The Great God Gold. Le Queux William

papers.

      “Doctor,” he whispered at last, “I – I want to burn – all these – all – every one of them. Burn them entirely.”

      “As you wish, my dear friend,” responded the hunchback, eyeing the envelope eagerly, and wondering what it might contain. “I’ll put a match to them in the stove yonder.”

      The invalid, by dint of great effort, managed to move himself so that his eyes could fall upon the little door in the round iron stove, in which, however, no fire was burning, even though the day was bitterly cold.

      Yet he hesitated, hesitated as though he dared not trust the hungry little man who had befriended him.

      “Do you wish them destroyed?” the Doctor again inquired.

      The dying man nodded, at the same moment raising his finger and motioning that he could not speak.

      Diamond waited. He saw that the patient was vainly endeavouring to articulate some words.

      For several moments there was a dead silence.

      At last the nameless man spoke again, very softly and indistinctly. Indeed, the Doctor was compelled to bend low to catch the words:

      “Take them,” he said. “Take them – and burn them in the stove. Mind – destroy every one.”

      “Certainly I will,” answered the other. “Give them to me, and you shall see me burn them. I’ll do so there – before your eyes.”

      The man held the envelope in his dying grip. He still hesitated. His eyes were fixed upon the papers wistfully, as though filled with poignant regret at a mission unaccomplished.

      “Ah!” he gasped with difficulty. “To think that this is the end – the end of a lifetime’s study and struggle! Death defeats me, vanquishes me – as it has vanquished every other man who has striven to learn the secret.”

      Diamond stood listening in wonder and curiosity. He noticed the dying man’s reluctance to destroy the papers.

      Perhaps he would succumb, and leave them undestroyed! What secret could they contain?

      There was a long silence. The grey light over the thousands of chimney-pots was fast fading into gloom. The room was darkening.

      The patient lay motionless as one dead, yet his dull eyes were still open. In his hand he still held his treasured envelope.

      Again Diamond spoke, but the man with a secret made no reply. He only raised his wan hand, and shook his head sadly, indicating inability to speak.

      The queer little Doctor bent once more closer to the stranger and saw that the end was near. He was hoping against hope that the man would expire before he had strength to order the destruction of those documents, whatever they were. The mysterious statements of the dying man had indicated that the papers in question contained some remarkable secret, and naturally his curiosity had been aroused.

      During those three brief days of their acquaintance he had, in vain, tried to form some conclusion as to who the stranger might be. At first he had believed him to be a broken-down medical man like himself. But that surmise had been quickly negatived. He was a professional man without a doubt, but he had carefully concealed even his profession as well as his name.

      The doctor had re-seated himself in the rickety rush-bottomed chair at the bedside, and sat in patience for the end, as he had sat beside hundreds of other dying men and women in the course of his career.

      The patient breathed heavily, and again stirring uneasily, cast a longing look at the glass of lemonade upon the little table near by. Diamond recognised his wish, and held the tumbler to the man’s parched lips.

      The dying stranger motioned, and the Doctor bent his head until his ear was near the other’s mouth.

      “Doctor,” he managed to whisper after great difficulty, “it’s no use. There’s no hope! Therefore will you take them to the stove – and – and burn them —burn them all!”

      “Certainly I will,” was the Doctor’s reply, rising and slowly taking the envelope from the prostrate man’s reluctant fingers.

      He felt crisp papers within as he turned his back upon the dying man and bent down to the stove, placing himself between the invalid’s line of vision and the stove itself.

      A moment later, however, he opened the stove-door, placed the envelope within, and applied a match to it.

      Next moment a blood-red light fell across the darkening room upon the pallid face lying on the pillow.

      A pair of dull, anxious, deep-set eyes watched the flames leap up and quickly die down again, watched the crinkling tinder as the sparks died out one by one – watched until Diamond stirred up the charred folios in order that every one should be consumed.

      Then he turned slightly in his bed and, stretching forth his hand as though wishing to speak, drew a long, hard breath.

      “And – and so – vanishes all my hope – my life,” the stranger managed to sob bitterly in a voice almost inaudible.

      Again he sighed – a long-drawn sigh. And then – in the room, now almost dark, reigned a complete silence.

      Death had entered there. The man with the secret had passed to that land which lies beyond human ken.

      Chapter Two

      Describes the Doctor’s Doings

      Raymond Diamond’s unfortunate deformity had always been against his advancement in his profession.

      The only son of old Doctor Diamond, a country practitioner of the old school, in Norfolk, he had had a brilliant career at Edinburgh, and after some years of changeful life as a locum tenens had bought a partnership in a practice on the outskirts of Birmingham.

      His partner turned out to be a rogue who had misrepresented facts, and six months afterwards absconded to America. Diamond, however, betrayed a sharp resourcefulness. He advertised the practice in the Lancet, and when a prospective purchaser came to view it, he hired fourteen or fifteen men to come into the surgery, one after the other, and pay fees. Such an impression did this ruse cause upon the newly married medico, who came from London to investigate, that he bought it at once, and Diamond netted nearly twice the sum he originally gave for his partnership.

      Finding that his deformity precluded him from forming anything like a lucrative practice, he accepted a berth as ship’s doctor in the P&O service, and for some years sailed the Indian and China seas.

      Back in London again, he drifted from one suburban practice to another, doing locum work, and at last built up a semblance of a practice in a cheap new suburban district down at Catford.

      Even there, however, his ugliness proved much against him, and at last he was forced to retire into a Northamptonshire village, where he and his wife eked out a modest living by adopting children upon yearly payments.

      It was not a very creditable means of livelihood, yet the several children beneath their cottage roof were all well treated and well cared for. And after all, Raymond Diamond, a brilliant man in many ways, was only a failure because of his physical shortcomings.

      He knew his Paris well. In his younger days he had often been there. Indeed, he once resided at St. Cloud with an invalid gentleman for close upon two years. Long years of travel had rendered him a thorough-going cosmopolitan, even though his lot was now cast in a sleepy country village.

      The reason of his present visit to Paris was in order to interview the father of one of his adopted daughters, but the man had not kept the appointment, and by waiting from day to day in hope of finding him, he had exhausted his slender finances, and he knew that his patient wife was in a similar condition of penury at home.

      He was certainly a strikingly ugly man. His forehead was broad and bulgy, and his face narrowed to the point of the beard. His head seemed too large, his arms too long and ungainly, while his face was deeply furrowed by long years at sea. His mouth, too, was wide and ugly and when he laughed he displayed an uneven row of teeth much discoloured by tobacco.

      With