III. THE SOUL OF THE SCHOOLBOY
A large map of London would be needed to display the wild
and zigzag course of one day's journey undertaken by an uncle
and his nephew; or, to speak more truly, of a nephew and his uncle.
For the nephew, a schoolboy on a holiday, was in theory the god
in the car, or in the cab, tram, tube, and so on, while his uncle
was at most a priest dancing before him and offering sacrifices.
To put it more soberly, the schoolboy had something of the
stolid air of a young duke doing the grand tour, while his
elderly relative was reduced to the position of a courier,
who nevertheless had to pay for everything like a patron.
The schoolboy was officially known as Summers Minor,
and in a more social manner as Stinks, the only public tribute
to his career as an amateur photographer and electrician.
The uncle was the Rev. Thomas Twyford, a lean and lively
old gentleman with a red, eager face and white hair.
He was in the ordinary way a country clergyman, but he was
one of those who achieve the paradox of being famous in an
obscure way, because they are famous in an obscure world.
In a small circle of ecclesiastical archaeologists, who were
the only people who could even understand one another's
discoveries, he occupied a recognized and respectable place.
And a critic might have found even in that day's journey at least
as much of the uncle's hobby as of the nephew's holiday.
His original purpose had been wholly paternal and festive. But, like many
other intelligent people, he was not above the weakness of playing
with a toy to amuse himself, on the theory that it would amuse a child.
His toys were crowns and miters and croziers and swords of state;
and he had lingered over them, telling himself that the boy ought
to see all the sights of London. And at the end of the day,
after a tremendous tea, he rather gave the game away by winding
up with a visit in which hardly any human boy could be conceived
as taking an interest--an underground chamber supposed to have been
a chapel, recently excavated on the north bank of the Thames,
and containing literally nothing whatever but one old silver coin.
But the coin, to those who knew, was more solitary and splendid
than the Koh-i-noor. It was Roman, and was said to bear the head
of St. Paul; and round it raged the most vital controversies about
the ancient British Church. It could hardly be denied, however,
that the controversies left Summers Minor comparatively cold.
Indeed, the things that interested Summers Minor, and the things that did
not interest him, had mystified and amused his uncle for several hours.
He exhibited the English schoolboy's startling ignorance and
startling knowledge--knowledge of some special classification
in which he can generally correct and confound his elders.
He considered himself entitled, at Hampton Court on a holiday,
to forget the very names of Cardinal Wolsey or William of Orange;
but he could hardly be dragged from some details about the
arrangement of the electric bells in the neighboring hotel.
He was solidly dazed by Westminster Abbey, which is not so
unnatural since that church became the lumber room of the larger
and less successful statuary of the eighteenth century.
But he had a magic and minute knowledge of the Westminster omnibuses,
and indeed of the whole omnibus system of London, the colors
and numbers of which he knew as a herald knows heraldry.
He would cry out against a momentary confusion between a light-green
Paddington and a dark-green Bayswater vehicle, as his uncle would
at the identification of a Greek ikon and a Roman image.
"Do you collect omnibuses like stamps?" asked his uncle.
"They must need a rather large album. Or do you keep them
in your locker?"
"I keep them in my head," replied the nephew, with legitimate firmness.
"It does you credit, I admit," replied the clergyman.
"I suppose it were vain to ask for what purpose you have
learned that out of a thousand things. There hardly seems
to be a career in it, unless you could be permanently on
the pavement to prevent old ladies getting into the wrong bus.
Well, we must get out of this one, for this is our place.
I want to show you what they call St. Paul's Penny."
"Is it like St. Paul's Cathedral?" asked the youth with resignation,
as they alighted.
At the entrance their eyes were arrested by a singular figure
evidently hovering there with a similar anxiety to enter.
It was that of a dark, thin man in a long black robe rather like
a cassock; but the black cap on his head was of too strange a shape
to be a biretta. It suggested, rather, some archaic headdress
of Persia or Babylon. He had a curious black beard appearing only
at the corners of his chin, and his large eyes were oddly set in his
face like the flat decorative eyes painted in old Egyptian profiles.
Before they had gathered more than a general impression of him,
he had dived into the doorway that was their own destination.
