I followed him in what I took to be a northerly direction.
"You hate me, don't you?" he asked, after a time.
"That's right."
He paused at the head of a wide stone stairway. He turned and leaned back against the wall.
"I'd like to clear that up before tonight."
"So that's what you meant about my timing?"
He nodded.
"Tonight's the night. But you must have known that, at some level."
"I guess I did."
"I get to keep all the gold," he said then. "But I had to surrender a lot of my holdings, including most of this place."
"And Annie?" I asked. "She's a part of the price?"
He nodded again.
"But I'm going to want you on my side tonight, Perry, when it's time to pick up the pieces. Yes, I promised them Annie. I'd have promised them anything to get the work done. But afterwards... .
They're going to have to be happy with the real estate, the jewels, the foreign holdings. I get the gold, you get Annie, the hell with everybody else."
"You're too Byzantine, Ellison," I said, "too Machiavellian. There's no way I could trust a man like you even if I wanted to."
He sighed. Then he stared downward at his feet. A full minute must have gone by. Either he really had at one time been an actor or there was a great internal struggle in progress.
Then, "All right," he said, and he reached beneath his dressing gown and withdrew a silver flask. He unscrewed its top, removed it and waved it under my nose. It smelled like whisky.
He filled the top, which was the size of a shot glass, and he tossed it off in a single swallow. Then he refilled it and extended it toward me. I accepted it and did the same.
"I crossed over by accident myself, during a strange storm," he said, "apparently in exchange for my counterpart. So I knew it could be done. It took me a long time to figure how it might be managed—which is how I first came to know Griswold and Templeton. We worked together to discover the means. But they'd gotten greedy on a recent deal." He offered me the flask again. I declined. He took another slug himself, capped it, and put it away. "So I've no qualms about reneging on part of a deal with them. If the lady really means that much to you, she's yours."
I sat down on the top step, massaged my brow.
"Consanguinity makes these things easier," he said at last.
"Damn you, sir," I said.
"I'm not asking filial piety, just cooperation," he said. "We'll finesse these bastards and come out on top.
I'll get my gold, you'll get your Annie and they'll still be rich enough not to complain too loudly. It'll be better than death."
"Your troops look pretty evenly matched to me."
"I've reserves they don't know about," he said. "They show up on cue, the balance gets tipped, nobody fights. We all back away from each other, snarling and go about our business."
"What about Von Kempelen?"
"What about him?"
"He gets to live."
"Why?"
I remembered the old popeyed man who'd given us a cup of tea back in Paris and shown concern for our welfare as we scrambled away over the rooftops. True, he was venal. But he was not a killer, not a madman, not a predator. But I couldn't say this, and even if I did, it would mean nothing.
"Because that's how I want it," I answered him.
He made as if to reach for the flask again, thought better of it, let his hand fall.
"It'd mean my watching him for the rest of his life, to see he doesn't try the gold trick again."
I felt the left corner of my mouth quirk upward.
"Think you can afford that?" I asked.
"Damn you, sir," he quoted. "If that's what it takes, you've got it. Shall we shake on it?"
"No."
He dropped his cigar to the floor and stepped on it.
"All right then," he observed. "Between you and me, now, everything must be staged. We block out the action, we agree upon our cues. We have our entrances and our exits... ."
We entered the deep cellar, illuminated by torch and candle, a bit later in the day. The setup was somehow reminiscent of the arrangement on the worktable in Von Kempelen's Paris apartment, only on a much vaster scale. There were several ovens cooking things. There were jars and vials and alembics and retorts. But the majority of the chemicals occupied large vats, arranged about the floor in some pattern I did not understand. A massive quantity of dark metal was stacked upon a tarpaulin at the room's center. Annie, in a simple gray frock, stood beside a vat holding a pair of rods which extended from it.
She looked our way as we entered, let go the rods and came to me. I held her.
"I knew you'd come," she said, "today."
Von Kempelen looked our way.
"I know you," he said. "You was with the little man—and the monkey."
I nodded.
"I get around." Then, "Come on, Annie, let's get out of here," I told her.
She looked to Von Kempelen.
"Go ahead. You can finish charging it later," he said.
I took her out of there and up the stairs and through the halls and gallery and out into the garden, leaving them there below.
A long while later, as we lay amid beauty and sunlight, regarding golden trees, I remarked, "So the process involves mesmerism?"
She nodded, she yawned.
"It's the secret ingredient in such transmutation on a large scale," she explained, "a special kind of mesmerism."
"Oh," I said. " 'Special?' In what way?"
"Other-worldly energy," she replied. "There will be a vast flux of it when the door for Poe's return is finally closed."
"And that takes place tonight, during the work?"
"They would like it to,'' she said, "but it shan't. I haven't been keeping it open all this time for their benefit."
"You've lost me."
She smiled.
"No, I haven't lost anyone yet. Not even Poe. I plan to give them their gold and get him back, too. The three of us will finally be together, here."
"I am not a scientist," I said, "and my training as a mesmerist is far from complete. But even without knowing the mathematics that must prop such matters, I'm sure of one thing: The universe doesn't give you something for nothing. What's the price?"
She smiled again.
"Mr. Ellison does not know that I am aware of his secret," she said. "He is from that Earth. Therefore, I can exchange him for Poe and then close the door. We will be reunited, and Mr. Griswold will be extremely grateful."
"I'll bet," I said. "This was his idea, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
It was like looking into a maelstrom—things changing constantly as I watched. Would her stratagem prevail? Had Von Kempelen a secret army of homunculi awaiting the appropriate moment, somewhat after midnight of a gold October 7th, to make their move on his behalf? I was probably the only one involved without a contingency plan.
So I kissed her, and, "Tell me more about mesmerism," I said. "When the force is as strong as ours there must be special measures for keeping it under control."
"Oh, yes," she answered. "We must construct our own tools... ."
On that night of all nights in the year, well after midnight, we made our ways into the cavernous cellar of the manse at Arnheim to commence the transmutation.
The private armies of Seabright Ellison and the men he had dubbed the Unholy Trinity faced each other across the length of the laboratory. There were perhaps forty on each of two sides. Each man bore a rifle and wore a brace of pistols; and there were plenty of edged weapons in sight. I wondered what it would be like with ricochets flying all over the place. Civilians... . I'd sneaked in and dug a hasty trench earlier—not too far off to my left—and covered it over with a piece cut from the tarp holding the mountain of lead bars. I'd anticipated something like this; and at the first evidence there'd be gunfire I intended to grab Annie and dive into it.
Von Kempelen was connecting hoses from tank to tank, rods from the final tank to the far side of the stack of lead bars. Annie was seated in a shiny black chair which looked as if it had been constructed from slabs of obsidian. A glass helmet covered her upper head, and she leaned against a strip of gold which ran up its high back. She was given two rods to hold, both of which extended to the near side of the lead heap.