‘Plenty. I was going down to Derby yesterday for the first Spring Race Meeting if this business hadn’t cropped up overnight. So I’d drawn fifty the day before.’
‘Good,’ the Duke nodded. ‘We shan’t move from here until you return.’ Then, as Rex strode away across the grass to the Hispano, which was now visible where they had left it in the car-park, he turned to Simon:
‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘while Rex is gone. How did you ever get drawn into this terrible business?’
Simon smiled. ‘Well,’ he said hesitantly, ‘it may seem a queer thing to say, but you are partly responsible yourself.’
‘I!’ exclaimed the Duke. ‘What the deuce do you mean?’
‘I’m not blaming you, of course, in the least, but do you remember that long chat we had when we were both down at Cardinals Folly for Christmas? It started by your telling us about the old Alchemists and how they used to make gold out of base metals.’
De Richleau nodded. ‘Yes, and you threw doubt upon my statement that the feat had actually been performed. I cited the case of the scientist Helvetius, I remember, who was bitterly opposed to the pretentions of the Alchemists, but who, when he was visited by one at the Hague in December 1666, managed to secrete a little of the reddish powder which the man showed him under his finger-nail, and afterwards succeeded in transmuting a small amount of lead into gold with it. But you would not believe me, although I assured you, that no less a person than Spinoza verified the experiment at the time.’
‘That’s right,’ said Simon. ‘Well, I was sceptical but interested, so I took the trouble to check up as far as possible on all you’d said. It was Spinoza’s testimony that impressed me because he was so very sane and unbiased.’
‘So was Helvetius himself for that matter.’
‘I know. Anyhow, I dug up the fact that Povelius, the chief tester of the Dutch Mint, assayed the metal seven times with all the leading goldsmiths at the Hague and they unanimously pronounced it to be pure gold. Of course there was a possibility that Helvetius deceived them by submitting a piece of gold obtained through the ordinary channels, but it hardly seemed likely that he practised deliberate fraud, because he had no motive. He had always declared his disbelief in alchemy and he couldn’t make any more because he hadn’t got the powderso there was no question of his trying to float a bogus company on the experiment. He couldn’t even claim any scientific kudos from it either because he frankly admitted that he had stolen the powder from the stranger who showed it to him. After that I went into the experiments of Berigord de Pisa and Van Helmont.’
‘And what did you think of those?’ asked the Duke, his lined face showing quick interest in the early morning light.
‘They shook my unbelief a lot. Van Helmont was the greatest chemist of his time, and like Helvetius, he’d always said the idea of transmuting base metals into gold was sheer nonsense until a stranger gave him a little of that mysterious powder with which he, too, performed the experiment successfully; and he again had no personal axe to grind.’
‘There are plenty of other cases as well,’ remarked the Duke. ‘Raymond Lully made gold for King Edward III of England, and George Ripley gave Ł100,000 of alchemical gold to the Knights of Rhodes. The Emperor Augustus of Saxony left 17,000,000 Rix dollars and Pope John XXII of Avignon 25,000,000 florins, sums which were positively gigantic for those days. Both were poor men with slender revenues which could not have accounted in a hundred years for such fortunes. But both were alchemists, and transmutation is the only possible explanation of the almost fabulous treasure which was actually found in their coffers after their deaths.’
Simon nodded. ‘I know. And if one rejects the sworn evidence of men like Spinoza and Van Helmont, why should one believe the people who say they can measure the distance to the stars, or the scientists of the last century who produced electrical phenomena?’
‘The difference is that the mass mind will not accept scientific truths unless they can be demonstrated freely and harnessed to the public good. Everyone accepts the miracle that sulphur can be converted into fire because they see it happen twenty times a day and we all carry a box of matches in our pockets, but if it had been kept as a jealously guarded secret by a small number of initiates, the public would still regard it as impossible. And that, you see, is precisely the position of the alchemist.
‘He stands apart from the world and is indifferent to it. To succeed in the Great Work he must be absolutely pure, and to such men gold is dross. In most cases he makes only sufficient to supply his modest needs and refuses to pass on his secret to the profane; but that does not necessarily mean that he is a fraud and a liar. The theory that all matter is composed of atoms, molecules and electrons in varying states is generally accepted now. Milk can be made as hard as concrete by the new scientific process, glass into women’s dresses, wood and human flesh decay into a very similar dust, iron turns to rust, and crystals are known to grow although they are a type of stone. Even diamonds can be made synthetically.’
‘Of course,’ Simon agreed, with his old eagerness, so absorbed now in the discussion as to be apparently oblivious of his surroundings. ‘And as far as metals are concerned, they are all composed of sulphur and mercury and can be condensed or materialised by means of a salt. Only the varying proportions of those three Principals account for the difference between them. Metals are the fruits of mineral nature, and the baser ones are still unripe because the sulphur and mercury had no time to combine in the right proportions before they solidified. This powder, or the Philosophers’ Stone as they call it, is a ferment that forces on the original process of Nature and ripens the base metals into gold.’
‘That is so. But do you mean to tell me that you have been experimenting yourself?’
‘Ner,’ Simon shook his narrow head. ‘I soon found out that to do so would mean a lifetime of aestheticism and then perhaps failure after all. It is hardly in my line to become a “Puffer”. Besides it’s obvious that transmutation in its higher sense is the supreme mystery of turning Matter into Light. Metals are like men, the baser corresponding to the once born, and both gradually become purifiedmetals by geological upheavalsmen by successive reincarnations, and the part played by the secret agent which hurries lead to gold is the counterpart of esoteric initiation which lifts the spirit towards light.’
‘Was that your aim then?’
‘To some extent. You know how one thing leads to another. I discovered that the whole business is bound up with the Quabalah so, being a Jew, I began to study the esoteric doctrine of my own people.’
De Richleau nodded. ‘And very interesting you found it, I don’t doubt.’
‘Yes, it took a bit of getting into, but after I’d tackled a certain amount of the profane literature to get a grounding, I read the Sepher Ha Zoher, the Sepher Jetyjrah and some of the Midra-schim. Then I began to see a little daylight.’
‘In fact you began to believe, like most people who have really read considerably and had a wide experience of life, that our western scientists have only been advancing in one direction and that we have even lost the knowledge of many things with which the wise men of ancient times were well acquainted.’
‘That’s so,’ Simon smiled again. ‘I’ve always been a complete sceptic. But once I began to burrow beneath the surface I found such a mass of evidence that I could no longer doubt the existence of strange hidden forces which can be chained and utilised if one only knows the way.’
‘Yes. And plenty of people still interest themselves in these questions and use the Quabalah to promote their own well-being and the general good. But where does Mocata come into all this?’