Nothing could be seen above ground of the sunken sanctuary
except a strong wooden hut, of the sort recently run up for many
military and official purposes, the wooden floor of which was
indeed a mere platform over the excavated cavity below.
A soldier stood as a sentry outside, and a superior soldier,
an Anglo-Indian officer of distinction, sat writing at the desk inside.
Indeed, the sightseers soon found that this particular sight
was surrounded with the most extraordinary precautions.
I have compared the silver coin to the Koh-i-noor, and in one sense
it was even conventionally comparable, since by a historical
accident it was at one time almost counted among the Crown jewels,
or at least the Crown relics, until one of the royal princes publicly
restored it to the shrine to which it was supposed to belong.
Other causes combined to concentrate official vigilance upon it;
there had been a scare about spies carrying explosives in small objects,
and one of those experimental orders which pass like waves over
bureaucracy had decreed first that all visitors should change their
clothes for a sort of official sackcloth, and then (when this method
caused some murmurs) that they should at least turn out their pockets.
Colonel Morris, the officer in charge, was a short, active man
with a grim and leathery face, but a lively and humorous eye--
a contradiction borne out by his conduct, for he at once derided
the safeguards and yet insisted on them.
"I don't care a button myself for Paul's Penny, or such things,"
he admitted in answer to some antiquarian openings from the clergyman
who was slightly acquainted with him, "but I wear the King's coat,
you know, and it's a serious thing when the King's uncle leaves
a thing here with his own hands under my charge. But as for
saints and relics and things, I fear I'm a bit of a Voltairian;
what you would call a skeptic."
"I'm not sure it's even skeptical to believe in the royal family
and not in the 'Holy' Family," replied Mr. Twyford. "But, of course,
I can easily empty my pockets, to show I don't carry a bomb."
The little heap of the parson's possessions which he left on the table
consisted chiefly of papers, over and above a pipe and a tobacco
pouch and some Roman and Saxon coins. The rest were catalogues
of old books, and pamphlets, like one entitled "The Use of Sarum,"
one glance at which was sufficient both for the colonel and
the schoolboy. They could not see the use of Sarum at all.
The contents of the boy's pockets naturally made a larger heap,
and included marbles, a ball of string, an electric torch,
a magnet, a small catapult, and, of course, a large pocketknife,
almost to be described as a small tool box, a complex apparatus
on which he seemed disposed to linger, pointing out that it included
a pair of nippers, a tool for punching holes in wood, and, above all,
an instrument for taking stones out of a horse's hoof.
The comparative absence of any horse he appeared to regard
as irrelevant, as if it were a mere appendage easily supplied.
But when the turn came of the gentleman in the black gown,
he did not turn out his pockets, but merely spread out his hands.
"I have no possessions," he said.
"I'm afraid I must ask you to empty your pockets and make sure,"
observed the colonel, gruffly.
"I have no pockets," said the stranger.
Mr. Twyford was looking at the long black gown with a learned eye.
"Are you a monk?" he asked, in a puzzled fashion.
"I am a magus," replied the stranger. "You have heard of
the magi, perhaps? I am a magician."
"Oh, I say!" exclaimed Summers Minor, with prominent eyes.
"But I was once a monk," went on the other. "I am what you
would call an escaped monk. Yes, I have escaped into eternity.
But the monks held one truth at least, that the highest life should
be without possessions. I have no pocket money and no pockets,
and all the stars are my trinkets."
"They are out of reach, anyhow," observed Colonel Morris,
in a tone which suggested that it was well for them.
"I've known a good many magicians myself in India--mango plant
and all. But the Indian ones are all frauds, I'll swear.
In fact, I had a good deal of fun showing them up.
More fun than I have over this dreary job, anyhow. But here comes
Mr. Symon, who will show you over the old cellar downstairs."
Mr. Symon, the official guardian and guide, was a young man,
prematurely gray, with a grave mouth which contrasted curiously with
a very small, dark mustache with waxed points, that seemed somehow,
separate from it, as if a black fly had settled on his face.
He spoke with the accent of Oxford and the permanent official,
but in as dead a fashion as the most indifferent hired guide.
They descended a dark stone staircase, at the floor of which
Symon pressed a button and a door opened on a dark room,
or, rather, a room which had an instant before been dark.
