Читать книгу The Golden Beast - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 9

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With all his faults, and Joseph, second Baron Honerton, had many, it could never be said that he was ashamed of his origin or of the source of his wealth. He was never happier than when showing distinguished strangers over the marvellous Works from which his fortune flowed. Distinguished strangers were common enough, especially foreigners, for the Works themselves were in every way unique. Royalty, however, even in somewhat remote connection, was entirely a new departure, and Royalty introduced and accompanied by his daughter was an honour which made him for a moment forget his troubles and remember only the mighty organisation of which he was the head. The presence, too, of Frederick Amberleys was extremely gratifying. It was as well for his prospective son-in-law to realise the source of that vast wealth, a portion of which was to pass some day into his keeping.

"This warehouse, now," Joseph pointed out, standing in the midst of it and indicating an immense vista of counter and shelves, "is absolutely the largest room of its sort in the United Kingdom. There is an electric tramway, as you see, running its entire length. The stores are kept at this end, the packing is done at the other. The duty of all these people," he went on, directing his visitors' attention to forty or fifty young men and women in white overalls, "is to examine the products as they come up from the factory and pass them down to the packing room. These casks which are coming up, for instance, contain 'Maltby's Honey Milk'. They will be sent down to the other end, and packed in jars or tins according as it is for the home or the export market."

"So you make 'Maltby's Honey Milk'?" Amberleys exclaimed. "Tophole stuff! I had it when I was getting over the fever."

"We manufacture at the present moment," Joseph declared, "three hundred and thirteen different sorts of patent medicines and foods; including, I am sure, more than half the specifics you have ever heard of. 'Phillip's Lung Tonic', for instance. 'Meadows' Beef Tea', and dozens of others. We're the largest manufacturers of pills in the world, and though we have a plant going day and night we find it difficult to keep up with the demand."

"I am always interested in these advertisements of patent medicines," the Prince remarked. "One is warned against them, but I suppose some of them must be quite good."

"The drugs and foods that are turned out from this establishment," Joseph announced, "are absolutely and entirely pure. Patent medicines have an undeservedly bad name. Manufactured as we manufacture them you could not get purer stuff. The prescriptions are all the result of studied medical labour and no small chemist can command drugs of the quality we are able to buy. Our head chemist is a very wizard—the most celebrated young man in Europe."

"Do you ever take any of your medicines yourself, sir?" Frederick Amberleys asked.

"When I have anything the matter with me I never hesitate," was the prompt reply. "We make 'Donat', the celebrated cure for indigestion. I take it whenever I have an attack and it never fails to relieve me. I have confidence in it because I know how it is made. The prescription is there with the others in my safe. Come and I will show you some of the manufacturing processes."

The trio dutifully followed their guide and saw strange sights. They saw great vats of a famous "Nervine" being stirred by slowly turning wheels into the proper degree of consistency, pills flying from an amazing-looking machine at the rate of a hundred a minute, roots and hard knobbly nuts without shells being ground into a powder by yet another machine. They started from the basement, where the floor was of stone and huge vats full of liquid, some aromatic and some the reverse, were being warmed, tested and mixed, and mounted by slow stages to the fourth storey where the bottling was done. On the fifth floor, to which they finally ascended, there were long rows of men bending over fixed receptacles, which glistened like silver.

"This is where the more expensive remedies are prepared," Joseph explained. "There are two hundred men over on that side alone, mixing 'Mason's Cough Cure', a medicine which has to be carefully handled. And here, in a sense," he added, passing on, "is the most important part of the whole building. I am myself responsible below for the commercial and financial side of the undertaking. This is the headquarters of the science and brain which direct it."

They had reached a solid mahogany door, set in a partition which extended the whole width of the building. Joseph knocked almost tentatively before entering, and ushered his companions into a large, handsomely furnished room, three walls of which were lined to the ceiling with bookcases, whilst the fourth was completely given up to a huge safe. A young man who had been writing at a desk rose to his feet at their entrance.

"Is Sir Lawrence in the laboratory?" Joseph enquired.

"I believe so, my lord," the young man answered doubtfully.

"Ask him to spare us five minutes. Tell him that Prince Edgar is here, looking over the Works."

