SILAS MONK.
A TALE OF LONDON OLD CITY.
IN FOUR CHAPTERS.—CONCLUSION.
The streets in the old city are dark and deserted as the detective and Walter Tiltcroft hasten through them towards Crutched Friars. The street-lamps cast limited spaces of light upon the fronts of lofty warehouses and counting-houses, leaving limitless spaces of shadow about and above. The windows of these mansions have the blankness of blind eyes; the great, black, massive office-doors are firmly closed; and the greater doors of the warehouses are fastened with huge padlocks and chains, like prisons, or places with dead secrets made safe in the custody of night. Not a word is spoken. The two men, earnestly bent on their search, walk along with the echoes of their footsteps sounding loudly in their ears; while the tap on the pavement of Fenwick’s stick falls with a musical ring, as though it were gifted with the power, like a magic wand, of chasing the echoes away. When they presently stop at the entrance to the counting-house of Armytage and Company, the detective produces a latchkey, opens the door, and leads the way into the house. As soon as Walter has entered and the door is closed behind him, Fenwick draws forth a dark-lantern, which he flashes unceremoniously in the young clerk’s face. ‘I call this light,’ says Fenwick, ‘my eye.’
Walter stares at it, and blinks.
‘It has peered into and pierced through many a dark deed.—Catch hold!’
Walter, with trembling expectation, takes the lantern.
‘Throw the light upon the keyhole!’ cries Fenwick. ‘I will open the door.’ He rattles, as he speaks, a bunch of keys.
‘Which keyhole first?’ Walter asks.
‘The strong-room.’
Walter shows the way. They pass through the clerks’ office and reach the iron-bound door of the strong-room. The keyhole is rusty with age; and when Fenwick stoops and applies the key, there is a grating sound inside the lock like the grinding of teeth. As soon as the door is thrown open, Walter, with quick-beating heart, flings the light forward into the room; that strange fancy coming over him that his eyes will encounter the ghostly form of the old miser, as he had imagined him that afternoon, wrapped in the white shroud, dancing round his heap of gold. But finding nothing except dark walls, he boldly steps in. The high stool beside the old desk, where he has so often seen Silas Monk sitting and poring over large ledgers, is vacant, and the ledgers are lying about on the desk, closed.
‘Now,’ says Fenwick, ‘give me the lantern.’
Walter complies, and the detective flashes the light about from ceiling to floor. Suddenly the two men are startled by a stifled cry. Fenwick casts his lantern angrily upon Walter’s face, as though he suspects him of having uttered it. The clerk’s eyes are terror-stricken, and his face deadly pale.
‘What’s that?’ asks the detective.
Walter clutches at Fenwick’s wrist. ‘It is the cry which I heard this afternoon.’
‘What do you mean?’
The light of the lantern is still on Walter’s face as he answers: ‘I was seated at my desk. The cry came from this room; but I thought it was a fancy. At that moment Mr Armytage sent for me, and I was afraid, if I mentioned it, that the clerks would laugh at me.’
‘Why?’ asks Fenwick, with surprise. ‘Do you believe in ghosts?’
‘N—no,’ says Walter with some hesitation. ‘But that cry did seem rather ghostly too.’
‘Nonsense! It is Silas Monk.’
‘But it sounded,’ continued Walter, ‘as though it were in this room.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Then it must be his ghost; for there is no living being here except ourselves.’
Fenwick again flashes the light from ceiling to floor, as though to make sure of this. Then he says: ‘Kneel down, my lad. Place your ear to the ground, and listen.’
Walter quickly obeys; and for some minutes a dead silence reigns in the strong-room. The beating of his heart is all that Tiltcroft hears; and all that he is otherwise conscious of is that Fenwick’s ‘eye’ is watching the side of his face uppermost on the floor as he lies there listening. Their patience is presently rewarded. Their ears are filled with another cry, pitiable and more prolonged.
Walter springs to his feet. ‘It is there!’ he cries.
‘Below?’
‘Yes; directly beneath our feet.’
The detective begins to examine the flooring. Inch by inch the ‘eye’ wanders over the ground. An antique threadbare drugget is moved on one side; packets of papers, ledgers, and lumber are shifted from one corner to another. At last Fenwick lights upon a circular hole about the size of a crown-piece, scarcely an inch deep. ‘Ah!’ cries he, ‘now we are on the track.’ He takes from his pocket a penknife, scoops about, and turns up a ring attached to the floor. He puts his large muscular thumb into this ring, and gives a jerk. A patch three or four feet square in the boarding is detached. ‘A trap-door!’ cries Fenwick. ‘Stand clear.’
So it proves—a trap-door, which the detective quickly raises, revealing pitch-darkness in the opening.
‘Go below,’ says Fenwick; ‘I’ll follow.’
Walter looks down, hesitating. But when the light is thrown that way, and he observes that there are steps leading into the obscurity, he takes the lead. The descent seems endless; for he moves slowly, as Fenwick, coming after him, throws the light upon him. Walter hears the hard breathing of the detective, and it sounds so strange in the stillness that he holds his own breath to listen. Suddenly the light from the lantern falls upon something which glitters on the ground on all sides.
‘Gold!’ cries Walter. His feet touch the ground. He stoops and picks up a handful of sovereigns. ‘The place is a vault, and it is paved with gold.—What’s that?’ He points to something in one corner like a human form.
