shot, last night. No one would have been
+sorry for that, and the country would have saved the ten pounds to
+Jack Ketch for hanging you, and the cost of a new rope!"
+
+"Eh?" cried Stamer, not that he did not hear and understand, but in
+order that he might get the story re-told.
+
+Timmons went over the principal points again.
+
+The burglar listened quite unmoved.
+
+"You take it coolly enough, anyhow?"
+
+"Why not? It was an accident."
+
+"An accident! An accident!" cried Timmons, drawing up in front of
+Stamer and looking at him in perplexity.
+
+"Well, what could be plainer, Mr. Timmons? Of course, it was an
+accident. Why should I hurt a man who never hurt me?"
+
+"But you did."
+
+"They have to prove that. They _can't_ prove _I_ rounded on a pal. I
+can get a hundred witnesses to character."
+
+"Nice witnesses they would be."
+
+"But the coppers _know_ I'm a straight man."
+
+"They would hardly come to speak for you. It's someone from Portland
+would give you a character. But you know you fired the shot."
+
+"At a screech-owl, my lord, at a screech-owl, my lord, that was flying
+across the street. You don't suppose, my lord, I'd go and round on a
+pal of Mr. Timmons's and my own?"
+
+Timmons glared at him. "But the man is dead, and someone shot him."
+
+"Well, my lord, except Mr. Timmons--and to save him I risked my own
+life, and would lay it down, and am ready to lay it down now or any
+time it may please your lordship--unless Mr. Timmons goes into the box
+and swears my life away, you can prove nothing against me, my lord."
+
+"After all," said Timmons, looking through half-closed critical eyes
+at Stamer, "after all, the man has some brains."
+
+"And a straight man for a friend in Mr. John Timmons."
+
+"Yes, Stamer, you have."
+
+Stamer stood up and approached Timmons. "You'll shake hands on that,
+Mr. Timmons?"
+
+"I will." Timmons gave him his hand. "And now," he added, "I don't
+think you know the good news."
+
+"What?"
+
+"Why, Forbes's bakery was burned out last night."
+
+"Hurroo!" cried Stamer, with a yell of sudden relief and joy. "My
+lord, you haven't a single bit of evidence against Tom Stamer. My
+lord, good-bye. Mr. John Timmons and Tom Stamer against the world!"
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+                              THE RUINS.
+
+
+The morning following Hanbury's visit to Grimsby Street saw the order
+of arrival of the ladies in the sitting-room reversed. Mrs. Grace was
+there first. Edith had been too excited when she went to bed after the
+young man's disclosures to sleep, and it was not until the small hours
+were growing big that the girl could close her eyes. As a consequence,
+she was late.
+
+But when at last she did awake, how different were her feelings from
+the day before! She could scarcely believe she was the same being, or
+it was the same world. That letter from Mr. Coutch, of Castleton, had
+plunged her into a depth of leaden hopelessness she had never known
+before. Now all was changed. Then she was the last of a race of
+shopkeepers; now she had for cousin a man whose ancestor had been a
+king. Whatever fate might do against her in the future, it could never
+take away that consoling consciousness. At Miss Graham's in Streatham
+the girls used to say she ought to be a queen. Well, a not very remote
+relative of hers would have sat on a throne if she had lived and come
+into her rights! Prodigious.
+
+She found her grandmother waiting for her. The old lady was seated in
+the window, spectacles on nose, reading the morning paper. All the
+papers of that morning had not an account of the disaster at Chelsea,
+because of the late hour at which it occurred. Mrs. Grace's paper was
+one that did not get the news in time for insertion that morning, so
+that the old lady and Edith were spared the pain of believing that a
+man who sat in this room yesterday had met with a sudden and horrible
+death.
+
+But Mrs. Grace's eye had caught a paragraph headed "The Last of the
+Poles." Without a word or comment she handed the paper to the girl and
+said merely, "Read that. It ought to interest you."
+
+Edith looked at the heading, flushed, and then read the paragraph. It
+ran:
+
+
+"The last survivor of one of the great historical families of Europe
+was buried at Chone, near Geneva, four days before Christmas. The
+venerable Mathilde Poniatowski, the widow of Count Szymanowski, had
+just passed her ninetieth year. Her family gave to Poland its last
+king, Stanislaus Augustus, under whose reign the death-struggle of the
+Polish nation began, and its last hero, Prince Joseph Poniatowski, who
+fell as one of Napoleon's generals when bravely attempting to cover
+the retreat of the French at the battle of Leipzig. The Tzar
+Alexander, with a generosity which did him credit, allowed his corpse
+to be buried in the church at Cracow amongst the old Kings and heroes
+of Poland. Count Szymanowski, the husband of the deceased lady, took a
+prominent part in the rising of the Poles in 1831, since which time
+she has lived a quiet and uneventful life in the hospitable republic
+of Geneva."
+
+
+"And think," said Mrs. Grace, "that she who is just dead represented
+only the younger branch of Mr. Hanbury's family. It is all more like
+an Eastern romance than anything which could take place in Europe!"
+
+Edith could not say much. She felt choking, and merely said it was
+wonderful, and that Mr. Hanbury would no doubt know all about the
+countess.
+
+"I don't think so. You know he said he did not know much of the
+family. I must cut out this paragraph and keep it for him."
+
+The notion of cutting a paragraph out of a penny paper and giving it
+to the head of the house here referred to, was grotesque. Besides, he
+had not said that he should come again. He said his mother would call,
+and he expressed a vague hope that they might be better friends. Edith
+knew no practical importance was to be attached to this man's
+parentage, as far as honours went; but still it could not be that he
+would move about as freely now as of yore, or mingle with the people
+he had formerly considered his equals. He could no more destroy the
+stream of noble and kingly blood in his veins than a costermonger
+could carry the arms of a Howard or a Percy.
+
+Edith broke bread that morning, but made little more than a formal
+meal. Mrs. Hanbury would of course call. When? And what would she be
+like? The son had been much too condescending and familiar for one in
+his position. Would his mother make up in stateliness what he left
+aside? She would drive up between three and five with powdered
+footmen. The arrival of the carriage, and the footmen, and Mrs.
+Hanbury, mother of the well-known Mr. Hanbury, would be an event in
+Grimsby Street. Her old resolution of not knowing rich people must be
+waived in this case. There was no remedy for it; for he had said his
+mother would come.
+
+Neither grandmother nor grand-daughter was in humour for talk. Edith
+was occupied with her own thoughts. They had nothing to do that day,
+for Edith had made up her mind to do nothing about a new situation
+until Monday. It being now Saturday, there was no time to take any
+steps that week.
+
+They had not sat down to breakfast until half-past nine, and by ten
+they had not finished. As the little clock on the mantelpiece struck
+the hour the landlady's daughter entered to say a lady was below who
+desired to see Mrs. and Miss Grace.
+
+Both rose. Whom could it be?
+
+Mrs. Hanbury.
+
+"I have taken the liberty of coming up without permission," said a
+voice at the door, and a tall, stately lady, with white hair and
+dressed in black, appeared at the threshold of the door left open by
+the attendant.
+
+Mrs. Grace invited her to enter and be seated.
+
+"I need not introduce myself further," the visitor said with a smile,
+as she sat down, after shaking hands with the two, "than to say I am
+the mother of Mr. Hanbury, who had the pleasure of calling upon you
+yesterday evening. I am afraid my visit this morning is as
+inconveniently early as his last night was late. But the discovery of
+the relationship between us is so extraordinary, and so pleasant to
+me, that I could not deny myself the happiness of calling at the very
+earliest moment I could get away. You have not even finished
+breakfast. I fear you will find it hard to forgive me." Her words, and
+smile, and manner were so friendly and unassuming, that grandmother
+and grand-daughter felt at ease immediately.
+
+Mrs. Grace said that if the visitor would forgive the disorder of the
+table, they should have no reason to feel anything but extremely
+grateful to Mrs. Hanbury for coming so soon.
+
+Mrs. Hanbury bowed and said, "I saw my son on his return from
+Derbyshire yesterday and when he came back from you last night. But he
+had not come down when I was leaving home just now. I am a very
+positive, self-willed old woman, and I have to ask you as a favour to
+make allowances for these infirmities. I have made up my mind that the
+best thing for us to do is to hold a little family council, and I have
+grown so used to my own room I never can feel equal to discussing
+family matters anywhere else. I have therefore come to ask you a
+favour to begin with. Do humour me, please, and come with me to my
+place. John will be down and done breakfast by the time we get there,
+and we four can talk over all this wonderful story at our leisure."
+
+There were objections and demurs to this, but Mrs. Hanbury's
+insistent, good-humoured determination prevailed, and the end was that
+the three ladies set out together on foot for Chester Square. "And
+now," said Mrs. Hanbury, as they walked along, "that I have tasted the
+delights of conquest, I mean to turn from a mild and seemingly
+reasonable supplicant into a rigid tyrant. Back into that dreadful
+Grimsby Street neither of you shall ever go again. It is quite enough
+to destroy one's zest for life merely to look down it!"
+
+The protests and demurs were more vehement than before.
+
+"We shall not argue the point now. In my capacity of tyrant, I decline
+to argue anything. But we shall see--we shall see."
+
+When they reached Mrs. Hanbury's, they went straight, to her own room.
+She left word that she was most particularly engaged, and could see no
+one. On enquiring for her son, she heard with surprise that he had
+come down shortly after she left and gone out without leaving any
+message for her.
+
+That morning John Hanbury awoke to the most unpleasant thoughts
+about Dora. What ought he to do in the matter? Had he not acted
+badly to her in not writing the next morning after the scene in the
+drawing-room?--the very night?
+
+Unquestionably it would have been much better if he had written at
+once. But then at the time he reached home, he was in no state of mind
+to write to any one, and when he read his father's letter, the
+contents of it drove all other matters into the background, and made
+it seem that they could easily wait. Now he had been to Derbyshire,
+and knew all that was to be learned at Castleton, and had seen Mrs.
+Grace and Miss Grace and told them of the discovery he had made. His
+mother had undertaken to go see them, and for the present there was
+nothing to press in front of his thought of Dora.
+
+He had behaved very badly indeed to her. At the interview he had acted
+more like a lunatic brute than a sane gentleman, and afterwards his
+conduct had been--yes, cowardly. Curse it! was he always to behave
+like a coward in her eyes? She had reproached him with cowardice the
+other day, and he fully deserved her reproach. That is, he fully
+deserved the reproach of an impartial and passionless judge. But was
+the attitude of an impartial and passionless judge exactly the one a
+man expected from his sweetheart? Surely the ways of life would be
+very dusty and dreary if a man found his severest critics always
+closest to his side, if any deficiencies in the public indictment of
+his character or conduct were to be supplied by a voice from his own
+hearth, by his other self, by his wife?
+
+John Hanbury had from his first thinking of Dora more than of any
+other girl he had met, looked on her as a possible wife. When he went
+further and made up his mind to ask her to marry him, he had regarded
+her as a future wife more than a present sweetheart. He had felt that
+she would be a credit and an ornament to him and that they should get
+on well together. He had never for an hour been carried away by his
+feelings towards her. He had never lost his head. He told himself he
+had lost his heart, because he was more happy in her society than in
+the society of any other young woman he had met.
+
+He was an imaginative man, of good education, strong impulse, and
+skilful in the use of words. Yet he had not addressed a single piece
+of verse to her. She had not moved him to adopt that unfamiliar form
+of expression. He had nothing in his mind about her that he could not
+express in prose. This alone was a suspicious circumstance. He knew he
+was not a poet, and he felt it would be absurd to try to be a poet,
+because he was going to marry a woman he liked very much.
+
+This was ample evidence she had not touched the inner springs of love
+in him. The young man who keeps his reason always about him, and won't
+make a fool of himself for the woman he wants to marry, isn't in love
+at all. There may be fifty words describing beautifully the excellence
+of his intentions towards the young woman, but love is not one of
+those words. He had felt all along that they were about to enter into
+a delicious partnership; not that he was going to drink the wine of a
+heavenly dream.
+
+This morning he was wrestling and groaning in spirit when the servant
+brought the letters to his door. He recognised her writing at once,
+and tore the envelope open hastily.
+
+He read the letter slowly and with decaying spirit. When he had
+finished he folded it up deliberately and put it back into the
+envelope. His face was pale, his lips were apart, his eyes dull,
+expressionless.
+
+"Be it so," he said at length. "She is right," he added bitterly. "She
+is always right. She would always be right, and I when I differed from
+her always wrong. That is not the position a husband should occupy in
+a wife's esteem."
