CHAPTER XI

ALCHEMY

"Redfern got through?"

The eager question was like a knife in Forrester's heart.

"Yes, Redfern got through," he repeated wearily. "Your name is Beresford?"

"It is. Where is Redfern? Have you disposed of that ancient scarecrow above?"

"I am a prisoner like yourself."

The elder man gasped.

"Has he cast his spell over all of you?" he cried. "A British force conquered by a conjuring trick? For heaven's sake explain yourself."

"There is no British force. It is a long story I have to tell you."

"Come along over here, then. There's only one poor idiot who _can_ understand you besides myself, and he's so desperately cowed that I doubt whether he _will_. Now, sit here: you won't catch cold: the whole place is warm, as I daresay you have discovered."

Beresford's brusque manner, quick speech, and robust personality acted as a tonic upon Forrester. Already he felt invigorated. The mystery of the place evidently had no terror for this sturdy Englishman. Forrester had vaguely expected that the archaeologist would be old, dry, bent, and spectacled: the actual man was of middle height, athletic in build, under forty years of age, with a heavy brown beard and moustache, and the large deep eyes that are the index to a mind at once eager and reflective.

They squatted side by side on the rocky floor. Beyond them, Forrester caught sight of the drooping figure of the young Chinaman, Wen Shih's companion, and several older Chinamen, clearly prisoners. Near the entrance to the cave were two negritos with spears, and, in a pagoda-shaped sentry-box, a priest of the second order.

"I didn't choose my company," said Beresford with a laugh. "Now, forge ahead; I won't interrupt you if I can help it."

It was soon evident that to listen long without interrupting was impossible to this impetuous spirit. He was patient enough while Forrester related the strange manner of his meeting Redfern, only ejaculating "Poor dear old chap!" when he heard of the captain's illness. But as Forrester was recounting the preliminary stages of the expedition, he broke in:--

"Cut that, if you don't mind. Hitch on again at your discovery of the rift."

"Yes; there's a good deal in between, but--well, the people here were warned of our coming by Wen Shih, who----"

"Wen Shih! Who is he? I suppose he comes into the part you've skipped. Wait though: I know the name. Of course; that broken-hearted young fellow over there mentioned him; seemed in two minds whether to hate or love him. But he has only been here since yesterday: he's young, and I hope to make a man of him yet. But I'm interrupting: do go on."

Forrester was too much pleased with this cheery being to resent being hustled. He went on to relate the closing scenes of the party's journey through the rift, their awaking in the rock chamber above, and the dreadful ceremony in the Temple. His voice faltered as he spoke of the beam of light and its effect.

"Ah! That's new to me," said Beresford more gravely than he had yet spoken. "That's dashed bad. You're sure it wasn't a Maskelyne and Devant trick?"

"Quite sure. There could be no possible doubt about it."

"That's what they really mean by the Eye, then. I took it to be the eye of that ridiculous creature on the wall. That old villain above is more ingenious than I fancied him. I regarded him as a mere clever bag-of-bones togged up--a sort of music-hall comedian with a straight face. But please go on."

The rest of Forrester's story was soon told.

"Well, don't be downhearted," Beresford cried, gripping his shoulder with the rough vigour of a friendly bear. "The August and Venerable sent me here too, to learn wisdom: we'll learn it together. I have been here three days----"

"Did you come down a staircase, with negritos and a priest behind?" asked Forrester, remembering the strange procession across the rift wall.

"I did. There's no other way. But why did you ask?"

"Because we saw you--what looked like half-dressed skeletons, slanting down the wall. When we found that the wall was solid, without steps, we were flabbergasted."

"I daresay," Beresford rejoined with a smile. "You will learn more wisdom here than our ancient friend upstairs reckons for!"

"But why didn't you feel the same ghastly creepiness as we did?"

"I'll tell you. It was _because I knew what the old villain was up to_. That knowledge was a wonderful talisman against his tricks. And what's more, _he didn't know that I knew_, or, after what you have told me about his murderous Eye, I should without doubt have been resolved into molecules before this. Like you, I was allowed to go up daily to the plateau--by the way, they employ a marvellously effective system of intensive cultivation there--like you, I refused to dig. Unluckily one day I lost my temper with one of his bald-headed priests: it doesn't matter why; and I knocked the fellow down. They hauled me into the Temple, and tried to lift me on to that pedestal you spoke of, supposing no doubt that the green-eyed monster and the surroundings generally had crumpled me up--that mist, for instance, a magnificent bit of stage management. But I sent one of the fellows spinning with my right and the other with my left, and marched straight up to the throne--it's pure gold, by the way--and shook my fist in the August and Venerable face, telling him what I thought of him and his crew. I am bound to say he stood it well. He didn't blink an eyelid; there wasn't a tremor in his silvery old voice when he reeled off, in surprisingly good English, a rigmarole about the Law of the Eye. I told him I didn't care a tinker's curse for the Law of the Eye. That was enough to rouse him, but the wonderful old creature wouldn't be roused. He simply yarned on about learning wisdom, and the Power of the Eye, shrouded himself in his vapour and disappeared like a dissolving view. Then I was brought here."

