Part 6

“Dull place, Westminster Abbey!” it remarked--“Oh hoo-roo! All damp and dismals! I wouldn’t be an England’s great man for anything! It’s the last reward an England’s great man ever gets,--the ‘honour’--oh, hoo-roo!--of being allowed to moulder among the most mouldered remains that ever mouldered! Hoo-roo! I’m glad the body I used to wear when I was a Churchwarden is all turned into daisies in a country churchyard. Pretty things, daisies! Fancy _your_ old wrinkles turning into them!”

McNason was silent. He stood quietly resigned to the Goblin’s clutch, waiting for its next move. And while he waited, he saw the crowd in front of him sway, part asunder, and begin to disperse,--while the Atheist-Preacher, descending from the pulpit, held brief conversation with a man who took from his hand a roll of paper. McNason could hear him speaking, despite the space between them.

“Here’s my sermon in full,”--he said--“I hope you will give it the widest publicity. The ‘copy’ contains a good many effective bits which I was obliged to leave out with a mixed congregation. You never know how people may take the upsetting of their cherished creeds! In such work the Press can do more than the Pulpit. Nothing like a good Press discussion for shaking the old foundations! And I think my remarks are likely to cause a fluttering in the dove-cotes!”

The reporter--for such he was--smiled.

“You are not afraid of your Archbishop?” he said.

The Atheist-Preacher laughed.

“My Archbishop! He has no time to give his attention to any such matter as this. He’s too busy with the claims of the Poor Clergy!”

They both laughed then, shook hands and separated. McNason, in the Goblin’s grasp, watched them go their several ways, and then suddenly recovering his speech, said:--

“That man ought to be put out of the Church!”

“Quite right--so he ought!” agreed the Goblin--“You are getting quite discriminating, Josiah! He ought to be put out of the Church, but who’s going to do it? He isn’t drunk or disorderly! He’s a liar and a hypocrite, and he’s taking his ‘salary’ on false pretences--but there are hundreds--perhaps thousands--like him! Besides, those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones! You’re as bad as he is in your way! You pretend----”

“I _have_ pretended----!” said McNason, humbly.

The Goblin looked at him, and closed one round eye in a most horrible and portentous wink.

“I see!” it observed--“You’re preparing to make a good end! You’re like the Naughty Duchess! Oh, hoo-roo! What a character _she_ was! She went the pace as hard as ever she could till she was quite worn out and could count her crows-feet,--then she began to go to Church regularly, and became publicly charitable. She turned herself into a Bazaar Lady; opened several soup-kitchens, and used to cry over the newest sweet thing in curates. Naughty, naughty Duchess! When she died an eminent Dean preached a sermon about her. She left him five thousand pounds in her will. He said she was ‘one of the noblest women that ever lived.’ And she’s one of us now. Oh hoo-roo! Don’t you try to be like her, McNason!--it doesn’t pay! Come along!--Come and take a look at London!”

With a fantastic caper, the Goblin sidled and skipped out of the Abbey, its conical cap glowing like the flame of a will-o’-the-wisp in a dark morass,--while passively, and without any strength to resist its imperious lead, the millionaire followed. In the full radiance of a moon which made the streets as light as day, they presently stood,--and as in a fevered dream, Josiah saw the familiar clock-tower of Westminster, the great square in front of the Houses of Parliament, and the twinkling lamps on the bridge that spans the steely gleam of the river Thames. The dull human roar of the great metropolis thundered in his ears like the rushing of many waters, and while he yet looked on the scene which he knew so well, the Goblin took off its cap and touched his eyes with its tasselled point.

“Tick-tock! Tick-tock! Only two thousand years by the Spirit’s clock!” it said.

And lo!--the stately tower, buildings and streets disappeared! Smooth green fields spread out on every side, full-flowering with meadow-sweet, buttercups and daisies,--there was no longer any bridge across the river, which, flowing calmly between low banks of mossy turf and fern, reflected the sunshine in a thousand sparkles and plashed against the double shores with musical murmurs of peace. A flock of sheep grazed on the quiet pasture, and their shepherd sat at his ease by the side of the placid stream.