+
+Then he sat down in the easy chair he had occupied two nights before,
+and fell into a reverie. He did not heed how time went. When he roused
+himself he learned that his mother had gone out. He did not want to
+meet her now. He did not want to meet anyone. He wished to be alone
+with his thoughts. Where can man be more alone than in the streets of
+a great city?
+
+He went out with no definite object except to be free of interruption.
+His mind ran on Dora. Now he thought of her with anger, now with
+affection, now with sorrow. He had no thought of trying to undo her
+resolve. He acquiesced in it. He was glad it came from her and not
+from him.
+
+Now that all was over between them, and they were by-and-by to be good
+friends, and no more, he became sentimental.
+
+He passed in review the pleasant hours they had spent together. He
+took a melancholy delight in conjuring up the things they had said,
+the places they had gone to, the balls, and theatres, and galleries
+and meetings they had been at with one another. He thought of the last
+walk they took, the walk which led to the present breach between them.
+It was in this neighbourhood somewhere. Ah, he remembered. He would go
+and see the place once more.
+
+Once more! Why it was only two days since they had come this way, she
+leaning on his arm. What a wonderful lot of things had been crowded
+into those two days!
+
+This was the street. What was the meaning of the crowd? When she and
+he were here last, there had been a crowd too. Was there always a
+crowd here? By Jove! there had been a fire. And, by Jove! the house
+burned was the one against the end wall of which she and he had stood
+to watch the nigger.
+
+Policemen were keeping people back from the front of Forbes's bakery,
+which was completely gutted, standing a mere shell, with its bare,
+roofless walls open to the light of Heaven. All the floors had fallen,
+and a fireman with a hose was playing on the smoking rubbish within.
+
+"An unlucky place," thought Hanbury, as he stood to look at the ruins.
+"First that unfortunate nigger meets with an accident there, and now
+this house is burned quite out. An unlucky corner."
+
+At that moment there was a cry of dismay from the crowd. Hanbury drew
+back. He thought the walls were falling. Presently the cry of dismay
+changed to a cheer, and the crowd at the corner of the Hanover swayed
+and opened, and through it, from a cab which had just drawn up, walked
+hastily towards the smoking pile, Oscar Leigh.
+
+Where Hanbury stood was the nearest point from which the dwarf could
+command a view of the bakery. When he reached Hanbury's side, he
+stopped, looked up, dropped his stick, flung his hands aloft and
+uttered an awful yell of despair.
+
+The people drew back from him.
+
+No trace of even the floor of the clock-room remained in position,
+beyond a few charred fragments of joists. Everything was gone, wheels
+and pulleys, and levers, and shafts, and chains, and drums, and bands.
+Even the very frame itself, with its four strong pillars and thick
+cross-bars, left not a trace aloft, and its very position was not
+indicated in the heap of steaming rubbish.
+
+"All gone! All gone! The work of seven years. The result of a
+lifetime. Gone! gone! gone!"
+
+He reeled and would have fallen but that Hanbury caught him and
+supported him.
+
+Williams appeared and between Williams and Hanbury the dwarf was led
+into the private bar in which his learning and occult knowledge had
+brought him distinction and respect.
+
+A chair was fetched by Binns the potman and Leigh was set upon it with
+his back to the window, so that his eyes might not look upon the grave
+of his labour.
+
+"All gone! All gone! Nothing left! Nothing left! The work of seven
+years day and night! Day and night! Day and night! Gone, all gone!"
+
+"But, Mr. Leigh," said the pale-faced Williams, in a low and very
+kindly voice, "it might have been ever so much worse."
+
+"Worse! How could it be worse? There is nothing saved."
+
+"Why, thank God, Mr. Leigh, you are saved. It was said in some of the
+papers and we all believed you were burned in the fire."
+
+"And what if I was? I wish I was."
+
+"You oughtn't say that, Mr. Leigh. It is not right to say that. You
+ought to be grateful for being saved."
+
+"Grateful for being saved! Who? I! Who should be grateful that I am
+saved? Not I, for one."
+
+"Well, your friends are very glad, any way. Didn't you hear how the
+people cried out with fear first, for they thought you were a ghost,
+and didn't you hear how they cheered then when they saw it was you
+yourself, alive and well?"
+
+"I! Who am I? What am I? My clock, sir, was all I had in this whole
+world. It was the savings bank of my heart, of my soul, and now the
+bank is broken and I am beggared."
+
+"But, Mr. Leigh, you are not beggared indeed. You have plenty of money
+still," said Williams in the soft tone one uses to a reasonable child.
+
+"Money, sir, what is money to me? I am not a pauper, but what good is
+mere money to me? Can I dance at balls, or ride fine horses or shoot?
+What good is money to me more than to get me food and drink for my
+body? and what a body! Who will feed my soul? What will feed my soul?
+How am I who am but a joke of nature to live with no spiritual food?
+My clock was my life, and my soul, and my fame, my immortal part and
+now--! Gone! gone! gone!"
+
+"But how did you escape, Mr. Leigh? We saw you winding up after you
+left this, and you nodded to us as usual, when the easy part of the
+winding came, half-way through."
+
+"I did. Curse my mandarin neck. If I had minded nothing but my clock
+it would be safe now, or I should be dead with it."
+
+"But how did you escape, Mr. Leigh?"
+
+"The devil takes care of his own, Mr. Hanbury," he said, speaking for
+the first time to the young man. "Whatever way you are going I should
+like to go, if you would have no objection? I have no way of my own
+now except the way common to us all."
+
+"I shall be very glad to have your company," said Hanbury, who was
+sincerely moved at the loss and grief of the little clockmaker.
+
+"Shall we walk or would you prefer to drive?"
+
+"Let us drive, please. I have lost my stick. Ay, I have lost my
+crutch, my stick, my prop. You are very kind to let me go with you."
+
+"Indeed I am very glad to be of any use I can."
+
+And leaning on the arm of John Hanbury, Oscar Leigh limped out of the
+private bar of the Hanover.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+                           OPEN CONFESSION.
+
+
+When the two men gained the open air no cab was in sight.
+
+"If you will rest awhile here," said Hanbury, "I'll fetch a cab. I
+cannot see one up or down the street."
+
+"No," said Leigh, a shudder passing through his frame. "Let us walk,
+if you do not mind. I could not bear to stay near this place any
+longer. Is it not strange that you should have wanted a cab in this
+spot forty-eight hours ago, and I should want it here now?"
+
+"It is strange," said Hanbury, "but the world is very small, and our
+absolute wants in it are very closely circumscribed." The manner of
+Leigh had changed in a marked manner since they emerged from the door
+of the Hanover. His steps had become slow and more dragged, his
+breathing more laboured, and he had lost all swagger and bounce, and
+self-assertiveness.
+
+"I know I am going very slowly. But I cannot get along quicker. I have
+had a great shock, and a slow step is becoming at a funeral."
+
+"Pray, do not apologise. I assure you I have absolutely nothing to
+do."
+
+"Nor I, nor shall I ever have anything to do in this world again. Sir,
+this slow pace befits a funeral. This is my funeral."
+
+"Oh, you mustn't say so. I am sure your clock must have been a
+terrible loss, but not irreparable."
+
+"Do you mean that the clock is reparable?"
+
+"No. I am well aware the clock is past repair, but the loss may be
+repaired."
+
+"No, sir. It may not. I do not want ever to see this street or that
+corner again. I have lived there seven years. I have toiled and
+planned there night and day for seven years, and now I am going
+away shorn of the growth of all my labours. Men of my make are never
+long-lived. When they meet a great shock and a great loss such as this
+they die. There is a hansom, but don't call that. Call a four-wheeler.
+It is more like a hearse, and this is a funeral. Let us dress the
+rehearsal of the play, the real play, as well as we can. I am rather
+glad I am done with life----"
+
+"Why, you are quite a young man yet, Mr. Leigh."
+
+"I am rather glad I am done with life, I was saying, for I was
+beginning to tire of it. A man formed as I am has a weary up-hill
+fight. He must either play the part of the subtle beast, or go under,
+and a man who cannot ever stand up and fight for himself does not like
+to go under. It is not fair to ask a man who has never been able to
+put up his hands if he has had enough."
+
+"But you will begin another great clock, even a greater one."
+
+For a moment the little man fired up, and seemed about to regain his
+old insolent combativeness. "Sir, it would be impossible to design a
+greater."
+
+"Well, let us say as great," said the young man soothingly. He was
+beginning not only to take an interest in this strange being, but to
+sympathise with him.
+
+"No, sir. I shall begin no other clock. The sands in my own hour-glass
+are running low already. When a man of my make endures a great shock
+and a great disappointment he does not endure much more. He dies. I am
+glad to meet you again. I am glad it was your arm kept me from
+falling. I want you to be my friend. I have no friend on earth
+excepting my poor mother, who is more helpless than I myself. I know
+what I am asking when I say I want you for my friend. I would not ask
+you to be my friend the day before yesterday. I would have preferred
+you for an enemy then, for then I was strong and able to take care of
+myself. Now I am too weak to be your enemy, and I am fit only to be
+your friend. You will not spurn me?" He paused in their walk, and
+looked up anxiously into Hanbury's face.
+
+"Assuredly not. I will do anything I can for you. Please let me know
+what I can do for you?"
+
+"I may presently, I may later. I may the last thing of all. But not
+now. Let us walk on. My clock is gone for ever, and on the ruins of my
+clock I have found a friend. I would much rather have my clock, ten
+thousand times rather have my clock, than you, but then I knew it so
+long and so well. If you had made that clock as I had, and had lost it
+as I have lost it, you would go mad and kill someone, maybe yourself,
+or perhaps both."
+
+"I am sure I should feel bitterly the loss of so many years of
+labour."
+
+"Of so many years of labour and love and confidence and pride, the
+depository of so many hopes, the garden in which grew all the flowers
+of my mind. Well, while I had the clock, I had a friend in which I
+could confide. The clock is gone past recall. My mother cannot, poor
+soul, be expected to understand me. As you have promised to be my
+friend, I will confide in you. I know I may do so with safety."
+
+"I think you may."
+
+"It is past _thinking_ in me: I _know_. I told you before, I never
+make mistakes about people." In all this talk Hanbury noticed that
+the old self-assertive "Hah!" had no place, nor was there any use of
+eau-de-cologne or reference to it. These had been nothing more than
+conversational fripperies, and had been laid aside with the spirit of
+aggression. The manner of aggression still prevailed in the form of
+thought and manner of expression. "You will be astonished to hear that
+I was attracted towards you from the moment I saw you in Welbeck
+Place--the attraction of repulsion, no doubt. But still you were not
+indifferent to me. I have had so long a life of loneliness and
+repression, I want a few hours of companionship and free-speaking
+before I die."
+
+"Anything you may tell me to relieve your mind, I shall treat as a
+secret of my own--as a secret in keeping which my personal honour is
+concerned."
+
+"I know. I wish I were as sure of anything else as I am of you. I tell
+you I never make mistakes about people. Never. I lied to you very
+considerably. I lied to everyone pretty considerably, partly because I
+have imagination, or fancy, or invention, or whatever you call the
+power of easily devising things that are not. I lied because I had
+imagination. I lied because I had vanity. I lied because people are
+such fools. How could a man tell the truth to a creature like
+Williams, the owner of that public-house? The creature could not
+appreciate it. Besides, lying is so amusing, and I had so little
+amusement. I used lies as at once a sword and buckler. I cut down a
+fool with a lie; I defended myself against the silly talk of fools by
+holding up a lie with a brazen boss the shining of which dazzled their
+eyes and choked their silly voices. I lied a good deal to you."
+
+"Pray do not pain yourself by apologies. You said what you said to me
+merely for pastime."
+
+"No; as an indication of my contempt for you. Did you not see I had a
+contempt for you? Did I not make it plain? Did you not see it?"
+
+"Yes, I think you made it plain."
+
+"I am glad of that, for my intention was to hurt you a good deal, and
+I hate to fail. I am very glad you saw I had a great contempt for you.
+This is my death-bed confession, and I shall keep back nothing,
+without warning you I am keeping something back."
+
+"You are quite candid now, I am sure."
+
+"Quite candid, as candid as a child is in its unspoken mind. What I
+said about those figures of time was mostly a lie."
+
+"I guessed that."
+
+"What I said about Miracle Gold was mostly a lie also."
+
+"I knew that."
+
+"You knew it! How could you know it? How can you _know_ a negative any
+more than _prove_ it, except by the evidence of your senses?--and then
+you do not _know_, you only fail to perceive."
