Raffles Haw led the way through the
front door, and crossing over the gravelled drive
pushed open the outer door of the laboratory the
same through which the McIntyres had seen the packages
conveyed from the waggon. On passing through
it Robert found that they were not really within the
building, but merely in a large bare ante-chamber,
around the walls of which were stacked the very objects
which had aroused his curiosity and his father’s
speculations. All mystery had gone from them
now, however, for while some were still wrapped in
their sackcloth coverings, others had been undone,
and revealed themselves as great pigs of lead.
“There is my raw material,”
said Raffles Haw carelessly, nodding at the heap.
“Every Saturday I have a waggon-load sent up,
which serves me for a week, but we shall need to work
double tides when Laura and I are married, and we
get our great schemes under way. I have to be
very careful about the quality of the lead, for, of
course, every impurity is reproduced in the gold.”
A heavy iron door led into the inner
chamber. Haw unlocked it, but only to disclose
a second one about five feet further on.
“This flooring is all disconnected
at night,” he remarked. “I have no
doubt that there is a good deal of gossip in the servants’-hall
about this sealed chamber, so I have to guard myself
against some inquisitive ostler or too adventurous
butler.”
The inner door admitted them into
the laboratory, a high, bare, whitewashed room with
a glass roof. At one end was the furnace and
boiler, the iron mouth of which was closed, though
the fierce red light beat through the cracks, and
a dull roar sounded through the building. On
either side innumerable huge Leyden jars stood ranged
in rows, tier topping tier, while above them were
columns of Voltaic cells. Robert’s eyes,
as he glanced around, lit on vast wheels, complicated
networks of wire, stands, test-tubes, coloured bottles,
graduated glasses, Bunsen burners, porcelain insulators,
and all the varied debris of a chemical and
electrical workshop.
“Come across here,” said
Raffles Haw, picking his way among the heaps of metal,
the coke, the packing-cases, and the carboys of acid.
“Yours is the first foot except my own which
has ever penetrated to this room since the workmen
left it. My servants carry the lead into the
ante-room, but come no further. The furnace can
be cleaned and stoked from without. I employ
a fellow to do nothing else. Now take a look in
here.”
He threw open a door on the further
side, and motioned to the young artist to enter.
The latter stood silent with one foot over the threshold,
staring in amazement around him. The room, which
may have been some thirty feet square, was paved and
walled with gold. Great brick-shaped ingots,
closely packed, covered the whole floor, while on
every side they were reared up in compact barriers
to the very ceiling. The single electric lamp
which lighted the windowless chamber struck a dull,
murky, yellow light from the vast piles of precious
metal, and gleamed ruddily upon the golden floor.
“This is my treasure house,”
remarked the owner. “You see that I have
rather an accumulation just now. My imports have
been exceeding my exports. You can understand
that I have other and more important duties even than
the making of gold, just now. This is where I
store my output until I am ready to send it off.
Every night almost I am in the habit of sending a
case of it to London. I employ seventeen brokers
in its sale. Each thinks that he is the only
one, and each is dying to know where I can get such
large quantities of virgin gold. They say that
it is the purest which comes into the market.
The popular theory is, I believe, that I am a middleman
acting on behalf of some new South African mine, which
wishes to keep its whereabouts a secret. What
value would you put upon the gold in this chamber?
It ought to be worth something, for it represents
nearly a week’s work.”
“Something fabulous, I have
no doubt,” said Robert, glancing round at the
yellow barriers. “Shall I say a hundred
and fifty thousand pounds?”
“Oh dear me, it is surely worth
very much more than that,” cried Raffles Haw,
laughing. “Let me see. Suppose that
we put it at three ten an ounce, which is nearly ten
shillings under the mark. That makes, roughly,
fifty-six pounds for a pound in weight. Now each
of these ingots weighs thirty-six pounds, which brings
their value to two thousand and a few odd pounds.
There are five hundred ingots on each of these three
sides of the room, but on the fourth there are only
three hundred, on account of the door, but there cannot
be less than two hundred on the floor, which gives
us a rough total of two thousand ingots. So you
see, my dear boy, that any broker who could get the
contents of this chamber for four million pounds would
be doing a nice little stroke of business.”
“And a week’s work!”
gasped Robert. “It makes my head swim.”
“You will follow me now when
I repeat that none of the great schemes which I intend
to simultaneously set in motion are at all likely to
languish for want of funds. Now come into the
laboratory with me and see how it is done.”
In the centre of the workroom was
an instrument like a huge vice, with two large brass-coloured
plates, and a great steel screw for bringing them
together. Numerous wires ran into these metal
plates, and were attached at the other end to the
rows of dynamic machines. Beneath was a glass
stand, which was hollowed out in the centre into a
succession of troughs.
“You will soon understand all
about it,” said Raffles Haw, throwing off his
coat, and pulling on a smoke-stained and dirty linen
jacket. “We must first stoke up a little.”
