The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations Read online

  ADVENTURE OF THE GOLD TIBERIUS.

  The acquaintance between Mr. Dyson and Mr. Charles Phillipps arose fromone of those myriad chances which are every day doing their work in thestreets of London. Mr. Dyson was a man of letters, and an unhappyinstance of talents misapplied. With gifts that might have placed him inthe flower of his youth among the most favored of Bentley's favoritenovelists, he had chosen to be perverse; he was, it is true, familiarwith scholastic logic, but he knew nothing of the logic of life, and heflattered himself with the title of artist, when he was in fact but anidle and curious spectator of other men's endeavors. Amongst manydelusions, he cherished one most fondly, that he was a strenuous worker;and it was with a gesture of supreme weariness that he would enter hisfavorite resort, a small tobacco shop in Great Queen Street, andproclaim to any one who cared to listen that he had seen the rising andsetting of two successive suns. The proprietor of the shop, amiddle-aged man of singular civility, tolerated Dyson partly out of goodnature, and partly because he was a regular customer; he was allowed tosit on an empty cask, and to express his sentiments on literary andartistic matters till he was tired or the time for closing came; and ifno fresh customers were attracted, it is believed that none were turnedaway by his eloquence. Dyson, was addicted to wild experiments intobacco; he never wearied of trying new combinations, and one evening hehad just entered the shop and given utterance to his last preposterousformula, when a young fellow, of about his own age, who had come in amoment later, asked the shopman to duplicate the order on his account,smiling politely, as he spoke, to Mr. Dyson's address. Dyson feltprofoundly flattered, and after a few phrases the two entered intoconversation, and in an hour's time the tobacconist saw the new friendssitting side by side on a couple of casks, deep in talk.

  "My dear sir," said Dyson, "I will give you the task of the literary manin a phrase. He has got to do simply this: to invent a wonderful story,and to tell it in a wonderful manner."

  "I will grant you that," said Mr. Phillipps, "but you will allow me toinsist that in the hands of the true artist in words all stories aremarvellous, and every circumstance has its peculiar wonder. The matteris of little consequence, the manner is everything. Indeed, the highestskill is shown in taking matter apparently commonplace and transmutingit by the high alchemy of style into the pure gold of art."

  "That is indeed a proof of great skill, but it is great skill exertedfoolishly, or at least unadvisedly. It is as if a great violinist wereto show us what marvellous harmonies he could draw from a child'sbanjo."

  "No, no, you are really wrong. I see you take a radically mistaken viewof life. But we must thresh this out. Come to my rooms; I live not farfrom here."

  It was thus that Mr. Dyson became the associate of Mr. CharlesPhillipps, who lived in a quiet square not far from Holborn. Thenceforththey haunted each other's rooms at intervals, sometimes regular, andoccasionally the reverse, and made appointments to meet at the shop inQueen Street, where their talk robbed the tobacconist's profit of halfits charm. There was a constant jarring of literary formulas, Dysonexalting the claims of the pure imagination, while Phillipps, who was astudent of physical science and something of an ethnologist, insistedthat all literature ought to have a scientific basis. By the mistakenbenevolence of deceased relatives both young men were placed out ofreach of hunger, and so, meditating high achievements, idled their timepleasantly away, and revelled in the careless joys of a Bohemianismdevoid of the sharp seasoning of adversity.

  One night in June Mr. Phillipps was sitting in his room in the calmretirement of Red Lion Square. He had opened the window, and was smokingplacidly, while he watched the movement of life below. The sky wasclear, and the afterglow of sunset had lingered long about it; and theflushing twilight of a summer evening, vying with the gas-lamps in thesquare, had fashioned a chiaroscuro that had in it something unearthly;and the children, racing to and fro upon the pavement, the loungingidlers by the public, and the casual passers-by rather flickered, andhovered in the play of lights than stood out substantial things. Bydegrees in the houses opposite one window after another leaped out asquare of light, now and again a figure would shape itself against ablind and vanish, and to all this semi-theatrical magic the runs andflourishes of brave Italian opera played a little distance off on apiano-organ seemed an appropriate accompaniment, while the deep-mutteredbass of the traffic of Holborn never ceased. Phillipps enjoyed the sceneand its effects; the light in the sky faded and turned to darkness, andthe square gradually grew silent, and still he sat dreaming at thewindow, till the sharp peal of the house bell roused him, and looking athis watch he found that it was past ten o'clock. There was a knock atthe door, and his friend Mr. Dyson entered, and, according to hiscustom, sat down in an armchair and began to smoke in silence.

