Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 51, February 1948

The black stone of Dr. Dee by Lillian de la Torre (as narrated by James Boswell, March 1771)

In September 1947 D. Appleton-Century published villainy detected, a simply gorgeous anthology of real-life crimes of a certain period in English history, edited by our foremost authority on 18th century crime-and-detection, Lillian de la Torre. Miss de la Torre, you will remember, had her first fiction published by EQMM — the brilliant series of historical detective stories later issued in book form as DR. SAM: JOHNSON, DETECTOR. To give you just a hint of the flavor, atmosphere, and pungency of Miss de la Torre’s anthology, let us quote the title and subtitle in full: villainy detected: Being a Collection of the most sensational True Crimes and the most notorious Real Criminals that blotted the name of Britain in the Years 1660 to 1800: By Various Hands: The Whole collected together and embellished with Observations historical, moral, and critical.

This festival of crime celebrates the Extraordinary and Daring Exploits of such picturesque scoundrels as Jack Sheppard, whom no jail could hold; Swift Nicks of the famous ride to York; James Maclaine, the sentimental Gentleman Highwayman; Lieutenant Richardson, the amorous pirate; thief-takers and thief-makers; horse-stealers, poachers, smugglers, house-breakers, foot-pads — rogues and renegades all, bloody malefactors, their villainy display’d, unmask’d, and detect’d by such illustrious oldstyle chroniclers of crime as Daniel DeFoe, Jonathan Swift, and Sir Walter Scott, and such equally renowned modem reporters of crime as Edmund Pearson, William Roughead, and Raymond Postgate. And as an extra dividend of sheer detectival delight Miss de la Torre includes in this rich and raffish tapestry of a book an original short story of her own, “The Disappearing Servant Wench,” in which her real-life detector, Dr. Sam: Johnson, grapples with the Elizabeth Canning mystery, “turning upon it the full beam of his penetrating intellect.”

If you are a collector or connoisseur of crime, Lillian de la Torre’s anthology is a “must” volume for your shelves; if you are a plain fan or fancy aficionado of crime, villainy detected is equally a “must” on your reading list; if you care not a hoot for crime, fictional or real, and have not the remotest notion as to the difference between cly-fakers and Abram coves, beak: runners and hornies, wipe prigging and lully prigging — why, in that case, simply read the book for its scholarship, authenticity, humor, and superb entertainment.

One picture is worth a thousand words: one sample is worth a thousand recommendations. If you are not familiar with the quality of Miss de la Torre’s workmanship, read her newest story about Dr. Sam: Johnson — “The Black Stone of Dr. Dee.”

Author’s note: It was Horace Walpole himself who posed this problem, in the letter with which the story opens. I give it as it came from the famous letter-writer’s quill pen in the spring of 1771, with only a word or two interpolated by my typewriter.

Mr. Walpole s castle, his book, his unbalanced nephew, his Thespian ten ant, and his ducal neighbours, are all drawn from the life; except that the real Duke of Argyle was staunchly loyal to the Hanoverian King, and his brother to him.

The Black Stone of Dr. Dee now reposes in the British Museum. If it should be subjected to those experiments in natural philosophy practised upon it by Dr. Sam: Johnson, I cannot guarantee what might be discovered.

“ ’Tis a strange kind of thief, my dear George,” wrote Horace Walpole, on a day in March, 1771, “that goes to the devil’s own trouble to break and enter, and then goes away with nothing for his trouble, not even a golden guinea out of a drawer full of them. But stay, you shall have the tale from the beginning.

“ ’Twas Monday I had a courier from cousin Conway to tell me that my house in Arlington Street had been broken open in the night, and all my cabinets and trunks forced and plundered.

“I was a good quarter of an hour before I recollected that it was very becoming to have philosophy enough not to care about what one does care for, if you don’t care there’s no philosophy in bearing it. I despatched my upper servant, breakfasted, fed the bantams as usual, and made no more hurry to town than Cincinnatus would if he had lost a basket of turnips. I left in my drawers 270 I. of bank bills and three hundred guineas, not to mention all my gold and silver coins, some inestimable miniatures, a little plate, and a good deal of furniture, under no guard but that of two maidens.

“When I arrived, I found in three different chambers three cabinets, a large chest, and a glass case of china wide open, the locks not picked, but forced, and the doors of them broken to pieces. The miracle was, that I did not find the least thing missing!

“In the cabinet of modern medals, there were, and so there are still, a series of English coins, with downright John Trot guineas, half-guineas, shillings, sixpences, and every kind of current money. Not a single piece was removed. Just so in the Greek and Roman cabinet; though in the latter were some drawers of papers, which they had tumbled and scattered about the floor. A great exchequer chest, that belonged to my father, the Prime Minister, was in the same room. Not being able to force the lock, the philosophers (for thieves that steal nothing deserve the title much more than Cincinnatus or I) had wrenched a great flapper of brass with such violence as to break it into seven pieces. The trunk contained a new set of chairs of French tapestry, two screens, rolls of prints, and a suit of silver stuff that I had made for the King’s wedding. All was turned topsy-turvy, and nothing stolen.

