CHAPTER VI.
[OSCAR LEIGH'S CAVE OF MAGIC.]
When Mr. Oscar Leigh emerged from the door of the public house, he crossed to the other side of Welbeck Place and moved rapidly along the front of Forbes's bakery until he reached the private entrance to that house. Then he opened the door with a latch-key and entered. In the hall there was nothing but a small hand-truck standing up against the wall. He ascended four flights of stairs, found himself opposite the door of his flat, opened that door with another latch-key, and went in.
The door at the head of the stairs rose up from the edge of the topmost step so that there was no landing outside it. The whole depth of the landing was enclosed by the door and belonged to the tenant. The little man slammed the door behind him and went down a passage leading east. He came to the sitting-room, passed through it, then through the sleeping chamber beyond and thence into a completely dark passage, out of which opened two doors, one into the sleeping chamber from which he had come, and one into the workshop or clock-room. The latter door he unlocked with a small patent key. He pushed the door open very cautiously. Before the space between the edge and the jamb was an inch wide, some small object placed on the inside against the door, fell with a slight noise. He now pushed boldly, entered, and closed the door behind him. It shut with a snap and he was locked in.
The noise of some object falling had been caused by the over-turning of a small metal egg-cup on the floor. It had been so placed that the door could not be pushed open from the passage without upsetting it, for a strip of wood two inches wide was fixed on the door an inch and a half from the ground and this ledge touched the egg-cup while the door was shut and pressed against the upper rim of the cup the moment the door began to move inward. Around the spot on which the vessel had fallen spread a little pool of liquid on the floor.
Leigh stooped, dipped the tip of his long thin left forefinger in the liquid and then touched the top of his tongue with the wet tip of his finger. A gleam of satisfaction and triumph shone on his face. "Sweet," he whispered, as he straightened his crooked figure. "Sweet as sugar! Any fool who wanted to find if his sanctuary had been defiled by strange feet during his absence might think of placing a vessel of water against the inside of his door There is nothing easier than to draw it up close to the door from the outside. All you have to do is to place the vessel on a long slip of paper in the line of the door, and then, having shut the door, draw the paper carefully under the door and away from beneath the vessel. The ground must be level and the paper smooth, and you must have a nice ear and a steady hand. Any fool could manage that.
"Then if defiling hands opened the door and overturned the vessel and spilt the water, and the hands belonged to a head that wasn't that quite of a fool, the hands could replace the vessel full of water against the shut door as it had first been placed there. But the sugar was a stroke of genius, of ray genius! Who that did not know the secret would think of putting sugar in the water?" Leigh touched his tongue again with the tip of his finger. "Sweet as honey. Here is conclusive proof that my sanctuary has been inviolate while I have been from home. Poor Williams! A useful man in his way; very. One of those men you turn to account and then fling on a dung-hill to rot. A worthy soul. I have succeeded in my first great experiment. I wonder how it goes with my dumb deputy of last night? Ha-ha-ha!"
He turned away from the door and confronted a thicket of shafts and rods and struts and girders and pipes and pulleys and wheels and drums and chains and levers and cranks and weights and springs and cones and cubes and hammers and cords and bands and bells and bellows and gongs and reeds, through all of which moved a strange weird tremulousness and plaintive perpetual low sounds, and little whispers of air and motion, as though some being, hitherto uncreate, were about to take visible life out of inertia, and move in the form of a vast harmonious entity in which all this distracting detail of movement would emerge into homogeneous life.
From where Oscar Leigh stood, contemplating his machine, it would be absolutely impossible for anything stouter than a wand to reach the one window through the interminable complicacies of the clock.
Again a look of satisfaction and triumph came into his narrow swarthy face as he muttered, "Even if anyone had got as far as where I stand, he could stir no further without unintentionally blazing his way as plainly as ever woodman did with axe in Canadian forest."