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