“In short, they had broken out a panel in the door of the area, and unbarred and unbolted it, and gone out at the street-door, which they left wide open at five o’clock in the morning. A passenger had found it so, and alarmed the maids, one of whom ran naked into the street, and by her cries waked my Lord Romney, who lives opposite.

“All London has fallen to reasoning on this marvellous adventure, and not an argument presents itself that some other does not contradict. I insist that I have a talisman.

“You must know that last winter, being asked by Lord Vere to assist in settling Lady Betty Germaine’s auction, I found in an old catalogue of her collection this article, ‘The Black Stone into which Dr. Dee used to call his spirits’ Dr. Dee, you must know, was a great conjuror in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and has written a folio of the dialogues he held with his imps. I asked eagerly for this stone; Lord Vere said he knew of no such thing hut, if found, it should certainly be at my service. Alas, the stone was gone!

“This winter I was again employed by Lord Frederic Campbell to do him the same service about his late father’s (the Duke of Argyle’s) collection. Among other odd things he produced a round piece of shining black marble in a leathern case, as big as the crown of a hat, and asked me what that possibly could be?

“I screamed out, ‘O Lord, I am the only man in England that can tell you! It is Dr. Dee’s Black Stone!’

“It certainly is; Lady Betty had formerly given away or sold, time out of mind, for she was a thousand years old, that part of the collection which contained natural philosophy. So, or since, the Black Stone had wandered into an auction, for the lotted paper is still on it. The Duke of Argyle, who bought everything, bought it. Lord Frederic gave it to me; and if it was not this magical stone, which is only of high-polished coal, that preserved my chattels, in truth I cannot guess what did.”

Thus, in gay mood, wrote Horace

Walpole to his nephew, Lord Orford; and ’twas Lord Orford who, taking a soberer view, brought the letter to Dr. Sam: Johnson. ’Twas his belief, that the thief who had missed his mark in Arlington Street, might try again, and succeed, at his uncle’s Twickenham estate, the famous Gothick castle of Strawberry Hill.

Dr. Johnson, concurring in this view, found himself forthwith whisked off to Strawberry Hill; and to my delight, for I had never seen the place, Lord Orford accommodated me also with a scat in his chariot.

We found Strawberry Hill to be a little miniature imitation of the Gothick, with lath-and-plaster battlements and a smell of raw wood. Nevertheless, it had every Gothick appurtenance, a chapel a-building in the garden, a great garden-seat like a shell, an oratory with its niches, a hermitage under a bank. A little toy house across the mead housed Kitty Clive, late the darling of the stage.

The chatelain of Strawberry greeted us in the library, when I perceived to my disquiet not only that he had not desired our presence or our assistance, but also that it was far from welcome to him. Indeed he looked at me askance when Orford named me, and knapped his thin lips together with ostentatious and ludicrous determination, as who should say, “Not one word shall pass my lips until this man and his notebook are out of earshot I”

“What the devil do you mean, George,” he muttered aside to Lord Orford, “by bringing ursa major—” by this disrespectful designation he intended Dr. Johnson — “to Strawberry?”

Dr. Johnson, by good fortune, was engrossed at the bookcases, oblivious of all else, but I watched the little passage enthralled. Mankind is my study.

Mr. Walpole is a point-device creature with a faded kind of fineness to his countenance, and large eyes full of sensibility. He frowned pettishly upon his nephew. Lord Orford is higher than his uncle, and broader, and smells of Newmarket. His scalded red countenance and his blank boiled eyes are susceptible of little change of expression, but a kind of grin broadened his loose mouth. He made no reply whatever, merely leered like a codfish, and after a moment our unwilling host shrugged, and dispatched a flunky to conduct us to our chambers.

“The Blue Bedchamber, George. The Red Bedchamber, Dr. Johnson. And for Mr. Boswell, as you affect the Gothick, you shall lie in the Round Tower.”

I heard Orford laughing to himself as he retired to the Blue Bedchamber. He sounded rather as if he could not stop.

Leaving Dr. Johnson at the Red Bedchamber adjoining, I followed my guide the fifty-foot length of the Great Gallery. At the west end a noble Gothick doorway led by way of a passage into the newly-completed Round Tower, which on this floor housed a handsome drawing-room. The flunky conducted me to the Round Bedchamber above, on the two-pair-of-stairs floor.

I took a romantick satisfaction in lodging in the Tower. The windows were mere slits set in deep embrasures. Opposite the bed hung a noble portrait of a gentleman in tilting-armour; he held his casque in his hand. Over the deep fireplace was Hogarth’s portrait of Sarah Malcolm the Temple murderess, which he painted in Newgate the night before her execution. In her uneasy company I erased the stains of travel before descending.

I found a distinguished company gathering in the Round Tower drawing-room. Mr. Walpole named me to them rather as if I had been a slug upon his roses. To my intense satisfaction, I found myself greeting the noble company upon a footing of acquaintanceship and mutual respect. They were Mr. Walpole’s neighbour, the Duke of Argyle, his brother Lord Frederic Campbell, and Lord Frederic’s lady, Lady Mary.

