“Ay,” put in the Clive, “a quiz upon Orford. He opened it to me last night in our homeward stroll.”
“Ay, so?” replied my learned friend. “Nevertheless, Lord Frederic, something is concealed in the conjurer’s stone. Let us have it out.”
“How know you that?” I enquired.
“Nay, Bozzy,” replied my learned friend, “to what end were my experimentations of the morning? Have you never heard the tale of Archimedes and Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse?”
“No, sir,” replied I, ready to be enlightened.
“Sir, ’tis of a goldsmith, who had of the tyrant a certain weight of gold of which to fashion a crown. Now Hiero suspected the man for a cheat. Accordingly when the crown came home, he asked Archimedes, whether it were all gold, or dilute with base metal? Archimedes made shift to measure its gross content of metal, by immersing it in water and measuring the overflow. In the same manner he measured out an equal content of pure gold; which weighing against the crown, the crown was demonstrated to weigh less. Now as every substance has its weight, and gold the heaviest, the cheat was discovered. Just so, the Black Stone weighed less than an equal volume of coal; as it could not be adulterated, ’twas proved to be hollow.”
“Though it be hollow, how are you to open it without instruments?”
Johnson set the sphere upon the floor; it rolled and came to rest.
“Instruments have failed. ’Tis plain, this sphere has not been halved and hollowed. Has it been bored? If so, it shews us as it lies, in which direction the bore runs.”
Johnson touched it delicately with his strong, shapely fingers.
“You may feel, though you cannot see, the intersecting circle of the bore. At raising that circle I have failed, and upon my failure was baffled. But no problem is forever impervious to reflection. Can not we depress it instead?”
So saying, as the strange company watched fascinated by the light of the moon in the doorway, my friend gripped the sphere in his fingers, and exerted his giant’s strength in the steady pressure of his thumbs upon the end of the bore. Slowly the opposite end began to be extruded, a cylinder revealed to be nearly two inches in depth. Then it came with a rush. ’Twas hollowed like a little drawer. In it lay a single paper, rolled into a cylinder.
My near-sighted friend unfurled the paper and held it to his eyes, almost brushing it with his eyelashes. I advanced the taper. By its light I could see that what had been concealed in the speculum was a letter, writ in a foreign hand upon a single sheet of paper. I stared at the royal seal and the royal signature: Charles Edward Stuart.
“So,” says Dr. Johnson, “this is what is in it. Treason is in it.”
He mowed and muttered over the phrases:
“To general John Campbell.”
“To the Duke of Argyle!” I cried in horror.
Lord Frederic sank on the hermit’s pallet with a gesture of resignation.
“ ’Tis over. I have ruined my brother. His attainder is sure. I dare ask no mercy.”
I took the letter into my hand and scanned the fulsome phrases: “... your influence with the army on our behalf... will send you what moneys you need...”
“Nay, Frederic,” said Kitty Clive stoutly, “pluck up heart, man, this letter is nothing. The ’45 is a quarter-century gone.”
“Alack, Kitty,” replied Lord Frederic in dejection, “ ’tis no matter of the ’45. ’Twas writ just before he became Duke.”
“Pho, a forgery,” said Kitty scornfully.
“ ’Tis the Pretender’s own hand.”
“Then,” said the Clive, “we must—”
She broke off with a scream. Never have I seen such a look of horror on a human countenance. Her eyes seemed to start from her head, her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, as she pointed a trembling finger toward the opening of the secret passage, and strove to speak a warning. I turned my head with a thrill of awful foreboding.
“We must burn it,” said the Clive calmly; and as I realized that the gloom was but empty, I felt her twitch the paper from my hand.
My chagrin at being thus tricked before my venerable friend was doubled as I heard him speak.
“Ay, let us burn it,” said he calmly. “Pray, Bozzy, the candle.”
Dubiously I yielded it. Dr. Johnson advanced it towards the letter; but before paper and flame met, Lord Frederic reached a hasty hand.
“Nay, Kitty, bid me take it to my brother, for I have sworn to lay it in his hand; and the house of Argyle will reward you well.”
The Clive reached him the paper, but Dr. Johnson came between.
“Pray, Kitty,” cried he sternly, “do you hold this letter safe for the nonce, while we scrutinize this fellow’s proceedings. What do you say to a thief who parades about in masquerade, and leaves his booty behind instead of bearing it away to a place of safety? A thief who courts attention instead of shunning it? What do you say to the strange debility of the Duke’s heir, which only assails him in London? What do you say to the proceedings of the next heir, who so far from making the letter secure in secret, and so protecting his brother from attainder, plays the fool with it until it comes to light, and will not suffer us to burn it?”
During this recital, Lord Frederic’s frame seemed to shrink. Kitty Clive slowly rose and drew away from him. Without a word she yielded up the letter to Dr. Johnson.
“In Arlington Street,” pursued Dr. Johnson, contempt in his eye, “the noble house-breaker lost his labour; save that by turning out the papers he made sure, what his brother’s unbroken friendship with Walpole must have told him, that the speculum remained unopened. In his own person he learned where it was deposited at Strawberry, and returned a-mumming by Mr. Walpole’s new-built secret passage—”
“To think,” cried the Clive, “that ’twas I that revealed it to him, and provided gear for his masquerade, and victualled him in the hermitage, in the belief that ’twas but a bit of play-acting with a laugh to follow. I should have been better advised; for Lord Orford is notoriously mad, and who puts a quiz upon a madman?”
“The secret passage was built with the Round Tower, and the hermitage at the same time, to mask its egress? The entrances lie behind the great portraits in the rooms of the Round Tower?”
“That is so, but pray, how did you know?”
“I said it in jest, the apparition was gone back into the portrait; and began to perceive how it might be true in earnest. From the portrait, then, Lord Frederic in his hermit’s gear entered the Round Tower, meaning to fetch the stone from the Tribune hard by. Retreating before us onto the secret stair, he learned where we proposed to sequester the speculum, at the same time gaining from our talk a spectacular notion for his next appearance. From your theatre-chest you, ma’am, fitted him out to affright Mr. Boswell; on which occasion he took care, to awake Mr. Boswell, to leave his booty behind, and to depart by the door, lest he betray the secret of the passage. Pray, Lord Frederic, satisfy my curiosity: why did not you shatter the stone then and there, and thus betray all at a stroke?”
“I flung it with violence, but it resisted,” said the detected scheamer surlily.
“Nay, when you came by it tonight, why did not you set it open and so leave it in the Tribune for Mr. Walpole to find?”
“When my brother found that I had given the thing away,” muttered Lord Frederic, “he told me how he had saved the letter against King Charles’s return, and bade me for the safety of our house recover it; but he would not tell me the secret of the opening.”
“Ho, ho,” cried Dr. Johnson, “thy brother knows thee well, I perceive.”
“I beg,” said the false hermit sullenly, “that my brother may not hear of this. ’Tis ill enough between us already.”
“Ay, sir,” said Dr. Johnson thoughtfully, “I have seen how your lady suffers, to have another, not near so well-born, take precedence of her as Duchess of Argyle. ’Tis a bird of ill omen, and so Lord Ferrers found her.”