For almost as the heavy iron door swung open an almost
blinding blaze of electric lights filled the whole interior.
The fitful enthusiasm of Stinks at once caught fire, and he eagerly
asked if the lights and the door worked together.
"Yes, it's all one system," replied Symon. "It was all fitted
up for the day His Royal Highness deposited the thing here.
You see, it's locked up behind a glass case exactly as he left it."
A glance showed that the arrangements for guarding the treasure were
indeed as strong as they were simple. A single pane of glass cut
off one corner of the room, in an iron framework let into the rock
walls and the wooden roof above; there was now no possibility
of reopening the case without elaborate labor, except by breaking
the glass, which would probably arouse the night watchman who was
always within a few feet of it, even if he had fallen asleep.
A close examination would have showed many more ingenious safeguards;
but the eye of the Rev. Thomas Twyford, at least, was already riveted
on what interested him much more--the dull silver disk which shone
in the white light against a plain background of black velvet.
"St. Paul's Penny, said to commemorate the visit of St. Paul to Britain,
was probably preserved in this chapel until the eighth century,"
Symon was saying in his clear but colorless voice. "In the ninth
century it is supposed to have been carried away by the barbarians,
and it reappears, after the conversion of the northern Goths,
in the possession of the royal family of Gothland. His Royal Highness,
the Duke of Gothland, retained it always in his own private custody,
and when he decided to exhibit it to the public, placed it here with
his own hand. It was immediately sealed up in such a manner--"
Unluckily at this point Summers Minor, whose attention had
somewhat strayed from the religious wars of the ninth century,
caught sight of a short length of wire appearing in a broken
patch in the wall. He precipitated himself at it, calling out,
"I say, say, does that connect?"
It was evident that it did connect, for no sooner had the boy
given it a twitch than the whole room went black, as if they
had all been struck blind, and an instant afterward they heard
the dull crash of the closing door.
"Well, you've done it now," said Symon, in his tranquil fashion.
Then after a pause he added, "I suppose they'll miss us sooner or later,
and no doubt they can get it open; but it may take some little time."
There was a silence, and then the unconquerable Stinks observed:
"Rotten that I had to leave my electric torch."
"I think," said his uncle, with restraint, "that we are sufficiently
convinced of your interest in electricity."
Then after a pause he remarked, more amiably: "I suppose if I
regretted any of my own impedimenta, it would be the pipe.
Though, as a matter of fact, it's not much fun smoking in the dark.
Everything seems different in the dark."
"Everything is different in the dark," said a third voice, that of
the man who called himself a magician. It was a very musical voice,
and rather in contrast with his sinister and swarthy visage, which was
now invisible. "Perhaps you don't know how terrible a truth that is.
All you see are pictures made by the sun, faces and furniture and
flowers and trees. The things themselves may be quite strange to you.
Something else may be standing now where you saw a table or a chair.
The face of your friend may be quite different in the dark."
A short, indescribable noise broke the stillness.
Twyford started for a second, and then said, sharply:
"Really, I don't think it's a suitable occasion for trying
to frighten a child."
"Who's a child?" cried the indignant Summers, with a voice
that had a crow, but also something of a crack in it.
"And who's a funk, either? Not me."
"I will be silent, then," said the other voice out of the darkness.
"But silence also makes and unmakes."
The required silence remained unbroken for a long time until
at last the clergyman said to Symon in a low voice:
"I suppose it's all right about air?"
"Oh, yes," replied the other aloud; "there's a fireplace and a chimney
in the office just by the door."
A bound and the noise of a falling chair told them that the irrepressible
rising generation had once more thrown itself across the room.
They heard the ejaculation: "A chimney! Why, I'll be--" and the rest
was lost in muffled, but exultant, cries.
The uncle called repeatedly and vainly, groped his way at last to
the opening, and, peering up it, caught a glimpse of a disk of daylight,
which seemed to suggest that the fugitive had vanished in safety.
Making his way back to the group by the glass case, he fell over
the fallen chair and took a moment to collect himself again.
He had opened his mouth to speak to Symon, when he stopped,
and suddenly found himself blinking in the full shock of the white light,
and looking over the other man's shoulder, he saw that the door
was standing open.