I stared covertly upon Lady Mary’s sweet face. She was the relict of the notorious Lawrence, Earl Ferrers, who for her sake murdered his steward, and was hanged for it. Suffering had stamped its mark upon her, but she held her head proudly.

To my mingled relief and chagrin, the Duchess was not one of us. She was the most famous beauty of the age. She had come to London a raw Irish girl, so beautiful she could not walk in St. James’s Park without a mob attending her; she had married the Duke of Hamilton at midnight with a ring from the bed-curtains; and when she tried to obtain for their son the Douglas patrimony, among the attorneys who defeated her was your humble servant, James Boswell — but that is all another story. Now she was by a second marriage the Duchess of Argyle — and what would she say to James Boswell?

“My wife will follow,” the Duke told Mr. Walpole, “in the carriage. The boy is ailing, and engages her attention.”

“I fear you will never raise him,” said Lady Mary gently.

“Nay, ma’am, he blooms in Argyle; ’tis but the air of London sends him into a decline.”

“Pray, Mr. Walpole,” Lord Frederic diverted the conversation, “has Dr. Johnson seen the treasures of Strawberry?”

“No, sir,” replied our host, “he is newly arrived this past hour.”

“May not he see them now,” begged Lord Frederic, “and we will all assist in the perambulation, and thus expend our time until our table at cards is complete?”

I thought the Duke looked mighty bored, as the new saying is; but Dr. Johnson bowed polite acquiescence, and Mr. Walpole seized upon the proposal with enthusiasm.

A great fire burned in the gallery as we admired the paintings with which the walls were hung, and the antique marbles that lined the hall.

“Make way,” cried a deep rich voice with a chuckle in it, “for still another of Horde’s antiques!”

Into the gallery like a City Company’s state barge surged Kitty Clive, the beloved actress, now a hearty ample woman of some sixty years.

Orford, up to this time sunk in the sullens, brightened at sight of her.

“Damme,” he shouted, “filly or mare, ’tis all one to me! Have at thee, Kitty!”

He rumpled her, and had a box o’ the car for his pains.

“God bless you, Horrie,” cried Clive, spying my philosophick friend, “God bless you for bringing us Dr. Johnson. Sure I love to sit next to Dr. Johnson; he always entertains me.”

So saying, she greeted the philosopher with a hearty buss, which Dr. Johnson, who esteemed himself for his gallant attentions to the ladies, returned with interest.

I was assessing Mistress Clive’s ample frame, her broad red nose shining like the sun in her broad red face, her brocade gown as red, when turning to me she greeted me with a great smacking kiss. She smelled of otto and sillabubs.

In the hubbub of greeting the Clive, who must perforce buss every man present, the Duchess of Argyle slipped quietly into the gallery. She wore pale grey, her colour was high, she greeted no one.

“The boy?” asked the Duke quietly.

The little mouse feet of age were clearly visible at the Duchess’s eyes.

“He mends,” she said, “he has purged, and he mends.”

From the gallery we passed into the Tribune, which lay by the Round Tower. As the gentlemen stood back to bow the ladies through the door, Lady Mary, who stood nighest, made as if to enter. The Duchess touched her sleeve. Lady Mary stood still the length of a heart beat. Then the colour stained her throat, and she drew back with downcast eyes to give her sister-in-law precedence. A little sigh escaped her lips. Behind the Duchess Kitty Clive flounced through with her blunt nose at an even sharper angle than the beautiful Duchess’s chiselled one, burlesque in every waggle of her draperies. Dr. Johnson permitted himself a faint smile, Walpole looked pinched, and Orford guffawed; but the Campbells ignored the little scene.

The Tribune was a curious barroco room, shaped like a square, with four bays. A star of yellow glass centered the ceiling. Here were housed many of our host’s choicest objects of curiosity. We gazed upon the dagger of Henry VIII, the silver-studded comb of Mary Queen of Scots, and the red hat of Cardinal Wolsey. In a glazed china cabinet we came upon the Black Stone of Dr. Dee. Everyone, Campbells included, crowded about to stare at it. Mr. Walpole was exalted as a showman.

“ ’Tis my newest treasure,” said he, “the generous gift of the Duke of Argyle by his brother, Lord Frederic—” the brothers acknowledged his bow — “You must know, Dr. Johnson, that Dee was an alchemist, and made gold for the King of Bohemia; and into this gazing-glass he was wont to call his spirits.”

On the side of the leather case a slip of paper was untidily affixed. Mr. Walpole untrussed the points and displayed to our curious eyes a polished black sphere, which rolled and came to rest on the china cabinet shelf.

“Pray, Mr. Walpole,” said Dr. Johnson, “will not you place this object in a place of safety?”

“Sir,” said Walpole, “Strawberry Hill is a place of safety. We are not plagued, as Fleet Street, by light-fingered gentry.”

“Or,” said I, “Arlington Street.”

I had for reply a freezing stare, as Walpole replaced the stone and conducted the party to the library.

We were forced to admire this spacious chamber. A large window looked east, topped with stained glass, with a rose window at each side. The room was lined with books, arranged in Gothick arches of pierced work. To them my learned friend devoted his attention, blinking at the titles in the candle-light.