He put his weight on a pair of great bellows, and
an answering roar came from the furnace. “That
will do. The more heat the more electric force,
and the quicker our task. Now for the lead!
Just give me a hand in carrying it.”
They lifted a dozen of the pigs of
lead from the floor on to the glass stand, and having
adjusted the plates on either side, Haw screwed up
the handle so as to hold them in position.
“It used in the early days to
be a slow process,” he remarked; “but now
that I have immense facilities for my work it takes
a very short time. I have now only to complete
the connection in order to begin.”
He took hold of a long glass lever
which projected from among the wires, and drew it
downwards. A sharp click was heard, followed by
a loud, sparkling, crackling noise. Great spurts
of flame sprang from the two electrodes, and the mass
of lead was surrounded by an aureole of golden sparks,
which hissed and snapped like pistol-shots. The
air was filled with the peculiar acid smell of ozone.
“The power there is immense,”
said Raffles Haw, superintending the process, with
his watch upon the palm of his hand. “It
would reduce an organic substance to protyle instantly.
It is well to understand the mechanism thoroughly,
for any mistake might be a grave matter for the operator.
You are dealing with gigantic forces. But you
perceive that the lead is already beginning to turn.”
Silvery dew-like drops had indeed
begun to form upon the dull-coloured mass, and to
drop with a tinkle and splash into the glass troughs.
Slowly the lead melted away, like an icicle in the
sun, the electrodes ever closing upon it as it contracted,
until they came together in the centre, and a row
of pools of quicksilver had taken the place of the
solid metal. Two smaller electrodes were plunged
into the mercury, which gradually curdled and solidified,
until it had resumed the solid form, with a yellowish
brassy shimmer.
“What lies in the moulds now
is platinum,” remarked Raffles Haw. “We
must take it from the troughs and refix it in the large
electrodes. So! Now we turn on the current
again. You see that it gradually takes a darker
and richer tint. Now I think that it is perfect.”
He drew up the lever, removed the electrodes, and
there lay a dozen bricks of ruddy sparkling gold.
“You see, according to our calculations,
our morning’s work has been worth twenty-four
thousand pounds, and it has not taken us more than
twenty minutes,” remarked the alchemist, as he
picked up the newly-made ingots, and threw them down
among the others.
“We will devote one of them
to experiment,” said he, leaving the last standing
upon the glass insulator. “To the world
it would seem an expensive demonstration which cost
two thousand pounds, but our standard, you see, is
a different one. Now you will see me run through
the whole gamut of metallic nature.”
First of all men after the discoverer,
Robert saw the gold mass, when the electrodes were
again applied to it, change swiftly and successively
to barium, to tin, to silver, to copper, to iron.
He saw the long white electric sparks change to crimson
with the strontium, to purple with the potassium,
to yellow with the manganese. Then, finally, after
a hundred transformations, it disintegrated before
his eyes, and lay as a little mound of fluffy grey
dust upon the glass table.
“And this is protyle,”
said Haw, passing his fingers through it. “The
chemist of the future may resolve it into further constituents,
but to me it is the Ultima Thule.”
“And now, Robert,” he
continued, after a pause, “I have shown you enough
to enable you to understand something of my system.
This is the great secret. It is the secret which
endows the man who knows it with such a universal
power as no man has ever enjoyed since the world was
made. This secret it is the dearest wish of my
heart to use for good, and I swear to you, Robert
McIntyre, that if I thought it would tend to anything
but good I would have done with it for ever. No,
I would neither use it myself nor would any other
man learn it from my lips. I swear it by all
that is holy and solemn!”
His eyes flashed as he spoke, and
his voice quivered with emotion. Standing, pale
and lanky, amid his electrodes and his retorts, there
was still something majestic about this man, who,
amid all his stupendous good fortune, could still
keep his moral sense undazzled by the glitter of his
gold. Robert’s weak nature had never before
realised the strength which lay in those thin, firm
lips and earnest eyes.
“Surely in your hands, Mr. Haw,
nothing but good can come of it,” he said.
“I hope not I pray
not most earnestly do I pray not. I
have done for you, Robert, what I might not have done
for my own brother had I one, and I have done it because
I believe and hope that you are a man who would not
use this power, should you inherit it, for selfish
ends. But even now I have not told you all.
There is one link which I have withheld from you,
and which shall be withheld from you while I live.
But look at this chest, Robert.”
He led him to a great iron-clamped
chest which stood in the corner, and, throwing it
open, he took from it a small case of carved ivory.
“Inside this,” he said,
“I have left a paper which makes clear anything
which is still hidden from you. Should anything
happen to me you will always be able to inherit my
powers, and to continue my plans by following the
directions which are there expressed. And now,”
he continued, throwing his casket back again into the
box, “I shall frequently require your help,
but I do not think it will be necessary this morning.
I have already taken up too much of your time.
If you are going back to Elmdene I wish that you would
tell Laura that I shall be with her in the afternoon.”