I went out and wandered rather
aimlessly about the streets; my head was full of my tale, and I didn't
much notice where I was going. I got into those quiet places to the
north of Oxford Street as you go west, the genteel residential
neighborhood of stucco and prosperity. I turned east again without
knowing it, and it was quite dark when I passed along a sombre little
by-street, ill lighted and empty. I did not know at the time in the
least where I was, but I found out afterwards that it was not very far
from Tottenham Court Road. I strolled idly along, enjoying the
stillness; on one side there seemed to be the back premises of some
great shop; tier after tier of dusty windows lifted up into the night,
with gibbet-like contrivances for raising heavy goods, and below large
doors, fast closed and bolted, all dark and desolate. Then there came a
huge pantechnicon warehouse; and over the way a grim blank wall, as
forbidding as the wall of a jail, and then the headquarters of some
volunteer regiment, and afterwards a passage leading to a court where
wagons were standing to be hired. It was, one might almost say, a street
devoid of inhabitants, and scarce a window showed the glimmer of a
light. I was wondering at the strange peace and dimness there, where it
must be close to some roaring main artery of London life, when suddenly
I heard the noise of dashing feet tearing along the pavement at full
speed, and from a narrow passage, a mews or something of that kind, a
man was discharged as from a catapult under my very nose and rushed past
me, flinging something from him as he ran. He was gone and down another
street in an instant, almost before I knew what had happened, but I
didn't much bother about him, I was watching something else. I told you
he had thrown something away; well, I watched what seemed a line of
flame flash through the air and fly quivering over the pavement, and in
spite of myself I could not help tearing after it. The impetus lessened,
and I saw something like a bright half-penny roll slower and slower, and
then deflect towards the gutter, hover for a moment on the edge, and
dance down into a drain. I believe I cried out in positive despair,
though I hadn't the least notion what I was hunting; and then to my joy
I saw that, instead of dropping into the sewer, it had fallen flat
across two bars. I stooped down and picked it up and whipped it into my
pocket, and I was just about to walk on when I heard again that sound of
dashing footsteps. I don't know why I did it, but as a matter of fact I
dived down into the mews, or whatever it was, and stood as much in the
shadow as possible. A man went by with a rush a few paces from where I
was standing, and I felt uncommonly pleased that I was in hiding. I
couldn't make out much feature, but I saw his eyes gleaming and his
teeth showing, and he had an ugly-looking knife in one hand, and I
thought things would be very unpleasant for gentleman number one if the
second robber, or robbed, or what you like, caught him up. I can tell
you, Phillipps, a fox hunt is exciting enough, when the horn blows clear
on a winter morning, and the hounds give tongue, and the red-coats
charge away, but it's nothing to a man hunt, and that's what I had a
slight glimpse of to-night. There was murder in the fellow's eyes as he
went by, and I don't think there was much more than fifty seconds
between the two. I only hope it was enough." Dyson leant back in his armchair and relit his pipe, and puffed
thoughtfully. Phillipps began to walk up and down the room, musing over
the story of violent death fleeting in chase along the pavement, the
knife shining in the lamplight, the fury of the pursuer, and the terror
of the pursued. "Well," he said at last, "and what was it, after all, that you rescued
from the gutter?" Dyson jumped up, evidently quite startled. "I really haven't a notion. I
didn't think of looking. But we shall see." He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and drew out a small and shining
object, and laid it on the table. It glowed there beneath the lamp with
the radiant glory of rare old gold; and the image and the letters stood
out in high relief, clear and sharp, as if it had but left the mint a
month before. The two men bent over it, and Phillipps took it up and
examined it closely. "Imp. Tiberius Cæsar Augustus," he read the legend, and then, looking at
the reverse of the coin, he stared in amazement, and at last turned to
Dyson with a look of exultation. "Do you know what you have found?" he said. "Apparently a gold coin of some antiquity," said Dyson, coolly. "Quite so, a gold Tiberius. No, that is wrong. You have found _the_ gold
Tiberius. Look at the reverse." Dyson looked and saw the coin was stamped with the figure of a faun
standing amidst reeds and flowing water. The features, minute as they
were, stood out in delicate outline; it was a face lovely and yet
terrible, and Dyson thought of the well-known passage of the lad's
playmate, gradually growing with his growth and increasing with his
stature, till the air was filled with the rank fume of the goat. "Yes," he said, "it is a curious coin. Do you know it?" "I know about it. It is one of the comparatively few historical objects
in existence; it is all storied like those jewels we have read of. A
whole cycle of legend has gathered round the thing; the tale goes that
it formed part of an issue struck by Tiberius to commemorate an infamous
excess. You see the legend on the reverse: 'Victoria.' It is said that
by an extraordinary accident the whole issue was thrown into the melting
pot, and that only this one coin escaped. It glints through history and
legend, appearing and disappearing, with intervals of a hundred years in
time and continents in place. It was discovered by an Italian humanist,
and lost and rediscovered. It has not been heard of since 1727, when Sir
Joshua Byrde, a Turkey merchant, brought it home from Aleppo, and
vanished with it a month after he had shown it to the virtuosi, no man
knew or knows where. And here it is!" "Put it into your pocket, Dyson," he said, after a pause. "I would not
let any one have a glimpse of the thing, if I were you. I would not talk
about it. Did either of the men you saw see you?" "Well, I think not. I don't think the first man, the man who was vomited
out of the dark passage, saw anything at all; and I am sure that the
second could not have seen me." "And you didn't really see them. You couldn't recognize either the one
or the other if you met him in the street to-morrow?" "No, I don't think I could. The street, as I said, was dimly lighted,
and they ran like mad-men." The two men sat silent for some time, each weaving his own fancies of
the story; but lust of the marvellous was slowly overpowering Dyson's
more sober thoughts. "It is all more strange than I fancied," he said at last.