These words were dying on his lips when three sharp raps on the ceiling made him lift his head.
"Althotas wants me, and in a hurry. That is a good sign."
With a long iron rod he rapped in answer. He put away the tools, and by means of an iron ring in a trap overhead, which was the floor of a dumb-waiter, as then they called elevators, he pulled this down to his feet. Placing himself in the center of it, he was carried gently, by no spring but a simple hydraulic machine, worked by the reservoir which had extinguished the fire, up into the study reserved for the old alchemist.
This new dwelling was eight feet by nine in height, and sixteen in length; all the light came from a skylight, as the four walls were without inlet. It was, relatively to the house on wheels, a palace.
The old man was sitting in his easy-chair on casters, at the middle of a horseshoe-shaped table in iron, with a marble top, laden with a quantity of plants, books, tools, bottles, and papers traced with cabalistic signs—a chaos.
He was so wrapt in thought that he was not disturbed by the entrance.
A globe of crystal hung over his yellow and bald pate; in this a sort of serpent, fine and coiled like a spring, seemed to curl, and it sent forth a bright and unvarying light, without other apparent source of luminous supply than the chain supporting the globe might contain to transmit.
He was "candling" a phial of ground glass in his fingers as a good wife tries eggs.
"Well, anything new?" said Balsamo, after having silently watched him for a while.