"So they've got at us at last," he observed to Symon.
The man in the black robe was leaning against the wall some yards away,
with a smile carved on his face.
"Here comes Colonel Morris," went on Twyford, still speaking
to Symon. "One of us will have to tell him how the light
went out. Will you?"
But Symon still said nothing. He was standing as still as a statue,
and looking steadily at the black velvet behind the glass screen.
He was looking at the black velvet because there was nothing else
to look at. St. Paul's Penny was gone.
Colonel Morris entered the room with two new visitors;
presumably two new sightseers delayed by the accident.
The foremost was a tall, fair, rather languid-looking man with a
bald brow and a high-bridged nose; his companion was a younger
man with light, curly hair and frank, and even innocent, eyes.
Symon scarcely seemed to hear the newcomers; it seemed almost
as if he had not realized that the return of the light revealed
his brooding attitude. Then he started in a guilty fashion,
and when he saw the elder of the two strangers, his pale face
seemed to turn a shade paler.
"Why it's Horne Fisher!" and then after a pause he said in a low voice,
"I'm in the devil of a hole, Fisher."
"There does seem a bit of a mystery to be cleared up,"
observed the gentleman so addressed.
"It will never be cleared up," said the pale Symon. "If anybody
could clear it up, you could. But nobody could."
"I rather think I could," said another voice from outside the group,
and they turned in surprise to realize that the man in the black robe
had spoken again.
"You!" said the colonel, sharply. "And how do you propose
to play the detective?"
"I do not propose to play the detective," answered the other,
in a clear voice like a bell. "I propose to play the magician.
One of the magicians you show up in India, Colonel."
No one spoke for a moment, and then Horne Fisher surprised everybody
by saying, "Well, let's go upstairs, and this gentleman can have a try."
He stopped Symon, who had an automatic finger on the button, saying:
"No, leave all the lights on. It's a sort of safeguard."
"The thing can't be taken away now," said Symon, bitterly.
"It can be put back," replied Fisher.
Twyford had already run upstairs for news of his vanishing nephew, and he
received news of him in a way that at once puzzled and reassured him.
On the floor above lay one of those large paper darts which boys
throw at each other when the schoolmaster is out of the room.
It had evidently been thrown in at the window, and on being
unfolded displayed a scrawl of bad handwriting which ran:
"Dear Uncle; I am all right. Meet you at the hotel later on,"
and then the signature.
Insensibly comforted by this, the clergyman found his thoughts
reverting voluntarily to his favorite relic, which came a good second
in his sympathies to his favorite nephew, and before he knew where
he was he found himself encircled by the group discussing its loss,
and more or less carried away on the current of their excitement.
But an undercurrent of query continued to run in his mind,
as to what had really happened to the boy, and what was the boy's
exact definition of being all right.
Meanwhile Horne Fisher had considerably puzzled everybody with his new
tone and attitude. He had talked to the colonel about the military
and mechanical arrangements, and displayed a remarkable knowledge both
of the details of discipline and the technicalities of electricity.
He had talked to the clergyman, and shown an equally surprising knowledge
of the religious and historical interests involved in the relic. He had
talked to the man who called himself a magician, and not only surprised
but scandalized the company by an equally sympathetic familiarity with
the most fantastic forms of Oriental occultism and psychic experiment.
And in this last and least respectable line of inquiry he was
evidently prepared to go farthest; he openly encouraged the magician,
and was plainly prepared to follow the wildest ways of investigation
in which that magus might lead him.
"How would you begin now?" he inquired, with an anxious politeness
that reduced the colonel to a congestion of rage.
"It is all a question of a force; of establishing communications
for a force," replied that adept, affably, ignoring some military
mutterings about the police force. "It is what you in the West
used to call animal magnetism, but it is much more than that.
I had better not say how much more. As to setting about it,
the usual method is to throw some susceptible person
into a trance, which serves as a sort of bridge or cord
of communication, by which the force beyond can give him,
as it were, an electric shock, and awaken his higher senses.
It opens the sleeping eye of the mind."
"I'm suspectible," said Fisher, either with simplicity or
with a baffling irony. "Why not open my mind's eye for me?
