The Snake-Oil Dickens Man. Ross Gilfillan
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But it was Elijah, and not Merriweather who had been ringing my attendance and it was with some irritation that I mounted the stairs after a fruitless search for the book I had taken with me last night, into the saloon. I passed Merriweather in the lobby but he was busy instructing the carpenter, regarding the special arrangements for accommodating General Thumb.
I had only lately come to regard my daily visits to Elijah as blessed periods of respite from the mundane routines of hotel life and times at which I might exercise faculties that went untested anywhere else in this no-hope place. This afternoon was different and I was loathe to leave the scenes of so much unprecedented excitement and had half a mind to ignore the summons, borrow a horse and gallop back into town. The other half acknowledged that it had been a long morning and that I had worked to exhaustion. Also, the effects of the whisky that so much novelty had distracted me from suffering, were now making themselves known. An hour or two with Elijah might be sufficient for me to recuperate before I returned in time to witness the arrival in town of the Greatest Show on Earth. Elijah recognised the condition I was in the second I began to make my apologies. I fumbled with the glass cover of the oil lamp and somehow caught it just before it hit the floorboards.
‘This is too bad,’ he said as he gazed vacantly through my presence. ‘It’s a poor enough show that you don’t attend me because of some flimflam men and their circus and that I have sat here the livelong day with nothing to occupy me but my memories. But that you lost your Great Expectations whilst in your cups is beyond crediting. Well, Pip and Estella will have to remain at what they are about until we can get another copy.’
He sighed over the manifold follies of youth, mine in particular. His brow furrowed as he cogitated upon something before he leaned towards me, upon his stick and said: ‘Billy, there is something I must talk to you about. It’s a very important matter and I must be sure that I explain it and you understand it properly. I had thought to lay the matter before you today but it’s clear that you’re too tired from your gallivanting and addle-headed from whisky.’
And so I had been an instant before but now that Elijah had confirmed my suspicion of the other evening, that something of significance was to be revealed to me, I felt as alive as electricity and burned with curiosity.
‘Pardon me, Mr Putnam, but you’re mistaken. I never felt better,’ I said. ‘Please tell me all now.’
But Elijah was adamant. ‘Tomorrow will be better,’ he said. ‘I shall expect you at sundown. We will take a walk. In the meantime and in lieu of our readings, perhaps you will be so good as to take down a little more of my memoir?’
I moved a lamp to a small table and opened the bound ledger in which was written already so much of Elijah’s story, the place at which his angular hand was replaced by my own slapdash loops denoting that at which he had owned to himself that he was certainly going blind.
He said, ‘Remind me of where we left off last time.’
‘You had been in London some three months and had visited with the lawyer, from whom you collected your inheritance. The sum was much smaller than you had expected but Mr Bulstrode had been good enough to help you invest it in the hope of great return. We had just completed a passage in which Mr Bulstrode announced that he had secured an introduction to Mr Chalmondely-Palmer, agent for the Bombay Spice and Silk Company.’
‘The Bombay Spice and Silk Company. Yes,’ said Elijah and reclined in his deep leather chair and in so doing, sank back some twenty-five years.
I dipped my nib and began to scratch away as quickly as I could, my pen racing hard against Elijah’s narrative.
‘Bulstrode and I both thought it was a golden opportunity. We had heard of others who had made their fortunes by it. I let Bulstrode invest a small amount and it paid off handsomely. I ventured some more and this too made an excellent return. This continued for such a time that we came to regard the Bombay Spice and Silk Company as a convenient source of revenue. One had only to send in a little bronze for it to return as gold.
‘Bulstrode visited me one day, greatly excited. He said the whisper in the city was that Bombay stock was about to soar and that he had mortgaged his home and staked all he had upon it. It was a sure thing and if I followed suit, I would undoubtedly return to America a very rich man indeed.
‘I hesitated. I had never been a gambling man and a venture of this magnitude had my heart pounding and head reeling. This was too big for me. I would quit while I was ahead of the game. I told Bulstrode, who shook his head and looked at me as if to say well, that was my funeral. He left, whistling at my rashness.
‘Doubt nagged me throughout the night. Supposing he was vindicated? Would I see Bulstrode in a golden coach on the morrow? If he was right – and respected City capitalists were certain of the Bombay’s future – then I would regret it for ever, I knew that.
‘That I had acted wisely was poor consolation and when I rose, tired and haggard the next day, I had changed my mind and prayed I could find Bulstrode in time for him to make the necessary arrangements before all the world knew about the Bombay. I found him in his office with another, grandly-dressed gentleman. He betrayed no surprise at my sudden entrance.
‘“I’m glad you’ve dropped by, Putnam,” he said, “for this is Mr Chalmondely-Palmer, agent for the Bombay Spice and Silk Company. It’s high time you made the acquaintance of the man who has made your fortune.”
‘I shook his hand and for a second or two I could say nothing, overawed as I was by the fine appearance of this gentleman. His suit, his hat, his rings and his manner all bespoke great wealth. Then I composed myself, said how honoured I was and asked Bulstrode if there was still time for me to fall in with him and invest my all. Mr Chalmondely-Palmer said it was all most irregular and Bulstrode was commiserating with me when the gentleman in the powder-blue suit appeared suddenly possessed of an idea. “Wait,” he said, “I think I see how it might be done.”
‘It is unnecessary to go into the details of how my wealth was converted into stocks and bonds of the Bombay Spice and Silk Company but transformed it was and I shook hands with both gentlemen and almost immediately, I took three of my closest friends to celebrate with dinner at the pleasure gardens. I could tell them nothing and how it must have perplexed them, to see me so gay and so lavish with my entertainment.
‘The next day I took my newspaper to my breakfast table and read of a massive fraud involving the Bombay Spice and Silk Company. The scandal was all over the second page but I had barely read the half of it before I had grabbed my hat and was running pell-mell down Chancery Lane to where Bulstrode had his chambers. I took the steps five at a time and burst into his apartments, where I received my second shock of the day. They were empty. Not physically so: the desk, chairs and carpets remained but not so any sign of Bulstrode. His pictures, books and papers, his certificates, plaster bust of Thomas Chatterton, knick-knacks and ornaments were all gone. It was the same scene in the adjoining room.
‘I left the door and bounded down to the basement, where the porter had his office. The man said that Bulstrode had paid up to today and vacated early that morning. I took a cab to the Stock Exchange, where my worst fears were confirmed. The Bombay Spice and Silk had crashed and I was newly penniless. How I cursed Bulstrode and the man who called himself Chalmondely-Palmer but how much more and how bitterly I cursed myself.
‘I pass over the next two days as they did me no credit. Suffice it is to say that I lay upon my bed much of the time and bemoaned the unfairness of my fate. On the third day, I called on friends I had made during my stay in London but, as did those of the prodigal in the parable, mine had deserted me to a man. They were apologetic but their suggestions, that I find myself a good post somewhere, or go home to America were unhelpful and it was plain that they would rather I took myself and my ill-fortune somewhere else. I found myself alone in a strange city with barely a penny to my name.
‘The education that I had thought to complete in London after I had collected my grandfather’s bequest was useless to me now. I exhausted the introductions I had made without any success whatsoever. I moved from my comfortable and spacious lodgings off Green Park,