Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 42

“Rummy, that, certainly,” Colin commented. “And no particulars?”

“No particulars whatever. The result was that the chemical world got the notion that he had something up his sleeve—something big; but exactly what it was they couldn’t define. If they’d gone into committee and pooled all they’d heard individually I doubt if they’d have made much out of it. The nearest thing was when he was put up to speak at a Chem. Soc. dinner. He’d mixed his drinks a bit, and in proposing a toast he turned aside to make a lot of sneering remarks about the ‘fiddling methods’ and ‘paltry results’ of the transmutationists. Without putting it into plain words, he made it sound as if he were an expert patting a lot of beginners on the back for their little efforts. I heard that speech myself. It was in damnably bad taste, but that made it all the more convincing, in a way.”

“What sort of man is he?” Colin interjected.

“I’ve never spoken to him in my life,” Northfleet explained. “But I’ve watched him often at meetings of the Chemical. He’s an egotist of the extreme sort. Number One is all that counts with him. That sticks out all over him. He built up no school at the Adelphi College, because he took care that no student working with him ever got a spark of the credit. ‘We’ simply wasn’t in his dictionary. It was ‘I’ all the time. ‘I was the first worker in this line’: ‘I foresaw this difficulty and I devised means to get over it’; ‘I brought out the important fact that—’; ‘I said the last word on this subject in my paper of such-and-such a date’; and so on and so forth. He quarrelled with all his old students, too; and with most of his colleagues as well, I’ve heard. Naturally he wasn’t liked. But a clever man can do without people’s liking—up to a point at any rate.”

“Don’t flatter him, do you?” was Colin’s comment.

There was a personal note in Northfleet’s description, in spite of his carefully-assumed indifference; and Colin now had little difficulty in guessing the origin of it. With an effort he refrained from making the obvious identification aloud. It would come better when he had listened to the whole story, he felt.

“Well,” Northfleet continued, without noticing the interruption, “things went on like this for a while. Then, in 1924, he walked up Tower Hill, dropped in at the Royal Mint, dumped some gold on the counter, and demanded payment. In those days you could insist on having gold of a certain purity converted into sovereigns. Naturally, they didn’t take his word for it. The stuff was assayed, and it turned out to be what he said it was—fairly pure gold. They had to pay him for it. I’ve been told that he went back several times, always with sound stuff, and in fair quantities too.”

Colin had no need to feign interest. With the gold brick in his pocket and the mysteries of Ruffa in his mind, he wanted to hurry Northfleet’s narrative, for he could see whither it was trending.

“In 1925,” Northfleet resumed, “that little game came to an end. Free coinage of bullion at the Royal Mint was abolished. I don’t suppose he had much difficulty in finding an alternative market. The fact that he had sold his stuff to the Mint was pretty convincing. And any jeweller who bought from him would take good care to have the stuff assayed by an independent expert. It wasn’t spot-pure gold, but it was quite worth refining. It varied from sample to sample. There was always a fair amount of silver in it, some copper, and a little platinum. These, in case you don’t know, are impurities found in specimens of natural gold, at times. Here are the results of the analysis of a sample of Leven’s gold. The figures are percentages.”

He handed over a paper and Colin read :

“Seems to be a lot of silver in the stuff,” Colin commented.

“Not more than you find in some specimens of native gold,” Northfleet assured him. “I’ve seen analyses of some Transylvanian gold where the silver content went as high as thirty-eight per cent. Gold and silver always seem to be associated in Nature.”

“This percentage business conveys nothing definite to me,” Colin admitted, tapping the paper as he spoke. “What’s the fineness of this stuff? How many carats?”

“Round about fifteen. Pure gold’s reckoned as twenty-four carat.”

“How do you know these figures are O.K.?” Colin demanded in a slightly sceptical tone.

“Because I did the analysis myself. You needn’t ask me who gave me the stuff. I shan’t tell you that,” said Northfleet bluntly.

Colin thought he could read between the lines. Some jeweller had employed Northfleet to make the assay. Naturally, he could not give his employer away. It was stretching things quite far enough to show the analytical results.

“So much for that,” Northfleet went on. “I’ve no notion how much gold Leven managed to get off his hands through the jewellers and bullion dealers. His sales varied in amount and were at irregular intervals; but judging by his standard of living he must have driven a pretty brisk trade. And then, apparently, somebody split. The thing leaked out, anyhow. A couple of cheap sensational papers came out one day with a portrait of Leven and headlines: ‘Alchemists’ Dreams Come True’; ‘British Scientist Makes Gold’; ‘Interview With The Inventor and all the rest of it.

“That interview was a bit curious. Leven took the stand that he was a purely scientific person; the process was still in its early stages; he didn’t care to say much about it just yet; in due course his results would be communicated to the chemical journals, etc., etc. That choked off the journalists—too dull for them. So they dropped the thing instanter. As for the man in