I picked up from a bureau a book lying by itself, richly bound in morocco and stamped with the Walpole arms.

“Well, Mr. Boswell,” came the thin voice of our host at my elbow, “what say you to my little Gothick romance?”

“Why, sir,” I replied, “nothing, for I have never read it.”

Walpole smiled sourly.

“This, Mr. Boswell, is an ignorance not invincible. You shall have the reading of this very copy.”

“Do,” says Clive, “for you’ve never read it’s like. It consists of ghosts and enchantments; pictures walk out of their frames; armour is heard to clank, and helmets drop from the moon. Horrie says, it came to him in a dream, and sure I fancy ’twas a dream when he had some feverish disposition on him.”

I accepted of the volume eagerly. With such a prospect in store, I regretted having pledged myself to take a hand at loo; I was in haste to be at it. Dr. Johnson excused himself. He never plays at cards, preferring to supply the vacuity of life with conversation; which failing, he betook himself to the book-cases.

We sat down, therefore, seven at the table, to our game. I was out more money than I liked, and feeling as bored as the Duke by the curiosities, when our game was cut short by a distressing incident. Lord Orford was in ill luck. He sat mum-chance, losing steadily, taking his breath noisily through his teeth as he saw his guineas swept away. Luck was all with Lord Frederic.

“Pam be civil,” said he, leading the ace of trumps.

Lord Orford held Pam, the all-conquering knave of clubs, and was thus debarred by the custom of the game from taking the trick with it. He scowled with fury; a moment later he took a distressing revenge.

With a sudden roar he leaned forward and seemed to draw an ace from Lord Frederic’s sleeve. Lord Frederic leaped to his feet, his bluff countenance purple with fury.

“What kind of jugglery is this, my Lord?” he demanded angrily. “I should call you out for this.”

“Pray, sir,” said Walpole hastily, “be so candid as to overlook my nephew, you know his weakness.” Still roaring with laughter, Lord Orford was hustled away, and in perturbed silence the party broke up. The carriage rolled off with the ducal party, Lord Frederic ’squired the Clive in her homeward walk across the moonlit mead. Dr. Johnson was already retired to the Red Bedchamber with Barrow’s quarto of Archimedes. Walpole mounted to his two-pair-of-stairs bedroom, and I was left alone by the fire in the great gallery to read

Having once opened it, I was powerless to lay it down. Long after all were wrapped in slumber, I sat in the shadowy gallery and read by the light of a single candle.

Through the stained glass window-arch the full moon spilled blood upon the floor, while a shaft of cold green assailed but could not conquer the shadows of the passage into the Round Tower. I liked the shadows little, and less as I read Mr. Walpole’s tale. ’Tis of just such a castle, most dismally haunted, at once by the vices of its chatelain and the avenging spirits of his ancestors. ’Twas from the wicked lust of Manfred that the Lady Isabella fled. I read entranced:

“Where conceal herself? How avoid pursuit?

“As these thoughts passed rapidly through her mind, she recollected a subterraneous passage which led from the vaults of the castle to the church of St. Nicholas. Could she reach the altar before she was overtaken, she knew even Manfred’s violence would not dare profane the sacredness of the place. She seized a lamp that burned at the foot of the staircase, and hurried towards the secret passage.”

Brave, intrepid soul!

“The lower part of the castle was hollowed into several intricate cloisters; and it was not easy for one under so much anxiety to find the door that opened into the cavern. An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions—”

A silence as thick reigned in the shadowy gallery. I permitted myself an uneasy glance about me, before I read on:

“— except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors she had passed—”

Was that the wind in the battlements of the Round Tower?

“— and which, grating on the rusty hinges, were re-echoed through that long labyrinth of darkness.”

I could have sworn that somewhere a hinge creaked. I reproved myself for phantasy, and read on:

“She trod as softly as impatience would give her leave, yet frequently stopped and listened to hear if she was followed. In one of those moments she thought she heard a step—”

Was it a step that I heard? I shook off the fancy, and took up the tale:

“Her blood curdled. She was on point of flight, when a door was opened gently—”

Was not that faint sound, the opening of the door to the Round Tower? I forced myself to read on:

“— but ere her lamp, which she held up, could discover who opened it, the person retired precipitately on seeing the light.”

The impression was too strong for me. I rose and advanced my candle to the Round Tower passage. The weak yellow rays assailed the darkness and barely revealed—

A shadowy Presence. It stood motionless in the pale green moonlight and gazed towards me. It was gowned from crown to heel in an antique gown, the cowl drawn forward and shadowing the face, from which sightless eyes seemed to burn.

For a moment I stood as if turned to stone. Then the Presence melted into the darkness of the Round Tower, and the heavy door swung shut. It wanted no more to impel me to activity. The great key was in the lock. I leaped forward and turned it. The midnight intruder was a prisoner.

I found my learned friend abed in his chamber, reading his tome of Archimedes by candle-light, poking his head so close to the candle as to scorch the front of his nocturnal headkerchief.