+
+"Well, let us not get into metaphysics."
+
+"All right. _Most_ of what I told you about Miracle Gold was a lie.
+_All_ I told you about making it was a lie. I was about to enter into
+a league with thieves to take stolen gold, and pretend to make it. I
+was going to do this for the sake of the fame, not the profit."
+
+"A very dangerous kind of alchemy."
+
+"Yes; but very common, though not in its application to real metallic
+gold."
+
+"It would be worse for us to get into a discussion on morals than even
+on metaphysics."
+
+"It would. Anyway I have told you what my scheme was. I told Mrs.
+Ashton that my clock was independent of my hands for winding up. You
+heard Williams, the publican, say they saw me wind up my clock last
+night. Well I was not near my clock last night."
+
+"But he said he saw you."
+
+"He did. Now you can understand how necessary it was for me to lie."
+
+"I candidly confess I cannot."
+
+"Well to me it would be unbearable that a man like Williams should
+know of all my actions. I was not near my clock, not in the same room
+with it, not on the floor where it stood, from the early afternoon of
+yesterday. When I conceived the notion of making Miracle Gold I knew I
+ran a great risk. I thought it might become necessary to prove
+_affirmatives_ at all events. The proposition of an alibi is an
+affirmative, the deduction a negative. I told you my clock was my
+friend. Well, I made it help me in this. I gave out in the private bar
+of the Hanover that my clock had now become so complicated that I had
+arranged to connect all the movements, which had hitherto been more or
+less independent, awaiting removal to a tower. I said I was going to
+get all my power from one force, weights in the chimney. Hitherto I
+had said I used springs and weights. I said this change would involve
+half-an-hour's continual winding every night, with a brief break of a
+few seconds in the middle of the half hour. The clock was to be wound
+up by a lever fixed near the window, at which I sat when at work, the
+only window in the room. Night after night I worked at this lever for
+half-an-hour, turning round exactly at a quarter-past twelve to nod at
+the landlord of the Hanover and the people in the private bar.
+Meanwhile, I was busy constructing two life-sized figures. One of the
+body of a man in every way unlike me. The other of a man who should be
+as like me as possible. I have skill, a good deal of skill, in
+modelling. The face and figure unlike mine were the first finished.
+Both were made to be moved by the lever, not to move it. I easily
+timed the head so as to turn at a quarter-past. I inserted in the neck
+of the figure like myself a movement which would make the head nod
+before turning away to go on with the winding. You now see my idea?"
+
+"Not quite clearly. But I suspect it."
+
+"Suppose I had to meet one of my clients about the gold, I should make
+an appointment with him at a quarter-past twelve in Islington, or
+Wapping, or Wandsworth, or Twickenham. My clock, at twelve o'clock,
+slowly raised the figure from the floor to the place in which I sat in
+my chair, turned up the gas, which had been dimmed to the last glimmer
+that would live, and then released the weight in the chimney and set
+the figure moving as if working the lever, instead of the lever
+working it. Thus you see I should have a dozen to swear they saw me in
+my room at Chelsea, if anything went wrong in my interviews with my
+clients, or if from any other cause it became necessary for me to
+prove I was in my workshop between twelve and half-past twelve at
+night."
+
+"Very ingenious indeed."
+
+"The night before I met you in Welbeck Place, that is to say Wednesday
+night, I tried my first figure, the figure of the man unlike me."
+
+"May I ask what was the object of this figure? Why had you one that
+was not like you?"
+
+"To give emphasis to the figure of myself. I at first intended going
+into the Hanover on Wednesday and declaring that I had been obliged to
+employ a deputy in case of anything preventing my being able to attend
+between twelve and half-past. I had intended spending the half hour
+the figure was visible in the bar, but I changed my mind. I went to
+the country instead, and imparted as a secret to the landlord that I
+was to have a deputy that night, and that he was to keep an eye on him
+and see he did not shirk his work. I knew Williams could no more keep
+a secret of that kind than fly. I did not want him to keep it. My
+motive in cautioning him was merely that he might watch closely, for
+of course I was most anxious that the delusion should be complete and
+able to bear the test of strict watching from the private bar. I went
+down to the country partly to be out of the way and partly for another
+reason I need not mention."
+
+Hanbury started. The excitement of seeing the place burned out, and
+meeting the dwarf and listening to his strange tale, had prevented him
+recollecting the connection between Edith Grace and Leigh. "Go on,"
+said Hanbury, wishing the clockmaker to finish before he introduced
+the name of Edith.
+
+"There is not much more to tell. Owing to a reason I need not mention,
+I made up my mind on Thursday morning to go on with the production of
+Miracle Gold. I resolved against my better judgment, and gave the word
+for the first lot of the gold to be delivered at my place at midnight
+exactly. You know how my afternoon was spent. While at Mrs. Ashton's,
+my better judgment and my worse one had a scuffle, and I made up my
+mind to decide upon nothing that night, and certainly to commit myself
+to nothing that night. What you would call the higher influence was at
+work."
+
+"Pallas-Athena?"
+
+"Yes, if you think that a good name. Any way I made up my mind to do
+nothing definite in the interest of Miracle Gold that night. I set my
+dummy figure and left my house at midnight exactly, saw my client and
+told him I could do nothing for a week. Next day I heard from Williams
+that I had wound up my clock and nodded at a quarter-past twelve,
+right time. Last night I went into the Hanover, as you heard Williams
+say, and passed into my house after speaking a while to a friend in
+the street. But I did not go upstairs. I went through the house and
+out into the mews at the back. I was supplied by the landlord with
+keys for the doors into Chetwynd Street and Welbeck Place, but had not
+one for the bakehouse door into the mews until I got one made unknown
+to anyone. Thus the landlord and the people all round to whom I spoke
+freely would never dream of my going through into the mews. It was my
+intention they should have a distinct impression I could not do it.
+Thus I had the use, as it were, of a secret door. When I got into the
+mews I hastened to Victoria and caught the last train for Millway, the
+12.15. I wanted to see my mother about business which I need not
+mention. I had made up mind to have nothing to do with the Miracle
+Gold. On my way back to town I called on my client and learned that
+the place was burnt down and that I was believed to be dead. The
+latter belief is only a little premature. I am going fast. Is there no
+cab? I can hardly breathe. Have you seen Miss Ashton since?"
+
+"Since I saw you last?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have."
+
+"Since yesterday afternoon?"
+
+"No."
+
+Leigh gave a sigh of pain and stopped. "I am done," he said. "I can go
+no further. I shall walk no more."
+
+"Nonsense, you will be all right again. Here is a cab at last, thank
+goodness!"
+
+"You will come with me. You will not desert me. My confession is over.
+I shall speak of this matter no more to any man. It was only a
+temptation, and I absolutely did no wrong. You will not desert me. I
+am very feeble. I do not know what the matter is with me. I have no
+strength in my body. I never had much, but the little I had is gone.
+You will not desert me, Mr. Hanbury. I have only listened to the voice
+of the tempter. I have not gone the tempter's ways, and mind, I was
+not tempted by the love of lucre. If I had had a voice, and stature,
+and figure like yours I might have been able to win fame in the big
+and open world, as I was I could win it only in the world that is
+little and occult. Come with me. You promised to be my friend before
+you heard of my temptation. Are you less inclined to be my friend
+because I was tempted and resisted the tempter, than if I had never
+been tempted at all? Get in and come with me. See me under a roof
+anyway. The next roof that covers me will be the last one I shall lie
+under over ground."
+
+"I own," said Hanbury, "I was a little staggered at first, but only at
+first. I am quite willing to go with you. Where shall I tell the man
+to drive?" Hanbury had assisted Leigh into the cab, and was standing
+on the flagway.
+
+Leigh gave the address, and the two drove off.
+
+The dwarf's confession had not benefitted his position in Hanbury's
+mind. The fact that this man had been in communication with a fence,
+with a view to the disposal of stolen gold, was enough to make the
+average man shrink from contact with the dwarf. But then Hanbury
+remembered that the secret had been divulged by the clock-maker in a
+moment of extreme excitement, and after what to him must have been an
+enormous calamity. To have been tempted is not to have fallen; but,
+the temptation resisted, to have risen to heights proportionate to the
+strength of the temptation, and the degree of self-denial in the
+resistance of it.
+
+Yet, this was a strange companion, friend, for John Hanbury, the
+well-known public speaker, a man who had made up his mind to adopt the
+career of a progressive and reforming politician, the descendant of
+Stanislaus II. of Poland! Contact with a man who had absolutely
+entertained the notion of trading in stolen goods was a thing most
+people would shun. But, then, were most people right? This man had
+claimed his good offices, first, because Hanbury was in his power, and
+now Leigh claimed his good offices, because he was in great affliction
+and prostration. Certainly Hanbury would be more willing to fall in
+with Leigh's views now, when he was supplicating, than on Thursday,
+when he was threatening. Who could withhold sympathy from this
+deformed, marred, wheezing, halting, sickly-looking man, who had just
+seen the work of a lifetime swept away for ever?
+
+Then Hanbury remembered he had questions to ask Leigh, and that his
+motive for keeping with him was not wholly pure. How many motives, of
+the most impersonal and disinterested, are quite pure?
+
+The young man did not know how exactly to introduce the subject of the
+Graces, and, for a moment, he hemmed and fidgetted in the cab.
+
+At last he began, "You have not seen Mrs. Grace, since?"
+
+"No; nor shall I ever again."
+
+"Why, you have not quarrelled with her, have you?"
+
+"Quarrelled with her! Not I. But I have explained to you that I am
+going home, that this is a funeral; my home is not in Grimsby Street.
+You did not say Grimsby Street to the cabman, I hope?"
+
+"I did not. I gave him 12, Barnes Street, Chelsea. Is not that right?"
+
+"Yes. That's right. No, I am not likely to see Mrs. Grace again. How
+wonderfully like Miss Ashton Miss Grace is! Oh, I may as well tell
+you, how I came to know Miss Grace, as she has really been the means
+of bringing us together as we are to-day. My mother is paralyzed, and
+I advertised for a companion for her. Miss Grace replied, and I
+engaged her. I said she should see little of me. But at the time it
+did not occur to me that I might like to see a great deal of her. I
+did not explain this before, for the explanation would have
+interrupted the story of my clock. Well, although you may hardly be
+able to credit it, I, who had, up to that time, avoided the crowning
+folly of even thinking of marriage, thought, not quite as calmly as I
+am speaking now, that I should like to marry a wife, and that I should
+like to marry her. She was to go to my mother on Wednesday. I was to
+test my automaton on Wednesday night. I ran down to my mother's place,
+and was at Eltham when Miss Grace arrived. My appearance there, after
+saying she should see me little, must have frightened her. I have
+often heard children call me bogie. At all events, she came back to
+Town next day. Ran away, is the truth. Ran away from the sight of me,
+of bogie. If she had staid with my mother, I should have had something
+to think of besides Miracle Gold. It was upon seeing her and arranging
+that she was to go to Eltham, that my interest in Miracle Gold began
+to diminish, and I grew to think that my clock alone would suffice for
+my fame, and that I might marry and leave London, and live at Eltham.
+Well, she ran away, as I said, and I came back to London the same day,
+and made up my mind to go on with Miracle Gold. Then I met you and
+Miss Ashton, and I went to Curzon Street, and I thought, If Mrs.
+Ashton will let me come on Thursdays, and breathe another atmosphere,
+and meet other kinds of people, I still may be able to live without
+the excitement of Miracle Gold. And so I wavered and wavered, and at
+last made up my mind to give up the Gold altogether, and now the clock
+is gone, and I am alone. Quite alone. This is the house. It belongs to
+Dr. Shaw. He has looked after my health for years, and has promised to
+let me come here and live with him, when I haven't long to live. I
+have your address, and you have this one. Will you come to see me
+again?"
+
+"Indeed I will."
+
+"When--to-morrow? To-morrow will be Sunday."
+
+"Perhaps I may come to-morrow. I shall come as soon as ever I can."
+
+They were standing at the door-step. Leigh had leaned his side against
+the area-railings for support. His breathing was terrible, and every
+now and then he gasped, and clutched his hands together.
+
+"If you come, perhaps you may not come alone?"
+
+Hanbury flushed. He did not want to make his confession just now.
+
+"Perhaps I may not," he said. "Good-bye, now."
+
+"Good-bye; and thank you for your goodness. You know whom I hope to
+see with you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Pallas-Athena, of course."
+
+"Of course."