My friend Harold March here will tell you I sometimes see things,
even in the dark."
"Nobody sees anything except in the dark," said the magician.
Heavy clouds of sunset were closing round the wooden hut,
enormous clouds, of which only the corners* could be
seen in the little window, like purple horns and tails,
almost as if some huge monsters were prowling round the place.
But the purple was already deepening to dark gray; it would
soon be night.
"Do not light the lamp," said the magus with quiet authority,
arresting a movement in that direction. "I told you before
that things happen only in the dark."
How such a topsy-turvy scene ever came to be tolerated in
the colonel's office, of all places, was afterward a puzzle
in the memory of many, including the colonel. They recalled it
like a sort of nightmare, like something they could not control.
Perhaps there was really a magnetism about the mesmerist;
perhaps there was even more magnetism about the man mesmerized.
Anyhow, the man was being mesmerized, for Horne Fisher had collapsed
into a chair with his long limbs loose and sprawling and his eyes staring
at vacancy; and the other man was mesmerizing him, making sweeping
movements with his darkly draped arms as if with black wings.
The colonel had passed the point of explosion, and he dimly
realized that eccentric aristocrats are allowed their fling.
He comforted himself with the knowledge that he had already sent
for the police, who would break up any such masquerade, and with
lighting a cigar, the red end of which, in the gathering darkness,
glowed with protest.
"Yes, I see pockets," the man in the trance was saying.
"I see many pockets, but they are all empty. No; I see one
pocket that is not empty."
There was a faint stir in the stillness, and the magician said,
"Can you see what is in the pocket?"
"Yes," answered the other; "there are two bright things.
I think they are two bits of steel. One of the pieces of steel
is bent or crooked."
"Have they been used in the removal of the relic from downstairs?"
"Yes."
There was another pause and the inquirer added, "Do you see anything
of the relic itself?"
"I see something shining on the floor, like the shadow or the ghost
of it. It is over there in the corner beyond the desk."
There was a movement of men turning and then a sudden stillness,
as of their stiffening, for over in the corner on the wooden floor
there was really a round spot of pale light. It was the only spot
of light in the room. The cigar had gone out.
"It points the way," came the voice of the oracle.
"The spirits are pointing the way to penitence, and urging
the thief to restitution. I can see nothing more." His voice
trailed off into a silence that lasted solidly for many minutes,
like the long silence below when the theft had been committed.
Then it was broken by the ring of metal on the floor, and the sound
of something spinning and falling like a tossed halfpenny.
"Light the lamp!" cried Fisher in a loud and even jovial voice,
leaping to his feet with far less languor than usual.
"I must be going now, but I should like to see it before I go.
Why, I came on purpose to see it."
The lamp was lit, and he did see it, for St. Paul's Penny was lying
on the floor at his feet.
"Oh, as for that," explained Fisher, when he was entertaining March
and Twyford at lunch about a month later, "I merely wanted to play
with the magician at his own game."
"I thought you meant to catch him in his own trap,"
said Twyford. "I can't make head or tail of anything yet,
but to my mind he was always the suspect. I don't think he was
necessarily a thief in the vulgar sense. The police always seem
to think that silver is stolen for the sake of silver, but a thing
like that might well be stolen out of some religious mania.
A runaway monk turned mystic might well want it for
some mystical purpose."
"No," replied Fisher, "the runaway monk is not a thief.
At any rate he is not the thief. And he's not altogether
a liar, either. He said one true thing at least that night."
"And what was that?" inquired March.
"He said it was all magnetism. As a matter of fact, it was done by
means of a magnet." Then, seeing they still looked puzzled, he added,
"It was that toy magnet belonging to your nephew, Mr. Twyford."
"But I don't understand," objected March. "If it was done with
the schoolboy's magnet, I suppose it was done by the schoolboy."
"Well," replied Fisher, reflectively, "it rather depends which schoolboy."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"The soul of a schoolboy is a curious thing," Fisher continued,
in a meditative manner. "It can survive a great many things
besides climbing out of a chimney. A man can grow gray
in great campaigns, and still have the soul of a schoolboy.
A man can return with a great reputation from India and be put
in charge of a great public treasure, and still have the soul
of a schoolboy, waiting to be awakened by an accident.