The young man disappeared through an inner door. Joseph lowered his voice.

"You've probably heard of Sir Lawrence Paule," he said. "Quite a young man, but the most brilliant chemist in the world—taken every possible degree at London, Oxford and Leipzig, did marvellous things in the war and was the first scientist knighted. He is responsible now for the whole of our productions and we had a report from a committee of analysts only a few months ago, stating that they had never reached so high a standard. We pay him the salary of a Cabinet Minister, but he's worth it."

The messenger returned.

"If you will be seated, my lord," he invited, "Sir Lawrence will be here directly."

The little party accepted chairs and indulged in desultory conversation.

"Your safe looks formidable," the Prince observed.

"It needs to be," Joseph answered. "It holds all our secrets; the original prescriptions from which most of our products are made are in there, and a great many others, even more important—some there I wouldn't let a certain German firm see for fifty thousand pounds."

"I suppose the Germans are your greatest competitors?" Amberleys enquired.

"They used to be," Joseph replied. "Since the war, though, they can't buy the drugs."

"Tell us about this paragon of a scientist who is keeping us all waiting," Judith begged curiously.

Her father frowned warningly. The door opposite had opened and a man in a grey tweed suit, a flannel shirt and collar, and a tie the colours of a famous cricket club, entered. He paused for a moment to speak to the young man who had summoned him. Then he advanced to meet his visitors. Judith, who was seldom surprised, was staring at him in frank astonishment.

"Let me present you, Sir Lawrence," Joseph said, rising to his feet. "Sorry to disturb you but we are very much honoured this morning. Sir Lawrence Paule, our head chemist—His Highness Prince Edgar of Galwey—my daughter, Lady Judith—Lord Amberleys."

The newcomer acknowledged the introductions with composure. Judith's eyes had scarcely once left his face.

"Surely I have met you lately, haven't I?" she asked wonderingly.

"Indefinitely," he admitted. "We met in the Lawn Tennis Competition at Queen's last week. I was playing with Lady Ferber, if you remember."

"Of course I remember," she exclaimed. "You wiped the floor with us. Lady Ferber's introduction was almost inaudible, and I never caught your name."

"Your partner was very much off his game," Paule remarked.—"I am so sorry to have kept you waiting this morning. I was trying a slight experiment in the inner analyst's room, and was obliged to see it through. Would your visitors care to see the private laboratories, Lord Honerton?"

"We should like to very much," Judith declared promptly, without waiting for any one else to reply.

Sir Lawrence turned away for a moment, with a word of excuse, to give some instructions to the young man who was obviously his secretary. Judith's eyes continued to follow him. There was indeed in the light of her father's information some cause for her surprise. She had been expecting to see a studious if not grey-headed veteran of science, stooping and bespectacled, with all the aloofness of the savant. Lawrence Paule, on the contrary, although he was one of those men whose age would at any time have been difficult to determine, was obviously under middle age. He had the long, lean body of an athlete, a clean-shaven, thoughtful face, with a somewhat prominent forehead, grey eyes, hard and keen, a cynical twist to his mouth, black hair, glossy, yet slightly unkempt, and worn a trifle too long. He was wearing, over his clothes, a loose linen duster, and he carried in his hand a pair of thick magnifying spectacles. A single horn-rimmed eyeglass hung by a cord from his neck. Judith leaned across her companions.

"Dad," she asked, under her breath, "how old is this amazing scientist of yours?"

Her father grinned.

"Better ask him, my dear," he suggested. "He wouldn't tell me."

"I've heard of the fellow," Amberleys whispered. "Tell you something about him later."

Sir Lawrence finished his conversation with his secretary and at once rejoined them. He moved immediately to the inner door, opened it and motioned them to pass through.

"I am afraid," he said, "you will find very little here to interest you. This department is devoted to purely technical experiments. My assistants are busy this morning testing a shipment of suspected drugs from South America."

They all looked around; no one with very great enthusiasm. In front of a great uncurtained window, was a long marble table, on which were ranged a seemingly endless collection of glass vessels of various sizes and shapes, underneath some of which little electric fires were burning. From several of the others a faint brown vapour was being emitted, over which one of the four young assistants was holding some sort of a ball instrument enclosed in a silk mesh. On the farther side of the room a certain space was shut off by a solid mahogany rail, with iron lattice work beneath. In the centre of this space, overhung by powerful electric lights, was a marble table on which were several more glass retorts, and a large number of gleaming scientific implements.