"I wonder you came!" Forrester exclaimed, envying the speaker's boldness, and burning to hear the secret of it.

"Well, I wanted to see all there was to be seen," Beresford replied simply. "I didn't know, of course, that I couldn't get back; and I might have acted differently if he had given an exhibition of the Power of the Eye for my benefit: I suppose there was no criminal on hand at the moment. As soon as I got here I saw that his intention was to give me a stronger dose of his horrors; he is a perfect epicure in punishments. But there was no occasion for panic. I've known Redfern for twenty odd years: he was my fag at school: and I would have given long odds that he would worry through somehow, send up a relief party and give the old reprobate what-for. I've every confidence even now that he will--if he lives. We may be here longer than I expected; but we can stand two years of it, perhaps three."

"You mean that, even if we are not taken above and pulverised, we are in mortal danger here?" Forrester asked.

"Certainly; but not of instant death unless we make fools of ourselves. The length of the process depends on your constitution. Not one of those poor wretches yonder has been here more than four years, and that's exceptional. That young fellow, the last-comer--his name is Wing Wu, by the way: did you ever hear such a name?--he will hardly last out a year: he hasn't the stamina for it."

"But what is the mystery, then?" asked Forrester, astonished at the calmness with which this intrepid fellow seemed to envisage a certain death. "People have lived much longer than four years underground."

"Never in such a dungeon as this. Come with me."

He led Forrester across the cave until they came to a spot whence the floor shelved down steeply to the wall. That part of the wall which was below the general level of the floor was brightly luminous, and on its green surface Forrester saw, as on a screen, the shadowy forms of fishes and aquatic reptiles flitting hither and thither. Watching them curiously, he was astonished when, at one and the same moment, they dispersed with a rapidity betokening terror, some to the right, some to the left. For an instant the screen was left blank; then there appeared upon it a monstrous skeletonised form, somewhat resembling the fantastic creatures depicted on the walls of the Temple, and on the wall of his own cell. It combined in one shape all the most hideous features of the alligator, the rhinoceros, and the dog-fish immensely magnified. Involuntarily Forrester started back as the figure came close up to the wall, and seemed to be looking through it, as the fish in an aquarium look through the glass of their tank. But it was a shape only; its eyes could not be seen.

"What is it?" Forrester asked in a whisper.

"I don't know," his companion responded. "It is not one of any of the species of ichthyosaurus that I have ever seen; but it is liker that reptile than to any other known creature."

"But isn't that extinct? Don't they find merely the fossil remains of it?"

"Who is to say that any creature is extinct? Scarcely a year passes but some explorer finds, in some remote neglected region, what is to him a new type, but in reality, no doubt, dates back to an antiquity beyond computation. This hideous creature seems to be the last of his kind; I have seen no sign of a mate; and his extinction would not be much of a loss."

"How can we see him at all, through the wall--just as we saw you coming down here three days ago?"

"Does no explanation occur to you?"

"Well, of course I have heard of X-rays, and things of that kind; but----"

"Exactly. Excuse my interruption, but I know what you were going to say. You were going to speak of cathodes, and vacuum tubes, and phosphorescent screens, and----"

"I wasn't," said Forrester: "I never heard of them."

"It comes to the same thing," Beresford went on imperturbably; and Forrester felt a little sorry that the man of cheery good fellowship was for the time sunk in the man of science. "Here there is none of the elaborate apparatus of the experimenter; but Nature has been experimenting through ages beyond count. What do our men of science know of the real nature of the X-rays? Next to nothing. They can produce them, that is all. And here, before our eyes, we have phenomena produced, not by man, but by the Great Artificer of the universe. Those creatures are swimming in the lake which you skirted just now. Their images are cast in some marvellous way upon this particular portion of the wall. I know no more than you the explanation, but.... My dear fellow, pardon me: this is not a lecture room. Come, I have something more to show you."

They recrossed the cavern, which was as broad as it was high, and turning a corner, were confronted by the arch-like opening of a passage. It was much more brightly illuminated by green light than the cavern out of which it led. Passing under the arch, the two men walked quickly up the passage, which twisted to right and left at every few yards, and inclined gradually upward.

"I feel very rummy," said Forrester after a while: "the sort of tingling you have before a severe thunderstorm."

"I feel it too," his companion responded: "not so intensely as you, perhaps. The thing is to keep as tight a hold on yourself as you can--as you ought to have done when that old sinner above hypnotised you."

"But----"

"Now don't talk. We shall have plenty of opportunities of discussing him, and hypnotism, and a thousand and one things. Take a grip of yourself, and _will_ that the mephitic influence shall not affect you. You won't thoroughly succeed, but the effort will be good."

The feeling of tenseness increased as they advanced. To Forrester it seemed as though a hot band were tightening round his temples; but he kept silence. Glancing at Beresford, he perceived on his face an expression of grim, almost savage, determination. They went on, the passage becoming lighter moment by moment, until, after they had walked a few hundred yards, it widened out into a cavern, much less spacious than that which they had left, but almost as light as open ground at noonday. At the edge of it Beresford halted.