The detective steps forward and bends down, throwing the light upon a ghastly wrinkled face. The small eyes glitter like the gold, as though they had caught the reflection, and the long lean fingers are clutching sovereigns and raking them up. Fenwick touches the miser on the shoulder. ‘What is all this?’ asks he. ‘Have you lost your senses?’
The old man utters a cry of distress which has in it a ring of madness.
‘Speak to him, my lad,’ says Fenwick. ‘He will perhaps recognise your voice.’
Walter kneels and takes the old miser’s hand. ‘Mr Monk,’ says he, ‘do you know me? I am Walter Tiltcroft, your friend.’
Silas Monk looks up, bursts into a wild fit of laughter, and then falls back senseless.
The detective lifts the old man in his strong arms as though handling a child. ‘Ascend the ladder!’ cries he quickly to Walter, ‘and show a light; not a moment must be lost in getting the old man home.’
Silas Monk was taken back to his tumble-down dwelling in the dismal row, and was tended with all possible care by his devoted grand-daughter. His recovery to a certain point was rapid. But the mental condition was curiously impaired. His brain had lost its force; no recollection of the past survived. His memory seemed to have fled into darkness, and to be resting there and sleeping—a darkness into which it was safer not to admit a single ray of light. This was the bitter irony displayed by nature when granting to this old miser a further extension to his lease of life. For time out of mind, Silas Monk had been governed by a master-passion—his only thought that of hoarding gold. The glitter, like sunlight, had pierced his cold heart, and had helped to keep it beating; and it would almost seem as though the warmth which this gold had driven into his veins still lingered there, and helped to sustain vitality, even when the memory which had given birth to all this agitation was dead.
It had been thought advisable by those who study the mysterious workings of the mind, that gold should be concealed from the sight of Silas Monk, and, if possible, even the sound of it, in order that his memory might rest dormant and his life be prolonged.
One evening the old man was seated in his armchair before the fire, with closed eyes. Rachel sat on a low stool at his feet, holding his hand. On the other side of the hearth was Walter Tiltcroft.
‘Walter,’ said the girl in a low voice, ‘you hardly know how happy I am, now that grandfather can give me all his love. He thinks no more about his’——She stopped, and looked up at her grandfather’s face, frightened that even the mention of gold should reach his ears.
‘Ah!’ cried Walter with a sigh, ‘how many are there, I wonder, in this old city whose minds would be less disturbed if that precious word was forbidden to be uttered in their presence? Does not your grandfather already look less pale and haggard than he did a few weeks ago?’
‘Indeed, he does,’ replied Rachel. ‘He remembers both of us when we are near him. He seems to need nothing now except our affection.’
Walter took the girl’s disengaged hand and said: ‘Rachel! Let me be near you and him. Why should we not be one, and watch over grandfather together?’
At the young man’s words, a look of rapture crossed the girl’s face. ‘Dear Walter,’ cried she, ‘that is all I wish for in this world!’ She spoke like a true and tender woman—from her heart. Seated there by that homely fireside, with the only two beings who were dear to her, she never thought, or cared to think, that all the gold which Walter Tiltcroft and the detective had found in the vault below the strong-room in Crutched Friars would one day belong to her—that, when her grandfather died, she would be a great heiress—worth, indeed, some thousands of pounds. All she thought of, with that look of rapture in her face, was that she had gained Walter Tiltcroft’s love.
Meanwhile, Joe Grimrood having been accused of the robbery in Crutched Friars, was tried, and convicted. Thereupon, he made a full confession. For some days before committing the theft, he had watched Silas Monk from the scaffolding, after the rest of the workmen had gone. Through a chink in the old shutter he had observed every movement of the old miser. He had seen Silas Monk raise the trap-door which led into the vault; he had seen him descend with his lantern, and bring up bag after bag of gold, and pour it out on the desk before him. Watching in Crutched Friars, after having been shown to the door by Walter Tiltcroft, he had seen the young clerk leave the premises. Re-entering the house by means of a key which he had taken the precaution to forge, he had gone straight to the strong-room, where he had met with unexpected resistance. Silas Monk had displayed, according to Grimrood’s statement, almost supernatural strength; defending his gold as a tigress defends her young ones, with a savage leap at the workman’s throat. When utterly exhausted, Grimrood had carried Silas down into the vault and had closed the trap-door upon him. Then, having placed all the gold with which the desk was covered, into the bags, the burglar had decamped, making his way to the docks, and securing a berth on board an emigrant ship which was on the point of departure for the high seas.
Thus it happened that, but for the shrewdness and energy of the detective, Joe Grimrood would have started on a voyage to Australia with, as it appeared, nearly a thousand pounds in hard cash belonging to Silas; and the old miser himself would in all probability have been left to die in the vault under the strong-room in Crutched Friars, and ‘the mystery of Silas Monk’ would have remained a mystery to the present day.
All this occurred some years ago. Silas Monk is long dead; and Walter Tiltcroft, who married the old miser’s grand-daughter, is now a merchant-prince. He purchased, soon after the death of Mr Armytage, a partnership in the great firm; and thus the gold which old Silas had hoarded up in Crutched Friars proved the means, to a great extent, of making Walter Tiltcroft’s fortune.