made a desperate escape, he dashed towards the door. McMadden stopped him in his tracks and, angered, was in no mood to reason any more. He raised his arm and struck him hard. He struck him hard again. And then again, harder than before and Manson broke, bleeding, frail and weakened by the beating, turned and tearfully opened his embrace and let the little golden box tumble to the ground.
In triumph, McMadden picked it up from the dusty floor and brushed it off and smiled and said: “Be careful who you steal from.” And he turned his back and left.
Mandrake’s task was satisfied, but McMadden was disquieted. A curious business this; that two old men should, in their different ways, be so transfixed by a worthless box, so gripped by their possessing it. Perhaps this twice stolen thing had, as Mandrake hinted at, a power over men that could make its owner greater than a king.
“I’ll not hurry to return this thing to that fool Mandrake”, thought McMadden now. “He can wait a day or so. I’ll make him sweat and he’ll pay double for my pains.”
4
McMadden halted outside a humble shop. He looked up and saw a painted sign which, when read over, read Shop (of Curiosities). An idea took hold of him: if he could learn a little more about this curious thing, and learn something of its value and its power, he would have advantage over Mandrake. He stepped within to see what old man Mankopf knew.
Sure enough, he found old Mankopf where we left him, busy as his desk, pondering the mechanism of a jewellery box that when opened showed a puppet dancing girl, her wooden arms outstretched in pirouette, her pointed toes painted gold. At the very moment McMadden took out the little golden box the ballerina, all by herself, started to turn a dance. She drew a circle, swift and true, and slowed gently down to rest. She bowed low and respectfully and waited there, as if in expectation of polite applause.
“Well I never!” Mankopf said and looking up saw McMadden there who asked at once: “Would you be so good as to tell me all you know of this?”
Mankopf smiled obligingly, “with great pleasure” he said, and he fixed his wiry spectacles to nose. “Well I never! How did you come by this? Only yesterday I sold one to a gentlemen. I had never in my life seen one such as this before and now its brother comes along.”
McMadden smiled at Mankopf’s error and did not trouble to set him right. “Do I take it that its scarcity makes its value great? And what of its age and purpose?”
“By my recollection, rare indeed, and very old I’d say, though its value is only what a keen collector is prepared to pay. The gentleman who came is yesterday might be interested in another for his collection.” He paused and exclaimed: “Upon my word, what a morning this is, here’s the very man himself!”
McMadden span around and standing there was Mandrake. Mandrake spoke, clear and cold: “You vile thief. You foul snake. To think I held you in good faith. I find you here, passing on my property and profiting from my loss. I ordered you to bring my treasure back at once; but you defy me, and tarry here with this half-blind watch mender, trying to make a sale.”
“And as for you, Mankopf”, Mandrake held the pointed tip of his blackthorn cane up to Mankopf’s frightened face, “You sold me short old man. This thing I bought from you is incomplete, I need the key that brings the box to life or, strike me dead, you will not live to see another day.” He raised his stick and crashed it down upon the jewellery box that Mankopf had been working on.
The little boy, who at this hour, was sat upon his bed upstairs, had heard each word. And each and every word that Mandrake screamed out had lodged itself inside his frightened soul. He had taken what was never his to take. His crime had tightened about his heart. His secret sin had set his soul against himself: he was at once the boy that stole and lied, and yet the better part of him looked on, saddened and ashamed but powerless by itself to undo what he had done.
From its hiding place he took, with trembling hand, the little key, the star of gold, which he gripped for all his life. This was his chance to put things right, his chance to make amends. He had to find within himself the strength to face the man who was bringing terror to his home. He made to move and thought that fear would hold him back; but no: his steps were light, for honesty drew him easily onwards and towards this reckoning.