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+                                FREE.
+
+
+With a feeling of relief, Hanbury walked rapidly away. The last words
+of Leigh had stirred within him once more the trouble which had made
+him shirk meeting his mother that morning. The burning down of Leigh's
+place and the destruction of the wonderful clock, and the meeting with
+the unfortunate clockmaker, would afford a story to be told when he
+got home, and he might interpose that history between the first words
+of meeting and the ultimate announcement that the engagement between
+Dora and himself was at an end.
+
+Family considerations or desires had nothing to do with the
+understanding which had existed between Dora and him; but to his
+mother, from whom he had no secret, except that of the quarrel on
+Thursday night, he must explain, and explain fully too. There was no
+good in putting off the inevitable meeting any longer. He knew his
+mother had great respect and liking for Dora, but she had had nothing
+whatever to do with bringing about the understanding between the two
+of them. They had been quite as free in their choice of one another as
+though they had been the heroine and hero of a pastoral. He had never
+been a fool about Dora and she had never been a fool about him. In his
+life he meant to be no cypher among men; it would never do for him to
+be a cypher in his own home. Dora and he had acted with great
+reasonableness throughout their whole acquaintance, and with supreme
+reasonableness when they agreed to separate. If he had been an
+ordinary man, a man with no great public career before him, he might
+have been disposed to yield more to Dora's opinion or judgment; but as
+matters stood, any man with the smallest trace of common sense must
+commend Dora's decision of terminating the engagement, and his
+acceptance of her decision.
+
+When he got back to Chester Square he heard, with great relief, that
+Mrs. and Miss Grace were at luncheon in the dining-room with Mrs.
+Hanbury. The presence of the two visitors and the general nature of
+the conversation necessary to their presence and the meal, would serve
+as an admirable softener of the story he had for his mother's private
+ear.
+
+"You see, John, I have succeeded," said Mrs. Hanbury, after greetings
+were over. "I went the moment breakfast was finished and carried Mrs.
+and Miss Grace away from that awful Grimsby Street. We have had a good
+long chat, and, although I have done my best with Mrs. Grace, I cannot
+induce her to promise not to go back to that murderous street again. I
+must now ask you to join with me in forbidding her to leave us."
+
+Hanbury spoke in favour of his mother's proposal and urged many
+arguments; but the old woman was quite firm. Back they must and would
+go. Why, if no other consideration would be allowed to weigh, there
+was the fact that her grand-daughter had not yet received her luggage
+from Eltham House.
+
+This reference brought in Leigh's name, and then Hanbury told of the
+fire, the destruction of the clock, his meeting that morning with the
+dwarf, and the conviction of the latter that he would not long survive
+the destruction of his incomparable machine. He noticed as he went on
+that Miss Grace first flushed and then paled.
+
+The girl had hardly spoken up to this. She sat silent and timid. She
+did not seem to hear quickly or to apprehend accurately. She had
+hesitated in her answers like one afraid. The table was small, and
+laid for four people. Hanbury sat opposite his mother, Edith opposite
+her grandmother. The heat was intense.
+
+There was a buzzing and beating in the girl's ears. She heard as
+through a sound of plashing water. The talk of Leigh had carried her
+mind back to the country, back to Millway and Eltham House, and to the
+unexpected and unwelcome and disquieting apparition of the dwarf at
+the door of the house when she arrived there.
+
+Through this strange noise of splashing water she heard in a low
+far-away voice the story of her fear and loneliness and desolation on
+that Wednesday, separated from her old home and the familiar streets,
+and the sustaining companionship of her old grandmother, who had been
+all the world to her. She heard this story chanted, intoned in this
+low, monotonous voice, and she had a dim feeling that all was changed,
+and that she was now environed by securities through which she could
+not be assailed by the attentions of that strange, ill-featured dwarf.
+
+But her sight was very dim, and she could not see anything clearly or
+recollect exactly where she was. Gradually her sight cleared a little,
+and she was under trees heavy with leaves, alone on a lonely road by
+night. The rain fell unseen through the mute warm air. A thick perfume
+of roses made the air heavy with richness. She felt her breath come
+short, as though she had walked fast or run. The air was too rich to
+freshen life to cool the fevered blood.
+
+Now she became dimly conscious of some sound other than the plashing
+of water. It was not the voice, for the voice had ceased. The sound
+was loud and distinct, and emphatic and tumultuous.
+
+All at once she remembered what that sound was. She hastily put one
+hand to her left side, and the other to her forehead and rose, swaying
+softly to and fro.
+
+"I--I----" she whispered, but could say no more.
+
+Hanbury caught her, or she would have fallen. The two ladies got up.
+
+"She is not well," said the old woman excitedly. "She has eaten
+nothing for days!"
+
+The girl reclined, cold and pale as marble, in the young man's arms.
+Her eyes were half closed, her lips half open.
+
+He half led her half lifted her to a couch. Restoratives such as stood
+at hand were applied, but she did not quite recover. She was not
+exactly unconscious. This was no ordinary faint.
+
+The women were terrified. Mrs. Grace had never seen her in any such
+state before. To her knowledge the girl had never fainted.
+
+The ladies were terrified, and Hanbury ran off for a doctor. When he
+came back, the girl had been got upstairs. She was still in the same
+state, not quite conscious, and not quite insensible.
+
+The doctor made a long examination, and heard all that was to be told.
+When he came down to the dining-room, where Hanbury was excitedly
+walking up and down, he said the case was serious, but not exactly
+dangerous, that is, the patient's life was in no imminent peril. She
+had simply been overwrought and weakened by want of food, and jarred
+by suppressed and contending emotions. There was no organic disease,
+but the heart had been functionally affected by the vicissitudes of
+the past few days acting on an organism of exquisite sensibility.
+Quiet was the best medicine, and after quiet, careful strengthening,
+and then the drugs mentioned in this prescription. But above all,
+quiet.
+
+Could she be moved? Mrs. Grace asked.
+
+By no means. Moving might not bring about a fatal termination, but it
+would most assuredly enhance her danger, and most certainly retard her
+recovery.
+
+Would she recover?
+
+There was no reason to fear she would not. All was sound, but much was
+weak. Her anxiety of mind, and the excitement of going to that
+uncongenial home, and the long walk the morning she left, and the lack
+of food had weakened her much, but nothing had given way or was in
+immediate peril of giving way, and with care and quiet all would be
+well.
+
+And when this was passed would she be quite well again?
+
+Yes. In all possible likelihood under Heaven, quite well again.
+
+It would leave no blemish in her life? No weak place? She would be as
+well as ever?
+
+Well, that was asking a doctor to say a great deal, but it was
+probable, highly probable, she would be quite as well as if this had
+never happened. The key to her recovery lay in the one word, Quiet.
+After quiet came careful nurture and, a long way from the second of
+these, drugs. But recollect, Quiet.
+
+Hanbury took up the prescription and hastened off with it.
+
+The poor girl so sensitive and fragile! It was a mercy this illness
+came upon her here. How would it have fared with her down in that
+lonely Eltham House to which she had taken such a dislike? Why, it
+would have killed her.
+
+What an exquisite creature she was, and so soft and gentle in her
+ways. It was fortunate this illness had not overtaken her in Eltham
+House, or in Grimsby Street, for that matter, because the street was
+detestable, and to be ill in lodgings must be much worse than to be
+ill in a public hospital, for in hospital there was every appliance
+and attendance, and in lodgings only noise, and bustle, and grumbling.
+It was dreadful to think of being sick in lodgings. And now Mrs. Grace
+and her grand-daughter were poor.
+
+How horrible it would be to think of this girl lying stricken in that
+other house, and requiring first of all quiet, and then cherishing,
+and being able to get neither! It was dreadful to picture such things.
+And fancy, if these poor ladies had not enough money for a good doctor
+and what the poor weak child wanted! Fancy if they could not pay their
+rent and were obliged to leave. Oh! how fortunate it was he had come
+across them so soon, and how strange to think that Leigh had been the
+means of first bringing them together. He owed that good turn to
+Leigh.
+
+On his way back from the druggist he reverted to the past of Leigh:
+
+"Yes, I owed the introduction to him. I freely forgive him now.
+Indeed, I don't know what I have to forgive him of. He did not send or
+write that paragraph to the papers. He did not even write it, as far
+as I know, and although he was rough and rude, and levied a kind of
+blackmail on me, the price he asked me was not disgraceful from his
+point of view. If I had met him under happy circumstances, I might
+have brought him to a Thursday at Curzon Street. He was interesting,
+with his alchemy and clock and omniscience and insolence and
+intellectual swagger. Of course, I did not at the time know he was in
+treaty with a fence. According to his own account he never committed
+himself in that quarter, and as he had no need to tell me of that
+transaction at all, I daresay he kept pretty near the truth. How
+strange that when he lost his clock, he must straightway get a
+confidant! I wonder is there any truth in his own prophecy about his
+health?
+
+"He, too, was the means of breaking off the Curzon Street affair. I
+must write there at once. I have behaved badly in not doing so before.
+I'll write the moment I get home. Yes, I must write when I get back,
+and then I'll put the affair out of my mind altogether, for good and
+ever."
+
+Upon getting to the house, he went to the library and read over Dora
+Ashton's letter once more, slowly. He gathered no new impression from
+this second reading. Her resolution to put an end to the engagement
+seemed to him more strong than at first. That was the only change he
+noticed in the effect of the letter upon him. It was as cool and
+business-like and complete as could be. He was too much of a gentleman
+to give expression in his mind to any fault-finding with the woman to
+whom he had been engaged, and whom he had behaved so badly towards the
+other evening, but it seemed quite certain to him now that Dora Ashton
+was a girl of great cleverness and good sense and beauty--but no
+heart.
+
+He did not at all like the task before him, but it must be done. When
+the letter was finished, it ran:
+
+
+"My Dear Miss Ashton,
+
+"I got your letter. It was very good of you to write to me in so kind
+and unreproaching a spirit, and I thank you with all my heart for your
+merciful forbearance. My conduct, my violence on Thursday evening,
+must always be a sorrow and a mystery to me. I only indistinctly
+recollect what I said, but I feel and know my words were perfectly
+monstrous and cruelly unjust. I feel most bitterly that no apology of
+mine can obliterate the impression my insanity must have made on you.
+To say I am profoundly sorry is only to say that I am once more in my
+right mind. I must in the most complete and abject manner beg your
+pardon for my shameful violence on Thursday evening. I must not even
+try to explain that violence away. I ask your pardon as an expression
+of my own horror of my conduct and of my remorse. But I do not hope
+for your forgiveness, I do not deserve it, I will not accept it. I
+shall bear with me in expiation of my offence the consciousness of my
+unpardonable conduct, and the knowledge that it remains unpardoned.
+Even lenity could ask no more indulgent treatment of my monstrous
+behaviour.
+
+"As to terminating the engagement between us I have nothing to do but
+accept your decision, and since you ask it as a favour, the only
+favour you ever asked of me, I must receive your decision as
+irrevocable. I will not make any unpleasantness here by even referring
+to the difference of the ending I had in the hope of my mind. As you
+very justly say, the least said now the better. I shall say not a word
+to anyone about the immediate subject of this letter except to my
+mother. On that you may rely. I must tell her. You, I suppose, will
+inform Mrs. and Mr. Ashton (if they do not know of it); nobody else
+need hear of the abandonment of our designs. Let us by all means meet
+as you suggest, as though we never had been more than the best of
+friends, and were (as I hope we shall be) the best of friends still. I
+also quite agree with you about the notes, &c. Burn and destroy them.
+I will most scrupulously burn your letters, of which I have a few.
+This letter will I suppose be the last of the series.
+
+"In a little time I trust we may meet again, but not just now for both
+our sakes.
+
+                    "Yours ever most sincerely,
+
+                                 "John Hanbury."
+
+
+When he had finished the letter he closed it without reading it over.
+"When one reads over a letter like this," he thought, "one grows nice
+about phrases and tries to alter, and finally tears up. I am satisfied
+that if I tried all day long I should do no better than this. I shall
+post it myself when I go out. That letter is a great weight off my
+mind, and now I am much less disinclined to break the matter to my
+mother. When that is over I shall feel that I am free."
+
+He found his mother alone in her own room. Mrs. Grace was with Edith
+in a room which had been hastily prepared for her.
+
+"She is just the same way," said Mrs. Hanbury. The young man had heard
+from a servant downstairs that there was no change. "We are not to
+expect much change for a while. She has quite recovered consciousness,
+but is very weak, and the doctor says she is not to be allowed to stir
+even a hand more than is necessary. There is no anxiety. With time and
+care all will be well."