And now the Goblin waved its spidery arms.

“Ask him,” it said--“what has become of London!”

Obediently McNason put the question. The shepherd turned upon him a young wondering face.

“London!” he echoed. Then he smiled. “Oh yes, I think I know what you mean! There _was_ a city of that name somewhere about here once, but I don’t know exactly where! There’s nothing of it left now!”

“Nothing!” exclaimed McNason, aghast.

“Nothing!”--And the Goblin, pronouncing this word, waved its arms again, whereupon the Vision vanished,--“Nothing! Not a shred!--not a brick--not a bone! Not even a gold Coin! All the business--Gone!--all the pleasure--Gone!--all the scheming, plotting, lying, cheating, villainy, hatred and envy of one human creature contesting with the other--Gone! All the self-sufficiency, learning, little wisdom, and utter godlessness--Gone! Such will London be in two thousand years! And Nature will not miss it! Nature can do without it very well; Nature can do without you equally well, McNason! The sun will go on shining and the birds will go on singing none the less because You are wanting! Come along!--come along! In the spirit of One Timothy Two, time’s up! Off we go on our last journey!”

Once more Josiah fell on his knees.

“Spare me!” he cried--“Spare me! Surely I have suffered enough!”

“Suffered? You? Oh Beelzebub!” And the Goblin began to elongate itself in its own peculiar and terror-striking style, “You’ve only just begun to know what it is to _feel_! You hard old scoundrel! _You_ talk of suffering!--why, you have lived till over sixty years of age, caring nothing at all for the troubles of others unless you could turn such troubles to your own advantage! As a child you were selfish,--as a boy you were selfish,--as a young man you were selfish,--as an old man you are selfish! You have crushed out hundreds of human lives in your factories as if they were mere ants swarming under your iron heel! You have cut down the expenses of your business to the narrowest, meanest, most pitiful margin,--you ‘sweat’ your labourers to such an extent that you know you dare not walk through your own workshops without a revolver in your pocket and a man on either side of you for protection--you are a living curse to the majority of those you employ--and they look for your death in the hope that after you are gone they will have a kinder master! And _you_ quote Shakespeare, do you? And the Bible! Oh hoo-roo! Come along! Time’s up, I tell you! And we’re not going far. Just a little see-saw ride to a Home Sweet Home! A last long Home! A Happy Home! Oh hoo-roo-oo-oo! One Timothy Two, and away we go!”

* * * * *

Again a brief spell of semi-consciousness--a kind of waking nightmare in which many confused sights and sounds were intermingled;--flying visions of pale worn faces full of sorrow and appeal; noises as of weeping, with stifled cries and sobs of pain;--and then Josiah McNason opened his eyes widely, to find himself lying flat on a narrow bed in the centre of a rather large room. His head rested on a small, very hard pillow,--and on this pillow squatted the Goblin with an air of being quite at ease.

“Here we are in a happy ‘Home,’ McNason!” it chuckled softly in his ear--“Don’t worry! Don’t agitate yourself! Keep quiet calm! You will have every possible attention!”

Josiah stared helplessly about him. He saw his clothes neatly folded and placed all together on the top of a chest of drawers,--his top-hat was also a particularly conspicuous object on a chair close by. He realised that he had been undressed and put to bed, but how this had happened he could not tell. He turned a miserable questioning gaze on the Goblin.

“What--what’s this?” he stammered--“What are you going to do to me?”

“I?” And the Goblin, with an injured air of perfect innocence, executed a diabolical French shrug of its shoulders--“I’m not going to do anything to you, my dear sir! I wouldn’t be so cruel! It is THEY!--THEY are going to do something to you,--but all for your good!--oh, hoo-roo--all for your good!”