“Well done, Bozzy,” he cried approvingly when he had heard my tale. “Time was, when you would have conceived no other remedy, but to repair to the oratory and ejaculate Ave Marys against the powers of darkness. You progress, sir, you progress. Let us at once go look upon this apparition, and so prove it to be flesh and blood. ’Tis to be hoped,” he added thoughtfully, thrusting his feet into his vast buckled shoes, “that your prisoner is not our host, night-rambling in one of his Gothick freaks.”

Though forcibly struck by this possibility, I nevertheless gripped the poker as we passed along the gallery, and held it at the ready when Dr. Johnson swung back the massive door of the Round Tower drawing room.

The chamber was empty.

Dr. Johnson tried the windows in the bay. They were all made fast.

The Presence had not been flesh and blood after all.

My hair stirred at the thought. For Dr. Johnson, ’twas his irascibility that stirred.

“Sir,” he said scathingly, “I find you do not improve, but the contrary. ’Tis said, Mr. Walpole’s book has set Misses in boarding schools to screaming in the night. Sure you lie under its spell. Did not armour clank, and chains rattle?”

“No, sir,” I replied, “but I heard the wind in the battlements, and a step in the Round Tower, and the opening of the door.”

“Why, then,” continued my friend severely, “perhaps your apparition stepped from yonder portrait” (pointing) “and has gone again home into its frame.”

I yielded to his mood.

“It may be so,” I granted him, “for I own, that I have been kept from mounting to my chamber above, by the fancy that the portrait that hangs in it, he in black armour, might step from the frame to trouble my rest.”

“Sir, clear your mind of phantasy,” roared my common-sensical friend. “My mind misgives me for Mr. Walpole’s Black Stone. It lies exposed to every chance in yonder open cabinet.”

“We must,” said I, “remove it to a place of safety.”

“My chamber is too easy of access. Pray, Mr. Boswell, keep it by you this night in your embattled Round Tower.”

It seemed an idle precaution, against a visitant that could pass through walls, but I acquiesced. I fetched the stone in its case, and carried it with me up the narrow stair into my bedchamber high in the Round Tower.

The portrait in black armour viewed my proceedings. The eyes of the face, and the eye-holes of the casque, seemed to follow my movements as I laid the case on an antique chest opposite the bed. I turned the key in the door, divested myself hastily, and blew out the candle.

The full moon streamed through the narrow slitted casement, and fell upon the chest. I took a fancy to expose the magick stone itself to the moonlight. It shone with an awful, dark, steady gleam. Even after I had drawn the bed-curtains, through the slit I could still perceive the magick stone shining in the moonlight. It seemed to me that then, if ever, the spirits must enter into it. Mingled cloudily with these musings was the thought of the man in black armour descending from his frame to bend over me. ’Twas my last thought as I drifted into uneasy sleep.

The moon was still in the south window when I opened my eyes again. Motionless in its bright ray stood — a figure in armour! I strove to shake off the phantasy, and looked again.

’Twas no phantasy. The figure was solid. It stood in the bright moonbeam and cast a shadow across the chest. The casque was not in its hand, but on its head. The visor was closed, concealing who knows what? Between the palms of the gauntleted hands lay the Black Stone of Dr. Dee.

I swallowed, and spoke. My voice came out in a croak:

“In the name of—” I uttered.

With a violent start the apparition whirled. The sphere flew from its hands, and landed safely among the bed-curtains. With measured tread the armoured thing passed from the room. I heard the key turn in the lock, the door creak open, and a heavy step descending the stair.

With damp palms I huddled my night gown about me, seized the Black Stone, and fairly fled to the Red Room.

“Pho, pho, Bozzy,” said Johnson angrily. “You dreamt it. ’Tis the natural result of Mr. Walpole’s Gothick castle, and his Gothick romance, and his magick stone. Let us hear no more on’t.”

Nevertheless, he afforded me the half of his bed, and there I passed the night, with the Black Stone thrust up into the tester.

When I awoke, the sun was high. I found the company dispersed. Horace Walpole was feeding his bantams. Lord Orford was not to be seen. Dr. Johnson was in the wash-house engaged in experiments in natural philosophy.

The object of his study was the Black Stone of Dr. Dee. When I came into the dark, damp-smelling wash-house from the spring sunshine, he was engaged in duplicating the magick stone from a piece of cannel coal, laboriously chipping and grinding away the surface, and every so often laving the rough object in a bucket full of water. I could not see why he persisted in saving the sooty water that overflowed, but save it he did, storing it up in a graduated phial, and only decanting it when a new lustration occasioned a fresh supply.

Ultimately his handiwork satisfied him, unsymmetrical and rugged as it was. His next care was to weigh the polished stone against the rough one. His work was still unfinished, for the rough out-weighed the smooth by two to one. Nevertheless, he now declared himself fully satisfied, and restored the magick stone to its case and the case to its cabinet in the Tribune, discoursing the while of substances heavy and light.

Chemistry is not my study. I was full of determination to consult him upon the nature of the apparition which the full moon and the magick stone of Dr. Dee had conjured into the Round Tower bedchamber, but sought in vain to stem the eloquence of his learning.