+
+"I am glad I found you alone, mother. I think you must have seen that
+I have been a good deal excited during the past few days."
+
+"Yes, and very naturally too. That letter must have disturbed you a
+good deal."
+
+The son paused in his walk and stared at her. "How did you know about
+that letter? Who told you? Have you seen Dora? But that is absurd. She
+would not speak of it."
+
+Mrs. Hanbury looked at him in amazement and alarm. "What do you mean,
+John? You make me very uneasy. What has Dora Ashton to do with it?
+Miss Grace may, but not Dora. Surely you do not suppose I did not read
+your father's letter?"
+
+"Oh!" he cried, "I did not mean my father's letter. I was referring to
+another letter. Upon reflection I quite agree with you and my father
+in attaching little or no importance to that discovery. I was thinking
+of a letter I had from Dora."
+
+"Yes," said Mrs. Hanbury with a sigh of relief. For a moment she
+thought her son's head had been turned by the disclosure of his
+pedigree. "What does she say?"
+
+He was walking up and down rapidly now. "Well, the fact is, mother,
+the thing is off."
+
+"Off?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Well, the thing is over between us, the engagement, you know. The
+fact is we had a scene on Thursday evening. I lost command of myself
+completely, and used very violent language----"
+
+"To Dora!" cried the mother in bewilderment.
+
+"Yes, to Dora. I don't know what came over me, but I was carried quite
+beyond myself and said things no gentleman, no man, ought to say to
+any girl----"
+
+"John, I don't believe you--you are under some strange and miserable
+hallucination. You said something to Dora Ashton that no man ought to
+say to any girl! Impossible! Thank God, I know my son better than to
+believe anything of the kind," said Mrs. Hanbury, beginning in a
+manner of incredulity and ending in firm conviction.
+
+"Unfortunately mother it is only too true. I need not repeat what
+passed, but the dispute----"
+
+"Dispute--dispute with Dora! Why she would not dispute with you! How
+could she dispute with you? Dispute with you! It is nonsense. Why the
+girl _loves_ you, John, the girl _loves_ you. It is lunacy to say it!"
+
+"I may have used an unhappy word----"
+
+"A completely meaningless word, I assure you."
+
+"At all events, we differed in opinion, and I completely lost my
+temper and told her in the end that in certain cases of importance she
+might betray me."
+
+"Oh, this is too bad! I will not sit and listen to this raving. You
+never said such a childishly cruel thing to Dora Ashton? She is the
+noblest girl I know. The noblest girl I ever met."
+
+"I was mad, mother."
+
+"Most wickedly mad."
+
+"Well you do not know how sorry I am I allowed myself to be carried
+away. But that cannot be helped now. I must abide the consequence of
+my folly and madness. She has broken off the engagement, for we were
+engaged, and I have written saying I cannot disapprove of her
+decision. We have agreed that as no one has known anything of the
+engagement no one is to hear of its being broken off. Are you angry
+with me, mother?"
+
+"Angry--no; but greatly disappointed. I was as happy in thinking of
+Dora as your wife as if she were my own daughter, but I suppose I must
+become reconciled. If you and she have agreed to part no one has any
+right to say more than that it is a pity, and I think it is a pity,
+and I am very sorry."
+
+That was the end of the interview of which the young man had stood in
+such dread, and now that it was over and he was going to post his last
+letter to Dora he felt relieved. The news had doubtless greatly
+surprised and shocked his mother, but this meeting had not been nearly
+so distressing as he had anticipated.
+
+When he came to the post pillar into which he had dropped most of the
+letters he had written to Curzon Street, he felt an ugly twinge as
+this one slid from his fingers and he turned away--free.
+
+
+
+
+                           CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+                        DOCTOR SHAW'S VERDICT.
+
+
+Dr. Shaw, at whose house door Hanbury had left Oscar Leigh, was a
+fresh-coloured, light haired, baldheaded, energetic man of about
+fifty-five. He was always in a state of astonishment, and the
+spectacles he wore over his green grey eyes seemed ever on the point
+of being thrust forward out of their position by the large round
+prominent dancing eyes of their wearer. He was a bachelor and had a
+poor practice, but one which he preferred to hold in undisputed
+ownership, rather than increase at the sacrifice of liberty in taking
+a wife.
+
+He had just come back from his round of morning visits and was sitting
+down to his simple early dinner, as Leigh knocked. When he heard who
+the visitor was he rose instantly and went into the small bare
+surgery, the front ground-floor room.
+
+"Bless my soul, Mr. Leigh, what's the matter?"
+
+Leigh was sitting in a wooden elbow chair breathing heavily, noisily,
+irregularly. "I have come," he said in gasps and snatches, "I have
+come to die."
+
+"Eh! Bless my soul, what are you saying?" cried the doctor approaching
+the clockmaker so as to get the light upon his own back.
+
+"I have come to die, I tell you."
+
+"But that is an opinion, and it is I that am to give the opinion--not
+you. You are to state the facts, I am to lay down the law. What's the
+matter?"
+
+"In this case, I am judge and jury. The facts and the law are all
+against me. I have had another seizure a few minutes ago," he laid his
+hand on his chest. "In the excitement I kept up, but I know 'tis all
+over. You will remember your promise about the quicklime. I never let
+anyone pry into the machinery of my clock, and I won't have any
+foolish young jackanapes prying into the works of this old carcase.
+You will fill up the box with quicklime?"
+
+"Not yet anyway. What happened. Where do you feel queer?"
+
+Leigh pointed to his chest a little at the left of the middle line.
+
+"Shock?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"What?"
+
+"My clock, the work of seven years, has been burned, destroyed."
+
+"Burned! That was hard. I'm very sorry to hear it. We'll have your
+coat off. Yes, I'll lock the door. You need not be afraid. No one
+comes at this time. Yes, I'll pull the blind down too. Stand up....
+That will do. Put on your coat. Let me help you. Drink this. Sit down
+now and rest yourself."
+
+"Rest myself? Rest myself! After standing for that half a minute?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did I not tell you facts and law were against me?"
+
+"You are not well."
+
+"I am dying."
+
+"You are very ill."
+
+"I had better go to bed?"
+
+"You would be more rested there."
+
+"Would it be safe for me to go to Millway, about sixty miles?"
+
+"No."
+
+"How long do you think I shall last?"
+
+"It is quite impossible to say."
+
+"Hours?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+"Days?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Weeks?"
+
+"With care."
+
+"Months?"
+
+"The best thing you can do now is to go to bed. I'll see the room got
+ready. You feel very weak, weaker even than when you came in here."
+
+"I feel I cannot walk."
+
+"The excitement has kept you up so far. You are now suffering from
+reaction. After you have rested a while you will be better."
+
+"Very good. Shaw, will you send for your solicitor, I want to make my
+will."
+
+The doctor left the surgery for a few minutes to give the necessary
+orders about the room for Leigh and to send for the solicitor. Half an
+hour ago he had felt very hungry, and when the clockmaker knocked he
+had been thinking of nothing but his dinner. His dinner still lay
+untasted. He had forgotten all about it. He was the most kind-hearted
+of men, and the sight of Leigh in his present condition, and the fatal
+story he had heard through the stethoscope had filled him with pity
+and solicitude.
+
+"The room will be ready in a few minutes," he said, in a cheerful
+voice and with an encouraging smile, when he again came into the
+surgery. "We shall try to make you as comfortable as ever we can. I am
+sorry for your sake I haven't a wife to look after you."
+
+"If you had a wife I shouldn't be here."
+
+"What! You! Why, that is the only ungallant thing I ever heard you say
+in all my life."
+
+"I should envy you and be jealous of you."
+
+"Then, my dear fellow, I am very glad we are by ourselves. I suppose
+your mother would not like to come up to nurse you?"
+
+"She cannot move about now, except in her wheeled chair."
+
+"Is there anyone you would wish to come to see you? This house you
+will, of course, consider as your own."
+
+"Thank you, there is no one. I do not know anyone in the world, except
+my mother, so long as I know you. The only friend likely to call I saw
+to-day. There is no need for me to send for him to-day, is there?"
+
+"Need, no. You will be much better when you have rested a while. You
+know cheerful company is always very useful to us doctors, and we like
+to have all the help we can. But I daresay we shall get on famously as
+we are." He would like to have heard all about the fire and the
+destruction of the clock, but he refrained from asking because he
+feared the excitement for his patient.
+
+It happened that Dr. Shaw's solicitor lived near, and was at home, so
+that he came back with the boy before the room was ready. Shaw
+withdrew from the surgery, and for half-an-hour the lawyer and the
+clockmaker were alone. Then Leigh was carried upstairs and went to
+bed, and felt, as Shaw said he would, better and easier for lying
+down.
+
+"I have no trouble on my mind now, Shaw, and my body cannot be a
+trouble to me or anybody else long. I never say thanks or make pretty
+speeches, but I am not ungrateful all the same. I don't think we have
+ever shaken hands yet, Shaw. Will you shake hands now?"
+
+"With the greatest pleasure, my dear fellow," said Shaw, grasping the
+hand of the little man, and displaying his greatest pleasure by
+allowing his large dancing green-grey eyes to fill up with tears
+behind his unemotional spectacles.
+
+"That clock would have made my fame. I don't know how the fire arose.
+I had the clock wound up last night by a mechanical contrivance, and
+before leaving for Millway I lit the faintest glimmer of gas. Some
+accident must have happened. Some accident which can now never be
+explained. I left the window open for the first time last night. I had
+put up a curtain for the first time last night. If any boy had thrown
+a stone, and the stone got through the curtain, there is no knowing
+what it might not do among the machinery; the works were so close and
+complicated, it might have brought something inflammable within reach
+of the flame of the gas, for the gas would not be quite out. At all
+events, the clock is gone. It was getting too much for me. Often of
+late, when I was away from it, the movements became reversed, and all
+the works went backwards, and I often thought that kind of thing would
+injure my brain."
+
+"It was a sure sign injury was beginning, and I think it is a good
+thing for you the clock is burned," said Shaw soothingly.
+
+"But the shock! The shock you will say, by-and-by, killed me. How,
+then, do you count the loss of the clock good?"
+
+"I mean if you had told me there was no way of stopping this
+involuntary reversal of the movement I should have advised you to
+smash the clock rather than risk the brain."
+
+"And I should have declined to take your advice."
+
+Shaw laughed. "You would not be singular in that. I can get ten people
+to take my medicines for one who will take my advice."
+
+"What an awful mortality there would be, Shaw, if people took both!"
+
+"There now," said Shaw, with another laugh, "you will do now. You are
+your old self again. I must run away. I shall see you in an hour or
+two, and have my tea up here with you. If you want anything, ring."
+
+So Leigh was left alone.
+
+"The clothes," he thought, "of the figure must have in some way or
+other come in contact with the gas-jet. If they once caught fire the
+wax would burn--the wax of the head, and then there would be plenty of
+material for a blaze.
+
+"Ah, me; the clock is gone! Even if that survived, I should not mind.
+I was so jealous of it. I never let anyone examine it, and the things
+it could do will not be credited when I am dead, for I often, very
+often, exaggerated, and even invented, a little.
+
+"Ay, ay, ay, the clock is gone, and the Miracle Gold, too. I am glad I
+never had anything really to do with it. I am sorry I was not always
+of the mind I was yesterday--my last day at my bench. All the time I
+was burying in my own grave my own small capital of life, I was
+missing the real gold of existence. I sought to build up fame in my
+clock and in that gold. Fame is for the dead. What are the dead to us?
+What shall I be when they bury me to myself, who walked in the
+sunlight and saw the trees and the flowers, and the clouds and the
+sea, where there were no men to remind me of my own unshapeliness?
+Nothing. Why should a man care for fame among people he has never
+seen, among the dim myriads of faces yet to come out of the womb of
+time, when he could have had an abiding place in the heart's ingle
+among those whom he knows and whose hands he can touch? What good to
+us will the voices of the strange men of the hereafter be? What a fool
+I was to think of buying the applause of strange, unborn men out of
+gold rent from living men, whose friend I might have been.
+
+"I told Hanbury I was making a dying confession to him. I suppose this
+is a death-bed repentance. Very well. But I sinned only in thought. In
+order to show other men I was better than they, I was willing to be
+worse. Shaw is right. I am much easier here. I feel rested. I feel
+quiet. I have really done nothing harmful to any man. It will be a
+relief to get out of this husk. I will try to sleep. My poor old
+mother! But we cannot be separated long. It is easier to die in a body
+like this than to live in it."
