“I know it. Yet that is no justification for me. I stole it if a thief ever stole anything. When I first saw it that night on the floor of Pan Andrew’s lodging I would have exchanged my chance of heaven for its possession. When I had obtained it, and the attention of the crowd in the court below was turned to the robbers and to the man escaping over the roofs, I brought it here to the loft, under my coat.”
“You did well,” said Tring, the wildest impulses of excitement leaping within him. “Look—look at the crystal. It glows and dances and quivers like a thing alive, ready to tell its secrets. Quick, draw your chair near to it as you used to draw your chair to me when I was the master of your trances. Gaze deeply into it”—he fixed the hesitating alchemist with his eyes as a serpent might fix a helpless bird—“and now let us try the greatest experiment of all.”
The alchemist pulled his chair close to the crystal as he was bid, and fixed his eyes upon it. Tring watched him closely from a distance. One minute—two minutes—three—the alchemist still looked at the crystal and Tring regarded him as a cat might regard a mouse that it was playing with. Four minutes—five. The alchemist still sat motionless, but his posture in the chair was changing slightly. His arms and neck seemed to be stiffening, his face was taking on the look of an entirely different person; his breath came regularly but in longer and deeper draughts than was his wont. His eyes became wide open and staring.
“Listen,” Tring’s tone was sharp, commanding.
“I am listening,” the reply came instantly.
Tring trembled with excitement. Not only had the alchemist gone into this trance more quickly than he, Tring, had ever been able to send him, but he was still responsive to the student who had feared lest the agency of the crystal might render Kreutz unresponsive to him. But Tring had sent him into trances so many times that now his mind seemed to answer the student’s bidding automatically.
“Tell me what you see.”
“I can see a huge hall like an alchemist’s room, filled with braziers and glass instruments. In these instruments fluids of fire are rushing to and fro and near them are great copper kettles out of which are coming puffs of steam.”
“It is the devil’s workshop that you are in,” said Tring sharply. “Do you see any men at work?”
There was silence a moment as the alchemist’s consciousness went roaming through the vast room.