"What exactly goes on here?" Judith enquired, curiously.

"Every parcel of drugs which comes into the place," Paule explained—"drugs, herbs or any component parts of our medicines—is tested and according to any divergence there may be in its strength or purity, from the recognised standard, so our mixer in chief varies his preparation. Sometimes, of course, we have to condemn parcels of drugs altogether. All our eucalyptus oil lately, for instance, has been most indifferent."

"And what goes on inside that jealously preserved space?" the Prince asked, pointing to the enclosure.

Paule strolled over to it and opened the iron gate with a Yale key attached to his watch chain.

"This is one of the places where I make experiments," he said. "Sometimes, for instance, it is possible to substitute a far less expensive drug for some of those we have been in the habit of using and procure exactly the same result. This is where I try to justify my existence as a commercial asset to the firm."

"And succeed too," Joseph declared heartily. "You'd be astonished, all of you, if I were to let you into the secret of how much money has been saved to the firm inside that little enclosure."

Paule remained impassive, watching a blue flame over some brown powder in one of the retorts. Judith found herself standing by his side.

"What on earth does that signify?" she asked, pointing to it.

"Just this," he replied.

He plunged into a highly technical exposition, winding up with a little movement of his hand towards the expiring flames.

"You understand?" he asked.

"Not a single word," she admitted frankly.

He smiled as the flame died out with a small report.

"No," he murmured. "Well, I didn't think you would."

"Why did you trouble to tell me about it, then?" she demanded.

"Because you asked," he rejoined.

She turned away. Joseph had himself been explaining the procedure of the room to his other two visitors.

"Well," she declared, "I am a little disappointed. Is there nothing more for us to see, Dad?"

Her father pointed to a solid mahogany door at the farther end of the laboratory.

"Not unless you can persuade Paule to take you into his holy of holies," he replied.

"Has Sir Lawrence anything so exciting?" she queried. "Is there anything beyond that door, Sir Lawrence, more interesting than a silly blue flame, a brown powder and a lot of stupid technical terms?"

"Vastly so," he assured her, without moving from his place.

"Then lead on," she begged. "I am in the humour to be thrilled."

He shook his head gently. Her father intervened.

"I ought to have warned you, Judith," he said, "that Sir Lawrence is rather by way of being a martinet about that Bluebeard's chamber of his. Can't quite make up my mind whether it's perpetual motion or something of the monkey's gland order he's after. Only been allowed to peep inside the door once myself."

"There's nothing going on there at the moment likely to interest any of you," Paule insisted coolly. "In fact, the whole of this department is a little technical for the ordinary visitor."

"Very interesting, all the same," Prince Edgar declared, stifling a slight yawn.

Judith leaned towards her guide and dropped her voice.

"Aren't we to be allowed just a glimpse inside that room?" she pleaded.

He shook his head. He had somehow the air of one addressing a child.

"To tell you the truth," he confided, "there are ghosts and evil spirits loose there. They recognise me as their master but they object to visitors. An evil spirit evolved from gasses is a terrible fellow to meet when he's not in the humour for amenities."

She made a little grimace to cover her anger.

"And a distinguished chemist when he is in the mood to be disagreeable can also be an unpleasant person," she observed.

Paule locked the gate through which they had issued and passed in front of them to the farther door of the laboratory.

"I am sorry not to have had more to show you," he remarked, with a bow of obvious dismissal. "Perhaps you may honour us on some future occasion when we are making some more interesting experiments. We have an idea, for instance, of a new cure for rheumatism, which if it succeeds will make England a brighter nation."

"Insufferable person!" Judith declared, as soon as the door was safely closed.

Her father shook his head deprecatingly.

"My dear," he confided, taking her arm, "he is sometimes very rude to me. I pretend not to notice it. I shall go on pretending not to notice it. Last year he increased the profits of his department two hundred thousand pounds. So long as he goes on doing that, he can be as irritating as he chooses."