+
+He was very weak, and life fluttered feebly in his veins. He closed
+his eyes and ceased to think. The calm that comes with the knowledge
+that one is near the end was upon him. He did not think, he did not
+sleep. He lay simply gathering quiet for the great sleep. He was
+learning how to rest, how to lie still, how to want not, how to wait
+the sliding aside of the mysterious panel that the flesh keeps shut
+against the eyes of the spirit while the two are partners in life.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+                          PATIENT AND NURSE.
+
+
+Mrs. Hanbury was greatly shocked by the news her son had given her
+that day about his relations with Dora. She had a conviction that it
+would be to John's advantage to be married. She held that, all other
+things being reasonably taken care of, a young man of twenty-six ought
+to marry and settle down to face the world in the relations and
+surroundings which would govern the remainder of his life. There had
+never been any consideration of John's sowing wild oats. He had always
+been studious, serious, domestic. He was the very man to marry and, in
+the cheerful phrase of the story book, live happy ever after.
+
+And where could he find a wife better suited to him than in Curzon
+Street? Dora had every single quality a most exacting mother could
+desire in the wife of an only son, and Mrs. Hanbury was anything but
+an exacting mother. Dora's family was excellent. She was one of the
+most beautiful girls in London, she was extremely clever, and although
+she and he did not seem fully in accord in their views of some things,
+they agreed in the main. She was extremely clever and accomplished,
+and amiable, and by-and-by she should be rich. In fact, Mrs. Hanbury
+might have doubled this list without nearly exhausting the advantages
+possessed by Miss Ashton, and now it was all over between the pair.
+This really was too bad.
+
+She idolized her son, and thought there were few such good young men
+in the world; but she was no fool about him. She had watched his
+growth with yearning interest from infancy to this day. She knew as
+well, perhaps better than anyone, that he was not perfect. She knew he
+was too enthusiastic, that sometimes his temper was not to be relied
+on. She knew he was haughty, and at rare times even scornful. She knew
+he had no mean estimate of his own merits, and was restive under
+control. But what were these faults? Surely nothing to affright any
+gentle and skilful woman from uniting herself with him for life. Most
+of his faults were those of youth and inexperience. When he was
+properly launched, and met other men and measured himself against
+them, much of his haughty self-satisfaction would disappear. Most
+young men who had anything in them were discontented, for they had
+only vague premonitions of their powers, and they felt aggrieved that
+the world would not take them on their own mere word at their own
+estimate.
+
+What Mr. and Mrs. Ashton would say she could not fancy. Perhaps they
+would imitate for once the example of younger people, and say nothing
+at all. They could not, however, help thinking of the matter, and they
+would be sure to form no favourable estimate of John's conduct in the
+affair. The rest of the world would be certain to say that John jilted
+the girl, and anyone who heard the true history of the Hanbury family,
+just come to light, would say that John kept back in the hope of
+making a more ambitious marriage.
+
+He was, every one allowed, one of the most promising young men in
+England, and now the glamour of a throne was around him. All the
+philosophy in the world would not make him ever again the plain John
+Hanbury he was in the eyes of people a few days ago, in the eyes of
+every one outside this house still. Stanislaus II. may have been
+everything that was weak and contemptible, and been one of the chief
+reasons why his unfortunate country disappeared from the political map
+of the world, but John Hanbury was the descendant of King Stanislaus
+II. of Poland, and if that monarchy had been hereditary and the
+kingdom still existed, her son would be the legal sovereign, in spite
+of all the Republicans and revilers in Europe.
+
+She herself set no store by these remote and shadowy kingly honours,
+but even in her own heart she felt a swelling of pride when she
+thought that the child she had borne and reared was the descendant of
+a king. A pretender to the throne of England would be put in a padded
+room and treated with indulgent humanity. But on the Continent it was
+not so. Sometimes they put him in prison, and sometimes they put him
+on the throne he claimed. She knew that her son would no more think of
+laying stress upon his descent from the Poniatowskis than of asking to
+be put in that padded room. But others would think of it and set value
+on it. Exclusive doors might be closed against the clever speaker,
+plain John Hanbury, son of an English gentleman, who for whim or greed
+went into trade, when he was rich enough to live without trade; but
+few doors would be closed against the gifted orator who was straight
+in descent and of the elder line of the Poniatowskis of Lithuania, and
+whose great grandfather's grandfather was the last King of Poland.
+
+After all, upon looking more closely at the affair, the discovery was
+of some value. No one now could think him over ambitious for his years
+if he offered himself for Parliament. Younger men than he, sons of
+peers, got into Parliament merely by reason of a birth not nearly so
+illustrious as his, and with abilities it would be unfair to them to
+estimate against his.
+
+There was something in it after all.
+
+If now he chose to marry high, whom might he not marry? Putting out of
+view that corrupt, that forced election to the throne of Poland, he
+was a Poniatowski, _the_ Poniatowski, and few English families of
+to-day could show such a pedigree as her son's.
+
+There was certainly no family in England that could refuse an alliance
+with him on account of birth.
+
+And now vicious people would say he had been guilty, of the
+intolerable meanness of giving up Dora Ashton either in order that he
+might satisfy his ambition by a more distinguished marriage, or that
+he might be the freer to direct his public career towards some lofty
+goal. She knew her son too well to fancy for a moment any such
+unworthy thought could find a home in his breast; but all the world
+did not know him as she did, and no one would believe that the
+breaking-off came from Dora and the cause of it arose before the
+discovery of Stanislaus' secret English marriage.
+
+When the doctor made his second visit, he pronounced Edith Grace
+progressing favourably. She was then fully conscious, but pitifully
+weak. There was not, the doctor said, the least cause for uneasiness
+so long as the patient was kept quite free from excitement, from
+even noise. A rude and racking noise might induce another period of
+semi-insensibility. Quiet, quiet, quiet was the watchword, and so he
+went away.
+
+Mrs. Grace had protested against a hired nurse. She herself should sit
+up at night, and in the daytime the child would need no attendance.
+Mrs. Grace had, however, to go back to their lodgings to fetch some
+things needed, and to intimate that they were not returning for the
+present. Mrs. Hanbury volunteered to sit in Edith's room while the old
+woman was away. Protests were raised against this, but the hostess
+carried her point. "I told you," she said, with a smile, "that I am
+very positive. Let this be proof and a specimen."
+
+So the old lady hastened off, and Mrs. Hanbury sat down to watch at
+the bedside of the young girl. Speaking was strictly forbidden. Mrs.
+Hanbury took a book to beguile the time, and sat with her face to the
+patient, so that she could see that all was right by merely lifting
+her eyes.
+
+The young girl lay perfectly still, with her long dark hair spread out
+upon the pillow for coolness, and her white face lying in the midst of
+it as white as the linen of the sheet. Her breathing was very faint,
+the slight heaving of her breast barely moving the light counterpane.
+The lips were slightly open, and the eyes closed.
+
+Edith was too weary and too weak to think. Before she had the fainting
+fit or attack of weakness (she had not quite fainted), she heard the
+story of the dwarfs misfortunes in a confused way through that sound
+of plashing water. She was quite content now to lie secure here
+without thought, in so far as thought is the result of voluntary
+mental act or the subject of successive processes. But the whole time
+she kept saying to herself in a way that did not weary her, "How
+strange that Leigh should lose everything and I gain so much, and that
+both should be lying ill, all in so short a time!" This went on in her
+mind over and over again, more like the sound of a melody that does
+not distress one and may be listened to or not at will, than an
+inherent suggestion of the brain. It was the result of the last strong
+effort of the brain at memory blending with the first awakening to
+full consciousness. "How strange that Leigh should lose everything and
+I gain so much, and that both should be lying ill in so short a time!"
+
+Mrs. Hanbury raised her eyes from her book and gazed at the pallid
+face in the sea of dark hair. "She might be asleep or dead. How
+exquisitely beautiful she is, and how like Dora. How very like Dora,
+but she is more beautiful even than Dora. Dora owes a great deal to
+her trace of colour and her animation. This face is the most lovely
+one I ever saw, I think. How gentle she looks! I wonder was Kate Grace
+that Poniatowski married like her. If so I do not wonder. Who could
+help loving so exquisite a creature as this?"
+
+Both of the girl's hands were stretched outside the counterpane.
+
+Mrs. Hanbury leaned forward, bent and kissed the one near her, kissed
+it ever so lightly.
+
+The lids of the girl trembled slightly but did not open.
+
+Mrs. Hanbury drew back afraid. She had perhaps awakened her.
+
+Gradually something began to shine at the end of the long lashes, and
+a tear rolled down the sweet young pale face.
+
+"Have I awakened you?"
+
+"No. I was awake."
+
+"Are you in pain?"
+
+"No. Oh, no!
+
+"You are weeping."
+
+"That," she moved slightly the hand Mrs. Hanbury had kissed, "that
+made me, oh, so happy."
+
+"Thank you, dear."
+
+No more words were uttered, but when Mrs. Hanbury looked down upon her
+book her own eyes were full.
+
+The touch of the lips upon that hand had brought more quiet into the
+girl's heart than all the muffling in the house or the whispered
+orders to the servants or the doctor's drugs.
+
+"She believed I was asleep and she kissed my hand," thought the girl.
+No quiet such as this had ever entered her bosom before.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XL.
+
+                          THE TWO PATIENTS.
+
+
+Day followed day in Chester Square, bringing slowly, almost
+imperceptibly, health and strength back to the exquisite form of Edith
+Grace. The spirituality lent by illness still more refined the
+delicate beauty of the girl, and when the colour came back to the
+lips, and the cheeks lost their pallor she seemed more like a being
+new-born of heaven to earth than a mortal of our homely race.
+
+At the end of a week she was still restricted to her room, although
+allowed to sit up. The fear was not so much of physical weakness as of
+mental excitement. There was now no need to watch her by night. She
+seemed in perfect health, in that cool seraphic health of man before
+the Fall.
+
+And what a change had taken place in the young girl's spirit! Her
+grandmother had told her that Mrs. Hanbury had insisted on making good
+the loss they had sustained in the failure of the bank, and more
+beside.
+
+"I am very rich," said Mrs. Hanbury, "for a woman, I have only a life
+interest in most of the money my late husband left, and on my death it
+all goes to John. But I have never spent anything like my income, and
+John has an income of his own since he came of age. It is not that I
+will listen to no refusal, but I will hear no objection. I put it to
+you in this way: Do you suppose if my husband were making his will at
+this moment and knew of the misfortune which had come upon you and the
+child, he would insert no provision for you in his will? And do you
+mean to say that I am to have no regard to what I know would be his
+wish if he were alive? Remember, you represent the English side of his
+house. The child is the last of the English side, as John is the last
+of the Polish side. So let me hear no more of the matter. John has a
+sufficient income. I have large savings with which I do nothing. Am I
+to give my savings to an hospital or a charity or to the people of my
+husband, who left the money?"
+
+Then Mrs. Grace told Edith that Mrs. Hanbury had taken a great liking
+to her.
+
+"She always calls you 'the child' when she speaks of you, and indeed
+it seems to me she cares for you nearly as much as if you were her own
+daughter. She told me she never had a sister or a daughter, and that
+she barely remembers her own mother, and that all her married life she
+prayed for a girl-baby, but it was not given to her. And now that she
+has found you, dear, and me, she says she is not going to be lonely
+for womenfolk ever again, for although we are not of her own blood we
+are of John's, and we are the nearest people in the world to her
+except her brother, Sir Edward Preston. She says she has a right to
+us, that she found us, and means to insist upon her right by keeping
+us to herself."
+
+And all this helped to make the quiet greater in the girl and helped
+to heal her.
+
+Then the old woman told Edith that Mrs. Hanbury wondered if she were
+like that Grace of more than a hundred years back. She said this at
+dinner one day, and there and then Mr. Hanbury conceived the notion of
+trying to find out if, in that great portrait-painting age, any
+portrait had been painted of the beautiful Kate Grace who had
+fascinated the king. Mrs. Grace always spoke of Poniatowski as though
+he were a king while he lived in England in the days of George II.
+
+The young man hunted all London to find out a portrait, and behold in
+one of the great houses within a mile of where she lay, a house at
+which Mr. Hanbury had often visited, was a portrait of "Mrs. Hanbury
+and child," believed to be one of the Hanbury-Williams family. Mr.
+John Hanbury had gone to see the portrait, and came back saying one
+would fancy it was a portrait of Edy herself, only it was not nearly
+so beautiful as Edy.