  "You know, Phillipps," he said at length, "that I have always battledfor the marvellous. I remember your maintaining in that chair that onehas no business to make use of the wonderful, the improbable, the oddcoincidence in literature, and you took the ground that it was wrong todo so, because, as a matter of fact, the wonderful and the improbabledon't happen, and men's lives are not really shaped by odd coincidence.Now, mind you, if that were so, I would not grant your conclusion,because I think the "criticism-of-life" theory is all nonsense; but Ideny your premise. A most singular thing has happened to me to-night."

  "Really, Dyson, I am very glad to hear it. Of course I oppose yourargument, whatever it may be; but if you would be good enough to tell meof your adventure I should be delighted."

  "Well, it came about like this. I have had a very hard day's work;indeed, I have scarcely moved from my old bureau since seven o'clocklast night. I wanted to work out that idea we discussed last Tuesday,you know, the notion of the fetish-worshipper."

  "Yes, I remember. Have you been able to do anything with it?"

  "Yes; it came out better than I expected; but there were greatdifficulties, the usual agony between the conception and the execution.Anyhow I got it done at about seven o'clock to-night, and I thought Ishould like a little of the fresh air. I went out and wandered ratheraimlessly about the streets; my head was full of my tale, and I didn'tmuch notice where I was going. I got into those quiet places to thenorth of Oxford Street as you go west, the genteel residentialneighborhood of stucco and prosperity. I turned east again withoutknowing it, and it was quite dark when I passed along a sombre littleby-street, ill lighted and empty. I did not know at the time in theleast where I was, but I found out afterwards that it was not very farfrom Tottenham Court Road. I strolled idly along, enjoying thestillness; on one side there seemed to be the back premises of somegreat shop; tier after tier of dusty windows lifted up into the night,with gibbet-like contrivances for raising heavy goods, and below largedoors, fast closed and bolted, all dark and desolate. Then there came ahuge pantechnicon warehouse; and over the way a grim blank wall, asforbidding as the wall of a jail, and then the headquarters of somevolunteer regiment, and afterwards a passage leading to a court wherewagons were standing to be hired. It was, one might almost say, a streetdevoid of inhabitants, and scarce a window showed the glimmer of alight. I was wondering at the strange peace and dimness there, where itmust be close to some roaring main artery of London life, when suddenlyI heard the noise of dashing feet tearing along the pavement at fullspeed, and from a narrow passage, a mews or something of that kind, aman was discharged as from a catapult under my very nose and rushed pastme, flinging something from him as he ran. He was gone and down anotherstreet in an instant, almost before I knew what had happened, but Ididn't much bother about him, I was watching something else. I told youhe had thrown something away; well, I watched what seemed a line offlame flash through the air and fly quivering over the pavement, and inspite of myself I could not help tearing after it. The impetus lessened,and I saw something like a bright half-penny roll slower and slower, andthen deflect towards the gutter, hover for a moment on the edge, anddance down into a drain. I believe I cried out in positive despair,though I hadn't the le
ast notion what I was hunting; and then to my joyI saw that, instead of dropping into the sewer, it had fallen flatacross two bars. I stooped down and picked it up and whipped it into mypocket, and I was just about to walk on when I heard again that sound ofdashing footsteps. I don't know why I did it, but as a matter of fact Idived down into the mews, or whatever it was, and stood as much in theshadow as possible. A man went by with a rush a few paces from where Iwas standing, and I felt uncommonly pleased that I was in hiding. Icouldn't make out much feature, but I saw his eyes gleaming and histeeth showing, and he had an ugly-looking knife in one hand, and Ithought things would be very unpleasant for gentleman number one if thesecond robber, or robbed, or what you like, caught him up. I can tellyou, Phillipps, a fox hunt is exciting enough, when the horn blows clearon a winter morning, and the hounds give tongue, and the red-coatscharge away, but it's nothing to a man hunt, and that's what I had aslight glimpse of to-night. There was murder in the fellow's eyes as hewent by, and I don't think there was much more than fifty secondsbetween the two. I only hope it was enough."

  Dyson leant back in his armchair and relit his pipe, and puffedthoughtfully. Phillipps began to walk up and down the room, musing overthe story of violent death fleeting in chase along the pavement, theknife shining in the lamplight, the fury of the pursuer, and the terrorof the pursued.

  "Well," he said at last, "and what was it, after all, that you rescuedfrom the gutter?"

  Dyson jumped up, evidently quite startled. "I really haven't a notion. Ididn't think of looking. But we shall see."

  He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a small and shiningobject, and laid it on the table. It glowed there beneath the lamp withthe radiant glory of rare old gold; and the image and the letters stoodout in high relief, clear and sharp, as if it had but left the mint amonth before. The two men bent over it, and Phillipps took it up andexamined it closely.

  "Imp. Tiberius Caesar Augustus," he read the legend, and then, looking atthe reverse of the coin, he stared in amazement, and at last turned toDyson with a look of exultation.

  "Do you know what you have found?" he said.