Dinner was a sturdy buttock of beef, of which Dr. Johnson ate ravenously, declining to say a word. Walpole picked at a cold bird. Orford’s boiled countenance grinned steadily as he depleted a loaded dish.

After dinner we parted, our host to the offices, Orford upon some errand of his own, my friend and I to stroll the meads.

Our way led past the hermitage. This time we glimpsed another of the Gothick appointments of Strawberry — the hermit. He was a sturdy strong-built man, having a long white beard and a hardy blue eye. His dun-coloured gown was kilted up, revealing that he was clothed in skins; though he had so little sense of the part that he was hired to play, that he was wearing buckled shoes. He had come to the opening of the hermitage to gaze across the mead; when glimpsing us, he with great haste slipped back into the obscurity of his den.

Upon this Dr. Johnson recited the following burlesque ballad of his own making:

These lines, he maintained, though written in mockery of Dr. Percy the ballad antiquarian, well suited the ridiculous Gothick fashion of the time, when every estate had its grotto and its oratory, its hermitage, and in it its hermit; being otherwise an honest rustick fee’d to sit within and clank his beads.

The sun was declining as we approached the Round lower. The ruddy rays slanted across the mead and illuminated, a long way off, the sturdy figure of Mistress Kitty, issuing from her door, with her rustick petticoats girded about her, and in her hand a milking-pail. ’Twas a little landskip in enamel, and put my friend in high good humour.

Nevertheless, we had no sooner entered the door than he fell foul of our host about the hermit:

“Are not there in the world enough of the unfortunate, who want a dinner, and know not where they shall lay their heads at night, but Mr. Walpole must fee some idle lubber to sit about in his garden, because, forsooth, in times past the land teemed with idle lubbers?” he demanded hotly.

“What idle lubber?” asked Walpole blankly.

“The hermit,” replied Dr. Johnson sternly, “he in skins, who decorates your hermitage yonder.”

“Hagley has a hermit,” I put in nervously. “A hermit is the refinement of the Gothick.”

“A hermit is the refinement of flummery,” said my friend angrily, turning on me.

“I am sorry that Strawberry does not please you,” said Mr. Walpole coldly. “The chaise will be at your disposal in the morning.”

I was aghast. We were dismissed, and we had failed of our errand. Dr. Johnson merely bowed.

“And,” added Walpole, preparing to leave the apartment, “permit me to state, I do not employ a hermit.”

“Not?” cried Johnson in excitement. “No, sir. My hermitage is untenanted.”

“My apologies, sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, “and I shall be ready to ride in the morning.”

Supper was a stiff and uncomfortable collation. Dr. Johnson cut his tea ration to a mere five cups, and withdrew early. Soon I was constrained to follow him.

He was not in the library nor the Round Tower, the wash-house nor the Red Bedchamber. At last I found him in the Tribune with a bodkin in his hand. The Black Stone lay before him. He stared upon it and said nothing.

“Pray, Dr. Johnson, give over your care in this matter. We are dismissed, and must depart in the morning.”

“Why, then we will depart in the morning. But tonight we shall resolve this puzzle.”

“Pray, sir, how is this to be done?”

“I have put my endeavours, sir, upon the stone, which is the end and object of these manoeuvres. I can give but little better account of it—” (replacing it in the cabinet) “Tonight we shall approach the matter at its point of departure — the hermitage.”

’Twas Dr. Johnson’s plan, I soon learned, that we should give our attention to the proceedings of this hermit that was no hermit, by watching before his cell and following him whither he went.

“Thus, sir, we may see how he gains access to the house, how he goes on there, and what his object is.”

Retiring early, accordingly, upon plea of our impending departure on the morrow, we donned greatcoats and prepared for our vigil. On point of departure, I observed Dr. Johnson standing before a handsome rosewood nest of drawers, swaying himself in meditation, and pulling and pushing the upper drawer out and in.

“Shall we go, sir?”

“Go? Oh, ay, let us go.”

We armed ourselves with rough staves from the wash-house, and took up our post concealed in the scallop-shell settle.

In the trees above our heads an owl mourned softly. On the two-pair-of-stairs floor Mr. Walpole’s candle burned in his bed-chamber window. The night was soft and smelled of spring. We sat a long time in the balmy darkness.

Once the owl was startled into flight. ’Twas the hermit come out to gaze towards the house. He returned to his cell in a little space. Time passed with leaden foot.

The moon rose behind the house, and began to swing out and up in the southern sky. Mr. Walpole’s light went out. Once more the hermit came to his door and gazed towards the now darkened castle. Once more he swept aside the skins and reentered his hermitage.

Still we sat in the shadow of the shell. Again time passed. Suddenly Dr. Johnson gripped my elbow. A light flickered in the windows of the Tribune.

“We have watched the wrong man,” I whispered aghast. “The hermit sits in his hermitage while another steals Mr. Walpole’s Black Stone.”

“Say rather, while we watched the front door, the false hermit has made off by the back.”

“The hermitage has no back, save under the bank.”

