The Crystal Egg | Page 8

Mr. Cave thought at first
was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway
beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr.
Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of
extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had
passed out of sight.
After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians,
and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to
the crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately
turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of
signalling. But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the
Martian had departed.
Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and
then Mr. Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the
crystal were allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that,
as occasion arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself
with what was fast becoming the most real thing in his existence.
In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming
examination became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for

a week, and for ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw
nothing of Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these investigations,
and, the stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to
Seven Dials. At the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's
window, and then another at a cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed.
He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at
once called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in
cheap but ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without
any very great surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already
buried. She was in tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just
returned from Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own
prospects and the honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace
was at last able to learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been
found dead in his shop in the early morning, the day after his last visit
to Mr. Wace, and the crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands.
His face was smiling, said Mrs. Cave, and the velvet cloth from the
minerals lay on the floor at his feet. He must have been dead five or six
hours when he was found.
This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself
bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's
ill-health. But his chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that
topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs. Cave's peculiarities.
He was dumfounded to learn that it was sold.
Mrs. Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had been taken upstairs,
had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds
for the crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt,
in which her daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his
address. As they were without the means required to mourn and bury
Cave in the elaborate style the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant
demands, they had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in Great
Portland Street. He had very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at
a valuation. The valuation was his own, and the crystal egg was
included in one of the lots. Mr. Wace, after a few suitable condolences,
a little off-handedly proffered perhaps, hurried at once to Great

Portland Street. But there he learned that the crystal egg had already
been sold to a tall, dark man in grey. And there the material facts in this
curious, and to me at least very suggestive, story come abruptly to an
end. The Great Portland Street dealer did not know who the tall dark
man in grey was, nor had he observed him with sufficient attention to
describe him minutely. He did not even know which way this person
had gone after leaving the shop. For a time Mr. Wace remained in the
shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless questions, venting his
own exasperation. And at last, realising abruptly that the whole thing
had passed out of his hands, had vanished like a vision of the night, he
returned to his own rooms, a little astonished to find the notes he had
made still tangible and visible upon, his untidy table.
His annoyance and disappointment were naturally very great. He made
a second call (equally ineffectual) upon the Great Portland Street dealer,
and he resorted to advertisements in such periodicals as were lively to