“He has the spear!”
“Where?” – – Only now does the butcher seem to see the dagger in the dead man’s right hand. He swoops on it like a hawk.
The dead man’s fingers move perceptibly. They curl round the handle and grip it tight.
The furious snarls of a bulldog with its teeth in its victim come from Greene’s throat. The adept in white turns his upper body towards the sun; a ray is refracted in the golden threads of the rose; radiance spreads over the ghostly figure of Bartlett Greene. Waves of light wash him away.
The hooded men return. They lift up the body and lay it gently in the cross-shaped coffin. Gardner signals to them with his hand and leads them out to the glory of the warm sun. His figure dissolves into crystalline light, the pallbearers follow him and the silent procession floats out through the East wall of the hovel.
A garden. Masonry gleaming between high cypresses and shady oak trees. Is it the park of Mortlake Castle? It could be, for there are mournful burnt-out ruins amongst the glowing beds planted with all kinds of flowering shrubs and luminous sunflowers; but Mortlake never had such forbidding towers and ramparts as can be seen everywhere here through the foliage; and beyond the crumbling fortifications a vista opens out onto a deep blue valley with the line of a winding river etched into its floor. One flowerbed is a jumble of plants and soil where a grave has been dug; the cross-shaped coffin is being lowered into it.
Whilst the dark pallbearers fill the grave with earth the adept in the white gown moves from place to place, bending down at some mysterious task. He seems to be tending plants and shrubs like a gardener; he prunes, he ties, weeds and waters, steadily, calmly, as if he has long since forgotten the burial.
A mound rises over the grave. The blue-black pallbearers have gone. Gardner, the strange alchymist’s assistant, has tied a strong, young rose stock to a newly cut, slender stake. The roses glow blood red amongst the wealth of leaves.
I am tormented by a question which is forcing its way to my lips. But before they can form the words, the adept looks over his shoulder at me: it is Theodor Gärtner, my friend who drowned in the Pacific.
The coal dropped from my hand; my head throbbed. I felt convinced that I would never again see anything in the black glass. I had been through some kind of metamorphosis, of that I had no doubt, although I could not say precisely what it was. “I have become heir to John Dee in all that he was or did” might be the best way of putting it. We have become fused; he is no more and I am here in his stead. He is I and I am he for ever.
I threw open a window; the stale reek from the onyx bowl was unbearable. It stank of decay.
Hardly had I filled my lungs with fresh air and removed the bowl and its disgusting smell than Lipotin arrived.
As he entered he sniffed the air as unobtrusively as possible but said nothing. He greeted me rather loudly and effusively; his normal calm and languid air became nervous, fidgety. He kept laughing without reason and said “Yes, yes” and made a whole ceremony of sitting down. He crossed his legs in a rather exaggerated fashion, hurriedly lit a cigarette and started abruptly:
“I represent a client, of course.”
“The client being ...?” I asked with excessive politeness.
He bowed: “The Princess, of course.”
Without doing so deliberately, I stuck to the tone of exaggerated dignity in which our conversation had begun and which made it sound like the negotiations of two stage diplomats.
“Yes, my benefactress, Princess Shotokalungin.”
“And?”
“I have been commissioned to purchase from you – if possible – this ... this ... poignard, shall we call it. May I?” His long, slender fingers took up the dagger which lay on the table and he pretended to examine it thoroughly, screwing up his eye like a caricature connoisseur:
“Actually it’s not difficult to run this piece down. Look at the crude workmanship. A mish-mash!”
“I must admit that I, too, have the impression that it’s value as an antique is not all that great.”
Lipotin interrupted me with an anxious gesture. He was afraid of an overhasty decision. He stretched out in his chair and made an effort to get back to the lighter tone:
“As I said, I have come round to talk you into selling the dagger. Why shouldn’t I be open about it? It’s not the kind of thing you collect. But the Princess does. And she thinks ... of course I don’t share her view at all ... but she thinks ...”
“... it is the piece missing from her father’s collection.” I kept to my aloof tone as I completed Lipotin’s sentence.
“Yes! That’s it! ... Right first time!” Lipotin leapt up from his chair and put on a show of pleased astonishment at my astuteness.
“I concur with the opinion of the Princess,” I remarked.
Lipotin leant back in satisfaction.
“You do? Then that’s all right.” His expression suggested he assumed the bargain had been struck.
In the same calm tone I said:
“And that is precisely why the dagger is of great value to me.”
“I quite understand,” interrupted Lipotin in his alacrity to agree with me. “We must make the most of our opportunities; my sentiments entirely.”
I ignored the insulting suggestion:
“I have no wish to be involved in any kind of deal.”
Lipotin squirmed about in his chair:
“Of course not! And I am not here to make you an offer. Hmm ... It would be very tactless of me to try and pry into your thoughts. Of course. But the Princess has taken a fancy to it and when a beautiful woman takes a fancy to something, ... I would