THEY! Who were THEY? With painful hesitation Josiah turned his eyes round about again, and presently saw, standing near him like dim figures in a blurred photograph, two men talking confidentially together--one fairly young, the other elderly,--while with them was a smart, well-set-up, rather perky looking woman attired in the conventional grey gown, spotless apron and cap of the “professional” nurse. The elderly man’s back was turned, but he seemed to be expounding some knotty point of argument to his companions with particular emphasis and gusto.

“Something’s gone wrong with the Works, McNason!” said the Goblin, confidentially, “That’s what’s the matter?”

“Works?” And McNason’s troubled mind immediately reverted to his huge factories--“What works?”

“YOUR works!” and the Goblin leered at him sideways with a frightful grin--“Your internal works! And these two learned gentlemen are going to find out what it is. You’re ill, you know!--you’re very ill! The learned gentlemen don’t quite understand how or why you’re ill, but they’re going to find out! They’re going to slice you up and see what you’re like inside! It will be most interesting and instructive--to the learned gentlemen! It won’t interest YOU at all, because you’re to be put under chloroform, and you won’t know anything about it except when you ‘come to.’ Then you will die! But that won’t particularly matter! The operation is sure to be ‘most successful.’ An operation is always ‘successful,’ even if the patient never recovers! The medical profession must be safeguarded, you know!”

McNason heard, and in an instant became a prey to the most violent access of nervous horror.

“I’m not ill!” he said fiercely. “There’s nothing whatever the matter with me! How dare you say there is! It’s all a mistake--an abominable mistake! I’ve never suffered from any illness except gout and indigestion--never!--there’s no operation needed for such ailments!--what the devil do you mean by bringing me here?”

“You _will_ talk about the devil!” And the Goblin shook its tasselled cap at him reproachfully--“Don’t say I mentioned him first! You’re ill, I tell you!--you’re more seriously ill than your old friend Willie Dove, and you’re here _because_ you’re ill! ‘To this complexion must we come at last’! Oh Beelzebub! They don’t know whether it’s cancer or appendicitis with YOU!”

“Look here!” almost shouted Josiah, addressing himself to the two men, who, with the nurse, still stood together talking, but who appeared not to hear him--“Take me out of this place directly! I’ve been brought here on false pretences! I’m not ill! I don’t want an operation! I won’t be operated upon! I’ll--I’ll----!”

Here exhausted, he sank back on his hard pillow impotently clenching his hands in a paroxysm of rage and fear.

The Goblin grinned.

“Now, McNason, keep cool!” it said--“Don’t show temper! Doctors don’t like that sort of thing. They call it ‘nerves’ and they give you a soothing draught. Besides, these two eminent personages who are just now discussing your ‘case’ can’t hear you, and if they could they wouldn’t listen. One’s a ‘Sir.’ He’s a clever man, of course, or he wouldn’t be a ‘Sir.’ It’s a little unpleasant that the title puts him on the same rank with any provincial Mayor who has presented an address to the Sovereign! But it can’t be helped. There’s no suitable honour in this country for _merely_ intellectual and scientific persons! Now about your case----”

“I’ve _no_ case!” groaned the wretched millionaire--“No case at all----”

“You _are_ a case!” declared the Goblin--“A whole case in yourself! A case of a man gone wrong! A case of a human creature who has a stone in the place where his heart ought to be!--a hard, heavy stone, without a pulse of love or kindness in it! A case? Oh Beelzebub! I should think you _are_ a case! Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up--that’s the broad-backed elderly gentleman over there,--thinks you’ve got something ‘malignant’ inside! Oh hoo-roo-oo-oo! I should think you had! Sir Slasher believes it’s cancer. But if it is, they’ll never find it, McNason! No!--_your_ cancer’s on the mind!--and they’ll never cut _that_ out! But they’re going to have a good try!”

Josiah moaned helplessly.

“Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up is a great vivisector,”--proceeded the Goblin, cheerfully--“He knows where to find every little nerve and muscle in the body of a dog, for instance. I don’t say your body is at all like that of a dog!--I know your Soul isn’t half so honest or so faithful! Sir Slasher has had more than a hundred innocent animals under his scalpel--all poor, trustful, good creatures whom he has pinned and stretched in every possible position on his rack of torture--whose nerves he has severed--whose muscles he has galvanized--and whom he has killed as slowly, as ruthlessly and as criminally as any Torquemada that ever roasted a heretic to the sound of sacred music! Hoo-roo! Sir Slasher knows a thing or two, I can tell you! He’s a licensed murderer of the harmless and helpless,--but even a dog’s soul has a place in the eternal countings, as Sir Slasher may find out to his cost when he becomes a member of our United Empire Club! He cut up a dog yesterday--now he’s going to cut up YOU! You’re a splendid subject for him, you know! You’ve got so much MONEY!”

Again Josiah moaned in a stupor of fear.

“You’ve got so much MONEY!” repeated the Goblin, smacking its wide lips as though it were tasting something savoury,--“And MONEY’s a great thing! MONEY has enabled you to come to this ‘Home’--one of the most select ‘Homes’ in London! Oh, Home Sweet Home! Oh happy, happy Home! It’s the special pet ‘Nursing Home’ of Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up, where he’s got the matron and all the nurses under his big Thumb! Oh, hoo-roo! Such a dear Home! You pay Five Guineas a week for your room to begin with,--and then when you’re very ill, you pay Ten. Afterwards, when you get worse and are likely to die, you pay Fifteen. The nurse is extra. If you have two nurses you have two extras. Everything apart from the room and the bed is ‘extra.’ If you want a bottle of soda water you pay sixpence for a ‘split,’ ninepence for a full. And so on! And so on! Oh, what a dear ‘comfy’ Home! There aren’t many like it in London, I can tell you! Only a few--a beautiful, blessed few!”

At this moment, the personage whom the Goblin designated as Sir Slasher-Cut-Em-Up finished his conversation with his younger colleague, and both gentlemen smiled pleasantly, not to say flirtatiously, at the grey-gowned nurse.

“Twelve o’clock to-morrow will do very well,” said Sir Slasher--“We shall leave you to make all the preliminary arrangements, Nurse Drat-Em-All. He’s asleep just now, I see!”

“I’m not asleep!”--gurgled McNason, feebly.

But Sir Slasher apparently did not hear. He stood by the bedside, smiling blandly, his hands clasped behind him under his coat-tails.

“One of the richest men in the world!” he ejaculated, appreciatively--“Dear me, dear me! Ah well, well! Has he any family?”

“None,”--said Nurse Drat-Em-All--“He had one son, I believe, who died in childhood.”

She spoke primly, her lips opening and shutting on her words like a kind of mechanical valve. But while she spoke she flashed her eyes at the younger doctor with a feline cajolery in their hard brown depths.

“Then who,” murmured Sir Slasher, thoughtfully--“Who is to carry on his vast business concerns? Who is to inherit his enormous fortune?”

No answer was forthcoming to this profound proposition.

Sir Slasher thereupon removed his hands from under his coat-tails, and consulted his watch.

“I must be going,”--he said--“You will attend to all that is necessary, Nurse?”

“Certainly, Sir Slasher!”

“I shall bring Dr. Choke-Em-Off with me to-morrow--and I think--yes, I think”--here he looked benevolently considerate--“that taking into account Mr. McNason’s great wealth and important position, and--er--also--er--the very great difficulty and uncertainty of the operation, Dr. Choke-Em-Off’s fee should be doubled! He is one of our best anæsthetists--what do you say, Nurse?”

Sir Slasher had a delightful smile, and he was smiling delightfully now. Nurse Drat-Em-All responded to the charm of it.

“There is no doubt that it is justifiably a case of double fees all round!” she said, her own smile breaking into a giggle.

“Exactly!” And Sir Slasher shed a fatherly glance upon her--“And our young friend here”--at this he laid a hand on his fellow-surgeon’s shoulder--“Our young and brilliant friend will also have an opportunity of displaying his skill and securing his reward! Of course,”--here he became portentously business-like--“it will be advisable to get the patient to sign the required cheques in advance,--there will be no difficulty about that I should imagine! Because you see,--afterwards!”