“Then he has made his way to the house, under the bank,” replied my friend. “Come, Bozzy, this is a thing susceptible of demonstration.”

He rose, and boldly sweeping aside the skins, he entered the hermitage. The hermit was from home.

The hermitage, however, was not untenanted. Established on the pallet, as if she had been there a long time, sat Kitty Clive. At our entrance she leaped to her feet.

“Back!” she cried. “Back, on your life! There is death in this place! Yonder poor man hath been carried to his village sick to death of the small pox. Pray, pray, shun the infection!”

I drew back in alarm, but Dr. Johnson entered unmoved.

“Prettily played, ma’am,” says he. “Drury Lane never saw better. I beg, however, you’ll hold your peace. I am resolved to have a word with this pox’d hermit.”

“ ’Tis but a quiz,” says the Clive, “there’s no harm in it,”

“Then, ma’am,” says Dr. Johnson, “we’ll quiz the quizzer; so pray, ma’am, hold your tongue.”

Kitty was perforce silent, and again we took up a vigil. The moon silently shone in at the opening. By its light I studied the appointments of the hermitage, the one low door, the walls hung with skins, a carved wood virgin in her niche. The Clive stared before her, and bit her finger-ends. Dr. Johnson sat by her side in meditation.

Soon, however, a step was heard. In another moment, the skins on the backward wall parted, and the hermit stepped through the opening. In one hand he held a wax taper; in the other, the Black Stone in its case.

When he saw us, he took one backward step before Dr. Johnson seized his wrist in a grip of iron.

“I yield at discretion,” said the hermit with a shrug, and set down his candle.

Surely I had heard that voice?

Dr. Johnson stopped not to parley. With a sudden mighty tug he tore away the long white beard and exposed the face beneath.

Lord Frederic Campbell!

Dr. Johnson took the case from his hand and extracted the polished black sphere.

“Pray, Lord Frederic,” he enquired, “what is the secret of this stone, that you give it away without a thought, and within a season, like the base Indian, you must have it back?”

“Nay, Dr. Johnson,” replied the hermit, “Kitty will bear me out, ’tis but a frolick.”

Never have I seen a countenance so little frolicsome.

“Ay,” put in the Clive, “a quiz upon Orford. He opened it to me last night in our homeward stroll.”

“Ay, so?” replied my learned friend. “Nevertheless, Lord Frederic, something is concealed in the conjurer’s stone. Let us have it out.”

“How know you that?” I enquired.

“Nay, Bozzy,” replied my learned friend, “to what end were my experimentations of the morning? Have you never heard the tale of Archimedes and Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse?”

“No, sir,” replied I, ready to be enlightened.

“Sir, ’tis of a goldsmith, who had of the tyrant a certain weight of gold of which to fashion a crown. Now Hiero suspected the man for a cheat. Accordingly when the crown came home, he asked Archimedes, whether it were all gold, or dilute with base metal? Archimedes made shift to measure its gross content of metal, by immersing it in water and measuring the overflow. In the same manner he measured out an equal content of pure gold; which weighing against the crown, the crown was demonstrated to weigh less. Now as every substance has its weight, and gold the heaviest, the cheat was discovered. Just so, the Black Stone weighed less than an equal volume of coal; as it could not be adulterated, ’twas proved to be hollow.”

“Though it be hollow, how are you to open it without instruments?”

Johnson set the sphere upon the floor; it rolled and came to rest.

“Instruments have failed. ’Tis plain, this sphere has not been halved and hollowed. Has it been bored? If so, it shews us as it lies, in which direction the bore runs.”

Johnson touched it delicately with his strong, shapely fingers.

“You may feel, though you cannot see, the intersecting circle of the bore. At raising that circle I have failed, and upon my failure was baffled. But no problem is forever impervious to reflection. Can not we depress it instead?”

So saying, as the strange company watched fascinated by the light of the moon in the doorway, my friend gripped the sphere in his fingers, and exerted his giant’s strength in the steady pressure of his thumbs upon the end of the bore. Slowly the opposite end began to be extruded, a cylinder revealed to be nearly two inches in depth. Then it came with a rush. ’Twas hollowed like a little drawer. In it lay a single paper, rolled into a cylinder.

My near-sighted friend unfurled the paper and held it to his eyes, almost brushing it with his eyelashes. I advanced the taper. By its light I could see that what had been concealed in the speculum was a letter, writ in a foreign hand upon a single sheet of paper. I stared at the royal seal and the royal signature: Charles Edward Stuart.

“So,” says Dr. Johnson, “this is what is in it. Treason is in it.”

He mowed and muttered over the phrases:

“To general John Campbell.”

“To the Duke of Argyle!” I cried in horror.

Lord Frederic sank on the hermit’s pallet with a gesture of resignation.

“ ’Tis over. I have ruined my brother. His attainder is sure. I dare ask no mercy.”

I took the letter into my hand and scanned the fulsome phrases: “... your influence with the army on our behalf... will send you what moneys you need...”

“Nay, Frederic,” said Kitty Clive stoutly, “pluck up heart, man, this letter is nothing. The ’45 is a quarter-century gone.”