+
+This all helped to cheer and heal the girl greatly. The notion that
+this Mr. John Hanbury had gone to a great house to see the portrait of
+her relative, the beautiful Kate Grace, that married the man
+afterwards a king, opened up fields for speculation and regions of
+dreams so different from those possible when she was fronting decaying
+fortune in Miss Graham's, at Streatham, or face to face with poverty
+in Grimsby Street, that it was enough to pour vital strength into
+veins less young and naturally healthy.
+
+She now breathed an atmosphere of refinement and wealth. Her mind was
+no longer tortured by the thought of having to face uncongenial duties
+among strange people. She had all her life denied herself friendships,
+because she could not hope for friends in the class of people whom she
+would care to know.
+
+Now all this was changed, as by a magician's wand. If in the old days
+she might have had the assurance of Mrs. Hanbury's friendship, she
+would have allowed her heart to go out to her, for Mrs. Hanbury,
+although she was rich, did not think of money as those girls Edith met
+at Streatham. The girls she met were, first of all, the daughters of
+rich fathers, and then they were people of importance next. Mrs.
+Hanbury was, first of all, intensely human. She was a woman first of
+all, and a generous, kind-hearted, large-natured, sympathetic woman.
+As her son had said of her, the greatest-hearted woman in the world.
+Princes and peasants were, to her mind, men, before anything else.
+
+This was a revelation to Dora, who had always heard men measured by
+the establishment they kept up, and the society in which they moved.
+There had been only one retreat for her from feeling belittled in the
+presence of these plutocrats. She would set all store by pedigree, and
+make no friends. A beggar may have a pedigree equal to a Hapsburg, and
+a peasant who has no friends, and goes into no society, cannot have
+his poverty impressed upon him from without, however bitterly he may
+suffer from within.
+
+And this Mrs. Hanbury, who was so kind and gentle, and who had
+manifested such an interest in her, belonged to a class of society in
+which no girl she ever met at Miss Graham's moved, in which any girl
+she had ever met there would give anything she possessed to move. Mrs.
+Hanbury's father had been a baronet, and her forefathers before him as
+far as baronets reached back into history, and her father's family had
+been county people, back to the Conquest, if not beyond it.
+
+And Mr. Hanbury, who was the son of this woman, had a pedigree more
+illustrious still, a pedigree going back no one knew how far. The
+family had been ennobled for centuries, and in the eighteenth century
+one of them had sat on the throne of Poland, a crowned king.
+
+She was now under the roof of these people, not as the humble paid
+companion of Mrs. Hanbury, which would have been the greatest height
+of her hope a week ago, not as an acquaintance to whom Mrs. Hanbury
+had taken a liking, but as a relative, as a distant relative of this
+house, as one of this family!
+
+Oh, it was such a relief, such a deliverance to be lifted out of that
+vulgar and squalid life, to be away from that odious necessity for
+going among strange and dull people as a hired servant! There was no
+tale in all the Arabian Nights equal to this for wonders, and all this
+was true, and referred to her!
+
+Youth, and a mind to which are opening new and delightful vistas, are
+more help to the doctor when dealing with a patient who is only
+overworn than even quiet, and day by day, to the joy of all who came
+near her, Edith Grace gained strength. The old stateliness which had
+made her schoolfellows say she ought to be a queen, had faded, and
+left scarcely a trace behind. There was no need to wear an air of
+reserve, when there was nothing to be guarded against. She was Mrs.
+Hanbury's relative, and to be reserved now would seem to be elated or
+vain. There was no longer fear of anyone disputing her position. There
+was no longer any danger of exasperating familiarity. She was
+acknowledged by Mrs. Hanbury and Mr. Hanbury, who would be a nobleman
+in Poland, and whose forefather had been a king.
+
+She did not try or desire to look into the future, her own future. The
+present was too blessed a deliverance to be put aside. Up to this
+there had been no delightful present in her life, and she was loath to
+go beyond the immediate peace.
+
+While the young girl was slowly but surely mending in Chester
+Square, the invalid under the care of Dr. Shaw, of Barnes Street, not
+very far off, was slowly yielding to the summons he had received. The
+kind-hearted and energetic doctor saw no reason to alter his original
+opinion of the case. The end was approaching, and not very far off. On
+the fifth day after the morning examination, Shaw said, "You arranged
+everything with the solicitor? There is nothing on your mind, my dear
+friend?"
+
+"I understand," said Leigh. "How long have I?"
+
+"Oh, I only wanted to know if your mind was at rest. Anxiety is always
+to be avoided."
+
+"I tell you, Shaw, I understand. How long do you think this will
+last?"
+
+"My dear fellow, if all your affairs are in order, and your mind is
+quite free, your chance is improved, you know. That only stands to
+reason."
+
+"I am sorry I cannot go to Eltham. But that cannot be helped now. She,
+poor thing, will notice little change, for I have not been with her
+much of late. Shaw, the last time I was there I promised her a
+daughter-in-law, and straight-backed grandchildren, and soon she will
+not have even a cripple son! Poor old woman. Well! well! But, Shaw,
+send to Chester Square for my friend, Mr. John Hanbury, the man who
+brought me here, you know. I want to see him alone, privately. He is
+the only person who knows all my affairs." There was a flicker of the
+old boasting spirit in the way he gave Hanbury's name and address, and
+spoke of him as his friend.
+
+Hanbury came at once.
+
+"I sent for you because I have something on my mind; and, as you are
+the only man who knows all the secret of Mystery Gold, and my deputy
+winder, I want you to do me a service. Will you?"
+
+"Any thing that an honest and honourable man may do, I will do for you
+with pleasure, if I can possibly," said Hanbury, shocked and subdued
+by the change in the clock-maker's appearance.
+
+"That man, Timmons, who was to get me the gold, has a place in
+Tunbridge Street, London Road, across the river. He believes that a
+man was burned in that fire. He believes my deputy winder lost his
+life in the miserable fire that destroyed my clock. Go to Timmons, and
+tell him that no one was lost in that fire, that the winder of the
+clock is alive, that I am dying, and that the best thing he can do is
+to leave the country. He will understand, when I am dead, no secrets
+will be kept. I do not want to give him up. I have no conscience. But
+the country may as well be rid of him and me together."
+
+"But, need I go? Can I not send?" asked Hanbury, not liking the idea
+of such a message from such a man to such a man. It looked like
+shielding a criminal. Leigh had, according to his own account,
+coquetted with crime, but kept clear of it.
+
+"No, it would not be nearly so good to me, for you know the secrets,
+and if he showed any disposition to rebel, you could drop a word that
+would convince him you were authorized by me, and knew what might be
+dangerous to him."
+
+"You are asking me too much. I cannot do it."
+
+"Where is your promise of a moment ago?"
+
+"No honest man would assist the escape of this thief."
+
+"Hush! Let me think awhile."
+
+"It is not clear to me, that I ought not to give this villain up to
+the police, and that you are not bound to give him up. I would do
+anything I could, in reason, for you; but is it reasonable to ask me
+to carry a message from you to a man who, you tell me, or hint to me,
+is a thief, or receiver of stolen goods?"
+
+"I did not regard it in that way. I fancied you would like to rid the
+country of such a man."
+
+"Yes, by locking him up. I think you are in duty bound to denounce
+him."
+
+"But, in honour, I am bound not; and honour is more binding on a man
+than any law."
+
+"But you cannot have any honourable bond with a man like that."
+
+"What about honour among thieves? Even they recognize honour."
+
+"But, are you a thief, that you want to shield yourself under their
+code?"
+
+"No. I am no thief. I haven't a penny that isn't fairly mine. I told
+you I have no conscience, at least nothing that people are accustomed
+to call conscience; but do you think honour does not bind a man to a
+thief?"
+
+"Surely not about the fruits of his theft."
+
+"I have not looked at it in that way. When a man has no conscience,
+what binds him?"
+
+"Nothing, except the law of the land, or handcuffs."
+
+"Ah, that is your view. Well, it is not mine. Of course, I have not
+given you the man's real name or address. I gave you merely a
+fictitious name and address. Whom did I say? The Prince of Wales, was
+it, and Marlborough House, or the Prime Minister, and 10, Downing
+Street? Which was it? I forget."
+
+"Well," said Hanbury, "can I do anything for you?"
+
+"Are you going to Curzon Street on Thursday?"
+
+"No." Hanbury reddened, but he was standing with his back to the
+light. "The family are leaving Town suddenly."
+
+"Are you going too?"
+
+"No." Hanbury was anything but pleased with all this, but who could be
+angry with a dying man, and such a dying man too?
+
+"If you were going I should like to send a message. But of course you
+cannot be going if they are leaving town. I told you I have some money
+of my own. I have made my will since I saw you. After my mother's
+death all will go, I mean the yearly interest of all will go in equal
+shares to any hunchbacks that apply for shares. The conditions will be
+advertised in the papers."
+
+"I think you could not have done better with it," said Hanbury,
+cordially.
+
+"Yes. When you see her next, tell her I gave up all thought of making
+Miracle Gold, because she said she wished me. What a wonderful
+likeness there is between Miss Grace and Miss Ashton. I had not begun
+to model those figures of time. That clock was getting too much for
+me. Often when I was away from it, and when I was in bed, the movement
+was reversed, and all went backwards until the weights were wound up
+so tight against the beam, that something must give way if the
+machinery did not stop. Then, all at once, the machinery would stop,
+and suddenly begin running in the ordinary manner, and I used often to
+shout out and cry with relief. You don't know all that clock was to
+me. And yet it would have killed me. It has killed me."
+
+"The strain must have been very great. I wonder it did not break you
+down."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"In reality, though, it was the Miracle Gold did the mischief. Only
+for it I should not have been away from my clock, or left the gas
+lighting. I know it is not fair of me to keep you here. You want to
+go. Say good-bye to her before she leaves town. This is Wednesday. You
+must not stay here any longer. Will you say good-bye to me also? Two
+good-byes in one day. One to her and one to me."
+
+Hanbury rose and held out his hand, saying "Good-bye."
+
+Leigh did not stir.
+
+"Are we not to shake hands?"
+
+"Yes, in a moment."
+
+Hanbury waited a while. "I am going now. You have nothing more to
+say?"
+
+He had not.
+
+He had nothing more to say. He would say no more to anyone. He was
+dead.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLI.
+
+                              FUGITIVES.
+
+
+Hanbury had, during the past few days, carefully avoided meeting
+friends or acquaintances. He went near no club and kept in the house a
+good deal. When he went abroad he drove. He did not wish to be asked
+questions of the most ordinary kind respecting the Ashtons.
+
+The discovery of his foreign extraction had not yet got abroad, but,
+although Mrs. Grace and her grand-daughter were under his mother's
+roof, and they were the only persons besides his mother in whom he had
+confided, he felt as though every one must know. Such things got about
+in most unaccountable ways.
+
+That morning he had seen in a newspaper that Mr., Mrs., and Miss
+Ashton were leaving for a tour in Norway and Sweden. That was all the
+paragraph said.
+
+At the very moment Hanbury was speaking to Oscar Leigh, the Ashton
+family were leaving Curzon Street.
+
+When Dora Ashton sat that afternoon in her own room, after writing to
+her lover, she knew the engagement was at an end, and realized the
+knowledge. But she had not said anything of it. When she got his
+answer all was over beyond any chance whatever. He had apologized
+amply for his offence, and accepted her decision.
+
+His letter had a bracing effect upon her. She had been perfectly
+sincere in writing her letter and she had never wavered in her
+resolution of breaking off the engagement, yet deep down in her
+nature was a formless hope, which she would not acknowledge to herself
+for a moment, that he might disregard her request and insist upon her
+re-consideration. But with the advent of his letter, that hope
+vanished wholly, and she felt more firm and secure. Now all was plain.
+She should tell her mother, and tell her, moreover, in an easy and
+light manner. The letter had been a tonic. If he were so easily
+dismissed, he had not been very much in earnest.
+
+She went to Mrs. Ashton at once, and said, "Of course, mother, you
+knew that there was something between John Hanbury and me."
+
+"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Ashton in surprise that grew as she looked at
+the girl.
+
+"Well, I have come to say that we have decided it would be better to
+put an end to it; we have come to the conclusion it would not be for
+our happiness it should go on any further. It is all over."
+
+"All over! my dear! All over! But I thought it was fully arranged that
+you were to be married as soon as he had made a beginning in the
+world."
