“Most specifically the stone in the dead man’s mouth, the red lion, and the raven. All of these are possessed of a significance that only one who was versed in the golden game might understand.”
“Do you mean that alchemy is somehow involved?”
“It is a strong possibility.”
“Then tell me what these things mean.”
“That would take too long.” Newton picked the stone off the table and turned it over in his hand. “These things are a message, just as surely as the cipher in this paper, and both must be understood if we are to solve this matter. The meaning of these alchemical signs may be merely allegorical; but I’m certain this cipher contains the key to everything. These are no ordinary coiners with whom we are dealing, but men of learning and resource.”
“And yet they were careless to leave that written message on Mister Kennedy’s body,” said I. “Even if it is a cipher. For ciphers can be broken, can they not?”
Newton frowned, and for a moment I almost believed I had said something else that disagreed with him.
“As always, your thinking troubles me,” he said, quietly, and folding the cat’s ears. “You are right. They might be very careless. But I rather think that they are confident that the cipher will not yield its secret easily. For the message is so short, otherwise I might begin to divine the method in it. And yet by thinking upon this matter continually, I may yet play Oedipus to this particular riddle.”
A heavy step was heard upon the stairs, at which Newton pronounced that the sentinel was returned and that he would be very surprised if Daniel Mercer was accompanying him. An instant later the sentinel came into the Mint office and confirmed what my master had suspected, that Daniel Mercer was not to be found in the whole Tower of London.
“Mister Ellis,” said Newton, “what should be our next course of action?”
“Why, sir, to search for him at his place of lodging. Which I have already made a note of from the employment records in the Mint, after Scotch Robin and John Hunter named him as a likely culprit. Mercer lives across the river, in Southwark.”
We left the Tower at around five of the clock and walked across London Bridge though it was no fair weather and still very cold. Despite the early hour, we found the bridge already congested with people and their animals journeying to the market at Smithfield, and we were obliged to push our way through the arches underneath the tall and elaborate houses that sometimes make the bridge seem more like a series of Venetian palazzos than the city’s only thoroughfare across the Thames.
At the southern end of the bridge, on the Surrey Shore, we came past the footbridge by the Bear Garden, walked around St. Mary Overies and, near The Axe Tavern, between a tanner’s shop and a currier—for Southwark was home to all sorts of leather workers—we found the house where Daniel Mercer had his lodgings.
Mercer’s landlady, who was a most lovely-looking woman, suffered us to come indoors where she told us that she had not seen Mister Mercer since the day before and was now much concerned at his continuing absence. Hearing this, my master counterfeited much anxiety on Mercer’s behalf and, explaining that we were come especially from His Majesty’s Mint, begged to see his rooms that we might find some clue to his whereabouts and perhaps thereby assure ourselves that the injury to his person we suspected had not been received. At which Mrs. Allen, for that was the woman’s name, straightaway admitted us to Mister Mercer’s lodgings, and with tears in her eyes so that I thought she and Mercer were pretty close.
A table covered with green felt occupied the centre of the room, beside a chair on which lay a fine beaver hat, and in the corner stood an uncomfortable-looking truckle bed which was the twin of the one on which I had slept at Gray’s Inn. Such is the life of a bachelor. On top of the table lay an egg, a sword, and several books much torn up, as if the reader had been piqued by the writer, which is a thing I have sometimes been tempted to do myself with a bad book.
“Have you admitted anyone else in here since you last saw Mister Mercer?” Newton enquired of Mrs. Allen.
“It’s strange you should ask that, sir,” said Mrs. Allen. “Last night, I awoke and thought I heard someone in here, but when I came to look to see if it was Mercer, there was no one. And the room looked as you see it now. Which was not at all as Mercer would have left it, for he is a most careful man in his habits, sir, and is very fond of his books, so he is. It is all most alarming and strange to me, sir.”
“Does the sword belong to Mister Mercer?” he asked.
“One sword looks much like another to me, sir,” said Mrs. Allen and, folding her arms as if she was afraid to touch it, stared at it most circumspectly. “But I reckon it’s Mercer’s right enough. His father’s sword, it was.”
“The green tablecloth. Do you recognise that?”
“Never seen it before in me life, sir. And Lord only knows what a goose egg is doing on the table. Mercer couldn’t abide the taste of eggs.”
“Do you lock your door at night, Mrs. Allen?”
“Always, sir. Southwark isn’t Chelsea yet.”
“And did Mister Mercer have a key?”
“Yes sir. But Mercer was never in the habit of lending it.”
“And was your door locked when you rose this morning?”
“Yes sir. So that I almost thought I must have dreamed I heard someone in here. And yet I am certain Mercer would not have torn up these books. These books were his chief enjoyment, sir.”
Newton nodded. “I wonder if I might trouble you for some water, Mrs. Allen?”
“Water, sir? You don’t want water, not on a cold morning like this one. It is too heavy to be good for the health and will give you the stone if you’re not careful. We can do better than that for gentlemen such as yourselves. Will you take some good Lambeth ale, sir?”
Newton said we would, and with great pleasure, although it remained plain to me that in asking for water his intention had only been to remove the woman from Mercer’s room so that he might search it. This he proceeded to do and all the while commented on the appearance of the room, which he found mighty interesting.
“The emerald table, egg, sword, without doubt this is another message,” he said.
The mention of the sword prompted me to pick it up and examine it with the same judicious care Newton himself might have brought to the matter. He himself drew open a small cabinet drawer and examined a box of candles while I brandished the rapier in the air as Mister Figg, my fencing master, had once taught me. “This is an Italian cup-hilted rapier,” I said. “Ivory grip. The hilt deep-cut and well-pierced and engraved with some scrolling foliage. The blade of the lozenge section signed by Solingen, although the bladesmith’s name is illegible.” I tried the edge against my thumb. “Sharp, too. I should say this is a gentleman’s sword.”
“Very good,” said Newton. “If Mrs. Allen had not told us the sword belonged to Mercer’s father, we should now know everything about it.”
Newton, who was still examining the candles thoughtfully, caught sight of my disappointment, and smiled at me. “Never mind, my dear young fellow. You have told us one thing. That Mercer had seen better days than is evident from his present circumstances.”
I waited for him to make some disclosure about the candles, but when he did not, my curiosity got the better of me, and I did look at them myself. “They are beeswax,” said I. “I would have expected tallow candles in Southwark. Mercer was not one for economy. Perhaps he had not lost a taste for better living.”
“You are improving all the time,” said Newton.
“But what do they signify? What is their meaning?”
“Their meaning?” Newton replaced the candles in the drawer and said, “They are for light.”
“Is that all?” I grumbled, seeing that he had mocked me.
“Is that all?” He smiled a most damnedly supercilious smile. “All things appear to us and are understood through light. If fear of the darkness had not plagued the heathen, he would not have been blinded by false gods like the Sun and the Moon, and he, too, might have taught us to worship our true author and benefactor as his ancestors did under the government of Noah and his sons, before they corrupted themselves. I have given much to understand light. Once I almost sacrificed the sight in one eye to its understanding by experimentation. I took a blunted bodkin and put it between my eye and the bone as near to the backside of my eye as I could. And pressing my eye with the end of it, so as to make the curvature in my eye, there appeared several white, dark, and coloured
