Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 3 of 3). Dowling Richard

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      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. СКАЧАТЬ