“Ah!--afterwards!” echoed the younger doctor, speaking for the first time.

Sir Slasher tried to look grave, but failed in the attempt.

“Afterwards,” he said pleasantly,--“the worthy millionaire may not be in a condition to sign anything! I think”--and he paused, stroking his smooth double chin--“I think, Nurse, he should be told that the operation is a grave, very grave one, in case--these things sometimes happen!--in case he has not made a will--or--let us say in case he might wish to make some last testamentary gift--to--er--to me?--or--or to you?--or to anyone else who may have rendered him a service?”

“I’ll see that he does all that he ought to do!” said Nurse Drat-Em-All, with some severity--“I like my patients to be prepared for the worst!”

“Quite right--quite right!” murmured Sir Slasher--“But prepare him gently--quite gently, Nurse! By degrees--and cautiously! I _have_ known cases where patients, getting too much alarmed, have made their escape from a home like this by jumping out of the window! And strange to say they have--some of them--escaped uninjured!--and stranger still, they have recovered and lived many years! Most curious and remarkable! But nerves are unaccountable things!” Here he paused and looked again at McNason. “He sleeps very soundly! I should say he was older than he admits! Ah well, well! We shall see! But I very much fear there’s no chance for his recovery!”

“Then why not spare the knife and let him live as long as Nature will allow him?” asked the younger doctor suddenly.

Sir Slasher looked amazed and reproachful.

“My dear sir! I was called in by Mr. McNason, and I must do my best for such a very wealthy man! Besides, I think his is a very complex case, and likely to prove most helpful and instructive. To-morrow at twelve o’clock, Nurse! Good-evening!”

And Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up walked softly out of the room, followed by his colleague. Nurse Drat-Em-All, with a casual glance at the bed where Josiah McNason lay, settled her cap more coquettishly on her head and tripped after them.

“They’re gone!” said the Goblin then, sliding down from the pillow and sitting astride on Josiah’s recumbent body--“But Nurse Drat-Em-All will soon be back!”

“I don’t want her back!” groaned McNason, making an attempt to draw up the bed-quilt in order to cover his eyes, in which effort he did not succeed--“I don’t want anything! Leave me alone!”

“Sorry I can’t oblige you!” replied the Goblin--“I can’t leave you alone till you leave YOURSELF alone! And Nurse Drat-Em-All must come back to attend to her duties! She’s got a lot of things to do to you!”

McNason peered over the extreme edge of the bed-quilt.

“A lot of things to do to me?” he echoed, whimperingly--“What--what will she do?”

“She will wash you first!” said the Goblin, briskly--“All over! Oh, such a nice wash! Made of carbolic disinfectant! And you will be so clean--_outside_ you!”

Josiah closed his eyes shudderingly.

“And then you will be put into a new flannel night-shirt,”--went on the Goblin--“And you will perhaps be allowed a cup of hot milk or beef tea. And when you’re nice and warm and clean and cosy, Nurse Drat-Em-All will come and tell you to prepare for your end!”

“No--no!” cried McNason--“I’m not ill!--and I’m not ready--!”

“You _are_ ill!” declared the Goblin, firmly--“And never mind about not being ready for your end. Nurse Drat-Em-All will _make_ you ready! She’ll tell you what a very serious and expensive matter it will be to slice you up scientifically to-morrow--and she will ask you where your cheque book is----”

“I won’t tell her--I won’t--” stuttered McNason.

“Oh yes, you will! _She’ll_ get it out of you! And then you’ll write a big cheque for Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up, and another for the matron of this happy ‘Home’--and for Dr. Choke-Em-Off,--and for everybody else who wants a fee for sending you into the next world--and then--then you’ll be allowed to sleep if you can! And to-morrow--to-morrow----”

Here the Goblin paused. Josiah raised himself up on his hard pillow and looked at it with appealing eyes.