  "Apparently a gold coin of some antiquity," said Dyson, coolly.

  "Quite so, a gold Tiberius. No, that is wrong. You have found _the_ goldTiberius. Look at the reverse."

  Dyson looked and saw the coin was stamped with the figure of a faunstanding amidst reeds and flowing water. The features, minute as theywere, stood out in delicate outline; it was a face lovely and yetterrible, and Dyson thought of the well-known passage of the lad'splaymate, gradually growing with his growth and increasing with hisstature, till the air was filled with the rank fume of the goat.

  "Yes," he said, "it is a curious coin. Do you know it?"

  "I know about it. It is one of the comparatively few historical objectsin existence; it is all storied like those jewels we have read of. Awhole cycle of legend has gathered round the thing; the tale goes thatit formed part of an issue struck by Tiberius to commemorate an infamousexcess. You see the legend on the reverse: 'Victoria.' It is said thatby an extraordinary accident the whole issue was thrown into the meltingpot, and that only this one coin escaped. It glints through history andlegend, appearing and disappearing, with intervals of a hundred years intime and continents in place. It was discovered by an Italian humanist,and lost and rediscovered. It has not been heard of since 1727, when SirJoshua Byrde, a Turkey merchant, brought it home from Aleppo, andvanished with it a month after he had shown it to the virtuosi, no manknew or knows where. And here it is!"

  "Put it into your pocket, Dyson," he said, after a pause. "I would notlet any one have a glimpse of the thing, if I were you. I would not talkabout it. Did either of the men you saw see you?"

  "Well, I think not. I don't think the first man, the man who was vomitedout of the dark passage, saw anything at all; and I am sure that thesecond could not have seen me."

  "And you didn't really see them. You couldn't recognize either the oneor the other if you met him in the street to-morrow?"

  "No, I don't think I could. The street, as I said, was dimly lighted,and they ran like mad-men."

  The two men sat silent for some time, each weaving his own fancies ofthe story; but lust of the marvellous was slowly overpowering Dyson'smore sober thoughts.

  "It is all more strange than I fancied," he said at last. "It was queerenough what I saw; a man is sauntering along a quiet, sober, every-dayLondon street, a street of gray houses and blank walls, and there, for amoment, a veil seems drawn aside, and the very fume of the pit steams upthrough the flagstones, the ground glows, red hot, beneath his feet, andhe seems to hear the hiss of the infernal caldron. A man flying in madterror for his life, and furious hate pressing hot on his steps withknife drawn ready; here indeed is horror. But what is all that to whatyou have told me? I tell you, Phillipps, I see the plot thicken, oursteps will henceforth be dogged with mystery, and the most ordinaryincidents will teem with significance. You may stand out against it, andshut your eyes, but they will be forced open; mark my words, you willhave to yield to the inevitable. A clue, tangled if you like, has beenplaced by chance in our hands; it will be our business to follow it up.As for the guilty person or persons in this strange case, they will beunable to escape us, our nets will be spread far and wide over thisgreat city, and suddenly, in the streets and places of public resort, weshall in some way or other be made aware that we are in touch with theunknown criminal. Indeed, I almost fancy I see him slowly approachingthis quiet square of yours; he is loitering at street corners,wandering, apparently without aim, down far-reaching thoroughfares, butall the while coming nearer and nearer, drawn by an irresistiblemagnetism, as ships were drawn to the Loadstone Rock in the Easterntale."

  "I certainly think," replied Phillipps, "that, if you pull out that coinand flourish it under people's noses as you are doing at the presentmoment, you will very probably find yourself in touch with the criminal,or a criminal. You will undoubtedly be robbed with violence. Otherwise,I see no reason why either of us should be troubled. No one saw yousecure the coin, and no one knows you have it. I, for my part, shallsleep peacefully, and go about my business with a sense of security anda firm dependence on the natural order of things. The events of theevening, the adventure in the street, have been odd, I grant you, but Iresolutely decline to have any more to do with the matter, and, ifnecessary, I shall consult the police. I will not be enslaved by a goldTiberius, even though it swims into my ken in a manner which is somewhatmelodramatic."

  "And I for my part," said Dyson, "go forth like a knight-errant insearch of adventure. Not that I shall need to seek; rather adventurewill seek me; I shall be like a spider in the midst of his web,responsive to every movement, and ever on the alert."

  Shortly afterwards Dyson took his leave, and Mr. Phillipps spent therest of the night in examining some flint arrow-heads which he hadpurchased. He had every reason to believe that they were the work of amodern and not a palaeolithic man, still he was far from gratified when aclose scrutiny showed him that his suspicions were well founded. In hisanger at the turpitude which would impose on an ethnologist, hecompletely forgot Dyson and the gold Tiberius; and when he went to bedat first sunlight, the whole tale had faded utterly from his thoughts.