And it is ten times more so when to the schoolboy you add
the skeptic, who is generally a sort of stunted schoolboy.
You said just now that things might be done by religious mania.
Have you ever heard of irreligious mania? I assure you it
exists very violently, especially in men who like showing up
magicians in India. But here the skeptic had the temptation
of showing up a much more tremendous sham nearer home."
A light came into Harold March's eyes as he suddenly saw,
as if afar off, the wider implication of the suggestion.
But Twyford was still wrestling with one problem at a time.
"Do you really mean," he said, "that Colonel Morris took the relic?"
"He was the only person who could use the magnet,"
replied Fisher. "In fact, your obliging nephew left him
a number of things he could use. He had a ball of string,
and an instrument for making a hole in the wooden floor--I made
a little play with that hole in the floor in my trance, by the way;
with the lights left on below, it shone like a new shilling."
Twyford suddenly bounded on his chair. "But in that case,"
he cried, in a new and altered voice, "why then of course--
You said a piece of steel--?"
"I said there were two pieces of steel," said Fisher. "The bent
piece of steel was the boy's magnet. The other was the relic
in the glass case."
"But that is silver," answered the archaeologist, in a voice
now almost unrecognizable.
"Oh," replied Fisher, soothingly, "I dare say it was painted
with silver a little."
There was a heavy silence, and at last Harold March said,
"But where is the real relic?"
"Where it has been for five years," replied Horne Fisher,
"in the possession of a mad millionaire named Vandam,
in Nebraska. There was a playful little photograph about him
in a society paper the other day, mentioning his delusion,
and saying he was always being taken in about relics."
Harold March frowned at the tablecloth; then, after an interval, he said:
"I think I understand your notion of how the thing was actually done;
according to that, Morris just made a hole and fished it up with a magnet
at the end of a string. Such a monkey trick looks like mere madness,
but I suppose he was mad, partly with the boredom of watching
over what he felt was a fraud, though he couldn't prove it.
Then came a chance to prove it, to himself at least, and he had what
he called 'fun' with it. Yes, I think I see a lot of details now.
But it's just the whole thing that knocks me. How did it all come
to be like that?"
Fisher was looking at him with level lids and an immovable manner.
"Every precaution was taken," he said. "The Duke carried the relic
on his own person, and locked it up in the case with his own hands."
March was silent; but Twyford stammered. "I don't understand you.
You give me the creeps. Why don't you speak plainer?"
"If I spoke plainer you would understand me less," said Horne Fisher.
"All the same I should try," said March, still without lifting his head.
"Oh, very well," replied Fisher, with a sigh; "the plain truth is,
of course, that it's a bad business. Everybody knows it's a bad
business who knows anything about it. But it's always happening,
and in one way one can hardly blame them. They get stuck on to a foreign
princess that's as stiff as a Dutch doll, and they have their fling.
In this case it was a pretty big fling."
The face of the Rev. Thomas Twyford certainly suggested
that he was a little out of his depth in the seas of truth,
but as the other went on speaking vaguely the old gentleman's
features sharpened and set.
"If it were some decent morganatic affair I wouldn't say;
but he must have been a fool to throw away thousands on a woman
like that. At the end it was sheer blackmail; but it's
something that the old ass didn't get it out of the taxpayers.
He could only get it out of the Yank, and there you are."
The Rev. Thomas Twyford had risen to his feet.
"Well, I'm glad my nephew had nothing to do with it," he said.
"And if that's what the world is like, I hope he will never have
anything to, do with it."
"I hope not," answered Horne Fisher. "No one knows so well as I
do that one can have far too much to do with it."
For Summers Minor had indeed nothing to do with it;
and it is part of his higher significance that he has really
nothing to do with the story, or with any such stories.
The boy went like a bullet through the tangle of this
tale of crooked politics and crazy mockery and came out
on the other side, pursuing his own unspoiled purposes.
From the top of the chimney he climbed he had caught sight
of a new omnibus, whose color and name he had never known,
as a naturalist might see a new bird or a botanist a new flower.
And he had been sufficiently enraptured in rushing after it,
and riding away upon that fairy ship.