“Alack, Kitty,” replied Lord Frederic in dejection, “ ’tis no matter of the ’45. ’Twas writ just before he became Duke.”

“Pho, a forgery,” said Kitty scornfully.

“ ’Tis the Pretender’s own hand.”

“Then,” said the Clive, “we must—”

She broke off with a scream. Never have I seen such a look of horror on a human countenance. Her eyes seemed to start from her head, her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, as she pointed a trembling finger toward the opening of the secret passage, and strove to speak a warning. I turned my head with a thrill of awful foreboding.

“We must burn it,” said the Clive calmly; and as I realized that the gloom was but empty, I felt her twitch the paper from my hand.

My chagrin at being thus tricked before my venerable friend was doubled as I heard him speak.

“Ay, let us burn it,” said he calmly. “Pray, Bozzy, the candle.”

Dubiously I yielded it. Dr. Johnson advanced it towards the letter; but before paper and flame met, Lord Frederic reached a hasty hand.

“Nay, Kitty, bid me take it to my brother, for I have sworn to lay it in his hand; and the house of Argyle will reward you well.”

The Clive reached him the paper, but Dr. Johnson came between.

“Pray, Kitty,” cried he sternly, “do you hold this letter safe for the nonce, while we scrutinize this fellow’s proceedings. What do you say to a thief who parades about in masquerade, and leaves his booty behind instead of bearing it away to a place of safety? A thief who courts attention instead of shunning it? What do you say to the strange debility of the Duke’s heir, which only assails him in London? What do you say to the proceedings of the next heir, who so far from making the letter secure in secret, and so protecting his brother from attainder, plays the fool with it until it comes to light, and will not suffer us to burn it?”

During this recital, Lord Frederic’s frame seemed to shrink. Kitty Clive slowly rose and drew away from him. Without a word she yielded up the letter to Dr. Johnson.

“In Arlington Street,” pursued Dr. Johnson, contempt in his eye, “the noble house-breaker lost his labour; save that by turning out the papers he made sure, what his brother’s unbroken friendship with Walpole must have told him, that the speculum remained unopened. In his own person he learned where it was deposited at Strawberry, and returned a-mumming by Mr. Walpole’s new-built secret passage—”

“To think,” cried the Clive, “that ’twas I that revealed it to him, and provided gear for his masquerade, and victualled him in the hermitage, in the belief that ’twas but a bit of play-acting with a laugh to follow. I should have been better advised; for Lord Orford is notoriously mad, and who puts a quiz upon a madman?”

“The secret passage was built with the Round Tower, and the hermitage at the same time, to mask its egress? The entrances lie behind the great portraits in the rooms of the Round Tower?”

“That is so, but pray, how did you know?”

“I said it in jest, the apparition was gone back into the portrait; and began to perceive how it might be true in earnest. From the portrait, then, Lord Frederic in his hermit’s gear entered the Round Tower, meaning to fetch the stone from the Tribune hard by. Retreating before us onto the secret stair, he learned where we proposed to sequester the speculum, at the same time gaining from our talk a spectacular notion for his next appearance. From your theatre-chest you, ma’am, fitted him out to affright Mr. Boswell; on which occasion he took care, to awake Mr. Boswell, to leave his booty behind, and to depart by the door, lest he betray the secret of the passage. Pray, Lord Frederic, satisfy my curiosity: why did not you shatter the stone then and there, and thus betray all at a stroke?”

“I flung it with violence, but it resisted,” said the detected scheamer surlily.

“Nay, when you came by it tonight, why did not you set it open and so leave it in the Tribune for Mr. Walpole to find?”

“When my brother found that I had given the thing away,” muttered Lord Frederic, “he told me how he had saved the letter against King Charles’s return, and bade me for the safety of our house recover it; but he would not tell me the secret of the opening.”

“Ho, ho,” cried Dr. Johnson, “thy brother knows thee well, I perceive.”

“I beg,” said the false hermit sullenly, “that my brother may not hear of this. ’Tis ill enough between us already.”

“Ay, sir,” said Dr. Johnson thoughtfully, “I have seen how your lady suffers, to have another, not near so well-born, take precedence of her as Duchess of Argyle. ’Tis a bird of ill omen, and so Lord Ferrers found her.”

“Pray, sir,” I struck in, scanning the thing from a lawyer’s view, “how could you hope that upon attainder of the traitor the estates could be yours, and not the King’s?”

Lord Frederic grinned sourly.

“ ’Twas worth the risk. I have friends in the right places.”

“Well, well,” said Dr. Johnson, “a word to the wise and I have done. These proceedings shall be our secret, as long as the Duke of Argyle guards his new-found loyalty, and as long as the Dune’s son has his health in London as in Argyle.”

“Sir!” cried Lord Frederic, stung. “Do you say that Lady Mary—”

“I say nothing, sir. The boy’s indisposition may have given hope for this contrivance; it may be part of it. I say only, if you tender your brother’s friendship, tender also his son’s life.”

Lord Frederic’s haughty stare was a failure; his eyes fell, and he bowed his head.

“I perceive,” said Dr. Johnson, “that we understand one another.”