"Stand here, and watch," he said.

In the centre of the floor there was a large square slab of some greyish substance--the only spot in the cavern through which the green rays did not, as it were, percolate. It was about three feet each way, and stood a few inches above the floor. Upon it lay a coil of thin yellow-green chain, like an immense brass watch-guard tinged with verdigris, and an oblong lump about a foot in length, and of the same colour. A few feet above, a stout bar of yellow metal projected from the wall of the cavern, having at its free end, exactly over the centre of the slab, a wheel over which another chain hung.

These objects first caught Forrester's attention, no doubt because they formed a group in the centre of an otherwise bare floor; but they held it only for a moment or two. His eyes were diverted to a living figure. From a hitherto unnoticed recess on his left hand came a bent, decrepit, cadaverous Chinaman, to all appearance very old, carrying a thin square plate, in colour a dirty greenish-grey. He toddled slowly towards the slab, looking neither to right nor left, laid the plate upon it, and passed through a hole in the centre of the plate what seemed to be a small catch in the aforesaid lump of metal. This latter he attached to the chain hanging over the wheel.

This done, he moved to one side, and standing at a distance of about ten feet from the slab, pulled at the chain which lay upon it, and which, as Forrester now saw, was fastened to a stout ring in its upper edge. The slab moved on hinges slowly towards the Chinaman, and as it rose from the floor, a shaft of pale green light, blinding in its brilliance, shot up to the roof, fourteen or fifteen feet above, causing the two Englishmen to start back and retreat some paces into the passage. Forrester was conscious of an intensification of his nervous excitement. His ears buzzed; his skin tingled as if he were in an electric bath; his impulse was to cover his eyes and rush headlong to escape the terrible glare and its psychical accompaniment. But seeing Beresford venturing back by degrees, he exerted his will to the utmost, and followed him.

The Chinaman, who was probably at the outset less nervously organised than they, and was certainly inured to the conditions, was carefully paying out the chain over the wheel, with its weighted plate, into a hole in the floor. As Forrester now perceived, the two chains were one, which was much longer than had appeared when it was coiled up. When it was stretched to its full length, it rose vertically from the slab to the bar, ran through hooks in this for a few feet, then descended perpendicularly over the wheel. The Chinaman drew back, and leant against the wall in the relaxed attitude of one waiting. To the Englishmen, in this overpowering atmosphere, the period of inaction seemed an hour: it was really about five minutes. Then the Chinaman approached the chain, taking care to remain as far as possible from the hole, and with careful deliberateness hauled it in, moving backward as he did so. Forrester waited with feverish impatience as it clinked inch by inch over the wheel. When at last the square plate came to the top, the Chinaman raised it until there was room for the slab to pass beneath it, and prevented it from slipping down over the wheel by hooking the chain to the wall, leaving, however, the greater part of the chain free.

Then, with a quickness all the more surprising because of his slow movements hitherto, he rushed with bent head at the slab, gave it one vigorous push, and darted back to the wall, catching at the chain in time to prevent the slab from falling violently. When it was settled in its place, and the blinding glare was shut off, the old man sank on the floor as if to rest after tremendous exertions.

At first Forrester felt a dull disappointment. Without a definite expectation, he had anticipated some striking phenomenon as the result of this elaborate performance. The plate, whose upper surface was towards him, seemed after its long descent to be exactly as it was before: there was no change in it, nor had it brought anything up from the pit into which it had been plunged. But after a few minutes had passed, the Chinaman turned it over, and Forrester was mildly surprised to perceive that the under surface had changed its colour. It was now greenish yellow, like the chain, the bar, and all the other parts of the machinery. In his half-dazed condition he did not suspect the extraordinary character of the transformation.

The Chinaman having reversed the plate, fastened it again to the chain, and went through the same series of careful movements as before. During the second period of waiting, Forrester, prompted by his companion, followed with his eyes the vertical path of the shaft of light from the hole to the roof. He noticed there an aperture, corresponding in size to the hole. A little fine dust was falling from this aperture, like soot from a chimney, into and around the opening of the pit, the minute particles dancing and glistening like the motes in a sunbeam.

When the plate came up the second time, its colour was the same on both sides. The Chinaman unhooked it, carried it across the cavern into the recess, and reappeared with a similar plate, dull and lustreless as the first had been.

Beresford drew Forrester away, and hurried him back through the passage, saying nothing until they regained the larger cavern. Then he halted, clutched the lapels of Forrester's coat, and said:--

"Well, what do you think of that?"

"I don't understand," Forrester replied, something in his companion's manner convicting him of stupidity.

Beresford smiled.

"I don't wonder," he said. "You have seen what the alchemists from Trismegistus to Roger Bacon spent their lives in fruitless efforts to discover, and what Paracelsus would have given the world to see. You have seen lead transmuted into gold! That is the Old Man of the Mountain's secret. Come along to my particular nook: I will tell you all I know."