“The man we are looking for, madam,” he said carefully. “The man who did forge the guinea which your husband was foolish enough to pass off. He is very likely French. He is perhaps a man with teeth
To my surprise, for I had never heard this description before Newton gave it utterance, Mrs. Berningham started to nod, even before my master had finished speaking.
“But, Doctor Newton,” she exclaimed. “Surely you have met my husband.”
“I have not yet had that pleasure,” said Newton.
Mrs. Berningham looked at me. “Then you must have described him to the Doctor.”
“No, madam,” said I.
“Then how do you seem to describe him so well? For ’tis true, he has not been well of late.”
“It is no matter for now,” said Newton.
Newton’s coach drew up at Mrs. Berningham’s address in Milk Street and we set her down, whereupon my master cautioned her to return to the Whit only in daylight when her safety might be better assured.
“But how did you know Berningham’s appearance?” I asked, when she had gone up to the door of her house. “A man you have never seen nor heard of before. And yet Mrs. Berningham recognised him from your description.”
And upon my asking, Newton smiled a quiet little smile so that I thought how he seemed rather pleased with himself. “‘He giveth wisdom unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things: he knoweth what is in the darkness and the light dwelleth with him.’ The Book of Daniel, chapter two, verses twenty-one to twenty-two.”
I confess that I was a little piqued at Newton’s enigmatic resort to the scriptures, for it seemed to confirm in my mind that he enjoyed confounding me, which made me feel and no doubt look mighty ill-humoured, so that my master patted my knee, like a spaniel methought, although his speech was full of much warmth and good intent toward me.
“Oh come, sir, this will not do. I would know if I am to improve myself.”
“Rest assured, my dear young friend, that you who have saved my life shall know my complete confidence. The description was furnished easily enough. Whoever forged that guinea has had a prolonged acquaintance with mercury, which produces in a man all the ill effects that were described: the blackened teeth, the tremulous hands, the great thirst. I might also have mentioned the unsoundness of mind. These effects are not generally known. I only discovered them myself as a result of a great distemper with which I was afflicted during the year of 1693, when I almost lost my mind through much experimentation in my laboratory.
“All of which leads me to suppose that the lady tells us much less than she knows.”
“How is that?”
“She told us that her husband was merely passing off the bad coin as good, when the substance of the matter is that he did forge them himself. Berningham is almost certainly the man who has perfected the
Newton instructed his coachman to drive to the Tower and from thence back to Jermyn Street.
“I have a favour to ask of you: that Miss Barton shall be told nothing of tonight’s adventure. She is a sensitive child, prey to all sorts of imaginings, and it would greatly inconvenience me if every time I went abroad, she were to detain me with questions regarding the safety of my person. My duties on behalf of the Mint are the only matters on which I am happy for my niece to remain in complete ignorance.”
“Depend upon it, sir. I shall be the very model of discretion where that young lady is concerned.”
Newton bowed his head to me.
“But,” I said, “since I now dare to enjoy your complete confidence, sir, I would take advantage of that to remind you of a matter in which my own continuing ignorance is an affront to me. I would ask if you have had any further thoughts regarding the death of George Macey, of whose murder you bade me to remain silent. And, if you have, I would be grateful if you would share them with me, for I do confess that my own predecessor’s death still much occupies my thoughts.”
“You do well to remind me of it,” said Newton. “But I have not lacked for diligence in obtaining more information.
“Macey was, by several accounts, a most diligent man, but not an educated one, although he does seem to have made an attempt at improving himself. None of this amounted to very much, however, and it seems that Macey often had recourse to consult the mind of a man I suspect was one of Macey’s informers, a goldsmith by the name of St. Leger Scroope. Oddly it is a name that I seem to be familiar with, although I have been unable to fathom why. And since Mister Scroope was to have been out of the country until about this time, I confess I have not pursued the matter any further, and therefore your reminder is most opportune. We shall try and visit Mister Scroope tomorrow, at his place of business in the Strand. It may be that he can shed some further light on a letter written in a foreign language that was rumoured to have come into Macey’s possession, about which, according to Mister Alingham, the Tower carpenter who was a friend of his, Macey was much exercised to comprehend.”
Out of the coach window I saw the familiar castellated outline of the Tower appear in the moonshine like King Priam’s city bathed in the glow of Zeus’s silvery eye. The coach pulled up at the Middle Tower, close by the Barbican wherein the lions restlessly groaned, and set me down upon the esplanade. Before closing the door behind me, Newton leaned out into the cold and feral-smelling night, for the wild beasts below did much pollute the air with their excrements, to speak to me one last word before I took my leave of him.
“Meet me outside the water tower at York Buildings tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, when we shall call upon Mister Scroope. And after that we may visit this Berningham fellow at the Whit.”
Then Newton rapped on the roof of the coach with his stick and the little red chariot was rattling away to the west, along Thames Street.
I turned and approached the guard near the Byward Tower, who was well away from his post, and for a moment I stopped to talk with him, for it was always my habit to try to improve relations between the Mint and the Ordnance. We spoke of how to keep warm on duty, and which Tower was the most haunted, since I never walked about the Tower at night without being afeared to see some spirit or apparition. For shame I could not help it; and yet to speak in my own defence, so many dreadful things had happened there that if anywhere be haunted it might be the Tower. The guard believed that the Jewel Tower, also known as the Martin Tower, was a place of many ghostly legends. But we were soon joined in this conversation by Sergeant Rohan, who knew the Tower as well as any man.
“Every quarter has its own ghostly legends,” opined Sergeant Rohan, who was a great burly figure of a man, almost as wide as he was tall. “But no part is so scrupulously avoided as the Salt Tower, which, it is said, is much disturbed by spirits. As you know yourself, Mister Twistleton, the Armourer, saw a ghost there, which is what lost him his wits. I myself have heard and felt things there I know not how to explain, except to say that their origin be malign and supernatural. Many Jesuit priests were tortured there, in the lower dungeon. You may see the Latin inscriptions carved upon the wall by the hand of one.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He was taken to York in 1595,” said Rohan, “where he was burned alive.”
“Poor fellow,” said I.
Rohan laughed. “Think you so? He was a very fanatical sort of Roman Catholic. Doubtless he would have done the same to many a poor Protestant.”
“Perhaps so,” I admitted. “But it is a very poor sort of philosophical argument that we should do unto others before they do unto us.”
“I doubt there are many philosophers who could know what a needful capacity for cruelty most Roman Catholics have,” insisted the Sergeant. “Dreadful things were done to the Protestants in France during the