Downstairs, McMadden was motionless. He held his ground and quickly calculated plans. Mandrake had lost all sense and it seemed was in the mood for bloody violence. It was time to take his leave. But something in him could not leave the curious thing behind. In a panic blind he snatched the box from the tabletop and fled fast through to the back of Mr Mankopf’s shop. As Mandrake’s screams assailed his beating heart, he burst through to a long dark corridor that was lined with doors and books and littered with a thousand ancient things, unsold, broken and discarded. He tried one door: it was locked up tight. The next one opened but this was no way out: it was just another room that was brimmed with useless bric-a-brac. So he fled further through the house, pursuing a winding course, believing that the outside world lay up ahead. And with every desperate step he put distance between himself and Mandrake.
But he turned a corner and his way stopped dead. A wardrobe, towered, coffin black; it filled the corridor. There a door! He wrenched it open; a flight of stairs, leading upwards and away. But where? Behind him the sound of Mandrake, his heavy frame forcing through the thousand things that filled the shop. Laughing, Mandrake pushed and smashed anything and everything that stood between him and the curious thing.
McMadden flew up the stairs. He reached the landing and felt escape was near. But turning right he saw a broken windowpane, and before it, with blood still dripping from his fractured head, was Manson. In one hand he held an iron bar, in the other, weeping for his life, he gripped the scruff of a little boy.
“A strange meeting this.” Manson grinned. “Now give me back my treasure!” McMadden turned but there was Mandrake. Two angers barred the way. Manson stood his ground and waited while McMadden, trapped between these two hateful men (both of whom he had provoked and both had cause enough to beat him dead) held hostage in his arms the precious thing. The three of them, thus caught up in the same desire were fixed in a dreadful stalemate.
“Let’s bring this business to a close,” said Mandrake, who was relishing this sudden sense of terror. “I am the only man here with a true claim upon that object. McMadden, I command you, give it up. And I wonder if that vile thief that stands beyond has not chanced upon another in his trade. That poisonous little boy who trembles there, did his thieving little fingers help themselves to the key that drives my music box? Let me tell him straight, he had no business taking it, and hell awaits, with gaping mouth, wicked little boys like him.”
Now Manson, in whose grip the boy was still detained, saw his moment clear. He grabbed the boy’s wrist and twisting, prised apart the tight holding fingers. In his palm lay the finely made five-pointed star. Manson held it high and threw the empty-handed, battered boy onto the dusty ground.
It dawned at once in Manson’s mind what power he now held. With tremendous force he raised his weapon high above his head. “An eye for an eye, McMadden. That box is mine.” And Manson powered forwards.
“Hold back, I say!” McMadden screamed, and Manson stayed his hand. Then McMadden spoke out with a strange simplicity:
“It seems that matters are complete. We have both box and key. We have the man who mended it and made it work, and the man who knows its purpose and its power.
But I say damn your claim Mandrake. For those that want to keep what they possess had better reckon with the fact that the poor and broken, those that lack the finery your riches can provide, have no lesser need of beauties such as this.
And so it seems to me that this curious thing has summoned to itself three men who want it for themselves: men whose greed has made them mad; men who, in jealousy, have put away their humanity.
But I know of something stronger still, something older and more terrible than greed and superstition. I
say let cold reason have its way. Since we crave this curious treasure, and its power, with equal measure, it seems to me that reason compels that we should divide it equally. Each man, by rights, can simply take their share of it.”
McMadden raised the curious thing high above his head and threw it down mightily upon the ground. It broke at once into a thousand splinters of glass and gold. He snatched Mandrake’s blackthorn cane and again and again, he hammered down hard upon its little broken body. “This is the darkest power that is in Man!” McMadden cried, “to kill his gods, to undo the living work of centuries, to turn against his greatest heart’s desires.”
And then upon the Shop (of Curiosities) a silence fell. Mandrake and Manson knew full well that here their road was ended. They now felt nothing. No rage spurred them on, no need, no want, disturbed them. They did not speak as each left the place.
But there is a little more to say. In years to come we will come to learn this of them: Manson, too infirm for thievery, played through, in his mind, each of his crimes. He saw them seething over the skin of his hands, each one drawing its debt of guilt and shame. The harm he had done came back in haunted forms, and he wrote down in black ink, with a sharp pointed pen, along his arm