“Yes, devils. I can stand it no longer.” The alchemist rose from his stool and turned upon Tring. “You who have powers greater than man, know most of what is passing in my soul. The secrets of my craft, the sciences of actions and reactions—all these you know. But I hold from you one secret, one great secret which has bowed my shoulders with care and blackened my heart with crime. Come, watch, I will show you something that has powers beyond those of which you dream. See . . .” His accents became wilder and his voice trembled. He shuffled about the attic as if making preparations for some experiment. He set up a tripod in the very middle of the room and linked the top with chains as if he were to set a bowl upon it; he unlocked a great chest that stood in one corner under the eaves and took from it some object wrapped in black cloths, and this object he placed upon the tripod.
“Now let us have a light,” he said.
He shook some powder into a brazier full of coals which suddenly leaped into flame. As the whole room burst into existence with the illumination there appeared most prominently in it the tripod which bore the covered mystery. The alchemist whipped the cloth covering away.
It was as if he had uncovered a diamond of the finest water! Upon the brass top of the tripod gleamed in that instant a very miracle of color and light; the object itself was about the size of a man’s head. Upon this exquisite thing no artificial effort of man had been expended; it was as nature had fashioned it in the depths of some subterranean grotto where drops of water falling in steady succession for thousands and thousands of years had slowly created it. The outer layers were clear like the water of a mountain spring; as the eye fell farther and farther within the surface a bluish tint was perceptible and at the very center there was a coloring of rose. Such was its absolute beauty that whoever looked into its depths seemed to be gazing into a sea without limit.
“In the name of Heaven,” shrieked Tring, “what is this?”
The alchemist spoke in a low voice as one might speak in a church: “The Great Tarnov Crystal.”
“The Great Tarnov Crystal!” repeated Tring. “The Great Tarnov Crystal! . . . Why, that is the stone for which alchemists and workers of magic have been searching these hundreds of years. The Great Tarnov Crystal!” He shouted it almost in high excitement. “Why, man, we have here the greatest scientific treasure of all ages.” He began to skip about in transports as the possibilities of the treasure’s possession leaped into his mind. “And now I understand,” he continued. “Indeed you have been under the hand of a devil if you have been gazing into that thing. Why, do you know that this stone can send a man into a trance in which all manner of truths will be divulged? Do you know that we can learn now for a certainty the very secret that we have been seeking?” And going close to the stone, he gazed into its depths as a thirsty man might gaze into a well of water.
There was this curious property of the Great Tarnov Crystal, and perhaps of all great crystals in the world’s history, that it never presented the same vista twice to the man who looked within its depths. Now this may have been due to many things, to the fact that the lights surrounding it were never twice the same, and also perhaps to this, that the crystal had the strange property of reflecting back to the observer the very thoughts that were tucked away deeply in his head. What drew men to the Tarnov Crystal in the beginning was, of course, its beauty, its color, its light, its constantly changing vistas, and besides these, there was that indefinable fascination that all such stones have. Diamonds, as well, possess this fascinating power to a high degree though the diamond is, of course, a small stone, and not large enough to hold the concentrated focus of two eyes for a very long time; the crystal by reason of its size possesses this quality according to its fineness.
The Tarnov Crystal was the finest crystal known to the magicians of the Middle Ages. And although magic was frowned upon by scholars and men of science such as astronomers and alchemists, still there was no distinct line between science and magic, with the result that many of these men found themselves practicing magic when they had intended only to make scientific investigations. It was even so with Pan Kreutz, who ordinarily had but little use for magic or the Black Arts in any form—until now he had come entirely under the domination of the student Tring whose enthusiasm had carried him away.