+
+"I am sure, mother, you do not want me to say more than I wish to say,
+and I don't think speaking about the affair can do good to anyone. He
+and I understand each other fully. This is no mere quarrel. At my
+suggestion the affair has been broken off. I wrote to him, saying I
+desired it broken off, and gave him my reasons, and he wrote me back
+saying that he is very sorry, and that it is to be as I wish."
+
+"But, my dear, although I judge by your manner you are not very much
+distressed, I cannot help feeling a good deal of concern about you."
+
+"Oh," said the girl with a smile, "you must not imagine I am
+desperate. I am not, I assure you. The breaking off has been done in
+two very sensible letters, and we have arranged to be fast friends,
+and to meet one another as though there never had been anything but
+friendship between us. You see, mother, there are a great many things
+upon which we don't agree, and most likely never should, and it would
+never do to risk life-long bickering. I assure you we behaved more
+like two elderly people with money or something else practical in
+view, than two of our age. You know I am not a sentimental girl, and
+although the thing is unpleasant I shall I am certain never regret the
+step I have taken in putting an end to what could not otherwise end
+well for either of us. And now mother do me one favour, will you?"
+
+"Oh, yes, my darling. My darling Dora. My own poor child."
+
+For a moment the girl was compelled to pause to steady her lips and
+her voice. "Do not speak to me again about this until I speak to you,
+and--and--and don't let father speak to me either."
+
+"It will kill you, child. It will kill you, my Dora."
+
+Again the girl was compelled to pause. "No. It will not. And mother,
+don't treat me in any other way than as if it had not occurred. Be
+just the same to me."
+
+"My darling."
+
+"And," again she had to stop, "above all don't be more affectionate.
+That would break my heart. Promise."
+
+"I promise."
+
+The girl threw her arms round her mother's neck and kissed her, and
+the mother burst out crying, and the girl hushed her and petted her,
+and tried to console her, and asked her to bear up and not to cry.
+
+"I'll try, child, I'll try; but it's very hard, darling."
+
+"Yes, mother, but bear up for me, for my sake."
+
+"I will, dear! I will indeed. We shall not stop here. We shall go away
+at once."
+
+"Very well. Just what you please, mother."
+
+"I couldn't bear to stay here and see you, my child."
+
+"If you wish it, mother, let us go away at once. Look at me how brave
+I am. Do not give way. Do not give way, for my sake."
+
+"I will try--I will try."
+
+The grief seemed to be all the mother's, and the duty of consolation
+all the daughter's duty.
+
+It is the sorrows of others that most hurt noble natures, and the
+natures of noble women most of all.
+
+That night it was settled that the Ashtons should go to Norway and
+Sweden for three months. Norway and Sweden had been put into Mr.
+Ashton's head by the announcement of Sir Julius Whinfield months ago
+that he was making up a party for his yacht to go north that summer,
+and that the Dowager Lady Forcar and Mrs. Lawrence, Sir Julius's
+married sister, and her husband, Mr. James Lawrence, had promised to
+be of the party. "We can arrange to meet somewhere," said Mr. Ashton,
+and so the expedition was arranged.
+
+
+When John Hanbury left Dr. Shaw's, he thought that now, all being over
+with Leigh, he was bound in common rectitude to disclose the source of
+the gold which Leigh had intended passing off as the result of his
+imaginary discovery in chemistry or alchemy. The simplest course would
+be to go to Scotland Yard and there tell all he knew. Against this
+course prudence suggested that perhaps the name and address given were
+imaginary, and that there was no such man or street. He was not
+anxious to pass through streets in which he was known, and he was glad
+of anything to do. How better could he employ an hour than by driving
+to London Road and trying to find out if any such man as Timmons
+existed? He did not like the whole thing, but he could not rest easy
+while he had the name of a man whom Leigh said dealt largely in the
+fruit of robberies and thefts. At all events, supposing the whole
+story told him by the dwarf was fiction, no harm could come of a visit
+to Tunbridge Street.
+
+He jumped into a hansom and was rapidly driven to London Road, and
+alighted at the end of Tunbridge Street.
+
+Yes, sure enough, there was the name and the place: "John Timmons,
+Marine Store Dealer." But how did one get in, supposing one wanted to
+get in? The place was all shut up, and he could see no door.
+
+A man was busy with one of the many up-ended carts. He had the wheel
+off and was leisurely greasing the axletree.
+
+"Has Mr. Timmons left this place, please?" he asked of the man.
+
+"I think so. Ay, he has."
+
+"Do you know how long?"
+
+"A few days. Since Monday, I think. Anyway, the place hasn't been open
+since Monday, and I hear that he is gone since Saturday night."
+
+"Have you any notion where he's gone?"
+
+The man stopped greasing the wheel and looked up curiously. "Are you
+from the Yard too?"
+
+"What yard?"
+
+"Why Scotland Yard, of course."
+
+"No, I am not. Have people been here from Scotland Yard?"
+
+"Ay. And if you was in with Timmons and that crew, you'd better show a
+clean pair of heels. There's something wrong about a dwarf or a
+cripple that's missed down Chelsea way, burned up in a fire. Timmons
+and a cracksman was seen hanging about that place, and they do say
+that if they're catched they'll be hanging about somewhere else. So if
+you're in with that lot, you'd better clear out too. They say Timmons
+has got out of the country, but they'll ketch him by Atlantic cable,
+and hang him with British rope." The man laughed at his own wit, and
+resumed his work upon the axle. Hanbury thanked him and turned away.
+He had nothing to do here. The police had information already.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XLII.
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+"Well," he said, "what is the matter? Oh, breakfast." He put down his
+newspaper. "I see," he added, "they have given this fellow Timmons
+five years, and serve him very right."
+
+"John, you have forgotten something!" she said, stopping him on his
+way to the breakfast table and laying one of her delicate white hands
+on his shoulder.
+
+"Eh? Forgotten something? Have I? What? I have a lot of important
+things on my mind," said he, looking down on the clear sweet, oval
+face, turned up to his.
+
+"Whatever is on your mind, sir, you ought not to forget the duties of
+your lips. I have not had my good-morrow kiss, sir."
+
+"I never had anything so important on my mind, or on my lips, Edy, as
+your kiss, dear." He took her in his arms and kissed her fondly.
+
+"You grow better at compliments as the days go by."
+
+"No dear, deeper in love."
+
+"With such a commonplace kind of thing as a wife?"
+
+"With the most un-commonplace sweetheart--wife in all the world."
+
+"John, I am already beginning to feel quite a middle-aged wife, and my
+ring where it touches the guard is getting worn."
+
+"That's a desperately serious thing--about the ring, I mean. Gold was
+too easily--worn a metal to marry you with, Edith. It should have been
+a plain band of adamant, and even that would not last long enough,
+dear."
+
+"Are you practising a speech to win a constituency?"
+
+"No. I am speaking out of my heart to keep what I have won."
+
+"Do you know I envy you only for one thing?"
+
+"And what is that?"
+
+"All the love that you give me."
+
+"But we are quits there, for I give all, you give all."
+
+"But yours seems so much richer than mine."
+
+"Does it, sweetheart? Then I am glad of that. For what I give is yours
+and you cannot help yourself but give it all back to me again."
+
+"Oh, but what pains me is that I never seem to be able to give you any
+of mine. All you have got from me seems to be only your own going back
+and I long--oh, my darling, I do long--to show you that when all you
+gave me is given back to you I never could exhaust my own. Indeed, I
+could not, and keeping so much as I have is like a pain."
+
+"Then what must I do to soothe my sweetheart's pain?"
+
+"I do not know. I often think few people know what this love is."
+
+"There is nothing worth calling love that is not such as ours. Love is
+more than content, more than joy, and not delusive with rapture. It is
+full and steady and unbroken, like the light of day."
+
+"It is a pain, a pain, a pain! A secret pain. And do you know it is no
+less when you are away, and no greater when you are near? And it often
+seems to me that it is not exactly you as you are I love, but
+something that is beyond speech and thought, and the reason I want you
+is that you may hold my hand and love it too."
+
+"My Sibyl! My Seer!"
+
+"You and I are, as it were, waiting, and I should not wait if you were
+not with me."
+
+"But I am with you, and always shall be. You are not afraid of my
+leaving you?"
+
+"In the vulgar sense? Oh, no! Afraid of your going away and caring for
+some one else? Oh, no! That could not be."
+
+"No, indeed. No, indeed."
+
+"For I should call you back and show you my heart, and how could you
+leave me when you saw that there was nothing in all my heart but you?
+Your pity would not let you do that. You might take something else
+away, but you could not take away all that I had in my heart."
+
+"You dreamer of holy dreams."
+
+"It is by the firmness of the clasp of our hands we may know that we
+shall be together at the revelation. I think people coarsen their
+minds against love. I have heard that people think it is a sign
+of foolishness. But it can't be. Where, I think, the harm is that
+people harden their natures against it before it has time to become
+all--before it has time to spiritualize the soul. It seems to me that
+this love of one another that Christ taught is the beginning of being
+with God."
+
+"Surely child, my child, my dear, you have come from some blessed
+place, you have come to us from some place that is better than this."
+
+"No," she said softly. "No. There is no better place for me. I am
+where God placed me--in my husband's arms."
+
+They had been married a couple of months, and it was June once more.
+Not a cloud had arisen between them for these two months, or during
+the months before. John Hanbury's mother said that Edith Grace had the
+same witchery in appearance as that village beauty of the days of
+George II., and that some quality of the blood which flowed in his
+veins made him succumb at once to her; for otherwise how could it be
+that he should almost immediately after parting from Dora Ashton fall
+helplessly in love with a girl so extraordinarily like Dora as Edith?
+How else could the fascination be accounted for?
+
+Edith herself could give no reason except that things of the kind
+invariably arranged themselves independently of reason. All she knew
+was that at first she was disposed to worship him because of his
+illustrious origin, and gradually she lost this feeling and grew to
+love him for himself. And with that explanation and him she was
+content.
+
+He, being a man, could not, of course, admit he did anything without
+not only a reason but an excellent reason too. He began by saying that
+she was even lovelier than Dora herself, which was a thing more
+astonishing in one at all like Dora that it counted for more than an
+even still more wonderful beauty of another type. Then he had been
+chiefly drawn towards the girl during her tardy convalescence because
+of her weakness and dependence, and the thousand little services he
+could render her, which kept him always watchful and attentive when
+near her, and devising little pleasures of fruit or flowers, or books,
+when not by her side.
+
+"I do not believe," he would say to himself, "that I was ever in love
+with Dora. I do think we should never have got on well together, and I
+am certain when she and Whinfield are married, there will not be a
+happier couple in England excepting Edith and me. When I heard that
+Dora was to be one of the party on the homeward cruise of Whinfield's
+yacht, I knew all would be arranged before they saw England again.
+They are most admirably suited to one another.
+
+"But she and I were not. I was always thinking of what I should like
+her to do and what I should not, and her political views had a serious
+interest for me, and I was perpetually trying to get her to adopt
+this, and modify that, and abandon the third. Nice way of making love,
+indeed!
+
+"I never went forth to her with song and timbrel and careless joy. My
+mind ran more on propositions and principles. If at any time she said
+what I did not approve, I was ready to stop and argue the point. I did
+not know what love was then, and if I married Dora, I should have worn
+down her heart and turned into a selfish, crusty old curmudgeon in no
+time.
+
+"But with Edith all was different. I never thought for a moment of
+what I should like her to do or say or think. I only thought of what
+the girl might like. I lost hold of myself, and did not care for
+searching in the mirror of the mind as to how I myself looked, or how
+she and I compared together. I did not pause to ask whether I was
+happy or not, so long as I saw she was happy. There was no refinement
+in the other feeling. It was sordid and exacting. With Edith a
+delicate subtlety was reached, undreamed-of before. An inspired accord
+arose between us. She leaned upon me, and I grew strong enough to
+support the burden of Atlas. I flung myself aside, so that I might not
+be impeded in my services to her. And I was welcomed in the spirit I
+came. She would take what I had to give, and she would like to take
+it. And so she accepted me, and all I had, and I had no care in my
+mind of myself or any of the gifts or graces which had been mine and
+now were hers. So I had enough time to think of her and no care to
+distract me from her."
+
+That was his way of putting it to himself when he was in a very
+abstract and figurative humour. When he was not quite so abstract or
+figurative, he would say to himself, "It is sympathy, nothing more
+than sympathy. That is the Miracle Gold we should all try to make in
+the crucible of our hearts."
+
+
+
+
+                               THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Miracle Gold (Vol. 3 of 3), by Richard Dowling
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 42499 ***