‘Well, maybe I will go catch a cat in Gravesend,’ said Dr Jonathan before adding, with a relish that caused me to shudder inwardly, ‘and drown it in a bucket.’
‘Rather than kill a cat, maybe my brother could use the influence of his magic stone to get favourable weather,’ said Captain Case to the rest of us.
‘Oh, I have heard of this magic stone,’ said Henry Tallman. ‘It originated in the polar regions, did it not?’
It was plain that Jonathan Case was unwilling to answer. This was most likely the reason Tallman pressed him further, saying, ‘Won’t you show it to us, Dr Case? I understand it is in this very chamber.’
Jonathan glanced automatically at the cabinet and its weird detector lock before looking daggers at his brother for raising the subject. Even so, I could see that he was half tempted by the chance of showing off what he’d called ‘the sky-stone’ once more. He sighed but nevertheless reached for his keys and went across to the cabinet. Stooping, he was about to insert the key into the lock when he suddenly straightened and whirled around. The expression on his face was somewhere between fury and panic.
‘Someone has been tampering with this. The lady’s finger points at forty. Someone has opened the cabinet.’
He looked at our four faces as if one of us might have been responsible. I could vouch for Jack and me, although I didn’t know about Captain Case or Henry Tallman. While Dr Case jabbed at the keyhole with the key — failing several times on account of his angry state — I recalled that the extended arm of the dancing lady had indicated the number thirty-nine on the dial. If it was now reading forty, then the cabinet must have been opened. Unless Jonathan Case had done it himself and somehow forgotten.
By now the physician had succeeded in turning the key in the lock. He scrabbled blindly inside until his hand closed on something. He brought out the satin-swathed item he’d deposited there the previous evening. He unwrapped it and brought the contents close to his eyes. He pored over its surface. To me it looked very like the sky-stone. Case’s shoulders slumped in relief. An involuntary ‘Thank God’ escaped his lips. It was the sky-stone.
He carried the dark stone back to where we were sitting. He was reluctant to let it out of his hands but allowed Mr Tallman to hold it for a few instants. This black-clad individual weighed it in his palm before holding it up so that he could study its outline. I was still unable to decide whether it most resembled a bird or a boat. I noticed Colin Case looking curiously at it. Tallman sniffed at the sky-stone. He, too, scanned its surface.
‘Why, there appear to be characters inscribed here,’ he said. ‘Strange markings. Letters, perhaps, although not English ones.’
‘Perhaps so, perhaps so,’ said the doctor.
‘It has curative properties?’
‘It may do.’
‘My friend Dr John Dee of Mortlake would be interested in this,’ said Tallman.
‘No doubt,’ said Dr Jonathan Case.
I picked up the reference to a much more famous doctor, the aforesaid Dee, the aged occultist and astrologer who was an occasional counsellor to kings and queens. Tallman probably mentioned him to show the reach of his acquaintance. If so, Case was determined not to be impressed, as his terse answer showed.
Trying again, Tallman said, ‘I am sometimes troubled by the head-ache. I could sleep with the stone under my bolster to test its curative powers.’
Case was having none of it. He held out his hand but Tallman wasn’t quite done.
‘I was under the impression that this was the property of an important foreigner, one residing in London.’
‘It may have been,’ said Jonathan Case, now practically seizing the sky-stone from Tallman. The physician replaced the black stone in the cabinet, once more making a show of turning the key in the lock and examining the dial.
I had a sense of strong animosity between the three men, or at least between Jonathan Case on the one side and his brother Colin Case and Henry Tallman on the other. I was not sure what Tallman did but, from his mention of Dr Dee and other not-so-casual comments, I rather thought he, too, was one of those individuals who claim to be able to unpick the mysteries of heaven and earth, and most likely of hell as well. That would explain his interest in the sky-stone. Each man had his specialism, whether it was seamanship or physic or occultism, and each man looked down on the others’. With Colin Case there was the additional irritation of having to defer to his brother, who had chartered the Argo. I hoped the ship’s captain was getting well rewarded for it.
Jack and I kept fairly quiet and tucked into the mutton stew provided by the Gravesend ordinary. We were glad enough to be at the end of our voyage, as we thought. I hadn’t eaten all day and my appetite had returned. We listened to the bickering of these individuals with mild interest, no more. There was a revealing comment made by Dr Case later in the meal. Tallman brought up the subject of the sky-stone once more, remarking that many people would like get their hands on it by fair means or foul. As Tallman said this, Jonathan Case glanced at Jack Wilson and me. Not in suspicion, as if we wanted to steal the thing, but with a momentary unease, as if he were touched by guilt.
‘Is that why you requested our company from Middle Temple to the riverside yesterday?’ said Jack. ‘Were we to act as protection against any attempt to seize the stone?’
‘I was delighted to have you with me,’ said Case. ‘Strength in numbers.’
‘But why did you take the stone to the Temple in the first place?’ persisted Jack.
‘Tell them, Jonathan,’ said Colin Case. ‘It is the least you owe these players for having imposed on them. Tell them, or I shall.’
‘I went to the Middle Temple with a dual purpose,’ said Case with great reluctance. ‘To see you players in the King’s Men and to, ah, collect an object that another member of the audience wished to entrust into my hands…’
‘Nonsense!’ said Captain Case, a very mild reaction for a sailor. ‘As usual, my brother can’t help making himself out to be much more important than he really is, as when he conveys to us the King’s opinion on smoking. Brother Jonathan is merely acting on commission, carrying that precious sky-stone from London to St-Malo. He is being paid for his pains, and I in turn am being paid for the pain of enduring his company and his chatter.’
‘You collected the sky-stone from someone in the French ambassador’s party,’ I said. This was not much of a stab in the dark, since Tallman had already referred to ‘an important foreigner in London’, but I could see from the expression on Case’s face that it had gone home. ‘That was really why you were at the Middle Temple. You and your cousin.’
‘Ha!’ snorted Colin in derision, so that another of my suspicions seemed to be confirmed. Thomasina was no cousin to the physician. As if to prevent any further outburst, Jonathan rapidly agreed that, yes, it was so, he had been in conversation with an individual from the ambassador’s entourage — whom he was not at liberty to name — and that he was now responsible for delivering the sky-stone to another unnameable individual in St-Malo.
Henry Tallman had been staring hard at the doctor all this time. He tapped his long, beringed fingers on the table.
‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘It is Maitre Renard you are taking it to, no? He is the only man in St-Malo who would be concerned with such things.’
‘It may be Renard.’
‘The only one who would have the resources to pay for it, too. He must trust you, Dr Case.’
‘I have a certain reputation,’ said Jonathan.
‘That is what I mean,’ said Tallman. ‘And I would wager that the individual you obtained the sky-stone from was acting — how shall I put it? — sub rosa? That he perhaps does not have full title to the thing since he is not the “important foreigner” I referred to but one of his underlings.’